Unreleased Work Policy Feedback

Chiming in to echo the same concerns that have already been brought up in the thread yet still haven't been addressed in any notable way:

• It has been asked multiple times to show proof that speculative troping was a pervasive problem causing intense enough issues to require such a draconian clean-up process, and yet nothing has been provided. (When it was pointed out in The Woobie cleanup thread that mishandling of the trope wasn't pervasive enough to require a CM-style dedicated clean-up, it was agreed to step back and make it more in-line with a general clean-up thread)
• It has been pointed out multiple times that the citation requirement- that every example needs "As shown in the trailer", "As shown in the beta demonstration", etc.- not only makes pages look clunky, but leaves just as much work for other tropers to clean up when the trope in question is, almost inevitably, proved to be present in the final product, and yet no superseding justification or better solution has been provided.
• It has been pointed out multiple times that a Double Standard exists wherein trailers and demos are considered 'official enough' to be sourced, and yet press releases and information from official websites are not, and no solid justification has been provided in defense of this.

The problem listed on the previous page shows either a glaring issue with the policy itself, or a glaring issue with how HighCrate is enforcing it- an hour-long presentation of a work slated to be released in a few weeks, played by the creator themself who also provides their own information to bolster what is being shown in the actual footage itself- is apparently 'not enough' of a citation to count for the purposes of the policy. Then what, pray tell, does count if actual, concrete footage of the work does not?

From what I can tell, it's just what I said in the other thread — he wants you to say "in the presentation" instead of linking to it; which seems especially nitpicky since you are providing sources.

In general, I'm in total agreement with the things you've said in the other thread about the requirement to say such things in every little entry, and I've raised the points here before. I do appreciate the intent to give people the tools to validate the information, but I think this implementation causes more problems than it solves and hope we can find a better solution.

Because the page still is up to edit, I'm gonna just try and add those bits of exposition. I'm still not a fan of this because this is pretty word-crufty and is gonna become redundant once the game is out and is able to speak for itself as released and will need to be cleaned up, but if this is required for now to be public, so be it.

Pointing out that Speculative Troping is a long-standing policy and is very clear. If you haven't seen the finished product, anything you say about it is not verifiable.

Nobody's defending speculation; we can all agree that making guesses isn't appropriate. What we're protesting is the lengths we need to go to to prove that we're not speculating.

Cite the source of your example. This isn't hard. You're just resisting because you don't like it. Not sorry.

Edit: I'm not trying to be mean here, just establishing the boundaries of this discussion.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 18th 2019 at 4:45:27 AM

That doesn't work when the examples are cited and still get commented out anyway for not being cited, which is the point robotic is trying to make.

Edited by Crossover-Enthusiast on Sep 18th 2019 at 4:43:29 AM

Are those hidden for being speculative, or for being low-context?

Link to the page that robotic is referring to. The tropes in question have more than enough context, but because they linked to the exact time in the demo where the trope happened, instead of saying 'This is shown in [x] demo', they were commented-out with the reasoning that Weblinks Are Not Examples (which IMO is a mishandling of that policy. WANE applies when context is not provided- context of the trope was adequately provided in this case, the weblink was merely showing proof that the trope existed in the work).

They were hidden because High Crate doesn't believe that a game which isn't out yet is capable of being accurately represented as a tropable work in the same way that anything else in the context about the game is. Again, I disagree greatly because 1) this information is directly from an extremely verifiable source, 2) the verification is far more extensive than most content in the article which High Crate claims is allowed. The distinction of what is speculation and what is not just because the game is technically not released yet despite being effectively complete is arbitrary as hell; that is my issue with this whole thing.

Edited by number9robotic on Sep 18th 2019 at 1:48:44 AM

As the primary writer of the policy page in question, would you mind clarifying if you find the policy itself arbitrary or the application (which touches on questions of WANE).

This is something I'm generally interested in. As said when we first rolled this out codified, it's easier to relax things than strengthen them.

(This doesn't change the general opinion of the mod team, that unreleased works do merit a more clear delineation of tropeable vs. not tropeable.)

You cannot use timestamped YT links as context, because external links are not context. Just say, "In the trailer" or "In the 9/17 demo footage". Follow the same standards as everything else and we don't have to have an argument.

