Improving YKTTW

Another problem is people stuffing every bigger change or problem of a page in TRS even if it isn't always the best place. The thread I linked in the previous post was an idea to reduce that problem.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Unless you could link the discussion pages to the right places in forums... that might help. Hmmm... maybe a re-route option? Dunno if that's even feasible, though. (Code illiterate, I'm afraid.)

If we want to discuss TRS, this thread might be a better place - this one is about YKTTW. For the Forum Guide, just use the one in my penultimate post.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Or thing that bothers me about hat removal is that it's already a huge pain to get 5 hats even for a completely uncontested trope. I had two in YKTTW for almost a year that never got 5, and no one raised any problems with them. I fear this may slow things down even more. Ther's no need to rush, but taking too long makes it more likely people lose interest, and that leads to yet more abandoned drafts.

Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.

But can't you launch with less than five hats? I've seen launches with no hats at all (although those always end up in TRS).

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

Agreed, hat removal by itself is only a mini-solution. We still need a larger overhaul of YKTTW.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

On the subject of hat removal: This could essentially be the hat version of crowner votes: Toss a hat = +1 vote; remove a hat = -1 vote. Either way, you can only do one 'vote' per YKTTW.

However doing it this way has an obvious problem, namely the 2-point difference between a +hat and -hat. Once you've tossed a hat for or against the count, the system needs some way to make sure that if you switch your vote later from one to the other it only causes a 1-hat difference.

Here's an idea: Each hat internally stores two boolean values with it, the first being whether it was originally a +hat or -hat (true or false, respectively) and the second stores whether it was changed/reversed later (true or false). The actual 'value' of a hat at any given time would be (value XOR reversed).

When a user tosses their hat (for or against) onto a YKTTW for the first time, it stores the hat's value. If they change it later, the hat's original value can't be changed, but its 'reversed' status is (so it only yields a 1-hat change to the total score).

---

On the topic of rushed launches, I think we should hide the "a YKTTW should be at least three days old" message — some people take this really literally and think that they can launch after exactly 72 hours regardless of other people's opinions. Instead, if they click the "launch" button before the 3-day rule is spent, they get a popup notice informing them that it's not ready for launch yet.

Another proposal that we could do in the current system is that the "launch" button does not appear at all unless the YKTTW has at least one hat on it. Worst-case abuse is the OP tosses their own hat on it and chooses to launch away, but that's not a big issue.

edited 19th Feb '12 8:34:54 AM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

^Support both opinions.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Oh, yes: Give the "Needs A Better Title" and "Needs A Better Description" tags some teeth.

Make it so a user absolutely cannot launch a YKTTW if it's currently tagged with either one; the tags must be removed prior to launch.

It could be done in the current YKTTW format with a simple wikiword string search on the draft text. (Having them as discrete checkable options is ultimately better, but for now anyone can edit a draft to add/remove those tags.)

And I keep thinking the "launch" button should have an icon of a finger over a Big Red Button.

edited 19th Feb '12 8:41:25 AM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

The logic of hat removal is: On Remove, get vote for this draft by this troper.

• CASE none and draft has up vote, insert down vote else no action, return ok.
• CASE vote was up, modify to down and update draft's total, return ok.
• CASE vote was down, no action, return message

I believe that covers it.

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

...Except for the two-point difference between a +hat and a -hat, like what happens when you change a crowner vote from up to down or vice versa.

If a crowner has five hats (including yours) but you remove your hat, the results hould be four hats remaining, not three.

My logic is, when a user tosses a hat/boot (okay, "boot" is a nice synonym for a -hat), scan the table for this user's vote and:

• CASE none found: Insert the corresponding hat/boot as appropriate.
• CASE found hat: Flag the hat as 'reversed'. It's still present in the system, but is no longer counted towards the total score.
• CASE found reverse-hat: Flag the hat as valid again.
• CASE found boot: Flag the boot as 'reversed'. Still there, but not counted against the total.
• CASE found reverse-boot: Flag the boot as valid again.

edited 19th Feb '12 8:48:12 AM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

There is only one point deduction/addition in the scenario I gave.

edited 19th Feb '12 8:47:00 AM by FastEddie

Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

Okay, I see what you did there. But what happens when the total falls out of sync with the actual hats/boots cast?

