Ask The Tropers

Yeah, that's complaining and should definitely not be on the page.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

"No such thing as notability" is not a defense for putting dubious statements on a creator page. These are real people and we have to be careful with what we say about them. That paragraph should be reduced to what is verifiable.

Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.

To verify all of it, we would have to access old database of official page of Sapkowski (no, really), where there was a vast archive of the data related to the production of The Hexer. The page got a lifting in early 10s and I'm afraid the interviews with various people in the production of the series are currently lost, unless someone archived them.

Still, if we really need them to "physically" exist to describe the whole thing, then it can go out from Creator's page, as far as I'm concerned. The entire point of re-adding those bits and pieces was to paint the picture of Sapkowski's permanent issues with adaptation of his works and worse than awful handling of each situation involving copyrights. He had serious and in the same time utterly ridiculous issues with payment for the TV series and he had them again with video games. So the fact he went vocal against CDPR wasn't his first time to pull this kind of stuff and that's why I re-added lenghty note describing the situation with Hexer.

Again, if it has to go, then let it go, no hard feelings nor insistance it has to stick. But if the page describes his stance toward games, it would be nice to keep in mind same happend with the TV series and thus its Compilation Movie

Edited by Dratewka

I just don't think those bits belong there, at least the way they're written. They come off as way too bash-y.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

The author (as in - Sapkowski) has a well-established and earned status of a complete jerk in Poland, so I guess it's just bleeding over the description. Like I've said, it can go, it can be rewritten, I don't really insist it has to stick in current form, since it was a stop-gap measure with the [note] either way.

The thing is, the entry as first written sounded more like someone with a grudge than actually showing him to be at fault. That he made money off it doesn't mean he can't think it failed artistically. It implies that he made it fail but doesn't explain why in any way. And those hyperlinks should not be there, real people should not be troped. If you want to tell readers he is a difficult man, you should give facts and let them understand that through them.

If there were legal or financial mishandlings on his part, those are verifiable issues that can be mentioned.

Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.

That's not even what There Is No Such Thing as Notability means. That policy means any work can have a page, as long as it doesn't violate any policies (particularly the Content Policy or the policy on unreleased works).

Edited by GastonRabbit Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

@Reymma - I honestly have no idea how to describe it in a way that would tell the whole story, in the same time being accessible to people not knowing about the whole thing. So I would gladly accept any sort of help with it. The whole thing goes as follow:

• Producers of the series obviously needed copyrights for short stories; they've contacted Sapkowski
• He replied with absolutely unrealistic call of 1 million dollars (the entire budget for the series was around 6 and obviously there is difference in what you can make with such money in Poland in 2000 and everywhere else in the world), then the one-off negotiations toned down the demand to something more sensible (depending on who was asked, anywhere between equivalent of 50 to 180 thousands dollars)
• Pre-poduction starts along with the negotiations for copyrights, script is gaining shape
• Sapkowski realises this is all the money he will ever get from making of the series and obviously isn't pleased with the sum he got
• He withdraws all his support, never talks again with anyone related with the production, ignores calls and eventually withdraws from the whole deal as far as only possible; depending on who was interviewed in the production team, they either assumed he either tried to "ransom" them for more money (despite his contract being for specific sum he already received) OR simply changed his mind, which is something he's infamous for.
• Production is going, with script hastly reworked to fit within the boundaries of the existing copyrights AND to fill contracted 13 episodes with something, since half of the short stories remained outside the rights secured by production team in the end
• Sapkowski starts slander campaign during the later phases of production against the series, despite, you know, it's still being in production and he didn't even seen it nor bothered to care about it in any way
• Decision to make a Compilation Movie is made via Executive Meddling, against will of everyone involved in the production; it ends up being a 130 minutes of nonsensical material slapped together from the existing footage of the series (about 700 minutes of plot); the script writer asks for his name to be removed from credits in protest
• The "movie" flops, while Sapkowski starts to play hard on the entire production and keeps kicking on the series (still unreleased and unaired)
• Everyone band-wagons on Sapkowski's complains against the entire adaptation, since after all, it's the creator complaining about his work being mutilated
• The series premieres eventually a year later and obviously has serious issues with being faithful to the material, as the material was banned from being used by Sapkowski; fandom gathers in a lynching mob and everyone complains how half of the episodes are just made up instead of being adopted from the short stories
• Sapkowski smugly keeps talking on fan conventions how some random hacks destroyed legacy of his short stories and how it's all the fault of the script writer; always ommits the part about his involvement in this entire mess.

