Discussion FanficRecs / RanmaOneHalf

ok can someone help me reword the synopsis i'm not good at that sort of thing

I'd like to think we've all been good boys and girls and should be able to play in the sandbox again. I'd like to think...

It's unlocked! I'm so happy!

Because of the clueless, wall-of-texty lunatic in the thread above, who refused to stop edit-warring on the page.

If you want to recommend something, I suggest that you write up and format the rec yourself (including a linked review), and then post it in this thread.

I'd also suggest seeing if you also have an alternate source for the fic as well, to the best of my knowledge thekeep.org is on borrowed time and may vanish from the face of the web at any point.

Why is this thread locked? Because it only takes one person to ruin something for everyone else!

Feel free to sort any crossovers you see on the page into their own folder, then.

I also agree about the crossovers. I'm personally fed up with "for want of a Nail" due to the "Bet" style general OOC and occasional Fan Wank Running the Asylum God-Mode Sue tendencies, but others like them, so why not.

Agreed, we need a crossover page!

Because nobody's made one yet.

Becuase the thread is locked!

In that case, sandbox one up and present it in the 'Edit requests for locked pages' thread on the forums.

Don't know how to do that!

This page should work. Just copy the Fanfic Recs page onto it, make the changes you want, and then go onto the forum thread I mentioned (in Wiki Talk) and ask that a mod replace the current page with your version.

Don't use the forum, and I don't care enough to join the forum. I'm willing to wait for the page to be unlocked. . . I can wait months.

That was not what was said. You simply immediately suggested removing it.

Here is the text concerning this point:

"Iaculus: I'm a bit uneasy about this. I mean, removing all mention of a story due to authorial bad behaviour seems to rather fly in the face of There Is No Such Thing As Notability.

Fighteer: Is there anyone else who's read it and wants to trope it? If so, I could consider relenting.

Jordan: Tropers/Gaston1991 has his own trope page, and while sharing some common interests with antvas, have edited a lot more pages and don't really seem given to soapboxing/has a very different style.

Iaculus: In that case, then, we do appear to have an independent rec for VFFPC..."

As for the "half-hearted review" Iaculus also mentioned that he was perplexed about, it wasn't originally a review, just a description that I added when modifying Gaston's entry somewhat, but when I followed the head moderator's Fast Eddie's instruction to move all reviews to separate linked pages, spending several hours doing so since wanted to help out after Eddie's decision, I simply moved it to that section to keep things brief in the main section. Since I'm a compulsive right-is-right truthsayer, as you should know by now, I gave an honest summary, not a misleading gushing endorsement.

In addition, you yourself made a massive case for No Such Thing As Notability, which I initially disagreed with, and as such kept my story from being listed for a long time, but eventually changed my mind about, since nobody else cared, nd lots of authors added their own stuff, which is fine as long as the descriptions are accurate.

Also, I seriously don't get why you hate me with such a burning fervour Cryptic. I mean, as far as I know I don't cause any harm, definitely not in the harmless stuff I do nowadays, have made extreme efforts to actually help out, including the review indexing, and generally try to compromise and use reason and communication. T He long text sections used to be a problems, but I have mostly fixed that, and have behaved like much less of an asshole than most involved in this, so I really don't get why people get hung up about me.

I mean social situations, especially extreme misunderstandings, easily get perplexing for me, but all of this feels like Alice In Wonderland. I'm completely confused about what feels like a stalking Witch Hunt harrassment, for very unclear reasons as most editors here are more offensive and uncompromising than I am, and you yourself may have been the most fanatic. I mean you have literally repeatedly popped up within 3 minutes of any mention of me to find a way to take advantage to hurt me in any way you can, or taken multiple initiatives to suggest ways yourself in assorted posts... all this over a span of almost a year now. Why do you even care what I'm doing? I mostly do a few brief additions and cleanups nowadays.

The story you are currently attempting to remove on false premises was something I spent around 1000 hours of intense focus writing for one thing, and although I don't like fics like "The Key To A Successful Interview", I don't remotely go to the extreme of actually removing any mention of it from the wiki, and it is very common with contributors who are much bigger casual assholes than I am. I mean I even have a troll blog here devoted to me for some unclear appeal that I cannot relate to.

So what has made you hate me in particular so much that it never goes away? Is it just mutual misunderstandings, weird conspiracy theories like some people have dreamed up about me, or something more? Seriously, I really need an explanation, because as far as I know I am pretty harmless and well-intended.

You're a ban-evader in flagrant and repeated violation of the rules of the site. That alone is reason enough for your many and varied socks to be hunted down and terminated on sight. Your tendency towards Wall of Text (which, despite your claims, has not improved) and habit of trying to pervert the site towards your own moral agenda are just further reasons for us to not want you around for any real period of time. Your excuses for your behaviour are inadequate, and your attempts to redeem yourself are too little and too late. The site will not let you back in, and asks only that you leave it well alone - and I can say this despite not being a mod because they have already made their position on this abundantly clear.

If that is not enough to appeal to your sense of decency, then may I mention the other, legitimate tropers who run the risk of being bounced due to intersecting IP addresses every time you use another sockpuppet to get back on the site? You are causing real, tangible damage via your very existence every single time you come here.

And for the record, Cryptic removed the rec before my objection, since it seemed at the time to be a pretty clear sock-recommendation (which we don't like on recs pages). Accident, not malice.

In short, it doesn't matter how many sock accounts you make. We'll ban every last one of them until you get the hint and leave for good, and we'll do it because we do hate you, we hate the way you've acted on the site, and so you're not welcome here.

Well there is Ranma and Kaneda but that is with a version of Akane that was cursed at birth and raised as a guy, erm, there is Lost Innocence (sorry no link I'm afraid google shall have to be your friend) where Akane does gain a curse, but it isn't a light comedy, it starts with Ranma being raped and curse-locked by Kuno.

First Steps has Akane accidently cursed while trying to cure Ranma. And there is Gin and Kin which has Akane getting a magic necklace that lets her change, although once again the focus is on a curse-locked Ranma.

It's a difficult thing to track down right enough.

A couple that come to mind off the top of my head are "The Heart of Ranma" and "Clothes Make the...". Oh, and "The Ghost of Curses Past", well, sorta.

Actually, most of the synopses here seem pretty good, which was a surprise for me given how underwritten the descriptions on some other fanfic recs pages are.

The purpose of this recs page is to detail recommended stories - so synopses, tags (slash, gorn, lemon, et cetera), and so on. Opinions are for the reviews.

Maybe we could use a bit of a polish here and there, but other pages seem to need more help after the policy change.

Well, I moved about half of the comments to linked reviews sections before I ran out of energy. It is quite mind-numbing, and at the time I thought that other contributors would chip in as well. Would anybody be willing to do parts of it?

On that note, Sensu, I appreciate your effort, but whatever you're currently doing doesn't seem to be working that well. Any idea what's going on?

Well, I'm not certain myself. Eddie told me that I shouldn't simply move all of the old posts into single threads and remove the "Comment thread" parts of the links, so I went with the instructions. I don't think that it is necessary to merge the titles into single words however, or at least it worked fine to add the reviews before.

I also find the page to look much cleaner if we remove any pro-con subjectivity whatsoever from it beyond brief description and signature.

However, although interpretating intent is frequently an iffy subject, so I may misunderstand, I obviously strongly disagree with the principle of that only propaganda should be allowed, or that if a writer puts together something very disturbing, offensive, or even outright filled to the brim with hatred, rape-glorifications, rampant Moral Dissonance amorality or similar, a reader has no right to react to this, even in the rare cases of outright hate-propaganda against him/herself, and should just "shut up and take it" rather than point it out. It always turns into a Moral Myopia principle of that one type of offensive expression is okay but not reactive defense against it, and as usual I have a fundamental problem with that sort of thing, especially if the manner my processing and reactions work is misinterpreted or misrepresented in conjunction with accepting the hate-attack of the work that spawned the reaction, no matter how comparatively petty, conceited and trivial, is somehow not.

And that's speaking as someone who most likely literally put a far more intense effort into my own story than pretty much any fanfiction author out there, but as long as the reactions are intelligent, and consist of completely honest processing after reading the entire produced work I have no problem with them, negative or not.

