Ask The Tropers

Bump

Hrm. Folks in the thread say that it was "mindless bashing" but I have checked the last pre-cut version and I don't see it...

Yeah I am not seeing it either or at least not to the extent the thread made it seem.

The whole "should be limited to fans" thing was just a proposal. Nobody in the thread ever stated it was a rule yet. TRS would be needed to enforce it. In fact, it's in Tropes Needing TRS right now.

If it's just a proposal then why was the page deleted for a rule that doesn't exist, also I am heavily against the idea of that rule as judging haters from fans is something that we can't do.

It was full of bashing, that's why. It wasn't deleted for a rule that doesn't exist.

Also, It's pretty easy to judge who is a hater. There's entries that even admit they're part of the hatedom.

I looked at the archive and the entries weren't that bashy Septimus Heap even agrees.

The "hatedom" issue comes from the fact that if you hate an entire work, there was likely no one moment that "dethroned" it for you.

I've seen other DMOS pages woth similar "not a fan but I caught this episode and it sucks" issues, like Family Guy. It might be a good rule to ban those (through TRS) since those who judge a show based on a single episode aren't dethroning and also may not have the context of the entire show, leading to misinformation.

If we ban those kinds of entries from the language used in the post then the haters will just lie about liking the show.

I mean, if they care that much then there's not much we can do? We won't investigate every troper to make sure they're not lying on DMOS pages, but we can make sure the pages aren't just hatedom bashing that go against the actual spirit of DMOS.

And the spirit of DMOS is?

For people to discuss moments that made them turn against a work. You can't have a moment that made you hate or dislike a work if you hated the entire thing from the start.

I'm gonna agree with WarJay77 here, since Mykan has been known to be a very infamous person in the fanfic community, with his fanfics being Snark Bait. People will go into this WANTING to hate his work.

It's different from, say, RWBY's page where it's clear most of the people were either fans who were turned away by one moment or felt it was the lowest point of a show they otherwise love.

Alright if you don't want these to go on here because they are from haters then where on the site would they go?

...Nowhere?

Why do they need to be here? Quite frankly I'm already not a fan of the DM pages anyway, but if entries already don't belong there because they're from pretty clear haters, then why do we need to keep them anywhere?

^^^^^ I always thought the spirit of Dethroning Moment of Suck was for people to talk constructively about what they thought was the worst moment in a work, regardless of whether they liked it or hated it. If the haters are being constructive, they should be allowed to list their worst moments too. And if Septimus and Ordeaux's comments are any indication, some haters were indeed being constructive on DethroningMoment.My Brave Pony Starfleet Magic.

Also, the definition of bashing (in this context) is harsh/severe criticism. So if you think bashing is a problem on DMOS—something that requires "bashing"—I really don't know what to say other than to cut DMOS.

I am not personally the biggest fan of people's opinions on a piece of media being deleted from the site if they want to express it they should have somewhere to do it.

^ Complete agree with this as well

The haters who get upset about not being able to discuss their opinions even in a calm and civil manner (understandable if they are being calm and civil and would feel like they just got kicked out for no good reason) will have their feelings hurt, while the more problematic ones will probably just disrespect the consensus anyway and just put the entries back out of spite, possibly by lying about being fans just like I said or just editing the entries to remove the parts where they admitted they already hated the work as a whole. Basically in this case the well-intentioned haters will be the ones punished while the bad ones will be the ones who manage to get their entry in because they will be the ones to lie.

Having said entries edited that way to only focus on the specific moment in a more neutral tone without any indication they hated the work as a whole could actually have it work both ways by still preventing mindless bashing. I will agree that at least some entries should have the angry words edited and the page opening should be more neutral. At the very least, the two users who are still around could be offered a chance to change their two entries to remove the bashing before moving them to the fan work DM page, if they are interested. In general, if an entry anywhere in the DM pages is too hateful, and starts raging against the creators, mods and admins should probably message them with "[Insert username here] you have to change your entry". That may actually be something the site should have done with DM long ago.

That is my personal opinion on how it should be done.

On the one hand I agree that it seems counter to the dethroning part of DMOS to list examples from people who hated the work in the first place.

On the other hand, though... it's already pretty much one of the most worthless complaining cesspools of the site. Does it really need to be policed for excessive complaining? Seems a bit silly.

