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Opening this for public processing as I am not familiar with the incident.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
There's no need to Unperson somebody because of controversy if their works are tropable on the wiki. Not familiar with the controversy but talking at length about any controversy is contentious due to the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment. But we can discuss it on items such as Role-Ending Misdemeanor.
Edited by mightymewtron I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
I don't recall the exact details but the controversy was that Haywood apparently used his fame from Achievement Hunter to groom multiple underage girls who were fans of his. I don't recall if he actually sexually assaulted anyone but I'm reasonably certain nudes were exchanged. In the aftermath he was fired and Achievement Hunter did their best to Unperson him from the channel, deleting any videos that that contained only him or were primarily about him.
Edited by Dirtyblue929
We can talk about him. We probably just can't talk about that.
^ I'm not a big Rooster Teeth fan, but from what I'm seeing here, I think that talking about Ryan but not his crimes would be even worse than not talking about him at all. It'd be like pretending that his crimes and their victims don't exist.
If he's mentioned on the page, it should be made clear that he's a sexual predator and that his acts have ended his career.
Edited by Zuxtron
Like I said, talk about controversies when they're relevant, i.e. objective facts describing his work on the show and items like Overshadowed by Controversy, Role-Ending Misdemeanor, Missing Episode, or Harsher in Hindsight. Ignoring the matter altogether isn't just brushing it under the rug, but it erases the impact his allegations have apparently had on the work. But it also shouldn't be shoehorned into every mention of Ryan on the page.
Edited by mightymewtron I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
Yeah, that's what I meant. Not "every time he's mentioned should have a shoehorned reminder that he's a sexual predator" but "if he's to be mentioned, his crimes should be mentioned somewhere on the page too".
I simply feel that while his transgressions are heinous, going into detail about the magnitude of it can be very upsetting. I think a blanket "inappropriate misconduct and behavior towards fans" should be enough to why he's no longer mentioned on tropable work pages.
At the same time, we don't want to downplay it by being too vague. If said inappropriate behavior involved grooming underage girls, then we should say so.
Obviously, there's a level of detail that's unacceptable, but I think it's relevant here that said crimes were committed against minors, since omitting that detail could affect how someone perceives them.
That's what I'm talking about. People can't even bring up what he's done without it being deleted. Like ever since it happened in October it's been a cycle of people adding stuff and it getting removed within the day. That's why I asked this in the first place, if we can't even bring up his crimes why not just follow AH's lead and unperson the bastard?
Edited by maslego
As a lot of people here have said there's a compromise between ignoring it and unpersoning him.
The act of deleting all mention of the incident while leaving mentions of him in is whitewashing and definitely not okay. Unpersoning him, as people mentioned, would be like pretending it never happened and erasing the history of the group.
However, if the parts elaborating on the scandal were shoehorned and unrelated to the context, or were going above and beyond the point of "inform people about the incident" to "make this page/entry all about the incident and how awful it was and what a horrible person he is", then that's not okay either.
I think the acceptable middle ground here would be to leave it at a sentence or two about the nature of his crimes - using his fame to solicit sex from underage fans. No elaboration is necessary from that - it's to the point and describes what happened. Going into more detail would be unnecessary and upsetting, and spending more than a sentence or two on it would be sensationalist and detract from the focus of the pages in question.
This isn't to say "just add a notice and move on like nothing happened" mind you - we should probably look into the pages to tone down any gushing about him so we don't look like we're endorsing him. He was one of the most popular members of the cast prior to these revelations so I wouldn't be surprised if there's a whole lot of that. Might even warrant a cleanup thread if there's too much of it.
Edited by Dirtyblue929
You know, I think having a general Wiki Talk discussions about how to handle such controversies might make more sense than a new Ask The Tropers query for each new instance.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I brought this up because he's trying to make a twitch comeback and I'm hoping people won't be ignorant of his crimes
ROCEJ would apply here, methinks. Not going to step into this minefield, just agreeing with the "one sentence talking about his crimes" idea.
