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(Edited Mar 28 2024, adding bullet about OTC and amending layout a little)
Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 11th 2024 at 3:20:25 AM
I'll be completely honest: the rule is surgically targeted at people who raid us from other wikis. I still can't figure out why CM and MB get such... fanatical attention, but I do know how to handle it.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Neither can I man, neither can I - but at least there's a potential solution now. Thanks again for stepping in like that, things got heated really fucking fast
It is really only CM as far as I can tell. MB really doesn't get near that level of fanaticism. I think the reason might be CM has Pure Evil to compare to on the Villains Wiki but MB doesn't have a direct comparison.
Think you're tough because you made it through Lord of the Rings? Real men survive The Silmarillion.Thing is that because there's so much overlap between the threads, MB has its own fair share of ban evaders that insist on making their way over there - granted it's nowhere near as many, but it's enough.
It could also be a matter of popularity the CM trope is way more popular than the MB trope.
Right, the other purpose of the rule is that it can help carve out ban evaders, and there is a lot of overlap in participation between those threads.
I want to be very clear: we are applying it narrowly. I reviewed the last five or ten pages of the CM thread, saw who participated in that cursed discussion from earlier, checked all accounts for age and participation quality, then applied suspensions to those who met the following criteria:
- Recently registered
- Near-zero posts outside of the CM and MB topics
- Near-zero wiki edits
This was a surgical strike, not a wide net, and most participants are clearly in good-faith and need not worry.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"There is one user I kind of want to speak up for with that in mind. Yobaby Colin was also suspended. The thing is though he has been a contributor to the CM and MB threads for a while. He also isn't a user from one of the wikis at least from what I can tell.
Edited by Ordeaux26 on Jun 3rd 2022 at 9:11:49 AM
Yeah, but how can we tell that? I am not going to snoop around over there, and our policy is that behavior on other sites is not relevant to TV Tropes unless it crosses into attacking people here. Their account fit the profile. If they want to appeal, they can do so in Edit Banned.
I know you participate "over there", Ordeaux, and I've tried hard not to hold that against you, but you're putting us in a very difficult position. I really don't want to be in a war, but the war is coming to us and we need to protect our interests.
Edited by Fighteer on Jun 3rd 2022 at 12:15:09 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"That is fair. I can see they are already editing some more so the problem will probably take care of itself.
I don't really get what you mean by that. What position am I specifically putting you in?
Edited by Ordeaux26 on Jun 3rd 2022 at 9:14:57 AM
You're sort of the flagship poster of "I can participate productively on both sites", and you are clearly familiar with other tropers who do so as well. So it would be very easy for us to lean on you to out people who aren't participating in good faith, but I refuse to do that.
What I want, viscerally, is to ban anyone who also uses those other sites, but I know that can't work. This is about TV Tropes participation and TV Tropes rules, full stop.
Edited by Fighteer on Jun 3rd 2022 at 12:18:09 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Alright, that does make sense. I do try to not let my role on the other site influence my judgment and just try to go off my own opinions. It is understandable you wouldn't want to turn to me for that though.
I can't really say I agree with that idea but I don't really want to go further.
...Hey, any chance this is connected to this
TLP draft that got added today? The person who made it only had one edit prior to this, after all.
Curious: do things like troper pages and sandboxes count as edits towards this limit? Because that seems rife for potential Loophole Abuse.
Ah, I thought it was like, a hard-coded thing.
Edited by mightymewtron on Jun 3rd 2022 at 1:35:29 PM
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.![]()
Ummmmmmmmm...........
Well, that user is getting a suspension and that draft is getting nuked. As for any hypothetical connection to recent events, I'll leave that up to the judgment of each observer.
I said quality wiki contributions, and editing one's own troper page is absolutely not that. CM sandboxes are also tied directly to the CM topic, so I'd like to see participation beyond this one very specific trope.
Edited to add: The reason I'm suspicious of people who go straight into the CM topic is that we have a very large wiki. Someone jumping immediately into that topic wouldn't have organically discovered it via Google search. They were probably directed there from other sites that pay us a lot of attention. This is automatically problematic, because our standards are not their standards.
Edited by Fighteer on Jun 3rd 2022 at 12:42:33 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Welp, to the surprise of precisely no one, they're a VW member
I have seen them show up on the NPE wiki a few times as well, though they aren't one of our more active members so I kind of forgot.
Seriously, this is why I feel paranoid about new people in the CM and MB topics. This exact thing. I have faith that it's not organized raiding: that these sites are not shipping people over here to do shit like this. But does it really matter from our perspective?
I'm exercising a great deal of restraint to not go off on one right now.
Edited by Fighteer on Jun 3rd 2022 at 12:47:46 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I do understand your perspective for sure. It is annoying for me as well as I can't control what our users decide to do on their own which leads to stuff like this happening sometimes.
...Your other wikis don't have drama importation rules? Maybe you should, like... talk to the other mods about that, because as a former moderator myself I just don't believe that this situation is impossible to resolve. At the very least, make it clear that trying to meddle here bad.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallWe do have rules about importing drama into our wikis but not with importing drama from are wikis to other ones. Though it could be a good idea to consider changing that.
Yeah, anti-brigading rules would be useful to keep in place, even if they're harder to enforce. A lot of subreddits have those, after all.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.I think it is a good idea to have drama importation rules work both ways, yes.
And you can always remind your own users that other wikis/forums will have different expectations of them, and that if they are serious about participating on TV Tropes, it is best to start regularly editing on the wiki side before diving into specific forum threads.
Hope shines brightest in the darkest timesI think the one thing I was worried about with these new rules is that it doesn't account for would-be tropers with few contributions who've lurked the forums and now want to help. That was me—I didn't have an account until late 2019, and had few edits prior to beginning my participation on the forums in late 2020. I'm aware these new rules do not currently affect me as Macron said due to the fact that I'm a TRS/Projects regular, but I'm mainly concerned about any other tropers who may have similar experiences to me.
Worth noting that I was a regular reader of TV Tropes prior to become a troper/projects regular so I at least had some knowledge of the site.
Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

Yeah, this seems specific to things like Projects and TRS, which don't work very well when people dive in head first and start suggesting alterations when they don't know how the wiki works.
Especially where the CM thread is concerned.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall