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This thread's purpose is to discuss issues within the TLP community and site culture as well as propose solutions to said issues.

Please do not use this thread to report or call out specific users or TLP drafts on this thread. You can make a Ask The Tropers query on the issue, holler, or PM a mod (the first of the three being preferable).

     Original OP 
I've been discussing with Warjay on DMs over the problematic issues of the TLP community as a whole, and I've started noticing this pattern from this draft. Based on the earlier Mario Pissing and Gay incidents, as well as observing the behavior of regulars in general, here are some issues I need to address.
  • The community is too bomb-happy. By that, I mean, when a stub draft is proposed, users are way to quick to drop the bombs the moment it's available, and this creates a feedback loop where other users are encouraged to drop bombs as well. It gets to the point where the purpose of dropping bombs to offset hats is lost, and people care more about raising the bomb count than anything else.
  • The community is unwilling to teach inexperienced sponsors. All too often, I've seen regulars not even trying to teach sponsors the steps needed to improve, and instead, will just give blunt statements that do nothing to help at all. (Ex: "No description! No examples! Bombing for lack of effort!")
  • The overall rudeness of regulars. From my observations, most of the regulars are very prone to delving into snarky and sarcastic comments that condemn sponsors, and this is only creating an unwelcoming, toxic environment.

This needs to be fixed because, from the looks of it, those who were not banned from the 5T incident or didn't participate at all didn't get the memo that this type of mentality is very toxic and is what leads to incidents like that in the first place.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Nov 30th 2023 at 9:20:46 AM

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
crazysamaritan NaNo 4328 / 50,000 from Lupin III Since: Apr, 2010
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
#277: Jun 2nd 2021 at 9:20:41 AM

The original post is linked on the previous page, but these are some ideas that I had been working on, with thanks to a number of tropers who contributed to the discussion in other threads:

  • Turn TLP 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.
    • If we can't get this functionality easily, then the votes don't have to be tied to comments. We at least have vote visibility now.
  • 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 (are not longer greyed out) 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.
    • Fighteer's recent post suggested that the discard option might be a moderator/engineer-only power, but right now I still lean towards allowing all editors access as long as mods/jinns can restore.

Based on some of the recent discussion, the evaluation stage being called "countdown" is probably a good/fun idea.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
WarJay77 Bonnie's Artistic Cousin from The Void (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
#278: Jun 4th 2021 at 6:25:34 PM

We're gonna need a mod discard here. It's a stub made by a banned troper, and is attracting mass-bombing and popcorning.

Current Project: The Team
WarJay77 Bonnie's Artistic Cousin from The Void (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
#279: Jun 23rd 2021 at 9:44:35 AM

Sigh. We have yet another draft attracting bombs and snark here. Discard please?

Current Project: The Team
Willbyr Hi (Y2K) Relationship Status: With my statistically significant other
mightymewtron Angry babby from New New York Since: Oct, 2012 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
Angry babby
#281: Jun 23rd 2021 at 11:49:43 AM

"There's no reason to add more than five bombs at this point"

[draft gets at least two more bombs after I post that comment]

Sigh. It'd be neat if there was some sort of coding change to make the bombs and hats cap out at five, with hats just taking away a bomb and bombs just taking away a hat, but that's probably tricky to fix.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
Piterpicher Veteran Editor IV from Poland, for real (Series 2) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Veteran Editor IV
#282: Jun 23rd 2021 at 12:08:36 PM

That sounds impractical, honestly, and I do believe 5 net hats vs 20 for instance provide an important difference of confidence, a larger pool of people who probably do have at least somewhat different standards can show. I prefer what I came up with on We're Improving the TLP: if a draft reached 50 net bombs, it would be nuked instantly, without needing a moderator (no real draft would reach that amount and it would be difficult for it to be done it bad faith these days).

Edited by Piterpicher on Jun 23rd 2021 at 9:14:18 PM

Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)
WarJay77 Bonnie's Artistic Cousin from The Void (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
#283: Jun 23rd 2021 at 12:16:13 PM

My idea is for the cap to gradually increase depending on net count. So if there's no hats you'd only be able to have 5 bombs, if there's one hat then 6 bombs, and so on. Meanwhile that 6-bomb draft would be able to get up to 11 hats.

My concern is that in trying to make some sort of statement people are essentially bullying draft makers. Yes, the draft was bad, but after a while the amount of bombs and comments were just petty and pointless. People would rather dogpile stubs than actually give constructive feedback to drafts in need, and its infuriating.

Current Project: The Team
RustBeard Since: Sep, 2016
#284: Jun 23rd 2021 at 12:19:22 PM

Why don't we have a waiting period (say 24 hours) to add hats or bombs? No draft is launch ready in the first day and I think there are plenty of bad drafts that could be salvaged if they weren't hit with so many bombs.

crazysamaritan NaNo 4328 / 50,000 from Lupin III Since: Apr, 2010
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
#285: Jun 23rd 2021 at 3:24:14 PM

That's essentially the "two-stage process: drafting and evaluating" that I suggested earlier, although you're implying a timed changeover while I wanted a toggle.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
DivineFlame100 Since: Mar, 2014 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#286: Jun 23rd 2021 at 3:39:29 PM

> "People would rather dogpile stubs than actually give constructive feedback to drafts in need, and its infuriating."

