All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XXXI

[Bob Schroeck]

One of the problems here is that, intentional or not, your more extreme edits give every impression that you are pushing a political agenda, and more than that, you are comfortable expressing a homicidal rage at the very existence of people who don't share your opinion. Your review of the Barbie movie in particular was so vitriolic that it resulted in a new rule for the wiki, one of the very few explicitly defined-and-written-down rules we have. You were banned not by a single administrator's whim, but after discussion and debate among the entire wiki staff because we felt that outside of simple mechanical edits, we could not trust you edit without the explicit intent to subvert the wiki's established neutrality in favor of a viewpoint where if white males don't get the best of everything 100% of the time as god intended, they are victims of eeeeeeevul librul oppression.

You need to realize that you don't need to convince the rest of us to overrule Robkelk's ban, you need to convince all of us that our collective opinion of you is wrong and you won't start ranting the next time you come across a work that doesn't fall at the feet of the idol of the White American Male and worship it slavishly.

[MorningDaylight]

Well, I no longer write reviews on the ATT site either. And I wrote a very aggressive review of Deadpool 2 where I called Ryan Reynolds an annoying clown. I do not worship any concept of "white male".

To be honest, this post comes to as a shock to me because most of the time I'm writing about japanese videogames, manga, television or VNs which definitely don't star white males.

I admit I get very annoyed if I perceive some work as racist or sexist, or just plain dumb. I guess if it's for the best for me to not write about things that bother me. I was banned temporarily before for using very aggressive language about ships on Naruto ten years ago on another forum. I stopped entirely talking about ships since and I look back on all that discussion as something pretty stupid I engaged. I think this is gonna be the first time I wrote "Narusaku" on the Internet in ten years, and it feels somewhat painful to mention I used to be one of them, like some embarassing political extremist movement I took part.

So all I can promise is also to not make edits about works that I dislike so I do not engage on unfair biases that go against the principles of neutrality.

[GethN7]

Well, I will try to write something that will not waste much of anyone's time;

I am human, I'm prone to error. Errors happen. I admit I'm often anxious and write things before thinking about what exactly they mean.

About the "Human Resources" edit, I didn't intend to create legal problems for the wiki. I thought the information was factual, it was not factual. I don't read a lot of gossip news, and I thought by the point where articles on "The Guardian" were quoting it, I thought it was real. I did not intend to create legal problems for the wiki.

I promise I will abstain from troping on real things to avoid future errors.

About the "Oppressed States of America" edit, I admit, I didn't watch the credits of the movie. I don't read movie credits. Ever. Apparently, "CSA: The Confederate States of America" is not a parody of anything, despite being a mockumentary.

About the CSA example, I do not know what to say except "I had incomplete information". Honestly, I found the movie so poorly made and so absurd in its premise( I do not think any country in the proximity of Britain's sphere of influence would hold on to slavery more than my country Brazil did, that was 1888) that I thought it was a comedy; some bad movies like "The Room" by Tommy Wiseau also made me think they were intended to be comedies, but they were not. I promise I will refrain from saying a work fits a genre or not unless I have a source that is not myself.

 I do not think this last error was so big, but I suppose with all the errors I committed all those years this was the last straw to most of you.

And that is all I could write in my defence.

I am going to be against reinstating for some time, a bare minimum of six months to a year would suffice before I would reconsider, and I'll explain why.

First off, I hate having to throw anyone out who wants to edit in good faith. I helped found ATT in part because of all the hoops TV Tropes made (and still makes) people go through to bow and scrape for the mercurial whims of people who frankly, by my standards, come off heavy-handed at the most charitable.

At the same time, let me be clear: I have to hold you to the same standards I hold myself or anyone else, and frankly, you have stirred the pot numerous times. There are many persons, works, and ideas I find utterly abhorrent, and their being flung off a cliff to their doom would not displease me in the slightest. At the same time, I help run a wiki where we have to be mostly objective, and even where opinion is allowed, it has to be civilly expressed and based on a firm ground of fact with as little insult, invective, or name-calling as possible.

And that is why I find it hard to just welcome you back with open arms. No offense, you cannot restrain your passions. You have found it very hard to stay civil. You have repeatedly let political and social venom leak out far beyond levels our rules find acceptable. If you can stay away a bare minimum of six months, with no further attempt to sneak back under the radar, and then politely make your case for reinstatement, I will be more than willing to give you a fair hearing. Until then, I remain firmly convinced, for both our sakes, we need time to pass on both sides for good faith to be established, and for passions to cool, before the question can be considered.

