TLP Crash Rescue - Fixing prematurely launched TLPs and pages

I'm not terribly comfortable about allowing articles for RPs conducted in private or invite-only venues. One of the important ideas behind our articles is verifiability — that is, that an interested party could in theory find the work and see for themselves that it contains the tropes in question. Troping ongoing RPs is already fraught with problems, among them the pernicious issue of discussing the players rather than the game. They also have a habit of being masturbatory in tone.

Yes, that's the concern.

edited 3rd Mar '17 7:58:32 AM by Fighteer

A work that only exists for the participants is, as far as I'm concerned, no different than a work that exists only in a writer's mind. To everyone not contributing to the work it is effectively non-existent.

Invite only, hosted on a private server, Only in Google docs, behind a paywall, they're all inaccessible and might as well be unpublished. Additionally, if it's so vile that he doesn't want it made public, then I don't think we want to give it any space.

I just looked at the article for that RP. It is disturbingly self-congratulatory. "We've got the coolest RP ever, and you can't see it. Nyah,nyah." Nuke it with prejudice.

edited 3rd Mar '17 8:50:44 AM by Fighteer

Watch the scope creep, though. This topic concerns itself mainly with maintaining newly created pages to current standards, making up new policies or practices is not quite the point.

It's not a new policy. Just one we've inadequately enforced at times.

Looks like the verifiability issue is handling itself. The troper added the page to Unpublished Works. However, the page needs moving (unless we're reporting it to P5?).

Also RE: 4837: I had already messaged the troper by the time you commented.

Consider the page nuked unless we're keeping it. In that case decline th cut requests.

If Fighteer says nuke something, nuke it. If a bad enough page comes here that won't likely survive reviewing by the P5, we can nuke it. If a page is not worth saving, it is our duty to nuke it. Am I wrong on any count?

If the author wants to move it to Darth Wiki, that's an acceptable compromise, as long as it's de-wicked and removed from all indexes except Unpublished Works. That said, if the transplant is to cover up a possible 5P action, then it's suspect. The problem is that nobody can review the work to find out.

Do we have a consesnus that putting the tags back in TLP would be helpful?

We are nowhere near ready to redo the whole thing, like the forced reason for tagging, Hatting, or Bombing but the devs will likely be able to do the tag restoration if we ask.

If so, what tags are needed?

I'm thinking:

• Needs Better Name
• Needs Examples
• Needs Better Description
• Duplicate Trope
• Not Tropeworthy
• Motion To Discard

Yes to all of those except "Motion to Discard." IIRC, people like to put that one onto drafts before the five bombs are accumulated.

That's the point of the 'motion to discard' tag, for when people ignore the conversation, when a not launch worthy trope lacks the bombs to discard, and launch it anyway.

I move put all the tags back except Motion to Discard.

I think it overlaps with five (min.) bombs right now, and if I remember correctly, a few nasty trolls over the years slapped it on perfectly good drafts. (Part of the reason I personally want a comment box.)

Well, when you must post why when you add a tag, it will be trivial to report trolls and fix their <Redacted>. They would not have made any meaningful contributions anyway, it's better to flush them out.

Edit: Thought of a few more tags that could be useful:

• Trivia
• YMMV
• Work Page
• Useful Notes

To allow each proposal to show what category it is (or perhaps should be) up front.

EDIT Edit: As for my final closing statements on that RP, to those of you who don't see where the page mentions explicit content;

From the page:

They discussed vore in the SERIOUS RP

I'm really glad you guys don't know what that sentence means. You Do Not Want To Know.

edited 3rd Mar '17 8:09:49 PM by sailing101

yes to those tags, too

Actually, it was my experience that trolls would add the "Motion to Discard" tag before most discussion occurred at all. I'm pretty confident in saying that it was the #1 most requested tag for mods to remove from drafts. It was kind of like how some people nowadays will say "This is Not A Trope" then add a bomb and never return to see the revised description.

Now that I think about it, I think "Motion to Discard" was always a useless tag. Prior to getting five bombs, the draft cannot be discarded and a "motion to discard" doesn't make sense in a communal project like TLP. Moreover, after getting the five bombs, you can do one of three things:

1. Discard the Draft Yourself
2. Comment in the Comment Section and Ask if the Draft Should be Discarded (a "motion to discard" as a comment)
3. Comment in the Comment Section and Defend the Draft (a "motion to not discard" or just a part of the revision process)

edited 3rd Mar '17 8:15:56 PM by WaterBlap

Would page types work as tags? I would think the trope category would be considered by the original poster, or discussed in the commentary.

