Question about Trope Entries & Cut Series

Examples that don't link to actual articles are undesirable. Either we redlink them, in which case people will try to create the article by clicking the link and get confused when it doesn't work, or we remove the link, in which case people will similarly assume we don't have the article.

The third option is to have the example link offsite, which defeats the purpose of removing the content in the first place.

There seems to be no point in keeping examples that don't link to anything and cannot, by our policies, be made to do so.

That is true, but I see lots of examples that don't link to anything. It's not nearly as much of trouble as a lot of redlinks, and examples without links don't seem to encourage page-creation, which is probably a good thing here.

They can also give the impression that we endorse the work in question, regardless of the nature of the trope the example is in, which is precisely the reason we're removing the articles in the first place.

Examples without article links are a technical violation of our policies. All examples should have a link. If they cannot have a link because of our policies, they shouldn't be listed. Except I guess for Real Life and mythology.

edited 21st May '12 1:28:15 PM by Fighteer

.....I don't endorse 'real wifeys get money' but I listed it :(

The issue is that many people will take it that "we have examples on these works, so we condone them".

That being said, this topic is probably too much of a can of worms to use it as an argument.

Eh, just saying. BTW: Real Wifeys Get Money was on the AA interest table at B+N and unlikely to be porn.

I think the examples shouldn't be removed.

What we really need, IMO, is the notion that this site isn't the end of the world. If people understand that, then they can just say "Ok, maybe this site isn't the place for this." Then it wouldn't pose much problem to make a clear distinction between cut and not cut, which I think is more consistent.

I'm going to complicate matters by saying that I think that works cut for pedocrap should probably be burned to the ground, but examples from the excuse plots of porn-with-excuse-plots should be acceptable, as long as they don't violate our policies in other ways.

Talking about porn merely causes trouble with the ad servers and such. Keeping references to pedocrap could potentially result in severe legal problems for the site owners, up to and including being forced to register as a sex offender.

Eh, considering that other sites have pages about pedophilia, I don't think it's really going to cause any more trouble. I would prefer keeping things fair and having a consistent policy.

@Fighteer: Sorry to be so nitpicky, but can I consider this as an official go-ahead to delete examples? It's just that I have heard several different statements from different members of the moderation team (see my post above), and I'm seriously confused about what to do.

I'm trying to put together an official statement. Will let you know.

I'm pretty sure this is a bad idea. I haven't followed content policy discussions for a while, but I'm fairly certain that examples from cut works didn't need to be cut.

Decisions like this always affect more than you expect. If we're thinking, oh, it's no great loss to not have mention of these disgusting works that usually aren't in the mainstream anyway, that's good in theory, but you'll always find some flaw, especially with our borderline cases. What if you want to reference the legendary Troubled Production of Caligula, or explain how the Mysterious Informant in All The Presidents Men got his name? All Anime Is Naughty Tentacles got reinstated; can we not even mention what anime is being misunderstood as?

The bottom line is that we don't need to be Orwellian about this. If you're worried about having mentions of a work we frown on, consider actually explaining or indicating in some way that the work in question has no page due to our content policy. Concealing a cut&locked page is a really lousy reason to cut ordinary trope examples or cursory mentions that pertain to an explicit work.

If we have icky examples, we cut them; that was the case even before the new policy.

I agree.

Did we ever decide a policy?

So, have you reached a consensus? I'm contemplating cutting an example from a page.

I find the idea that anything that isn't directly labelled something like "recommendation" or "review" to be utterly mind-boggling. This wiki is filled with things that I'm sure nobody here wants to endorse, but they're still tropes, so they still belong. And some of these examples are pretty good examples. (The Ln O example, for instance, has given me a new understanding of the concept of AudienceAlienatingPremise... even if I'm not personally alienated by that part.

So, has an official decision been reached yet, as to whether or not references to cut works should actually be deleted from trope pages? If you ask me, I think they shouldn't be, but if the staff decide that they need to be disacknowledged, then I can at least respect that more than I can respect whoever's decision it was to ban emphasizing any words whatsoever (including when emphasis is called for) in the Dethroning Moment of Suck pages.

First I noticed of this (which was just this morning), was when the Popotan example under Most Writers Are Adults was gone, courtesy of Ojamajo Lime Pie. From what I gather, she's also targeted other references to it and other cut works for deletion, and has also asked to become a member of the P5 (which she's seemingly been denied). However, I'm not sure if she's actually even a moderator or not, and don't know how to tell if she is one.

If it gets officially decided (or already has been) that there are to be no references to cut works, even under non-sexual trope pages, then I'll leave everything be. However, if we decide otherwise, I'll come back later on, whenever it's safe to assume that OLP has moved on to better things (so as to not start an edit war), to add the stuff back in.

edited 15th Jul '12 5:21:01 AM by SeaRover

It would be nice to get the idea. So far, the Lowest Common Denominator is that potentially problematic examples (like Nightmare Fuel or Sex Tropes) have to go, but e.g images or memes based on the cut things are allowed to stay

edited 14th Jul '12 2:24:32 PM by SeptimusHeap

I'd like to see some official policy on this. I've almost entirely ignored the various debates about the actual "P5" policy, arguments about whether this or that series qualifies, etc.

But I edit some pages with occasional wicks to these works, and it's kind of a mess to deal with them. For instance, I might see on Gender Bender:

• In Some Random Violating Work, Bob turns into a girl.

Or in a black-text version:

• In Some Random Violating Work, Bob turns into a girl.

In either case, there's no way for me to tell whether Some Random Violating Work is some pre-existing work page that got cut for content violations, or simply one of the many works that don't have pages yet (but there's no inherent reason why they can't or shouldn't).

For the latter, I subscribe to the "Red is Good" philosophy, that a red work link highlights the fact that "Hey, this work has no page!" and somewhat encourages Wiki Magic to rectify that fact. But if we're supposed to "black-(non)link" violating works? It creates confusion.

Would it make sense to have links to violating works redirected to an actual page that would have boilerplate text about "This work page was deleted for violations of TV Tropes policy blah blah blah but wicks to non-violating aspects of the work are OK blah blah"? It could, I suppose, be a "fake redlink" page like This Troper, though I've always loathed that particular practice. (IMO, if a link goes somewhere, it should be blue, and we shouldn't be attempting some weird sort of troper social engineering by deceptively suggesting "there's no page here.")

Anyone? I think this is a practical question that needs to be addressed at some point. I don't especially care what the answer is one way or the other, as long as it's a clear answer that editors can follow.

edited 26th Aug '12 9:43:08 AM by suedenim

There is already a thread in CV discussing that.