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I'm also not happy about the way they use "we" to give the impression that the ratings are backed by site consensus.
JustForFun.Steven Universe is on the same basis and should share its fate.
This makes me wonder on if there could be some legitimate way of doing this sort of thing.
I just checked the Wayback Machine for the page. The person who created those pages' primary mistake, IMO, is the tiers equating plot relevance to quality. An unquestionably-plot-vital episode can be an absolute shitshow to sit through, and a filler episode can be one of the most entertaining episodes of the show. A page with this purpose should make no mention of subjective opinion on the episode in question.
Just For Fun is also not an appropriate namespace for it. (If I were to guess, it was probably just picked due to being unoccupied.) While a "filler tracker" could be a useful thing to implement, it would have to be given its own space, which I doubt the majority of the site would readily welcome.
Edited by BaffleBlend "It's liberating, realizing you never need to be competent." — UltimatepheerI'm afraid lists like this will act as complaining magnets. I guess it's too easy for some people to fall into the chain of reasoning "Not relevant for the overarching plot" -> "Not relevant" -> "Not important" -> "Fluff" -> "Bad", or, more simply, the fallacy "It's not useful, so it shouldn't exist".
I'm not really a fan of actual works having JFF subpages that aren't something tongue in cheek like a Show Within a Show page. Rankings aren't really jokes.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.I mean, on the one hand, DS 9 (like pretty much every show ever made) had some episodes that were objectively terrible and are more or less universally agreed to be so, with one of them prompting the producer whose idea the episode was to say of it, "I am a moron."
On the other hand... this doesn't sound like how you should address something like that around here?
ETA: E.g. 99 out of 100 DS 9 fans agree that e.g. "Profit and Lace" and "Meridian" (the aforementioned "I am a moron" episode) were just... bad. Some of us still enjoy those episodes (I actually quite enjoy "Meridian", for instance) but that doesn't mean anyone thinks they're good. I feel like "I enjoy X" and "X is good" get conflated far too much (on the internet in general, not just here). You can think something is good and not like it, and you can like something and not think it's good.
Edited by RoseAndHeather I serve at the pleasure of President Pritchart.^^When it comes to episode quality, even our definition of "objectively terrible" isn't truly objective, and relies primarily on the amount of people expressing a subjective positive opinion being overwhelmingly (to the point of even having one fan is usually enough to get a work disqualified) outnumbered by the still-subjective negative majority. And in these cases, the creator's opinion is just one opinion.
If someone has a beef with those episodes, we have a page for that.
If we were to implement tiers of plot relevancy, this is how I'd word it along the lines of. I tried to avoid any implication of quality judgement.
- 1: Pivotal - This installment is vital to understanding the overarching plot. This could be introducing central characters or plot elements, or the occurrence of other radical changes to the status quo.
- 2: Major - This installment has significant aspects that advance the story. Skipping it will likely cause the audience to become lost or miss important moments, as if opening to the wrong chapter of a book.
- 3: Minor - This installment has some aspects that advance the plot, but can be skipped without significant understanding of the story's current state being lost if so desired.
- 4: Substory - Does not advance the main story, but may advance alternative plot threads or contain a significant amount of worldbuilding.
- 5: Filler - This installment takes a break from the current story. May still have worldbuilding elements or moments of character development.
- 6: Loose Canon - This installment is possible in the context of the story, but may or may not have happened.
- 7: Non-Canon - This installment does not pretend to be a part of the plot and exists for another purpose.
- 8: Canon Discontinuity - The installment is explicitly stated by the work creators to have been annulled. Does not apply to individual parts of the incarnation of a work that has been annulled — e.g. in a retconned arc, an episode important to the plot of the retconned arc would not be in this tier.
I like the idea of such guides. Many shows, especially shounen that were on air all year through, have serialised stories, but also many unconnected episodes, and many viewers would rather skip most of the filler. The important thing is that editors be made well aware that plot relevance is not the same as quality (so I suggest avoiding the word "filler"). But I don't know where we would place them.
^ That, however, is too complex and would be impossible to sustain on different articles by different editors. Connected, unconnected and non-canon would do fine.
Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.^Yes, loaded words like "filler" should be avoided, since they carry connotations of lower quality, which is of course not always the case. It may also be factually incorrect: the creators may see such episodes as artistically motivated - for example, taking a break from a very bleak storyline and showing the heroes actually winning for a change can help avoid Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy - and then the "filler" suddenly has a function and is not filler at all.
I also feel that focusing too much on the relevance to the long-term plot also ignores other aspects that can be important. For example, a monster-of-the-week episode may be irrelevant to the overarching plot, but contain important character development or explore sides of the characters which are not seen in the arc episodes.
For critical purposes (such as troping), I do see potential usefulness in lists of which episodes belong to a certain plot arc, because if you're interested in how a particular arc develops you should concentrate on those episodes. But rating episodes in terms of relevance invites complaining and can make new viewers throw out the baby with the bath water.
Edited by GnomeTitanHello! I'm very dismayed that two pages I spent months working on were deleted abruptly with, as far as I know, no warning.
I'm also dismayed that anyone could have interpreted those pages as "complaining about shows you don't like" or "bashing the show", since those are shows that I love; the goal of those pages was to share spoiler-free (or, well, spoiler-light) guidance to new viewers about what to expect.
It was never intended to be exclusively based on plot-relevance (although that was the point of tier 4 specifically); the four tiers were meant to be targeted at:
4. viewers who only want to watch episodes that are necessary for understanding what happens in the overall plot
3. viewers who want a somewhat abridged version of the show, but want to follow character development and the more detailed structure of the narrative in addition to the key plot points, and catch the highlights of the show
2. viewers who want to watch basically the whole show, but skip a handful of episodes that probably won't add much to their viewing experience
1. viewers who want to watch every episode
It's true that the distinctions between tiers 1 and 2 and between 2 and 3 in that formulation depend partly on judgments of episode quality. (Not 4, though!) Would it be better if it were clearer that those judgments are based on the consensus of critics, rather than the personal opinions of tropers such as myself? Or does something like that simply have no place in TV Tropes at all?
Edited by AJD

JustForFun.Star Trek Deep Space Nine is meant to be an analysis of which episodes are plot-relevant and which aren't, however, it also calls some episodes bad, which seems to violate our Complaining About Shows You Don't Like policy. I asked on the negativity cleanup thread, but no one answered.