Ask The Tropers

It was a huge shock to find that this happened to Trustfell and even bigger to discover that even more murdergames fell victim to the same page mutilation, and I'll fight to the bitter end to put them back the way they were (seriously, commenting out all the Murder Tropes as ZC Es?), but I understand this involves challenging the "ZCE = bad in all instances" and "if there are too many spoilers, just don't mark any of them ever" policies themselves rather than just this example. Thank you for your comment.

A list consisting only of a dozen "Victim #, Some Trope" contains essentially no information. It's a very central example of why Zero-Context Examples are forbidden.

Right. We aren't just trying to say that a trope is in a work, but how the trope manifests in the work.

The pages have been reverted.

Jisu, it's concerning that you're stating you will "fight to the bitter end" on this. Regardless of your opinion on this matter, ZCE's are a standard "don't" of this wiki, and it is appropriate to comment them out, as was done in this clean-up effort.

Oh, while we're talking about it, that list was also bad Example Indentation. You don't list related tropes as a sublist under a supertrope.

So instead of:

• Murder Tropes
  • Executions & Retaliations: Vampiric Draining
  • Victim 1: The Can Kicked Him, Killing in Self-Defense
  • Victim 2: Tap on the Head

It should look more like:

• The Can Kicked Him: Alice died on the toilet because it exploded or whatever
• Killing in Self-Defense: Bob stabbed Alice after she threw a flaming toilet seat at him with the intent of blowing up his highly flammable fedora or something
• Tap on the Head: Charlie died when Dawn hit her on the head, expecting her to be knocked out harmlessly and stuff
• Vampiric Draining: Ethel... did a vampire thing, I dunno, I'm making this up

^ 👍🏻

I just have to say that Tap on the Head is NOT a Murder Trope. It's specifically about conveniently knocking people out who usually wake up when it's best for the plot without any permanent damage.

Listing the Murder Tropes as one ZCE list like that is how we've done it for years, preventing spoilers by removing context and keeping everything in one place. I understand why the general policy doesn't like it and why you all want to change it, but combined with how the entire Journal Roleplay section got bombarded with "fixes" last month, it's a bit overwhelming.

I get that the current spoiler policy is geared towards prioritizing casual readers over devoted fan editors, but I don't understand why that would be. How do you make someone interested by giving a page full of unmarked spoilers instead of responsibly hiding every single one behind a spoiler tag? As much as I fought tooth and nail to keep the trope names the way they were during that spree to remove obscure names and make nothing named after anything (Ascended Extra and Demoted to Extra will always be Super Grape and Isn't It Sad, no way around it), the push behind that to make the site more accessible to people who didn't care to read into the reasons unfortunately made sense. Complaints about "Swiss cheese pages" don't. Pages full of spoilers should mark them all.

I get that the Journal Roleplay section was dragged kicking and screaming late to a lot of these changes that have encroached on the rest of the wiki for years. But it's geared toward people who, well, want to read about those things and would be interested in them. Why spoil all the stories people still talk about instead of using tags? For that matter, why a lot of the edits that were made to the section? The main page for it no longer divides games by finished versus ongoing, when that's a pretty big consideration.

...Answer me this. Besides the people in the RP, who would even really care for spoilers? Who would sit and read roleplays they were never involved in?

The actual answer to this is 'potentially anyone' (and I do remember at least one troper saying that they've read and enjoyed RP's that they had no involvement in), ergo the RP pages must be held to the same standards as every other page on the site.

Zero-context examples are bad for both the readers and the wiki, full stop. Take "Executions & Retaliations: Vampiric Draining". What are Executions and Retaliations? How is Vampiric Draining implemented into them? What is drained from the victim? Is an actual vampire involved? Who does the draining, and who is drained? Is it attempted? Is it discussed? Is it played with? It tells the reader nothing, and it contributes nothing to the wiki. Throwing your own question back at you, how do you make someone interested in the work if you tell them nothing about it? It might as well not be on the page at all, hence why it gets commented out until information can be added to it so that it actually contributes something.

As for spoilers, a page that's significantly covered in spoilers is no more fun to read than a CIA document. Pages are for documenting tropes in fiction first, and garnering interest in the work second. Yes, someone might go onto the page, ignore the warning about unmarked spoilers, and decide for whatever reason that they have no interest in reading the work now that they know that Alice dies in Chapter 3, but that's a necessary sacrifice to make the page readable for casual readers/tropers/editors who don't want to navigate a spoiler minefield for a work in a genre that inherently invites a great amount of spoilers.

We have plans to make indexes for roleplays that are ongoing versus ones that are finished/abandoned, as we recognise that people who read RP pages may be interested in joining said R Ps, so keeping them informed on whether it can be joined or not is important.

Anyway, thanks for the reverts nombre! Two more Trustfell pages were edited while I was in the process of making this ATT, but I should be able to revert them myself.

^ What I meant was that their concern over spoilers-off seemed a bit silly. By stripping them we are following normal standards, not just spoiling people willy-nilly; and I still maintain that while it's possible for people to read these RP threads, it's unlikey anyone will, so it just sounds like a weird fight to pick. ...also I was very tired and probably couldn't brain.

Basically we agree that the edits were good, I just felt their concern about spoiling people was unnecessary.

The DWRP community is a lot less insular — lots of people do read threads and games they weren't in, and actually, when TF was running, spectating was at a high point. So it is likely people will read them, actually. I understand the rest of your points, though I'm still against taking the spoiler tags off because then the spoilers will be out in the open and that is bad whatever you say about casual readers not caring. But I know that's an issue take up with wiki policy itself and not just this particular instance.

I feel like murder mystery works should usually be Spoilers Off by default since it's nearly impossible to so much as glance at the trope list without accidentally seeing a spoiler. This is especially true for the character sheets, where the presence or absence of killer-or-victim-related tropes in someone's folder automatically spoils their fate.

Yeah, if the spoilers make the page look like swiss-cheese, it's generally preferred to get rid of them entirely. If someone will run into a spoiler every seconds, then almost everything is a spoiler. If everything is a spoiler, nothing is.

Honestly, reading a lot of these arguments makes me wonder if we need to specifically mark spoilers when it's already been made painfully clear that certain sections contain lists of things that happen in works. This may be a conversation better suited elsewhere, though.