TLP reform

Sept: I know I linked you to this doc before; but for the others, [[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cpEpsf_XuXTSYISMJ4bLcVLZUf8Gl_3Vc5lIpKmZsIg/edit is what I submitted to the dev team.

It's public, so you all should be able to read it. Please Do NOT edit it though. If you have questions, suggestions, or objections, post them here. I don't know when it will go into the work queue, but Drew led me to believe it's a high priority fix for them. So soon, I hope.

edited 1st May '17 8:54:48 AM by Madrugada

There was also the idea of having herald-like tropers for TLP that was proposed.

edited 1st May '17 9:20:14 AM by WaterBlap

Indeed — did we ever settle the question of whether we want a "launch committee" that would either be required or encouraged to review all proposed launches before they could be made final?

No, that was not definitely settled, except that it was split slightly unevenly against giving any tropers (even the mods) that kind of control over what launches and what doesn't. I'd estimate it was about 60/40, tending toward "opposed", and that split stayed pretty consistent from the time it was first brought up to now, so changing it to a strong consensus in either direction is going to take a very strong, new argument being offered.

edited 1st May '17 10:48:11 AM by Madrugada

We could do a "soft" rollout of that idea: implement a system where certain "TLP Engineers" can add their weight for/against, and look back in a year or three and see if their opinions tend to be prophetic.

Basically, don't give them the power to control launches, but state to everyone that their opinion has greater weight than the average troper. Normal human hierarchical thinking may cause the desired effect without needing to wield real power.

I'm coming into this discussion very late (and really only coming into it now because I panicked when I saw the headline was gone, and because Mads' document provides a useful framework for looking at the discussion), but I started writing a longer version of this post several times but didn't complete it in one sitting and kept losing what I wrote to computer crashes between sittings.

The main thing I was able to complete each time was a bit of historical perspective, namely that we went through multiple threads back in 2012 on pretty much this exact issue, though it was more pressing then because the Crash Rescue thread didn't exist so bad launches were hogging TRS spots. Then, a moderate consensus emerged that YKTTW entries should be "drafts" editable by anyone like any other wiki entry, but that was never really going to come to fruition as long as a) YKTTW code had a number of quirks compared to code on the main wiki and b) YKTTW history simply consisted of entire revisions with no spotlighting of specific changes, and realistically won't really come to fruition until 2.0 comes along. However, since the transition to the new administration and the new layout that came with it was billed as putting the wiki on a single code base, I was surprised to find that both these quirks remain intact on TLP as it exists today. The main change that came out of the 2012 threads was the adoption of the tag system; if the main effect of the change to the new administration on TLP/YKTTW was the loss of that system, it's no surprise that we're back to where we were then.

So I'm fully on board with bringing back the tags, but I'm on the fence about splitting hats/bombs into three categories, because I'm not sure how much thought has been given to how that'll interact with bringing back the tags, or how necessary it'll be once tags are brought back. It's worth noting that the tags were, essentially, a compromise reached after this thread spent several pages on a multi-stage process (effectively forcing tropeworthiness to be established and a description and name nailed down before examples could be added, the idea being to prevent people cluttering the comments with examples and drowning out more substantive concerns) that eventually collapsed under its own weight. The idea behind the tags is/was to signal to tropers issues that need to be fixed before a page is launched, which is the same purpose behind the proposed "yellow light" "under construction" flag. I could see them working together if any tag other than "Motion to Discard" (excluding those that aren't actually flagging problems with the draft like Up for Grabs) served as a "yellow light" on the draft (effectively accompanying each "yellow light" with more information on the specific problems to be solved, or even having many different kinds of "yellow lights"), with motions to discard taking the form of "red light" bombs. (To be clear, I'm not saying to bring back the "motion to discard" tag; the consensus seems to be that no matter what else, it's redundant with bombs.) That might require substantially more coding than simply adopting one or the other proposal, though, and tags are more informative and have more of a history on TLP/YKTTW. Still, in a vacuum a three-flag system is a worthy idea, and if the devs can get the tags to work with the hats/bombs system they should; it's just that it's two different routes to get to much the same destination. The auxiliary suggestions to those two major suggestions in that document, I'm mostly okay to neutral with.

