WebVideo namespace and index cleanup

Wiki Talk has made a decision that all articles in the Let's Play namespace (list of pages in that namespace) should be moved to other namespaces.

Since let's plays are usually video-based, the target namespace is usually WebVideo/. However, some are text-based, and the consensus was to handle the namspacing of those on a case-by-case basis, with Blog/, Fanfic/, and Literature/ brought up as potential targets.

Before any given article is transplanted, we should confirm that it meets the standards for being a TV Tropes work article. Note that these often serve as hybrid articles for their creators in much the same way as the Music namespace. If there is insufficient content, the articles end up becoming about the creators, violating our "no troping real people" policy.

The crucial question is whether the article has any tropable, creative content. This means that it's more than just "Alisha plays games and makes faces." What counts as tropable, creative content? Here are some examples.

• Creating a fictional/roleplaying narrative that is distinct from the game being played or the real person doing the LP.
• Using the game as a medium to craft original content: songs, videos, machinima, and so on.
• "MST'ing" or creatively riffing on the game's content, as long as it's sufficiently transformative.

What are not criteria for a tropable Let's Play by themselves?

• Adopting a quirky personality, cracking jokes, making funny faces, or overreacting to jump scares.
• Cosplaying, playing with toys, unboxing merchandise, etc.
• Having a "gimmick" that makes them stand out, such as a repeated Catchphrase, eating loudly on microphone, or calling their viewers "Doggo fam".
• Playing games in a particular way (speedrunning, evil runs, no-kill runs, etc.) that fall within what it is possible to do in the game itself, with or without mods.
• Modding the game.
• Being very popular.
• Having lots of memes arise in their fandom.

Note that the same general principles apply to any Web Video creator, especially those whose main work is in news, reviews, vlogging, and/or reaction videos.

There are a few outliers that will need to be handled on a case-by-case basis.

• After-Action Report: I would move it to literature, although it could be considered fanfic.
• Liveblogs, which are probably not tropable.

I started the sandbox several months ago, naively believing it would be a simple project to clear out some index misuses here and there— ha! I was so wrong.

The easy-seeming part when I started on Web Video (the index) was just removing things not even located in the namespace— found in Creator, Film, Web Animation, etc. Then I started noticing there were many things put in Web Video (the namespace) that were basically Creator pages, lots of Let's Play, other video game streaming that doesn't currently have an index, other misuses in index and/or namespace placement...

As described, the index is for pages about works meeting all these criteria:

1. original live action, meaning not animated or reusing existing footage;
2. narrative/creative, a bit unclear, but it's not someone simply reviewing another work/reacting to other works/playing through another work;
3. a work, which is... a work, not a creator.

So the index itself is a narrow type of web video, not everything ever put on YouTube or every kind of online video. That... isn't what has happened.

The namespace (see here) is much more broad: "Live-action videos and video-based Lets Plays originally or only released online. Covers both YouTube videos and web-exclusive series, but does not include those that belong in the WebAnimation/ namespace. For big-budget series exclusive to streaming services such as Netflix, use Series/ or the appropriate animation namespace instead." — Not limited to original or live action footage, narrative works, etc. However, people have mistakenly created Web Animation pages in this namespace, made what are essentially creator pages, typed it as "Webvideo", etc.

Re: War Jay 77's question "Would 'commentary channels' count as reviewers? The sort of people who poke fun at, say, Jake Paul, rather than movies.", Fighteer said here:

• No Analysis Channel index — corrected!
• No index for non-Let's Play video game streaming unless they're on Twitch. If they don't fall into the Let's Play format and aren't on Twitch, where do they go?
• No Gag Dub or Gag Sub index
• Where should we put channels based on prank calls, scam-baiting, other audio-based things where the video is incidental?