Unreleased Work Policy Feedback

Until the very limited seating ran out, of course. It's not— unless I'm mistaken— like one of those Fathom events that only run for one night, but are in hundreds of theaters across the country and are easy to get tickets to.

On a spectrum between "absolutely no one can see it" on one end, and "absolutely everyone can see it" on the other, it's closer to the former than the latter.

Edited by HighCrate on Aug 26th 2019 at 6:00:21 AM

Speaking of Fathom events, what happens for "normal" episodes that release early through Fathom?

The Volume 5 and 6 premieres for RWBY both had early releases in this way, but neither had Recap/ pages created until their standard release.

Update on the SU screening; Grace Kraft, who works on the comics and is a friend of the crew, stated that the attendees did indeed have to sign an NDA, in addition to promising the creator that they wouldn't spoil anything. So yeah, they don't want anything else about the film getting out.

Sounds like things went fine in that case. If someone who saw it at the Fathom event had wanted to make a Recap page, I can't say I'd have a problem with it, but if not, that's fine too.

i keep misreading "Fathom" as "Fathorn".

i still think it's weird that they'd have to sign an NDA, but it certainly makes our decision easier.

I think that settles it. We shouldn't trope it until it airs on TV.

Why should TV Tropes care about NDAs? We have no obligation to honor contracts between other parties.

We care because the ND As are the line between 'official informatio' and not publicly released

NDA's are also related to leaks. We don't trope leaks either. If something is under NDA, it is not supposed to be public. We want to trope public information. It all goes hand in hand.

Mind you, this is important because we have a consensus that private screenings are not tropable(or at least we have a majority who agree with that. It's not an actual rule at this time). NDA's are the clear line between what is private and what is publicly available.

Isn't rule #1 of TV Tropes "Don't be a dick"? If someone makes you sign an NDA, that's a sign that they really don't want you talking about it online, so making a page specifically for that purpose would count as dickish behavior.

In some cases, breaking an NDA is illegal. I doubt that a cartoon studio would sue someone for editing TV Tropes with info from an advance screening, but it's still behavior that we shouldn't be encouraging.

Yeah. People who break NDAs get in trouble, and by extension we could get in trouble for hosting information under an NDA.

I've run into NDA problems in the past (for a work that doesn't have a page here), so I'm well aware of what can and can't be said.

The best thing to do if someone is NDA'd is to treat their information as if it was a leak - because it often is.

This feels like a clear-cut case here. If it's got an NDA, then we shouldn't make a page on it till it lifts.

That said, with the private screening voting going on, it does appear that that factor is unlikely to be relevant. If it isn't in public officially, we don't trope it. Pre-release or not.

Anyway, we need to tally up the votes first, though. Not much of a majority if we don't double check the votes, heh.

We could also do a crowner, since there's some decent arguments for what counts as "private"?

Edited by Irene on Aug 27th 2019 at 8:17:35 AM

I am pretty certain that crowners are deprecated as a way to hammer out policy details.

Anyhow, yes, if it was published in violation of a NDA it's "stuff that is not supposed to be public yet" like a leak or a pirated copy of a not-yet released work so it's not OK to trope it.

I spent the weekend watching Ghost Recon Breakpoint beta livestreams on Twitch. I specifically asked the streamers about some things. I even gave a reason for editing the page as "Updating based on the beta livestreams." (I did the exact damn same thing in case of Control, updating the game's page as some streamers got early copies).

It's not speculative troping, it's actual, observed and confirmed info from public livestreams.

Not to mention, the Ink-Suit Actor entry is so obvious since the live-action trailer release that I find commenting it out an insult to intelligence and eyesight.

Edited by NotSoBadassLongcoat on Sep 9th 2019 at 10:26:19 AM

To avoid this sort of situation in the future, it's important to cite the appropriate material.

& This would be better discussed in the cleanup thread.

Hard to "cite" a Twitch livestream, luckily I found Youtube videos including a full, uncommented run through the tiny bit of storyline, including the key characters like Walker and Mads Schulz.

So do we have a consensus on preview screenings? It'd be nice to actually get a topic fully resolved.

From what I can tell, if it's public without an NDA attached, it can be troped.

Though we need to define "public" in these cases. It isn't just anything that a random person could see if they pony up enough cash.

