Roleplay Namespace Cleanup and Maintenance

That's a pretty narrow definition of "bad page" that would rule out a lot of pages that need maintenance. Besides, I have also procedural concerns (making wiki policy in obscure maintenance threads) beyond the substantive.

Generally, I consider bad pages to be any in need of serious cleaning, because they take a large amount of time and energy away from doing other things, and before I got there were, they were rule-breaking nightmares that could trick people into thinking "this is how it's done". That would be more-or-less most pages on this wiki.

It's just that roleplays are the most blatant and extreme offenders, with pages that have very little redeeming qualities before serious scrubbing, and a large amount of pages to worry about. In my experience cleaning them, they are the absolute worst of the worst namespace wise for cleanup-work, and at best they feel time-wasting to work on, because I've said it before and I'll say it again- very few of these pages are actually written with readers in mind, and readers aren't going to end up at these non-indexed, non-crosswicked pages; I only find them when doing wick-checks.

I also don't like the idea of policy changes being decided in an obscure thread, is there no way to get more opinions on this subject? Can some RP mods be convinced to stop in?

Edited by WarJay77 on Jul 26th 2019 at 2:51:59 PM

Had a little free time today so I opened up the ol' namespace index and got to work on a couple of pages:

• Abnormal Apartments: Only contains two non-ZCE tropes and the link to the roleplay is broken. The person who created the page has made other edits as recently as May, so I've sent them a PM about cleaning up the page. If they don't reply, I'm inclined to put it on the Cut List.
• Absit Omen: Many ZCE's which I've commented out. Character page was looking pretty ugly so I cleaned a lot of it up. One of the page's editors has made other edits as recently as March, so I sent them a PM about possibly helping out with the ZCE's.
• Abysmal Souls: Biggest problem was deprecated formatting, I took care of that alongside a couple of ZCE's. Also added a link to the roleplay itself.
• Academy of Merlin: Page is pretty solid. Glancing through I caught some indentation and ZCE issues, but not outside the realms of what you see on most work pages. Character pages seem to be a little more sparse though. I might clean this up a little later, but it's been maintained pretty decently.
• Academy Of Villains: Cleaned up the ZCE problem on the main and character pages, and also indexed both. Looks a little sparse now, but it's more than three tropes at least. No-one who's edited the page (besides for clean-up) has been on the wiki since 2016, so I don't think there's any point in PMing them.

It should be noted that Absit Omen has a YMMV and a Trivia page that I didn't really touch since I don't think we've officially decided on what to do with them?

More clean-up:

• Aces and Spades: Had some problems with ZCE's, which I've commented out. The character page is very lacking in full-context tropes, enough so that the few viable tropes could be merged back to the Main/ page and the character page deleted. Also, the roleplay is described as 'closed', meaning it probably isn't viewable to the public. There are two editors for the page which have other edits as recently as May and July, so I've sent them PM's about the ZCE's and also the availability of the RP.
• Acid Soup: Had a couple of ZCE and indentation issues that I cleaned up. I've sent a PM to the page's main editor about how to do them properly.
• A City of Weirdos: A little sparse, but only required a tiny bit of clean-up.
• Active Duty: Lot of ZCE's that I've commented out. I don't know if the roleplay is public/still available, as a Google Search to find it wasn't successful. One of the page's editors have been working on other pages as recently as this month, so I've sent them a PM asking if they know any more about it.
• Ad Astra Per Aspera Quest: Couple of ZCE's, but aside from that there was little problem. The only person who's edited the page (besides cleanup) hasn't been on the wiki since 2017.
• Adeptus Evangelion The Tower Of Babel: Commented out ZCE's. Character page is lacking in actual tropes. The biggest problem, though, is that I don't know if it's publicly available. From the description, it seems to be a campaign using the Adeptus Evangelion system, but the links for the campaign guide are broken and I can't find any sign of the Tumblr that's reportedly supposed to be posting logs of the sessions. Moreover, the page's editor hasn't been on tvt since 2015.
• A Dinner Game: Good page, didn't really need clean up except for commenting out some tropeless characters on the Character/ page.
• A Dragon of the North: Some ZCE's I've commented out and YMMV items that needed to be moved to their page (again, I'm not really touching subpages until we come to a solid decision, though I have been making a list of what pages have subpages), but apart from that it's pretty decent.
• Advance Wars Eternal War: Commented out ZCE's and also fixed indentation and alphabetisation issues. The only person who's edited the page (besides cleanup) hasn't been on the wiki since 2017.
• Roleplay/ADestiny_of_Strife_a_HollowsQuest_Bleach: I legitimately don't know how to link to this page, but it's under A in the Namespace Index. So, the page needs a touch up, and there's at least three tropes for it, but the obvious problem is the weird namespace. I'm guessing we move it all over to Roleplay/ADestinyOfStrifeAHollowsQuestBleach and then cut the current page? Or should we redirect it? It has 555 inbounds, if that means anything. All that said, the Character page is a stub so I've added it to the Cut List.

