Outdated Administrivia Pages

Has there been a discussion on noteworthy vs tropeworthy? I know it came up in the Bi The Way TRS thread but I hadn't heard of that dichotomy before then.

Personally I think they're on different scales, like a work can be noteworthy but not tropeworthy (since only phenomena have trope-ability) and a phenomenon can be tropeworthy (and therefore notable) but to say it isn't noteworthy separate from it's tropeworthiness seems inaccurate. Like, to say it isn't tropeworthy but at the same time it is notable implies that it is tropeworthy, because there is some significance to that phenomenon that makes it notable. If it truly has no tropeworthiness then it would not be notable.

We have Garnishing the Story for notable phenomena that are otherwise not tropeworthy. But they still are tropes, and their trope-ability comes primarily from their notability. If a given phenomenon has even less noteworthiness than GTS then it is Chairs.

We could probably move this discussion to a new thread or ATT, tbh. I just wanted to make that point because I really don't see a good reason for separating notability from tropeworthiness.

It's been coming up more often since the Bi The Way thread, mostly because the issue only struck me then but has become more obvious since.

Basically I just think we need to better explain what does and doesn't make something tropeworthy and how one can tell if something is/isn't a trope.

That's fair.

Other questions for the FAQ:

• Under "The People and Their Language"
  • "Can I change my username?"
    Short answer: No. Long answer: At present, no, but the ability to change an account name is on the long-term wishlist.
  • Who owns the site? Who are the owners?
    The admins, drewski and itcdr (or Drew and Chris, respectively), co-own the site under the company they founded, Proper Media.
• Under a folder for specific sub-forums:
  • "If I post my writing on TV Tropes or in the forums, do I keep the rights?"
    No. See this thread and the "Your Rights" section on Welcome to TV Tropes for specifics, but essentially TV Tropes licenses anything you contribute to the wiki from you non-exclusively, permanently, and irrevocably. You don't have any say in what TV Tropes does with your written material once it's on TV Tropes. If you post your original work here, TV Tropes could use it without your permission unless you get a written agreement first. See also The Fic May Be Yours, but the Trope Page Is Ours. One way to protect your work is to post a link to it rather than posting the text directly.
  • "Where can I get criticism of my original (or derivative) writing?"
    The Writer's Block subforum is a great place to talk about writing and what you've written. There, we have the Constructive Criticism Thread for receiving criticism from multiple people. If you are looking for something more personable, take a look at Uncle Drunkie's Writer/Critic Dating Service.

Going to toss in a correction: you do keep your rights to what you post here and/or contribute to the wiki. Our contribution license is nonexclusive, meaning you can still use the content you contribute yourself in any manner you see fit.

Here's what you can't do (unless you negotiate alternative terms in writing):

• Demand that we remove your content.
• Prevent your content from being altered.
• Prevent us from using your content commercially.
• Demand that we attribute your content to you.

Here's what you risk:

• A publisher may reject content that you have previously published elsewhere. That includes TV Tropes. This is why you shouldn't post complete copies of your original work here. It has nothing to do with our license. Excerpts are usually fine.
• Ideas and concepts that you post here may be used by other people without crediting you or asking permission. Again, this has nothing to do with TV Tropes; it's just a fact of the Internet.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 3rd 2020 at 10:51:25 AM

What Fighteer just said is a partial truth, and it has nothing to do with what other people can do with TV Tropes's content.

From Administrivia.Welcome To TV Tropes:

Instead, by submitting user content to TV Tropes, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, perform, or publicly display your user content in any medium and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so.

Anything you contribute may be deleted, modified, or used commercially by us without notification or consent, to the extent permitted by applicable laws.

TL;DR: TV Tropes claims that they can do whatever it wants with whatever you submit to it, except prevent you from publishing it elsewhere. Because this statement is buried on a random page and no one has to see it in order to edit the wiki, it may not be legally enforceable, but IANAL and we really don't want to get into all that nonsense right now.

You didn't contradict anything I said. I was correcting a specific error, not reciting the whole policy. We can do whatever we want with your content, but we don't restrict your right to do what you want with it either. Hence, nonexclusive.

As for legality, there is no "assumed" license that people should expect when they contribute. Please don't fall into that "you changed your CC license in 2012" BS. That license has always and only ever applied to people using our content, not our use of contributions.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 4th 2020 at 9:56:36 AM

I specifically refrained from saying anything about the 2012 change in my post because it's utterly irrelevant to what TV Tropes can do with content submitted in 2020. The point was that you're not great at communicating what you do with that content.

We display it on this website. That you are reading now. I'm not sure how this is unclear. Definitely think we could make the rules more accessible.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 4th 2020 at 11:45:57 AM

Ah, I see what my error was now. The majority of the answer I "wrote" comes from the post Fighteer made in Writer's Block, but I said "You don't keep the rights" and yeah, that's wrong.