[MorningDaylight]

Well, to be honest, I was trying to be reinstated because I already did my efforts to calm myself down and they are working. I no longer go to a certain social media website, and I no longer do a certain thing with my body because it was making me frustrated, not relaxed.

But I guess like an alcoholic that didn't consume alcohol for one month I'm still considered on the constant danger of relapse. I'm logging out of this forum and not logging in back until All Saints Day.
If nothing horrible happens to me until there I will be asking for my reinstatement again in November. Have a good day, good evening, and good night.

[MilkmanConspiracy]

Writing this is difficult. I’ll start by saying that I genuinely value your non-problematic edits. You did good work updating and improving aspects of the wiki that had been left untouched or underdeveloped since the fork. I’ll also acknowledge that you chose to approach us to discuss this, rather than attempting to make another alternate account. I often enjoyed reading your edits, and I probably wouldn’t have noticed your alt was using your writing style if I didn’t.

There is no problem with editing pages for works you don’t like. I do it frequently, and I even write pages for works I find distasteful or somewhat disturbing (I may as well get something out of the consumption). Keeping your personal opinions close to your chest is where potential problems arise. My primary concern with letting you back on the wiki is the potential for libel. If you are allowed back on after having a known history of making edits that walk the line, I worry how a court would see the action of letting you edit once again should it come to that. Since this has been an issue in the past, and because you have ignored directives by wiki administrators before, I have a hard time seeing any future where you could be let back on the wiki directly, especially with automoderation, and not risk culpability with letting you back on as a result. Understand that this probably protects you too. I don’t know what it’s like in Brazil, but many countries have punishments for libel if someone pursues the issue and prevails in court. I’m not strictly opposed to your return, but the issues would need to be addressed, and I’m not sure how they could possibly be in a matter that is satisfactory to all parties, including potential litigants. That said, I’m not a lawyer, nor capable of providing legal advice or proper legal analysis, so I would defer to more experienced voices on this.

People do change, and I believe you are being genuine with us. However it hardly any time has passed since your ban. Do you truly want to re-enter troping at this wiki again? There are other trope wikis, and even other non-wiki troping projects online such as /r/topcharactertropes on Reddit. Outside of troping, your skills and experience could make a lot of difference and provide opportunities for personal growth. If I may make a suggestion, have you heard of the academic journal ROMCHIP? They are dedicated to preserving game history in an academic publication, but you yourself don’t need to be an academic to contribute. In fact, as a Brazilian gamer, your perspective and knowledge as a gamer capable of cultural critique is especially valued. If you know a language other than English such as Portuguese or an indigenous language, they also look for translators to help spread gaming knowledge. Your submissions would be subject to review of course, but as a journal, that applies to everyone. Give it some thought and consideration.

[MilkmanConspiracy]

Just a heads up that I’ve rejected several nonsense/misleading edits from a new user (Including poor grammar, structural issues). I’m not sure it’s worth dignifying with a response since it’s probably a troll, but wanted to document the rejection in a place outside the mod log.

[Bob Schroeck]

JJ villard? Good call. If he persists, we'll tag him as a spammer in the mod system and let it redirect him to the bitbucket.

EDIT: Technically, this should net him a permaban now, per our ban guidelines -- point 3 under "Grounds for a permanent ban without warning on the first occurrence" -- "Blanking or otherwise vandalizing a content page." His larger edits -- particularly the one on Animaniacs -- would certainly qualify.

[robkelk]

Is BlankEclair a ban-evasion account for Soturnupthelights / Soturnupthefun, or just somebody who happens to have the same posting style who didn't start posting until Soturnupthe* was banned?

Asking for a Checkuser...

[GethN7]

Is BlankEclair a ban-evasion account for Soturnupthelights / Soturnupthefun, or just somebody who happens to have the same posting style who didn't start posting until Soturnupthe* was banned?

Asking for a Checkuser...

I'm starting to suspect we may have a Single Issue Wonk poster on our hands, one obsessed with removing any mention of male or female and insisting on gender neutral terminology. Either that, or they are a nonbinary or pronoun-obsessed person who has something against firmly gender binary terms. The singular they is proper English grammar in some cases, but that would not seem to apply to these suspect edits.

Putting aside any personal feelings I have on the validity of that position, and strictly confining myself to policy, I see no reason to allow this to continue. Most media, even those catered to the LGBT community still refers to people as male or female, and further, their edits tend to be grammatically flawed.

