The NRLEP and LRLEO criteria

I'm noticing a divide between mods and non-mods over which tropes are eligible to be nominated for NRLEP. Mods insist that only once a trope's RL section becomes a problem with ROCEJ, gossip, or misuse can it be nominated to become NRLEP, but others say that it's better to cut potentially troublesome RL sections before they get to the point that they need cleanup. Dysfunctional Family was the trope at the center of the concern; the current RL section is mostly the kind of gossip that could put it on the crowner but it isn't very long, and there was a divide on whether it should be crownered or just cleaned up and left alone.

My argument in favor of any trope should be able to be nominated is that it's ultimately up to the community to decide whether or not a trope becomes NRLEP - if the community ends up deciding the RL section can stay it stays. I don't think gatekeeping what can end up on the crowner isn't very democratic. If you think something's not a problem, just vote down on the crowner.

Koichi really steals? No dignity.

I'd be fine with nominating items that don't have problems yet if their very concept is problematic. I assume the "don't add it unless it's an issue already" policy is just so we aren't overwhelmed with options to vote on.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Well, for one, framing it as a "mods vs non-mods" issue is inaccurate because there's multiple people who agree that the RL thread should be focusing on maintaining RL sections not just cutting them. That's how we have always done things.

Like I said before, I don't care for RL sections but I don't think a RL section should cut just because someone thinks it "might" cause a problem. Why get rid of examples that are fine just because of something that hasn't happened yet.

I think tropes that are impossible in real life can obviously be crownered but anything else probably needs further analysis.

Edited by MacronNotes on Aug 17th 2022 at 1:36:14 PM

Macron's notes

Meanwhile, I come down on the side that basically all tropes should be NRLEP on the basis that applying tropes to real life is at best distracting and at worst encouraging misuse.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Also because there's an (I believe minority) opinion shared by both that we should remove all real-life troping from the wiki. [ by ftr] If we are keeping some, then we shouldn't forbid examples unless there's a demonstrable problem (TLP having an exception; that process is allowed to proactively forbid examples).

The clean-up thread's purpose is to "clean up" existing problems, not to categorize all trope pages into "allowed/forbidden". Even if it did that, we'd still need the thread to review the "allowed" pages to see if problems have occurred there since the decision was made.

Edited by crazysamaritan on Aug 17th 2022 at 1:58:08 PM

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I'm kind of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" on the issue. Unless the real life section is already gossipy/nonsensical/rife with misuse/etc. or keeps attracting bad entries, the default state of the RL section is "harmless"/"let them have their fun". Crownering items with empty or unproblematic sections is like locking a page because it might get vandalized.

Honestly if all RL examples were to disappear, I wouldn't shed a tear. The amount of natter I tend to see where ppl's fingers just seem to let loose all manner of speculation, the "well actually.." and the like really bug me.

Having said that (and despite not being a mod), I would prefer to just deal with sections on a case by case basis. Having some overarching framework to forbid certain types of tropes just seems like the worst of both worlds.

I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me

I'd be quite happy to see all tropes NRLEP. Since that's probably never going to happen, we might as well just track down and deal with tropes that have problematic Real Life sections.

(Annoyed grunt)

I'm with the position of "Real Life is not a really valid example medium, but until there's a site-wide ban for it I don't really care."

I'd rather have all interesting RL examples be moved to JFF / Truth in Television / trope's Analysis page for "it sounds like it exists only in fiction, but it really does happen" because many author use historical cases for reference in their works. If RL disappears entirely, it'd be difficult to adjust to, but I don't have particular attachements to it.

Regarding NRLEP, I like to think that if a trope fits into one of No Real Life Examples, Please! 7 categories conceptually, it should be there automatically. Those that are in KRLEP don't bother me too much.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 17th 2022 at 9:25:18 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

I guess I'm somewhere in the middle as far as between "keep everything!" or "cut everything!" For some tropes, RL examples can be quite wholesome and informative. And I'm not going to pretend that totally fictional works can't cause people to get into horrific and heated arguments (cough ship wars cough). But it is true that RL is not exactly tropable in the way that works are. Some tropes really can't ever fit into most real life examples (like a lot of the ending tropes - yeah there's stuff like the endings of events and stuff but often that belongs in other namespaces, like Sports for instance.) And, of course, RL troping is the biggest cause of ROCEJ violations. I will say RL sections have brought me more grief in my years on this site than every other medium's examples combined. I just want people to have a good experience on this site, and sometimes RL examples have to go because of that.

Koichi really steals? No dignity.

Lmao, I wouldn't mention the "Sports" namespace, it's basically been agreed that the only tropeworthy sport is Wrestling/ so the rest is all misuse anyway.

