Ask The Tropers

Thank you. I'm also in favor of a lock until release.

The edit reason was "There should be something to read in the Characters section." Which is. An interesting interpretation of the Zero-Context Example rule.

Their edits got hidden by Silver for the speculative troping, and FSU unhid them. So, they're edit warring at this point.

Has there been other edit warring on this page prior to this, or just this?

"Something to read" doesn't really mean much if the "something" is speculative, zero-context, or otherwise against our example standards— better to have nothing until there's enough verifiable context. What's seen in trailers and previews won't necessarily be in the release.

It looks to me like a revert is appropriate, but a lock would be overkill if it's a one-time problem. If it's an ongoing thing, though, locking until the actual release would get that under control.

^ Not on this specific subpage that I could find, but the main VideoGame.Cyberpunk 2077 page had to be locked due to multiple tropers (none were FSU Bulldogs, for the record) systematically reverting cleanup.

Yeah this game has had severe issues with speculative troping ever since it started releasing information about its story and setting.

Not sure if we should keep the entire thing locked this close to release. While I saw that most of the pages have unnecessary speculation based on the pen and paper game (which is FAR REMOVED from the adaptation), locking led to the main page containing outdated or flat out incorrect info for far too long, which I personally tried to rectify.

We're not Reddit, sure. But since the game is on the last leg before release, with new promo material coming out steadily since late July, we should focus on unlocking and keeping the entire thing fairly clean, focusing on what's been said and shown in the official materials.

Wasn't HighCrate banned from participating in any Unreleased Work cleanup?

They're not doing cleanup. Check the page history; they haven't edited it.

Regardless of the final decision, somebody needs to tap FSU Bulldog on the shoulder for speculative troping issues and undoing cleanup efforts.

They just joined the editing on the 21st, so— early intervention! Have they been invited yet to this discussion?

^ Yes, I messaged them when I started the ATT thread.

Okay, I'm a little confused because the page sees a lot of traffic. Is the page currently in need of repair or has the speculative troping been removed?

^ The concern is that the speculative troping was temporarily repaired via commenting out, but then FSU Bulldogs undid that repair by un-commenting it. Not-So-Badass Longcoat, did your edits fix that or does it still need more?

Most of Silverblade's comment tags remain deleted (and the entries they were in place to hide unaltered) as of Not-So-Badass Longcoat's last edit. Currently, nothing below the "Jackie Wells" folder has any citations whatsoever.

Ok, so putting things in order:

• SFU Bulldogs has not been active since the start of this ATT thread, so I'm willing to show good faith and assume they haven't had a chance to respond to the PM invitation.
• It is impossible for me to revert the page to its non-speculative form without undoing every edit made after that. You will have to do it manually.
• I don't think the page is due for a page lock just yet, even though speculation on wiki pages is one of my major pet peeves.

I tried to sort out as much as I could, leaving mostly tropes I added to the main work page (the citations are there). If there's a character-specific trope that shouldn't be on the main work page, I added a short reference (mostly to the promotional website that details gang-related things).

Characters.Cyberpunk 2077 is still in pretty bad shape. A cursory glance over it reveals a lot of ZCEs and several entries with no citations to publicly-released tropable materials, which is required by wiki policy.

The page still has no citations below the "Megacorporations" heading, and several ZCEs along the lines of,

• Gratuitous Spanish: His primary form of speaking.

At this point, is there any consideration to just burning it all down and starting over from scratch?

I still think a thorough cleaning followed by a page lock is worth considering.

I said upthread that I hadn't found any previous edit-warring problems on this particular subpage, but it turns out that's because I wasn't looking hard enough. A more thorough look at the History page reveals a slow-motion Edit War between tropers attempting to clean it of speculation and ZCEs and tropers systematically removing comment tags going back years. Go to the history page and do a CTRL+F for "Action Girl" for just one example of what I'm talking about.

Meanwhile, new entries that do not conform to the site's policies are actively being added to the page as recently as yesterday.

