Is the wiki the place to discuss scandals that have nothing to do with works?

Thanks to the recent drama with ProJared, many of us have been pondering exactly how to handle it when a creator becomes embroiled in a scandal. We have a fairly extensive Ask The Tropers thread here, but the troper who created it requested to no longer be involved, so to respect their decision, we're moving the discussion over here.

The general consensus in the ATT thread was that scandals generally do not need to be mentioned, because they are about the creators as people, not about their work. Troping creators as people has been against site policy for a long time. In addition, most of us in that thread were of the opinion that we are not the Internet Police, and it's not our responsibility to warn people that so-and-so has had off-color involvement with underage girls, or anything else.

The main thing we were waiting on before we started implementing our decisions was input from a staff member, but since there are undoubtedly people here who haven't seen the ATT thread, I'm sure we'll see some more folks chime in. I welcome it. This is a drastic change to the way we've handled these things in the past, and I want as many people as possible to be happy with whatever decision we come to.

I was one of the most vocal in that thread for not discussing these subjects, unless they're absolutely relevant to the creator's work, or in the theoretical case of a page about someone famous for their scandal and not much else. One of the arguments I keep seeing for why we should discuss Jared's personal life is that it's on other creator's pages as well, but that doesn't make this sort of thing OK, even if another page got away with it due to lack of attention.

We can't hide our heads in the sand and pretend these things didn't happen or else we're right back to be accused of apologism via covering it up. It's also a discredit to claim we want to discuss and trope media while also avoiding discussing parts of it's history like creator scandals that affected it because we find it unpleasant.

It's something that needs to be mentioned as part of the creators career history but with tact and in a somewhat professional manner. Especially in a case like Jared because it's worth discussion that it's the reason way he was fired from Normal Boots and officially deleted from Game Grumps content.

It's just something that has to be approached as a sensitive topic and handled carefully.

Edited by CryptidProductions on May 13th 2019 at 6:40:47 AM

We're not hiding our heads in the sand by not allowing this sort of content- we're just sticking to the goal of the wiki, which has always been "fiction first".

Let me repost it here, just so it's apparent to everyone: the fact that we are not troping these scandals does not mean we are defending the creators or condoning their actions. What ProJared has done is despicable. It is also outside the scope of TVTropes. We are a wiki for describing narrative devices and cataloguing their use in fiction. We are not a wiki for naming and shaming every creator who breaks the law.

Another concern of mine is that if we allow this sort of thing, it can easily cross-over into people posting about allegations and scandals that haven't been proven true; while people should be able to come up with their own opinion after looking at the facts, there's an unfortunate trend of people assuming allegations- especially sexual ones- are true, even though there's always a chance that they're not. We don't need people shaming creators on their pages, and we definitely don't need people jumping the gun when it comes to allegations that haven't yet been proven one way or another. It's all too much of a mess for me to think any potential benefit is worth it.

(Note, I'm not saying people like Jared are innocent or anything...just that, well, allegations are allegations and it's not our place to play judge).

As I understand it, policy on stuff like this has always been that elements of creator's personal lives should only be referenced if it's relevant to the content they generate. Since the creator pages are meant to inform readers about their their careers, the information should be included, but only if said scandals actually had some relevance to their work. It shouldn't be included as a warning, and should be written to be as object as possible. The purpose of the creator page is to inform, not to warn or pass judgement on the subject.

Here are a couple of pages where I feel like referencing the scandals would be justified:

• Jimmy Savile: One of the largest sex scandals in British history and resulted in the guy basically being Unpersoned by the entertainment industry after his death. Including it on his page is important to explain why he almost never appears anymore despite being a major figure in British television.

• Bill Cosby: Extremely popular actor and comedian who broke a lot of racial barriers in his popularity and was considered a role model by most. It's pretty important to include the reason why almost none of his material is ever seen.

• Fatty Arbuckle: One of film's first major stars, and one of the first major scandals. Even though he was ultimately exonerated, the scandal basically torpedoed his career.

• Robert Downey Jr.: Dude's drug/alcohol issues almost killed his career, and it's general consensus that those experiences contributed to his portrayal of Tony Stark in Iron Man.

TL;DR I think scandals that have nothing to do with works have no place on the pages; but if they did influence the creator's work or career, it should be mentioned for the sake of information. If it didn't have an influence on their work, it shouldn't be mentioned, even if it is terrible. It's outside the scope of the pages, and of the wiki as a whole.

I'd also personally suggest that when it comes "hot button" issues (like the Projared thing) that are currently ongoing, they shouldn't be mentioned until it becomes evident what affect they'll actually have.

Edited by JapaneseTeeth on May 13th 2019 at 9:05:04 AM

This is the most valid reason I have seen to continue listing the scandals, and you aren't the first to bring it up. However, allow me to point out that we have a trope for this: Overshadowed by Controversy.

I, for one, would be willing to compromise by allowing the scandals to be listed under this trope and excising all other mentions of them.

e: In addition, Overshadowed by Controversy already has a mandatory six-month waiting period before it can be listed on a creator's page.

