TLP reform

As discussed here and forward, the Trope Launch Pad has been launching a large number of low quality pages lately that need to be backed out again.

A number of proposals for resolving the issue have been made, but I figure it's better to have a dedicated discussion to this.

One thing the other thread was discussing was bringing back the tag system (sans the "Motion to Discard" tag) with some new tags for stuff like Trivia and Useful Notes and whatnot. Going to thrown in my hat for supporting at least bringing back the old tags minus the "Discard" one.

We already have measures against low-quality launches. Do we need a longer "review period", so to speak?

^ What are the current measures?

A while ago, I suggested a sort of "delayed launch" system, where if a sponsor wanted to launch a trope, there would be a grace period where it could be vetoed (and if there were no objections after it ended, they could launch in the same way they can now), although more for users who were nervous about whether they were ready to launch. Could that help at all?

Some options I can think of:

• Bring back the tag system, allowing people to give more nuanced feedback that's immediately visible to newcomers.
• Require mod approval before all launches.
• Prevent users from adding hats to their own threads, and make a bomb from the OP equivalent to 5 bombs.
• Instead of requiring 5 hats before a launch, require a net score of 5 or higher (e.g. a trope with 7 bombs would require 13 hats before it was eligible for launch).
• Allow people to add alternate proposals to the OP. You can switch between them with tabs, and each has its own set of hats and bombs. The proposal that appears when you open the thread is based on a combination of net score and the total number of votes it's received. Basically a merger of the YKKTW and Crowner systems, which might encourage more people to rework tropes, and make it clearer to newcomers which version of the trope is currently popular.
• Change hats/bombs to filling out a survey of yes/no questions, preferably neutral ones where one answer isn't "cooler" than the other, and where you can't get a trope approved by clicking Yes to everything or No to everything. 'Is this trope named after another trope?' and 'Is this trope named after a specific person?' can be understood by anyone, but "Does this trope have a good name" can be interpreted in multiple ways. Then display percentage results for each question.

One thing that could be done. Is split the add hat questions into separate questions. Ex. Is the description is ambiguous? Does it duplicate an existing trope? Are there are at least three examples? Does the title makes sense? Is the trope ready to launch? That might cut down on newbies adding hats without reading the directions. Some kind of monrator that looks over trope when reaches launch or discard could also be useful. Be aware I am not real active on this wiki so I might be barking up the woung tree. edit: after looking at the system again I had another idea add a wait button in addition to discard button. We can debate the mechanics but people might be more likely to vote wait instead of discard.

edited 4th Mar '17 4:25:02 PM by miiohau

I never understood why tags were removed in the first place, does anyone know why?

The O Ps don't own a draft, and some tropers have a poor idea at first what works for a trope. The sponsor of a draft shouldn't have more "authority" then anyone else to add bombs, hats, or tags.

In the YKTTW thread, it was proposed to add a comment box that needed to be filled out when adding a hat or bomb. Precedent exists in having to explain a P5 report flag.

If we go the review committee route, a panel of qualified tropers would probably be better then adding more work to the mods' plates.

Adding alternate suggestions and such to the nascent trope is one of the things the commenting system is for; not just for adding examples.

One thing I'd like when the programming catches up is to split hats and bombs into three categories: keep, fix, and get rid of this. Right now, a bomb could mean either, and it's confusing.

I don't know about this specifically, but I do think it's very important that something be done to make bombs actually affect launching a trope, because right now they really don't, and that doesn't make a lot of sense.

I like miiohau's suggestion of splitting hats into separate questions, similar to the The Other Wiki's Good article criteria, which anyone can check (although we would have to define our own criteria for tropes). I also like Candi's idea split bombs into "must fix" and "must discard", although I am not sold on the "panel of qualified tropers" suggestion: the decision of who is "qualified" can get extremely political and will require even more effort from the mods than manually checking every entry before launch.

If I could design the trope launching process from scratch, it'd go something like this:

1. OP (in the following, this term will refer both to the "sponsor" and to whoever maintains a TLP entry for simplicity's sake) posts an initial description in the "Work in Progress" status. Others can comment on it and add examples, improvement suggestions, clarification questions and so on.
   1. At this stage, no hats are thrown in, but commenters have an option to throw a "bomb" by posting a special type of comment consisting of a trope title they believe covers the idea already as well as (and this is super important) an explanation of their similarities. This is to prevent anonymous bombs which do absolutely nothing to improve an entry.
   2. If the original bomber perceives their concern as sufficiently addressed (whether through modification of the entry or persuasion by the OP), they can mark their "bomb" as resolved, clearing the entry for launch. To prevent deadlocks in case a bomber disappears or a personality conflict occurs, the OP should have an option to ask the mods for a review of specific "bombs", which they can remove or make permanent (this should serve as a deterrent against mod call abuse).
2. Once an entry has been up for public review for three days (current setting) and has no unresolved "discard bombs", the OP gets the option move it to the "final draft" state (a.k.a. the "(hats please?)" stage).
   1. A final draft can no longer be "discard bombed", but the commenters get the option to post a special "peer review" comment, going through a checklist of our new trope quality criteria, giving each one a pass/fail mark and, importantly, a rationale explaining how to fix it. An all-passed review results in a hat, anything else gives the entry a "must-fix bomb".
   2. The reviewer can marked their concerns as resolved at any time, or the OP can ask the mods to arbitrate. At their discretion, the mods can bump any final draft back to the initial status (where it can be discard-bombed) for another three days.
   3. Once an entry has three full hats (see our Three Rules Of Three) and no unresolved concerns, it can be launched whenever the OP deems ready.