I don't deny there are some works where gender neutral or even blended terms could apply (a few Star Trek novels I've read featured intersex characters who used "hir" to refer to themselves because they were legitimately hermaphroditic in nature), but I would suggest if so, we have these exceptions confined to a new trope if we don't already have one. One character in the anime Majestic Prince leaves the question of their being male, female, or intersex an open question, hence they/them was used for convenience as well, which would also count for that purpose.

I would suggest (given this new account has two edits dating back to August 2024) we ask this user to explain themselves. If they refuse or the Checkuser turns up evidence of socking, we block the account for ban evasion.

[Bob Schroeck]

I note that we don't currently address gendered pronouns in the Style Guide. We should, so in future cases we can explicitly call this kind of thing a style violation.

[robkelk]

The CheckUser was not done because BlankEclair is a "trusted volunteer", whatever that is. (Maybe Labster knows.)

[MilkmanConspiracy]

Is BlankEclair a ban-evasion account for Soturnupthelights / Soturnupthefun, or just somebody who happens to have the same posting style who didn't start posting until Soturnupthe* was banned?

Asking for a Checkuser...

I'm starting to suspect we may have a Single Issue Wonk poster on our hands, one obsessed with removing any mention of male or female and insisting on gender neutral terminology. Either that, or they are a nonbinary or pronoun-obsessed person who has something against firmly gender binary terms. The singular they is proper English grammar in some cases, but that would not seem to apply to these suspect edits.

Putting aside any personal feelings I have on the validity of that position, and strictly confining myself to policy, I see no reason to allow this to continue. Most media, even those catered to the LGBT community still refers to people as male or female, and further, their edits tend to be grammatically flawed.

I don't deny there are some works where gender neutral or even blended terms could apply (a few Star Trek novels I've read featured intersex characters who used "hir" to refer to themselves because they were legitimately hermaphroditic in nature), but I would suggest if so, we have these exceptions confined to a new trope if we don't already have one. One character in the anime Majestic Prince leaves the question of their being male, female, or intersex an open question, hence they/them was used for convenience as well, which would also count for that purpose.

I would suggest (given this new account has two edits dating back to August 2024) we ask this user to explain themselves. If they refuse or the Checkuser turns up evidence of socking, we block the account for ban evasion.

If I recall correctly (And if they are all the same person) they were initially obsessed with changing they to he/she or something unwieldy like that (Not a simple "he or she"). When they were corrected with a suggestion to follow the Oxford English Dictionary’s guidance on the subject I think they swung the other way. I suspect this is malicious compliance (Due to repeatedly ignoring attempts by an admin to reach out and have a dialogue), and a weird battle for them to pick.

[robkelk]

I note that we don't currently address gendered pronouns in the Style Guide. We should, so in future cases we can explicitly call this kind of thing a style violation.

How do we want to recommend the Tropers set the style? I'm good with either "they" or "he or she"; the other options that I'm aware of are not to my tastes. (I especially dislike "s divided by he" or "he divided by she", a slash has no place in a pronoun.)

[Labster]

The CheckUser was not done because BlankEclair is a "trusted volunteer", whatever that is. (Maybe Labster knows.)

Claire is a security reviewer for Miraheze and is also a trans catgirl :3  She's really good at finding security bugs.

I'm honestly not sure about her style on-wiki.  I don't think it's particularly likely for it to be the same person, as there are a lot of younger people now who care very deeply about pronouns.  BlankEclair is definitely the main account for that person, so it seems not particularly likely she'd've made other accounts for editing pronouns in advance, and then switch to the main.  But I also don't like this sort of special treatment for insiders.  Mostly because it's funny, I'd move forward with a ban for ban evasion.

[robkelk]

So, should I add this to the CheckUser request and then carry out the block?

::: Since there will be no CheckUser carried out to verify whether this account is or is not a ban-evasion account, and on the advice of [[User:Labster]] [http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/s...#pid227729 here], we will carry out the ban-evasion block of the account. --~~~~

[MilkmanConspiracy]

I don’t know Clair, but that does track with a lot of the younger tech savvy people I know. (Including one trans person and one furry, though they are two separate people.)

It’s still suspect, but on second glance they at least use the changeset summary feature consistently which either soturnupthewhatever didn’t bother the do. They could still be the same person, but most ban evaders don’t think that far in advance.

That said, I think an attention getter block is fine until we can get a statement confirming they aren’t the same person. We haven’t actually reached out to them yet, right? (Including the event they are separate people?)

[GethN7]

I don’t know Clair, but that does track with a lot of the younger tech savvy people I know. (Including one trans person and one furry, though they are two separate people.)