Naturally it's not like I will contradict the instructions, although I have the impression that Eddie is a mostly well-intended and reasonable sort, so I'm talking to him about it, and will take the inaccurate "it is small" potshot with a grain of salt. I mostly work in terms of reactive input-output honest processing and that's it, and encourage the same in everyone else. From my perspective disliking certain thematic aspects of someone's story doesn't rank anywhere near as attacks or bigot propaganda against the person him/herself (which is the entire point of a large number of stories out there), and I don't even care/comment about material that is simply bad but not unsympathetic. Nor do I see the sense of that I'm allowed to give twentyfour thumbs up without a glitch, but two thumbs down, and five-six conflicting impressions, and people get into an uproar about it. I dunno if it is possible to properly clarify my actual position given that he is so busy though.

That said, I'm not sure whether or not we are allowed to move the longer reviews or not, but I suppose that I'll leave that part to yourself. None of this makes much matter-of-fact logical sense to me, but I'll continue to help out by trimming away all subjectivity and inserting review buttons.

... what? The purpose here is to cut the comments sections, replace them with reviews links, and turn individual comments into reviews, like what Wilbyr did with the Neon Genesis Evangelion page. That's it.

If you want to respond to a rec you don't like, write a review for it in the appropriate section.

If you want to discuss policy, meanwhile, would you please be so kind as to do so on the appropriate Trope Repair Shop thread where everyone can see it?

That's what I did. Then Eddie deleted the reviews and messaged me, so I responded in private. Then you asked me about it, so I gave an honest answer. It is all a bit confusing whether or not any negative impressions are allowed to be honestly expressed, or if it is simply about that I compressed them all into single posts... As Cryptic Mirror said above, perhaps it is better if someone else handles the moving part and I help out with the rest, as no matter what I do someone will inevitably get pissed off about it.

Definitely a good idea to take it to the thread, then, since I have no idea what you actually did, how it differed from Wilbyr's system, and so on, thanks to the deletions.

Well, I'll have to be informed about what is intended before making any fuzz (maybe it was simply about filtering away the less useful comments stemming from not at all fresh impressions? I'm certainly guilty of doing some of those, and see the point of removing them), and this isn't Wikipedia, so I had the impression that whatever opinion the mods have goes.

However, it'd be nice for the rest of us to know the modly opinion, how it applies, and discuss how we factor it into our editing.

Ah, screw it, I'll just post on the thread myself.

That may be better. You'll probably have an easier time making yourself understood. The value-structures I've seen in the forums can be rather alien here. Wikipedia was more straightforward to understand.(I also found most of the people there very decent, no matter the bad reputation.)

Contesting recommendations is absolutely fine, so long as it doesn't turn into a huge threadmode argument. Those should be shifted to the discussion page, with a note left under the rec that that's where the debate is continuing.

Sensu went a bit further than that, attempting to rank fics by quality among other siminlarly unworkable and unhelpful alterations. That's why he got hammered.

He got hammered, and that's fine. But his comments on that fic weren't being threadmode argued. Especially since his rants got trimmed to something more tolerable, I just don't see why his remarks should be further purged.

why would you need to rebut a recommendation? The point of the page is to recommend a fic, not to analyse its worth. If you don't like it, or do not recommend it, then simply do not add your name.

To quote the fanfic rec main page, paragraph 2 line 1

"Bear in mind that recommendations are subjective, so if you want to question or discuss any given recommendation you should do so on the appropriate discussion page."

Also the final line above the recs index:

"If you want people to stay away from a fan fic, or read it for other reasons, post it here or here. If you want to read articles for other fanfics of varying quality, go here."

So, no anti-recs allowed on the main page. Word of God right there.

I'll admit I am as guilty of breaking this as anyone else, and I really should go away and remove my anti-recommendation for, erm, the fic I put one on for. Or at least substantially modify it. Ah, it was Hearts of Ice, now edited for a more constructive approach.

As for Anonguy removing Antvasima/Sensu Bean's (which ever of his/her IDs you want to use) wall of text. Well personally I'm glad someone did. I might have done it myself except I didn't want to be again accused of some sort of vendetta. It needed removing, it added nothing, and was generally a sour note on the page.

Still, at least it isn't as bad as the Nobody Dies or Shinji And Warhammer 40 K super threads of doom on the Evangelion recs page. :o)

@Muphrid: You're right - it was just one dissenting opinion, and should probably be reinstated. The only issue is that it was pretty huge, which might mean it warrants either trimming or (again) moving to the discussion page. That's why we shift things here, after all, to save space. Big arguments take up a lot of page-room, but they're not the only things that do.

@Cryptic: The purpose of a fanfic-recs page is to tell us what stories are worth reading. Further notes by other tropers can give us a more three-dimensional view of a story, telling us what's good and bad about it. If lots of people are saying the same thing about certain aspects of a fic, that suggests that it's important - which can be good or bad, depending on that aspect.

Put simply, by recommending a fic, you are providing a positive analysis of its worth. In order for the page to be useful to readers, it's only fair that others get a say as well.

According to the main page these recs pages are not here to say what should be avoided. That is what discussion pages are for. And the afore mentioned pages linked to, again on the fanfic recs home page. These page are here to say 1 person thought it was worth reading. Which we can agree with, or disagree by abstention. If you want to explicitly comment on what is wrong, the main fanfic recs index page provides the links to the appropriate venues. This isn't a policy I made up, it is TV Tropes policy, and we consent to follow those policies when we post. If it makes you feel any better I was a bit surprised myself as I didn't recall it being spelled out quite so bluntly and when I went to check. But there it is, and that is that.

If that's the case, what's the point of this sentence (emphasis mine)?

You can also add to the current recommendations if you want. You can do it by expanding on the notes about the fanfic, or linking similar or related fanfics.

Well, I initially read it as you do. However, after checking the main page myself, I think it has to be re-read as expand on anything you liked that the initial poster didn't mention if you liked it for different reasons. I'm gonna have to go through all my various recs on all pages, (probably tomorrow as it is fast approaching 2am here now and bed is beckoning) and make sure what I've put fits. Ah the path of a troper is fraught with peril.

Perhaps the thing to do is raise a ticket at the trope repair shop highlighting the perceived discrepancy and asking for clarifications.

Yeah, all I meant to point out is that it's pretty common for people to comment saying they dislike a fic for whatever reason, and I'd thought that was okay. If instead a sweeping cleanup is required for consistency, I imagine that's fine. It just seemed with the Sensu think that it was just more people beating up on the guy when he's been duly dealt with, but a consistent cleanup of negative comments to point to discussion wouldn't seem inconsistent.

in all honesty some of column A, some of Column B. People are like that. Probably not intentionally though.

The Sensu Bean/Antvasima thing just brought to a head something that has been simmering on and off for a while. I'll give him/her this much, the whole fanfic recs system needs a good systemic clean up. Where we diverge is how we go about it. My own personal opinion is to go back to scratch with the pages being recs only and the standard for a rec is "I (generic "I", not necessarily me) liked it someone else might too", and the comments thread reduced to just the tags or trigger warnings. Any anti-recs should be hived off to the Darth Wiki (and/or afore mentioned pages) and nuked from orbit with extreme prejudice (or y'know, just deleted if you don't fancy an overblown melodramatic metty-four) when they appear.

Bear in mind, though, that even if neg-recs aren't supposed to be on the main page at all (I'll see if I can open a Trope Repair Shop discussion at some point) that just means that they should be shunted over to the discussion pages rather than deleted altogether. It also raises questions about what we're supposed to do about all the 'me-too' recs, which can take up just as much space as negs (see also, the Neon Genesis Evangelion recs page).

I agree, too much Gushing About Shows You Like is just as bad as Complaining About Shows You Dont Like. If all a person is adding is "me too" then just adding their handle to the "recommended by" field should be sufficient.

I think I've said this on the Eva page too. Definitely said it on one discussion page, darned if I can remember which one though. I think we do need a good old clean out, re-org, and consistent enforcement. This part of the wiki-just hasn't kept up with the evolution of the rest of it and is a bit rag-tag IYSWIM.