To improve usability, each status can, perhaps, be color-coded on the main page: the initial drafts could appear grey, drafts with "discard bombs" red, final drafts without "fix bombs" green, and final drafts with "fix bombs" yellow.

edited 5th Mar '17 12:35:11 AM by Koveras

Mod approval and any other system of approval has been discussed in the moderator discussions. The problems are both the manpower required and that it'd be a very bureaucratic way of going about this. I am also wary of any vote requirements as a lot of voting is not based on quality but on interest. Which is doubly problematic.

I agree that it's problematic, and I have personally been on the receiving end of putting a lot of work into many that have never gotten a single hat or even comment, but the only way to consistently enforce any quality standards without overloading the mods is to rely on the community to do most of the work.

As for the bureaucracy, then we already have a highly bureaucratic process for creating new tropes, compared to every other namespace. The fact that is accepted shows, to me, that the community recognizes some level of bureaucracy as necessary, and so the question is not whether we can do without, but how little do we need to achieve our quality goals.

edited 5th Mar '17 3:51:31 AM by Koveras

Ah, I didn't mean "must discard". My apologies. I meant "discard if no improvements".

As for a trope being passed by a vote of tropers -which is a court of next to last resort- I was thinking a panel, based on the P5 concept, picked for qualifications the same way they were, minus the brain bleach budget. Not just who happens to wander by whenever. And if they don't do the job, they can be replaced.

Crap, that would take more programming, wouldn't it? Research, I need to do more research into these things.

I think an issue with the idea of "they can mark their bomb as resolved" is that people don't typically return to drafts they bomb. I think that when they immediately put the bomb on the draft, they put a bomb on the idea of the trope. The very foundation on which the draft stands is somehow flawed in their eyes, so revisions to the draft don't matter to them ("This is a duplicate *adds bomb*" is a prime example, I think).

I think the issue is "Do we need more bureaucracy?" The more bureaucracy we have, the harder it is to trope. The harder it is to trope, the less fun it is to participate. The less fun it is to participate, the fewer tropers there are. The fewer tropers there are, the easier it is for problems to stay (e.g. vandals, trolls, duplicate tropes, TRS-related problems, etc.). Eventually, the quality goes to pot, and it's kind of a slow path to website death. I think it also puts more work on the mods, and that's not helpful.^note I've seen RP forums and other forums go down that path, so I'm not just hypothesizing.

Would it be possible to have a timer on when hats and bombs can be added? So, the draft has to be alive for three days before it can be discarded or launched. Would it be possible to have a similar timer before it can get bombs or hats? Three hours or one day, for example. There does seem to be a problem with sponsors making the draft and then immediately adding a hat.

edited 5th Mar '17 9:05:06 AM by WaterBlap

A final review. By either a moderator or a group of tropers that are trusted by the moderator to take on this task.

This is the only thing that's going to fix your problem. Anything else is just adding bells and whistles to the decentralized YKTTW process that has been judged a failure.

Although I will also support the motion upthread to bring back tags.

Take a look at how many hats and how many bombs have been thrown in. To qualify for a discard, look for at least five more bombs than hats. The launch, of course, goes the other way around.

The flip side, of course, is that there is always potential for the discussion to drag on beyond satisfactory resolution. In which case, let the author of the element being proposed terminate the discussion altogether by throwing in a Superbomb (to just nuke the whole thread and forget the "trope" ever existed).

That still runs into ownership problems. The creators of drafts are called "sponsors" for a reason.

No one owns a trope, even at its birth.

One thing we can do right now is encourage a culture in TLP that encourages participation and discourages slapping up hats and bombs at a cursory glance. It will be hard, but changing habits is always hard.

One of the reasons I want a comment box to add hats and such is so people have to explain why they're adding them. Spelling out reasons tends to make people think.

It doesn't even need to be a comment box, now that I think about it. It could be a drop-down list like with the notification messages (except we don't have to create a message since the phrase would probably suffice).

• Hat Messages?
  • This is launch ready.
• Neutral Option?
  • Not launch ready, but I'm supporting the idea. (I've seen some cases where this is probably what happened.)
• Bomb Messages?
  • Not launch ready, so I'm taking away a hat.
  • Not A Trope, Useful Note, or other article
  • etc.

If we don't go with moderator approval of all launches, maybe we could nominate (or volunteer) a select few members with good standing and a good history of YKTTW/TLP participation to a sort of Trope Review Board to look at and approve all launches. Potential ideas for that:

1. Tropes would require a private discussion amongst the board members and either a majority vote or unanimous vote before launch. Similar to how the P5 works, I suppose.
2. Tropes need to be looked at and approved by just one member of the board. We have several in order to account for whenever others aren't online and so that they can check with one another when they aren't sure.
3. TLP submissions need to be approved by members of the board before the draft is publicly viewable by people in the TLP.

Aside from that, I'd also support any of the ideas proposed by Prime32 above.

I think I'd prefer WaterBlap's idea combined with the reintroduction of tags.

edited 6th Mar '17 1:39:39 PM by rmctagg09

A "neutral" version of a bomb/flag sounds like a good idea.

The "neutral" thing sounds like a "tropeworthy" Tag. Which raises the question: would we want to have opposing tags like that? ("Tropeworthy" and "Not Tropeworthy".) Or should we simply have +/- on all tags?

People have already been using bombs as "not tropeworthy" (e.g. "This is Not A Trope" or something like that). People have also used hats as "tropeworthy" even when the draft is clearly not ready for launch.

Ah, I think I misread your comment.

edited 6th Mar '17 4:58:54 PM by WaterBlap

Yeah, I know. That's one of the things I think we're hoping to change....