Live Blog improvements and changes

aka a super neglected feature of the site that every so often I get a reminder that it exists

I'm of the feeling that right now,if we decided removed live blogs completely we'd face very little opposition because most people don't even know it exists,which is a pity.

Eh, I’ve seen some people use it time and time again and it seems harmless. lbssb had a Disney binge Just for Fun page that he was informed to move to Live Blogs. So it can definitely still be used, it just needs more attention and promotion by maybe putting it on the menu.

That and fix the garbage sorting system and publishing errors.

Thinking about it more, I prefer to fix liveblogs than get rid of them and maaybe promote them a little. If anything needs to be fixed it's definitely the sorting system. It's oldest to newest so new ones get buried on the last page.

Yeah the sorting system basically makes those who see Live Blogs for the first time, think that it stopped after 2011 or 2012. It looks absolutely ridiculous.

I remember there was an entire subculture of live-blogging on Tumblr in the 2010s, especially of Homestuck and later Steven Universe, with new ones still popping up from time to time to this day. Some of them even got work pages created for them (most of which aren't crosslinked at all and might be too off-mission regardless, verging as they can on troping real life).

This isn't entirely replicable on the TV Tropes live-blogging platform. Most notably, Tumblr liveblogs have a practice of "ask screeners" that seek to protect the blogger from any spoilers, whether malicious or accidental, even to the point of blocking anything that might affect how they think about the work. (Both HS and SU have a lot of intrigue, lore, and cascading revelations that create lots of opportunities for speculation that can either evoke laughter at how hilariously off they are or shock at how spookily spot-on they are, or both.) A platform explicitly dedicated to the practice could have that sort of thing as an explicit function, hiding comments from the blogger unless approved, but it probably isn't practical on TV Tropes, and in any case it might be unrealistic to expect someone on this site to avoid things that aren't considered spoilers in trope examples (as the ideal for HS and SU is for the blogger to go in completely blind). Some of the more useful potential functions might be dependent on 2.0, if and when that ever happens, and I'm not sure it would be a terribly high priority for development, as it's questionably on-mission and I'm not sure how much it would help Kory's stated goal of boosting engagement.

Still, I can't help but think about how TV Tropes has a platform nominally dedicated to this purpose, but one that seems to have been added as an afterthought, is easy to forget still exists, and has been barely maintained if at all, as evidenced by the presence of some pretty glaring bugs. So count me as someone who would fully support boosting the visibility and usefulness of this section, even if it's just fixing the sort order, adding it to the menu, and maybe sticking it next to the reviews on work pages.

Its definately part of this site's history,even as an afterthought,boosting it's visibility by improving its core features is a must if we want to justify its continued existence

I don't know,would reopening the live blogging forum improve its visibility?

imo id keep it as a (good) reminder of how things were. as bad as tv tropes back then could be it was a snapshot into late 2000s/early-2010s fandom insanity.

that and tumblr hid a lot of its blogs during their Tumblrpocalypse

Ignore, I think I misread something.

Edited by UchuuFlamenco on Sep 1st 2023 at 5:46:39 AM

The live blog forum was replaced with the current system. Not sure how reopening the forum is supposed to help the current system, unless it's to go back to the forum format, but I don't think there's anything wrong with the current liveblog system conceptually.

on boosting its visibility, along with possibly making improvements to it.

I might ping Kory if we can come up with some specific ideas on how to boost visibility/what to do with it.

Ah yes, live blog issues was brought to my attention recently through this wishlist query and this bug query.

It seems like some easy fixes / improvements I can do after I finish the TLP and editing changes.

Anything else that you think would help the live blogs?

I think one thing would be to display liveblogs somewhere on the page of the work they are attached to, similar to reviews.

Not a bad idea.

The thing about liveblogs is that not all of them are specific to a specific work, so that field should be optional. But if one is specified, the work page should reflect that.

I see live blogs header says: "A liveblog is a detailed walkthrough of a work, usually done in installments", should live blogs stay as works-only or should they be expanded to include tropes and/or anything else?

Edited by kory on Sep 7th 2023 at 3:14:11 AM

I think it should be limited works. Extended "walkthroughs" on tropes sounds like something that's covered on Analysis pages. Live are supposed to be journaling your experience with a work as you comment it I believe. I don't think that translates to trope walkthroughs.

Edited by MacronNotes on Sep 7th 2023 at 7:23:11 AM

That said, I also won't mind if Live Blogs just gets closed and archived entirely. Due to its low usage that kory theorized even an update wouldn't fix.

Edited by AudioSpeaks2 on Jan 3rd 2024 at 10:50:37 PM

Pinging bloggination authors (regardless of inactivity) ~JustNormalMusicLover ~m-95 ~ComicX6 ~Mrph1 ~Chibi-Robo ~Bismuth83 ~Valiona ~NinjaMatrix ~JumbledDesert ~Beverly ~CumbersomeFledgling ~HamburgerTime ~CaliburnAbsoluteEX ~Amiibear ~BigJimbo ~Millership ~KrisDK ~CyberController ~Revaryk ~WillyFourEyes for visibility in case they can give some input on the topic.

The question is would Live Blogginations help the site (with clickability) if it became more visible, and does it need more functionality. One distinct feature of Live Blogs is being multi-paged, meaning the author can write linked opinions for each chapter/level of the same Work as they read through it.

However, now that I think of it, I wonder if it's possible to transfer the multi-page functionality of Live Blogs, to Reviews and merge these sections, as they are both "troper's personal experience after reading a Work", but one is for Work as of whole and the other is meant to be updated over time.

Don't forget ~lbssb

He did state he was planning to start one for his Disney binge too

As little used as it is nowadays, I don't think we should kill off the liveblog section completely. I only ever completed two of the many threads I attempted when the concept was still fresh, but I think the format we had (every entry getting its own page) made it a lot easier for readers to follow than scrolling through pages of comments between entries without a dedicated "post bookmark" feature.

Better links between the liveblog and the works page(s) definitely sounds like a good thing.

Yeah, it would help, and I've been having trouble with two other things regarding liveblogs:

1. Apostrophes and quotation marks getting slashes put next to them

2. Links not working

We should really be doing something about that.

This does sound like a good fix. I tried setting up a liveblog for my thing but aside from the technical issues mentioned , it just flat-out refused to publish even the first page.

I've been able to defeat the "/" issue after apostrophes by copy/pasting from a Word document instead of typing on the TV Tropes box directly. Whenever they've shown up in my recent blogs is when I've made edits right before submitting and forgotten to do that.

Years ago a livelog tab used to appear at the top of a work page alongside all the others and I think that's a good thing to bring back if feasible.

I'll second the issue with apostrophes after quotations. The fact that liveblogs are hard to find is another problem, although not many people seem to be doing them anymore. Perhaps making liveblogs more visible will help, or perhaps they're out of style.