I mean, I see the point you guys are making. But I do genuinely believe that DMOS is intended to be for former-fans or at least people who didn't go into the work blindly hating it. Mykan's works are so infamously hated that posting DMOS's for them seems similar to doing it for, idk, My Immortal or Sonichu. At some point, the DMOS is just the entire work.

So while I agree that it's hard to draw the line on this sort of thing, the "Dethroning" factor is relevant here and shouldn't just be disregarded. You can't dethrone what never had a crown. I'm pretty sure it was intended to be that way to make it more than just a mindless bashing zone (along with all of the other rules)...and, well, to mirror CMOA back when it was CMOA.

I don't want to "punish" people here, but I also don't necessarily consider a page cut to be a punishment rather than just rule enforcement. They can always just write a review, discuss the work on their troper page, or even attempt to chat about it on the forums.

And if we do reinstate the page, how long before people see it as an invitation to be a lot more volatile and harsh than the "good" haters are being?

I don't think that DMOS is only for people that stopped liking the work after that moment it could just be ones that they didn't really like that took it down from how amazing it was to not as great. Or at least I have seen quite a few entries that are written like that.

Well, sure, that falls under the umbrella of what I'm talking about. It's not specifically for "liked it then hated it", but people shouldn't have gone into the work already hating it.

Again, Dethroning is a key word here. If not, it'd just be "Moment of Suck".

I always thought "Dethroning" was there to make Dethroning Moment of Suck sound cool. I never thought it meant being a fan of the work was required to list a moment, and I think it has that name because no one thought of something better for what you thought was the worst moment in a work. Misnomers are also a thing.

Frankly, this feels like people were looking for a pretext to cut the page. Being a fan was never a requirement to listing a DMOS. The only requirements are that a) you sign the example, b) that it needs to be a moment and c) one example per troper per work.

Being a fan was never a requirement, but not hating the work right out of the gate is - those two aren’t necessarily the same thing - and otherwise, the entire point of Dethroning is defeated. I’m getting the feeling that some Trope Decay has happened overtime. Now of course I can’t speak for this example since I can’t see the page, but if it’s becoming a general place to complain about something that they already hated right from the get go, that defeats the whole purpose.

Well, since I was involved in the discussion to cut the page, I apologize if I lead others to cut the page illegitimately. I'm wondering if the way to deal with the concerns of ^ is to create a Trope Talk or Wiki Talk page about DMOS and what to do with it.

Personally, I feel like the DMOS pages are a relic from when the site had lower standards about Complaining About Shows You Don't Like.

I think the important thing is that the entries shouldn't contain exaggerated complaining (they have to be complainy, by definition, but we don't need lomg, hate-filled rants) and they are limited to one entry per troper. If posters can keep to those rules, I can't see why it should matter if they are former fans, current fans, hated the work from the start, or merely dislike it.

I can imagine that even if you hated a work from the beginning, but for some strange reason continued following it, you can still have a particular moment that made you hate it even more :)

I've seem some examples that seem to straddle the line between talking about a particular moment and the whole episode, going "episode had x and y bad things, but what really got me is z", which can seem like an attempt to subvert the "one moment rule".

I don’t mind DMOS existing as a quarantine zone for harsh criticism and negativity, but it would do some good to flesh this "do you need to like the work first?" point out on Trope Talk or even TRS if needed.

I mean yeah Darth Wiki is just an outlet for complaining so I don't see the need to restrict it, restricting it will mean people just move to other tropes we don't want complaining on.

^My personal experience is if they so vehemently dislike x they'll still complain under every trope they can shoehorn it into in addition to listing their moment. This fics Dethroning page wasn't venting or reducing the amount of negativity to it elsewhere.

"Death Battle" had it's Dethroning page cut as the series was so contentious practically everything had a moment and was oft subject to edit wars, this fic would meet the former criteria but not the latter to my knowledge.

I looked for a Dethroning cleanup and found nothing. If one existed or is made this should be taken there as it’s getting long and going in circles here.

Anyone want to take this to Wiki Talk or Trope Talk? I think this discussion is one that needs to keep going, but it's getting outside the scope of ATT. We can discuss the cut page when we figure out what our DMOS standards even are.

Yeah, I'll close this. Feel free to ask in the moderation thread of the Frequently Asked Questions forum for a restoration, though.