Roleplay Namespace Cleanup and Maintenance

At a basic level, the considerations are as follows:

• Write for an audience, not for yourselves. Pretend that your RP is just another work that you, as a fan, are helping to trope. Avoid "in-jokes", insider lingo/terms, memes, and references to events that are not explained in the article.
• Write about the characters and the story, not the participants. Real life people may not be troped except under very specific circumstances. Don't even mention the names of the players or GM.
• Do not use TV Tropes to market or advertise your work.
• Comply with general wiki policies on example context, proper use of Playing with a Trope, indentation, and everything else on How to Write an Example.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 18th 2019 at 4:19:42 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Okay, we'll do our best to implement your general concerns. Is there anything specific (besides what's already been said) that stands out to you as obviously done wrong?

There are three main rules your pages break:

• Don't delete in-active characters from the character sheets. Tropes from old works are just as valid as tropes from new works. You can add a note to the character description that the character was retired from the game.
• How to Create a Character Page: You can't list characters on character sheets without at least a single trope.
• Zero-Context Example: This has been a rule since I remember (it means at least 7 years) though the page has been recently re-vamped to include what examples should and should not look like. Basically, you have to explain how the trope applies in the work, not just list a trope and stick a character name right next to it.

I posted a very long post about it: see here.

Edited by XFllo on Nov 18th 2019 at 10:29:07 AM

All right, well, we'll work on making the suggested improvements. Thank you for your suggestions.

Feel free to stop by if you need any advice or help or feedback. We'd be more than happy.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Just to make a belated note: I've been doing clean-up for about 8 years, and literally no other Roleplay page has been as longlasting in participant activity. Even if there's clean-up to do, it's miles - miles - ahead of many other pages which were just created, and then abandoned.

Edited by nombretomado on Nov 18th 2019 at 4:09:01 AM

Hi I joined TV tropes recently because an interactive fiction site I frequent changed its name so I thought I'd update the links to it on pages that mention it.

This is looking like a little more work than I expected because these pages don't use the Namespace consistently. Some are grouped under Roleplay while others are Webcomics. They're kind of half and half since they use a mix of images and text and take input from the readers in between updates by the author.

The InteractiveComic page is full of them and a lot of them are zero context examples too.

Any advice on resolving this?

First of all, Welcome To Tv Tropes!

Second...yeahhhh....ooff...that's bizarre. To start, we definitely need to move them to a consistent namespace.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Sandbox.Character Development Thread is now listed on the Administrivia.Overly Long Pages page, probably because it's the sum total of pages that were moved out of their namespaces by the discussion starting here. Usually I would bring this to the attention of the too-long page repair thread, but in this case I don't want them floundering by wondering if whatever they plan to do to fix it would step on this thread's toes.

If not for this anchor I'd be dancing between the stars. At least I can try to write better vampire stories than Twilight.

Thanks Warjay. I would lean towards moving all of the works listed on Interactive Comic to the Web Original namespace. Alternatively perhaps the text-only ones could remain as roleplays and the ones that include art be classified as webcomics as this split seems to already be partially adhered to.

After mulling it over, I decided it'd be best to follow the precedent established on Interactive Comic that "Frequently these comics straddle the boundary between Webcomic and New Media/Web Original. General precedent seems to be to put Interactive Comics in the Webcomic category. More and more however, traditional web comic creators are experimenting with the medium." and migrate the Roleplay works over to the Webcomic namespace. I'll provide a list as I work through them.

Edited by Arhquarium on Nov 25th 2019 at 7:49:52 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

For the record, Web Original tends not to be favoured over more specific namespaces. It's kind of deprecated and mostly there as a catch-all if absolutely nothing else fits.

Also, I think the issue is that interactive comics are essentially Quest Roleplays, and some of them are even called such (AsteroidQuest, Ruby Quest, Dorf Quest, etc.) Are they Quest Roleplays that use images instead of text, or webcomics that features interactivity as a core mechanic? The answer is both; because of said naming convention acknowledging that they're Quest Roleplays, I'd actually be more inclined to put them in Roleplay over Webcomic.

they/them || "Forgive me, regent of queer amphibians" - Lt.BGob

The convention seems to have shifted over time - the majority of the newer 'Quest Roleplays' are in the Webcomic namespace. Since this is the convention that Interactive Comic is using and several well known examples of this particular format (Prequel, Homestuck before it closed the suggestion box, etc) are put under the Webcomic namespace, this seems like the best place to put them. They're a webcomic with an interactive element for the audience rather than a traditional roleplay. Text-only ones may need to stay where they are though.