Edited by razorrozar7 on May 13th 2019 at 7:07:05 AM

As already mentioned in OP and in the linked ATT thread, scandals are generally not troped or mentioned in descriptions (I'll just say "troped" for short). One relevant policy is that we do not trope people and/or their personal lives but their works and their public personas. Another is that we generally do not trope "hotbutton" topics, such as Flame Bait or ongoing scandals.

Where are you getting this impression? I have worked to help maintain the wiki for a long time now and this has always been how this sort of thing has been handled...? Unless you mean completely ignoring the scandal, as I guess that is a bit odd.

It doesn't sound like that's what's at issue here. Two major issues seem to be (1) warning people of perceived "active predators" in online communities and (2) describing ongoing scandals. The former is not kosher here, as that isn't germaine to TV Tropes's mission of documenting elements of fiction (as opposed to documenting elements of reality, which is more germaine with Wikipedia's mission). The latter would generally fall under hotbutton topics so it's difficult to make blanket statements about discussing them on the wiki.

This is from the ROCEJ thread from Fighteer and Madrugada's statements on policy regarding politicians and troping RL individuals.:

I wonder if this could also apply to scandals, where the scandal should not be mentioned unless it meets the three criteria with the alterative criteria being that the scandal involves a work directly.

Such an interpretation on policy would necessarily have to come from the mods, and (disclaimer!) I am not a mod at all. I'm indirectly asking the mods if such an interpretation would fit with other policies and such.

I'm getting that idea from Bill Cosby, Kevin Spacey, John Kricfalusi, and the plethora of other creator and 'creator-adjacent' pages that devote extensive page space to talking about their scandals. If that's always been the rule, it's been very poorly enforced; however, it does make coming to a decision here much easier.

I think the main thing we're waiting on is still input from the staff. I know they're aware of the discussion we've been having, and I'm willing to be patient.

Edited by razorrozar7 on May 13th 2019 at 7:51:22 AM

@Warjay

To pretend works exist in a vacuum by completely divorcing them from how real life events with their creators influence them is a discredit to studying fiction.

Creators create fiction.

Creators lives can affect their career and that affects the fiction.

Like all the productions involving Kevin Spacey that were drastically changed or shelved when the reveal of his long history of sexual assault and harassment blacklisted him and made him poison overnight.

John K went from a celebrated figure at Nick for Ren and Stimpy's place in it's history to the studio unpersoning him and removing any works of his they held the publishing rights to from their networks.

Or like Teeth said, Bill Cosby because his works went from a celebrated part of cinema history for their positive portrayals of African Americans to things people are trying to forget they ever enjoyed overnight.

I think when a creators crimes affect their work so profoundly it needs to be noted as part of the works history.

I think the one complication here is that we aren't really talking about troping real life individuals; creator pages are more akin to Useful Notes that are meant to inform readers about the creators in question. The criteria listed there are specifically for using people as trope examples, which isn't quite the question at hand.

I see where you're coming from, but I think it's more an issue of making sure they don't overtake the rest of the article rather than not including it at all. For example, Bill Cosby's page is about 15 paragraphs long, only the last 2 of which discuss the sex scandal in any detail, which seems like an appropriate amount of information considering the overall length of the article.

By contrast, like half of Kevin Spacey's page is dedicated to the scandal, which is way more focus than it needs and could probably be pared down to two or three sentences. ("In October 2017, so and so accused him of sexual harassment, followed by others coming forward to claim they had also been harassed. As a result, he was fired from such and such show and he hasn't had any major roles since.")

Anyway, my suggestions for criteria on "real life" drama would be this:

• Scandals can be included on creator pages as long as:
  • They have had a clear influence on the creator's work and/or career.
  • They don't make up a disproportionate amount of content on the page.
  • They aren't ongoing (I'd recommend at least a six-month waiting period to allow things to settle)
• Real Life content can only be used for trope examples following the criteria mentioned above:
  • When the work in question specifically mentions the RL individual.
  • When the entirety of the example has to do with the portrayal of that individual in the work.
  • When the work is fictional.

Edited by JapaneseTeeth on May 13th 2019 at 10:37:01 AM

I think I can get behind Japanese Teeth's compromise.

Especially the bit about allowing a waiting period to let the dust settle and avoid nattering/gossip back and forth when the iron is still hot on an issue.

Edit: aside from the "work is fictional" bit at the bottom because that puts biopics on shaky ground.

Edited by CryptidProductions on May 13th 2019 at 8:09:23 AM

I'm okay with Teeth's compromise as well. However, I would like to point out that, if it's adopted, we'll probably need a Long-Term Projects thread dedicated to keeping creator pages clean, and to making sure the scandals don't lead to Creator Bashing in particular, no matter how deserved it is.

Also, I think this is far too big a decision to be made simply by the few of us who have chimed in so far, aside from the staff input. I think a crowner may be called for.

I think time is an important factor, though that doesn't excuse the presence of that (or any) "non-kosher" information.

When a scandal breaks, everybody seems to have an opinion on it, and many people push back against the possibility that something they like (e.g. the work, the persona, the whatever) comes from evil or hate or other negative things. It isn't until more information comes to light and more people understand the truth behind the scandal that there's less and less push back to the point where it can be safely discussed on TV Tropes as part of — as has just been mentioned — the history of the industry and of the work itself.