I'm not opposed to having RL examples when they're maintained. I feel like people have a lot of negativity bias going on thanks to the cleanup thread; if all you ever look at are the bad ones, yeah, you'll start to convince yourself that these sections are inherently bad even if there's plenty that have never caused problems.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Eh... I'm indifferent to RL examples being on trope pages unless they're actually problematic with either controversial stuff that's ROCEJ or stuff that is just plain impossible/improbable to replicate in RL.

One problem I see is that longer, more contentious RL sections tend to be voted as Keep Real Life Examples more often than non-contentious, shorter ones. I wonder if we need to take further action regarding those sections—a blanket ban wouldn't be popular, so not that, but something.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

Another interesting nugget of thought is that though Real Life isn't tropable, Real Life can have Audience Reactions, right? Like people can think someone or something that isn't connected to a work of fiction can have a Fan Nickname or be Overshadowed by Controversy.

The catch-22, however, is that while they are less controversial in theory, just in that real life isn't being treated like fiction, they attract more controversy in execution. So if there was a a blanket ban on Real Life examples, perhaps it would only apply to tropes, but since most Audience Reactions would attract way too much ROCEJ violations, the vast majority of those would be banned too.

Please elaborate "Real Life can have Audience Reactions", because I can't imagine this being possible the way I think it is currently.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 18th 2022 at 6:03:10 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

In the sense that people can have reactions to things that happen in real life, Real Life can have Audience Reactions. That's kind of axiomatic. But we define audience reactions as exclusive to fictional media in order to prevent the wiki from being carpet-bombed by personal troping - i.e., Troper Tales.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I'm saying that it is more true in theory and something that is valid as a concept, not that it is any less problematic when people type examples.

Tropes aren't a part of Real Life because it doesn't have a set narrative. It is impossible for someone in the real world to be a Big Bad because the real world doesn't have people that are established as good or bad guys. There is no narrative for them to exist, it's just a device for writing and nothing more.

However, someone could look at a speech someone said 50-some years ago and say that is a time-period example of Values Dissonance. Not only is that valid in it that it is subjective, but it is also someone judging what they see. People see stuff both in fiction and in real life, and it is legitimate to call it out in both instances. Now sometimes an Audience Reaction can be about people's reactions to specific narrative tropes and character types, such as Rooting for the Empire and Strawman Has a Point, and those wouldn't be valid, but ones that discuss things from a wholistic point of view are valid feelings towards something. Tropes aren't built on feelings, but reactions are.

Now that being said, they can in practice be even more contentious to put as examples. A lot of them are on NRLEP for a reason.

I am of the opinion that real life examples should not be on this website. Real life is not a story no matter how real we may think it is. I’ve especially seen this problem with tropes related to military and politics.

i would vote to axe real life examples entirely if such a vote were held. i don't think i have ever seen a single real life section on a page that didn't attract bad examples. real life entries are ridiculously prone to shoehorning and general examples in particular. they're outside our scope, yeah, but the primary reason i would be in favor is because they're such an ongoing mess requiring constant cleaning, and that time and effort could be spent improving other things on the wiki.

Why rehash the same argument over and over? There have been multiple recent discussions on RL examples, none of which remotely came close to cutting them as a whole.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

Ehhh... my go to example for a non-problematic real-life section is Short-Lived Leadership, which I'm well aware of the contents of because I compiled all the examples during the TLP... except one that got added later but is still just fine. None of these examples are bad, they're just some little historical factoids about (often obscure) real-life leaders with an extremely short reign. At most the examples could just use some better writing, but that doesn't make the section cuttable.

So yeah, non-problematic cases do exist, which again is why I'm convinced a lot of this issue stems from a negativity bias combined with a cleanup bias.

Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 18th 2022 at 1:04:35 PM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

It seems like every few weeks the RL thread gets into a kerfuffle over what to do about real life examples. And every time the consensus seems to be basically to leave things about how they are.

Its just a fact that a good portion of tropers like the RL sections, all we can do is keep it clean-ish.

I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me

I don't agree with your assessment that the Real Life section on Shortlived Leadership is unproblematic. The main problem being that it is pointless. It is a meaningless list of factoids that has very little to do with troping.

Let's just say and leave it at that.

Okay, and?

That's not been anyone's argument for removing a RL section, so it has nothing to do with what people actually consider "problematic" in reference to these pages. People remove these sections for having natter issues, general examples, ROCEJ issues, blatant shoehorning, etc, not just for being "a list of factoids", which is what all real life sections are. They're psuedo-JFF areas that maybe aren't on-mission but at their best don't hurt anything either.

And if you consider that inherently problematic, fine, but it has nothing to do with whether or not "all RL sections are bad" according to the criteria the RL Cleanup uses and the problems other people have brought up.

Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 18th 2022 at 5:19:01 AM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

it matters not if people "want" the real life section to stay. if it's clearly breaking rules, such as rocej, it needs to go.