All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part II

[Bob Schroeck]

And it's me who ends up creating it.
Here's an idea for promoting the wiki:  Drop a line to any of the journalists who covered the "rape tropes" mishegas last year and shone the light of press inquiry on FEddie and his censors, and point them at http://allthetropes.orain.org/wiki/All ... _TV_Tropes]the "Why Fork TV Tropes" page and just tell them an alternative exists.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Tennie]

One possible idea that I've thought about would be to have those of us with still-functioning TVT accounts send PMs to certain tropers we know who (A.) are neither mods nor admins and (B.) might have problems with the current administration and its policies.  Those PMs will contain the URL for ATT, letting them know of the site's existence.

Of course, this depends on whether admins or mods could read PMs even when they're not directed at them.  It also depends on finding those tropers who are likely to not snitch to the admins.  We'd do well to make sure to mention not to let it slip, either on the forums or on the wiki itself, but to instead suggest that they at least check out ATT before deciding whether to join it.

[GethN7]

Just wanted to announce my bot is officially filling in the categories on ATT.

Given the amount, it should take about a week or so, will update when it finally finishes.

[Bob Schroeck]

And I'd like to let folks know that I just finished the basic page for http://allthetropes.orain.org/wiki/RWBY]RWBY. No subpages yet, and I'm sure I don't have anything close to a complete trope list, so head on over and help flesh it out.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Tennie]

Here's yet another idea for Promoting ATT's existence:

I recall that one rather famous XKCD strip linked to TVT.  Perhaps we could contact the author, Randall Munroe, and see if he'd do a strip on ATT?  Just an idea, but give it some thought...

[robkelk]

Here's yet another idea for Promoting ATT's existence:

I recall that one rather famous XKCD strip linked to TVT. Perhaps we could contact the author, Randall Munroe, and see if he'd do a strip on ATT? Just an idea, but give it some thought...

His contact information is here: http://xkcd.com/about/
--
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

[Tennie]

Thank you, Rob, but I also want to mention something:

I'll be quite frank: I'm rather nervous about sending off an e-mail, as I'm not exactly sure what to write in such a way as to get his attention, and I'm not sure that I'll get his attention either.  Maybe someone (such as, say, you or Bob or someone like that) who has more courage than I could send off such e-mails.

In any case, I certainly hope that we can get his attention, and that he could provide some free advertising for ATT!

[Labster]

I totally wrote up this reply earlier, but then Yuku kept giving me 503 Forbidden errors and I lost the post.  But then I realize that I could install Wireshark, click resubmit in the firefox form, and grab the packet data.  A bit of perl later, and hey, that was only slightly slower to figure out than retyping the thing.
xkcd: That's a cute idea, but I can't think of anything that's exactly
*funny* about us yet.  There are a lot of writers on (this)
board.  If you can think up a joke about us that is actually
funny (that doesn't involve our layout being broken, or us being paedos
har har), then maybe we'll ask Munroe to write
something.
Not that I want to discourage anyone from promoting us, I'm just saying.   If it's a creator who has a tendency to link to TVT a lot, it's definitely a good idea to tell him or her that an alternative exists.

Of course, this depends
on whether admins or mods could read PMs even when they're not directed
at them.  It also depends on finding those tropers who are
likely to not snitch to the admins.  We'd do well to make sure
to mention not to let it slip, either on the forums or on the wiki
itself, but to instead suggest that they at least check out ATT before
deciding whether to join it.

I'm pretty certain that
if they didn't have this ability before, Eddie is coding it up now
just because you mentioned it in this
thread.  Be careful about mentioning anything you
want to do on TV Tropes in this thread.  Morganni was banned
for posting in a previous thread on this board -- and not for any
conduct on the actual tvtropes.org website.   Not even
for suggesting any anti-TVT action.  Just for posting in a
thread with people who protested.  So keep that in mind before
you mention any ideas in public about how to undermine TVT from
within.  They are watching you.
So while you could cross-post content between the sites because hey, you wrote it and you own it, I'd strongly recommend doing against so using the same user name.
-- ∇×V

[Tennie]

...Damn.  I wish that FE wasn't as paranoid(1)(2) as he is.  It would make things for everyone involved a whole lot easier.  But in this case we'll just have to handle the lemons we've been given as best as we can...