Sadly, this has been the norm in TLP ever since the Fast Eddie days, and unless the mods rule TLP with an iron fist and strong-arm the dogpiling users with threats of suspension directly (which is also a bad thing so don't take that as a suggestion), it's nearly impossible to convince these people otherwise. The excessive bombing, the dogpiling, the popcorning. To them, it's not just normal, but actually ingrained in their cultural mindset. Changing that meta will probably take a really long time.

WarJay77 Bonnie's Artistic Cousin from The Void (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
#287: Jun 23rd 2021 at 6:27:28 PM

Is that true? Because in the Discard Project we've been nuking hundreds of ancient stub drafts that flew under the radar for at least a decade. This whole "dogpile bad drafts" thing seems like a fairly new development, as standards have become much higher and people are more willing to actually discard things.

Current Project: The Team
RustBeard Since: Sep, 2016
#288: Jun 23rd 2021 at 8:11:40 PM

I've only really noticed poor drafts being dogpiled after the whole "Mario Pissing" and "Gay" incidents. In both cases people were trying to break the record for most bombed drafts.

It seems like every time someone starts a work draft, people comment that works are a free launch, which I kind of think discourages people from doing work drafts. I wonder if we could make a separate launch pad for work pages.

mightymewtron Angry babby from New New York Since: Oct, 2012 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
Angry babby
#289: Jun 23rd 2021 at 8:14:39 PM

[up]I'm seeing fewer people post that page recently because they always get reminded that it's not the way you reference the page. I even put the misunderstanding of that page on Square Peg, Round Trope.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
WarJay77 Bonnie's Artistic Cousin from The Void (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
#290: Jun 23rd 2021 at 8:17:13 PM

Well, that issue is one that's been going on for a few years. I remember a case of someone being suspended over it.

Mods can see who's been mass-bombing drafts, right? If there's any tropers in particular who continuously dogpile, is there any chance we can talk to them directly?

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 23rd 2021 at 11:17:52 AM

Current Project: The Team
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#291: Jun 24th 2021 at 12:30:32 AM

No, we can only see who bombs a specific draft.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
WarJay77 Bonnie's Artistic Cousin from The Void (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
#292: Jun 24th 2021 at 12:41:17 AM

That's what I mean. You guys can compare the bombs of these drafts to find repeat offenders.

Current Project: The Team
Willbyr Hi (Y2K) Relationship Status: With my statistically significant other
Zyffyr from Portland, Oregon Since: Apr, 2010 Relationship Status: Complex: I'm real, they are imaginary
#294: Jun 24th 2021 at 2:39:30 PM

One other crazy idea is to ask whether the software can perform some basic quality checking before launch. Say count the number of bullets (at least 24?) and the number of words that aren't part of a link (4?) per bullet to block drafts with obviously too low example numbers or obvious ZCE.

I know it has been a couple weeks, and the first half of this has been discussed. The second half (counting non-link words) would prevent anyone from launching a new index.

crazysamaritan NaNo 4328 / 50,000 from Lupin III Since: Apr, 2010
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
#295: Jun 24th 2021 at 11:10:40 PM

[edit:misread]

Edited by crazysamaritan on Jun 24th 2021 at 2:11:10 PM

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Shadow8411 Since: Jul, 2019
#296: Jun 27th 2021 at 9:49:35 AM

This draft has already amassed twice the number of bombs needed to discard it (and in less than 24 hours). The draft is a stub with no examples and spelling and grammar issues galorenote . The troper who made the draft has already been suspended.

mightymewtron Angry babby from New New York Since: Oct, 2012 Relationship Status: THIS CONCEPT OF 'WUV' CONFUSES AND INFURIATES US!
Angry babby
#297: Jun 27th 2021 at 10:59:39 AM

What sucks is that some others have found worth in the draft idea, but of course it just becomes a bombfest.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
ShinyCottonCandy Industrious Incisors from Sinnoh (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Who needs love when you have waffles?
Industrious Incisors
#298: Jun 27th 2021 at 11:03:20 AM

It can't have helped that the OP disappeared after the initial write up and only the smallest of editing... Or their suspension just came that quickly.

Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Jun 27th 2021 at 2:05:23 PM

SoundCloud
WarJay77 Bonnie's Artistic Cousin from The Void (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Bonnie's Artistic Cousin
#299: Jun 27th 2021 at 11:11:35 AM

[up] Even then, we can't forget the fact that sponsors might disappear because of the bombs.

Again, I'd love for the mods to look into this and see which tropers are dogpiling. It's against the rules.

Current Project: The Team
Shadow8411 Since: Jul, 2019
#300: Jun 27th 2021 at 11:47:39 AM

I remember that the bomb I added was either the fifth or sixth one, at which point the draft had one hat (most likely from the draft's own sponsor). After the sixth bomb, that should have been it.

[up][up][up] Good idea for a trope, not-so-good draft. Maybe it should be discarded and yarded?

Edited by Shadow8411 on Jun 27th 2021 at 11:48:09 AM


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