Well, I naturally thoroughly disagree about that diverging viewpoints should be censored by anyone inconvenienced by them (and it should be noted that I have only submitted two true cases, and four ambivalent ones, compared to twenty positive recommendations, but most people, including myself, tend to have automatic selective memories about things like that) then per logical definition the entire page automatically turns into a thoroughly onesided and misleading Gushing About Shows You Like. It isn't at all honest or informative.

The entire page is about giving text reviews, so that rationalisation (used by the rude frequent "Interview" editor AnonGuy to remove a very specific part of my texts) also rings false. To reach any form of balance both sides of an issue should be presented. I don't mind that you have a negative view of Hearts of Ice for example. It's a valid contrary viewpoint, and as such should be presented.

I do agree about that the reviewer should attempt to be as objective as possible to list the potential positive parts they could find as well however, but I actually did make an effort to do so. To mirror a comment I just saw on the general fanfic rec page plus and minus points should be openly listed according to honest belief. Any fic that attempts to censor honest and observant contradictory views per extension should also remove any views whatsoever, including the visible listing.

One thing I will say, Sensu, is that you really need to work on making your comments on stories more concise. Compare them to what most other folks are writing, and they nearly fall into Wall of Text territory.

For your Key To A Successful Interview one, for instance, you might as well just summarise your issues with it - i.e., Moral Dissonance, Canon Defilement, and the like - and save the more extensive writeup for the trope page's reviews section. Brevity is the soul of wit, and helps keep the page looking tidy.

But I have made a consistent effort to summarise the text due to the problems. It's at less than half of what it started at. Believe it or not, I _am_ consistently trying to keep it as brief as possible. My natural inclination from school is to write at least 20 pages discussing any serious topic. It isn't as severe here naturally, but nevertheless, it is still seriously shortened down. I suppose that it could be compressed even further, but beyond a certain degree I'm not sure what to take away without losing the intended point entirely.

You don't need to write a treatise, for a start. Here's my suggestion as an example:

• Honestly, this felt more like a Troll Fic than anything else. The author played fast-and-loose with the setting, the characters are drained of any redeeming features they had in the original stories and yet are portrayed in a disturbingly adulatory light, and the humour is shallow, heavy-handed, and overly reliant on cheap pop-culture references. I could go on, but for the sake of brevity I'll simply point you to my review on this story's trope page.

There. About a third of the size. Better yet, you could just put in a note saying 'I didn't like this as much as everyone else seems to have - see my review on the story's trope page for a full explanation'.

I don't really mind the above version beyond that it should preferably keep the links.

However, does it give you a general idea of how you might want to write an entry? Just consider what the most important points are for you about a story - in this case, Canon Defilement, Darker and Edgier Character Derailment leading to both Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy on the part of the readers and Moral Dissonance on the part of the writer, and clumsy humour that almost edges into a particular sort of Refuge in Vulgarity. Then slap 'em down in a concise little paragraph, with a notice of where to find a more detailed rant if you want to do one. Simple.

I actually appreciate that you attempt to communicate civilly. The hostile misunderstandings, or false accusations, get very frustrating after a while. How about something like this then? Shorten down at will.

"Honestly, this felt more like a Troll Fic than anything else. The author played fast-and-loose with the setting and ripped away much of the intended "be kind to others" message of the original work, the previously flawed but well-intentioned protagonists are drained of almost any redeeming features they had in the original stories, whereas the nastiest are portrayed in a comparatively disturbingly adulatory light, to the extent that the reader easily loses interest in the cast as entertainment, and the humour and story itself feels shallow, mechanical, heavy-handed, ruthlessly cynical, and overly reliant on cheap pop-culture references. Of course, Your Mileage May Vary, and all of this may be entirely intentional caricaturisation of media conveniences, especially considering the recurring No Fourth Wall narration. Basically if you aren't bothered by any of the above, then the writing quality is actually mostly decent, and if a reader is only familiar with the series from "Ranma Abridged" then he/she will probably enjoy this, as it entirely depends on if you have any actual affinity for the characters. I don't care at all about Sailor Moon for example, and thus enjoyed that spinoff considerably better."

I'd chop out everything after 'cheap pop-culture references', and replace it with "On the plus side, the writing quality is pretty good, and it's markedly more enjoyable if you only have a passing familiarity with the source material, so YMMV."

Modified version:

• Honestly, this felt more like a Troll Fic than anything else. The author played fast-and-loose with the setting and ripped away much of the intended "be kind to others" message of the original work, the previously flawed but well-intentioned protagonists are drained of almost any redeeming features they had in the original stories, whereas the nastiest are portrayed in a comparatively disturbingly adulatory light, to the extent that the reader easily loses interest in the cast as entertainment, and the humour and story itself feels shallow, mechanical, heavy-handed, ruthlessly cynical, and overly reliant on cheap pop-culture references. On the plus side, the writing quality is pretty good, and it's markedly more enjoyable if you only have a passing familiarity with the source material, so YMMV.

Again, try to drain it down to the bare essentials. Long-winded speculation about authorial intent is not necessary in something as short and to-the-point as a neg-rec (or, for that matter, a rec of any kind).

Ok, I'll replace the text with the above version, with a very small modification. Thank you for the help. :)

Okay, I've been blowing this off for a while because before I just didn't give a care, but I don't like Antvasima's appraisal. I feel it's inaccurate mainly because he takes Interview way too seriously. I also don't like the allegation that I wrote it with only a cursory understanding of the core material for people who would have the same grasp. I wrote it with nothing but love and understanding for the original work, largely to make fun of the fandom, and to have fun with the setting. While I will not state that it is the finest piece of fiction ever produced (it's shit, I will be the first to tell you this) I do have a bit of pride in my work because it's all I expect to get for it.

Antvasima: Don't take my story too seriously, it's a vehicle for cheap laughs, smut, over the top fight scenes, and the occasional pop culture gag. If you try to look at it any more in depth than it already is, you'll just repeat the same mistake 90% of the fandom has with the original work.

I'm afraid that 'don't take something too seriously' is not a concept yet known to antivasima/Sensu Bean.

Really, I wouldn't be too fussed if one person on the Internet dislikes your work. It's certainly not as if it's the only review of Interview on the page, for a start.

I've continuously been working on not taking things seriously over the years. It's necessary for survival given the virtual lack of impression filters, and I have managed to widen my sense of humour. However, it's never been quite that simple. I am strongly literal-minded, as another part of the whole autism deal (no not remotely the "barely maybe sort-of qualifies" arguable light Asperger variants) yes, but I don't take non-serious mangas, such as One Piece, Fairy Tail, Ranma, or othervise themselves seriously, and in fact that's the reason why I like and find them relaxing. What gradually started to get to me was noticing the way so many readers reacted to them, as many stories read as thoroughly twisted around and filled to the brim with pure and intense conceited hatred.

I'm a reactive sort by nature, and have extremely limited self-driven hatred or cruelty towards anyone (my problem doesn't lie with people, but with destructive ideologies as memetic infections), so the only way for media to get an actual rise out of me is to tell me in-depth over and over how feverishly someone else hates me on principle at an existential, genocidal, or "the more pain you cause the more justified you get to cause even more" "moment 22" torture-fetischism absolute level for whatever reason, despite that I've never hurt a fly outside of self-defence. However, I literally get bombarded by that sort of attitude in most media to a degree that by far overshadows the sillier foci of keyword bigot-terms. Nowadays I barely even blink at being called "retard" instead of autistic (also inaccurate, as it depends extremely from area to area) "emo" instead of bipolar or similar, nor do I have a problem with most of the silly offensive stereotype jokes in Family Guy directed my way (in fact I find several of them relieving, and don't at all get why anyone had a problem with the Down Syndrome episode... the more seriously played "justified" bullying of Meg on the other hand, that I have a problem with), and find it silly that this is the sort of convenient silly detail that is focused on by debaters rather than the actual context. The movie 300 is a decent well-known example for what actually is offensive, as regardless of all rationalisations in the world it still at the end of the day glirified and justified the ideal of genocide on anyone with a serious handicap, is morally identical to the work of Leni Riefenstahl, from a scientific (read Freakonomics) standpoint very much will cause efficient propaganda of every principle Benito Mussolini believed in, and matter-of-fact is equivalent to a death-threat towards millions of people, regardless of double-standards that it is only bad if done towards indivíduals... that happen to be of the same media-oriented variety as the person informing us that this is much worse than anything, ever...

