Unreleased Work Policy Feedback

I think the current policy is mostly good; there are just a few rough bits that need smoothing over.

I've already spelled out my main issue; the strange double-standard when it comes to which official sources we accept. I don't feel the need to go over the entire argument again, but it still needs to be addressed.

As for other points, I feel the "no speculation" rule can be taken too far. And it has been taken too far already at times; to dredge up an old example from early in the thread, when you're second-guessing whether Final Fantasy VII Remake is in fact a remake, you're overthinking things. I'm okay if examples were added with, say, 95% or better certainty as opposed to requiring 100%; though I'm at a loss as to how to write up the rules to support that. It would probably have to rely on tropers who are actually following the promotional material to police themselves instead of having outside enforcers come in, but then we're taking the discussion away from policy and back into troper behavior, so I'll stop here.

Another less-important point that I want to look at is the citation rule. I understand and appreciate why it's there; I just think the implementation is clunky. For one, shoehorning "in the trailer" into every entry is awkward both to write and to read. The other thing is that when the work comes out, you'd need to clean up the page to remove most of those disclaimers; otherwise they start looking like violations of Examples Are Not Recent. Over in the cleanup thread, the idea was mentioned of instead just having one disclaimer at the top of the page that says "This is pre-release and subject to change". We put a similar disclaimer in the page source code for editors already, but this would be for the reader's benefit. Of course, this has the obvious major drawback of not actually citing anything. (Though it might not be a bad idea to have the top-of-page disclaimers regardless.)

All of these points have been addressed, some as recently as in the previous page of this very thread.

With how many points there were being addressed, some of them may have not been addressed well. Especially with pages taken up by arguments.

I mean, addressed doesn't mean resolved... We still have yet to agree on things.

There have been a few in-thread requests for mod comment/explanation, which I'd be happy to provide (while all mods had the opportunity to review/revise the Administrivia page, I had primary custody so it makes sense for me to do the answering). Unfortunately, I've been away travelling for the past week so I'll try to address the more outstanding issues soon enough.

That being said, two things:

• Thank you for all the feedback, sincerely. New codifications are always rough, but it's best to discuss questions and concerns out in the open instead of muddling about.
• Similarly, individuals are rarely on the same page. We gain nothing by outright dismissing genuine, non-malicious questions or comments.

Edited by nombretomado on Aug 11th 2019 at 2:44:14 AM

First thing to address, of course, is the secondhand troping issue.

As long as the information is verifiable, does it really matter who adds it to the page?

It doesn't, honestly. The information would remain accurate regardless.

(I did make a list of things last page >.<)

Some of the major questions that have been brought up:

The line struck between the website/interviews/etc. and materials that purports to represent the work itself is an effort to delineate the two types of troping that are pursued for unreleased works:

• Content that is presumed to be in the final product.
• Content that is "hyping up" the final product.

These posts in the original clean-up thread may help.

This also goes to the question of "how do we determine what is 95% certainty vs. 100% certainty?" What we have been forced to grapple with is that websites/interviews/etc. are not presentations of work content, they are about content and therefore have much more potential for speculation. While I personally haven't been persuaded on potential alternative criteria, if one can be presented, I'm all ears.

A disclaimer seems like a good idea, but I do believe, especially since typically a work has more than one source of pre-release information, citations are necessary. In comparison to fully released works, there is no "default" ultimate resource (i.e. the full work), it could be anything from an initial teaser trailer, to a foreign poster, to a radio ad.

And as to the question of limited market release, this really seems like something that requires much more "hunting down" of individual tropers than is either manageable or advisable. If a particular work comes up, and there are examples contradicting each other, then take it up with the editing tropers in question to see what their sources are.

Citations for every example are still very clunky are antithetical to normal wiki procedure (i.e. helpful but not necessary). We are not Wikipedia, after all. Besides, it's already assumed by default that tropes about unreleased works are based on any official pre-release material, so specifying it in every line comes across as a bit redundant and a tad insulting. We should only specify the source when it becomes clear it's a trope exclusive to the context of said source (e.g. Trailers Always Lie, Advertised Extra), which often cannot be verified until a work's release. There's also the aforementioned extra work issue that bucks the burden of removing unnecessary citations to the people who trope the page that don't work with the cleanup thread.

Something else of note: new pages can attract new tropers, and we don't want to give them the wrong idea about how we do things here.

Edited by Karxrida on Aug 11th 2019 at 1:16:37 AM

Per How to Write an Example, we are always aiming for a final draft appearance.

An entry that specifies a trailer or other similar material as its source will always be correct, whether it winds up also applying to the final work or not, whether the final work even ever sees the light of day or not.

