Unreleased Work Policy Feedback

I think the release date policy came about with movies mostly in mind. Movies almost always release their first real trailer and a release date at the same time, so it's a pretty good line to draw. But different mediums have different standards.

There's a lot of things we have to work out by trial and error. I don't think the trial of a strict release date worked, so I guess that's our first error.

So, here are the different mediums and my immediate thoughts on revised "time" criteria:

• Film - think the release date works pretty well for this, to be honest.
• Series (Live-Action, Western Animation, Anime) - Don't think I've seen too many of these upcoming work pages, but I remember someone suggesting the season (i.e. Fall 2020)
• Literature - maybe on a case-by-case basis where we have excerpts? Upcoming book advertising is a little amorphous, as far as I know.
• Video Game - this has probably caused the most pushback, but I'm not super familiar with video game development. Perhaps we can use the grandfathered in works to determine what commonalities the best pages have in common?
• Web Media (animation/comics/etc.) - no clue. This seems like it could be the most problematic in identifying a reliable development pattern.

Any other thoughts?

It would be a lot easier to just say "season or equivalent time period" instead of having separate requirements for each media type. When I said it would be possible to separate, I didn't mean to imply I preferred that option.

What would be some of the equivalent time periods?

ETA: Discar's suggestion of one of the two is an interesting one as well.

Edited by nombretomado on Nov 12th 2019 at 6:21:43 AM

I'm wondering if we really need to use date as a criteria at all. It's not anything tropable in itself, and has no real bearing on whether there is tropable material. It serves its purpose as a roadblock to keep people from acting "too early" but that's it. Maybe instead of requiring a date and trailer, we ignore dates and have (to tweak Discar's suggestion) a "two trailer" minimum?

...Come to think of it, that could indirectly help with citations too. By forcing a wait for multiple trailers (or other sources), that'll encourage people to be clear on which trailer they're referencing when writing up examples.

If we use "two trailers", it would have to be as an alternative to date + trailer. Too many works have only one trailer, or the second trailer comes out very close to release.

What about works which don't have trailers?

They couldn't be troped because we don't have information on them.

Edited by Crossover-Enthusiast on Nov 13th 2019 at 8:40:21 AM

Septimus may also be alluding to work mediums that don't have trailers. It should be noted that part of the Administrivia page's criteria is "official advertising", which is most commonly (but not exclusively) trailers.

I don't have a problem with that. If, for example, the only thing we have for a book is the release date and a basic back-cover description, I'm not going to lose any sleep if we can't trope that before release. Not that we have a particularly active literature fanbase here anyway.

Manga, literature, music, and fanfiction don't really bother putting anything out pre-release beyond the most basic "hey we're dropping something new on this date, check it out." Very rarely I've seen books release chapters a few months ahead. Other than that, I'm not sure we have to worry about them.

Bump. We still doing something about this?

How did the work pages that were grandfathered in (for lack of a specific release date) work out?

No differently than any other work with a trailer.

All right, this looks like it died again. Can we get some more input on the potential "release window" change?

Some work pages are already being retained because of a release window, but there's been no consensus to actually change the rule. We should probably get to that.

I have an input regarding the specific case of Literature.

I am of the opinion that any upcoming piece of literature that officially releases excerpts of the book, even when it doesn't yet have an exact release date, should be fair game to troping. Limited to the released chapters of course.

If the author and/or publisher officially releases a chapter or chapters of a book, that should be fair game to create a page, even if there is no definitive release date in sight.

The quintessential example of this is The Winds of Winter, the upcoming sixth book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. That book has one of the most infamous cases of Schedule Slip known to man, and yet, five sample chapters are currently available in the A World of Ice and Fire mobile app, and that doesn't take into account the several additional chapters that have been read at cons.

Even for a Doorstopper of the kind that makes up the series, five whole chapters is a significant portion of the work.

Edited by AzureOwl on Jan 15th 2020 at 3:57:46 PM

If any part of a work has been officially released anywhere, that part can be troped even if the full work is unreleased. Excerpts from a book fall under that.

Given that the book has not even been finished yet, it's fairly obvious it's not eligible for its own page. That being said, there's nothing preventing the preview chapters from being troped on the series page and on trope pages (provided they're properly cited, etc.)

Bump. We seem to be in agreement that something needs to be done, and that different mediums can have different standards for what qualifies as "enough for a page." Another thread also noted that the stifling of new pages might be cutting down on our hits from search engines, so we should probably get on this.

My suggestion is this: A cinematic trailer and a release date (both), or a major content preview (just one works). What I mean by that is how video games often drop like a fifteen minute gameplay trailer, or books will occasionally release the first few chapters.

However, should the release date be loosened a little? This is a genuine question, I don't always pay attention to things pre-release, but I mean that sometimes you'll see an anime or tv show which has a trailer that just lists "Fall 2020" or whatever for its release date (while films almost never do that). Right now, we require a specific date, and I'm not sure that's the best we could do.

I think a release season/quarter should be enough.

I would agree with broadening how precise the release window needs to be before a page is allowed.

A quarter sounds good to me; if someone can narrow down the release date to somewhere within three months, that's a sign that they've got a decent estimate of how much time they'll need to finish the product.

I'd also agree with not requiring a release date for video games or books when a notable portion of it is publicly available (such as early chapter previews for books, and extended gameplay videos or demos for video games). These are a sign that the author is confident that these portions are representative of the final product.

I agree with the above. We shouldn't need an exact release date.

I agree.

Agreed

Mod polling in progress.