Let's Improve the TLP

Only the admins can.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I apologize if this doesn't go here but I'm having trouble with the page for a trope I proposed. I keep trying to make edits to it but it doesn't load properly and the save button gets obscured by the edit being stretched downwards. And this is only an issue for this one page.

Yeah, there's a glitch.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I wonder if the sheer amount of one-paragraph TLP drafts has something to do with how by default, the text box where you enter your draft is only about that size. It certainly doesn't look like the kind of place where you're expected type in an entire page's worth of content, unless you use the nub in the lower right corner to make it bigger. Perhaps if draft-proposers were presented with an editing screen that takes up most of the window, like when editing a page, it'd make it clearer that they're supposed to type a lot of content in there.

That makes sense. Like a pop-up window or something.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I literally only realized you could expand that window last month, after loads of frustration trying to make a full-length draft in that tiny little space.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Why didn't it occur to me to wonder about that sooner? This Explains So Much!

If not for this anchor I'd be dancing between the stars. At least I can try to write better vampire stories than Twilight.

A couple of major coding revisions that I want to suggest in one central post:

• TLP is turned into a two-stage process: drafting and evaluating
• The drafting stage has title, laconic, body, and comments. It acts much like TLP currently does, but hats/bombs are not present. There is a "discard" and "evaluate" option that appears after three days.
• The evaluation stage changes the way people add comments. A comment comes attached with a bomb or a hat. The counter only tracks a troper's most recent comment. This way we can see votes and people can tie their votes to claims. While in the evaluation stage, the draft cannot be edited.
• The evaluation stage has two options; "back to draft" and "launch". "Back to draft" remains greyed out until there are five more bombs than hats or at least three days have passed. "Launch" remains greyed out until there are five more hats than bombs, there are twice as many hats as there are bombs, and three days have passed.
• Choosing "Launch" should probably follow the current process, although fixing the namespace issue would be preferred.
• Choosing the "back to draft" option removes all the vote tags (but not the comments) and creates an automatic post saying, "[troper] has aborted the launch, please resume drafting". The "discard" and "evaluate" options return after three days.
• Choosing the "discard" option locks the thread to prevent further comments, maybe stripping code to make it look like an Archived Discussion, showing troper markup. Only a mod or engineer can restore a draft from this point, but normal tropers can copy the text into a new draft.

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I also want to suggest some sort of checklist somewhere. Something that says "A completed draft includes the following: A detailed description, At least ten examples, and At least one index".

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

A lot of these ideas are similar to ones on We're Improving the TLP. And that checklist is referenced on TLP Guidelines, though that's not just an easy thing people can double check every 5 minutes.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I know, but I wanted to distil a few ideas I've had stewing since this thread was created down to a single post.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

No, I get cha. Besides, I like your ideas.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

x4 I suggested turning TLP into a two-stage process over two years ago,

If not for this anchor I'd be dancing between the stars. At least I can try to write better vampire stories than Twilight.

I know

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I feel like there should be an auto-discard. There are tons of tropes that never got nuked just sitting in the TLP— maybe tropes that haven’t been edited in a year get auto-nuked? Or is that too harsh, since some of the drafts may be salvageable?

It’s not about the desti-something, it’s about the whatever.

Per War Jay 77, I'm transferring this that I posted on Ask The Tropers over to here.

I'd already posted this in a reply to a poorly written trope on the launch pad.

Is it just me, or does it seem like lately we are getting an INCREDIBLE number of proposed tropes that are poorly written, poorly formatted, and posted up with no examples? By people who are brand new to the troper community? If it's just me, I'll shut up, but just coming up with an idea and throwing stuff at the wall and hoping it sticks isn't what the launch pad is all about. You have to do your homework before proposing a trope. If I didn't know better, I'd say some people who've been suspended/banned are just creating new trope identities and doing this just to stir the pot. Okay, I've vented. Shutting my pie-hole now.

Should we have a rule on the launch pad that you can't post a proposal there unless you've been a member to TV Tropes for at least a year, AND have a strong edit history? Of course I say this knowing that it may not really help.

As I said, this is a transfer from Ask The Tropers. If you head over there for this thread you'll see comments/observations from fellow tropers.

Others have proposed an account age restriction on the TLP and we seem to agree it's a good idea. It won't save every problem, of course - a good deal of accounts making poor drafts are longtime users whose issues may stem from not realizing how our standards have changed in the past decade.