A good guideline is stuff like the Fathom(?) events where you can see a new movie a few days before the official release. Pretty sure there aren't any NDAs involved with those.

I know something like that exists because Brad Jones often goes to those screenings for his Midnight Review series.

Edited by Karxrida on Sep 13th 2019 at 12:14:58 PM

We've already addressed Fathom releases earlier, I believe. They're okay to trope, barring the possible specific case of RWBY.

Alright, so bringing in a thread from the Unreleased Work Page Cleanup regarding the upcoming Death Stranding, I've run into a conflict with High Crate regarding the nature of some of the entries which I have recently added, examples of which he has since delisted as "speculative".

To reiterate what was discussed, there was recently an hour-long presentation at Tokyo Game Show demonstrating gameplay mechanics with ongoing and in-depth commentary by the game's creator and director, Hideo Kojima. Based on this demo and concurrent confirmation by Kojima about their presence in the game, I added several entries (Bandit Mook, The Cameo, Genre-Busting,The Power of Blood, Powered Armor, Product Placement, Resources Management Gameplay, and The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You), preemptively cited with links of official time-specific citations in the video confirming their presence. All of which were delisted due to "Speculative Troping - no citation".

I had been aware that High Crate had previously been strict regarding this policy, and believed that the direct links to presentations by the game's creator would be sufficient enough to verify their existence, but evidently, that wasn't enough. We had a back-and-forth in the cleanup thread, and the argument was made that the content which I had posted was not verifiable — that "being "told what to expect" from Word of God is not the same thing as having the game in your hand", that the content has the power to be misleading and inaccurate and up to change, and the grounds of being directly explained by footage of the game itself in terms of a professional demonstration by the creator of the game is not substantiative enough to trope about.

I disagree greatly with this and still for the reasons why I argued him with — the game comes out in a little over a month from now, so the "logistical realities" that could compromise the truthfulness of the footage presented at TGS sounds like bad-faith hokum, and Kojima had made it clear that the product he was showing was truthful as he previously expressed discomfort of revealing too much about the product before release, requesting players NOT watch the presentation and instead experiencing it for themselves. In addition, I found it particularly odd that my specifically-cited tropes — which are represented multiple times as actual, unambiguous demonstration of the game itself, and are specifically sourced as such — have been cut out, whereas other entries in the Death Stranding page(s) regarding more nebulous, uncited tropes regarding the work are allowed to stay, based on distinctions regarding what is speculative and what as not being incredibly arbitrary in my eyes, especially due to the even-more speculative nature of the stuff that is allowed.

However, High Crate no longer wishes to argue his point regarding how this distinction is handled and has referred me to here — if we must discuss this as overall policy matters rather than individual context matters, let's.

The work is presenting as itself. The game has been in development for several years and is coming out in about a month, and is complete. The game has been presented as itself in concert with Word of God, which while I'm aware of the general pragmatic concerns regarding using out-of-work word as a general rule, help describe the nature of the work itself, which we are explicitly being demonstrated and instructed to expect. "Things that purport to represent the work itself includes trailers, teasers, gameplay footage, demos, open betas, and text excerpts. They are representing the work, instead of describing" are exactly the kinds of sources which I'm getting tropes from, in this specific case a demonstration from a gameplay demonstration at Tokyo Game Show. The tropes which I have added (and listed above) are not preemptive historical tropes, tropes centering around specific times in the game we aren't aware of, or YMMV — based on Creating a Work Page for an Upcoming Work, these entries are completely acceptable. They are present within the context of the game, they are not ambiguous assumptions, and are directly cited as concrete.

So... I still don't get what the deal is and why they're still delisted on grounds of "Speculative Troping - no citation". I've tried arguing at this point the specific nature of the tropes I specifically wish to add with High Crate and figuring out what makes them a problem in contrast to others in the page that are allowed to stick on (one example he used was Animal Motifs, which that is super-dodgy to me because the presence of dead crabs in the game doesn't actually say anything, through explicit Word of God or not, and the entry itself doesn't posit anything), but he no longer wishes to argue.

If anyone knows what the exact deal is, what about this is the problem, if this actually is an issue with the policy, or if the removal was unruly, let me know.

I agree that the Animal Motifs example HighCrate presented isn't actually a good example. It explains that that crabs appear in all three trailers, but it never says what the crabs are supposed to represent.