Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgment - Violations, misuse, and other issues

If literally nothing else then the works pages need some sort of acknowledgement of the writer and that their politics bleeds into their work, which I'd do except I don't want to be exposed to the work at all.

But I don't think adding that Vox Day is a white nationalist and supporter of far-right conspiracy theories is beyond the pale here and saying these themes bleed into the works isn't anything unacceptable.

Because yeah, as-is these pages are just kinda irresponsible.

Thanks for mentioning the Troping Works That Promote Bigorty thread, I was looking for that but couldn't remember the exact words and, well, TVT's search function is... yeah. Should this discussion be taken there?

Edited by Larkmarn on Oct 2nd 2023 at 1:43:36 PM

I've brought up Arkhaven and its comics before, it's a bit disappointing that not much has been done about them so far. Maybe we could start off by directly stating in the page description that the site is made by Vox Day with the goal of being "100% SJW-free" and that many of its comics feature alt-right themes.

I've edited the description of Alt★Hero to bring up its influences while still remaining (in my opinion, way too) neutral if people want to take a look.

Pinging ~@The Red Ripper who brought this up in the discussion page.

Arkhaven has zero reason to exist on this site. If Stormfront is banned, so should anything made by Vox Day.

I like how previously the one big work that we made an exception for in terms of "Should we cut this page even though theoretically we could trope the work neutrally?" was Stonetoss. (Admittedly it was a combination of several reasons, but one of the main ones was undoubtedly 'Do we really want to go to all of this effort to keep a page for an extremely anti-Semitic work of holocaust denial and proud, open racism and bigotry?')

In completely unrelated news, Arkhaven also hosts Stonetoss.

...Thing is, with Stonetoss there was no ability on our end to trope it neutrally. That's why it's gone. We could not talk about it accurately. That's not true of these other works.

Anyway, this really should be consolidated at the Bigoted Works thread. There's no reason to split the discussion in half.

To be fair, we cover plenty of plotless Gag-per-Day Webcomics with no overarching narrative, and plenty of works that only really exist to convey the author's bigoted beliefs. We absolutely could have troped Stonetoss accurately and neutrally, it's just that people tend to conflate 'neutral' with 'neither positive nor negative' and if we accurately cover that it's an alt-right work with punchlines based on Holocaust-denial and extreme bigotry, then it looks like we're being negative, because fortunately most people understand that those are not good qualities.

Stonetoss was definitely a more strange and complicated work to handle than normal but I think that treating him as a unique one-off case with no comparability to other works has really hampered our ability to deal with works with similar notability (i.e. none) that express similar levels of bigotry.

EDIT: Oop, taking further discussion to the Troping Works That Promote Bigotry thread.

Edited by Elmo3000 on Oct 3rd 2023 at 4:33:59 PM

Well There's Your Problem was decided to still be tropeworthy despite being a pure Author Tract based around true events, the Awesome subpage is just calling the hosts awesome for their political beliefs. Is that ROCEJ violating?

There's a big discussion on the cleanup thread for Snoot Game about whether or not the game is queerphobic.

Edited by SkylaNoivern on Oct 6th 2023 at 5:31:22 PM

I really want to thank you massively for bringing this up. The discussion got tired and most good faith tropers already left and moved on... and now the thread is populated by fans of the game who see nothing wrong in it.

Yeah, Snoot Game was literally a 'boo, LGBTQ bad!' spite project made in response to the announcement of a game with a non-binary protagonist... which hadn't even come out! It had just been announced, that was all. And Snoot Game is all about that character realising that they're not non-binary at all, they're actually 'normal' and they're much happier for it. It's another case where we definitely can trope it neutrally, but also, like... ew. Gross. We have a page for the anti-LGBTQ fangame made by literal 4channers?

Okay, this conversation should happen on the actual cleanup thread guys.

Sorry to bring this up here as well but frankly we really, really need a mod and I don't know how to holler, please help I am not good with computer.

