I Think It's Time I Walked Quietly Away from TVTropes

[Bob Schroeck]

Oh, in case you're interested, here's what I left on my troper page before Fast Eddie stalinized me:

I prefer "memory holed".  After all, I did co-found that one club in college. 

And after reading that link, may I say "Congratulations"?  All I ever did along those lines in college was post announcements for the Campus Crusade for Cthulhu in the Daily Princetonian...

I really see nothing there worth deleting, really.

Well, I made it pretty clear that I felt that Fast Eddie  (heh, I just typo'd that as "Fast Eddit".  Freudian slip? )  was morally and ethically in the wrong.  Obviously that couldn't be allowed to remain on the wiki, which has no one who disagrees with admin policies whatsoever.  Especially not one of the original first (well, first-and-a-half) generation tropers.

I suspect it's no coincidence that none of the original tropers, who built the site from the ground up with the sweat of their brow, have cared to remain.

Now, I know nothing of the specific history of TVT, but they made almost no effort to inform the community what was going on while they were implementing a censorship panel.  If things like that are typical, then yeah, surely that would drive out the early adopters.

I can't say I know the reason all the other original Tropers left, but yeah, since Webmonkey Gus died (or got tired of the wiki and just pretended to have died) and Fast Eddie took over, things have been a lot more arbitrary and abrupt.  I always felt that Eddie was a lot less... social -- or just less friendly -- than Gus was, though I always did my best to deal with him on a polite basis.  But on more than one occasion I got the definite impression that the last thing he wanted on his wiki was to have one of the very first tropers still hanging around.

But it's not just Eddie's management style.  It's humorless geeks coming in and trying to purge everything that's whimsical and informal about the wiki.  It's the johnny-come-latelies who have decided that the wiki is and always has been an academic resource and has to be written that way.  It's all these damned kids on my lawn.  
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[DHBirr]

Avoid people with ice-axes, Lev ... I mean, Bob.
-----
Big Brother is watching you.  And damn, you are so bloody BORING.

[Morganite]

Well, I've been looking into things recently, and it doesn't look like TVTropes has quite become the post-apocalyptic wasteland that was expected. Stuff that was really stupid to delete like Lolita and FSN have come back, and while the processes they've got aren't perfect, they do seem to be sort of working. (I also see it as a good sign that the panel is obviously taking a dim view of people who are just complaining about things they don't like.)

Oh, and as far as I can tell almost all the porn tropes are still there, even though the index isn't.

Doesn't mean the whole situation hasn't been handled pretty badly, and things need to be watched closely. But I'm not sure I'm willing to abandon the whole thing just yet.

-Morgan.

[Black Aeronaut]

If I had the time or the inclination I'd go on the inside as a poison little pill, but I don't know how I'd make a change working just on the inside of Fast Eddie's 'Lawful Evil'.

[Bob Schroeck]

I would recommend against that anyway, BA. It's not worth it.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[robkelk]

What Bob said.

The best option, IMHO, is one that's already been proposed - set up an alternative to TVTropes. When one has a monopoly, one can do what one wants; that option disappears when one has to worry about competition.
--
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]

I just received an interesting email last night about conditions over at TVTropes. With the sender's permission, I'm reproducing it here:

First off, just wanted to say I've always loved your "Drunkard's Walk" storyverse.

Seriously, it is still one of the best fanfictions I've ever read.

Anyway, as for TV Tropes, you were right to leave. I'm still there (but I'm about to walk myself), and IT GOT WORSE.

Page deletions are getting ridiculous, you can get called a troll for protesting the littlest things (and you have no idea how much you have to kiss up to the moderators to get away with even a little protest), there is an Orwellian order out now that if trope page goes down, it (and any references) did not exist, they never existed.

Also, most of the P5 is filled with gleeful deletionists who practicality brag about their newfound power to strike down stuff they don't like, and they have an insane bias of favoring Western works over Japanese works, with some pretty tasteless, tawdry Western works getting immediate safe harbor while banning pages on anime licensed in the US they feel is pedo pandering left and right.

I'll spare you the rest of the horrible details, but you were right to leave when you did, and to be honest, it's so bad I rarely edit anything and I'm frankly terrified to make any new pages (if it's remotely objectionable by their current draconian standards, it will wind up on the funeral pyre they call the "Content Violation Report" and castigated to the pit).

