All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XIV

[LulzKiller]

Was the person who Geth blocked one of the sockpuppets that Doc was talking about?

[GethN7]

Was the person who Geth blocked one of the sockpuppets that Doc was talking about?

Yes. caught them adding a similar page to ATT Wikia under a different name, but same basic idea of abusing the Blog userspace to do so.


Also, speaking of Doc, I have to reveal something.

I have decided to put our "go ahead and fork our community so long as you obey proper licensing rules" encouragement to the test. Therefore, Doc plans to use a clone of our Wikia branch and that dump I made of ATT's CM pages as a base for their own ATT spinoff on Wikia, essentially their version of us with blackjack and hookers.

Honestly, I can't complain they want to do this at all. Unlike those other idiots I reported a few posts back, they will be following copyright law in every relevant regard, and I've gone on record there need to be more (legal) alternatives to TV Tropes. Besides, as an open-source fanboy, this strikes me as a good way to let the disaffected do what they want without troubling us.

I have warned Doc they will likely have to put up with all the hassles this trope has brought us, and I intend to redirect everyone who might try to hassle us to Doc's little fork to have their fun. He's informed me he's fully prepared to deal with the hassle, and I wish him the best, I just don't want to deal with it in my backyard anymore.

[robkelk]

Does this mean I don't need to make an archive of our CM example list if the current proposal passes?

(Passing is not guaranteed. As of this posting, the vote is a tie, and as far as I'm concerned "50%" isn't good enough.)

[LulzKiller]

if it remains a tie by the end, I will remove my abstainment

[GethN7]

Does this mean I don't need to make an archive of our CM example list if the current proposal passes?

(Passing is not guaranteed. As of this posting, the vote is a tie, and as far as I'm concerned "50%" isn't good enough.)

Already did, posted a link to my OneDrive, check the talk page of Doc.

[robkelk]

Does this mean I don't need to make an archive of our CM example list if the current proposal passes?

(Passing is not guaranteed. As of this posting, the vote is a tie, and as far as I'm concerned "50%" isn't good enough.)

Already did, posted a link to my OneDrive, check the talk page of Doc.

Thanks. I feel more comfortable with a backup no matter what happens.

[LulzKiller]

Currently trying to get video files on Commons to work on our pages, unsuccessfully so far.

[robkelk]

I've never had any luck with that, either - that's why so many films of the 1910s have links that say "Watch it on Wikimedia Commons".

Was it Bob who figured out how to get Youtube videos to embed? Whoever it was, maybe he or she can take a swing at this.

[Labster]

I've had to think about what to do here quite a bit. I suppose I could have asked more questions, but I think I have a good measure of the situation. At least as far as it goes, I can draw a line between your current request and your previous activity on All The Tropes.

The current punishment is a bit over the top for what you did. Mouthing off to a moderator isn't that big of a deal, really. I was permabanned from TV Tropes for less, so that's something I'd like to avoid. I think possibly a week ban would be appropriate response from a moderator for these actions.

But, there are also aggravating circumstances here.

The first thing that tipped me off, that something might be wrong, was how fast you returned the email. In every interaction I've had with you, I've asked you to slow down. But here you returned one email with four, the first and second an hour after I sent my own. On its own it doesn't mean very much, but it is circumstantial evidence that you're not being terribly reflective on what happened.

The content of your letters didn't help so much, either. The apology you offered is very transactional. A lot of offers to behave a certain way in exchange for some restoration of status. For some people, this might have worked. But it's consistent with other previous apologies that you made, that seemed to be made in order to get what you wanted.

The problem with ethics is that other people doing something wrong is not an excuse for you to do something wrong. And you continued to name other moderators as the cause of all of the problems. While their behavior is suboptimal, you had a history of trying to escalate the problem. Any attack, real or imagined, would always be answered.