The idea of spotlighting tropers trusted to give a sound opinion on the state of drafts seems okay in theory, but I could see a backlash against the notion that some tropers' opinion have more value than others, which crazysamaritan's post pretty much makes explicit. I know that there were people complaining about that being an issue in TRS years ago, back before the Headlines were a thing and TRS had a habit of making big changes to prominent tropes that non-regulars perceived to be out-of-nowhere and unnecessary. The notion that the "cabal" has to put their seal of approval on every new trope isn't likely to go over well.

Unrelated note: I noticed that some tropers are bumping old (like as old as 2011) and stub drafts...

If they are just typing "bump" and not adding anything, we should consider mod action. If they are actually trying to advance the TLP proposals, then it's fine.

Speaking of old and stub drafts, I say the Trope Launch Pad has way too many of them, so I suggest doing a major cleanup of the TLP. As of this writing, it has a total of 9440 drafts.

Here's how we should clean up the TLP:

• Go to the last page in the TLP and look at each draft, and review them carefully.
  • If a draft has examples that are already covered by another trope, or is possibly becoming Flame Bait or NSFW, they should probably be discarded.
  • If it has little or no examples, an insufficient description, or an insufficient title, it should probably be put Up For Grabs—having someone else take over the draft and make it better enough to get launched.
  • If it has a good title, description, and a sufficient number of examples, but has not yet been launched or does not yet have enough hats to be so, a Do We Have This One should be added to the top of the page.

Unrelated to policy issues, I just want to mention that there are two links to Main.YKTTW Guidelines on Trope Launch Pad right now, and both should be changed to their correct links, Administrivia.YKTTW Guidelines.

Not sure if this is a good place to say it, but I thought that creating a new thread for this issue would overlap with this thread.

You mean Administrivia.TLP Guidelines, right? (Administrivia.YKTTW Guidelines is a redirect)

Just bumping this in recent light of a ninja launch spree. One draft of which was ninja launched was mine.

edited 16th Oct '17 12:05:04 PM by alnair20aug93

I remember in this thread that I said it was a pet peeve for me when someone ninja launches a draft when there's no statement that it's ready to be launched. Well, as someone had ninja launched my draft without consensus, I think that pet peeve had turned into a Berserk Button. I was supposed to do something that time, but that was unfortunately pushed aside over this debacle.

Maybe a tool to prevent launches by someone who hasn't edited the draft, and something to cap the number of drafts someone can launch in a day?

Those would do, and that launching should be a bit more exclusive for the OP, the ones who frequent TLP, and the mods. Though I for one wishes to bring back the tag systems as well that includes more protocol (such as no launching please)

edited 17th Oct '17 11:23:32 AM by alnair20aug93

I think just the OP and the mods should only be the ones who should launch the draft. Five hats does not equal launchable.

Well, that's a little too restrictive, as has been previously discussed. A whole new better system is what this thread has been working on.

What if the hats/bomb system had to be "turned on" before they could accumulate?

This way, the "draft" versions wouldn't get punished/rewarded for being "concepts I hate/love". There'd be a "drafting" stage for feedback and revision, then the "judgment" stage where we use hats to launch and bombs to send back to the revision stage.

I like that idea.

Could we also make it so that you can’t add a bomb unless there’s a hat or it’s been three days. People are adding bombs presumably to say not ready for launch but minutes after the draft has been made - obviously it’s not ready but now there’s a chance that bomb will stay.

Could we also introduce a separate rating system for tropeworthiness?

As long as we don't do the former until we do the latter, sure.

I was thinking: much like how you set the privacy settings of a Youtube video (public, unlisted, private) or setting the ratings filter of a post in a booru (safe, questionable, explicit), I was thinking of a launch filter where you could set the setting on who can launch a draft. Such as (only the OP, only the OP and the grabber, anyone can launch this)