Regarding this particular story, I would probably mostly have forgotten it by now if it wasn't because of the intense efforts to selectively censor my text... while leaving the literally ten times greater amount of positive recommendations alone. I don't have any problem with the writing quality, and that's never the sort of thing that bugs me anyway. If something is simply bad but harmless I'll just shrug and move to something else. However, if something is well-written, but has a fundamental perspective that reads as genuinely evil and is highly culturally influential on top (example 300, Bleach) then it can very easily get to me. As for this story I would definitely not go that far, and it is hardly the worst fic I've seen in the conceit, hatred, and amorality areas, but then this is fanfiction we're talking about so it is not exactly saying much, and it still contains more than enough, to, in combination with the various other mentioned tendencies, including the OOC, be severely annoying, and in this case it read as far more deliberate and systematic, especially combined with the "satire" label, the No Fourth Wall commentary, and exaggerated mechanical trope-mashing, which read like modern media played for laughs. And yes I do tend to find romps entertaining up to a certain extent of offensive, but am not certain where exactly the line is drawn... probably depending on the context/whenever it reads as having a deliberate unsympathetic message.

Of course, the impressions from the final product do not always at all gel with the actual intentions of the writer, and I sincerely doubt that Zack Snyder deliberately wanted to get known as "that Mussolini-movie guy" (he's certainly tried to distance himself from "300" through doing some more recent anti-Fascist movies), so you deserve benefit of doubt in that area, but the impression still honestly did come across in the manner that I described, so changing my text even further would be pointless and dishonest.

However, I did attempt to be as fair as I could in the review. I noted that the writing quality itself is decent, and not the problem, so it essentially boils down to personal taste. I noted that every tendency that I minded about it may be deliberate, as I did the same thing myself. And after I finally got around to watching Ranma Abridged I noticed that this is the sort of thing that reads as very similar in tone and I would probably have been able to enjoy more if that was all that I had seen. It doesn't mean that this was necessarily all that you had seen, but yeah, the story kind of reads like a mixture of You Tube and TV Tropes mentality bias, with a dash of *shudder* ED, and it definitely doesn't read like an affectionate parody to me. Parody, yes, affectionate, no. There is far too much OOC and violation of the fundamental structure and insertion of much greater intolerance than the original for that. Despite the claims of 90% of people take the series too seriously, you're doing exactly the same thing. Bash-fic level intolerance for idiotic but harmless quirks while comparatively glorifying what is portrayed as genuinely evil author avatar characters is the entire "take it too seriously" problem apparently stemming from North American (or othervise) popular culture immersed fanfiction author perspective coming into collision with a series that, unlike the vast amount of material the writers had ingested, was never remotely intended to be intolerant. It goes beyond mere Cerebus Syndrome, as the in the context morbidly upbeat stories incorporating casual self-righteous torture and bigotry ( Day order: 1) Eat Breakfast 2) Kick a screaming refugee-camp survivor down into an eternal torture pit with a snappy quote. 3) Family picknick! ) can read as even more disturbing, although that is certainly part of it.

Or to put it in a more visual/striking/concise/generalising manner, per definition I'm basically at the opposite end of the spectrum in relation to extreme level psychopaths, whereas a regular person is in the middle. Now, do you remember the aliens in Galaxy Quest that thought the "Star Trek" parody was real? They basically read as a parody of autistic people played for laughs in an uncommonly non-meanspirited/rather amusing and inoffensive manner. With me so far? Ok, now imagine being one of them stuck in a world that relative to your own position at the spectrum seems filled to the brim with hardcore psychopaths who produce constant intense hate-propaganda that consistently assumes or expects you to react the same way they would during considerably less extreme circumstances (as a raging calculated conscience-deprived casual lashout massmurderer, torturer and serial-rapist), even though it takes enormously higher amounts of torture to turn you nearly as inherently cruel and ruthless as themselves, while constantly overloading your mind trying to make sense of the way their society and culture works... Yeah... that's actually literally not a very far off picture.

Regardless, as Iaculus said, why do you even care so much/make such a fuzz over cutting away some diverging genuine impression? As far as I know there is almost no bad publicity. In fact I've probably given you more readers than the positive/less rubberneck interesting preceding comments, and getting picky about (whether directly or through friends) someone disliking the tone of a story, rather than, say, intense hate-propaganda centered on that you the person, and anyone like you, should be systematically exterminated, or tortured for all eterntity on principle, without even doing anything particularly bad, seems like such an extreme petty luxury-problem by my standards. A few people sent me hate-mail about my old story, but you know, at least they read it, that's something, and you did put your story to public display for input, so this should be very little by the usual standards, and to almost quote John Stewart (in relation to openly using the word "nigger"), "if you make offensive public statements you can't complain that some people will find them offensive," or "annoying" in my case. So basically, there is no controlling this kind of thing, and not even an actual need to resort to blatant temporary identity false pump-up reviews, since there are various useful real ones as well, and no the story quality itself was definitely not "shite". It was actually quite creative, and worked as an excellent satire of mechanically constructed modern pop-culture conveniences whether you intended it or not. If it actually was shite then I probably wouldn't even have bothered.

Just to weigh in on this, I don't belive that dissenting opinions should be removed, but they should be made in a honest and constructive, and most importantly a concise way.

calling something a troll-fic or making the assumption that anyone who enjoys it has less of an understanding of the source material seems a bit rude, and a lot pretentious.

the other big problem is responding directly and repeatedly on one fic the O Ps should rework their first post if they want to address a point brought up by others.

It is nice to have someone give an indepth opinion of a piece, but that is more of the role for reviews. If you have gone over five lines in your rec you should probably shorten it

I haven't said that anybody who might enjoy this fic automatically has "less understanding of the work", just that going by my experience of my own reactions and reader input for my own story, detachment generally seems to help, and after watching Ranma Abridged I thought that I would probably have enjoyed it more starting from that viewpoint, but perhaps it is unclearly worded; the review section is something nobody ever watches and isn't readily visible for a visitor, I certainly haven't noticed any updates whatsoever on my watchlist... but maybe the original could go there... or maybe not; regardless, I already compromised by shortening the text to about a third, any less and it won't transmit a useful impression; and I'm very sincere per default, I process and state my impression for whatever little that's worth, but at least you don't get any distortions out of me, which is necessary for a useful, if very brief, review.

Point taken about the back-and-forth though. It might be better to attempt to compress the contents of the different posts into one column for that.

Thanks for the tip. Mainly I'm trying to sort out the fics that I have seen winning prizes, have extreme creativity (Wfrose) or technical quality (R&A: A Love Story) despite that I personally dislike the tone and perspective, and have gained widespread applause, etc, from the personal "pets" or self-promotion.

I also weeded out "Sexy Amazon Hulk-chan", which, although harmless, is Anime Addventure "possibly bottom 10%" stuff; as well as the newly added "blindsided hate-spewing without artistic merit, that motivate the creation of satires everywhere" one, which is both below average, completely unoriginal, #&%@ing retarded in terms of the sheer enormity of the Moral Dissonance, and far outside the lines of "good taste"... yes, even for a page including Jim Bader, Wfrose, and the "Successful Interview" troll-fic.

In any case, I'll give your advise a try. Thanks for the help. :)

It seems like you're trying to separate out the particularly influential and renowned fics and authors that have withstood the test of time from more casual recommendations. Is that a fair interpretation? I admit, I find the idea intriguing and possibly useful. It's good to see some of the older fics and authors be recognized as having had an effect on subsequent writers.

That said, right now I find the separation of authors (and fics) into two different places a bit confusing. I also think what is and isn't famous (as far as fics can be famous) and influential is going to be really subjective. I think the author descriptions are really quite enough to convey information about their background and what influence they've had on the fandom and that the fics can stand by themselves. Perhaps grouping some renowned fics together in a section or folder would make sense, but it does risk fragmenting the organization of the page. We would have, basically, "the really well-known fics" in one folder, but when the other folders or sections are genres or crossovers, it makes those sections incomplete.

