Let's Improve the TLP

Might be redundant with the sounding board, but let's see what others think.

Bumping.

People lately have had a nasty habit of hatting drafts that have a good wealth of examples and a decent description, but also have a glaring flaw that should prevent hats- like a bad title, or general lack of tropeworthiness. Then when people bother to point out the flaws, they get completely ignored in favor of everyone else just posting more examples and giving more hats.

Right now a trope needs at minimum three examples. Some have suggested that we increase this minimum. However, I was thinking that we could keep the three example minimum, but add some qualifiers. Here's what I'm thinking:

• The examples can't all be from the same medium, unless it's a trope that's specific to one medium.

• The three examples have to be from different franchises. For instance, you can't list a bunch of examples that happen in Batman and its adaptations. You'd have to point to other franchises where this trope happens.

• The examples can't all be by the same creator.

I think that's a good idea, with or without increasing the minimum required number of examples. If consensus turns out to support making that policy, we should let the Outdated Pages thread know so they can update the policy.

Edited by Miss_Desperado on Aug 30th 2020 at 9:13:17 AM

I also think that's a good idea. So:

• at least three examples
• from at least two mediums, unless it's a trope that's specific to one medium
• from at least two franchises
• from at least two creators

Now which thread do we go to to get official community feedback?

I'm surprised "initial examples must be from different franchises" isn't already a rule, as I distinctly remember someone throwing a bomb at one of my drafts because it initially had only two examples, both of which were from the same show.^note thankfully they left a comment, so when the draft was much more polished I PM'd them to take a second look and they replaced the bomb with a hat.

Yes, that's what I had in mind.

I'd be fine with those rules, they don't seem too restrictive but definitely would make stuff better (of course, there is a 12 wick minimum rule for new tropes these days so that could make the rule superfluous, but I don't think it'd be a problem).

@ Miss_Desperado: Community Feedback?

I meant, where do we go to officially try to make this idea a new policy?

Oh, well, I guess outdated pages to update the TLP Guidelines again.

There are moderators vetting what's done in that thread, right? I just don't want anyone to get in trouble for changing policy behind their backs just because we didn't know where to get official approval.

We have to get the mods to approve it since the page is locked; you need to pitch the proposed rewrite and holler to see how the mods feel.

So after the "Gay" incident, here are some things that we have learned:

• Most importantly, the hat/bomb system is horribly broken and needs to replaced with something else.
• There needs to be a mechanism to prevent obvious troll drafts from showing up in the TLP.
• Launching should be restricted to the mods and the proposed TLP engineer group to prevent rouge launching and premature launches.
• Finally, the TLP is just broken in general.

That, and develop a hold mechanism to the Bomb/Hat system if something like that happening again goes awry.

Also, show exactly who hatted / bombed!

And instead of a trope being launched if it has at least five hats, make it so it can get launched if it has at least five more hats than bombs.

Agree with everything except the third bullet. We don't need to give the mods more work- especially since launched tropes need crosswicking!

What we need is a system to make rogue launches much harder.

Like, say, prevent any new users from using the TLP for a week.

Possible solutions to the rogue launch problem:

• Raise needed hat-bomb ratio to 10
• Drafts need to exist for 5-7 days instead of 3 days.
• Only the host can launch. If the draft ends up becoming up for grabs, then either the old author or a mod can grant access to the new host.
  • Also, if 2 months pass without edits from the host, then there will be a notice on the draft that says it's up for grabs and a mod can come in and either assign a new host or take it up themselves.

Edited by Van-San on Sep 8th 2020 at 11:43:27 AM

Sounds like a good idea. And allow hosts to put on Hold.

"There needs to be a mechanism to prevent obvious troll drafts from showing up in the TLP."

We could use the "locked" mechanism from forums where a mod can prevent a draft that's made in bad faith from entering the TLP at all (not just bad quality drafts that could be improved, but drafts that have no purpose but to complain, duplicate an already nuked draft, etc), but that might be too much extra work for mods.

I don't think transferring sponsorship should require mod intervention. Rogue launches are bad, but we don't want to make draft adoption a giant pain either.

I would say launching should require that 48 hours have passed since your first contribution to the draft.

I’m not sure if I should be sad that I missed that insanity or glad that I didn’t get hit with a ban because I missed it (because if I had known, I very probably would have participated) but anyway, I agree that with the suggestions to make troll drafts harder to create. Troll drafts are funny, but vastly unhelpful and unproductive, detracting from the focus on actual ideas.

If people want to create troll drafts, they should create a thread in Yack Fest or something.