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Unreleased Work Page Cleanup (Speculation, Spoilers, ZCE etc.)

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This is a thread for checking up on pages for works that have not been released yet, to make sure that they are not straying into rampant speculation or posting crazy behind the scenes spoilers. You can bring both individual examples or entire pages to attention here.

In extreme cases, any page can be locked, but hopefully that won't be necessary.

(As these pages often are hit with zero-context examples and shoehorning as well, all four - speculation, spoilers, ZCEs, and shoehorning may get addressed simultaneously.)

The policy governing this effort is Creating A Work Page For An Unreleased Work. Cleanup is being tracked using the Unreleased Works sandbox.

All pages for unreleased works should include a %% comment at the top of the page, confirming the policy and linking to this thread and the Administrivia page. It doesn't have to be exactly the same as the example provided here, but this provides a template to work with.

     Template for the unreleased work comment 
%%
%% Speculative troping is not allowed on TV Tropes.
%%
%% We trope what DOES happen in works, not what MIGHT happen or is LIKELY to happen.
%%
%% For unreleased works where all we have to go on is advertising and other supplemental materials, we have some detailed guidelines, which can be found at Administrivia/CreatingAWorkPageForAnUnreleasedWork.
%%
%% NOTE - these rules also mean that unreleased works should only have one page image, and that image should NOT be changed again until the work is released.
%%
%% If you have questions, please consult the Unreleased Work Speculation Cleanup thread at https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=15514631230A64268600
%%
%% Thank you.
%%

Edited by Mrph1 on Feb 10th 2024 at 8:16:52 PM

Karxrida from Eureka, the Forbidden Land Since: May, 2012 Relationship Status: I LOVE THIS DOCTOR!
#1251: Jul 1st 2019 at 9:35:55 AM

[up]x3 First of all, the examples were written before the policy had been put into place. They weren't bad until we arbitrarily decided they were.

Second of all, yes; I'm extremely frustrated because 1) I feel like this policy overstepped the necessary bounds required to fix the original problem (which was largely concerning YMMV pages, iirc) and 2) the aforementioned IRL stuff has made me incredibly stressed.

Edited by Karxrida on Jul 1st 2019 at 9:36:51 AM

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#1252: Jul 1st 2019 at 9:36:24 AM

[up][up]Manually contacting editors is a serious pain and is not mandatory. Sending them a 'speculation' issue helper is the most that we would expect.

[up] The policy on speculative troping vastly predates this cleanup effort. The issue is that it wasn't strictly enforced. Now step back and take a chill pill.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 1st 2019 at 12:37:40 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Karxrida from Eureka, the Forbidden Land Since: May, 2012 Relationship Status: I LOVE THIS DOCTOR!
#1253: Jul 1st 2019 at 9:38:15 AM

Fine. Then don't delete the stuff in VideoGame.Astral Chain (which I just restored under comments) until I can fix it. Or maybe somebody else does it for me.

WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (10,238/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (10,238/50,000)
#1254: Jul 1st 2019 at 9:41:07 AM

Hey, I know I don't usually post here, but I feel the need to get involved, seeing as I was the one who brought up the ZCE issue at ATT in the first place.

Now, I get it. It was bad form to have ZCEs on the page at all. But it's an extremely common problem everywhere, not just on pre-release pages. Were they added just so someone could come along and do the work later? Yeah, I guess it's possible, but AFAIK (please correct me if I'm getting information wrong), these could have just been normal ZCEs left by those that don't fully get context rules. Either way, though, the page was stuck with a bunch of ZCEs.

Maybe it isn't against the rules to delete them. I for one didn't know that at all, especially since all valid deletion reasons concern blatant misuse, and ZCEs may still be perfectly true, just lacking information. Whether or not it's outright illegal to delete them, though, it still makes me uncomfortable that they were deleted with no prior discussion.

The ZCEs weren't speculation, they weren't obvious misuse of any other kind, they were just low-context. Had there been any talk beforehand of whether or not they should've been cut, and the answer was "yes", I wouldn't care. But the fact that this is coming while we're still in debate over whether or not this is a good practice, when the only thing High Crate was told to delete was the speculation itself, when it's more courteous to just leave them alone and hidden, it just leaves a bad taste about the whole situation.

They did not need to be deleted, and even if it's not explicitly against the rules, isn't it always encouraged to get consensus before doing something like that?

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
rjd1922 Best robot boy | he/him | Image Pickin' regular, from the United States Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: Love is for the living, Sal
Best robot boy | he/him | Image Pickin' regular,
#1255: Jul 1st 2019 at 9:44:07 AM

[up][up]I agree, leave commented-out stuff that isn't speculation or misuse.

