Have a question about how the TVTropes wiki works? No one knows this community better than the people in it, so ask away! Ask the Tropers is the page you come to when you have a question burning in your brain and the support pages didn't help.
It's not for everything, though. For a list of all the resources for your questions, click here. You can also go to this Directory thread
for ongoing cleanup projects.
Courtesy link (I think?) Ideally, YMMV is supposed to document a wider audience reaction than a single person. By your own admission, your edits were portraying a personal opinion you know isn't shared by the wider fandom, which doesn't bode well for your argument.
Also you have a serious Natter issue and you're adding tropes based on audience reactions to main pages (such as here
where the Jerkass Has a Point entry isn't rooted in the text of the work but rather an Alternative Character Interpretation).
YMMV is for opinions of varying mileage, yes, but not just the opinions of single fans— that's how natter and edit wars and such start. We're here to be informative on how the fans, plural, think of the work, general opinions and beliefs about the movie, not literally anything any one viewer has felt. If that were the case, basically all YMMV pages would have all possible tropes and reactions included, which isn't feasible...
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallOK, because I was under the impression that YMMV was a place to share opinions of varying mileage. You are also under the assumption I was the only one who feel this way. We cannot round up everyone on the internet and take a survey, can we? I am annoyed because I feel I had my opinion taken down because someone didn't like what I was saying about a character they like. I made an entry. I rationalized it. He/She is not doing this because of any natter problems, but because, as she/he puts it, I am wrong and being unfair to a character they like. Can any of you actually give me a real reason that isn't based on my "inaccurate information", which is simply not true, you may disagree with my interpretation of the information, but that's different, my "outlier opinion" you can't prove that I am the only one who feels this way- Listen, I am just upset because I feel that Mr Death is being unfair and just trying to take my entry down, because I think that he/she likes Shang, and is upset that someone is criticizing him, and that all this is just a misguided attempt at defending a character he/she likes. And that is very frustrating for me. OK?
No, YMMV is not a place to share opinions. It's about documenting general audience reactions.
The place for sharing opinions is the Review section.
"I squirm, I struggle, ergo I am. Faced with death, I am finally, truly alive."OK, Look: That may be it, but I was not aware of it, and this official message does not help my impression: The [[article]] edit you made looks like you are deleting someone's opinion. The YMMV items are going to have opinions which might differ from yours. That is kind of the point. Please only remove things from YMMV that are factually incorrect. We'll be sure to leave your opinions up. Please extend that courtesy to others.
Edited by CatcherInTheWry...Okay.
First off: We're not mods. We're just regular tropers who understand the rules and are trying to help you understand the situation.
Second, it never does any good to paint opposition as whiny or unfair. The issue here is that instead of trying to debate over whether or not your example is valid, you're just arguing that they don't get YMMV, and when we tell you that they do understand what YMMV means, you get angry at us for explaining it to you.
I've no real stake in whether or not your example is added or not (though I do think the first could be trimmed down a bit, regardless). I just think you're misunderstanding what YMMV is for and going about this in the worst way possible. Try to calm down.
Edit: Okay, I see you changed your above post, though what I say still stands. While you are correct in that removing opinions on the grounds of disagreement is wrong, you also need to remember that YMMV still has criteria beyond "some fans somewhere might think this maybe". Many of them require a large amount of the fandom to think this.
While Informed Attribute may be ok if cleaned up, your Unintentionally Unsympathetic example seems a bit of a shoehorn, as if the only issue is whether or not you personally think he's a good captain...
Edited by WarJay77 Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallWell, like we said, it's for documenting the opinion of, at least, a portion of the audience. And while sure, you may not be the only one with your opinion, I've certainly never see anyone else consider Shang a bad captain, or find him unsympathetic because of it.
And Mr. Death has a good point that you're basing your opinion on a Training Montage, which skips all of the boring stuff and just shows the action. How do you know he didn't give instruction?
Another point is that this was the reserves, a back-up army just in case, and I believe they had limited training time. Shang may not have been able to start slow, if I'm correct.
Finally, the movie obviously paints the army as inexperienced, but skilled— they do save China after all, so how bad could Shang have really been at his job if he did manage to turn an unruly and inexperienced lot into a skilled team?
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall1) Again, I was unaware that there needed to be a consensus. 2) A montage, from what I have seen, is designed to show portions of the time skips that reflect a larger meaning of what I have seen. Even a small portion with Shang saying some clip of how to hold the bow correctly or a correct fighting stance-even that would have sufficed to gain understanding. 3) That's true. But starting your students off with something difficult is just asking for failure. 4) No, Mulan defeats almost the entire Hun army by herself with a rocket. Her three buddies hold off the Huns, Shang is quickly knocked out, and then she beats Shan Yu too. That is only a reflection of Mulan's group.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVcLIfSC4OE
The montage, for reference.
