Roleplay Namespace Cleanup and Maintenance

Hey, it's alright.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Come to think of it,I had actually planned to mentioned a Meta-Awesome moment about the RP being crowned the roleplay of the month last year in its "Awesome" page (once I tidied up the existing pages of course). Would it be considered Auto Erotic-Troping if a roleplayer from the thread decided to mention it?

Meta Moments are banned in general.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Got it

I think perhaps a step to take with regards to TV Tropes roleplays is to aggressively notify the tropers that write them, both by the standard notifiers and through their threads. And liberally requesting suspensions in case people don't get the memo.

~High Crate and ~Fighteer a few pages back: I think you are giving too much importance to one side of the conversation/problem statement. TV Tropes isn't just about maintaining trope lists, but also about writing them in the first place and about people reading them. There are three stakeholders involved - example writers, cleanup crews and readers - and we can't just prioritize one of these as all three are needed for an useful wiki.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

You have a point there, Septimus, but I must point out that readers get very little out of these pages.

As I said, I think this wiki is extremely useful for readers to learn about tropes (duh) and how they may manifest in works. Roleplays don't typically offer useful or interesting information, so the readers don't get much out of their existence, especially not if they're poorly done. That said, a well-done roleplay page can be just as informative as any other well-done page, so it's a case-by-case-basis.

All I'm saying is, of the three groups mentioned, the only people who benefit from roleplay pages are those who make them.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I can't think of any good way to word this but roleplays are still a type of work. In theory, there are certain tropes that are more common in (maybe exclusive to but I can't think of any) roleplays, and the collaborative writing style can introduce quirks other mediums don't have. As we are documenting tropes, it makes sense to have some roleplay pages. However, that does still leave the problem that in order for those to be obvious to a reader a page does need to be fairly well-written.

^^The roleplays themselves are not the point of these pages. Well, maybe for the players, but the pages themselves are important for us. Not the underlying work. That's why the poor quality of many of these pages is important, the fact that they are of roleplays is of secondary importance.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

The fact that they are of roleplays is a common thread running through many of the worst pages on this wiki. It would be silly not to take that common thread into account when considering what's to be done with them.

As for your trifecta of people who use the wiki (people who create pages, people who maintain quality standards, and people who read pages), that's exactly the problem. The people who create these pages are creating no value for people who read the pages, and a big headache for those who maintain quality standards. The balance is out of whack.

No, there is no evidence that these pages are creating no value for people who read the pages and we can't and won't take action on the basis of blithe unsupported assertions. And even if this were the case, the deletions and restrictions people are proposing wouldn't help readers in any way - no page is not better than a ZCE-filled one.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I disagree with that assertion: no page is in fact better than a page that doesn't meet basic wiki standards, because that sends the message that such pages are acceptable and encourages their proliferation.

Basic formatting, indexing, and context standards are non-optional. It's the same reason people who don't meet the wiki's standards for proper English writing aren't allowed to edit, even if their intentions are good. Because it creates messes that others have to clean up.

Edited by HighCrate on Jul 24th 2019 at 9:58:35 AM

Septimus, I do get what you're saying, but I do also think these pages don't offer a lot. Maybe saying they have "no" value was a little harsh, but I think poorly made pages in general offer very little value to the wiki, since they'd turn readers off or give them poor understanding of our rules if they, too, become tropers and pagemakers. This isn't inherent in roleplay pages, as there are some good ones, and it's not exclusive to roleplays either, but it is extremely common for the worst made pages to be roleplays.

And I do think that fact is very important to consider, if only because roleplayers have little incentive to care about having an audience. I'm not trying to insult anyone here; I was a roleplayer myself, so I totally get the mindset of "this is just a game between friends, but it's a game that's very important to us, and it'd be fun to document it". The lack of any outside audience means these pages are, inevitably, going to be made for a work that has no audience, no readers but those playing the game, and as such it makes sense that they'd be written in a way that satisfies the gameplayers, but may not hold up to wiki standards. If you're making a game for yourself and some friends, why not a page that's also for yourself and your friends as documentation?

That's the biggest issue, I think- these pages are unlikely to be made with a wiki of readers in mind, and so when they're being created, they're being created for the benefit of the players. Can readers get benefit out of them? Potentially, but it doesn't mean these pages are written with the intention of having other people see them.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Anyway, here's Roleplay.Fifteen Strangers. The character pages are as low context as would be expected, but Characters.Fifteen Strangers Round Five is being updated recently. Should we ping the editors over?

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

We need to have a talk about zero-context examples. And spoilers in trope titles. And Justifying Edits. And trope misuse. And shoehorning. And weasel words. And alphabetization. Yay.

Cleaning up every page in this namespace will be massively time-consuming. But I guess even when you're shoveling snow while it's still snowing, you usually shovel faster than snow piles up.