In addition, I've done some quick searing around the site; are there guidelines for cutting recommendations? Even if the quality or messages of the fics in question seem rather suspect, it seems awfully quick, to me, to purge them summarily. If there are indeed some guidelines in place, then feel free to disregard that.

Yes, that is roughly a correct interpretation, although attempt for evaluation of combined creativity, more recent widespread acclaim, technical writing quality, and effort to write within a tone approximating the source material, also factor into it.

The problem of course being that, although I am reasonably "informed" and automatically "unfiltered"/less subjective than an average person regarding objective evaluation, I'm still limited to my experiences, cognitive ability, and don't remotely know about all of them, so help and additional evaluation is necessary. Taste is not a science after all, but this was really turning completely unmanageable.

I only discarded two fics. One of them was a retarded, uncreative, overblown Moral Dissonance Up To Eleven hate- and torture-rant of less than average quality that's been done a thousand times before, with all of the worst Troll Fic qualities and none of the positive, without even doing so intentionally; and the other was an Anime Addventure 10-minute crack-fic.

The former would probably have been deleted according to the Mediaminer guideline if an admin bothered to check through it, but for this particular Wiki it was simply that a page that's supposed to focus on the "top 10%" per definition, should at the very least not include stories that can be argued to be among the worst of the worst. Those two were the only ones I knew of that qualified.

Unless you were the one to recommend the ones you deleted then I suggest you put them back, Fast Eddie really, really doesn't like that kind of thing. If they are the ones I think you deleted I agree with your assessment, but it is still bad form to delete someone else's recommendation. Just saying is all. After all your hardwork I'd hate for you to get edit banned because someone complains to the Fast Eddie.

That doesn't make sense according to my information/experience (which admittedly isn't much). As far as I know Fast Eddie actively encourages people to cut out irrelevance and gives partial bans for putting back deleted columns, so that's the guideline that I'm trying to follow now. Or at least that's what I have to go on. If I'm corrected and someone explains the distinction I will go with that instead.

In this case it is entirely warranted to remove the recommendations, or we literally make an argument that I can copy-past a few hundred random Ranma fics onto this page, as the majority would probably be much better. It makes no sense whatsoever to allow their inclusion.

Heck, I've even deliberately avoided including my own (overkill ambitious) story, since I don't think it at all measures up to the real masterpieces. This despite that it actually does hold an awful lot higher writing quality than some of the other current inclusions. Rowan Seven said that it "switches rapidly between brilliant and mediocre" and "is incredibly coherent considering how ridiculously much you wanted to say, but not so much othervise" which I suppose is the most accurate description that I've heard yet.

Anyway, I'm sure some petty and manipulative fellow could completely misrepresent the situation to Eddie, who has too much to do to be able to afford enough time to thoroughly check into the matter (it's probably extremely hard to run this type of vast site almost by oneself on top of very advanced real programming work) but I'd go into complete Cognitive Dissonance seisure if I started to attempt to accommodate for "Choose A or B: Either will get you banned!" I need clearer specifics than that.

I'm having a little trouble understanding the criteria by which fics are being sorted here. A number of fics I recommended because I consider them to be in the top 10% seem to be rather arbitrarily shuffled off to the ghetto recommendations section, possibly because mine is the only name on them.

Like Troper Tales, fanfic recs are a personal thing. It means someone feels that they are worth reading, if you disagree with the rec the thing to do is either not add your name to it, or if it is really offensive to your eyes and brain, add a comment in stating why you disagree. Removing recs due to personal opinion is a recipe for edit wars. Look at the comments thread for Genma's Daughter or basically any comment by Antvasima to see how to go about disagreeing.

Well, as I've consistently stated, I am antvasima. I don't do subterfuge, and even use the same IP, but anyway this was strictly about removing the two that were horrible beyond all taste and reason/very arguably in the bottom 10% with no artistic value whatsoever, as is the usual definition for deleting these things. If I had taken away everything that I simply personally disliked most of the page would probably be gone. However, any recommendation page has to uphold a certain basic minimum standard to be of any use whatsoever, and these were the only ones that from virtually any angle didn't at all meet it. Every other listed story that I knew about could have counter-arguments made for it, but these ones clearly fit with the standard "reasons for deletion" disclaimers.

As for "someone feels they are worth reading", that definitely does not mean "top 10%". The basic requirement for that would be to compare the fic with the borderline masterpieces (Shadow Chronicles, Dark Titans at its best/the Brushogun arc, possibly Relentless) and see if it cracks easily, and actually a whole lot of the ones listed here (especially the Thrythlind/Nanya clutter) are simply blatantly self-promoted by the author or a friend of the author regardless of actual quality. The (actually comparatively decent quality in itself, it's simply making an extreme effort to be annoying) troll-fic being compared to the best of the best a week after just one chapter had been posted is a perfect example of what completely ambivalent standards encourages.

As for Looney Tunes' comments, I only included the ones with the combo of that I've heard widespread acclaim, and/or awards, and have personally read enough of them to check that the quality is at least decent, creative, and/or ambitious. You'll note that about half of them are ones that I didn't like myself (no "antvasima" rec), so it's not like I'm unable to recognise quality strictly based on that I personally dislike them.

That you (LT) tend to be informed and level-headed is why I asked you for help with attempting to gauge and sift out the best of the best. Meaning: Do what I did, think it through and evaluate as objectively as you can, and then restructure at will. I cannot personally add something that I have virtually no information about. It would be dishonest.

This fuels my theory that you are in fact a Timelord and your laptop is your Tardis... :op

I'll be the first to say that upholding some minimum standard for Fanfic Recs is probably a good idea. Unlike Troper Tales, I think one can indeed claim that recommended fics shouldn't be just good in one person's opinion somewhere but on a broader level—perhaps even to the point that most fans would agree that has appeal. That having been said, it would still be a new principle through which to filter recommendations and purge them from the page; it would not, to my knowledge, simply be a restatement of existing policy. At least, from the rec pages I've seen, purging someone else's recommendation seems like a new and unusual step. I don't reject the concept outright, but I think the underlying justification needs to be fleshed out and agreed upon.

It does seem to me like this could be the start of a wider debate about what should and shouldn't stay on rec pages, but I'd say it's more the start of something than the end of it.

I don't get the Time Lord joke? Is this an implication that you think that I am lying, as I would have to be in several places at once? No worries there, I almost can't do that. (Lying that is, although the self-controlled time-travel would of course have been neat. :) )

no, no it is not. it is merely another permutation of the Running Gag.

IC

Mm. You know, maybe recommendations would be better served by implementing them via the Crowner system, where votes by readers can automagically sort them into levels of quality...

Some form of voting system (through talk suggestions and agreement perhaps?) is a good notion if we can keep it honest and not strictly go by personal taste, but given how few of us there are contributing here it's very easy to rig it like, for example, Thrythlind somewhat did, although at least he was deliberately blatant about it, whereas most people don't seem to be open about their regular handles.

Better to go with overall acclaim from other writers, combined with creativity, popularity, widespread appeal, technical quality and in the case of guys like Wfrose, sheer flexibility/variety of popular output. It's iffy, but if we all try to be honest and objective, and those who do the evaluation have a good base of high-quality fics to reference/compare/roughly "scale" with it could work

Honestly I feel like the current structure of the page is a bit weird; it seems like it would be more intuitive if the page as a whole weren't divided into two different sections—rather, divide each folder into sections so that someone looking for a particular type of fic (e.g. shipping fics) doesn't have to look in two different places and keep the best of the best (authors, fics, whatever) at the top of each folder, separated off from the rest if necessary with a separate section. With only three real folders on the page (yes I know the page has six right now, but that's with the same folders in two different sections), it wouldn't be difficult. If we had something like the Evangelion rec page, that'd be a different story.

Well, that type of segmenting would lose the (please read the) disclaimer, and then we'd be back to square one cluttering again. If someone is only looking for shipping fics, then he/she can simply choose to open the two shipping folders and keep the rest closed.