There's been a development on that cleanup thread for Snoot Game, brief context, a fangame made by 4chan based on an indie game with a Non-Binary protagonist, in the fangame then if you don't support them out of their enby-ness then you get a bad ending where they either become a washed up junkie or shoot up their school and kill themselves. The good endings have them unilaterally decide that being enby was just a phase and/or mental delusion and now they are normal again. So yeah. Not exactly subtle.

Um... but the development is that someone in the thread has now been doxxed for their participation in the thread and being critical of Snoot Game, and it turns out that a bunch of people on 4chan are actively monitoring the thread and complaining about what 'the tv tropes faggots' are saying about their precious game. So, uh...

Yeah, if people on a 4chan thread are doxxing tropers for criticizing this anti-LGBT spite project that they really, really like for some reason, I feel like we should maybe cut the page as quickly as possible and maybe add it to the Permanent Red Link Club. Like, when users of this site are at risk of doxxing for criticizing a work then we're very far past the point of just nuanced discussion.

Thanks for the quick response! And for letting me know how to do the basic and intuitive site function that I missed.

Not trying to dispute or undermine anything but I thought that one of the - admittedly many - issues with Stonetoss (oh God, it always goes back to him) was that we suspected that he was actively taking an interest in his own page. I'm not trying to singularize the developers of the game and the people doxxing a troper who criticized the game as 'the notorious hacker known as 4chan', but in both cases it's just anonymous people on 4chan who really like Snoot Game. There was also the 'it was impossible to trope him neutrally' angle, and it makes it very difficult to trope Snoot Game neutrally when participating in the thread discussing Snoot Game too negatively puts you at risk of doxxing by irate fans who we now know for certain are actively observing the thread.

Apologies for continuing to post this here and not in the Snoot Game thread but, related to the above, knowing that there are people viewing the thread with the goal of harassing and doxxing people who speak critically about the work... that really makes me want to not continue posting in that thread with negative opinions about the work! In my opinion that makes this a more toxic work to cover than Stonetoss.

...Wasn't the person who got doxxed someone who worked on Goodbye Volcano High and not just a random troper?

Yes it seems it was going off the credits thing.

x3 Oh, it's... right, they're not harassing us for being positive about an LGBTQ work, it's for being negative about an anti-LGBTQ work. Snoot Game is a hastily-made parody of a game named Goodbye Volcano High, which has a Non-Binary protagonist. The parody came out long before the game did. Snoot Game has good endings where the protagonist no longer identifies as NB and bad endings where they continue to identify as NB and also possibly shoot up their school (not hyperbole.)

So, someone in the thread who has been critical of Snoot Game was doxxed and a screencap shows someone angrily posting on 4chan about our thread and how we are stupid and smelly and treating their favourite game as 'LITERALLY HITLER', and - my favourite bit - how they totally have loads of trans friends (definitely for real and for true) and they all prefer Snoot Game to Goodbye Volcano High anyway. Only the way they put it contains many more slurs.

The doxxed troper is in the credits for Goodbye Volcano High - I do not know in what capacity, could easily have just been a Kickstarter backer or something - so... maybe it would have still happened without their input on the thread?

I did not know about the dox when I was skeptical of a cut. I now vote for a cut.

I'm gonna throw a vote in for cutting. Blech.

Guys, we were already told to contain this discussion on one thread.

... Not sure what happens now, am happy to keep the discussion limited to the appropriate thread, but the appropriate thread has now been locked with no resolution reached. Do we take it here, or to Troping Works That Promote Bigotry, or just drop it?

It stopped being a cleanup thread a long time ago. If you all want to discuss whether the page should exist, open a Wiki Talk thread.

Wasn't it just one user who derailed the conversation? Though it's true that other people had participated in it afterwards. I feel like a verbal warning, with an invitation to move the discussion to Wiki Talk, would have worked.