Real Life section maintenance (New Crowner 19 Feb 2024)

We'll have to wait two more days for Dirty Cop because it's so close to 2:1. But yes, Too Controversial sounds good if it stays within consensus range.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jul 22nd 2022 at 12:13:07 PM

Dirty Cop is a morality trope. It’s explicitly about cops who are at the very least very corrupt if not outright evil.

It really isn't though. It's a legality trope. Yeah, the character type is almost always treated as evil, but you could totally write about an SS agent who is on the payroll of the French Resistance, and is arresting loyal Nazis after framing them for harboring Jews. If we want to ban real life examples because they're too controversial, or too common or something, then that's fair, but don't pretend this is something like Evil Jesuit. It's a trope of actions rather than ethics, more akin to something like Professional Killer (which still has real life examples at the moment).

I think that's closer to The Mole, TBH.

The description literally talks about Dirty Cop as a common villain in the first paragraph. "Morality trope" is not a stretch. I also think that "morality trope" is kind of a subsection of "too controversial" by design and adding to both might be redundant.

No, they are separate categories for a reason.

Morality issues means the trope assigns a moral judgment to the characters. While creators can easily use tropes to differentiate good and bad people, this isn't something we do for real life, since it means passing moral judgment on real people (also there are no tropes in RL). Like using Bald of Evil for real people, because being bald doesn't pass a moral judgment in RL, while in fiction it can easily do so.

Too controversial means applying the trope to RL people will spark endless flame wars, edits and reverts and stuff we really don't want. It's things like calling a religion a Cult or saying What An Idiot about a person.

Honestly, I would file Dirty Cop under too common, because it is depressingly common and has been for as long as police (or police equivalents) have existed throughout history. But that's just my two cents.

Edited by laserviking42 on Jul 22nd 2022 at 9:41:23 AM

Yes, and we don't pass moral judgment on people because it's inherently controversial. That's my point.

Putting Dirty Cop as "too common" risks making a political statement and being controversial in itself. "Morality trope" is fine.

By that logic, making it a morality trope would also make "a political statement". Besides, the entire sub-page of real life dirty cops that currently exists on our wiki is already making a "political statement" on its own.

Also, we don't pass moral judgment on real life people because it is generally considered a dick move, not because it's controversial.

Cool Old Guy and Cool Old Lady are... yikes. 90% of them are gushing about beloved elderly actors and ZCE's. Also, the trope is supposed to be about old people who do cool things while old, and a lot of the examples are people who lived to be old but had largely retired from public life for decades before they died, which I'm pretty sure is misuse. Personally, I think both of these ought to go on account of being too common anyway. Even if these pages don't get cut the certainly need cleanup.

No it wouldn't. When assigning something to Morality Tropes, we're talking about the morality of the characters in the trope, not the morality of real life cops. But Too Common is for things that exist frequently IRL.

My point is that calling people "evil" is dickish and likely to start fights in any case, hence controversial, but TBH this was a stupid pointless argument on my part.

I'd say cleanup first but I wouldn't miss those examples going — they attract too much gushing about any real life public figure who's old and popular.

We don’t pass moral judgement on real people because it’s subjective (especially for a subject as politically charged as the police) and it isn’t this wiki’s job to judge people’s morals (or lack thereof).

Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Jul 23rd 2022 at 8:09:58 AM

Calling someone who was convicted of police corruption a Dirty Cop isn't making moral judgement of that person. It's stating that said person was convicted of police corruption. Now, were we to call Dirty Cop a morality trope, that would be making a moral judgement.

The entire trope description is about the criminality of corruption, specifically the kind that lets criminals off the hook, disproportionately attacks criminals, etc., which is almost always depicted as a negative thing in media. If police corruption were a purely morally objective thing then it wouldn't be so much of an issue to list real life examples.

I'm not arguing that it shouldn't be? >_< I was just responding before that Morality Tropes seems to be a sub-section of Too Controversial (because calling real life people's actions "good" or "evil" is inherently controversial) so I didn't think it needed o be added to both sections but I don't really care either way now.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 23rd 2022 at 10:52:42 AM

Police Brutality is NRLEP so why shouldn’t Dirty Cop be?

And Police Brutality is listed under Too Controversial I would note.

I agree, they both should be NRLEP. Our job is not to punish or shame real life criminals.

Calling Dirty Cop for KRLE since it dropped below consensus range after the two-day delay.

I could even see a case for Dirty Cop to be in the "no gossip or stereotypes" category - certain cities, countries, and regions are more infamous for ineffective/bribable/brutal police than others (sometimes that's due to it actually being a real problem there, sometimes it's just people being racist or generally bigoted), and it would be really bad if the section were to turn into "all the cops in Tropekstan are dirty while the cops here in Troperia are good!"

Also, for what it's worth, here in America at least I'm starting to hear the term "dirty cop" used to describe officers convicted of specifically Police Brutality (which is NRLEP), which makes me think a definition drift is starting to occur, and it's probably a good idea to get rid of Dirty Cop's RL section before it becomes a dumping ground for the RL examples Police Brutality won't take.

I don't really think Dirty Cop needs to be put through the ringer three times just because it didn't get the result we wanted. If it's not an issue to a majority of voters, then it's not an issue. Most of our concerns seem to be about theoretical situations anyway. And I say this as someone who was fine with it being NRLEP and was arguing in favor of it being listed as Morality Trope.

I find it odd, though how, based on the above "it's not a morality trope" debate, people seem averse to recognizing that the trope is for cops doing corrupt, even villainous things, because if it was objectively just for cops convicted of corrupt behavior and that was treated as morally neutral, the RL section wouldn't be an issue.

My apologies if that's the case.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jul 24th 2022 at 9:04:47 AM

I assume MissConduct was ninja'd and didn't notice the call at the time they posted; their post was posted just a minute after the call happened.

Edited by Albert3105 on Jul 24th 2022 at 8:59:16 AM

Dan Browned's Real Life folder is a mess. It contains examples that belong in Magazine and Web Original.

The section about family crests even contains Fan Myopia.

I think we're getting a little bit over-zealous about what counts as a "morality trope." I feel like there's a difference between tropes about characters who are evil (e.g. Morally Ambiguous Doctorate, President Evil), and tropes about characters who commit very specific acts or sets of acts that any reasonable person would describe as evil (e.g. Dirty Cop, Pedophile Priest, Professional Killer). The difference is, by listing a person as an example of one of the former, you're necessarily making a value judgement. By listing a person as an example of one of the latter, you can merely state the facts and allow the reader to make their own value judgement, even if, realistically, you already know what value judgement they're going to make.

(Also, I know Pedophile Priest is already NRLEP because it's a sex trope. I just used it because it was useful for illustrating my point.)

Grumpy Old Man only has 2 RL examples and they're both super general (and in Harlan Ellison's case, he was also very much a Grumpy Young Man in his younger days).

They're ZCE and can be removed for that alone.

Those aren't general (specific people are named), they are zero context though, Castro's is relying on a link and Ellison ... as you say, he's always been cranky.

And

Edited by laserviking42 on Jul 25th 2022 at 8:10:02 AM