I'm grateful to tropers like Silverblade and Not-So-Badass Longcoat for their efforts to keep the page clean, but it seems unfair to ask them to keep it under 24/7 watch against constant efforts to undo their work.

Should we go through a last round of edits and make it a locked page then?

I know the YMMV page for Captain Marvel was locked before release to stave off issues with high misuse and vandalism from trolls.

This is about what it would look like if it were fully cleaned of citation-less, context-less, or otherwise invalid entries today. A bit thin, but still page-worthy.

Ideally, it would be nice to have someone familiar with the marketing and supplemental materials released so far take a look and see if any of the hidden entries could have citations added and be unhidden.

My understanding is that quite a bit of material has been released; the issue is that it's also an adaptation of a pen-and-paper tabletop game, and edit reasons in the page history reveal that some tropers have been adding tropes that they assume will be in the video game based on tabletop game knowledge.

To someone unfamiliar with the franchise, it's impossible to tell how much of the material on the page is valid and simply needs citations, and how much is speculation based on the tabletop game.

And unfortunately, the Venn diagram between tropers who know and care about the franchise, and tropers who know and care about following wiki policy about unreleased works, does not include much overlap.

Does anyone have any input on the above, or are we good to implement cleanup and call for a page lock?

A lot of the entries currently existing could probably get citations from the marketing materials easily, it's just that the people interested in editing the page don't seem to have much interest in it, for any number of reasons (not knowing the policy, disliking the policy, not knowing how to insert a citation without making the entry look cluttered and awkward, probably more)

I wouldn't support a cleanup and lock without someone who's followed the marketing going through and helping create citations, because there are a lot of things on the current page that have been outright confirmed by the developers, trailers, interviews, etc.

Then the page needs to reflect that. Leaving policy violations because those that are interested in cleaning up bad pages don't know the material is not a good idea because it encourages more people to break the policy.

^^ I would love it if someone who's followed the marketing would go through and add citations, and would be happy to hold off on calls for a page lock if a volunteer emerges to do so.

Absent such a volunteer, however, our options are limited. Frankly, if more folks who were familiar with the marketing were willing to follow the wiki policy, we wouldn't need a lock.

Okay, for starters, I'm cutting the "Classes" part from the Character sheet entirely. It's a holdover from the very early marketing info, later it turned out that the supposed "classes" are just skill trees.

That sounds like a good start, and I also notice you adding context to some of the ZCEs, which is great.

It's the lack of citations which is the real elephant in the room, though. Just to take one example, under the Arasaka heading:

• Japan Takes Over the World: They are Japanese owned and easily the most powerful megacorporation in the setting.

Where is this information coming from? I know there is extensive pre-release marketing material, and I also know that it's an adaptation of a pen-and-paper tabletop game and that at least some tropers have been adding entries based on information from that. The former is fine, but the latter is speculation; just because something is true of the tabletop game doesn't necessarily mean it will be true of the video game adaptation. And as someone who's not familiar with the franchise, unless the entry text tells me, I have no way of telling the difference.

This is a problem for literally every entry below this one, which is the majority of the page.

And just now troper ~Setaflow jumped in, added two uncited entries, added a third pre-hidden with comment tags, hid one of the first two entries, and then un-hid the third. I see no rhyme or reason to the hiding and unhiding.

I don't see any way to justify keeping this page unlocked. This sort of thing is happening all the time. It would take constant vigilance to keep it clean. Let's just clean it, lock it, and be done. Anyone who cares to add citations to hidden entries can always do it on a sandbox and submit it to the Locked Pages thread.

I think that Arasaka is hyped to be the biggest megacorp in one of the featurettes, probably the Lifepaths one. I'll watch it again to confirm.

However, as if that's not enough, Dark Horse Books released a companion book for the video game. Looking at the promo of several pages of the Polish translation, it looks like fluff from the tabletop game, just recycled and updated. Which makes our job considerably more difficult.