I know what vore is. Ick. Just bring it up or flag it for P5. That disposition is why more members were recruited.

Danganronpa RP For Scrunts: Summoning ~Oggser to have a bit of explanation. I don't think non-public works should be sent to 5P as there'd be no way to assess them.

@Candi: Clarify what "page types" means in this context? I don't think mixing "there's a problem" with "this is what this page is supposed to become" tags makes sense.

What sailing listed as possible tags:

Trivia, YMMV, Work Page, Useful Notes

I don't see how having those as tags makes sense. They're page types and a namespace, items that go in the title or body of a draft, not a 'this needs to be fixed' or other recommendation.

Edit; yeah, that post replying to sailing was clear as mud, wasn't it? Sorry.

edited 4th Mar '17 7:35:26 AM by Candi

When I first interpreted those tags, I immediately thought of things like "Really Trivia" or "Really a Useful Note" (or "Motion to Make Trivia" or "Motion to Make YMMV") instead of just the classification of "Trivia" or "Useful Note."

Now I'm thinking that these tags might be able to make it easier to achieve what I suggested earlier about the system sending "UsefulNotes/TropePage" to the UsefulNotes/ namespace instead of Main/. Like, the system gives you the option to launch the page in the correct namespace, asking for the CamelCase and the namespace separately. (So, if the draft has "Really a Work Page," the system asks when you launch if the article is a trope or not, and if it's not a trope page, then it lets you put in the appropriate namespace from a drop-down menu). I'm not saying to do this immediately, given what Madrugada already said about realistic options. I just mean that it's one more step to making that a realistic option maybe.

I can see a use for "Trivia" and "Useful Notes" tags; it's not uncommon that people make a proposal for a trope that is actually one of those. Thise tags would serve as "I don't have a problem with the proposal, but it's not a trope. It's one of these."

..Which would mean we could get rid of "Not A Trope" and simply use Duplicate, Chairs, Trivia, and Useful Notes, providing more helpful information for the sponsor in correcting the issues.

and And even if we can't have the whole revamp now, having those tags in place and getting TLPers used to using them would make it easier to automate launching once we do get to that stage of development.

edited 4th Mar '17 7:44:23 AM by Madrugada

That's on the table for 2.0 (asking the user if they're proposing a trope, work, creator, useful note, etc.), but I'm not sure how much development we'll be able to put into the current iteration of TLP.

edited 4th Mar '17 7:43:19 AM by Fighteer

Currently TLP shows "Page Type: trope" in the header of every discussion. I think displaying this is a misfeature since no other page types can be selected now; it may be encouraging people to downvote proposals that were never intended as tropes per se.

I know some of this would probably require more development than practical right now, but I think some of it might be possible with tweaks of the current system:

I think it would be useful to be able to see what changes have been made to a draft since a Bomb, Hat, or tag was added.

I think this could help somewhat with the issue of people adding Bombs/tags/etc. and not returning to see the improvement and revise their assessment, by at least letting other tropers see which critiques have already been addressed. For example, if a poor initial draft accumulates several Bombs (or tags, if they're brought back) and then gets thoroughly reworked, it would be useful to know that the Bombs were in response to an initial version. Or if a draft gets a "Needs better name" tag and then goes through several revisions, it would be useful to know which name was flagged as being inadequate. Might also be relevant if a draft goes through a major overhaul after a Hat is added—if someone says a draft is ready, and then someone else overhauls the description, the validity of the Hat seems questionable.

In the short term, one way to implement this might be to have the Bomb/Hat/tag buttons automatically recorded as a change in the edit history. If it were the normal wiki editing system, I'd suggest an automatic null edit with an edit reason of "Bomb", "Hat", "Tag: Needs better name", etc. In the TLP edit history, each entry starts with lines for "Working title:" and "Laconic:"—would it be possible to add a similar line that summarizes the number of Bombs and Hats and list the active tags? Alternatively, instead of recording an entry of "Change made by [Troper handle] [date]", could it record an entry of "Change made by Bomb [or 'Hat', 'Tag:...', etc.] [date]"?

Ideally (i.e., in the long term and/or if we could wave a magical developer's wand), it would be handy for tags to be able to return some summary information of updates since the tag. E.g., clicking an existing "Needs better name" tag would tell you the working title at the time it was flagged and possibly list the title revisions since that time; clicking an existing "Needs examples" would either tell you that X new examples have been added since the tag was added or mark the examples that have been added/changed since the tag; you could select an existing Bomb or Hat to see the draft as it existed at the time of Bombing/Hatting, etc.