I've placed a redirect for the following works and gone through their related links. They should all only have two links to the roleplay cleanup sandbox now, all the rest are pointing to the webcomic namespace:

Acid Soup

A Little Town Called Coxwette

AsteroidQuest

Unnatural Selection (this one turned out to be quite tightly interlinked in with the Asteroid Quest so I cleaned it up at the same time)

I've also placed a redirect for Ruby Quest but that one turned out to have over 200 links so haven't done anything further yet.

Edited by Arhquarium on Nov 25th 2019 at 12:06:06 AM

Characters.Hunger Games Simulation Scipion 3 popped up on CharacterSheets.Role Play.

I think it needs to be cut or moved somewhere else. It's hardly our standard use of the Characters/ namespace. Other character sheets on this work's index have the same issues. I think it lists the roleplayers, not the characters they created. As far as I can tell, there are no tropes list, just some links to work pages or websites. For example, see Hunger Games Simulation Players A To M.

(One page from the roleplay is probably fine: Hunger Games Simulation — Lore Characters as it lists fictional characters with tropes; though there are some issues, too — for examples some characters don't have any trope lists.)

The recap page Recap.Hunger Games Simulation also seems a bit off. Just some stats about who won. Recap are supposed to recap the storyline, no?

Trying to ping ~Troper No. 9001 because they added the page to the index and they seem to edit this roleplay a lot.

Edited by XFllo on Dec 1st 2019 at 12:52:06 PM

Alright, I left Freedom City Play By Post alone for a while, letting the participants have a chance to do some clean-up, but got back into it tonight with the Character subpages. Part way through Characters.Freedom City Play By Post S.

Edited by nombretomado on Dec 3rd 2019 at 7:34:57 AM

No response yet. Did you add the ping in the edit? I'll try it again:

~Troper No. 9001

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Alright, I'm trying to discuss this with the other players on the thread's Discord server.

"Anemone dear, I know you want to be more independent from me, but... please take care, okay?"

The character sheets are nonstandard because there are two threads for this. First is the Main thread where the players nominate tributes and react to them fighting as another player uses the sim to generate the events that happen to them. Second is the the RP thread, which is the sequel to this one, which is a roleplay based on the events of the Main thread.

The character sheets for the Main thread not only trope the players, but also their tributes and what they did there. For example, if a tribute killed a lot of people, then they're troped as Ax-Crazy. Problem is that some of the folders don't have tropes because we leave it to the players themselves to trope their tributes.

The "Lore Characters" page and the recaps for Convergence and ASAS should be fine, but if you think the recaps for the Main thread (the ones which list the top three tributes along with the most murderous of each season, which has been a tradition since the first iteration) are too much of an issue, then we'll transplant them to a public GDoc.

I'll call ~Psychedelicate, ~Vengeful Bale, ~Zanreo, and ~Dave The Assassin, the thread's server mods, for their thoughts on this.

Edited by TroperNo9001 on Dec 4th 2019 at 1:49:14 AM

"Anemone dear, I know you want to be more independent from me, but... please take care, okay?"

Yeah, I agree with . I'd also like to add that not every player tropefies themselves; in fact, most of them only tropefy their tributes. In regards to the folders that lack any trope lists, we could solve that by encouraging the players in question to add some tropes, but unfortunately some of those players are now inactive on the site as a whole. Worst comes to worst we may need to either remove the offending folders or see if we can add some tropes to them ourselves.

Any blank/tropeless folders on the Lore page can also be commented out for the time being until anyone finds the time to add tropes to them.