If we can get the pagemakers to help, though, that's a way to lighten the load a ton.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

How do you feel about some roleplay YMMV pages listing memes?

Can an obscure roleplay between friends provide examples of Memetic Mutation?

I thought memes had to be more notable/widespread/long-lasting among a work's actual audience to be worth listing.

Edited by Mickoonsley19 on Jul 24th 2019 at 12:05:00 PM

Keyword- works audience. Do roleplays have audiences? Are the roleplayers themselves the audience?

I'll be honest, in my old roleplay my friends and I did have running jokes I'd consider memes, especially at the time, but that's only if you go with the assumption that the roleplayers are their own audience.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Take this example from YMMV.Fifteen Strangers:

• Memetic Mutation:
  • Round 2: KANAME MADOKA. People still shout it from time to time.

I did an online search for ""KANAME MADOKA" "15 Strangers"" and I found no evidence that this "meme" had spread outside of the roleplay's website.

Edited by Mickoonsley19 on Jul 24th 2019 at 12:16:13 PM

Well, that's what I'm saying; It's probably misuse by our definition, but I can also see why the roleplayers themselves would consider these things memes, because they are the "audience".

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I'm for killing memes that originated from a particular roleplay work. Unless it can be noted it is used elsewhere, but other than being the codifier for a meme, it doesn't seem like there's any real reason to keep it on that page as is. Besides that, the work pages could just as easily note that the meme came from the roleplay and leave it at that. Albeit, you can still justify a crosswick for a few tropes allowed on YMMV. But I doubt that it's going to be that useful as is for having that kind of page.

I mentioned Woobie earlier, and that one might be a bit more possible at best. Complete Monster has its own cleanup thread and can easily remove it if it wasn't approved. I still don't think a roleplay can easily have a CM unless it was short enough that somebody can decently go through the set of pages and verify. I admit this is also assuming a bit of bad faith, but I agree fully that verification is too hard with YMMV tropes. I'm fine with gutting those. The only roleplays that maybe could have YMMV are ones that are short enough that are closer to a basic novel, so not something like thousands(if not hundred thousands) pages long. In the hundreds? Maybe? We could put a somewhat arbitrary limit(especially with 25 posts per page. But the other issue is some posts are severely long too. Not everybody writes in script).

We could maybe look at a few finished Yugioh roleplays for a good starting point of how long they might be. Maybe it'll give an idea of how feasible it is, at least for verifying some YMMV stuff in itself. One topic I used to be in, well, it has over 40000 pages(We Are Our Avatars). It goes without saying a lot of help is needed there. Though I can somewhat help fix my own character stuff(as I was originally the user named Hydronix, but had a different name change, etc.)

The example listed seems like it'd fit Creator In-Joke more than Memetic Mutation- that's assuming that it plain isn't used as a Running Gag in the work itself.

Anyway, I agree with getting the 15 Strangers roleplayers in here to see if we can work together to improve the page- at the very least, we can use it as a test run going forward.

Since there seems to be a few who've edited the page, I'll ping the three that do so most frequently - Griffin stellachromatic Roses Spindle

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

To be clear, I did already speak with Roses Spindle about indexing the newest character's page, so I know they're at least open to discussion.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

You ping people with a ~, not a -, and you have to put it in front of all of them, like so: ~Griffin, ~Stellachromatic, ~Roses Spindle.

Jawbreakers on sale for 99¢

The - was just a seperator, but I did forget the ~. I couldn't find what page explained it (I now know it's Text-Formatting Rules) so I was going off memory

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

~Septimus Heap: — Value of null page—

• people who create pages: null value (nothing is there)
• people who maintain quality standards: null value (nothing to check)
• people who read pages: null value (nothing to learn)

— Value of bad pages—

• people who create pages: positive value (they can show what they have added)
• people who maintain quality standards: negative value (lots of work here, harms Wick Check efforts due to bad context/formatting)
• people who read pages: negative value (blithe unsupported assertions and encourages bad behaviour)

— Value of "complete" pages—

• people who create pages: positive value (they can show what they have added)
• people who maintain quality standards: positive value (no work, Wick Check efforts can verify how group #1 is using tropes)
• people who read pages: positive value (events and tropes are provided with full context)

— Value of cut pages—

• people who create pages: negative value (their work has been removed)
• people who maintain quality standards: null value (nothing to check)
• people who read pages: null value (nothing to learn)

---

Both null pages and cut pages are "no page", but there is a subtle difference. In reality, most pages fall between "bad" and "complete". However, if there is a common trait between "bad" pages, like the same troper making multiple violations, the moderation team is usually willing to restrict/ban that user. It appears inconsistent to identify another common trait (medium) and claim this trait should not be restricted/banned.

I think what you're trying to say is that the total value of cut pages is lower than the total value of average pages. I agree with that, but I don't think a cut page is a lower value than a bad page, especially if the Cross Wicking contains the properly contexted examples.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.