In the crowner system, you can just count up the + and - votes again and resync the total, but we can't do that with a hat-boot system unless there's some way of discerning between a vote was initially A, and one that was originally B and changed to A later.

(Granted, votes falling out of sync are only noticeable when both the total and its contributing votes are both displayed; but it still happens.)

edited 19th Feb '12 8:52:50 AM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

"I've seen launches with no hats at all (although those always end up in TRS)."

That depends on if there was discussion helping to fix the trope or not. If there was, then it's often that users just forgot to give a hat to it.

Also, the hat button is not helpful. "Ready to Launch" looks like another form of the launch button. So not only does it no stand out, it looks like something other than what it does.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

Here's a hat-less YKTTW.

But I imagine most people forget to go back to a YKTTW they gave advice on. It's really difficult to find again.

edited 19th Feb '12 8:57:36 AM by lu127

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

On the subject of good-vs-bad examples in a YKTTW: It just reminded me that I had one YKTTW about a deadly boss attack whose only countermeasure is to attack the boss and force him to flinch (typically in a scenario where the boss is otherwise Immune to Flinching). Unfortunately it got bogged down with far too many Square Peg Round Trope examples, that I had to finally declare "screw this, I'm outta here" and toss it out. Shame though, it is a pretty identifiable thing.

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

There's that: you can bust a gut defining something, and get no hats. E.g. this one. Just the way things happen, I guess. <shrugs>

No, not really. In the YKTTW history (which you can reach through the article watchlist), there's a section at the bottom which shows every active YKTTW that you've ever replied to, and orders it by "last to be replied to, either by you or by anyone else".

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I also wrote "if there was discussion helping to fix the trope or not".

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

Part of the issue is that there are just so many new proposals on a daily basis that no one has the time to hand hold someone through writing a better description for a trope that we aren't sure what they meant to begin with. Especially with the hardcore group of TRS regulars and other people that really know what they are doing are often as not working on repair jobs, image picking, and their own trope ideas. So at most you have time to slap a Needs A Better Description title on it.

Also, so many draft ideas are perfectly legit and well formed, but just get lost in the shuffle and get no attention from the crowd. So many also get abandoned by their sponsor almost as soon as they get started. Going through the stale drafts, it seems like some people must have dozens upon dozens of active drafts out there that they either decided was a bad idea but never discarded, or they simply forgot about it and moved on to something else.

I've been trying to bump old drafts to get people to sponsor them, and so far a few have attracted people saying they will adopt them, but I fear that most will just be forgotten in the midst of everyone being eager to publish their own new ideas.

edited 19th Feb '12 11:46:42 AM by Catbert

^I think the only way to fix these problems would be by implementing solutions like these that were done when TRS was clotted with dead threads.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

If I may repeat, the "by oldest" YKTTW listing needs to go by reply date, not creation date. Currently, 90% of the oldest 100 YKTTW's have been bumped recently, which means that "by latest reply" and "by oldest" are showing largely the same ones and it's impossible to clear out any of the rest inbetween them.

It also needs a better icon — the skull icon has noticeable resize artifacts. How about something along the lines of the iconic RIP headstone? [1]◊ [2]◊ [3]◊

edited 19th Feb '12 2:20:27 PM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

We need a way to see every single one of them in a list format.

So, the ideas are:

• Replace the icon with a less artifacted one.
• Create a "order by creation date" option.
• (Mine) Cap the amounts of YKTTW threads that cna exist at any one time.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

^ I don't think capping the YKTTW is a good idea. Especially not without some mechanism (like page numbers) to browse through every last YKTTW in the listing.

And creation date is virtually irrelevant if a YKTTW has active, constructive discussion going on.

edited 19th Feb '12 2:22:52 PM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.