(1) I do not mean any actual ill will towards him.  In fact, I've noticed that I probably share certain traits with FE (Although they fortunately haven't manifested from me on a level that they have from him; however, I'm also sure that it's more noticeable from him because he's in a position of power, and the stress seems to be taking its toll on the poor guy.  After all, heavy is the head that wears the crown...).

(2) I also feel like there's a tinge of paranoia coming from this group, although given the current track record it seems to be more justified coming from us than it does from FE.  And that's just a plain sad situation all around.

[Morganite]

Though it is worth noting that I was also un-banned.

In general, you should assume that anyone with root access to a server can read PMs. However, PMs do have a certain expectation of privacy. If it were ever shown that banning or other action took place based on information in private messages, it could result in significant negative publicity. I'm not prepared to comment on how likely anyone at TVT is to realize this and/or care.

Bob: I think you might be getting a bit overzealous on removing links to TVT/it's forums. The particular page I'm thinking of is "Tv Tropes Writing Contests". From our perspective, it's a lot more like a page for a web original work, and so it makes sense to link to the source. (It definitely doesn't belong in the Trope category either way.) (Actually, one hell of a lot of things that aren't tropes seem to be in Trope. That could be... a problem.)

On the search thing: I notice that when you search, it searches both page titles and full text. I tend to want just the former. Would there be a way to add a search that only does titles? That seems like it might help some with that issue.

Also, if we're going to link to "Weirdest Inbound Link of the Day" on ATT pages, it should probably get links to our inbound link tools, and the ones from TVT should probably be on a separate page if we keep it at all.

I'm noting that some people over there seem to have awfully weird ideas on what Creative Commons SA licenses are for. That people can and occasionally do take the material and do their own thing with it is not an undesirable side effect, it's the entire point of using that kind of license.

And speaking of licenses, it is probably a good idea to change our copyright page to note that it's okay to put your own material on both wikis. Because the existing page suggests that you can't, and that's wrong, and making it look otherwise is a rather dubious move.

-Morgan.

[Labster]

@Morganni: I must have forgotten you were unbanned.  (By way of excuse, it's been over a year.)  Sorry about that.  Also, I will do copyrights thing momentarily.
We do need to be careful about mentioning TV Tropes too much on our wiki, lest we face the wrath of a trademark infringement suit.  But we should keep it around in the nominative case, though.

Actually, one hell of a lot of things that aren't tropes seem to be in Trope. That could be... a problem.

sub is_trope_or_work {    my ($fn) = @_;    my $newtitle = get_new_title($fn);    return "work" if $newtitle =~ /(/;    return "creator" if $newtitle =~ /^Creator/;
    my ($ns, $pn) = split /./, lc($fn), 2;    use List::MoreUtils qw/any/;    return "work" if any { $rewrite_as{$_ . $pn} }         (qw/characters trivia recap synopsis fanficrecs radar synopsis ymmv/);
    return "trope";}

This was not the most elegant approach, but it was the best I had at the moment.@Tennie: I don't really feel any ill will towards Eddie, either.  He's put in a lot of work on his website, and it was a lot of fun for a lot of years.  I am still angry with him, a year and a half later.  It's like my superpower, the ability to stay angry and motivated for the long game.

Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.

Maybe my evil superpower :/
I try to keep my anger to the institutions, and try to change them from the inside, but that was simply not possible in this case.  ????????? I can only try to good with it and create a new thing that's better.
Paranoia was my stock-in-trade, being one of the founders of this club at my college.  And well, in conflicts, it makes perfect sense to spy on the enemy, especially when it's as easy as reading a forum thread.
Oh, and I had one more idea -- why don't we tell the people on YKTTW that if that if TVT denies their new trope idea, maybe they can make a page for it on All The Tropes.
-- ∇×V

[Morganite]

This was not the most elegant approach, but it was the best I had at the moment.

...

I wish you'd said something.

After poking around some more, I've upgraded my estimate to "I suspect that most o the things in Trope aren't tropes".

I think I can suggest a better test, but it's probably better if someone else handles the botsmithing... (Was that GethN7's department? I could've sworn it was.)