Fighteer, I think most people agree that adding pre-commented out ZCEs is not OK. Yes, commenting out examples lacking context or citation is a courtesy, but deleting examples that were added and later commented out, as HighCrate has been doing, seems rather discourteous to me.

Edited by rjd1922 on Jul 1st 2019 at 11:47:04 AM

Keet cleanup
Crossover-Enthusiast from an abaondoned mall (Lucky 7) Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#1256: Jul 1st 2019 at 10:00:00 AM

I think we need to get some other mods, or at least some other people, in here to further the discussion, because we're starting to go on circles again.

Also, just a little bit ago, Willbyr restored some commented out zero-context examples after someone had deleted them on Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart, saying "don't remove commented-out Zero Context Examples, fix them".

Jawbreakers on sale for 99¢
HighCrate Since: Mar, 2015
#1257: Jul 1st 2019 at 10:08:48 AM

Kaxrida has taken it upon himself to revert cleanup on Astral Chain. The entries in question:

  • Another Dimension: The monsters are said to come from a dimensional rift that has appeared in the Ark. Speculation, passive voice (who says they come from a rift?), ZCE (what is the other dimension like?). Motion to cut.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Some of the monsters that threaten the Ark are humongous in size. Very context-light, speculation (no citation). Motion to cut.
  • City of Adventure: The events that transpire in Astral Chain take place in the cyberpunk city called the Ark. ZCE, speculation. Motion to cut.
  • Cyberpunk: The game takes major cues from various cyberpunk works (Takahisa Taura specifically credits Shirow Masamune's Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed), with transhuman characters mentally connected to the biomechanical legion weapons. No citation. Cite publicly-available tropable material or cut.
  • Half-Identical Twins: The player character and their younger sibling. ZCE. Add context or cut.
  • Gendered Outfit: The main female character's uniform has a few differences, the most prominent being the short shorts. No citation. Cite publicly-available tropable material or cut.
  • Male Gaze: The female character's pose blatantly showcases her rear end. No citation. Cite publicly-available tropable material or cut.
  • Police Are Useless: The reason that Neuron was formed was because regular law enforcement was ill-equipped for the monster threat. No citation. Cite publicly-available tropable material or cut.
  • Puppet Fighter: The protagonists fight alongside Legion, Mini-Mecha that fight beside you in combat. No citation, ZCE, speculation, shoehorning. A Puppet Fighter is when you get control of two different entities in a video game simultaneously. I'm highly skeptical that full context can be given with the available pre-release materials. Motion to cut.
  • Static Role, Exchangeable Character: The twin you select as the Player Character will always be the older sibling and The Hero. The other twin is delegated to a support role as another member of Neuron. No citation. Cite publicly-available tropable material or cut.

I also noticed another problem entry on the page that must have been missed up until now:

  • The Corruption: Chimera activity leaves behind a residue that can't be seen by normal people, and if it's not cleaned up with Legion it can cause all sorts of problems ranging from disappearances to portals for more Chimeras to come through. No citation. Cite publicly-available tropable material or cut.

By the way, I'm not ignoring the rest of the discussion, but considering that Fighteer is making 99% of the same points I would make, only better-expressed and with moderator authority behind them, I don't think it would be particularly productive for me to restate every point.

Edited by HighCrate on Jul 1st 2019 at 3:25:48 AM

WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (10,238/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (10,238/50,000)
#1258: Jul 1st 2019 at 10:11:19 AM

Listen my guy, all I'm trying to say is that you should've gotten consensus before cutting the ZCEs along with the speculation, especially given the other thread is still debating this very subject.

Illegal? Guess not. A bit rude? Yeahhhh.

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
Crossover-Enthusiast from an abaondoned mall (Lucky 7) Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#1259: Jul 1st 2019 at 10:15:31 AM

[up] [tup][tup][tup]

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DanteVin The Time Has Come from Somewhere Since: Jul, 2016 Relationship Status: Singularity
#1260: Jul 1st 2019 at 10:22:53 AM

[up][up][up][up]"I think we need to get some other mods, or at least some other people, in here to further the discussion, because we're starting to go on circles again."

Wait, what is the "starting to go on circles again"? What happened in this thread the past few hours? Is there a recent change to the policy concerning unreleased works and commented stuff?

