Roleplay Namespace Cleanup and Maintenance

If the work once existed, it is still valid to trope. You'll have to just treat it like any other work you haven't read.

But now nothing on the page can be verified, which is the big problem we have with these pages. It existed, but this means we can't check to see if, say, it was written for an audience or not, or anything of the sort.

And, I mean... ain't all pages supposed to have information that can be verified? If the content is lost, so is the usefulness of the trope page.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 18th 2019 at 1:49:37 PM

If it required an account to view, then even the Wayback Machine can't be used to verify anything.

I thought I'd Take a Third Option where roleplays hosted on TV Tropes are concerned.

Why not move them to the Just For Fun namespace as "Just for Fun / Roleplay / ROLEPLAY NAME" - I appreciate the title may be clunky.

It keeps self-referential stuff out of the main wiki and could fit it in a place that's possibly suited to this kind of thing.

I'm not sure there's been any precedent for this kind of thing, but I thought I'd ask first.

Just for Fun is usually more for stuff like treating a Show Within a Show as if it was real. Roleplay pages aren't "Just for fun", they're usually a serious attempt at documenting a work—it's just that it's a work that no one cares about except its participants, and that isn't meant to be viewed by outsiders.

Also, two-level namespaces don't work on this site, so JustForFun/Roleplay/NameOfWork wouldn't work as a page name.

Besides, that'd just give these users some excuse to continue making garbagefire pages; they're Just For Fun, who cares if literally every formatting rule we have is broken when making them? Give 'em a break. They're just having fun, right?

Nah. We can't do selective enforcement. Bad pages are bad pages, it doesn't matter if the people who made them RP on this site or not.

So I stumbled upon Characters.Destiny Drive Third and I don't know what to think about it? There are many, many, many folders that just have character descriptions and nothing more, but the tropes that are there are surprisingly detailed.

^ Huh, that actually seems pretty well done. We can use this as another part of our ongoing study.

there is this dead roleplaying group on Gaia online called The Island Of Doctor Moreau (Io DM) that ran from August 2005 to June 2007. The main idea behind the setting is a modern version of the classic H.G. Wells' story, though instead of animals being surgically altered into humans, people (usually unwilling victims) are brought or tricked onto the island and genetically altered through a series of injections over several months to become animal/human hybrids. The Dr. Moreau of the island is one Dr. Nicholas Moreau, a descendent of the Dr. Moreau of literary fame. And the only difference between the setting for the story and the real world, other than the existence of the island and the "science" on it, is that the classic book was never written. The island is fairly-sized but small enough to not be on most notations. It is about twenty miles across at the widest points. Most of it is covered by deep jungle, though areas have been clear-cut for the village (the collection of duplexes the subjects live in) and the labs (which are surrounded by a high-voltage electric fence. The labs are built into the side of a dormant volcano that is in the center of the island. Sandy beaches are on the west side of the island, a rockier ledge on the east. There is a network of caves within the island itself. There is also a freshwater river system through the island and a large lake near the village. On the island itself, the whole system is highly monitored - think Big Brother. There are hidden cameras in all of the subjects' duplexes and all over the island. Each subject is inserted with a microchip in the back of their necks that tracks their location on the island and allows them to be "buzzed" unconscious in the event of a bad fight or in order to administer them their follow up injections. Even the staff of the island is not allowed communication off the island, and a couple of staff members have even been turned into subjects due to misbehavior. Thus far, there have been no successful escape attempts. But, all in all, the subjects are usually treated well, despite the kidnapping and being turned into an animal-creature. They are each assigned a duplex and have free reign over the island (with the exception of the labs, which are sectioned off by an electric fence). There is a cafeteria, entertainment room with movies and video games, sunny beaches, and deep tropical jungles. However, more than one lab tech has a cruel streak (it takes a certain kind of person to be picked to work for the labs) and use the subjects for some less than ethical psychological tests.

Edited by avisboys on Jul 23rd 2019 at 6:06:24 AM

Are you asking if it's worth a page here? Is it publicly available (can be viewed without logging in) and easily digestible?

yes!