You did make a major tactical error here in shaming moderators. I knew every member of the moderator team you attacked before I even started All The Tropes. It's hard to read an attack on one's friends. Even if a part of it is true. But it also makes it easy to sort out the false claims, too. I suppose it is a little unfair to be judged by someone with so much conflict of interest, but they all agreed that I'm the only person left who isn't at their "wit's end" with you. So I'm afraid I'm who you get.

The letter you wrote seemed designed to try to create a good side and a bad side, and get me to side with your side against the other moderators. The argument why doesn't matter, this is prima facie a reason to consider restricting access. Sowing division amongst the ranks to get ahead is not good for the long-term health of the wiki community, and a violation of ATT:FUN. Trying to solve problems, and backing off when getting too angry, is mandatory under policy. Just becase you like the trope of the Complete Monster, doesn't mean you need to assign other editors into teams of heroes and villains.

And while not really an aggravating factor, I worry about how much of your identity you've wrapped up in managing the Complete Monster pages. You've set yourself up as the great conservator of the health of the trope against a horde of others. And while in some ways that's a bit true, you've also crushed other editors making good faith edits in violation of ATT:1WAY.

The design of the Troper's Code on All The Tropes is that there are two sets of balancing policies, so as not lose our direction. The first pair, educate and entertain, means that we should take troping seriously -- but not too seriously. The second set, have fun and play nice, says that we should allow people to experiment and create, but not in a way that violates the rights of others. The fact that you've managed to step out of line with both halves of that equilibrium means that you were seriously out of balance.

The fact remains that you were making a good faith attempt to keep those pages in what you believe is the best possible condition. I really don't think you were doing it for petty power. These are mitigating circumstances.

There's also the fact that, as I hear, you are planning to set up a competitor to All The Tropes if you don't win this appeal. There are several ways this could be interpreted, so I'll set it aside for now.

And then, of course, there's the issue of autism. From where I am sitting, you definitely have an obsessive focus on the Complete Monster trope. It's okay to have have a focus, as with Greta Thunberg's superpower. But when that focus starts to antagonize other people who aren't doing anything wrong, it becomes a problem, as it has in this case.

You stated that there couldn't possibly be two interpretations of the Complete Monster trope, effectively saying that it's not your fault if everyone else is wrong. This is just not the way the world works. Boeing made a perfectly clear tiny warning light on the 737 Max and yet the pilots had no idea how to not crash the plane when it came on. The world seems to have settled on Boeing being at fault. Part of my day job involves UX design in software. If a lot of people get something wrong, it usually means my design sucks.

The other element I see here in your behavior that matches things frequently seen on the spectrum is an emphasis on fairness. And indeed, a decent part of what people have said about you is unfair. But All The Tropes isn't run based on an idea of fairness, however construed, it's run as a quasi-democracy.

You've tried to construct a single interpretation of the rules, then apply those terms to everyone, and when people suggests something different you see problems with being treated unfairly. It's just, like, your opinion, man. People have different opinions. And we need to make room for people to express different opinions, and decide as a group what is acceptable content. You can't win just because you think you're right.

Like, every single trope out there has shit examples. And sometimes, you just have to let some through. Because it's not worth it to fight everyone based on a single notion of what is allowable.

Which leads back to the point from the previous email. You don't know when to lose. You refused to compromise on one little subpage. All of the rest of us compromise every single day. It was a poor choice of a battle, and it cost you friends. It cost you soft power. So that now, when a lifetime ban comes up, you don't have any highly respected on-wiki friends to support your cause, despite all of your positive work on the wiki.

Even now, you're still bargaining, still hoping for some sort of influence on the process. The transactional apology, the multiple emails, the tarnishing of other moderators, the threat to start a competitor.

It's time to consider the judgement. Under normal circumstances, I'd recommend that the ban be two weeks for a repeat offense. GethN7's lifetime ban was a clear error in judgement, based on an overreaction to your trolling comment.

However, there are significant aggravating circumstances. Also, I feel that it's unlikely that a ban of such a short duration will teach the lesson we're looking for here. Nor will a short-term ban give you a chance to become a little less focused on a single trope. The previous ban proved that.

