The Web Original namespace -- is it necessary?

Then that shouldn't be a mark against Web Original or Web Fiction having only a couple of pages that it is necessary for, either, should it?

But that's not the point. The reason why I suggested cutting the WebOriginal/ namespace is because it attracts a lot of misuse (as can be seen in Sandbox.Web Original Wick Sorting), and because the few pages that do qualify for it (memes, tournaments, social media stuff) are of questionable tropability.

Also, even if WebFiction/ were to be launched (it probably won't, considering the negative reaction to the idea), it's not just "a couple of pages", but 100+ of them.

I'm not seeing why the cleanup thread isn't sufficient to deal with that though. Why do we need to go scorched earth on the whole namespace when there are legitimate works that fit it?

Edited by Orbiting on Aug 12th 2022 at 10:11:19 AM

I've thought we're not scorching the namespace but moving works to a more appropriate ones, and the point here is that Web Fiction/ would sound better because same-named Web Original is a giant catalog and not a medium index.

Think of it like when TRS notices that a trope is being misused. What do we do to prevent that from happening in the future? Rename? Merge?

I split this off because this is where that kind of discussion goes. This is where the Wiki/ and LightNovel/ namespaces got their threads, after all. Plus, I get more of a response this way.

I'm just hearing the discussion, seeing the points people make for or against this; we'll eventually decide what to do with a crowner, but it's still a bit early for that.

Okay, thank you. (If you posted that before, I missed it, sorry.) I feel less obliged to keep arguing that not all works in Web Original can be moved to other namespaces now.

I am, however, more confused about what's being argued about. Web Original is misused and deprecating it makes sense. The general reaction is against Web Fiction. What happens to those 100+ works then? Some of them can probably fit into Literature/ but dumping them all there just because "they're all text-based" is absurd. (Should we move Zork and AI Dungeon 2 into Literature as well then? Choose-your-own-adventures came in book form first after all...) Or does the opposition to Web Fiction just mean we're looking for a different new namespace to put them in? I'm increasingly convincing myself that Interactive Fiction and Interactive Comics should share one, but that still leaves out things like 17776 so Web Fiction still seems like the best option.

I'm still not convinced that Web Original needs anything more than a clean-up. I'd only vote to depreciate it if we were making a new namespace (like Web Fiction) to put the works that don't fit anywhere else... but I don't see how that new namespace wouldn't be misused the same way Web Original is, so I dount it would actuallysolve anything.

I mean, it's already technically deprecated, but kept around just for the edge cases.

If it's kept around for works, even a small number, then it doesn't sound depreciated.

But like, the works it's kept around for are also things that aren't actually necessarily tropeworthy, like memes...

But it's also kept around for things like 17776, which definitely are tropeworthy.

There's also Original Character Tournament, the namespace of which had some discussion on the Roleplay cleanup thread. I took the position that as there's no actual interaction between the participants and no one needs to actually acknowledge the contributions of others as 'cannon' in their creations, they differ significantly enough from traditional roleplays that they don't really belong in the same namespace.

Edited by Orbiting on Aug 12th 2022 at 4:11:38 AM

I mean, that's assuming we accept that roleplays are even tropeworthy in the first place, which has been debated before with consensus actually leaning toward "not tropeworthy". (That thread started out about the audience reaction dilemma, but soon expanded)

Sure, there are a few oddities like 17776, but is it worth keeping an entire namespace around when it ultimately just attracts a jumbled mess of an inconsistent usage?

That discussion seems to be primarily about if roleplay pages can have audience reactions when the pages for them are mostly made by and for the people involved in them, not that they can't have pages at all. I'm not sure what you mean by it starting out being about that but expanding outwards, as it's only 2 pages long and ended pretty quickly. I would strongly disagree with the assertion that roleplays aren't tropeworthy, period. They're fictional, narrative works.

Edited by Orbiting on Aug 12th 2022 at 5:00:50 AM

I mean, I just reread the discussion, pretty quickly the question was raised about if roleplays are considered "published works", and most people agreed that they don't exist to be read by an audience, they're for the fun of the players but that doesn't mean they're something we can discuss on this site. Most of them aren't public and the ones that are technically public aren't intended for audiences anyway.

Like yes it was a short conversation but my point is that the issue was raised and the general opinion at the time it was raised is that roleplays aren't actually something we should be troping. So like... it just influences my opinion further that the Web Original namespace is just a garbled mess of mostly-untropeworthy things and a handful of things that are just too weird to go anywhere else, but like a simple Mixed Medium/ namespace would cover a lot of it handily.

Okay, so after musing it over for a while, looking over the arguments on whether we should split works into WebFiction/ or just lump them into Literature/, I will argue towards the former action.

Then why do we have Webcomic/ separate from ComicBook/, then?

That's not a rhetorical question, there's actually a reason for it: to me, the reason why is because they have their own tropes, genres and styles that separate them from print comics.