Oh, and I had one more idea -- why don't we tell the people on YKTTW that if that if TVT denies their new trope idea, maybe they can make a page for it on All The Tropes.

I'd be careful on making anything that sounds like a promise on that. Some just aren't that good, and a *lot* are really just redundant.

-Morgan.

[GethN7]

Already have some ideas on the trope/work template fixes. Once my bot is done filling in all the categories, I'm going to go through the categories and start writing a series of edits for the most erroneous placement errors I can find. Right now, I still need to finish the bot I have going, so those things will still need to fixed manually, but once I have all the categories for the MW API to recognize, I can start doing mass fixes on request .

Already had this problem in mind long in advance, will have a better idea how to fix most goofs in the process once my primary bot run is finished.

About 20-25% done with my primary bot run as is ATM.

[robkelk]

And speaking of licenses, it is probably a good idea to change our copyright page to note that it's okay to put your own material on both wikis. Because the existing page suggests that you can't, and that's wrong, and making it look otherwise is a rather dubious move.

What do people think of this?

As mentioned on every Edit page, all contributions to All The Tropes are considered to be released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license. That means anyone who reads your work on ATT can use it anywhere else, as long as they give ATT credit and let people who read their work do the same thing - and that's all.

You are not giving up the right to post your contributions anywhere else.
You are not giving up the right to make money from your own work.
You are not giving up the right to be known as the original author of your contribution - in fact, the wiki software keeps a record of what you wrote, if you're logged it when you contribute it to ATT.

Your words are still yours, to do with as you will. You're just giving the world a license to use them.
--
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

[Bob Schroeck]

Morganni wrote:

---

Though it is worth noting that I was also un-banned.

You were? I don't recall ever hearing that. How did I miss it?

Morganni wrote:

---

Bob: I think you might be getting a bit overzealous on removing links to TVT/it's forums. The particular page I'm thinking of is "Tv Tropes Writing Contests". From our perspective, it's a lot more like a page for a web original work, and so it makes sense to link to the source.

Mm. I guess you're right. I'll go and use my newly-acquired admin powers and undo my changes there.
(Oh, and Brent? Thanks. It was an unexpected surprise this morning to find that in the Recent Changes log. I never even noticed the (slight) difference in my wiki interface.)

Morganni wrote:

---

On the search thing: I notice that when you search, it searches both page titles and full text. I tend to want just the former. Would there be a way to add a search that only does titles? That seems like it might help some with that issue.

Agreed. I wouldn't mind being able to chose "just titles" and "just text" in addition to "everywhere" myself.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Seraviel]

Just asking around since we're talking about tropes, near a year ago in thought of a tropes that I felt wasn't present in TVT: Vacation Hell.

(No, it's not the same thing as a Busman Holiday, Busman Holiday is when you are doing your job while on vacation. Vacation Hell is a vacation that ends up not being one. It's named after one of the Geobreeders Manga)

Does anyone know if this is actually an already existing trope under another name? If not, this will be the first thing I add as an AT-Troper.
-People may die, but ideas are forever. Je suis Charlie.

[Bob Schroeck]

I was going to suggest that you search the wiki on "vacation" to see what comes up, but then I went and tried it myself. "Title" hits brought up almost nothing but works, and in looking for "compare" and "related to" entries on the tropes I did find, there was nothing like what you have in mind. (In fact, we don't even have, and probably should, a category/index for Vacation Tropes.)

I'd say that if you have three good examples to put in it, go ahead and create the page. If we find a pre-existing trope, we'll just combine the best of both.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Tennie]

Vacation Hell is a vacation that ends up not being one.

That's very much a "Truth in Television"-type trope, as I can attest from some personal experiences.  Of course, I know some examples in fiction, although at the moment I can't think of anything detailed enough to write an entry about...

[Seraviel]

Done.

http://allthetropes.orain.org/wiki/Vacation_Hell

Please check if everything is fine, add links or examples if you know some, and generally comment.

Thank you.
-People may die, but ideas are forever. Je suis Charlie.

[Another Troper]

Did you read Ask The Tropers (here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/query.php?type=att ) already? They're talking about ATT now, albeit not in a good way.