For the last one, I'd ask the roleplay itself what the correct name is. If it's just a weirdly done title, cut it. Otherwise, redirect if it's the correct title. The high amount of inbounds makes me lean towards redirecting as is.

Wow, nice start, Whizzerd.

Haha, thanks!

Looking at the thread itself, and skimming through how they refer to it, the title doesn't seem like it's supposed to be formatted unusually. What makes me also inclined to believe it's a mistake is that the tropers that have been editing the page have issues with proper capitalisation of tropes (e.g. Talking Isa Free Action and Back Fromthe Dead).

Still, I've sent PM's asking about it to the two tropers that have edited the page and been on the site within the last year (which also included an explanation of how to capitalise tropes properly). They haven't appeared since April, though, so I'm not sure I'll get a response.

Characters.Opa City contains links to DarthWiki.Watchtower Grotto, an Unpublished Work, and I don't know how to get rid of them without ruining context. It also has problems with bad spoiler tag use. Also, Roleplay.Opa City doesn't contain a link to the forum where the RP is hosted (it's indexed under Forum Roleplays), and Google doesn't return any results when I search for "Opa City Roleplay", which makes me believe that the RP is not visible to the public.

If I could suggest new rules, how about these:

• All roleplay pages must include a link to read the RP. If a page doesn't have a link, it's most likely a private game and should go under Unpublished Works, not the main wiki.
• All roleplays are Spoilers Off since the pages are mostly read by their own participants, who don't care about spoilers, and they very often abuse spoiler tags.

EDIT: I sent a PM to zalzaires, who runs the RP and edits the page.

Edited by Zuxtron on Jul 28th 2019 at 6:09:43 AM

Looking at the page, the two tropes that involve W@tchtower Grotto are Adaptational Sexuality and Shout-Out, both of which are tropes that reference another work. So, the question then is whether a published work is allowed to make reference to an unpublished one; if not, then I'd guess those two tropes need to be deleted.

In regards to your proposed rules:

• Of the six pages that I've cleaned up that didn't include links to the roleplay before I edited them, three of them were publicly available and easily found with a Google Search (Abysmal Souls, Academy Of Villains, A City of Weirdos). And another one might have been publicly available before it was deleted (Active Duty). Ergo, nay on the first rule, even if it's just until we have a bigger sample size to judge with.
• I'm indifferent on the second rule, as I'll admit that I'm bad for glazing over spoiler mark-up.

Hell yes to the spoiler rule, these pages often overuse spoilers.

No spoilers sounds good to me. If they want to say that some spoileriffic stuff for the actual work will be unlisted, that's still good to put in the header. It's still a work people would read. So I get that.

Also, yes, a link to the roleplay is a must. I completely agree with that rule.

Definitely for link to the roleplay. How to Create a Work's Page already includes "a link to the official website" among the good things to include, and for a work that exists on a website, there's no excuse not to include the link.

Edited by Tabs on Jul 28th 2019 at 8:01:57 AM

Okay, yeah, link is also necessary. A working link.

To clarify my last post, I agree a link to the roleplay on the work page would be preferred.

It’s this assumption that I disagree with, due to my previous point about publicly available roleplays lacking links to them. We should at least do a cursory search for a link to the roleplay (a quick Google search and a PM to editors of the page) before considering migration to Unpublished Works, rather than just assuming it’s private.

Edited by whizzerd on Jul 28th 2019 at 3:30:48 PM

Again, reminds me of the Roleplay.Jellyneo Altador Cup VI and it's sequel, which have links that lead to non-existent forums, and while the content was spared by the internet archive, it's an incoherent mess of over 3,000 pages. Available content? Sure. Published content?

Not quite.

Well if a quick Google search returns a link to the RP, then that could work. If it doesn't, then we could declare it unavailable to the public and move it to Darth Wiki.

