I Think It's Time I Walked Quietly Away from TVTropes
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I Think It's Time I Walked Quietly Away from TVTropes
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If Fast Eddie had any integrity, he'd go get himself a real job and tell Google to go fuck themselves.
As it stands, he's just a puppet now. It's not so much that they have him by the balls. It's more like he cut them off himself and handed them over. 
.... I have no words for this...
Wait. Actually, I do. Fools. Morons. Nimnuls. Asskissers. Wankers. And so on and so forth.
Fast Eddie has said that he is attempting to get the site away from dependence on google. (With the implication that this is a temporary measure in order to keep the site from going down in the meantime.)
Which is somewhat less worrying than what it originally looked like. -Morgan.  blackaeronaut Wrote:hmmmm..... Okay, I'm just a noob when it comes to this sort of thing, but at first glance I'd say that Ourproject.org might be the best way for us to go, because it's free, ad-free, and allows for customization, among other nice goodies.Free and ad-free? What's the catch? -- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
@Morganni
No offense, but I refuse to buy that for one second. Over the entire course of TV Tropes history, it has shown a willingness to cut away portions of its own flesh to save the rest, and instead of getting skin grafts later, it just keeps cutting more and more as time goes on. The website is dying, it's only a matter how long the corpse will be kept on life support. Rpg1 Wrote:If this isn't proof TV Tropes needs an alternative, I don't know what is.It's in th Wayback Machine. Pick a date and back it up. -- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Oh, I'm well aware.
The only problem is knowing what point the site decay really started to accelerate before we stop turning back the clock.
Start with the most recent save, and work your way back from there until you find one you're happy with.
-- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012 
Wow, it's so nice to have all of that TV Tropes drama behind me now that they reversed my ban and all. Maybe I'll just have a whole day free of internet drama. Okay, I'll go check Bob's forums now.
o.O Goddamnit Fast Eddie. @Rpg1: Note that censorship isn't necessarily a bad thing. In real life commons, there are regulations on time, place, and manner of free speech. So enforcing a set of rules is part of the admin staff's job -- even if the wiki is a commons, that doesn't inherently question Fast Eddie's ability to act as caretaker. I'm sure Bob censors spam here, and I think we're all happier because of it. There's even an appropriate place for selling stuff. Therefore, he's a good caretaker of this commons, because his actions support the feeling of the community. In contrast to He Who Was Named A Few Sentences Back. Back to the new developments: I'm still iffy on a fork, but I think someone needs to take emergency action to preserve the content on TV tropes. So I've been diving into the CC-BY-SA license: CC-BY-SA Wrote:When You Distribute or Publicly Perform the Work, You may not impose any effective technological measures on the Work that restrict the ability of a recipient of the Work from You to exercise the rights granted to that recipient under the terms of the License.IANAL, but I think this clause means that I can legally spider the wiki. I think I'm just going to just ask for a backup copy of the page content, though. Wiki wo kakumei suru tame ni. -- ∇×V
Anyone tried core dumping an entire archive of everything on the TV Tropes server with a web archiver (which is perfectly legal), used the Internet Wayback Machine to bring back things that died along the way, then went on from there?