It's clear that in order for you to learn that lesson, you can no longer trope with us for the remainder of the decade. Hopefully, after that time for reflection you will be able to rejoin us and help make our wiki and community the best it can be.

Therefore the ban duration for DocColress is hereby set to four months, beginning today. Any attempts at ban evasion may increase this penalty, as appropriate. It is so ordered.

I um, may have been having a bit too much fun with the legal terminology. I kinda caught that bug from my friend.

[Labster]

I can be convinced to change my vote, but you're going to have to convince me on the basis of policy, not just that it's attracting a bad crowd. In my point of view it's still an objective trope. To reach example sectionectemy bar, you need to convince me that it's either not a trope, or not an objective trope. Or of something weirder like it's continued presence would violate one of ATT:CODE. There are all sorts of steps we could take short of deletion, like a rename or restricting edits to mod/admins.

[GethN7]

I can be convinced to change my vote, but you're going to have to convince me on the basis of policy, not just that it's attracting a bad crowd.  In my point of view it's still an objective trope.  To reach example sectionectemy bar, you need to convince me that it's either not a trope, or not an objective trope.  Or of something weirder like it's continued presence would violate one of ATT:CODE.  There are all sorts of steps we could take short of deletion, like a rename or restricting edits to mod/admins.

A rename would do nothing but give it a different name and might throw off the wonks for awhile, but once they figure out the new name rules, they'll be right back to their nonsense.

Locking edits to admins only means full-time maintenance of something we don't have to usually do because we can usually trust people to keep their spaghetti in their pockets, and the wonks aren't above spamming crap and creating their own pages to get around locks.

I agree things should be objective, but this is a classic case of why we can't have nice things because too many wonks want to ruin it, and we would be better served without the hassle.

[Labster]

You're saying these won't work without having tried them. Nice try, but an unconvincing argument. I get the "can't have nice things argument" for sure, though.

Is there some sort of psychological hack that can bypass these people? I can't help but shake the feeling that somehow the name "Complete Monster" conveys a sense of coolness. Like a rename to "Cardboard-Cutout Villain". No depth of character, see? Like over half of these characters are super-boring writing.

You can still get people to outvote me, though. Not sure I really should be voting here since I'm not that involved but meh.

[LulzKiller]

Let's approach this from a different angle. I'm not advocating for deletion, and currently abstaining from sectionectemy unless there's a tie; but I want to analyse a little bit, why we have had this problem, beyond any one individual.

My argument to Labster from the angle of example sectionectemy, is that Complete Monster is the fact that in affect, we are giving wiki users the ability to subjectively assign morality to characters and in disputes over such, human beings. People disagree about the most basic of things, even who is completely devoid of any good traits. "my son would never do such a thing"

Due to this, politics is completely unavoidable, what if a character is deemed a Complete Monster because the character banned abortions, what if the same but because they allowed abortions in a fictional work? Something that should be supposedly objective, with two completely different subjective views. They have different moralities, and both would serve the other as being a CM, due to the lack of civility around politics, particularly on the internet and particularly where synonyms are used (see Great Internet Fuckwad Theory).

The rules can't be made more strict/objective due to the fact those rules themselves would become the battleground of what is objective/subjective, with again often directly conflicting views on moral topics. Even universally hated things will find some contrarians and otherwise afflicted people to argue their case (see the awful MAPs for an obvious example).

By allowing such, we are effectively allowing us vs them politics on a wiki which has made active rules for staff to avoid it (and has defrocked and has currently banned the guy we're talking about for doing so), and encourages the wiki staff to at least stand back and breathe before they act. Wikipedia pages on modern politics becomes a battleground. Endless debates and bannings and a permanent blight in the reputation of wikis and the operation of them. Red vs Blue, Left vs Right, White vs Black, etc etc.

Even if you just let one person decide the standard by themselves, you're still going to get people who will strive for years against that at all costs, AKA this entire situation which is why we are having this discussion.