"Common sense" arguments don't work on a wiki. Someone will use them as an excuse to get away with stuff.

Anything from a trailer is not literally from the final product. It's from the trailer that was created by the developers/directors/etc. to show off certain pieces of the product in a way they want it represented. Often these trailers become outdated in the final product.

That's why we specify it's about the trailer. It's the only actual content we can trope till we have the actual final product in our hands. We should not be talking as if it's from something other than the trailer.

Though I do agree that a lot of the examples do not lack context. I think pointed out when it happens is fine entirely(as in the wording used that become your link. "It happens at 5 minutes in" is fine). As long as the context used in the example still explains it in a way that also doesn't rely on the link alone. More or less, it'd be explaining the example with full context and noting when it happens in the trailer. That way, it has full context and provides the citation required.

Does that make sense on how to handle it? You can just as easily say "in this trailer" while linking it just fine. It's not necessary to specify what time it happens, but I can't legitimately see why it's a problem either. The problem would be it being the only context to understand the example. If you do that, then it actually falls under WANE issues. But IMO, the way you worded the example in question, is not a case of WANE whatsoever. It also provided good context to understand the actual example even if you didn't need to cite it.

Now, to further clarify, I think that we still need to note it's from a trailer when linking(as that's the required citation to make sure it's not speculative). Saying what time the example happens is not necessary but is not wrong to do so either.

Just to be clear, I wasn't implying the examples were ZCEs, I was just asking because I know that has come up before- cited examples hidden as ZCEs were contested because the ZCE part was overlooked, and I just wanted to be sure that wasn't happening again.

x some number I'm too lazy to count (Fighteer):

We should clarify that a troper does not need to have personally experienced a work to trope it. Secondhand information is fully valid if it follows the existing rules in place (if the work is pre-release, it has to be cited properly in the text of the example.)

The links, in this instance, were not being used as context; the tropes had adequate context independent of the links. Instead of typing 'This trope happens five minutes into the demo', robotic instead linked to said moment in the demo, which according to HighCrate isn't valid as a citation. The whole thing seems very pedantic, IMO.

Personally, I have issues with the current citation policy as I've stated above; requiring every single trope to have a written citation- instead of, say, linking to trailers and demos in the work description and assuming good faith that editors aren't pulling tropes out of their asses- not only makes the work page look clunky, but it's just leaving work that some other troper has to clean up when the final product is released and they have to individually scour each trope for the 'As shown in the trailer/demo/beta' that needs to be deleted.

As is, the policy is just replacing one problem with another.

Exactly!

Here's my take on this. Blue Text, along with external links, should not be needed to understand information within an example, only supplement it (or point to a subpage when things get too long). If I were to print out the page and lose information as a result because I can't follow the hyperlinks, there is a problem.

So what if we have to delete those citations if a trope is found in the full work? There'll be plenty of people adding tropes anyway upon the work's launch date.

So I'm admittedly not a general goer of forums here, but we have someone with power who can rule on this make a stand on what's okay and not? I'm still getting a lot of division from this and feel we need someone with power on enforcing the policy's nature to make the call.

• Ah, I see, my bad.

Edited by number9robotic on Sep 18th 2019 at 5:38:28 AM

In case you're not aware, Fighteer (who posted a few times above) is a mod, so they're definitely a "person of power" on this site.

As am I.

Do note cleanup threads also enforce policies regularly. We simply follow the rules and inform others of them. Yes, it does mean some content has to be removed, but that's how cleanup goes. I mean, I recently lost a character page I worked on, but I can concur with it being gone at this time due to being verrrrrry poor.

The reason for everything needing the citation in text is that we don't know yet whether it applies to the final work. Once the work comes out and the entry is verified as correct, we remove it.

I can turn that question back on you; why do we have to work so ardently to curb speculative troping if there'll be plenty of people working on the page after the work's launch who'll clean up speculative entries anyway?

Again, all that seems to be achieved is that one required clean-up gets replaced with a different required clean-up.

It's better to write the entries in a way that's always accurate, than to allow possibly untrue examples to be on the wiki and remove them only after release.

If you say "this trope happens in the trailer", the statement remains true whether or not it also happens in the final work. But if you say "this trope happens" and it's only in the trailers, that means we had misinformation on the site, which may end up spreading elsewhere before being caught and removed.