...yeah, that does look odd in the form of a question, but I was wondering if anyone has thought of doing that? The reason I ask is because since the license of the site and the mods themselves (I can dig up the thread if anyone wants) said that would be perfectly legal and they would have no means nor ability to stop people, I thought it might be a good idea for anyone to to do now before the whole website is removed from Google. That might sound alarmist, but I'm convinced it's heading that way fast. @vorticity Good point. I agree wikis need caretakers, but unlike Bob, He Who Pulls Fast Ones has politicized TV Tropes as well as made it a shill for money, and the overall content is suffering as a result. I was willing to accept the porn/pedophilia cuts if need be, but after what just happened, I've given up on hoping for the best for TV Tropes.  Rpg1 Wrote:The reason I ask is because since the license of the site and the mods themselves (I can dig up the thread if anyone wants) said that would be perfectly legal and they would have no means nor ability to stop people, I thought it might be a good idea for anyone to to do now before the whole website is removed from Google.I don't think it would be removed from Google... but I would suspect that it's likely Google might permaban them from the ad service before they can get an alternative lined up, which would actually do so just as effectively. What I get the impression is that someone in the "moral majority" position is watching the wiki like a hawk, and sending out regular squacks to Google about it until they themselves are satisfied that the wiki has been sanitized. Or, perhaps, there have been enough complaints that Google themselves have decided to step up to active monitoring. -- "You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor
I personally know the entire board of WikiSpot.org, a 501(c)3 nonprofit educational organization, that allows any communities to collaborate via wikis. They're generally city-focused, but something like this would probably be well within their community guidelines. And I can guarantee that the they're not going to impose censorship or advertising over there. But the software is in flux right now, and it might not be the best fit for other reasons.
And both wikis are currently running Moin Moin derivatives, which means that someone would need to write a translation script from pmwiki. (And I know regular expressions. *sigh*) -- ∇×V
There is a key difference between this and the porn removal thing that makes me feel like FE does not actually want to remove this stuff. I'm not prepared to say what this is just now, because it's something I think could cause problems if it gets too much attention. But it's enough for me to say, you could give the man a freaking week or so before declaring the apocalypse? Coming up with a new way to pay for the place is likely to take more than half a day.
Which isn't to say that it's a bad idea to make some just-in-case preparations... -Morgan.
@Morganni
I'm a pessimist by nature, so I'm not inclined to believe FE has anything but his own interests as opposed to that of the tropers in mind, but fair enough, he didn't axe murder the pages (I checked, the source for all but one page is completely intact, and the one exception was a ghostlink for a rename.) Conversely, that doesn't mean he's not going to kill them, and may just be blanketing them for ease of disposal later without any of the fuss he got last time. Regardless, I agree we will have to wait and see. On the other hand, I say we back up and save now, because TV Tropes is on very shaky ground IMO. 
@vorticity
my previous job (which lasted 6+ years) mainly revolved around writing regex. If you need someone to take a swing at some translation scripts I'd be willing to give it a shot. -Terry ----- "so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today" TF2: Spy
Personally, I'd want to find someplace that would run pmWiki if at all possible. It seems like it would simplify things quite a bit.
(Plus I like pmWiki. Even if I'm not sure I"m capitalizing it correctly.) -Morgan. robkelk Wrote:Not sure, Rob, but from the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ourproject.org) I get the idea that it is 100% voluntary donation driven, much like Wikipedia itself. Also, it seems to be right up our alley in that it is all about freely exchanged information... which is exactly what our new trope-wiki is gonna be about, yes/no?blackaeronaut Wrote:hmmmm..... Okay, I'm just a noob when it comes to this sort of thing, but at first glance I'd say that Ourproject.org might be the best way for us to go, because it's free, ad-free, and allows for customization, among other nice goodies.Free and ad-free? What's the catch?
http://tvtropes.org/pmwik...0A11026600&page=188#4689
Fast Eddie's first post in this thread may be of interest. -Morgan.
Uh-huh... We'll see how well Google is willing to deal with Eddie.