RE: Communicating this information and being more accessible. There are at least two pages on the wiki and one in the specialized Writer's Block subforum that tries to explain this stuff. And now hopefully the FAQ will have the information too so as to better explain it.

Here's a revised version:

• "If I post my writing on TV Tropes or in the forums, do I keep the rights?"
  • See this thread, the "Your Rights" section on Welcome to TV Tropes, and The Fic May Be Yours, but the Trope Page Is Ours for specifics, but basically TV Tropes licenses anything you contribute to the wiki from you non-exclusively, permanently, and irrevocably. Because our contribution license is nonexclusive, you do keep your rights to what you post here and/or contribute to the wiki.
  • Furthermore, you also grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, unrestricted license over your contributions. Essentially, this all means that you don't have any say in what TV Tropes does with your written material once it's on TV Tropes. If you post your original work here, we could use it without your permission (unless you get written agreement first).
  • Unless you negotiate alternative terms in writing prior to submitting your content, you cannot demand that we remove your content, prevent your content from being altered, prevent us from using your content commercially, or demand that we attribute your content to you.
  • You have some risks when posting your original content on a public website such as TV Tropes. This includes:
    • A publisher may reject content that you have previously published elsewhere. That includes TV Tropes. This has nothing to do with our license, but rather we are considered a publisher. Generally, published excerpts wouldn't disqualify your work as "previously published."
    • Ideas and concepts that you post here may be used by other people without crediting you or asking permission. This also has nothing to do with our license; it's just a fact of the Internet.

Edited by WaterBlap on Jun 4th 2020 at 12:05:58 PM

Walkthrough Mode is a wiki policy page in Main/. It should be moved to Administrivia/, right?

I think that last FAQ question is fine.

As for Walkthrough Mode, agreed with moving it to Administrivia/. Also, that last sentence aught to be removed, as I don't think we've ever put walkthrough and guide stuff on Trivia/ subpages.

I agree with both of those statements about Walkthrough Mode.

Ok, I'll move the page without the trivia line or the page quote (which was discussed here).

What should I do with Strategy Guide Mode and We Are Not Game FA Qs (which both redirect to it)?

Edited by Serac on Jun 8th 2020 at 9:58:35 AM

I think they're fine, maybe they can also be moved but I don't think it's a big deal.

It's been referred on this ATT thread that Misty May is a fanspeak term, and not a trope.

was headed here to bring that up.

people on the thread are saying it's not even real fanspeak, just an ancient site in-joke. im inclined to ax it.

I've never even heard of the term outside of that page, so wouldn't be surprised if it was more of a site in-joke than a fandom term that was actually used at some point

The 1624 inbounds disagree with that contention, though.

Still. It's an old, outdated term, and new tropers don't get it. And current general search results either include a retired volleyball player, or Misty and May from Pokemon. And their busts don't seem to be bouncable.

Google tends to leave out a lot of stuff, so I would not assume that the absence of a thing from Google is meaningful.

Well, Urban Dictionary doesn't have an entry for it. But they do have entries for Pettanko and Yandere, two actual anime fanspeak terms. So I'm going to guess it's just a TV Tropes inside joke.

A different ancient in-joke, Bizarre And Improbable Giraffe Herding Techniques, was cut fairly recently.

rjd1922 previously suggested moving Misty May to Just for Fun. That's what we did with "Holy Shit!" Quotient, which was another page based around counting instances of something in a work. Personally, I think Misty May is to Gainaxing what "Holy Shit!" Quotient is to Shocking Moments.

Edit: Forgot to mention Takahashi Couple, which was originally the name for Belligerent Sexual Tension. It was another TV Tropes-invented term that was supposedly anime fanspeak, but actually wasn't (all Google results I saw were either from TV Tropes or offsite discussion related to TV Tropes).

Edit: On the subject of inbounds, Gainaxing has 121,659 (link), Pettanko has 19,454 (link, and its old Main/ location has 2,275), and Yandere has 363,901 (link), while Misty May has 1,625 (link). Pettanko's inbound count is the second lowest of the four (though it is listed on Urban Dictionary), but there's a pretty significant difference with Yandere and Gainaxing.

If Google is the wrong place to look to see whether Misty May is used as a fanspeak term on other websites, then what's the right place?

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 9th 2020 at 2:20:55 PM

If the inbounds are really important, we could just redirect it to Gainaxing rather than cutting it. I have to wonder where the inbounds came from, though. I'm guessing that inbounds weren't a concern when pages like Innocent Panties and Naughty Tentacles were cut (in fact, I would consider high inbounds to pages like that an even bigger reason to cut).

They weren't a concern because the problems there (advertising issues) were much more severe than these here. The importance of inbounds is that they indicate that a term is used offsite, and given how much Google misses out - or swamps among irrelevant results - it is not a compelling counterargument.