Anyway, I'm sorry for the gross disrespect you've suffered, and, one disgruntled troper to another, I'm sorry for what you had to go through.

P.S. - Honestly, after reading your forum, I'd love to see an alternative to TV Tropes, because the version that exists now was born out of George Orwell's night terrors.

If this is an accurate account -- and I have no reason to believe it isn't -- perhaps we should warn writers in other anime fanfic venues that they may want to try to ask TVT to take down pages or citations to their fics before they get smeared with the "pedophile" label by the xenophobes on the P5. After all, the moderator in the ATT thread rather smugly declared that they would respond to requests. If they weren't just lying outright, an email to Fast Eddie should be sufficient. And Fast Eddie's email address at TVTropes.org is pretty obvious.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Matrix Dragon]

Man, it's never fun seeing a website you loved turn into something you can't help but despise and pity.

[Logan Darklighter]

Ok - what with the original TV Tropes descending into an Orwellian Pit and all - you guys and gals keep talking about the best thing to do is make an alternative to TV Tropes. 

Fine. Then we need to get the ball started.

So - I'm not much of one to get committed to an organization. But I'll be happy to help you guys bounce some ideas around. 

First things first. You sorta kinda know the structure that such a site will require - you already have a template, broadly speaking. 

What you need is a NAME for the place that will be recognizable for what it is without being litigation-bait. 

Off the top of my head: 

Troper-Ville
Tropes-R-Us
Trope-a-thon
The Man with the Golden Trope
Seven Brides for Seven Tropes

Tropers Island
A Trope Too Far
Bridge over the River Trope
The Hitchhikers Guide to Tropes
A Trope is Born
The Emperor's New Trope
If you Build it, they will Trope
I'll buy that for a Trope!
Drunkard's Tropes
It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Trope!
Stop Me Before I Trope Again!

The Trope Strikes Back

I could keep going, but I'll stop before anyone's eyeballs begin to bleed from the pun-ishment. ^_^

[Dartz]

I wonder what the folks over at MiniTrope make of some this?
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Kurisu]

How about just 'Tropes'?
_____
DEATH is Certain. The hour, Uncertain...

[Logan Darklighter]

How about just 'Tropes'?

Seriously - how long has it been (on the original TV Tropes) since the site was solely about TV?
Tropes would do just fine. Simple and universal.
-Logan
--------------------
Captain Jack Sparrow: "I like it!
Simple! Easy to remember!"
--------------------

[bmull]

Tropes.com redirects to tropes.org and has nothing there.  Tropes.info is currently available if someone want's to grab it.

[Morganite]

Actually, I'm pretty sure the first thing you need is somewhere to put the thing and someone to run it.

Then, if people actually start using the place, you need some way to pay for it.

These strike me as non-trivial issues.

Edit: As for that email... Eh. I'm pretty sure I know who that is at tvtropes. And while I kind of agree with him on a number of things, I also don't think I'd call that a fair account of things. I don't particularly believe this person was actually trolling, but there was definitely an abrasive feel to that particular post, and I really got a feeling of someone in wants-to-be-offended mode. I know the P5 members don't seem like quite such demonic figures when I'm talking to them. Which is not to say that there aren't some... shall we say, overzealous people around. Who are getting told to stop doing that regularly enough.

As for this bias... citation needed, as they say. I can't find anything in the lists that seems to match those parameters, but I'm also not familiar with everything on them. I know the most recent actions on anime that I've noticed were stuff being kept or brought back. And most of the visual novels seem to be sticking around too. (Seems to be a fair amount of manga getting cut, but there's only one title I've spotted that really feels like a "just because".)

I also gotta say that I'm really not comfortable with the idea of authors just casually suppressing people who are talking about their work.

-Morgan.

[Labster]

I didn't want to keep bumping the thread, but since the topic won't go away...

And after reading that link, may I say "Congratulations"?  All I ever did along those lines in college was post announcements for the Campus Crusade for Cthulhu in the Daily Princetonian...

I'd like to note that we Orwellians were not affiliated with the Campus Crusade for Chaos and Confusion.  Nope, no connection whatsoever.

If I had the time or the inclination I'd go on the inside as a poison little pill, but I don't know how I'd make a change working just on the inside of Fast Eddie's 'Lawful Evil'.