Well, the problem may abate in the near term, because it looks like Fast Eddie might honestly be working to fix the situation. What still has me worried is the original exchange from VictimFallsForRapist TRS:
Fast Eddie Wrote:I've cut all the rape tropes. They were getting us in trouble with google. Discar Wrote:Would you mind making a new thread somewhere else where we can discuss Fast Eddie Wrote:It didn't work. There is no explanation needed beyond the fact that theThread Locked It's all NBD, no big deal man, and by the way I'm locking the thread so I don't have to explain myself in detail. I can't tell if he's being flippant because he hates the rape tropes, or because he's mad at Google. Or both. But communication skills are not his strong point. Still, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's figure out a way to get the backups, either through the Internet Archive, a database dump request from Fast Eddie and Co., or by mirroring the site. When we get it, we make it available as a torrent. If things settle down with Google and go back towards normal, all we've done is make additional offsite backups, which is good for everyone. If not, we figure out what to do from there. Edit: Man, I'm starting to feel sorry about hijacking this thread. Edit 2: And now the content violations thread is locked. -- ∇×V
@vorticity
Given how TV Tropes is almost completely paralyzed with an extremely shaky future ahead at best, your wanting to back up the site is a great idea I fully support. However, I'd still like to see a TV Tropes alternative free of the chains of both Fast Eddie AND Google, since even if Google ceases to be an issue. a lot of the site decay can be pinned on him politicizing it with his "no negativity" views and turning it into a revenue machine.
Folks, I am kibitzing and making suggestions here. I am not going to take an active part in the project - it's too close to the work that the government pays me to do, so there may be a perceived conflict of interest if I do more than I am doing.
-- Rob Kelk "Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of the same sovereign, servants of the same law." - Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
@robkelk
That's perfectly understandable. Just the fact you're offering advice is appreciated, and on behalf of the rest of us, thanks for your courtesy and understanding.
I probably won't be a contributor, but I do believe that the site should rely on donations, and not ads.
Putting aside whether or not Fast Eddie is using the whole scenario as an excuse to force the wiki into a particular image, or if he's just running scared, as well as whether the site is merely self-supporting but he'd be unable to afford to run it if it wasn't versus presence or lack of a day job... part of the problem it gets into is the "walmart problem" by having the advertising in place in the first place. Especially since most places will settle on a single service. This gives that single service an extraordinary amount of power over it. This would amount to having a business that relies on three customers... and one of those three provides 80%+ of the business. Walmart already does this sort of thing to companies, basically using their power to demand those businesses run in a particular way. On the other side of that... I can't really blame Google for the mess. They're trying to make sure they obey the law with regards to obscenity, or supporting it. Unfortunately, there is no good test about what constitutes obscenity. "I know it when I see it" is a really poor measure from a legal and logic standpoint. Since "adult" tends to completely encompass at least 90% of what most people would consider "obscene" (except some particular violence outliers), any company seeking a standard will pick that and let the chips fall where they may. Especially given the moral pressures to not sponsor adult material. For them, it's a "win win". Two birds, one stone. I do agree that someone probably has it out for TVT... either someone who was banned, or a moral guardian type that has a definition of "obscene" that would force the world into an Ozzy and Harriet sort of culture. The advertising mechanism, especially since it is quite likely automated (although FE has probably gotten it into the "human review" just by challenging it), is the perfect mechanism to force a change, especially on a popular site like that. Few sites that rely on the ads to pay the bills can afford to have it yanked out from under them, and I suspect that TVT's lifespan could be measured in hours if that happened. This replacement might not be so bad... but I would recommend highly to avoid the equation completely. Yes, donations might mean that the site will have some issues, but they're likely to be fewer overall than the constant threat of having ads pulled. Especially given the high chance that, if a TVT person is watching the thread here, they might decide "sauce for the goose" with it anyway. -- "You know how parents tell you everything's going to fine, but you know they're lying to make you feel better? Everything's going to be fine." - The Doctor
Actually, this doesn't have anything to do with the law about obscenity. Google can't sell ads to advertisers on sites where there's porn, so they push that requirement onto websites that use AdSense. There are companies who do sell ads on porn sites, but they're generally for other porn sites. So its an advertiser issue, though Google has final say, so to speak, due to its monopoly power. But can Google be faulted for its infamously bad customer service? Yep.
I really do think that we should cool the discussion about forking the site for a bit. I notice that Bob's not posting, and other people are a bit wary. In my experience, this probably means that I failed a wisdom check somewhere. But if someone wants to set up an IRC channel somewhere where we could talk through technical issues of backing up the site, that would be great. @robkelk Understood. -- ∇×V |
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