So in the end it's a story of a very, very Troubled Production (already covered partially in trivia entry for The Hexer) where everyone is to blame, but some people keep pretending they did nothing wrong and are just blameless victims of a con. The best part is how all the materials covering the whole story and describing the underhood of the production of the series was on Sapkowski's official page, in the section dedicated to The Hexer, so it wasn't even any sort of secret or inaccessible knowledge. Well, at least until the page received a lifting few years ago.

How to describe (or where to even put it) any of this in a coherent way is... well, your shot, basically, since I just put it back where it originally was (so Creator's page). I'm not going to insists it belongs there, but there is definitely some place where this could go and fit in. If the current description comes off as bashful, that wasn't even intended nor has to stay. Like I've said, your shot.

@Gaston The notion about There Is No Such Thing as Notability was a direct reply to Lord Gro's "This whole axe-grinding which is infesting the entire page is utterly uninteresting to 90% of our readers." (countesy of editing history). That's all.

Edited by Dratewka

If it's already mentioned on the Hexer's trivia page, it doesn't really need to be on the creator's page. We aren't here to make statements on real-life people being good people or not. It affected their work, but it's already mentioned there. I think, if we're going to mention this stuff, we need to stay objective; no moral judgements, just the raw facts, presented neutrally.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Maybe I should have been clearer about what's bad about the example.

@Dratewka: Like GastonRabbit said: that's not what There Is No Such Thing as Notability means. It means that "notability" does not come into play when deciding whether a work or medium can get examples written about it. It does not mean that we undiscriminatingly collect every possible piece of information. We do not.

It is not forbidden to mention "behind the scences" stuff; we have numerous Trivia items for that purpose. But the purpose of an example entry is to explain how a specific trope or Trivia item applies to a work. It is not an excuse to rant about whatever is on your mind, no matter how passionately you feel about it. The wiki is generally not interested in your opinions.

"No opinions" means that examples should stick to facts, not interpretations thereof. Tell us what people have done or said; don't tell us how we should morally judge their deeds and statements. This is called "editorializing" and very tedious to read.

That last point also implies that you shouldn't speculate on the motives for a person's actions or statements. In your example write-up, you claim that Sapkowski withdrew his support from the adaptation solely because he thought they did not pay him enough money; can you actually prove this? And even if it were so, it is merely your personal opinion that Sapkowski demanded "too much". There's nothing wrong with creators earning money for their work.

Your example also lets the reader "know" that the adaptation in question is "objectively" disastrous, and that does not belong there either. Whether the movie is bad or not is just somebody's opinion. We are not about reviewing stuff.

You should also be specific when mentioning things that people have done or said. You claim that Sapkowski ran a "slander campaign" against the production; a serious accusation, given that "slander" is a litigable offence; but what is the basis of that claim? Has Sapkowski been convicted of slander in a lawsuit? Or do you merely believe his statements (whatever they were) were slanderous? Or does "slander" merely mean that he commented negatively on the production (which isn't actually slander)? The fact that you don't actually tell us what Sapkowski said makes me think that the "slander" claim is probably nothing more than hyperbole.

Oh my god, please tell me those fans are in prison now! … or maybe you are just overdramatizing things?

To sum it up, a proper example entry for Disowned Adaptation needn't contain much more than this:

whereas the behind-the-scenes fallout between Sapkowski and the creators of the movie would go under Troubled Production:

Edited by LordGro Let's just say and leave it at that.