Meh, chaotic neutral is more fun, because you can just do what you feel like doing.  I'm still surprised I can get away with edits like this one.  The fact that it's remained unchallenged makes me wonder about the new world order over there.
I've been doing less and less over there, and been more productive at writing as a result.  But I still have some things to learn about plots and settings from the site, so I'm not ready to abandon it completely.

Page deletions are getting ridiculous, you can get called a troll for protesting the littlest things (and you have no idea how much you have to kiss up to the moderators to get away with even a little protest), there is an Orwellian order out now that if trope page goes down, it (and any references) did not exist, they never existed.
Also, most of the P5 is filled with gleeful deletionists who practicality brag about their newfound power to strike down stuff they don't like, and they have an insane bias of favoring Western works over Japanese works, with some pretty tasteless, tawdry Western works getting immediate safe harbor while banning pages on anime licensed in the US they feel is pedo pandering left and right.

Wait, you're allowed to protest?  I didn't know.  Virtually all of the threads in the P5 forum say "P5 Only", which I can only assume means I'll get a ban if I post in there.  No, really -- what other consquences would there be?
There's really a strong case of what tropers would call ValuesDissonance between Japanese and Western works.  It turns out that teenagers have sex with each other.  It's not pedophilia, it's a representation of real life.  Still, I'm wondering how long until the Evangelion page gets deleted for that one scene with Shinji and Asuka.

Fork the wiki

Actually, running the software is not a challenge, since it's GPL code, although quite a few of the modifications would have to be rewritten from scratch if Fast Eddie doesn't release the source code.  The current pages can be copied over, as they're CC-SA licensed.  And I believe that I could interest a certain nonprofit organization into actually hosting the wiki.  These are actually the easy steps.
The hard part would be getting enough of the community to jump ship and support the new project.  It's a large community with a large set of material to maintain.  Unless there is some way to convince editors to join another project -- and someone willing to spearhead the project -- there's not much point in even attempting a fork of the wiki.

"True greatness is measured by how much freedom you give to others, not by how much you can coerce others to do what you want."

I came across this quote on Patrick Michaud's site while researching his Pmwiki, the backbone of the TV Tropes software.  It seemed eerily related to the topic at hand.

I also gotta say that I'm really not comfortable with the idea of authors just casually suppressing people who are talking about their work.

I basically have to agree.  Bob's little delete spree was probably A Bad Thing.  I know, because I've done similar things myself, and it's never ended well for me.  And if every author got to control where and how their work was talked about, well, there wouldn't be any bad reviews or fanfiction.  If that had happened on my wiki, I would have locked him out for a couple of days, and tried to talk to him in email about what went wrong.  (This obviously did not happen here.)
I'm unsure of how to proceed with regards to the Drunkard's Walk page on TV Tropes.  As a wiki editor, my natural inclination is to want to update it about the new chapter.  Because, even if it's a website that has a lot going wrong with it, it can still attract new readers. So now that a month has gone by, I want to ask Bob what to do with the page.  Should I have it unlocked to update it?  Or leave it as a silent memorial to a lost age?
On the other hand, if you really want the page deleted, all you have to do is make Bubblegum Pink: Raging Fires a canon part of DW2 for a week or so.
-- ∇×V

[Morganite]

I didn't want to keep bumping the thread, but since the topic won't go away...

I don't think we've got any rules about talking about things anyway. '.'

Wait, you're allowed to protest?  I didn't know.  Virtually all of the threads in the P5 forum say "P5 Only", which I can only assume means I'll get a ban if I post in there.  No, really -- what other consquences would there be?

I don't think it gets a ban unless someone does it repeatedly. It's definitely not a one-strike-you're out thing.

Mind you, you can't judge the process just by looking at the current thread list. A lot of threads seem to go through a "feedback request" phase, and then after a varying amount of time go into the "P5 only" phase, and that's usually where they are once a decision is made and they get locked. But it seems like most of the action is happening in the "About Content Violations Discussions" thread. Protests there seem to be at least looked at as long as you're not a jerk about it. I'm pretty sure you'd be fine bringing something up about a P5 only thread in there too, although I haven't tried it myself due to not being familiar with any of the items that I've seen with running threads. (Although given the reason why the Baldr Sky thread is currently locked, I'd be really careful if you've got anything to say about that one.)

There's really a strong case of what tropers would call ValuesDissonance between Japanese and Western works.  It turns out that teenagers have sex with each other.  It's not pedophilia, it's a representation of real life.

