Wiki and Forum Policy - General Discussion

I am not really sure whats to be done with it? The only reason people were bombing it was because it was a work page and that it didn't look good when it was first submitted in. It looks better now and I don't see good reason to discard it. At least the sponsor is receptive of the feedback they have been given. Unfortunately, work pages usually get negative attention on the TLP because most people don't know that they are allowed.

I think I will tell people to stop mass bombing though

Edited by MacronNotes on Jan 1st 2022 at 1:47:09 PM

Why have the VideoGame.Earth Bound pages been deleted so randomly? Since the page is being moved to VideoGame.Earth Bound 1994 to disambiguate from VideoGame.Earthbound 1983, I have cutlisted all subpages with a link to their new locations in the cut reason, but a bunch of cuts were accepted (Trivia.Earth Bound, Haiku.Earth Bound, Laconic.Earth Bound, etc.) while others were denied (YMMV.Earth Bound, Heartwarming.Earth Bound, AwesomeMusic.Earth Bound etc.) with no rhyme or reason. Surely the inbounds would be caught since the new pages are linked to? Can I request a re-cut?

Edited by Piterpicher on Jan 2nd 2022 at 4:40:30 PM

Laconic and Trivia have autoindexes that get broken if you add a redirect, so they get cut even if there are a lot of inbounds. When the page is a redirect or has many thousands of inbounds, a cut request is likely to be denied.

The cut reason link is fine and dandy but it's not inherently better than a redirect.

One thing a cut subpage has inherently better over a redirect is that it at least slightly lowers the number of pages, slightly easing inflation for stuff like Wick in the future. besides, what if I wanted to make something like YMMV.Earthbound 1983 (just did). then the YMMV.Earth Bound page redirecting to 1994 would be stupid, and I don't think disambiguating subpages is needed.

Edited by Piterpicher on Jan 2nd 2022 at 7:20:27 PM

Do we really need to mass-rewrite entire examples all over for the sake of inconveniencing ban evaders? (Ban-Evader Example Rewrites)

More generally, I've noticed this website has a tendency to put a lot of attention to what people shouldn't be doing. Again, the forum rules are full of this, and Ask The Tropers—the most prominent sidebar link—is used to report edit wars a lot of the time.

The wiki maintinence part of the site might just Accentuate the Negative. How often do you see this website's counterpart to Wikipedia's Barnstars?

Before I get more into my somewhat disorganized personal takes, I should recognize that I'm speaking as somebody with much less experience moderating a website like this.

Since a wiki is based around collaboration I think some consideration needs to be done about whether this is the right way to approach things. I suspect a lot of this is kept around from the Fast Eddie days where the website was more heavily influenced by his vision.

The tone taken by the rules and their enforcement could be seen as provocative, interrogative, or even arrogant. It makes me wonder how many people in the Edit Banned thread could be persuaded if the conversations went in a more pleasant direction, less "in the spotlight", or whatever that may be. I assumed the thread was meant to be used as a mediator type of thread, but the ban evader callout posts and "closing the door behind you" remarks make me wonder otherwise.

And since it's somewhat relevant, here's a sidenote on ban evasion:

I wonder if I could actually make it through the Edit Banned thread if I got suspended. I prefer to think posts like this one are helping the community, but there's a slight doubt that what I've posted could be considered a type of troublemaking that would just escalate.

If the mods don't like the Edit Banned thread and the users don't like that thread, why do we have it? I don't have a solution to propose right now, but it may be worth considering if there are better alternatives to these super-old TV Tropes traditions.

I don't mind the "ban evasion = instaban" policy because most people who attempt ban evasion have a very specific and annoying wonk they want to bring here and have no desire to actually explain and improve themselves.

I do, however, agree that the rewriting policy for ban evasion feels a bit much, if only because there are cases where we just can't do that, like when they properly delete an example. If they're breaking the rules then we obviously fix that, but the idea that we have to delete anything made by a ban evader, even totally valid edits, actually feels a bit antithetical to the idea that this is a wiki and thus nobody owns an example or a page.

I'm more of an opinion that if you're banned, you just don't ban evade, because why would you. But the idea of "automatically undo edits written by unauthorized editor" is not something I clearly understood, if an edit is something everyone can agree with just leave it, it's not like that user has ownership on it.