[GethN7]

Alright, this will be a long post, so bear with me, but I had two things I had in mind to improve the site.

First, our Trope/work templates are a little dull, and I had a plan to fix that:

http://tropes.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Subpages

http://tropes.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Trope_Subpages

As you can see from these two pages on the Tropes Mirror Wiki, I spruced up the icons, mostly with things available from Wikimedia Commons, though I'm open to suggestions. Also, you might notice I stuck the icons beside the links: I did this because the way it's done on TVT it's impossible tell if something has a page unless you click on the link, and I'm of the school of thought red links are a challenge to turn them blue (okay, some red links will never be blue for certain reasons, but you get the idea).

If anyone has ideas for livening up the templates on ATT, I'm all ears.

Another thing I need to ask is: Do we want to keep Tropers Tales pages around? We have them included in the massive database upload we did (most of them, at any rate), and me personally, I'm in favor of getting rid of them for several reasons:

* They are low hanging fruit for trolls - I've read the mock threads on SA and on other sites, and Tropers Tales are a magnet for every douche on the internet to mock, and I asked the Wikia staff to remove them from the TMW because I didn't want the hassle.

* They will be a pain to clean up - They have a ton of links to troper names that are not users on All The Tropes, and removing the red links will be really aggravating at best, and purging them all will clean up a ton of red links.

* I don't think we really want to get back to those - One of the reasons Tv Tropes caught heat for having horrible people was because some of the Tropers Tales started edging into creepy and unsavory territory, and even if we did keep them around, they would need incredibly strict policing to keep out of the gutter, and I'm cynical at best about that being possible.

Anyway, that's my two cents. Given how important these issues are, especially the latter, I would like some opinions before I or any other admin considers what action needs be taken.

[Bob Schroeck]

Another Troper wrote:

---

Did you read Ask The Tropers (here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/query.php?type=att ) already? They're talking about ATT now, albeit not in a good way.

Not any more.  The mysterious Stalinizer has been at work removing threads that distress poor Fast Eddie so as to spare his blood pressure.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Bob Schroeck]

More seriously, after considerable back-and-forthing in my head, I'm (still) in favor of dumping troper tales. Mainly because they are trollbait. Let's focus on the tropes and not the way people perceive the tropes manifesting in their personal lives.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Labster]

I've gathered what I think are everyone's votes so far.

Bob: DeleteGethN7: DeleteTennie: Delete in a fireMorganni: Fun but off-topic so probably delete.Nylor: KeepVorticity: Keep but heavily redact: http://drunkardswalkforums.yuku.com/rep ... ply-116793

It looks like I'm being outvoted.  Let me try a few test edits to see if I can actually clean up Troper Tales pages to my own standards.  And if that turns out to be impractical/impossible, I'll go ahead and call the vote for the majority.
-- ∇×V

[Labster]

Okay, I tried editing 5 pages.
From best to worst:

http://allthetropes.orain.org/wiki/And ... oper_Tales // seems questionable, but nothing too bad.http://allthetropes.orain.org/w/index. ... oper_Tales // had one example that was barely coherent, deleted page.  It Gets Worse:http://allthetropes.orain.org/w/index. ... did=177842  // Deleted half of the examples, remaining examples are possibly acceptablehttp://allthetropes.orain.org/w/index.php?title=Animals_Hate_Him/Troper_Tales&curid=180941&diff=370583&oldid=180982  // Applied Sturgeon's law and cut 90% of examples.  Voodoo guy story was cool.http://allthetropes.orain.org/w/index. ... did=177994 // WARNING: STURGEON'S LAW EXCEEDED.  This Troper had a [[Heroic BSOD] for stubbing his toe really hard; that was exciting.  I kept one of the entries only because it was such a perfect Shaggy Dog story ("And 10 days later Nana died" -- she of course had not been mentioned until that point).

Messing with these entries took me like, 45 minutes?  Okay, I'm changing my vote to "Keep, but only if someone else volunteers to cleanup these pages because I'm certainly not doing it, otherwise Delete."
Edit: wrong law -- though honestly there's a limit to how much bad input you can accept.
-- ∇×V