I disagree that any reorganization was needed. The page was fine just the way it was, and if it needed reordering it could have been done by adding a few new genre folders instead of splitting it into "timeless classics" and "other stuff". Also, how the hell do you display "dignity and humanity" in a fanfic? Am I the only one who thinks that splitting the First Class Section from the rest of the stuff feels like something the mods — particularly the really anal-retentive ones — from The Other Wiki would do? I can't look at this list without thinking of all the "True Art is X" pages anymore.

These recommendations are based entirely on our own entirely subjective opinions, and there are several fics on the First Class Section that I, for one, would not touch with a ten-foot pole (The Shadow Chronicles, for instance). Similarly there are a few fics there that I would say don't deserve to be called timeless classics even if they are very good (The Titans And The Lost Boy and Dark Titans, for instance, both of which I originally recced and which I wrote the trope page for). Rather than focusing on ensuring that we only have the top 10%, I think we should leave this page open for any fics that people recommend and impose no criteria on said fics save that someone thinks they're worth reading (We do still have My Immortal on the Harry Potter page, don't we?), barring only the Shameless Self Promoters who have no business pimping their own stories here.

If we really have to regulate the entries we allow on the pages, then we should base it around the recommendations themselves, not some subjective rating system like what we have going now. Say for instance that any entry that accumulates a "score" of -5 or so (that is, five negative recommendations or one positive and six negative and so on) can be deleted but everything else stays the way it is. I would greatly prefer such a system over someone arbitrarily splitting "classics" away from "personal (CoughLesserCough) recommendations".

And I heavily disagree, although sure I'm an autistic editor, anal-retentive comes with the territory (and no I don't really have a personal bone to pick with Wikipedia, as on average the contributors have been among the most civilised and honest people I have encountered on the Internet. There are problems with bureaucracy and interest-groups who try to manipulate or censor the information, but there is an even larger amount of unsung decent people who make an effort to prevent that sort of thing) but if you take a potshot at that definition, so does considerably less filters and ability to lie either to oneself or others(/genuine honesty), not to mention that I put fics that I personally despise into the "top 10%" area, and asked for honest help in further additions and restructuring, so there goes that snarky(/irrelevant distraction) implication.

It's also a redundant mention that regardless of honesty we can't escape subjectivity, but my entire point was that at least we should make an attempt to weed out the most impressive ones, and not allow anything whatsoever. This was a starting attempt, not a final solution, but at least I made an effort.

If you want to reword the borrowed basic mediaminer definition that bigoted, hate-spewing, or rape-endorsing filth have no redeeming artistic value, or simply want to remove a few words, then write up a suggestion here.

Anyway, returning to the sticking point, the basic definition of this page is that it should only display stories that can strongly be argued to place in the top 10%, othervise it inevitably boils down to self-promotion/whoever among the authors and acquaintances of authors for the thousands of stories out there, who know of and bother with this place with whatever alternative handle they choose. And I don't have the impression that most contributors are open regarding this. Thrythlind/Nanya was/were deliberately honest about the self-promotion. It's very easy not to be.

Shadow Chronicles has received awards for being an extremely well-written and tightly plotted fanfic and is probably the most applauded story among the ffml mainstays. Dark Titans is iffy, as the first part starts very weak, but the Brushogun arc was extremely well delivered, and there is no denying that other popular authors find it to be very creatively written, especially in terms of characterisation. Despite unfortunate somewhat elitistic implications, this really is something considerably more useful for me than random personal favourites from unknown quantities/editors.

You do obviously have a point about that the section needs further work however, for starters I haven't read all of the mentioned fics in the second section, and the inclusion of others, such as Right Moments, WF Rose, etc, are probably very debatable.Another point is the unfortunate, and already lampshaded, somewhat pretentious word usage, but again, alrernatives are welcome.

Anyway, suggestions about how we should do the weeding system are useful, but there should probably be some basic "I am usually using this writer/community member handle at fanfiction.net or elsewhere" at least somewhat open disclosure dependency.

The award-winners could be recognized simply by adding an extra bullet point and linking to whatever award sites the story has been featured on under the "*Recommended by:" bullet point, which could then be used as a search term if you just wanted to skip between the really famous ones. While I agree to an extent with the point about Dark Titans, keeping it on that list specifically because it's liked by other well-known authors implies that an author's opinion is worth more than a non-author's opinion, which seems to me to be promoting those "elitist implications".

While I think the page did need organising I really think it should have been by the NGE page style, by category. The current one is subjective (worse it forces someone else's subjectivity on individual's own subjective choices), cliquey, and flamebait waiting to happen. If someone thinks it is worth reading then it should go on the list as long as the recommender puts their name. Any objections can be put (politely) in the comments section.

I agree with Cryptic Mirror. The current layout implies that there is some single entity sifting out the wheat from the chaff and declaring authoritatively "these fics are best" and "these fics are second-best".

Plus, the titling of the "second class" section (really, it is, if you're calling the rest "First Class" explicitly) as "Personal Recommendations and Self-promotion" is terribly misleading — yeah, there are some folks flogging their own work there, but by no means are all of those entries self-promotion. Why, I wrote a good number of them, and my one lonely Ranma fic is nowhere to be seen among them (and for good reason).

"and my one lonely Ranma fic "

linkz plz

I do not particularly like the idea of being referred to as a "clutter" for my involvement with three fics, nor the veiled implication that I and Nanya are the same person.

I did give him some help and advice with Grave's New Life and read through it, but I can hardly be said to have written it. Also likewise, I've said that Genma's Journal is not my first choice among my fics. It was a more or less disappointing experience for me do to interactions with a particular individual on the ffml at the time it was written. I've since heard that it's the defining piece of showing Genma as a machiavellian manipulator...and I persist in insisting that someone else HAD to have come up with that before me.

Likewise I have not denied being a self-promoter, though these days that mostly refers to the original work that I'm trying to get sold. I enjoy reading the comments, especially long ones that ask questions or make suppositions or suggestions. Those comments are one of the main reasons I post fic, to get feedback and I have in the past changed my stories to fit the feedback.

I just looked and found that both of my fics have second names recommending them, does that make them less self-promotion now?

It's linked as an example over on Song Fic. Which is intended as a warning.

Comartemis:

I've reworded/clarified the definition to simply state that to add something someone should be able to make an honest and reasonably argument for that the story has some sort of strong merit, whatever that merit may be.

First, just to make sure, it's not that a writer is somehow thought to have more worth as a human being than a non-writer; nor that they necessarily have better ability to gauge.

The intended point being the pragmatic aspects that they probably have better ability to evaluate technical writing quality than the average reader (however, for example, Stephen King hates Dan Brown, and I liked "Angels and Demons" or "Deception Point" fine, so tastes also simply differ), and more importantly that it is so very easy to set up temporary or multiple accounts in this place, so awards, widestream appeal (popularity and most people who read it seem to greatly enjoy it), or other well-known writers loudly applauding it do help with the whole sifting away the self- or friend-promotion part. As above, maybe contributors could simply identify their fanfic community handle or somesuch, but even that is iffy.

(There are a couple of authors I know of who either use an awful lot of them, or spawn identical thought-pattern clones. Being generally overobservant can turn into a problem... moving on...)

Anyway, just to clarify, the entire point of this was that I felt that the recommendation page was rapidly slipping into "random story listing" territory, but I'm not sure what the best approach is to handle it? The best would obviously be if we had some "average reader rating" with hundreds of contributors similar to animenewsnetwork, but in lack of that? The notion of linking to awards is an idea of course.

Cryptic Mirror: Well, the thing is that the entire definition of the page is that only the "top 10%" should be listed. I.e. stories for which a very good argument can be made that they are generally going to be better than 9 other randomly selected fanfics, and preferably an argument that it is probably going to be better than 19 of them to give some margin of error. Subjectivity for the selection is inescapable, but I never intended for "my" personal taste to be the final version. It definitely needs major reworls by other people. I tried to solve it by making a separate "pimp your stuff" section to let people do so openly instead, and more importantly give us more room to work with, so people can put stories they are uncertain of there, but maybe it was a bad idea. It's just... well, intuitively it takes an awful lot of "gall" to claim that some of the stories that don't even get the language straight are definitely in the top 10.