Now this is even better. I wanted to read up more on Adam Smasher, and what I'm reading on a Cyberpunk 2020 wiki gives me a very bad feeling.

Namely that CP 2077 is an Ultimate Universe version of the tabletop game. Otherwise, Yorinobu Arasaka (whose render was shown on the video game's fanpage on FB) would be a decrepit old man in 2077, and his dad would have to be either dead or heavily gene-modded, being over a century and a half old. Also, the artwork of original Adam Smasher is considerably more cartoonish than what CD Projekt made him look (and it's not just the art style, other characters look way more realistic).

I'll tentatively step forward as a volunteer to start cleaning this up with some proper citations, since I've been following the marketing and previews pretty closely, but I can't begin for a day or two. I'm also putting out a call to action on the game's forum thread, though it's been pretty dead lately so I'm not expecting much response.

Sounds good. I'll be available to offer a non-fan's perspective when needed.

What a coincidence, I just got corrected in regard to the Ultimate Universe hypothesis.

A new post on CP 2077 fanpage lists Saburo Arasaka's age as 158. Which lines up with his original CP 2020 birthdate.

The very fact that you're having to "hypothesize" about where the video game stands in continuity with the tabletop game based on tiny tidbits of information posted on fan pages should probably tell us not to take for granted that anything that applies to the tabletop game continuity necessarily applies to the video game.

The tabletop game has a page. There's no reason to duplicate stuff that should properly go there on a video game page when it's unclear where they even stand in relation to each other.

So just to clarify, what exactly defines a "cited" entry that's therefore valid? My approach so far has been to include the name of the source (not always easy given that this is mostly trailers, previews, and interviews), but should I be including links, or what? Also, what's the policy on entires that can be confirmed by an image on the page? For example, a trope about the appearance of a character who has an image depicting them in their folder?

Things like "the 2020 Night City Wire previews" should be fine, but "the director said" and "marketing shows" don't work because they don't give a specific source. Links are better, but still need to say what they're linking to in case the link breaks. Image on the page is useless because that can be changed. Don't bother saying anything about the current image. However, you can reference where the image came from and use that as a source. A theoretical example; "The E3 poster from 2019 shows <this character> with <this trait>" where that poster might be the character image, but the example doesn't care because the image might change.

Links are one of those things that are nice, but not strictly necessary. A lot of pages have links to major trailers above the line instead of in the individual examples, and that's fine.

Technically speaking, we're not meant to be making statements about what the marketing "shows," "reveals," or "confirms" about the game; we're only meant to be making statements about tropes that occur entirely within the marketing. That way if things are different between the marketing and the game, the entries are still accurate.

E.g. if a trailer depicts a character doing a Kamehame Hadoken, we'd want to say something like:

• Kamehame Hadoken: In the E3 2019 trailer, Johnny Murderface conjures a fireball in the palm of his hand and throws it at a mook.

And not something like:

• Kamehame Hadoken: The E3 2019 trailer reveals that the game includes a special move in which the player will be able to throw fireballs as Johnny Murderface.

Make sense? If it turns out that the Kamehame Hadoken shown in the trailer is not in the final game or happens in a different way in the game than the trailer, the former would still be true, but the latter would be speculation. Rule of thumb, if you find yourself making future-tense statements about a work that hasn't been released, that's probably not great. Try to make present-tense statements about materials (trailers, etc.) that have been released instead.

Likewise, statements like "the director said" are usually a sign of a Zero Context Example, because the director saying a trope will happen is not the same as the trope actually happening. Even if the trope is used in the final work, there's usually context about how it's used that doesn't become apparent until the work is out.

Think of it less like a "citation" in the academic sense and more like you're just saying when the trope happens. Saying "in the E3 2019 trailer, [character] did [this]" is no different than if you were writing an entry for a TV show and saying "in the second season, [character] did [this]."

This has gotten offtopic and a bit too long for ATT.