The problem is that this guy is stopping us from doing even that - I can understand not going into detail, but even mentioning that Ryan's trying to make a comeback got cut because "that's for another day". It's just infuriating how literally everything said about Ryan besides "he got fired and that's all we'll say about it" gets cut as though we're just gonna pretend that what we know happened didn't actually happen - like I said, not going into detail is one thing, especially if the examples were being shoehorned, but they're appropriate for their location, and deleting literally everything besides "he got fired" just feels like hiding what he did
Edited by STARCRUSHER99
Not every mention of Ryan needs to talk about what he did, otherwise we're just running into the same problems as with every other creator who got #MeToo'd. If it's irrelevant to the example, it shouldn't be shoehorned in.
That being said, if the example does revolve around why he was fired, we should say why.
Yeah we should probably get whoever keeps deleting the information in here for a chat.
Yeah, cutting every mention of him is going overboard. He sounds super shitty but the pages exist to describe his career first and foremost, and that doesn't automatically mean "go watch this guy he's cool." If we had to unperson every sexually abusive creator, we'd have to cutlist everything made by Cosby, Polanski, Kricfalusi, etc etc etc. Just briefly say what he did, how it affected his work on the site, and if possible say if he's doing anything else worth noting.
Edited by mightymewtron I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
I'll freely admit that when it happened I added stuff that I shouldn't - and it got rightly cut. But, for instance, an entire Harsher In Hindsight entry on their Minecraft series was cut; I agree it shouldn't have been specific as it was, but it should've been reworded, not removed, and the OP and I briefly talked about a moment on their Heartwarming page where Alfredo was talking about Ryan coming back - and it got cut because "that's for another day" even though it's warning newcomers not to fall for his manipulative BS. Same thing happened on his character page, with the same "and that's all we'll say about that" that they're saying everywhere.
Like, again, if it were being shoehorned then I'd get it, but entries that make sense are being cut.
I think I found the troper responsible for deleting mentions of Ryan's departure: lolz6924, who may have a habit
of downplaying descriptions of abuse allegations. Examples [1] [2] (has the "That's for another day" phrasing OP mentioned), [3] [4] (no edit reason for these deletions...)
That first cut was one of mine, which I understand in hindsight - I figured at the time that people were going to be looking for more information, and the link I shared was keeping track of everything while remaining as neutral as possible, so at least there it would be accurate information - but like I said, I get why that was cut. The rest, not as much.
The "that's all we'll say about that"-type phrasing is Word Cruft, but that's the worst edit of the four examples mightymewtron linked (not counting the other ATT.)
The first edit is justified as STARCRUSHER said, the second would have been better if the link was moved to the text in the beginning of the example and made clear that the "he" in the example is Alfredo (as the example is about Alfredo, not Ryan), the third is the Word Cruft, and the fourth is an unexplained but at least partially defensible deletion (unless Meg is more involved in this crap than I know.)
Send lolz a "Deleting YMMV" notifier. They're not the only troper involved in constantly rephrasing and deleting and adding junk about Haywood, but they're the one who seems to have an agenda surrounding abuse allegations in general.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
It's stuff like this one that annoys me the most - yes, the example went into way too much detail, but it should've been reworded, not completely deleted. Plus the fact that there's a clear history here as the other linked thread details is a bit of a red flag
Maybe we can take this to the Wall of Text cleanup thread?
^ Eh, that's not really a wall of text. It's just bad formatting (one example encompassing multiple).
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
@Septimus from way up in the thread, a Wiki Talk thread about this kind of thing did exist a couple years ago. Link.
I just got a reply from lolz saying they removed things for being contentious or inaccurate, and since Ryan hasn't responded to the allegations they don't think it's safe to say the allegations are accurate yet.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
It makes sense for the stuff that mentions the victims being underage - that is still contentious, especially since some of the people who came forward admitted to lying about their age (though not all of them did) - but he at minimum admitted to sleeping with fans on his Twitter (with all of the power imbalance that entails) and his only defense was "I didn't do anything illegal" so saying he "hasn't responded" is a straight up lie
Edited by STARCRUSHER99
Literally any time someone adds more details about the Ryan Haywood incident to the Achievement Hunter pages they get removed because "let's not go into that". So if we can't talk about him can we just delete him period?
Edited by SeptimusHeap