Well, that sort of ties into part of what's making things complicated - they tried to start doing this process before they defined exactly what the rules for things were going to be. So things got messy. What seems to be the current standard doesn't look like it should condemn teenagers having sex in most cases. Most of the issues seem to be around works where (at least to some viewers) characters look like preteens, whether they're actually supposed to be or not. (I think I can safely say that if anyone reported Evangelion, it'd be declared okay without even going through the voting process.)

(The reference removing thing is an example of this too, actually. Some people got overzealous and started stripping things out, but there's no official policy on it yet. (I think I may even have seen a panel member saying it was a bad idea somewhere, although I can't find the post now.)

The hard part would be getting enough of the community to jump ship and support the new project.  It's a large community with a large set of material to maintain.  Unless there is some way to convince editors to join another project -- and someone willing to spearhead the project -- there's not much point in even attempting a fork of the wiki.

Yeah, this is really the big thing. A wiki is it's people.

I don't want anyone to get me wrong about the whole situation. I think this whole deal is barking up the wrong forest. And I think it's a good idea to try and preserve material that does get cut. But until and unless there is a fork that seems like it's going to actually go somewhere, I'm going to focus on trying to save whatever I can.

On the other hand, if you really want the page deleted, all you have to do is make Bubblegum Pink: Raging Fires a canon part of DW2 for a week or so.

Heh. I don't think that would actually work though. It'd still have way too much not-sex to qualify.

-Morgan.

[Bob Schroeck]

So now that a month has gone by, I want to ask Bob what to do with the page. Should I have it unlocked to update it? Or leave it as a silent memorial to a lost age?

That's up to you. Any declaration by me of what should or should not be done would be editing at one remove, effectively, and that would undermine the purpose of my departure from the wiki. I personally would like to see it to be left untouched to become outdated and obsolete, but I'm not going to declare from on high that it must be so, nor am I going to get annoyed at anyone who goes ahead and updates it.

If you choose to not update it and feel funny about it, you could always update a private copy for yourself -- you'll find that strangely satisfying in an odd way if my own experiences are any indication.
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Labster]

It's not up to me any more.  I just got banned from edit TV Tropes with no notice as to why they were doing so.  And as far as I can tell, I hadn't violated any policies or anything like that.  Last time I checked, adding a trope to a page once wasn't a cause for a ban, but apparently it is now.
-- ∇×V

[Matrix Dragon]

Ouch. Sorry to hear that Vort.

[Jorlem]

Maybe someone from there is watching this thread?
-----
Stand between the Silver Crystal and the Golden Sea.
"Youngsters these days just have no appreciation for the magnificence of the legendary cucumber."  --Krityan Elder, Tales of Vesperia.

[Labster]

Update: Oh, I see.  It was for not amusing the mods.
On another wiki I frequent, there's a guy calling the mods and admins "bullies" while he repeatedly deletes pages about his business, and they're actually talking to him on the phone right now to try to calm him down.  What a difference in style.
Oh well, looks like more fanfic writing time for me.
Edit: Someone from TVT is definitely watching this thread.
-- ∇×V

[dark seraph]

Um.... is that good or bad?

[Bob Schroeck]

Edit: Someone from TVT is definitely watching this thread.

Have they nothing better to do?  Or do they imagine I or we am/are such a major threat to them that they need to maintain constant surveillance? 
And... how do you know?  Nothing in that thread seems to suggest so.
  If you're right, I suppose my concerns above were valid, after all.  And just after I'd convinced myself I was only being paranoid, too. 
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Labster]

Meh, chaotic neutral is more fun, because you can just do what you feel like doing.  I'm still surprised I can get away with edits like this one.  The fact that it's remained unchallenged makes me wonder about the new world order over there.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/article_hist ... i.TVTropes[/url]3rd Jun '12 9:30:09 PM system

moderator restored to earlier version

Somehow, the edit that had lasted a week disappears a day after I post about it here -- and it's removed by a moderator?  It's highly probable that someone who's of at least moderator-level is watching.  It's not definitive proof, but it's more than sufficient to meet my level of paranoia.
-- ∇×V

[Dartz]

I'm almost certain they aren't. If they were, anybody posting here would get shitcanned too. I checked, and I haven't. (Which also means I managed to guess my password.)
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?