I don't know, Sensu Bean. As I said before, I appreciate your intent, but I don't think this particular idea is working. I think the fics of high merit and quality are naturally going to get more recommendations and support anyway. Just look at the page: there are fics that are recommended by only one person, and there are others that have several people providing additional input and commentary, that have their own trope pages for even more information and context. Obviously that's not a perfect system, either, but it feels like this idea is trying to top-down separate out the fics when I think a lot of that happens on a bottom-up basis anyway.

I'm still of the idea that something more similar to the NGE page would be fine, perhaps with moving particularly notable or commented-upon fics to the top of their respective folders.

Looney Toons:

The intended point isn't that the cream of the crop should be for a single entity to decide, just to give all serious contributors some more room to work with to give the recommendation page any point.

There is a mixture of genuine recommendations and self- or friend-promotions in the second section (which was intended to be conveyed, but may have been worded in a diffuse manner), and no I don't think that you have done any of the latter. Like myself, you have a public identity, and your (rather well-known) story isn't even in here, but the two sticking points really do exist, and in combination kind of bother me:

The description clearly states (or at least heavily implies) that "these stories are definitely better than 90% of the rest", which sets a certain level of demand on the people who recommend.

In combination with that it is extremely easy to set up temporary accounts and then highlight stuff, or simply ask a friend to do it, and that I have noticed some of that going on, or seen extremely suspicious recommendations; for example a just started temporary account recommending a pure hatefic just to stir things up; Anime Addventure "written in 5 minutes; over to you" stuff accompanied by a Pay Pal link; Comparing a story that just had one chapter posted a week ago with some of the highest quality massive fanfics out there (regardless of what we think of the depressingly dark tone, the second part of Shadow Chronicles is probably the tightest plotted fanfic I've seen so far); the Thrythlind/Nanya "recommending lots of stuff by each other"; some stories with barely coherent spelling, and so on) it all boils down to that the page really did give an extremely cluttered impression.

The problem of course is that I don't really have any solid solutions, beyond "continuous work in progress by anyone with an open single identity and honest approach" unless the rest of you are interested in making some kind of "team effort" to think up decent methods and checkups.

Perhaps it is simply due to most people just checking through stories and recommending anything they think is kind of fun, rather than thinking through if it is simply decent or really good; or maybe I have simply stuck to reading recommended stuff myself, and as such don't have a grasp on just how mind-numbingly awful the general stuff is, and as such almost anything with some half-decent merits (including our own stories) would fit?

Another simple solution/idea is of course to simply remove the "better than 90% of the other stuff" label and let people recommend anything whatsoever that they like or want others to see.

Thrythlind:

The intended point being that it doesn't matter if you are the same person or simply friends/acquaintances (I'm definitely leaning towards the latter myself, as it would make little sense for you to be open about your general identity, rather than set up another temporary title, othervise), as you are still acting as a unit to recommend each other, and there is a certain level of conceit inherent in saying "several of my fics are better than 90% of the general stuff". From what little I remember there is nothing actually wrong with your stories. They can be a little bland, but flow quite well, and I could easily see a "top 30%" argument being made, but "all of it is definitely top 10%"... well, in combination with the circumstances, and that they take up some space, I'm sure that you can rationally see the problem. However, to be fair (tbf) a while after seeing it I considered letting some acquaintance who liked the story do the same for me, but then reconsidered.

Still, the two of you didn't just make some insincere "here only" cover handles, but rather choose to be open about it. To someone reasonably paranoid like myself it does however highlight that others are probably doing the same thing much more discretely.

As for greater validity through later recommendations from other editors, this is a solid point if these are ongoing and honest accounts... although there is of course an argument to be made that once it was highlighted here in the first place the visibility almost guarantees that some other editor should like it.

Edited: I just noticed that my glitchy memory inflated the amount of stories that you recommended for each other. There were actually just a few of them, which is a much smaller problem taken by itself.

Muphrid:

Well, if nobody is interested in a collaborative effort I suppose that there is nothing to it but to switch back. It still seems like an extremely uneven quality system, to take away most of the point of the page, and as above it is very easy to quickly make multiple temporary identities (either by oneself or in group), and then there are the common tastes of the type of editor that contributes here (the more tropes, memes, pop-culture references, other shout-outs, and in some cases hollow clichés, the better), so multiple recommendations don't necessarily say that much about general appeal or technical quality, nor does a tvtrope page (I'm considering openly/honestly setting up one for my own story myself), but at least there are a couple of points to consider that came out of it:

- A stronger highlight text in the beginning, which clarifies that editors should make an honest consideration, and not just recommend almost anything.

- Possible further sifting through linking to awards or mentioning other well-known fanfic authors who have said that they really like the work.

- Possible demand of less confidentiality regarding what ongoing handle the editor goes by outside of tvtropes, and sift away recommendations from temporary accounts.

- The need to develop other forms of collaborative sifting systems.

I also like the idea of moving the fics that are particularly notable to the top of each folder instead, although the amount of comments isn't a good gauge. If someone (including myself) makes a post about problems with a story, and this stirs some debate, this shouldn't be considered as a validation (well, there is the "all publicity is good publicity, and trash sells, since people act like lemmings" "hollywood diva mindset", but I never found someone reasonable saying "I have major major problems with this, and have genuine good reasons for it" to be a useful quality gauge).

I suppose I'm just concerned about the lack of uniformity between what we'd be doing with this page compared against the other rec pages (not that I crawl all the rec pages). It could be that this page has a unique problem that demands a unique solution, but I'm not sure that's the case. It honestly just strikes me that you keep reading the "top 10%" thing as meant to be literal when the guidelines for posting a rec have never been all that stringent—just sign your rec and it's done, and outside of removing unsigned recs, there are no guidelines for removing a rec, either.

Again, I appreciate and understand what you're trying to accomplish: a better rec page, one that more properly distinguishes works of genuine merit. Perhaps it's time to take the issue to the forum and try to gather ideas on how to improve the quality of the page (and rec pages in general) and establish some guidelines about cutting recs that seem suspect in origin or just genuinely not, as you say, above a certain level of quality.

It's more likely that it is a widespread inherent problem of the site than limited to here, so perhaps it would be an idea to work out better common standards to sift away the promotion?

I liked the idea of moving the fics with strong widestream appeal, several author recommendations, some award, or multiple positive (non-temporary) user recommendations etcetera to the top instead, and to simply keep the statement at the beginning that clarifies that the editor has to think things through before making a recommendation.

I've now removed the double sections. Does anyone want to discuss things further regarding ideas for maintaining at least some minor filtering system?

The before posting section is a bit lengthy and over emphatic, from my point of view.

Well, which parts should I cut out or tone down then?

all of it. The template itself is sufficient. Remember There Is No Such Thing As Notability (those of you following the TV Tropes Drinking Game, take a shot). All that is required for a story to be on this page is that one troper thinks it should be and is willing to put their name to it. The comments and additional names (or lack thereof) will do the rest.

Then we should also remove the "top 10%" definition, and replace it with something unpretentious like "stories recommended by tropers", as this othervise does declare a notability issue, and removing the guideline that a story has to have something whatsoever speaking for it, and isn't a 5-minute bigoted hatefic, means that the page has no standards or reliability or point whatsoever, could just as well be replaced with a link to the entire fanfiction.net Ranma index, and simply turns to temporary account-, or cover identity-, self-promotion... which is fine, if that is all we want the page to be and are openly honest about it, but if we do state that the page does have any standards whatsoever, then there should be some form of sifting and guidelines present.

I have now made an effort to write up something sensible, that won't be found offensive or pretentious. If you have specific problems with the phrasing feel free to bring it up and suggest alternatives. Well, either that or we really do remove all of it beyond the recommendations themselves, not just my text (and thus including the "10 %" sticking point).

There may not be such a thing as notability, but I think there's a good intent here—the question being whether the page is as useful as it could be if anything is allowed to be posted without regard to quality or whatnot. In short: is the page merely a collection of recommendations, or is it actually supposed to represent some of the "top 10%" after all?

