"Meta" Headscratchers and WMG

Following this conversation, as ~Septimus Heap requested I make a new thread for it:

Should "Meta" Headscratchers/WMG pages be allowed?

My concern about the specific meta page I brought up, the MLP:FIM one, is that 90% of the questions are people asking about and debating over real-life things, such as why specific voice actors didn't do specific things, why the merch is pink, why bronies exist, ect. In addition to the questions being repeated multiple times, it just feels a bit too flame-baity and nit-picky. It has nothing to do with the actual work, except that people are overanalyzing or nitpicking the production of it, and my personal take is that Headscratchers should be about the actual work, not the real-life production of the work.

Furthermore, as far as WMG is concerned, I can see some wiggle room if it's in good fun. If the theories are not meant to be taken seriously and are just goofs that happen to be about real-life subjects, I think that can be allowed, but genuine theories about reality probably shouldn't count.

Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 3rd 2020 at 4:14:35 AM

Yeah, I feel as if allowing actual theorization about reality on Headscratchers and WMG pages is just weird. It just leads to weird nitpicking and complaining- just look at WMG.The Emoji Movie.

I recall making a comment about this in ATT - WMG's that are benign tinhatting are A-OK to me. WMG's that seriously conspire about someone being a rapist/having a mental health issue/etc. are patently out the window.

I think nombretomado's criteria are fine and I think that meta entries on Headscratchers are OK too. The point of that subpage is to serve as a place to ask questions pertinent to a work, no reason to blanket exclude meta questions.

I just find that even allowing Headscratchers to have Meta questions opens to door to serious problems. Where is the line drawn between absurd, flame-baity nitpicks and valid questions about the work, in the context of meta?

Granted, 75% of Headscratchers is absurd, flame-baity nitpicks as is, but at least when it's talking about the actual narrative, there's some lines we can point to and it's easier to tell what's just complaining. Not with meta, where it can come off as bashing even if it's not.

Personally, I want the entire WMG, Fridge, and Headscratchers sections of the wiki to go away and leave us alone. Maybe they could live on in forum conversations, which is more appropriate for them. The notion that people are entitled to have their weird ideas preserved for posterity is just baffling.

I don't think that "opening the door to a problem" is the same thing as there being an actual problem. And in my experience even meta headscratchers are seldom a source of issues, far less than, say, shipping stuff.

They're a source of issues, for sure. It's just that the issues have flown under the radar because nobody made the effort to clean up the namespace until now.

I'm on the side of meta headscratchers being discouraged, if not removed entirely, for the record.

I want them all burned and salted, but if we have to pick and choose, the meta ones go up against the wall first.

I think they're cool and fun when done correctly, it's just that people tend to use both namespaces as a free-for-all.

Regarding Fighteer's comment, I think Fridge and Headscratchers are generally fine for a site about media and tropes therein. After all, Fridge Logic (et al) concerns content present in the work, and it's generally considered YMMV because a salient element of Fridge is that some audience members don't notice or realize X until finishing the work. It's still rooted in the work itself. Meanwhile, Headscratchers concern elements of a work that confused people, including fans of the work. Both of these are clearly in line with the mission of the wiki. At least on a foundational level. WMG, on the other hand, could die in a fire and not detract from the quality of the wiki at all, imo. WMG is all about speculation, and we don't allow speculative troping in the first place. On paper, WMG comes across as an artifact of ye olden days of TV Tropes.

Arguably, WMG inherently breaks the rules about speculation, so I'm not sure why it's still around other than merely being grandfathered in. I wouldn't mind it just being cut whole cloth, if only because that would be easier than cleaning up the pages. (Yes, this would require a dedicated discussion and crowner, but I think of the three mentioned, WMG is the best candidate for burning alive.)

Regarding meta entries of Headscratchers or WMG entries, I'd say just get rid of them. TV Tropes' priority is media, stories, how stories are made/told — that sort of thing. By definition, meta entries do not fall into that purview. At least Trivia and Useful Notes are objective and factual, or (to make the rhetoric parallel) Trivia is "meta troping." But meta Headscratcher and meta WMG are "meta speculative troping" (to be charitable). They are by definition speculative and if they're a problem, we should just get rid of them imo.

I don't think that Fridge and Headscratchers are so bad that they need the Troper Tales treatment, but I definitely agree that the entries posted there should only be about the content of the work in question, not "why do these people like it?" or "why did they hire this actor?"

WMG, on the other hand, is something I've never really understood. Is it supposed to be joking about things you know won't happen in the work, or is it for serious predictions of where you think a series is going? Is discussing and contesting other people's theories allowed, or should you just let them be? Nobody knows! And having a subpage for speculative troping goes against all the effort we're putting into stamping it out on the main wiki.

Deleting WMG would be a pretty serious discussion that would have to involve a lot more people, though. So for now, I think we can at least agree that WMG should also be limited to the content of a work rather than behind-the-scenes politics or a work's reception.

Edited by Serac on Aug 3rd 2020 at 6:44:18 AM

I don't mind WMG. It's at odds with the rest of the site but it's also self-contained. I think it's useful; if someone wants to wonk about their theories, they have a place to do so that doesn't interrupt the rest of the site.

It's also a good place to just discuss fan theories, as they're still a legit part of fandom culture- they just need to be kept to that one part of the site.

Actually, they're not as bad as Headscratchers are, IMO- because people don't really take WMG all that seriously, but they take their Headscratchers dead seriously. Look at all the debates and just tell me I'm wrong.

Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 3rd 2020 at 7:53:23 AM

I still remember a user who used the WMG page for Fire Emblem Warriors to wonk about the game. That was a definite "Whelp, should've seen this coming" moment regarding wonkers.

We have forums for discussing fan theories. I don't see why we'd artificially segregate them.

Back to the original question - I'm rather against meta headscratchers, and more tolerant of meta WMG.

Not all works are popular enough to have forum threads devoted to them...especially not the kind I like and would have theories for.

But I digress; this is about meta, not the namespaces in general.

I agree with Fighteer that Headscratchers and WMG are fundamentally flawed and wouldn't mind them getting deleted from the site entirely. They are formatted like normal wiki pages, and have the anti-natter rules to match, but they are also based around discussing and arguing about personal interpretations and opinions of the work, which is impossible to do without falling into natter. Deciding on what is "okay" or "not okay" and enforcing it would be impossible.

Since there is a tiny bit of value to these pages, the way I'd go replacing them is by having them be like the discussion pages, where people can create mini-forum threads and reply to them freely without worrying about additions looking like forum posts.

Nice idea, but the problem is what if readers are looking for individual questions and theories? Not to mention repeated questions.

I find it very hard to believe that anyone would actually expect any site to offer such a capability... except for TV Tropes, I guess. If we had not offered it to begin with, it would not be missed in the present, I promise you.

Anyway, if you had a forum thread or the equivalent, an OP could be pinned with FAQs and such.

Still doesn't answer the meta question, though, which is the point of this thread...

I suppose that is a site function that has long been needed, some sort of direct link from work pages to the forum threads. In reality WMG and Headscratchers are the last remnant of the long discredited natter and conversing in the main page style of writing.

Can we get a crowner hooked on whatever or not to deprecate WMG and Headscratchers?

...What the actual hell guys?

This isn't a thread to determine if we should have Headscratchers and WMG. We have them. They're here. Deal with it, or start a new thread to discuss removing them, but stop derailing this one for the love of God.

Fucking hell, it's in the title and everything. This is about Meta examples, not the entire namespaces and their value.