Lowering the thread cap for TRS

A major issue in the Trope Repair Shop is that threads are still stalling out for too long while carrying out page actions, especially wick cleanup, resulting in a chronic backlog in pending TRS threads (some of which have been waiting for over a month) and impeding efforts to fix the huge backlog of problems on the site (Sandbox.Tropes Needing TRS). So far, the consensus at the main discussion is that the thread cap should be lowered again to 75 to motivate tropers to resolve threads more quickly. Implementing the original cap has already shown benefits. IMPORTANT: Note that increasing the thread cap will not solve the problem, since there will be more page actions to carry out, and due to the Jevons paradox there will be an increase in the volume of pending threads, slowing down the process even more.

Yeah, what TRS needs is:

• Less threads
• More workers

The handful of us that are active in TRS are running ourselves ragged to get things done while the threads keep multiplying. New threads steal the spotlight while old ones wither and die because people lose interest when it's time to do the actual work, meaning only a fraction of the participants are left to try and clean up tropes that might be thousands of wicks in size.

So, I've always been frustrated whenever a ton of new threads would open at once. Not only does it tend to distract people from the other discussions, but it also means we have more to work on and that increases the odds of us reaching burnout.

You missed the Moderator post; we're waiting on admin action to reduce the current cap of 100 to 75.

I think this is still a worthwhile thread though to talk about the things we've been discussing at the policy thread, but in a way that can attract more voices.

Ironically enough, the Trope Repair Shop itself is the one in need of repairing. Anyway, the problem generally comes from stalling; most threads have between 100 to 1,000 wicks that need be cleaned (which already takes its time to do; that is, if there even are people at all doing the cleanup), but it's not uncommon to find tropes with over 10,000 wicks that require cleanup.

A completely wild idea, but it could do the trick - perhaps separate the TRS into "Long Term" and "Short Term", like with the Projects forum? Is that a possibility? If so, at what number of wicks do we draw the line?

Thing is, sometimes a large number of wicks can be purged in a few days if people are really eager to chop it down, while relatively smaller tropes can take months if nobody gives a shit.

It's not the size of the trope but the amount of interest people have.

Agreed. Bi The Way was huge but took less than a week to get dewicked, for example. Others sit at the bottom for years.

I really think the issue is more on the broadcasting side, which we've already discussed at length.

Again, that's where things like Trope Report come into play, since it seemed to be a good broadcasting tool for changes/efforts on the wiki. Maybe bringing it back could help get more hands into these wick cleaning/TRS efforts.

It's hard because I'm at the point now where I feel guilty choosing one thread over another. Like I can only spend so much time a week doing wick cleaning before my brain starts to melt, so I have to make decisions, but I know that spending the effort on one trope means I won't be contributing to another, and moreso if there's other projects beyond TRS that have my attention. I can't do everything at once, but when I choose something specific to work on I feel like I'm neglecting the rest of the wiki, which is absurd, because I'm only one person who uses this site as a hobby.

Basically, I hate feeling like I need to somehow spend all my free time cleaning up every page on the wiki or else feel guilty for choosing one task over another. Like, if I'm doing wick cleanups, I often find pages in abysmal condition, but if I stopped to spend time cleaning each of them, I'd only be able to get like 3 wicks done.

So, that's where I stand. I feel guilty for not being able to do more, while other people here ^note on the wiki in general, not this thread specifically don't contribute to cleanups at all and so that's why TRS is in the state that it is. You got some people taking on so much work so consistently that we're driving ourselves mad, and then a majority of the wiki that doesn't pitch in at all. It's a few people taking on tasks to improve the entire wiki, so it does lead to quick burnout and certain threads dying out in order to try and prioritize things, because we're all just human.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 7th 2020 at 7:26:22 AM

Yeah, I feel you. I keep thinking that if every troper online any given moment just cleaned five wicks some big cleanup projects would be done in half an hour.

But I digress. Not something a thread cap change would necessarily solve, although I support it.

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 7th 2020 at 6:49:17 AM

I mean, I've always been jealous of the CM / MB threads because their participation rates are insane and if everyone on those threads also contributed equally as hard to TRS or cleanup work, things would be done so much faster.

But yeah. Thread cap doesn't fix that, but it would at least mean we have less to split our efforts between, making things easier for the few of us who do get involved.

It's like our equivalent to Wikipedia's donation drives. "If everyone donated 5 bucks, this drive would be over in 30 minutes," that giant banner says. That's why some public announcement on Yack Fest wouldn't be bad.

I mean, I guess Bi The Way was easier to do because it was dewicking rather than cleanup; simply deleting the wicks was all that needed to be done. But when the trope is redefined and only the misuse should be cut, that's when things get messy.

Me, I sometimes wonder if between the various TRS and projects fora we are dispersing attention too much. I also think that we need to deal with dormant projects threads and resolved ones.