What ya'll need to remember is that these pages aren't for you- they're for an audience. Now, I'm not accusing you guys of doing that- it's just something to keep in mind; that if these pages are being written without the intention of anyone else ever reading them, you're missing the point.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Which is why we don't add folders without other players' consent. If no one but us was interested in reading those characters pages, they would be much, much smaller.

I get your points, but we don't act for the most part on those pages, except when adding some small edits or corrections. It's up for the HGS players to willingly add entries, which is only possible if they themselves want to take part in the characters pages.

And it's kinda hard for non-HGS players to get involved in RP Characters stuff. It's inevitable, really.

Edited by VengefulBale on Dec 3rd 2019 at 12:51:17 PM

"Bingo! If two species hate each other, they will wipe each other out on their own."

I definitely understand, I was just pointing out a potential concern. It's not that I think your page is bad, it's more that Roleplay pages are more often than not made as though only the RPers would be reading it. Since that's not how ya'll feel, it's all fine.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

As a fellow server mod, we can assure you that such a problem that you're seeing is fully unintentional. On the recaps, trying to fully recap everything and/or tropefying it would be an absolutely foolish thing to do, and it would be a straight up hell for everyone (and even those are understatements of the century), because the first iteration alone had 250 seasons spread across 1,200+ pages; let alone the ongoing Reboot. Add to the fact that several of the seasons' pictures (for which we decided to term it as "screens") are permanently lost, it's an automatic lost cause. And sometimes, we don't have time to do the recaps, which is why Convergence's page is lacking, really. We can't just do everything by ourselves; where would we be for the actual HGS seasons, as well as our real life obligations?

As for the character pages, they're non-standard, I get it. But it's been that way for a long while, ever since early-to-midway into the first iteration of the games (which means roughly, and I don't see much issues from it before. And our role as mods is to moderate the others, not impose how to do this and that. We don't want to burden everyone else with a standard format, because HGS as a whole.... really is NOT your conventional game. Trying to standardize the whole thing would be a fool's errand, and it's impractical.

Also, what Bale said about the Lore Characters page. The HGS lore has been quite a thing for a long while, but it really took off when Convergence, the first RP iteration, started. And considering everything, it's a hell of a work, and trying to completely reformat it would also be foolish.

And as previously said, folders are added by players themselves, and some people can't do everything for a variety of reasons. Which is why I'm against transferring to a public Google Doc, because it'd be complicating matters for some of us.

At the end of the day, we do apologize if you're confused with how we work. However, we're only doing what we do because considering the format of HGS itself is non-standard, so we chose to leave it to the players themselves to do what they want with their character folders. And as I previously said, it's been that way for a long time. We were really only doing what we've been doing since we started doing the character pages, and we haven't had much issue with it until now.

We do have plans for the Lore Characters page to be split into two, one for the RPs's villains and one for the nominators (in-universe term for players) and their tributes/allies, for better management. However, I'm willing to listen if you have any sort of compromise that won't jeopardize all these hard work we made throughout the years; and I'm sure everyone else will too.

Edited by dave_the_assassin on Dec 4th 2019 at 9:10:17 PM

Hope: "Let's go. We'll be together." Lightning: "I only know... that soon, we'll be together."

Whenever I try to ping someone, it doesn't seem to work. I did send a normal PM with a link to the post later.

---

My main argument for cutting the page (or moving the content elsewhere) is that it's not relevant to this wiki's mission and it's not correct use of character sheets.

To exemplify, first folder from Characters.Hunger Games Simulation Players A To M.

This is just a list of random works with notes. There is one trope though it's a zero-context. If I were just a reader of this page (the normal intended audience of this wiki), this would be my impression: I have no idea what you guys are talking about. It must be meaningful to only you as the players.

[[/folder]]

This is even worse. What is a reader supposed to make of this? Note that almost all of the links lead to Anime.Smile Pretty Cure or Anime.Suite Pretty Cure. What's with that? Repetitive links are not allowed. It's not reader-friendly at all.

• Troping players is against the rules (if I'm not mistaken).
• The thing that others don't contribute the page is a problem, but rules are for everyone. If you don't do it right, don't do it at all. How to Create a Character Page states what character sheets should look like. One of the rules is that if there is no trope for a character in the list, the character can't be included on the page.