EDIT: And of course, we should ask the page's creator for a link before moving.

Edited by Zuxtron on Jul 28th 2019 at 10:49:52 AM

Both rules sound good.

• ZUvengers: Sparse page with not much to fix aside from a ZCE (where I just parroted the description). Also submitted a custom title.
• ZOOOOOmmxBIES: The description needed work, so I worked on it (by truncating it). Commented out ZCE entries and deleted a couple of entries with trope misuse. While there's no link, the descriptions suggest this wasn't a private roleplay and actually has a decent audience, and it's Google-able. Also submitted a custom title.
• Zetsubou Carnival: Stub with no tropes and no edits since page creation. Submitted to Cut List.
• Zest For Hell: This and the character page are unindexed. The character page has some tropes, but this main page is just a description and an image. It says, "If you need the basics explained, check out the other pages on the blog" and provides no blog. What do?
• Zeon Quest: There's a smattering of ZCEs and violations of the trope indentation and spoiler policies. The final trope has a really, really long writeup and without reading it I've simply assumed it qualifies as context.

A quick look around for Zest For Hell gets me this tumblr page. Looking through it, it seems to be an RP hosted on Discord- and thus, private. More than that, I'm not entirely sure it even took off, since the last update was in May, which is also when the trope page was last updated.

Since it's a stub for a private, and maybe even unlaunched, roleplay, I'd say send it to the cut list.

• Advance Wars Role Play: ZCE's which have been cleaned up. Character page was a mess, but has now been properly formatted, alphabetised, and scrubbed of ZCE's. Main problem is that the roleplay seems to no longer be available; all links redirect to the main page of the Wars Central wiki. And no-one who's edited the page has been around the wiki for at least a year, so we're probably not getting help from them. Will probably have to be migrated to Unpublished Works.
• Adventuring Party: Short page, only required a little clean-up. The Character page is a stub, and the editors haven't been around since 2013, so I've sent it to the Cut List.
• Adylheim: Couple of ZCE's. There were some subtropes within tropes that I seperated out. Biggest problem is that the RP doesn't seem to be available anymore; at least, the links didn't work for me. No-one who's edited the page (besides clean-up) has been on the wiki in years. Will probably have to be migrated to Unpublished Works.
• A Dynasty of Dynamic Alcoholism: Couple of ZCE's and indentation issues, but nothing major. It's pretty rife with spoiler markup though.
• Aeia: Cleaned up ZCE's and some player-troping, and then indexed. Weirdly enough, the character page is more detailed than the main one.
• Aeterna Roma: Cleaned up ZCE's and player-troping.
• A Facility: Cleaned up ZCE's and got rid of the abritary split of tropes on the main page.
• After Action: Cleaned up ZCE's and indexed it. This RP is a spinoff of Active Duty, which doesn't seem to be available, and yet this one is weirdly (by which I mean the RP itself seems to be private, but there are after-action reports publicly available to read).
• After The Academy: Rife with ZCE's that I've commented out. It also doesn't seem to be available anymore, as the link is broken (both it and Abnormal Apartments, another unavailable RP, were on invisionfree, and a quick check confirms that it was bought out and shut down). Will probably have to be migrated to Unpublished Works.
• A Game of Chance: Character page was kinda messed up but I did some cleaning. Apart from that, and a couple of ZCE's on the main page, not much of a problem.
• A Game of Gods: Cleaned up some ZCE's and indentation issues. I'm in a Discord with some people who're in the various AGOG roleplays, so I've passed a message along to them about it.
• A Game Of Gods: Infinities: Same as above.
• A Game of Gods: Taskforce Sifuri: Same as above.
• A Geek's Guide: Corporation of Occult Research and Extermination: Needed a little general cleaning, but apart from that it's solid.
• A Geek's Guide: DeathWorld Earth: Same as above.

I'm starting to wonder if we should make a sandbox to list cleaned RP pages and their status, for the purpose of easier documenting and studying.

You mean something like the Comic Character Cleanup one?

For now, they're fairly easy to find. We've been documenting ^note —"we" as in "whizzerd and I"... have been documenting—) every page so far. Maybe in a little while, they'll get unwieldy.

Yeah, but eventually we'll need to go back and check all the information, which would be easier on a sandbox where it's all together, ya know?

What all should be on the page? Roleplays that’ve been cleaned, roleplays that aren’t publicly available and need to be migrated to Unpublished Works, roleplays that’ve been cut... anything else specifically?