My long-winded thesis is thus: human beings aka the "bad crowd" that you are talking about aren't a symptom, they're the root of the problem, and solving that problem would involve solving morality, something none of us will ever accomplish.

[Bob Schroeck]

Was it Bob who figured out how to get Youtube videos to embed? Whoever it was, maybe he or she can take a swing at this.

I figured out how to make the YouTube extension work, but never how to put it in a template.  Not sure what's needed for webm videos, but I'll give it a try.

[robkelk]

We have a tie... which, solely because of the discussion above, I am referring to GethN7 and Labster to decide how to break.

(If the discussion was not taking place, I would have declared the proposal to have failed; it did not gain a majority. But the discussion is taking place, so I'm not going to preemptively shut it down.)

[Bob Schroeck]

Was it Bob who figured out how to get Youtube videos to embed? Whoever it was, maybe he or she can take a swing at this.

I figured out how to make the YouTube extension work, but never how to put it in a template.  Not sure what's needed for webm videos, but I'll give it a try.

Okay, a bit of research and experimentation, and it looks like what we could do is activate the TimedMediaHandler extension, which is already installed but inactive.  According to this article (and the extension's man page), it should allow us to directly embed videos in the way LulzKiller is trying to do.  Does anyone have any reason I shouldn't do this?

[LulzKiller]

For the record; here is the phab link to my bug report

https://phabricator.miraheze.org/T4810

[robkelk]

Was it Bob who figured out how to get Youtube videos to embed? Whoever it was, maybe he or she can take a swing at this.

I figured out how to make the YouTube extension work, but never how to put it in a template.  Not sure what's needed for webm videos, but I'll give it a try.

Okay, a bit of research and experimentation, and it looks like what we could do is activate the TimedMediaHandler extension, which is already installed but inactive.  According to this article (and the extension's man page), it should allow us to directly embed videos in the way LulzKiller is trying to do.  Does anyone have any reason I shouldn't do this?

Will it break anything else on the wiki?

The only way to answer that for sure is to give it a try... preferably on a Sandbox page first, of course.

[robkelk]

We have a tie... which, solely because of the discussion above, I am referring to GethN7 and Labster to decide how to break.

(If the discussion was not taking place, I would have declared the proposal to have failed; it did not gain a majority. But the discussion is taking place, so I'm not going to preemptively shut it down.)

if it remains a tie by the end, I will remove my abstainment

Oops - I forgot about that.

Okay, it's up to you...

[robkelk]

Why did you visit now of all times, 503?

[robkelk]

I've barely started deleting the CM example subpages, and I've already lost track of the number of JAFAAC images were present on them. (The number was not zero, no.)

"Complete Monster/Anime and Manga" resists deletion; it's been edited too many times. I've blanked it except for a repeat of the "no examples" comment and a link back to the trope page.

We'll have to do the talk pages too, won't we? Doc put "Examples that should be here" and "Examples that should NOT be here" (his emphasis) lists on all of them, so they list examples, too.

[robkelk]

Geth, I'm going to take you up on your offer of help.

I cannot figure out how you coded the "Trope" template, let alone hazard a guess as to how to add a switch to it to gray out options under "Create New" (if such a switch is even possible).

The page history says you added Template:Trope to the wiki; do you remember enough about it to be able to edit it safely?

[GethN7]

Geth, I'm going to take you up on your offer of help.

I cannot figure out how you coded the "Trope" template, let alone hazard a guess as to how to add a switch to it to gray out options under "Create New" (if such a switch is even possible).

The page history says you added Template:Trope to the wiki; do you remember enough about it to be able to edit it safely?

I added the original version, Labster made the Lua template version, ask him.

[LulzKiller]

"We think this is a bug. We initially thought it could be related to the cache we set when using commons wiki, but nope, it still didn't work with the cache set."

While we should activate that extension, according to them, this might be a bug.

(Edit by Bob: fixed font and color)

[Bob Schroeck]

I'll give it a try tonight.