There's a project morgue, right? I wouldn't mind getting rid of some of the project threads if they haven't been touched in the past year or so, though I'm not 100% sure how that'd help this specific issue- it's not like the dormant projects steal anyone's attention.

The eternal problem is getting people to give a shit. CM and MB get a lot of attention because they involve a lot of arguing about characters with some undertones of dick measuring, which people find fun. Most TRS discussions are bureaucratic and boring and won't draw a lot of talk or volunteers unless the trope is prestigious in some form, because nobody cares otherwise.

Ultimately, we are fighting against apathy.

Edited by Karxrida on Oct 8th 2020 at 3:08:55 AM

I mean...I find these things fun. I like talking about these things far more than if that one villain in a creepypasta has personality or not, which is why I only post on the CM thread when I have to. Meanwhile, I get really interested in discussions about improving the wiki and I love discussing tropes and having actual debates with people. They're fun. That's why I do it. I wouldn't be in TRS if I didn't find the discourse interesting.

I just wish other people did too, I guess. But even then, the bigger issue is that people lose interest when the discussion is over- we want to talk about the issues but when it comes time to clean the wicks, we drop like flies.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 8th 2020 at 6:13:28 AM

Then why isn't the Five-Man Band cleanup thread moving?

MacronNotes posted recently in the "observations about the wiki" thread in Yack Fest on how TRS isn't active as it was several years ago when she first joined. Maybe the wiki is so large now that people are stepping away from repairing and cleaning tropes, especially ones that have ten thousand wicks.

Or, maybe it's because our standards for thread-creation is higher than it was, as is our standards for what makes tropes good.

A lot of people have this negative perception of TRS as beaurocratic and full of assholes who aren't friendly to newcomers, but in my experience only the first one if those is true because it has to be. People have admitted to staying away from it because they're nervous to be involved.

And, I mean, let's be real. The amount of tropers on the fora is a fraction of the amount of tropers there are in general. Only a fraction of that fraction habitually goes to the left-side forums, and only a fraction of those people go to TRS. Many tropers on the forums just choose to post in places like OTC or Yack Fest, where they can just chat about things. A lot of the tropers I see in Fan Games and the like use the wiki specifically for the forum and wouldn't want to come discuss cleaning up tropes.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 8th 2020 at 7:02:04 AM

From what I see, the "maintenance" subforums get a lot more traffic than the Just for Fun subforums get. Forum Games is the only subforum over there that seems to get a decent amount of regular use. Yack Fest is the second most active, but even then there are year-old threads as soon as the second page.

The rest have 3 — 9-year-old threads on their first page.

Okay, then they all go to OTC and the medium-specific forums and the like.

A lot of threads got finished today, we're on a good track.

I do feel that TRS is too bureaucratic. In particular, I feel like the requirements for a thread are too strict, since pages like String Theory (unrelated to actual string theory) can get stuck at suboptimal names if there is no actual misuse. On Wiki/{Wikipedia}}, we don't decline requests on procedural grounds, though lack of evidence can be used as an argument against the nominator.

I find a similar problem in other cleanup threads, particularly the Real Life section maintenance thread, where tropes with problematic RL sections will be reported, but nobody pays attention and they are never nominated on the crowner. For instance, No Ontological Inertia languished on a post for nearly 6 months before I noticed that there was consensus to add it to the crowner. I'd say TV Tropes needs to become less bureaucratic. Something like WP:BOLD for actions that are likely to be uncontroversial.

(I honestly like the name String Theory. It’s kinda punny.)

The problem is that the workforce is spread so thin and the work is hard, so the bureaucracy is in there to make sure that this workforce is putting their efforts towards problems that have proven to be real and important.

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 14th 2020 at 1:25:45 PM

The thread requirements have to be strict, because TRS takes a ton of work and the last thing we need is to bog things down by fixing things that aren't actually broken when the wiki is littered with problems that need immediate cleaning.

That's what people seem to keep overlooking. The TRS requires the hard work of tropers who are already scrambling to get things done. These tropers aren't going to want to devote their time and energy to things that aren't harming the wiki, not when so many other things need to be fixed. I hate this idea that we should just abandon our standards and work on things that don't need immediate attention, when pretty much every work page is a cesspool of editing mistakes and when a ton of the most popular tropes are being misused to the point of losing all meaning, and when there's only a few of us actually doing the work.

So in essence, it's not that TVT is too beaurocratic, it's that we have too few tropers trying to fix this gigantic, ever-growing wiki, where half the time we're just trying to play catch up because issues appear faster than we can fix them. As for the RL thread, yeah, that thread needs help, but it's not about beaurocracy, it's about disorganization- an issue facing almost every cleanup thread that isn't CM/MB.