It’s still suspect, but on second glance they at least use the changeset summary feature consistently which either soturnupthewhatever didn’t bother the do. They could still be the same person, but most ban evaders don’t think that far in advance.

That said, I think an attention getter block is fine until we can get a statement confirming they aren’t the same person. We haven’t actually reached out to them yet, right? (Including the event they are separate people?)

Upon further examination of the edits of the three accounts, no, Clair is not related to the others. That said, an attention getter block asking them to explain themselves would be wise. I will go along with what other adminstrators advise on this topic going forward.

[Bob Schroeck]

I've been holding back on commenting until I could look into this myself. I'm not convinced that even the attention-getter block is necessary. If this edit had been made without the issues with SoTurnUp* in its immediate past, no one would have looked twice at it, especially since we don't have a preferred usage laid out in the style guide. I think the only thing we need to do is determine a preferred usage, put it in the style guide, and apply it to future edits.

[GethN7]

I've been holding back on commenting until I could look into this myself.  I'm not convinced that even the attention-getter block is necessary.  If this edit had been made without the issues with SoTurnUp* in its immediate past, no one would have looked twice at it, especially since we don't have a preferred usage laid out in the style guide.  I think the only thing we need to do is determine a preferred usage, put it in the style guide, and apply it to future edits.

Sounds fair to me.

[robkelk]

As long as we're updating the Style Guide... From Topic:Ypih8aoqh89ui4l8

And we'll need to update the Style Guide and other relevant pages. We never thought we'd need to tell people "don't use HTML markup".

-- Looney Toons, admin

[robkelk]

Right... I get to do the first draft because of course I do all the first drafts. Posting here before posting to the wiki in order to get mod-team buy-in.

---

Proposal: Update the Style Guide

We've had a couple of issues with new Tropers (or drive-by editors from other wikis hosted by the wiki farm) makinng changes that are of sub-par quality but aren't specifically mentioned in the Style Guide. In order to close this [[Loophole Abuse]], I propose making these changes:


Add to "Proper English Grammar and Usage" before the line that begins with "Illiterate contributions will be rejected."

Two specific cases:
* Avoid [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/neologism neologisms]. Using words that people do not know is unclear. (Please note that [https://www.oed.com/discover/a-brief-his...ular-they/ "they" as a singular gender-neutral pronoun dates back to at least 1375], and thus is not a neologism.)
* Speaking of the singular "they", this actual word is preferred in cases where a Troper would prefer to avoid gender-specific third-person pronouns. (In this case, we disagree with the Chicago Manual of Style.) This doesn't apply to [[:Category:Always Female|Always Female]] tropes which should continue to use "she" and [[:Category:Always Male|Always Male]] tropes which should continue to use "he", since in these cases the gender is already known.


Add to "Italics, Boldface, and Other Emphasis" after the line that begins with "Similarly, we are not email."

We are also not a web site. Do not use HTML codes to emphasize text, either.

[MilkmanConspiracy]

The style guide already prescribes how emphasis is to be applied. It describes using wiki text.

"Any kind of emphasis you want to make should default to mixed or lower case in italics. Italics markup, as noted elsewhere on this page, is accomplished with two single quotes/apostrophes before and after the text to be emphasized."

I'm not opposed to using other kinds of emphasis if there are reasonable benefits, such as semantic uses, but they should be done smartly. For example, via a template, or in an edge case.

In general I would just say don’t use bare HTML if the result is achievable in wikitext. Not all editors are going to know what HTML is, and we don’t currently require it as a prerequisite to edit. Otherwise we could just have a git repo to collaborate and push to a static host, which I’m sure would save a lot on cost at the expense of killing user friendliness for the casual editor without prerequisite knowledge.

[Bob Schroeck]

Right... I get to do the first draft because of course I do all the first drafts.

No you don't. I just didn't get to it first, as I had other things on my plate this morning.

this actual word is preferred in cases where a Troper would prefer to avoid gender-specific third-person pronouns

Just because repeated words grate on my mental ear, I'd suggest "recommended" instead of "preferred".

We are also not a web site. Do not use HTML codes to emphasize text, either.

Well, actually we are a web site... how about "Our pages are coded for interpretation by the MediaWiki engine."

[robkelk]

Could one of our coder admins please debug Template:Work to get rid of the thousands of High-priority Lint Errors that it's generating?

[MilkmanConspiracy]

BlankEclair identified a copyvio in the page description for the webcomic Rain (Predates Import), and has offered a new description to replace it.

Is it possible to get oversight or similar on the page intro, given it exists in all prior article revisions?