I direct your attention to the last 45 seconds or so of the montage where:
- The recruits are clearly shown hitting the fruits with their arrows (something all the recruits were seen struggling with earlier)
- Mulan is shown keeping up with the water carrying (something Mulan was seen struggling with earlier)
- Mulan is shown keeping up with and even knocking Shang down while sparring (something Mulan was seen struggling with earlier)
- The big guy is nimbly hopping across the polls over water (something he was seen struggling with earlier)
- The group is shown competently moving in sync doing a kata
- The short guy is running unscathed through the flaming arrows (something he was seen struggling with earlier)
- The skinny guy successfully breaks a stone with his head (something he was seen struggling with earlier)
- Mulan catching a bunch of fish (something she was seen struggling with earlier)
- One of the rockets hitting its target (something the recruits were shown struggling with earlier)
The purpose of all of those is extremely obvious: To show that the recruits are learning and improving. How can you look at all that and conclude, "Shang is a terrible teacher, and therefore unsympathetic?"
The movie makes it absolutely clear that whatever Shang's doing is working, even if the montage doesn't contain some specific scene that you decided it's incomplete without.
Ergo, yes, the opinion that Shang is a bad teacher is an outlier, particularly considering you admitted to me that you just plain don't like him.
Edited by MrDeathSo your point is that the recruits got better? I'm not saying that they didn't. I'm just saying was that, at the very least, Shang would have done better to start them on something simpler. I never said I disliked Shang, just that I didn't adore him. I did not start off being this invested in this. Your utter insistence on making sure that Shang's record being clean on the YMMV being utterly squeaky clean and going out of your way to point out every instance of Shang being a good leader has evolved from annoying into downright aggravating. Nothing ruins a YMMV discussion like some uptight stan getting defensive and silencing people because they think that they're favorite character is being bashed. Yes. My opinion is an outlier. Where does it say in the rules, "You can't put an outlier opinion in the YMMV"?
Remember what I said above. Don't lose your temper. Nobody is trying to keep all criticism of Shang off the page, rather we're just trying to be more objective about Shang's leadership and follow the consensus aspect of YMMV.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallNeat, name-calling and a tantrum.
If you want to discuss examples, do it on the page's discussion page. ATT is generally for when someone starts breaking the rules and/or discussion is going nowhere.
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.I made one edit removing what appeared to be a bad-faith example that, at best, misunderstood the scene and the trope, and how YMMV works. I promptly forgot all about it — because, honestly, I don't care all that much — until the angry PMs started rolling in.
She made several edits on that page and others that seem aimed primarily at making Shang look bad (the Jerkass Has a Point entry, for instance, is very petty), then weeks later came here to gripe about it being removed.
I don't think I'm the one here who's fixated on the cleanliness of Shang's record.
Edited by MrDeathHonestly, I could care less about being proven wrong about wiki's policy, (Even if I'm confused, because I've been here for a couple years) but when you try and bring in accusations of character bashing and try and complain that I'm wrong about Shang, coldly brush me off instead of explaining yourself when I send a single, civil, PM explaining what's wrong, then I get worked up.
... mods, can we lock this?
You've been told where to hash this out. At this point you're just double posting for the sole purpose of whining.
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.

OK, so hi. Long story short, I watched Disney's Mulan. I disagreed with Shang's teaching methods and felt that said methods were a major contributor as to why his students were doing so badly at first-I also felt his captaining skills were an Informed Attribute (Probably should have put the phrase "Informed Attribute" in my entry now that I think of it, but what can you do?) and he mostly is seen quickly failing at the task at hand so that the title character can save the day. I wrote:
We're supposed to see [Shang] as this cool dude with this catchy song, and it's not his fault that all his recruits are a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits[sic] afterall. However, from the get-go Shang saddles them with incredibly difficult tasks-like shooting a pomegranate out of midair and dodging flaming arrows, which would be ridiculous for beginners to start out with, and even more ridiculous when you realize that due to the Hun Invasion, they only have three weeks to reach elite level skills. Not helping is that Shang is shown giving barely any instruction at all-just handing them their equipment and watching them fail miserably (And maybe giving them a single brief demonstration if they're fortunate) and getting angry that they can't perfectly replicate these crazy difficult feats on their first try. How they shaped up is a mystery of the ages.
Special mention and particularly egregious example in teaching Mulan hand-to-hand combat-we never see him teaching any of the recruits moves, or stances, and instead just forces Mulan to go up against him. Keep in mind that Shang is implied to have had years of specialized training for this and Mulan is still one of the recruits who is doing the worst (and has only been training for a few weeks). As you'd expect, Shang pummels her in a few seconds almost effortlessly. And yet Mulan is portrayed as a "bad student" despite doing her best to oblige her teacher's insane demands.
I also wrote, for Unintentionally Sympathetic:...Shang's biggest (and only) critic, Chi-Fu, is pointed being unreasonable when he criticizes Shang. And we're supposed to agree with Mulan when she calls Shang a "great captain". But when said captain starts his students of with expert-level skills instead of building their strength and endurance or giving them some practical combat level and never really demonstrating any kind of teaching aptitude whatsoever.
I know it ended kind of suddenly, and I'm sorry for that, but then this user called Mr Death, who was not concerned about the sudden stop at all, deleted both entries and said this:This entry makes no sense. We see a three-minute musical montage. Of COURSE we're not going to see him giving instruction because that would be boring. He obviously must be giving instruction because they're improving noticeably. This takes things out of contexts[sic] and makes completely unreasonable assumptions.
Then we had a short conversation where I expressed my annoyance.The point is is is that I had an opinion and he/she removed it and is accusing me of character bashing. For his/her side of the story, see here.
(But know that I am a girl/"she", not a boy/"he")
Edited by nombretomado