Edited by mightymewtron on Oct 28th 2020 at 11:12:57 AM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

I'm one of the people that speak out against it because I think that TLP is one of the ways that we attract new users. I think that they're attracted to the idea of making tropes and want to jump in and create pages. The harder we make allowing people to join in the "fun", the fewer people we have joining us and the more likely we end up like All the Tropes.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I am also against it, mainly because I don't think that new accounts are the main source of TLP's problems. Also, nobody has presented a cost-benefit analysis, and I want that. I've seen too many instances where a problem cropped up on a wiki somewhere and people immediately jumped to proposing restrictions on newcomers to the point that it looks like a pattern.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I'm not at all sure that an account age restriction is the way to go, but I'm worried about the concept that trope creating is a good way to draw in new users. Creating a good trope proposal requires a) a good feeling for what tropes are and how they work, and b) a good knowledge of what's already out there. Both a) and b) seem to require that you've been around the wiki for a while. Using the TLP to attract new users and encouraging new users to jump in and start creating tropes is IMHO asking for trouble.

I'm also a bit worried by the attitude that creating new tropes is something you do because it's fun. New tropes should be created because there's a need, because you see a pattern which has not been described before. I'm afraind encouraging trope creation for fun leads to exactly the kind of problems we're seeing right now, with lots of half-cooked trope ideas getting rushed through the process.

It may also be part of the explanation for what I feel is a kind of feeling of entitlement among some problematic TLP contributors, who seem to see any kind of criticism or insistence that they follow procedures as just interference with their fun activity of trope creation.

Edited by GnomeTitan on Oct 28th 2020 at 5:26:22 PM

The thing is, while not all TLP issues are caused by newbies, newbies almost always cause problems. 99% of the time. They have abused the system with socks and ban evasion, have gone on rogue launch sprees, and slam us with bad drafts they never intend to fix.

Every newbie? No. But it's a majority and the minority aren't worth the stress.

I've noticed the only disagreement is from non-TLP regulars. That's not to say your opinion is less valuable, but you don't really have first hand experience with this stuff.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

The thing is that "I want to make a new trope" is not a good motivation for joining this site. Really, it's not. Unless the individual in question is already steeped in tropology and has a good sense of what we're about, it's not going to be of benefit to anyone. They'll just do bad work and come out more disappointed than they would have been had we blocked them until they learned the ropes.

This is clearly not the only problem with TLP: we need much stricter automatic controls on what can be done with it, better reporting tools, better ability to track user activity, more moderation (or at least curation), and so on. But stopping new accounts from flooding it with crap tropes — and especially from flooding it with poorly considered hats — is a good start.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 28th 2020 at 12:44:17 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I know that the admins can't do any coding now (per Word of Mod, they're only committing to emergency fixes until this whole situation blows over), but one of the very first things they should do once normal site ops resume is fix the TLP coding to only allow five net hats for launch. I've seen many launches which are purely under the 5-hat limit where the OP doesn't understand the net 5 hat rule.^note I'm not blaming the OPs - and I actually did this when I was a troper, so I'm already crossing the hypocrisy line here.

While an account age restriction may be sufficient, nothing is stopping a persistent newbie from just waiting until their age restriction expires to help out (if they're constructive) or rogue launch and mass-discard (if they're not). A combined account-and-edit restriction would help to stem the flow of newbie-issues (that way, a troll has to be more persistent and contribute for a while before pulling a 180, and a genuine, bona-fide user can get the lay of the land before dipping their toes into TLP - but a very persistent troll will still try to achieve their goal, no matter how pointless it is.)

Maybe - and this is very far fetched - the rogue launch problem could be solved by allowing the sponsor to delegate launching authority? I know it sounds complicated, but the sponsor would have an extra tab when selecting someone's comment (Launch Permission), which would open up a small tab to allow the troper selected permission to launch. That way, only the sponsor or people given permission by the sponsor could launch it, and rogue launches wouldn't exist any more.

Yeah, never mind. It wasn't a good idea in the first place.

And sorry for the Wall of Text.

edit: essentially d by Fighteer

Edited by SilverCrown on Oct 28th 2020 at 10:22:41 PM

On the sponsor giving launch permission— what about abandoned drafts? if they get adopted, but the sponsor is gone, how could it get launched?

Edited by audgetrouble on Oct 28th 2020 at 12:52:13 PM

It’s not about the desti-something, it’s about the whatever.

That's a good point. I didn't consider it.

I suppose some more pondering needs to be done on the "sponsor give permission" idea.

Maybe there should be a formal adoption system— if the sponsor hasn’t touched a draft/the site in a set amount of time, the draft becomes Up for Grabs?

It’s not about the desti-something, it’s about the whatever.