With the Kevin Spacey scandal, for example, once he made an in-character video where he addresses a then-recent allegation, most people understood that, hey, this guy's let's say kind of lost his marbles. And then even more information comes out and "all of a sudden" it isn't so controversial to explain the controversy. I mean, enough people understand the scandal that it isn't a problem to mention it.

That said, remember the non-canon information problem TV Tropes has where there wasn't enforcement and nobody noticed the information was there. We still got rid of non-canon pages despite how long they've been here and despite how many of them there were.

No, creator pages are not the same as Useful Notes pages, and Creator/ pages can trope public personas, but we're not talking about troping those personas. And I'm just using "troping" as shorthand — as I mentioned in my previous post — for what you're saying as "inform[ing] readers."

Edited by WaterBlap on May 13th 2019 at 8:18:15 AM

Yeah, I recognize that Creator pages aren't Useful Notes, I just wanted to point out that they lean more in that direction than a standard trope page would.

As far as biopics go, I think those would generally be tropeable, if only because while the person's life itself can't contain tropes, a movie showing it can. If I remember right, the rationale on that has been "tropes are storytelling devices, as such real life can't be troped, because real life isn't a narrative, but a movie about someone's life can be, because somebody making the movie can use storytelling devices to to get their point across."

I might be misremembering though, and it still leaves documentaries as a bit of a gray area. In any case, the mods will need to weigh in on it.

Edited by JapaneseTeeth on May 13th 2019 at 10:37:26 AM

Hm...See, I feel we have something of an ethical obligation, as an information source, to put that sort of info where relevant. For instance, Bill Cosby's should definitely mention that the dude's been found guilty of sexual assault. If not in the opening paragraph, liek Wikipedia does, at least as early on as possible. Creator pages are obliged to cover the major highlights of the person's career, including what may end it. However, with Jared, it's complicated, because he's not technically on a creator page. Personally, i'd argue that, with Internet review shows being a very personality-driven genre, the Projared page IS more or less his creator page in every way that matters, but eh. Point is, I think we should definitely it. If not in the header, then somewhere on the main page. It's going to definitely be mentioned on things like YMMV and Trivia.

That's essentially what I meant by 'creator-adjacent' pages - work pages where the personality of the creator is one of the driving forces of the work. Pages for things like talk shows, podcasts, let's plays, reviewers, etc., tend to become de facto creator pages in a lot of ways. And I don't really think there's anything wrong with that. The Internet has given personality-driven works a huge audience. It would be remiss of us not to trope them.

Regarding your other point, our consensus in the ATT thread was that we do not have an ethical obligation to tell people about the crimes creators have committed. We are not Wikipedia. See the OP re:Internet Police.

As for the YMMV and Trivia pages, one of the purposes of this thread is to decide whether we should talk about them there or not. Nothing is 'definite' yet.

True enough, but I think it should be able to be mentioned on the Trivia and YMMV pages. Otherwise, we'd need to perform a MASSIVE Example Sectomy.

I've alerted the rest of the staff to this discussion.

The main point here is that the personal scandals of people have nothing to do with their works (outside of the Overshadowed by Controversy trope) in 99% of cases and are thus off mission. That and they often lead to skirmishing.

I'm wondering where we would draw the line? Is it just at major, lawbreaking scandals? What about someone coming out as political extremist of sorts? Controversial political opinions in general? What if it's just something like using a slur or making other tasteless jokes? When will it be considered okay to talk about someone's personal controversies and when isn't it? There has to be a line somewhere, right? If it's all fair game, then goodbye ROCEJ.

Edited by WarJay77 on May 14th 2019 at 3:46:15 PM

I'd disagree with that because there's very few cases where the scandals DON'T impact the creators career enough to affect their work.

I've said for a long time the ROCEJ greatly over-reaches and is more of a hindrance than a benefit in it's current state so I'd honestly approve of severely pruning back it's jurisdiction but that's another discussion for another time.

Edited by CryptidProductions on May 14th 2019 at 12:51:52 PM

I wholeheartedly disagree; but even then, that still begs the question of where the line is and where the line should be.

Just having a lot of work to do isn't necessarily a deterrent. If it makes the wiki better, the work is worth doing. I did mention the possibility of a cleanup thread earlier. Such projects can go on for years, if they're continuously improving the wiki. Just as an example, the Complete Monster cleanup thread has been going on since 2013 at least and is still going strong.

Thanks for stopping by, Septimus. The update is appreciated.

For now, I think, we should operate as though the ROCEJ is set in stone, for the purposes of determining policy. One variable at a time. If the ROCEJ is changed, we can revisit this discussion as well.

You clearly have an agenda here, which is to inform the world of the misdeeds of everyone. That is not TV Tropes' mission. We are about creative media, full stop, end of story.

What a creator does in their personal life is completely irrelevant to this site, unless said actions directly influence the content of their work (not the context).

We have no business putting warnings on our articles about why so-and-so is a horrible person. Absolutely none. That is our policy and it is not changing.

Edited by Fighteer on May 14th 2019 at 6:53:40 AM