Real Life section maintenance (New Crowner 19 Feb 2024)

Image Pickin' thread where this was discussed, for reference. As the one who brought it up in the first place, I'm all for adding it to NRLEP.

Edited by FernandoLemon on Jun 19th 2022 at 7:41:35 AM

Brahms' page should be in Music/ anyway.

Agreed that Brahms should be a "Music" rather than "Creator" page. I don't know why the thread dedicated to that discussion never corrected this.

I agree that Battleaxe Nurse should probably be NRLEP.

That does raise the question of when do we put people under the Creator space.

When they don't fit anywhere else. As was mentioned earlier, musicians go in the Music/ namespace.

And wrestlers go under Wrestling/, and internet creators go under one of their respective namespaces (Blog/, WebVideo/, WebAnimation/, etc.) Those are the three big exceptions.

Creator/ is for people who have made works, such as actors, directors, production companies, artists, authors, etc. Real life people can also go under UsefulNotes/ if their occupation isn't creative, such as scientists, activists, rulers/politicians, organizations, etc. People who only debatably existed such as King Arthur go under Myth/.

Edited by FernandoLemon on Jun 20th 2022 at 12:25:10 PM

The discussion of creator pages is outside the scope of this thread. We only deal with the real life sections of tropes. I think there's a clean up project for creator pages. I'll link the thread when I find it.

EDIT: Oh, nevermind it was right next to this thread. Anyways, Real Life People Clean Up Project

Edited by MacronNotes on Jun 21st 2022 at 12:14:57 PM

Do we have a policy of preemptively imposing NRLEP on tropes when they're made? I've had two people so far demand such a restriction on this WIP trope just because I added a real life section with a single entry that describes an actual real-life attempt at making the trope happen, all because of paranoia about somehow attracting shoehorns and natter.

Tropes can be made NRLEP in the Launch Pad, but there needs to be a real reason for it.

Does past precedent help? Expanded States of America has real life sections under each of its subtypes, and I don't see them attracting any problematic entries despite there being plenty of anti-American sentiment around the world and accusations that the United States practices its own form of imperialism.

That precedent does indeed help.

The fact that there's a hot war going on right now makes Russian examples a bit more of a minefield, but there's no reason to restrict politically neutral examples.

Political neutrality does not mean that we should whitewash history, though. Not even recent history. Facts and consensus opinion based on generally reasonable grounds shouldn't be considered politically problematic.

Edited by MarqFJA on Jun 21st 2022 at 5:25:00 PM

I don’t see the concern about shoehorns and natter and other issues I brought up on the trope discussion as “paranoia,” and frankly don’t appreciate the implication. As I said, we’ve encountered problems with tropes like this in past in their Real Life folders and have had to do clean up on them. I think it’s a perfectly reasonable issue to bring up.

The ROCEJ issue is also a legit one to mention in the case of the Real Life folder entry currently there.

Edited by BoltDMC on Jun 21st 2022 at 7:36:23 AM

It is paranoia when the most simple solution is to either vet any edit to the real life section or simply "soft-lock" it to the bare facts that it presents.

And I'm not convinced that there's an ROCEJ issue just because I put scare quotes on the word "diplomacy" when describing Putin's verifiably jingoistic policies.

Putting scare quotes around something is a way to say it isn't actually what it's described as. It's not a good idea to say that Putin/Russia can't do diplomacy good.

I suppose it is indeed inaccurate to say that Putin can't do diplomacy period ^note he seems to be doing fine with friendly countries like China and India, disregarding whether or not the deals he's struck with them are biased in one party's favor and whether the bias is heavy, he just can't do it when it comes to the targets of his ambition for regional hegemony if they're trying to break out of the Russian sphere of influence and aren't enticed by his attempts to effectively bribe them.

I changed the relevant line to this. How about it?

Edited by MarqFJA on Jun 21st 2022 at 6:13:34 PM

I can do without the condescension personally.

But to respond, one, it's not uncommon to call for NRLEP before a trope has been published if it really shouldn't have one (trope falls under one of the seven categories we've listed as having NRLE always) or if there are concerns about it potentially leading to issues like edit wars.

