A cleanup thread
for Snoot Game was recently closed as it was getting off-topic, here is a brief rundown of the game and the thread.
Goodbye Volcano High was announced in 2020 and released in 2023. The game features a Non-Binary protagonist, Fang, and other LGBTQ characters. In 2021, a group of 4channers under the name 'Cavemanon' who strongly disliked the look of GVH released an anti-fangame named Snoot Game, involving characters from Goodbye Volcano High but in a more anti-LGBT and alt-right adjacent narrative. Snoot Game has two good endings and two bad endings; a mandatory part of both good endings is Fang rejecting being Non-Binary, and in the bad endings, where Fang remains Non-Binary, they either commit a school-shooting and then kill themselves, or they became a washed-up failure who is implied to be addicted to drugs.
Needless to say, with this is mind - as well as the fact that the game was created when all that was known about Goodbye Volcano High is that 'it will be a video game with a Non-Binary protagonist', Snoot Game is pretty openly a project borne out of spite and anti-LGBT sentiment. The cleanup thread was distracted by some back and forth over this, and got more heated when someone in the thread who had been critical of Snoot Game revealed that they had recently been doxxed
by irate fans; in addition, it turned out that some people on 4chan were actively monitoring
the thread. So as not to scare-monger, the troper in question had been vocally critical of Snoot Game off-site, so this wasn't a case of someone being doxxed solely for being critical of a work in a TVTropes cleanup thread, but it still underlies that this is a rather contentious and unpleasant work to cover.
So the question now is, what is to be done with the pages for Snoot Game? They require a cleanup, but the cleanup thread was just locked. It's gotten the attention of people off-site who we absolutely do not want the attention of, and we especially don't want to invite any edits from them; while this is not our fault or responsibility, it's still something to take into account. For these reasons I would suggest just cutting it. Also, not trying to solidify my position as the objectively correct one but I feel it is relevant to the discussion; before the cleanup thread was locked then we had seven tropers in agreement - including two who were previously defending the work - that a cut was the best course of action, given the difficulty of covering the work neutrally, the impossibility of agreeing how to 'neutrally' cover a work which is simultaneously explicit and coy about its degree of anti-LGBT-ness, and the fact that a troper - albeit not due to their participation on the thread - had been doxxed by fans of the game.
Obviously any final decision ultimately comes down to the moderation team and we will all respect that, but also a final reason why I would favour a cut is that this work has been discussed in the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment thread, then Troping Works That Promote Bigotry, then it's own cleanup thread, then back to Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment thread, and now I have been told that it should be brought to its own thread on Wiki Talk, so... if it was cut then we could at least all put this behind us.
Please discuss! I mean, if you feel like it.
x4 It being a valid viewpoint to explore doesn't change the key difference between this and a work of totally original fiction: they took a character from another piece of fiction, who does not have any problem with their own identity, and made a new game where this sole known character trait at the time is actually wrong.
Which, again, circles back round to the game being impossible to be objective about. If you go full death of the author and take it in a vacuum, then it could be considered to be exploring identity in general (but still having a bad message from the endings including a school shooting). But in the context of 'game made using existing characters before the original source was even published and directly at odds with said original's own message', then we have an issue where it's being incredibly bigoted.
And then we have external drama issues.
Edited by RainehDaze on Nov 3rd 2023 at 10:30:57 AM
For one, you're not going to have edit wars in a locked page. For another, it doesn't seem that the page actually attracted drama (arguments in the cleanup thread aside) — I certainly haven't managed to spot any vandalism in the page history (and there's no discussion page). PRLCing a page because it might attract drama (as opposed to the Stonetoss case, where I understand it most definitely attracted drama?) is wholly excessive.
And, again, I think that the idea that the wiki has to cover the game "neutrally" or in a way that satisfies its fans is simply wrong. It can be covered much in the same way the Protocols are: documenting the tropes that appear in the work, while not ignoring (and certainly not supporting) the bigoted content of the work.
What drama issues? Did the page get vandalised? Have people actually harassed Tropers on TvTropes? As far as I can tell, the answer to both questions is "No", and, again, the mere potential of drama should not, in my mind, be sufficient for PRLCing a page.
And again: neither the "The work is bigoted"* nor the "It's not possible to be objective about the work" arguments hold any water, as far as I can tell. I certainly don't think restating the arguments verbatim is furthering them any.
On empty crossroads, seek the eclipse -- for when Sol and Lua align, the lost shall find their way home.
That's not "not being objective about the game" — whether the game is bigoted or not does not change whether tropes like Easter Egg or Adaptation Dye-Job apply to the game (as there's a fact of the matter). The game is certainly controversial, but the page itself (which is, mind you, the thing up for cutting, not the discussion here in the forums) doesn't seem to have any of those problems. By your logic we should unperson the locked cleanup thread as well as this thread and leave the page as-is because the page doesn't contain any back-and-forth arguments (it pretty obviously recognises the game as bigoted), wasn't vandalised, and (as far as I can tell) did not attract any drama aside from the arguments in the prior thread.
And, again, I'm sure you could dredge up a bunch of people that'll tell you that the Protocols are hunky dory and the Jews do actually plot to take over the world — but you aren't proposing to PRLC that page, are you?
On empty crossroads, seek the eclipse -- for when Sol and Lua align, the lost shall find their way home.
x3 Yes, we're not going to have edit wars on a locked page, but we'll have edit wars throughout the entire process of determining in what state the page is locked, and possible requests in the future from new tropers on either side of the discussion asking if we could briefly unlock to add a clarification or change this one bit that they disagree with. Or we cut the page, avoid all of this, and nothing of value is lost.