Yeah, the ban evader thing has more to do with the fact that, by ban evading, someone basically proves they have zero intention of playing by the rules. So many evaders get caught specifically because they repeat their old mistakes, to the point where ban evaders lacking any sort of self awareness has basically become a meme. Like, these people are so compelled to keep making their mistakes even knowing it'll get them suspended- they simply cannot be trusted. The only exception I can see is if it's like several years later and the evading account hasn't made any mistakes since being made, as in that case I think a clean slate is completely fair. While I have had experience ban evading on other websites, it was either on websites that could not care less, or ones that banned me for dumb reasons- TV Tropes tends to be a lot better at only suspending people who actually earned it in some way, and the ban evasion here just signifies a refusal to actually learn the rules.

I can't touch too much on the reversion policy since I have some mixed feelings about it (though I think the thread has only made things worse since everything is public and certain sites have been revealed to stalk the sandbox), but for the rest of it, I mean... It's sort of hard not to Accentuate the Negative here. ATT is the place for reports and questions, and those reports are always going to be about someone misbehaving. If someone doesn't get reported, it means they're doing a good job and doesn't need any extra attention.

I can agree that Edit Banned is flawed, but moreso in execution than in principle. I think such a thing is way better than the way I see bans handled on any other site, where the staff have no obligation to even discuss it with you, let alone hear you out if you want to remove the suspension. I once got suspended from some forums for making a harmless The Room reference where I used "moderators" in place of "Lisa" in the famous "tearing me apart" quote, and when I emailed them they basically told me to suck it up because they weren't lifting it. Being able to actually discuss things with the mods and have it be completely public is a blessing in disguise I think, since if the terms of your ban are unfair, the community will see that and come to your aid (which has happened at least once before from what I can remember). The issues I have with it are that a lot of cases just aren't... handled all that well? Some people get slaps on the wrist for things that take other people months to resolve, while other people are only told about part of the issue with their edits, or are outright mislead and punished for getting angry about it (Betoniarz comes to mind). If the process was just handled better, and things were a little more consistent and professional, it would probably seem a lot less scary to people.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 3rd 2022 at 4:31:57 AM

I like the Edit Banned thread because it allows the rest of us to hold the moderators to account on how they deal with situations. We get to see who has been banned, what conditions they are given for returning and then judge if we think the mods are being fair.

That’s better than many sites where everything is hidden away in P Ms and private discussions.

I think the mods could benefit from being a bit less hostile there, but I suspect that’s down to the issue of workload overload. Once the Engineer position is up and running it could be worthwhile for the mods to see if there are a couple people interested in becoming part of the team just to deal with ban appeals.

Looking back, I might have overplayed some of those points. I was not in a good mood when I started writing that.

Yeah, it makes sense that the people who avoid their bans wouldn't be the type of people to learn from their own bans. I suppose my mind jumped to a situation where a ban evader genuinely regrets their mistake, like the exceptional case WarJay mentioned.

I was mainly thinking about High Crate's recent ban for ban evasion, but I don't know enough about that situation to comment on it.

Edited by N1KF on Jan 3rd 2022 at 3:50:43 AM

Yeah, I wouldn't sympathize much with HighCrate there. He literally jumped back into the one part of the site he was suspended for obsessing and being a dick over, and his attitude + suspicious knowledge made it blatantly obvious it was him (at least in hindsight). If he regretted the circumstances that got him banned, he wouldn't have done it again, and that's what we mean when we say ban evaders lack awareness and don't actually attempt to be better.

On the topic of EB being visible, don't see why not, it gives transparency to the "court system", and specific posts are regularly used in ATT as a reference finding evaders or preventing repeat issues.

The moderation itself is not something I see problematic, it reminds me of a teacher who gives you a retry on exams, though the tone is not something I'd call "we just want to talk" like the policy page says.

Having to rewrite good edits made by a ban evader is a PITA, but the rule is there for a good reason: to make ban evasion not worth the effort.

Note that the rule only applies to edits made while ban evading. We don't un-person ban evaders by undoing all their edits, only those edits they made after they were banned.