I was neutral/leaning cautious on the NRLEP debate until it devolved into a back and forth on how to best describe somewhat recent political events. And fwiw I agree that writing "diplomacy" isn't accurate or useful (coercive diplomacy is still diplomacy. whether or not its effective is another discussion entirely and irrelevant).

I think the draft would be best without a RL section, but I would (and did on the draft) advocate for at minimum no recent examples.

Edited by amathieu13 on Jun 21st 2022 at 11:22:54 AM

The "condescension" as you call it is me being both flabbergasted and outraged that you guys want to expunge any and all references to actual real-life attempts at making this trope a reality, especially since some of those attempts are integral to the some of the trope's examples as a method for achieving it.

This debate probably would've been over already if you were asking to just limit it to mentioning the organizations in question, the fact that not all post-Soviet states have joined them, and then cap it off with a friendly warning that any further discussion is liable to attract controversy; I've seen this done on some tropes, so there's precedent. But excise any real-life examples indiscriminately? No, that's where I draw the line. Expanded States of America gets to have its real-life examples (including some fringe/conspiracy theory ones), and United Europe has several paragraphs in its description that talk about the real-life history behind pan-European unity; there's no justification for banning even a brief mention of the few attempts at post-Soviet reunification in real life.

You know, let me put it this way: If this trope had been made a decade ago, would anyone have objected to it having a real life section that went as far as to mention the Russo-Georgian War? And had the years gone by, would it have had that real life section excised after the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War just because of fear that it would attract controversy and edit-warring? I'd like to think that it wouldn't have, and instead the verdict would've been to wait and see.

Bottom line is, I honestly believe that you guys are jumping the gun on this one and trying to kill a fly by setting an entire room on fire.

Edited by MarqFJA on Jun 21st 2022 at 6:40:49 PM

bleh ~Marq FJA

I’m bowing out of this discussion, but I wish to formally state here that I’m against launching this trope with a Real Life folder for reasons stated earlier.

It's hard not being defensive when people are basically condoning censorship of simple facts whose only controversy comes from a segment of people that are demonstrably dangerous to civilized society (both national and international).

I took the debate here because amathieu13 wanted to break it up in the draft to begin with. I assume the intention was to not clutter the draft's comment section with what was proving to be a longer-lasting argument than expected, and I personally agreed.

And concern about RL and ROCEJ is one thing, demanding to censor even the slightest mention of the trope's real-life manifestation to avoid a so-far-unproven risk of attracting controversial edits is a different beast altogether. You would think such edits would've already manifested on, say, Make the Bear Angry Again, but AFAIK that hasn't been the case.

EDIT: Putting this another way, I am totally fine with a blanket ban on real-life examples for The Empire because nothing of great value is lost, as none of the straightforward examples of the trope IRL are integral to appreciating it. But banning any mention of the CIS and its related organizations as real-life examples of Post-Soviet Union attempts is like banning any mention of the Roman Empire as a real-life example from Hegemonic Empire. Hell, now that just looked at it, Hegemonic Empire already mentions Vladimir Putin's aggressive expansionism, and no problems seem to have arisen there! That's two prime places where Putinism's aggression should've attracted the kind of problems you guys are worried about, and so far they've failed to manifest.

Edited by MarqFJA on Jun 21st 2022 at 7:20:07 PM

I think the big question here is, do we want to trope current historical events, like this current war? I think that is not a good idea. There is a reason historians generally don't study anything from the last decade, because those events are usually still unfolding, and you need the benefit of hindsight to form a clear and objective view of such an event.

Also, and perhaps more relevantly here, allowing these real life examples would effectively turn this trope into running commentary on this war. There are plenty of places where we can do that, including on the forum, but I don't think trope pages are the place to do it.

We also have to consider that if we do allow these real life examples, they will be inherently Flame Bait. Are we willing to deal with that?

And yes, I would argue the same for the Expanding States Of America trope if America were to start conquering Mexico or something like that. I think that in such cases it is best to keep some distance from real life events.

Ultimately, after all, we are here to trope media, not real life.

NVM

Edited by MacronNotes on Jun 21st 2022 at 12:25:54 PM