While tropers are welcome to rephrase entry text to remove citations upon release where appropriate if they are so inclined, it is not necessary to ensure accuracy, since the entry text is already accurate as written if it includes citations.

Failing to properly cite pre-release materials creates more cleanup work later, since during the flurry of edits immediately after release, it is more difficult to know on casual inspection whether non-cited entries apply to the final work or not.

Something else of note: new pages can attract new tropers, and we don't want to give them the wrong idea about how we do things here.

Agreed. We want to make sure to show them that we are a wiki that catalogs tropes that happen in publicly-released works of narrative fiction, not a news site about production rumors nor a catalog of speculation of unreleased works based on advertising.

If, along the way to that goal, they should happen to develop the habit of including slightly more detail than is strictly necessary in pages for released works, I hardly consider that much of a down side.

Edited by HighCrate on Aug 11th 2019 at 2:23:44 AM

Regarding the citing thing; maybe we could make it a bit more discreet but still noticeable, like a labelnote or commenting it out next to the example.

For instance, this example from Steven Universe: The Movie would go from this:

• Rhetorical Question Blunder: In the trailer, when Steven repeats Peridot's statement that all organic life will be destroyed by the super injector, she nonchalantly confirms it and clarifies the myriad species that will be destroyed, people included.

To this:

• Rhetorical Question Blunder: When Steven repeats Peridot's statement that all organic life will be destroyed by the super injector, she nonchalantly confirms it and clarifies the myriad species that will be destroyed, people included.^Source The San Diego Comic-Con 2019 trailer

Or even this:

• Rhetorical Question Blunder: When Steven repeats Peridot's statement that all organic life will be destroyed by the super injector, she nonchalantly confirms it and clarifies the myriad species that will be destroyed, people included.%% Source: the San Diego Comic-Con 2019 trailer.

That would encourage people to phrase entries as if it were a foregone conclusion that every bit of context from the trailer will transfer with 100% accuracy to the final work, and encourage people to blindly delete such notes immediately post-release without sparing much thought for whether differences between the trailer and final work necessitate more in-depth wording changes.

I'm against it.

Edited by HighCrate on Aug 11th 2019 at 2:37:20 AM

I like the Source note thing. It definitely looks cleaner.

I knew you would be against it, so my post is more directed towards the rest of the thread.

Sorry.

Edited by Crossover-Enthusiast on Aug 11th 2019 at 5:51:49 AM

I also like the "Source" idea, but perhaps it should be placed after the trope name, rather than after the example text.

Still waiting on that evidence that this was a widespread problem... If the problem isn't widespread, then the removal of said edits cannot be a problem.

That's a good point. It'd be more clear that way what the citing is. You can immediately see it and all.

Edited by Irene on Aug 11th 2019 at 4:54:19 AM

and So like this then?

• Rhetorical Question Blunder^Source The San Diego Comic-Con 2019 trailer: When Steven repeats Peridot's statement that all organic life will be destroyed by the super injector, she nonchalantly confirms it and clarifies the myriad species that will be destroyed, people included.

Yeah, that looks really nice. :)

Thanks for coming in, nombretomado. It's good to know we're being heard by the higher-ups.

For second-hand source criteria, I'd say my rule of thumb would be that it has to be a planned release of information from the production company. Offhand comments from single people involved don't have the backing of production behind them and so wouldn't be enough.

Regarding citations, "always aiming for a final draft appearance" cuts both ways. Stating that a trope appears in a trailer will always be 100% correct, but once the work is out then the fact that the example specifies the trailer implies that the trope is only in the trailer and absent from the actual work.

I do kind of like Crossover-Enthusiast's idea. It'll still call for cleanup later, but at least the cleanup would be easier to do.

Edited by DragonRanger on Aug 11th 2019 at 3:49:00 AM

It implies nothing of the sort, no more than a trope entry in a Recap page for a particular episode of an ongoing series implies that the trope does not take place in other episodes.

Altering example text to refer to the final work isn't, strictly speaking, "cleanup." It's troping the final work once it is released and it becomes possible to trope it. Nothing wrong with doing it if you feel so inclined, but it's not "called for" in the sense of "required."

Edited by HighCrate on Aug 11th 2019 at 4:17:21 AM

You're right, removing those parts isn't mandatory and "call for cleanup" was probably not my best choice of words.

But I stand by my point that once a work is released, nobody's going to mention trailers anymore unless it's a place where they differ from the work. So if readers are coming in post-release and see the trailer specified, they're going to assume it's mentioned for a reason. That's not a "final draft" version.

Edited by DragonRanger on Aug 11th 2019 at 4:28:56 AM