With Great Power, Comes Great Motivation
WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (10,238/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (10,238/50,000)
#1261: Jul 1st 2019 at 10:24:45 AM

[up] The Spark Notes version is that High Crate deleted speculative and ZCE examples on Borderlands 3, Discar put them back, and we're debating over if things should have been deleted at all.

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
rjd1922 Best robot boy | he/him | Image Pickin' regular, from the United States Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: Love is for the living, Sal
Best robot boy | he/him | Image Pickin' regular,
#1262: Jul 1st 2019 at 10:25:00 AM

WarJay77, my thoughts exactly.

Keet cleanup
nombretomado (Season 1) Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#1263: Jul 1st 2019 at 10:36:20 AM

As I'm talking about commented-out entries, I mean commented out after they were added. I think we all agree adding pre-commented out entries is rules-circumventing.

~HighCrate, if we have an active conversation about deleting commented-out entries ve. keeping them commented out, and you move forward with deleting...it is, as noted, not against the rules, but that is rude and disregards others. And we have already had conversations about steamrolling over others.

Commenting out on the basis of ZCE's and commenting out on the basis of no-citation (for unreleased works) is a courtesy we extend to other editors. It is a chance we give them to fix small, non-egregious errors without having to start over from scratch.

This becomes more tangled for unreleased works because an example may be suffering from multiple problems, and some of those only became official problems with a relatively new policy.

It seems to me that an entry may reasonably have zero context in such a way that it appears to be speculative as well. But with minor edits, an editor can address both problems.

We do not want to speculate, but we are also (I hope) working in good faith to rehab fixable entries. It seems that, for unreleased works, it is more appropriate and community-friendly (especially for a newly encoded policy) to let these stay commented out.

Brainulator9 Short-Term Projects herald from US Since: Aug, 2018 Relationship Status: I get a feeling so complicated...
Short-Term Projects herald
#1264: Jul 1st 2019 at 10:37:44 AM

Also agreed with WarJay77.

Edited by Brainulator9 on Jul 1st 2019 at 1:38:45 PM

Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!
Crossover-Enthusiast from an abaondoned mall (Lucky 7) Relationship Status: Chocolate!
#1265: Jul 1st 2019 at 10:37:53 AM

@Dante Vin: I say "we're going in (dang autocorrect) circles again" because back when this effort first started, most of the discussion was just us arguing with High Crate over how strict the rules should be, and now we're arguing with HighCrate and Fighteer on how to handle ZCEs.

Jawbreakers on sale for 99¢
Discar Since: Jun, 2009
#1266: Jul 1st 2019 at 11:01:13 AM

The Spark Notes version is that High Crate deleted speculative and ZCE examples on Borderlands 3, Discar put them back, and we're debating over if things should have been deleted at all.

And I do apologize for that. Obviously I still think the examples should not have been deleted, but restoring them was the first step in what could have easily become an edit war.

As I'm talking about commented-out entries, I mean commented out after they were added. I think we all agree adding pre-commented out entries is rules-circumventing.

An excellent point that I didn't even consider. I haven't seen anyone adding pre-commented out entries, but I'm only looking at a handful of pages. I could easily see that becoming a problem. (slightly related—I've very rarely seen new editors add ZCE entries pre-commented out and expect someone else to fill in the example)

And I also agree with War Jay.

Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.
HighCrate Since: Mar, 2015
#1267: Jul 1st 2019 at 12:43:04 PM

The problem I see with leaving speculative entries— whether they're inherently speculative, speculative by reason of lack of citation, or presumed to be speculative because they lack enough context to judge otherwise— hidden is that we are already seeing tropers announcing their intention to unhide those entries as soon as the work releases.

The correct order of events is to experience the work, decide whether a trope applies, and then write up an example entry with full context.

It is not to guess what tropes will apply, write up the example entry based on what you think will happen in the final work, and then wait to see if you guessed right. That is fundamentally contrary to what we're here to do.

I do see several tropers working in good faith to add citations and context and make bad entries and pages better, and I thank them for their efforts.

Unfortunately, I also see tropers using comment tags and awkwardly inserted "the trailer reveals that" faux-citations as end-runs around the spirit of the rules.

Out of respect to the former group, I'm fine with bringing entries here for discussion before cutting them.

What's I don't think is a good idea is leaving poorly-written, zero-context and speculative entries hidden on the page in perpetuity for someone to unhide as soon as they're technically allowed to. That's not cleanup. It's sweeping the problem under the rug for someone else to deal with later.