The same principle applies to web-made literature. Creepypasta, for example, is a genre that got its start on the internet. Other works that I've already pointed to, such as AIIM, Unichat or Candle Cove are works that would only make sense on the internet, since they are trying to imitate the style of chatrooms, or I Like Monkeys, which is an e-mail story. There's the oft-cited 17776, and similar works like Xenogears: A Rope of Robots, which are multimedia (consisting of text and images, and sometimes videos and Flash files) but use the medium to tell a linear plot. Stories like Steelshod would also not work as books due to their subject matter (in this case, an adaptation of the events that took place in someone's Dungeons & Dragons game).

Edited by FernandoLemon on Aug 22nd 2022 at 7:22:48 AM

If the work has tropes, it needs a namespace, so the question is just where to put them if the namespace it's currently in is misused.

And this is what I alluded to when I mentioned "wastebasket taxon" - we need a place to put miscellaneous platypi like 17776 that don't fit anywhere else so we can trope them until we figure out if they can go, either if they aren't terribly different from existing media (like web serial novels going into Literature/) or if there are other works like it that collectively define a new form (like ARG/). That may very well look like misuse for any other namespace - it seems to me that Web Original has been serving this purpose by default, by being the only thing suitable for many of them, except it's all just accumulated and made a mess without being given a proper examination until now. The name actively invites troping things out of our scope, so it should be changed, but something has to fill the same basic function.

(I'm also suspicious of the argument that roleplays not being intended for a large audience makes them untropeable, when we have pages for the work of Creator.Franz Kafka and Creator.Emily Dickinson.)

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Aug 12th 2022 at 12:28:56 PM

Without derailing this too much, in regards to your last point: The difference is that their works were still published and read by a wide audience, whereas a roleplay is pretty much never going to be "officially published" in any manner. Like, we can and should have a wider discussion about the RP thing, but my stance is one many other people took at the time of the last discussion.

Oh also, I didn't mention it because I thought it was obvious, but the suggested namespace doesn't have to be called WebFiction/, that's just a random name I came up with. I'm open to more suggestions.

...that's true of a lot of web media, though. Like, almost everything on AlternateHistory.com is published as closed forum threads you can't see without an account.

Okay. Is the name generally objectionable, though? My impression has been that the argument against is mainly that it isn't necessary at all, not that it's a good idea but needs a different name. But to pick a good name we need to look at the kinds of works it's meant to be for and whether or not they're tropeworthy... which keeps getting into discussions that we're apparently not meant to have on this thread.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Aug 12th 2022 at 1:13:15 PM

I mean seeing as I once suggested that those forum threads are technically Roleplays anyway that's not anything that fazes me :P

Like I said, we should make another thread for this, it's getting off topic when the main reason I brought it up was to point out that one of the mentioned Web Original works might not qualify as tropeworthy if other roleplays don't.

True, true, but then we run into another problem. It's not totally clear the kinds of works this namespace is for, either. So we're going to have to define a scope either way, unless we just torch everything.

Edited by FernandoLemon on Aug 12th 2022 at 9:23:01 AM

It sounds like an argument over There Is No Such Thing as Notability, which I agree is a much broader topic than deciding what to do with a namespace. Okay, let's back up to here:

So what do you want to do with the "oddities", then, exactly, since that is on-topic? I can support a designated Oddity/ namespace.

I agree with your contrasting web fiction with literature in the same way webcomics aren't comics, and I can think of at least three specific ways which different works may use multiple of - use of multimedia distributed in a variety of locations (similar to ARGs), non-linear narrative structures over which the audience has some degree of control (similar to video games, gamebooks, tabletop rpgs, and ergodic literature), and full-fledged community-driven or even community-created storytelling (similar to mythology and tabletop rpgs). Microfiction might be worth considering too. If Web Fiction doesn't happen, I also think interactive fiction should have its own namespace, and possibly should anyway.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Aug 12th 2022 at 3:43:58 PM

I mean, I mentioned at one point that making something like a Mixed Media namespace would cover that work without covering the other far more questionable works.

ARG is a reasonable namespace because by definition it is difficult to fit them into a particular media category. At least, I can't think of any solution to that problem that doesn't involve creating even more vagueness. I suppose we could use Multimedia as a catch-all...

If visual novels are distinct enough from video games to warrant their own namespace, so is interactive fiction.

As for web stuff that doesn't properly fit in any existing namespace, how do ye feel about calling it Unclassifiable/?

If we do make such a namespace, I figure we should periodically audit it in case anything has been incorrectly placed in it, and also to see if anything in it has become common enough to warrant a distinct namespace of its own.

Edited by VampireBuddha on Aug 13th 2022 at 5:20:01 PM

Hm, perhaps I'd be willing to consider Multimedia/ if we get enough examples for it. Right now, I can only think of four: 17776, Cat Ghost, Ice Scream and The Wyoming Incident, and that last one could go into ARG/ just as well.