I admit, you can't say it has done the latter. That would be a new policy or guideline or whatever, and that's clearly the intent Sensu Bean is driving at, but is that the direction people want to go?

who is to say what falls into an individual's own ten percent? For a start, that was word play of off Sturgeon's Law not a prescription or an objective measure (save us from overly literal thinkers). There are quite a few fics on the page which I think are far below the top 50% never mind top ten, and I'm sure a lot of people would disagree with some of my choices.

The whole no standards argument is disingenuous at best, we plainly do not have people en masse copying and pasting from the pit of voles or creating self promoting sock puppets (and if we find a self promoting sock-puppet we remove the rec unless their are other supporters). To suggest that we have to act to prevent something that isn't actually happening, and hasn't happened with much larger fandoms like Harry Potter or Twiglet series. If those active, and ever so slightly rabid, fandoms can avoid it I fail to see why Ranma fandom cannot.

Segregate by genre by all means, but the final say on quality is up to the reader and recommender. And if a reader disagrees with it being recommended then they can add a comment saying "I think this fic is poor reading material because #foo reason". The current system isn't broken, doesn't need fixing, and is deviating from the template to be used as stated on the main fanfic recommendations index page.

I'll ignore the potshot at the literalmindedness (lots of them around here), but as I listed earlier I have noticed some temporary accounts or self-promotion going on in combination with that I like yourself see plenty of fics I'd consider below average. I have no problem with your argument beyond the rationalisation that the "top 10%" is to be taken non-seriously, but the notability guideline is to be taken literally.

Basically, I've at least tried to be a very reasonable class act (and no you haven't really been out of line compared to what I'm used to shrug off), but you'll still have to allow yourself a similar amount of self-distance to decide at either one solution or the other, rather than simply disregard and make snide comments about any arguments whatsoever, because as I see it the system very much is broken if we give a false impression and it is extremely open to manipulation... Or rather I go by that if I notice something there is probably more of the sort going on that I didn't, and many editors here don't tend to use their regular handles, alternately really do just set up something temporary. As an additional note, not everyone have been open about their regular "fandom community" identities (yes, I'm trying to be diplomatic, and no I'm not referring to yourself).

To go with the version you appear to find the least disagreeable, I'll remove all of the beginning descriptions in the meantime.

Woah, who thinks that Thrythlind and I are the same person? Heh, funny.

No, while we instant message each other sometimes, we are not the same person. Thrythlind lives over 1500 miles away from me. He's been in Ranma 1/2 fanfiction longer than I have. You can check his and my FF.Net pages to compare.

Plus, I'm pretty sure that TV Tropes can get the IP addresses of everyone involved. You'll see that he and I do not share the same IP address.

We're just decently good friends who have worked together.

I thought that since he put up one of my fics, I should return the favor and chose some that I thought were really good.

Edit: Also, I have to say that my writing style and his writing style are miles apart from each other.

And Like I said above, I don't think that you are (although IP address redirections are very easy to create), but that's completely beside the point as you still acted as a team unit, which means that it makes no difference. Regardless, it is now an irrelevant topic, as we have moved onwards to other subjects.

accusations of sock puppetry are a bit rich coming from someone who posts under one name, but uses another for recs.

Yeah, this is starting to get out of hand, I think. I'm not sure what's worse—that there are handles being created out of nowhere to prop up and advertise Interview or that Sensu Bean has basically reworked this entire rec page and edit warred on the Interview page as a means of fighting back. What's going on here just doesn't make sense.

well Antvasima/sensu has kinda appointed themself as defender of the one true interpretation here and on the main Ranma page for a while. And heaven help anyone who disagrees because you'll be argued into exhaustion..

um, just wondering, maybe we could add a crossovers folder? there's many fics like Wild horse of the Leaf, Eldritch Asylum, and Aftermath, which are wonderful ranma fanfics (in my opinion) that are not mentioned. And despite being a megacross and relatively unfinished, i believe that Path of Chaos could use a mention... along with older classics (though unfinished) such as Fist of the Pikachu and Messed Up!.

I don't see why not. If you want to add the folder and the recs yourself, go right ahead.

Though I do believe Path of Chaos is already on the page.

(By the way, for next time: rather than replying to an existing topic, you should add a new one. It keeps things tidier.)

I didn't accuse you (Cryptic Mirror) of using a sockpuppet, however it would be strange if I didn't notice the oddities surrounding the "First Impression" story.

Regarding my own switch of handle I've been deliberately extremely open about it, almost to the point of shouting it out every time I get, as I find subterfuge extremely distasteful, but had to switch due to receiving a warning for reinserting an inappropriate text column. Deliberately and misleadingly attempting to play multiple identities under the radar on the other hand, is something that I don't like.

So, let me get this straight. You got told off for edit warring and refusing to go with the wiki way, and instead of accepting it you dreamt up a new handle and carried on doing pretty much the same. That explains a lot.

If you want to make it clear that you aren't using a sock, then you should really change the handle used for your recs and sign any new recs or comments with your new handle. Because it is misleading.

Sil Yeah, a multi-cross folder would probably be a good idea. The Slash folder should really be merged with Shipping fics too since Slash is just a shipping fic Turned Up To Eleven and Ranma/Akane ships should be folded in as well. It's all shipping and that is what tags are for after all.

A slashfic isn't even 'a shipping fic Turned Up To Eleven'. It's just a shipping fic that involves non-heterosexual couples.

I stand corrected. (well, technically I sit corrected, but YKWIM).

No, the regular ip was still fine, so it wasn't a ban as far as I understood from other users on the message board who were very open about using new handles; and yes I have since definitely made an effort to adapt and compromise, including here, although I still have my limitations; and no, what would be dishonest is pretend that I was someone else, rather than link outright to the old profile page, consistently state it outright, and always sign my reviews with my regular multi-year handle I use almost everywhere else.

I really don't get your reasoning regarding honesty at all. I'm consistently deliberately playing with completely open cards regarding exactly what I perceive and who I am. I'm fundamentally almost unable to lie/filter, and find systematic usage extremely offensive. Why should I switch review handle halfway through? A casual reader would think that two different people were recommending.

As for this specific situation, I got somewhat provoked because yet another entirely new identity wanted to flaunt the deliberately offensive troll story, and then immediately afterwards another temporary identity apparently wanted to censor what I had to say, which wasn't the first part this happened in relation to the troll fic (completely censored by rude fanatics at the fic page, so I quickly lost interest since I didn't care that much, until I got some impulse focus from when the matter popped up in my face here again), and in combination with the ridiculous amounts of pimping after just one chapter was posted, yes that sort of thing usually turns into a pattern for me, so yes I called the new guy a sock, because considering the context he seemed to use deliberate subterfuge, and maybe I overreacted somewhat, but it's definitely not anything odd with that I noticed it.

As for general behaviour, you've definitely not been any better/much different than myself here, so it's not like you're in a position to cast stones. At least I'm trying to be very flexible (basically completely in the prefvious discussion mind you) and polite to serious (or ambivalent) editors, even in various cases when they have completely abandoned it themselves, but the class act trash can routine is getting old without some self-distance from those I talk to.

And seriously, how exactly have I completely changed the rec page beyond introducing folders, that WanderingBrowser then filled out somewhat, and I thought was accepted as a positive change? The only real thing is that pesky cosmetic "top 10% guaranteed" label that no reviewer is able to accurately define anyway. Also, I haven't really been that invested in most current details of the regular series pages, and have compromised to extremes there as well. I'm usually mostly fine with what Wandering Browser comes up with.

And yes, I obviously stray with the long columns. It's a no f-ing BS, medical condition and far more troublesome for me than it is for you, but I'm trying to keep it reasonably coherent, and recurrently take the time to continue trimming on the pages themselves, and no it isn't easy. I think in co-running completely honest infodumps, and it is very hard to keep it to just one single context or aspect.

Given that it appears to be your literal-mindedness and particular way of looking at things that are creating quite a few of the issues here, do you think it might be a good idea for you to take a step back from your currently very active role in managing this page? I mean, this wiki is for general consumption, and if we've established that you see things very differently from everyone else, and are managing the page in a way that best suits your own tastes... well, you can see where problems might arise.