Edited by HighCrate on Jul 1st 2019 at 12:46:38 PM

nombretomado (Season 1) Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#1268: Jul 1st 2019 at 12:55:32 PM

If someone unhides an insufficient example when a work changes from unreleased to released, that is a problem outside the scope of this thread.

We are all working, here, to trope well unreleased works. As plenty of people aren't even aware of our policy regarding theseworks, clean-up should be directed at, yes, the page itself, but also creating awareness on what these clean-ups entail and do not entail.

To me, deleting things that can be fixed makes a bigger mess than there has to be. Are insufficient examples a problem? Absolutely.

Are commented-out insufficent examples a waste of space? No, using that mark-up plus commented-out notes on policy can create both a cleaner, outward-facing page and a better community of discussion than deleting outright.

Edited by nombretomado on Jul 1st 2019 at 12:57:37 PM

WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (10,238/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (10,238/50,000)
#1269: Jul 1st 2019 at 1:14:22 PM

Not to mention that deleting this stuff is far more likely to spark edit wars (or potential edit wars) as people tend to get a lot more defensive over things being deleted than they do with things just being commented-out. With a new policy like this, is it really worth the risk of getting people more riled up by deleting huge swaths of pages? Isn't just leaving them hidden a better solution, so that future editors know that A) there's a new policy to consider, B) exactly what kind of examples aren't kosher, and C) that things can be fixed by just making the edits conform to policy?

Like, I'm not a fan of the idea of others trying to make others do the work for them. But all deletions do, especially in this case, is add to the drama and confusion!

With the ZCEs it's even more of an issue, because there's no policy that says you should or shouldn't delete them; doing it on a whim because you think it's the better solution may be allowed, but it's also jumping the gun and ignoring the discussion that, currently, does not favor deleting them.

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
rjd1922 Best robot boy | he/him | Image Pickin' regular, from the United States Since: May, 2013 Relationship Status: Love is for the living, Sal
Best robot boy | he/him | Image Pickin' regular,
#1270: Jul 1st 2019 at 1:53:20 PM
HighCrate Since: Mar, 2015
#1271: Jul 1st 2019 at 2:09:52 PM

Okay, we're in a situation now where I'm getting different answers from different moderators, and inconsistent answers from the same moderator.

My understanding has always been that we are not here to trope unreleased works. Just the opposite: we are here to clean up speculative troping of unreleased works.

Material that has been released (trailers, demos, etc) can be troped, even if it's attached to a work that has not, itself, been released.

Am I wrong about this?

Edited by HighCrate on Jul 1st 2019 at 2:10:51 AM

NTC3 Since: Jan, 2013 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#1272: Jul 1st 2019 at 2:16:46 PM

All right, I think I've helped to push a couple more works over the line. Was originally aiming to deal with all the leftover pages that have issues today, but it's night-time here, so I'll have to finish up tomorrow.I humbly ask that you don't cut any page on this sandbox overnight before I had the chance to look at it.

Also, please don't delete any commented-out examples from Code Vein: because of time constraints, I relied upon 9 minutes of footage to add valid examples. I would probably be able to substantiate many of the commented-out examples if I bothered to watch the hours of beta footage, but I plainly don't care enough about that game for that. Many people apparently do, though, so PM them, or something.

Lastly, I really wish the people who apparently added so much to Borderlands 3 would pay this much interest towards the Summary.Video Games page.

Edited by NTC3 on Jul 1st 2019 at 2:17:15 AM

nombretomado (Season 1) Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#1273: Jul 1st 2019 at 2:20:21 PM

What in my answers appears inconsistent with the policy as-written?

We have limitations on troping unreleased works, based on the materials that have been made publicly available. Some troping has been made that is unclear if they are based fairly on appropriate materials. Commenting out these examples, and in doing so enabling others to become aware of this policy and make edits to make these examples appropriate, is acceptable.

HighCrate Since: Mar, 2015
#1274: Jul 1st 2019 at 2:25:04 PM

So when you said,

We are all working, here, to trope well unreleased works.

I'm not sure what you mean. That is certainly not what I am working to do here.

This is not the "let's trope unreleased works!" thread. This is a thread for cleanup of speculative troping, among other problems on unreleased works pages, to ensure that they only cover material that has been released, like trailers.

Edited by HighCrate on Jul 1st 2019 at 2:27:04 AM

nombretomado (Season 1) Relationship Status: [TOP SECRET]
#1275: Jul 1st 2019 at 2:28:58 PM

If you do not believe the underlying goal of this thread is to curate unreleased work pages in such a way that they are adhering to a policy that explicitly permits such pages to exist, then we have a major problem.

Is that the case?


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