All-Purpose Policy and Meta discussion: Administrivia.Trope Repair Shop

When a trope has under 36 wicks, does that mean it’s not thriving?

Depends on how long ago it was launched. Something that TLP spat out a month ago isn't worth any notice, but a page that's been here for years definitely needs attention.

edited 6th Feb '18 5:38:42 PM by Karxrida

There's also that some tropes are just rare, in particular tropes that are depreciated or obsolete one way or another.

So wait, if the Fragile Flower thread is gonna remain closed due to a glitch, do I just re-post the thread and hope it gets properly opened?

What glitch?

@Lymantria - It was went over on the 249th post on this thread, if I'm not mistaken. I forgot who the OP was from memory, hence I'm using the post number. It should just be near the bottom of last page.

Why would that glitch cause this?

@Lymantria - See, I don't really know, hence I'm asking you guys the question—I'm new to the whole repair shop rodeo thing, and heck, most of my experience in editing TV Tropes period has usually been nomadic edits without much interaction with other users.

The question basically boils down to this: Can Fragile Flower's TRS thread be opened? It's presumably a bug keeping it closed—if I repost the thread, implying the bug doesn't happen again, will it be opened?

edited 10th Feb '18 7:17:49 AM by Camwood

1. There's no specific "glitch." That's what you call any irregularity or malfunction. There is no "that glitch." It's just "a glitch."
2. The glitch is the "this" of which you speak. Something causes the glitch to happen. The glitch is the symptom of something not quite perfect in code or software.
3. What's the difference to you exactly? Why are you obsessing over this? You cannot do much anything about it if you're not working at TV Tropes on the backend side of the site.

Recall that the mention of glitches was in response to this comment about the stale report. It had nothing to do with the Fragile Flower thread.

edited 10th Feb '18 8:05:32 AM by WaterBlap

I think that "this thread has been closed" message is the glitch. It is not supposed to appear on not yet opened threads and misleading people when it does.

Threads often remain unopened for a long time, but they shouldn't say "this thread is closed" instead of unopened.

That's what I said, the stale report has nothing to do with unopened threads.

edited 10th Feb '18 10:13:57 AM by Lymantria

Soo, while we're on the subject of unopened threads... Ambiguous Name: Transsexual has been locked for one and a half months now whereas every other thread on the board has either been opened or sent to the morgue by now. I've already sent a message to the mods, but so far received no answer. I'd be very happy to get some kind of status update, even if it's just "not opened due to reason X, please work on that" or "we're currently debating".

edited 16th Mar '18 9:23:12 AM by Cifer

Ha, that's why I came here to post. Why has a thread been left in locked status since February 5? Does anybody read this thread?

The problem with that thread is that a) people need to spend less time creating threads and more working on existing issues, especially given that renaming that trope would require over 1100 edits, and b) it is not clear whether the transgender/transsexual name issue has an established terminology yet.

Then by all means kill the thread, send it to the morgue. What I was wondering is why a TRS thread has been left for seven weeks in locked status.

The mods are busy folks with a lot to do. I don't think they owe us an explanation for why they've let some extremely low priority thread sit around doing no harm until they have time to decide on the proper action.

Fair point, but I think it's unreasonable to leave it untouched for seven weeks. For cases of indecision, there should be a sign saying "This thread has been read by the mod staff and is being considered", just to let the OP know it hasn't gone unnoticed or been ignored.

edited 26th Mar '18 6:45:31 PM by Gosicrystal

I agree. Bounce the thread, or put some kind of message in the thread saying that TRS can't make any new threads right now.

And if TRS can't make any new threads right now, all the locked threads should be bounced, and the forum should be closed to new threads.

Thank you for the replies, even if they're not quite the ones I was hoping for.

The terminology looks pretty established to me, considering the links I posted - if GLAAD is not an established source, what is? Does anyone have any counter-sources?

Yes, fixing the links will certainly take some effort. That said, I'm not sure if it's an effort that will actually detract from the rest of the TRS. From the number of threads in the discussion area, it seems there are several vocal proponents of changing the trope who might help with the actual job, but who are likely not active in daily TRS business. In addition, the change is actually pretty simple: In half the situations (transsexual used as an adjective), just swap out the word. In the other half (transsexual used as a noun), swap out the word and put a "person" or "people" after it. No brain work required. If I take on fifty examples per day, the whole thing is done within three weeks - half the time the thread spent inactive.

All in all, we don't need help, we just need permission.

edited 27th Mar '18 2:49:58 AM by Cifer

Throwing my two cents in about Transsexual because I feel like there's been a recent spike in people trying to change the name of it and related articles, though I can't recall exactly how often I've seen that article or related ones come up in TRS within the year.

Cifer, I'm not sure you're appreciating just how much effort "some effort" is. We're talking at least 1000 wicks. Comparable jobs have taken years, and that's discounting the majority of such efforts that stall out. It is a lot of work that is boring. Most people don't expect it to be so boring and so they may participate for a while but usually entire jobs like that are completed by groups three people who have been doing this for a long time. I'm not even joking. There's usually one to three people to a project that start it, and months after they quit there's another couple of people keep it active, and another three people finish it once the thread's stalled out and at the bottom of the page (that's been what I've noticed, anyway).

