TV Tropes called out by The Mary Sue

That said, if you don't count every single translation of Wikipedia as it's own wiki, we're a much higher number. A majority of the top rated wikis are really just Wikipedia in French.

edited 27th Jun '12 4:04:30 PM by shimaspawn

The assorted language wikipedias are actually quite different from one another. Especially how they're run.

I wouldn't be so quick to lump them together.

Yeah, they're generally completely independent projects apart from loose central governance.

Still interesting to see how large we are article-count wise, since we're a restricted subject matter Wiki.

Restricted yet broad. "Every fictional work, with TINSTAN" is potentially millions of works at least, and when you count the proliferation of fanfiction (and new published works, of course), that number continues to grow every day.

In all the world's languages, to boot. I doubt we're even 10% covered. In fact, 10% is probably laughably over-estimating.

Eh, I'd be amazed if we hit 3%, to be honest.

At this point, I think the only thing that'd actually help counter the issue of bad press would be a dedicated PR grunt. I know the wiki could find better things to do with the cash, so it'd have to be a volunteer. I'd love to see even a long list of whoever had both the skill and the willingness to try such a position - let alone the short list of who the mods would actually put in said position.

I'd be amazed if we hit 0.1% of everything just from this year, let alone from all of history. Fiction is big.

Hello, everyone. Long time troper, first time poster. This was important enough for me to venture into the forums where I normally fear to tread.

I strongly support the reinstatement of the rape tropes. I think that one of the most valuable aspects of TV Tropes is the conversation taking place about problematic tropes and how and why they are used. Unfortunate Implications has been invaluable for me in clarifying my thinking on some of them. I vividly remember reading the Laconic version of "Inspirationally Disadvantaged", a trope I had never much thought about: at the time, it read "Disabled? Don't worry—you can still serve as an inspiration to the people who REALLY matter to the story." And lo, I was enlightened. OK, maybe not, but a lot of talk about "ableism" suddenly zoomed into focus for me.

Removing the rape tropes because the Powers That Be (not only Fast Eddie but also—nay, especially!—Google et. al.) would prefer to just not have to talk about rape is NOT OKAY. We NEED to talk about rape tropes. We NEED to drag them out from under the rocks where they fester, so they can wither in the sunlight.

So thank you, everyone who argued for the restoration of the rape tropes.

That is all.

<lurk>

Actually, they were put back yesterday with non-Google ads.

I object to calling this person a Journalist, the first article while it had some major errors was journalistic, this last one was simple tabloid article.

As to us barely covering fiction, yea. I'd say we have 0.1-1% covered. There are so many webcomics, and web original videos, and stories, and let's plays which have fictional elements weaved in to them, so it's like a Let's Play meets a machinima.

Plus I can't even count the number of artists on Deviant Art which have like fusion narratives which are one part still frames with short narrative bits, one part web comic, one part written fiction, not one of which has ever had a trope page to my knowledge. I wouldn't even know which namespace to put them under.

Indeed, the objection is correct, Vyc, since the information contained in that article had less research than expected. So I guess you can't even call that worthwhile journalism.

We still have a looooooong way to go in terms of content.

edited 27th Jun '12 11:32:08 PM by lu127

Oh snap!

So, should we ignore that blatant attempt at scoring hits?

I'd say that sounds about right.

I wish to apologize for my post earlier in the thread. Some shit has been going on in real life and the stress of it has affected my ability to communicate effectively. Once I realized that my real life stress was making it difficult to communicate correctly, I backed off for a few days.

And trying to calculate how much of fiction we have on the wiki is insane, especially when you consider forgotten folk stories and those little comics that your friend drew in fourth grade.

@hex unless what they are a fan of gets cut

@Akagikiba: but neither of those fits within our remit (publicly available works). Still, we consider anything that someone sticks up at fanfiction.net to be within it ...

I know the conversation has definitely chilled on this topic, but I think it's important to note that if there is another article like this one published on The Mary Sue, we should take some sort of PR action. Most of us have agreed that the first well-intentioned article has morphed into a blatant attempt to scandalize readers and score hits (and doesn't really appear to have done that well, since its own readership is commenting on how sick they are of articles like this), but we cannot have someone consistently smearing our name at a reputable blog for what is, from what I understand, majorly misinformed reasons. There's a fine tightrope to walk with this, and if this continues, we need to not handle this in the same way ESPN handled the Roethlisberger sexual assault charges - ignore the issue until it becomes too big to ignore, and then get lambasted for ignoring the issue and not being up-front.

The nature of the PR action should really involve some hard facts about our number of tropers, the number of articles we have, and how TV Tropes really isn't the insular community that the articles written assume we are. It should also involved detailed rundowns of the "anonymous tips" received, with multiple higher-ups/moderators who are aware of the incidents commenting. It was mentioned earlier that the article writer could say, "oh, it was a different tipster", but that would be a tremendously stupid move, PR wise, on their part. There is no reason for them to divulge sources, true, but to reject a show of logistics and good faith would make them look incredibly petty. They do not want to look incredibly petty, considering that their stance on the issue is that of moral superiority.

I'm sorry that I kind of went off on a weird, "here's what to do!" tangent, but I feel like at least suggesting some pre-emptive moves in case of another high-profile blogging expose is a good measure to take. Also, this is basically what I was programmed to do in college, so it's hard for me not to think like a PR person sometimes XD

Don't sweat it, that's a good suggestion.

I recently started reading The Mary Sue for the interesting geek and feminism discussion, and I'm disappointed that they've come to this kind of slander about TV Tropes, particularly when they and their sources seem misinformed. They're painting us up like we're a Wretched Hive, for Bat's Sake.

I agree with Largo Quagmire's idea about taking action if this goes further. Until then, we need to remain quiet. Nothing good can come of escalating this further. If The Mary Sue posts another slander article about this again, then we definitely have to start talking to the author herself and to the site's members. I've also tried to add some Troper input on the second article's comments. Thankfully the readers at TMS aren't really buying the idea that we're an "OMG PEDOSHIT HAVEN!", maybe because they are actually doing the research for themselves, but of course, the haters will always be convinced...

They might also realize this is a *wiki*. We document, we don't endorse. Also, anyone who has spent 5 minutes on the net knows that being 'mean to pedos' could be anything. I accurately guessed it was for insulting other members.

BTW does this rape trope issue mean that the Second Google Incident is still in effect? Or is this yet another case?

Another big issue is there seems to be the idea that regulating a site of this size or larger is easy or inexpensive. And this goes beyond just TMS, it's the same with complaints about copyrighted material on Youtube, or stopping art theft on sites like Deviant Art.

There's only so much an admin and moderates can do and still have a site properly function. Some people never seem to see the thousands of people you prevent from going over the edge of some crazy cliff, they see the one body that falls off and they blame you for it.

Though in this case you want good people going off the cliff and bad people not going off the cliff.

edited 1st Jul '12 7:31:57 PM by Vyctorian

I agree with Largo.

I think it's a good idea...provided this is really a big enough issue to merit that sort of response.