I was thinking of this rule for Roleplays and Auto-Erotic Troping. The rule is that, let's say Bob goes on Role Play Thread, and he sits on a chair in a dining hall. That means that Bob cannot add the trope People Sit on Chairs to the trope page about the Roleplay thread. This rule would be kinda hard to enforce on non-TvTropes sites, but we could have one of those "Tropers in Role Play" lists, with their username in the role play threads.

Auto Erotic Troping means they aren't allowed to add subjective info about their work, and that'd apply to everyone in the RP talking about anything subjective in the RP. As the "creators", they're all inherently biased.

there's no media page of the Gaia online's Island of Doctor Moreau Role Play on tv tropes, I thought you can make one out of it

Edited by avisboys on Jul 23rd 2019 at 10:40:23 AM

You mean, sit down and read the entire roleplay to make a page? I'll pass, but you can feel free to make a page as long as you obey the guidelines...

...And fix your grammar.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 23rd 2019 at 1:49:21 PM

I thought you guys can make the page, not me, I can't do this all by myself, all I want was to see all the sad, scary, and funny moments of the roleplay on tv tropes, as well as all the characters.

Edited by avisboys on Jul 23rd 2019 at 11:07:06 AM

You don't have to do all the work alone, but This Is A Wiki, and it's impolite to push work on others that you could do yourself. You've read the work, so expecting others to sit through the work as well to make the page for you is unfair to those who could be spending their time doing other things for the wiki.

I should mention a page for this roleplay did exist, but it was badly made, and got cut.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 23rd 2019 at 2:09:11 PM

Looking at the link you gave in ATT, it seems like the story isn't presented in an "easily digestible" format, since the only way to read it is to go through a bunch of different threads on a forum. I don't think that the rule against making pages for such works is set in stone yet, so no one can really stop you, but don't be surprised if we end up getting rid of it later.

You'll need at least three tropes with sufficient context, otherwise the page will be considered a stub and get deleted. And if you participated in the RP, you shouldn't make a YMMV page, nor edit it if someone else does make one (this also applies to the "moments" pages like Funny Moments and Tear Jerker).

Edited by Zuxtron on Jul 23rd 2019 at 2:33:19 PM

So since it's back at the last page, can I ask again about Roleplay.Jellyneo Altador Cup VI and Roleplay.Jellyneo Altador Cup VII? The website they were hosted on no longer exists, so they're now unverifiable. At the very least, they can help us figure out how to deal with roleplays nobody else can experience, due to content removal or otherwise.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 23rd 2019 at 2:39:17 PM

It's been archived, but it's not an easy read at 3577 pages.

Okay, so it techically is verifiable, but this'll still make a good case-study for how we want to approach this issue.

I'm going to say it now: an RP conducted in forum threads is not suitable for a TV Tropes article. It's just too hard to digest for someone not intimately involved. It's like printing each page of a book in a separate volume. Even if they're lined up together on a shelf, nobody is going to want to read through all of it. Another way to put this is that it's not "published" by our standards.

Only if the RP is presented in a publication format should it get a TV Tropes article. As discussed previously, this can take several forms:

• Someone goes to the trouble to write up summaries, after action reports, anthologies, or something similar that lets people read it in an accessible format.
• It's in a broadcast format, like a streaming video series or podcast.
• It gets adapted to a scripted medium, like an anime or manga.

Should we consider the thread-R Ps "unpublished works" then?

I'll whistle Fighteer back a bit on this one. I am not seeing compelling reasons to treat thread-RPs as different from other works and certainly not a) when such a policy change - because that is what it is - is being proffered in the wrong part of the forum and b) there are plenty of stakeholders in the roleplaying fora who have not been AFAIK been informed of this discussion.

What we need though is to crack down much harder on poor quality examples. The roleplaying pages are among the worst for ZCE last I checked.

Been trying. It's exhausting and painful. The problems go beyond zero-context; they're often not even properly formatted. It takes a lot of time and energy away from cleaning up other pages, and I'm not sure that effort is warranted.