When you say there hasn't been much drama because there haven't been many edit wars and the page hasn't been vandalized, it's worth noting that the page for Stonetoss was never vandalized or the subject of many edit wars - a couple, but actually surprisingly few, given the content - but it still definitely caused drama, mainly in the forums. This is the fifth thread in which we're discussing how to handle Snoot, a troper who participated in the discussion has been doxxed - admittedly not because of their participation in the thread, but that's still a really bad look for Snoot - and we have confirmation that at least one very angry 4channer was actively monitoring the cleanup thread. It's creating drama. That's already happened.
Protocols isn't causing drama because no-one here is arguing that it isn't bigoted, and if anyone did then they would probably be banned immediately. Also the entire page is about how it sucks and is trash.
I really don't understand your reasoning here. "There's drama in the forums so we should PRLC the page"? The fact that discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict got banned
a few days ago (again — there were at least three threads about it beforehand and each got locked for the same reason, all of them years ago back when I was more active here) didn't lead to proposals to PRLC Arab–Israeli Conflict or Israelis with Infrared Missiles, and even Badass Israeli (which attracted an editor with an agenda) merely got locked
. The pages on the PRLC that got there due to controversy actually had edit wars and ROCEJ violations, not because people argued about them in the forums.
I also don't think that "Someone got doxxed because of their activity elsewhere" is relevant; if anything, that's importing drama.
And, again — I'm really feeling like a broken record here — I don't see why having a page that recognises the fact that the work is bigoted and sucks because of it is a problem. TvTropes isn't AP and it isn't beholden to "neutrality" because it'd lose money otherwise.
On empty crossroads, seek the eclipse -- for when Sol and Lua align, the lost shall find their way home.Because, and here is the critical point:
All the forum drama is about acknowledging this fact and putting it in the page. Since we can't resolve multiple forum threads about this to include said information, it's pretty clear that as long as the game has any attention, it's just going to keep being brought up and argued about. Making an edit and locking it won't change what's already happening.
So far I've seen all of one person here that argues for the game not being bigoted* ; since (as far as I can tell) TRS and Wiki Talk work by majorities rather than unanimous agreement, it doesn't look to me like the discussion about the page's content is impossible to resolve.
And, again, if forum drama is the problem (and so far this thread, at least, looks fairly civil to me) then discussion of the game should be banned in lieu of adding the page to the PRLC — especially since, as far as I can tell, site policy does not include "no pages for bigoted works".
On empty crossroads, seek the eclipse -- for when Sol and Lua align, the lost shall find their way home.![]()
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A troper being doxxed for being critical of Snoot Game is still relevant to the discussion because... Snoot Game isn't Undertale or FNAF, it's not a fandom of millions where you can write off any shitty behaviour by one or two fans with "Well, millions of people like this game, some of them are inevitably bound to be jerks!" It's an anti-LGBT game from 4chan. It stands to reason that a lot of fans - not all - are likely to be 4channers with an anti-LGBT streak. Someone getting doxxed merely for being vocally critical of the game is pretty relevant when discussing the potential for more drama. Also, something that just sticks in my mind is that when said troper revealed that they had been doxxed, then the first reply was a Snoot Game fan who showed no sympathy, no "That sucks," no "Sorry to hear about that," but instead just said "Yeah well I've seen you complaining about the game on Twitter and Tumblr and you seem incredibly biased to me." Which is just a really weird reaction to someone saying that they have been doxxed.
"I don't see why having a page that recognises the fact that the work is bigoted and sucks because of it is a problem-" I am begging you to read the last few pages of posts by Boredman. It is fundamentally impossible to have the page you suggest, without creating more drama by drawing negative attention from fans of Snoot Game. And if the page only exists because Snoot Game fans made it, but Snoot Game fans would also not be happy with our neutral and objective description of Snoot Game... then just cut the damn page. It's not worth the hassle.
Edited by Elmo3000 on Nov 3rd 2023 at 11:54:04 AM
Before commenting, I read the thread from beginning to end. This obviously includes Boredman's posts, and I did refer to them multiple times, but...
"Since TRS and Wiki Talk work by majorities rather than unanimous agreement, it doesn't look to me like the discussion about the page's content is impossible to resolve."
And, again, forum (not page) drama (or the potential for it) should be treated with forum-related tools, not by cutting the page or adding it to the PRLC.
Either way it seems to me that we simply see things differently, and that the discussion is going in circles. I certainly feel like I'm repeating myself.
On empty crossroads, seek the eclipse -- for when Sol and Lua align, the lost shall find their way home.I mean, if having a page attracts drama (in this case on the forums as that's our venue for discussing bigoted works—could just as easily spill over into a discussion page), then I'd want to remove the page. Having a page that can't be updated because it's locked and we can't talk about it is pointless.
We've given it another 24 hours and the Crowner vote split is now looking decisive, so calling it and locking the crowner.
The only option in green, with consensus, is "Cut and put it in the Permanent Red Link Club" (at +37, 63 votes in total, Yeas:50 Nays:13).
Both other options are in red.
So that's the decision.
I'm going through the wicks to see which can be kept once it becomes redlinked. I removed a mention of it in the description of VisualNovel.I Wani Hug That Gator, but the other instance in the Suspiciously Similar Substitute example of that page is one I'm not sure about.
Yeah, I had a feeling that's the case. It's pulled.
Edited by Berrenta on Nov 3rd 2023 at 9:13:51 AM
Crown Description:
Action for Snoot Game

yeah, i'm not really liking the insistence that "the game isn't that bad! you're reading too much into it". blatant or not, the enbyphobic undertones are still very much there.