Another issue, which Septimus brought up, is whether the transgender/transsexual name issue has an established terminology yet. If we were to change the name, who would next come out of the woodwork and complain that the change itself was offensive or that "transgender" is offensive? Looking at the thread's OP that you wrote, the evidence you gave for the term being established doesn't seem to make sense to use. Wikipedia is obviously not a reliable source, and Medical Daily looks like a pop mag (akin to Psychology Today or Time). While GLAAD can be a good source for information, it isn't exactly good form to use just one source anyway. It isn't convincing, is my point. Moreover, Merriam-Webster's dictionary gives the two terms nearly identical definitions. On top of all that, there's little evidence that one term is offensive compared to the other.

There's also the issue that this is a media wiki, not a medical one. For example, if a work calls a character transsexual, then that's the word we ought to use in that particular article. So your explanation that there's "no brain work required" is just plain incorrect. There's no need to bowdlerize.

There is also also the problem of the Wiki being controlled by the whims of random people's emotions, which isn't exactly the nicest precedent to establish.

Hi Water Blap!

Thank you for your comment. There are few things as frustrating like the feeling one writes into the void.

Yes, there have been several attempts at changing the article's name - I've counted four threads in the morgue. That alone should indicate that the interest exists and could be harnessed for the purpose of editing wicks. I am aware that not everyone who points to a problem will actually help fix it, but in this case, I feel the belief is warranted that at least some people will help - particularly since the trope is already split between Transgender and Transsexual, with one in five wicks using the alternative name and the main page already being very explicit about not using Transsexual.

I am also quite aware of how much effort "some effort" is. I am a translator and proofreader by trade, I know about tedious text work. And as someone who's built a fan project or two, I also know about wavering enthusiasm. Yet compared to other tasks that have been undertaken here where a trope name can be far less easily exchanged for another, particularly when they're entire phrases rather than simple adjectives or nouns, the task seems somewhat smaller.

I'll grant you the sources - I should have worked more carefully there and had the thread been opened for discussion, I would have found that a legitimate point of criticism and strived to find more sources to prove my point.

Regarding what words should be used, I wonder if your assertion to stick to the work's original language does actually hold true, particularly with regard to outdated terminology. If a period piece called one of its characters a "negro", would the article about that work use the same phrase or only once mention that this is the term being used (likely in Values Dissonance) and otherwise talk of a "black" character?

As for the emotions... well, that's the question here, isn't it? The whole point of the discussion is that the term is (or may be, if we don't want to jump to conclusions) problematic on an emotional level, because it is offensive to at least a part of the transgender community. Yet there are rules based on emotions all around us - if I were to take a guess at your ethnicity and call you some juicy slurs based on that, I would rightfully get booted from the site, simply due to the fact that I could hurt your emotions by doing so.

That said, the situation right now feels like it's being controlled by the whim of another person, who is certainly not random at all. I haven't been around long enough in the TRS to know what authority mods are supposed to have, what they need to be able to decide on their own in order for the TRS not to grind to a halt with votes. I don't know what happened behind the scenes, how many other mods were contacted. Maybe this system is fully accepted by all participants and works well. Yet I must say that to have this discussion ended so unilaterally, not with a visible vote or at least a multi-level exchange of arguments, just a "This would require too much work and it's unclear whether there's an established terminology" when I never asked for outside help and google trends heavily indicates that transgender is far more established than transsexual right now feels... well, bad.

edited 7th Apr '18 4:01:51 AM by Cifer

So... turns out that this comparable task in the end took about 3 days (plus a bit of preparation). Thank you all who took part in this!

Glad to hear it went so quickly, ~Cifer. I'd still like to respond to some of what you've said, though. I'll do that in a PM, except the part that's relevant to the TRS.

Fighteer

overwhelming consensus

You do realize I was talking about the status *before* Fighteer announced said overwhelming consensus?

I'll use this post to suggest a few tropes that I think could use renaming, redefinition and/or splitting. I don't really feel like starting threads for these, since I can't dedicate as much time to this wiki as I used to and this forum has too many stale threads already.

• Eenie Meenie Miny Moai: The trope name is nearly impossible to spell correctly, but that's a symptom of its lack of a proper definition. I think I've suggested splitting this into two tropes, one about locations featuring lots of Moai-like heads, and another about animate moai.
• God Is Evil: There seems to be a lot of misuse here. Many examples are not about "the supreme deity of a given setting," just assorted Gods of Evil or people with God complexes. There also seems to be significant Trope Decay in the examples actually about God and the definition itself, going from "the supreme deity of a given setting... is actively malevolent" to a mere "belief in an evil, incompetent or indifferent God."
• Take Cover!: The title is a Stock Phrase if there ever was one. The definition has certainly been misconstrued in the past as "video game characters hide behind objects," though I don't know if it's still enough to justify a rename and redefinition.
• We Will Not Use Photoshop in the Future: The trope name is unwieldy, derivative and doesn't fit the definition well. Worse, it refers to one specific digital image-manipulation software when the actual trope of manipulated photographs was around well before doing that using digital means happened even in science fiction.

edited 17th May '18 8:34:53 AM by Prfnoff