Think of what would happen if we didn't have such a rule: a banned user could make a new account just to make one edit. That account would be bounced, but the edit would remain. Then they could repeat this for the next edit, and so on, ad nauseam.

The effect would be that banned users could continue editing with just a little more effort, thus making the bans useless.

Edited by GnomeTitan on Jan 3rd 2022 at 11:05:35 AM

tbh, if someone makes "40 alternative accounts" that only make good edits, it sounds like a win for the wiki. But if they ban evade for agenda or vandalism though then sure, screw them.

Also if someone is persistent enough (we know one case), they'll just continue making new accounts without learning grammar and there's nothing really to stop them.

Edited by Amonimus on Jan 3rd 2022 at 1:26:37 PM

TBF, in 90% of cases those edits would need to be cut anyway, even if just because they break the rules in some way.

[quote] Think of what would happen if we didn't have such a rule: a banned user could make a new account just to make one edit. That account would be bounced, but the edit would remain. Then they could repeat this for the next edit, and so on, ad nauseam [/quote]

I think that would only be a problem in case of stuff like hate speech, vandalism and Single Issue Wonking (includes edit wars), all of which will end up getting removed/reverted anyway.

Edited by magnumtropus on Jan 3rd 2022 at 2:44:07 PM

Honestly, a big part of the reason why we have the policies on ban evasion is because many of them are/were so horribly irritating that we unperson them out of spite. In general, handling ban evaders is a bit of a philosophical question more than a practical one...

Usually the reason they get caught is because their edits suck and would need reversion anyway. If they come in and mostly make good edits, we don't usually catch them until they have some big blowup, and then sometimes we have to track down years of edits, some of which have already been reworked by other tropers.

We've had entire tropes launched properly by ban evaders. Kind of awkward to undo stuff like that.

Edited by mightymewtron on Jan 3rd 2022 at 5:59:10 AM

As for the Accentuate the Negative part and lack of barnstars: Editors should give praise to others on the TroperWall/ for their work. I do it often. Would definitely praise you if you had one.

Edited by Piterpicher on Jan 3rd 2022 at 1:53:47 PM

I don't think it makes sense to undo good editing just to spite a ban evader, and doing so is not in the best interest of the wiki.

And if a ban evader seems to do so much good work despite their ban, perhaps it is worth reconsidering the ban.

As for the suspension thread, I think it is a good balance between transparency and protection of the process that a big site like this needs.

Edited by Redmess on Jan 3rd 2022 at 2:16:37 PM

On the subject of High Crate, quite frankly I have to agree on not sympathizing with him. He was quite hostile on the forums at times—I recently was reading old threads out of boredom and his behavior on the thread that instituted the pre-release troping rules was nothing short of obnoxious. I can't say I should have been surprised he tried to ban-evade.

Anyway, on the ban evaders subject I think we should handle their edits on a case-by-case basis. I think blanket undoing everything is flat-out impossible if some of their edits were legitimately helpful. Of course if they go back to doing what they did that got them banned then they can be reverted, and I'm not arguing in any way, shape, or form that they should be allowed to edit again. I'm just saying that it's a bit tricky to undo all of someone's edits when they have made legitimately helpful ones or even launched tropes (I remember Mimic 1990 launched some tropes and that was a ban-evader account.)

As for whether or not this site is too hostile, I actually think something like the Barnstars may be worth having. Encourages people to edit well and assist in site processes. I don't know a lot about it though so take my thoughts with a grain of salt.

Obviously we look at these things on a case-by-case basis, but there are two main angles to consider. First, someone that we have bounced is rarely a "good editor". After all, they got suspended for something and ban evading usually means that whatever it was hadn't been properly addressed. Second, the only way to discourage a serial ban evader is to make sure that they can't get any of their edits to stick. Otherwise we are implicitly rewarding them for their efforts.

If only the badge shop was operational, mods could just gift specific awards badges to outstanding contributors. Not sure if the gifting part still works though.

I agree with that as well.

I wish we knew how to address the problem of ban evaders who take pride in what they do. Like johnnyfog.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jan 3rd 2022 at 9:23:13 AM

Guys: There is a whole list of resolved items in the thread header of the BERT. Those will tell you which edits are worth leaving alone.