Hope we'll be able to get up and running soon. Fast Eddie seems to be going even more off the rails now.
-Morgan.
-Morgan.
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Yeah, I've heard things are getting pretty bad over there. Keep Abreast Of This Index and Nothing Butt An Index were cut (or so I hear), because, apparently, body part fetishization doesn't occur in media? *Sigh*
I don't have much to report on the technical side yet. In the meantime, I think I'll post this exchange I had over email, because it's illustrative of the way I'd hope to run the wiki. The essential message here is not to just make stuff up as we go along. Stick with a few flexible rules, and expect that moderators follow the rules. Quote:Recently, Fighteer wouldn't allow a page on "The Pirate Bay" to be made on TV Tropes, since it was "an illegal website". Will ATT allow a page on it?First of all "The Pirate Bay" sounds like a great trope name. It's probably one we already have, like Wretched Hive or something. But back on topic, I don't see why he's making up new rules when the old ones will suffice. Is TPB a work, creator, or tool of the trade for creative works? Nope. So it's off-topic. You'd have to convince me otherwise. An argument in favor might go along the lines of: Well, we cover other distributors of content, like the TV Networks. And while this is true, the network's positions as patrons of the work give it no minor influence in the outcome of the plot. You could argue that tropes like Screwed By the Network mean that networks are in fact partially creators of the story. Plus, I have no ideas what tropes would be listed for TPB anyway. So the verdict is, a priori: No. I need to be convinced that it's on-topic. Quote:Also, would we be able to make trope pages for software? Same reasoning here: Not a work, creator, or tool of the trade. And when we say "creative works", we really mean "in entertainment". Software is indeed a creative work but... wrong wiki. If you want to talk about patterns in (non-entertainment) software design, visit The Portland Pattern Repository: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki LibreOffice might have sort of an exemption here -- it's hard to argue that a word processor is not a tool of the trade for writers. But since it doesn't seem tropable, writing software seems like it probably belongs in Useful Notes or So You Want To. Quote:What about pages on Encyclopedia Dramatica or Something Awful? ED is a creative work, and is therefore allowed. It may also be, in practice, a troll reservation -- a page where trolls roam free and wild. Sadly, not all of our pages will end up being good, but we'll do what we can. Similarly, SA is a content creator and host of creative works, like the Let's Play stuff. -- ∇×V  vorticity Wrote:Yeah, I've heard things are getting pretty bad over there.Sounds like an imperfect solution (that can be improved) might be needed sooner, rather than later. And "perfect is the enemy of good," or in this case "perfect is the enemy of good enough" (since it can be improved after being deployed). Is there any technical show-stopper left, or are all the remaining coding projects "nice to have" rather than "need to have"? Phrased differently, if you absolutely had to post what you have right now, will it run, deliver pages on demand, and allow updates of even a minimal nature? -- 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
If nothing else, it would be a good idea to figure out what to do with the Trivia namespace before launching, since that could be a massive shuffle, and would be -extremely- not fun to do post-launch.
(My current thinking is that there are some things in there that actually fit the idea of Trivia, and should stay there, and there are some things that really aren't, but also don't quite fit the "Trope" label. But I'm not sure what to call them, except it might have the word "Production" in it.) -Morgan.
I'm still not sure exactly what to do with the Trivia namespace, either. If you want to do something simple like renaming it to "Production", "Production Notes", or "The Making Of", that's an easy fix.
But I get the feeling that what it really needs is a larger reorganization, and that's not going to be fun pre- or post-launch. Looking at the list of Trivia items, we have some truly are about the production of the work, like "Not Screened for Critics" and "Incestuous Casting". Some are audience reactions like "Hey It's That Guy" and "I Knew It" -- though they aren't exactly the YMMV reaction types, where it's gushing/cursing. Some are about the format of the work itself, like "Anime First". And then we have trivia examples about the writing process, like "Write What You Know". And then we have "Bloopers", which are often released as part of the work (Home Improvement and Psych come to mind). Can someone tell me what all of these things have in common? Is there an order here that I'm missing? Because right now, it seems to me that the whole point of Trivia is "pages for things that someone (TRS) thinks aren't important enough to be tropes." And until I can figure out what Trivia is actually for, I ain't got no clue on how to go a-fixin' it. -- ∇×V
What's weird is that the tropes were fine (unless something else has happened without being thought worth mentioning), but the indices were cut. An index is an organizational tool!
I think I said before that I thought Trivia should be split. And while it might be no fun whenever you do it, it'd probably be less jarring to incoming users to have a major reorganization done before the launch. The most basic division I can think of would be... well, best way I can think to put it as "within the work" and "not within the work". Something like Dueling Movies I'd say is okay in Trivia, since it's not really about the work itself - just how it happens to relate to other stuff. All the Method Acting variants are definitely related to the individual work. (I kind of like Production Notes as a name for that stuff, although a few items might kind of stretch it.) And there's a few I think are just plain tropes. I've been thinking of just taking a list and trying to sort it into how I think things should be categorized and seeing what people think of it. Maybe I'll get to that sometime next week. -Morgan.
Do you need the indices in place before you can upload the content?
-- 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
If it were indices it wouldn't be a big deal. Moving things between namespaces is a more involved process.
-Morgan.
Thanks for taking it on, Morganni. It will be a lot of help. And don't be afraid to propose radical solutions either, like reintegrating a swath of the tropes back into the main page -- we're not TRS here, and no one has a interest in keeping the status quo.
Yeah. Right now, moving between namespaces is as simple as find/replace/change-all in a single text file. But getting indices in early is a good idea too -- they're going to be changed into a tag system automatically. Oh huh... 'YMMV' and 'Trivia' tropes are getting tagged the same way as subpages... *goes to fix* @robkelk: I'll get into more details about the software once I'm fully up to speed on it, but it looks like it's up-and-running now. But we're still messing around with the wiki content, a couple of syntax questions, and the software. While I do understand the whole worse is better philosophy, I think I should be allowed a little bit of second system syndrome to make sure things happen the right way. Because once we leave the development phase, these things are going to take 10 times as long to fix. -- ∇×V
"Behind the Scenes", maybe? I honestly never understood the rhyme or reason for TVT's Trivia category until this discussion happened, so I may not be the best judge.
Any new news?
So far as news, I went ahead and sent off a complete set of data to Evan so he can get a site set up. We never really decided what to do with Trivia, above, so it's going in intact and unrenamed for now. A reimport is possible, if we come up with good ideas in the next couple of weeks.
As far as I know, he's essentially clear for the rest of the year to work on wiki stuff for several sites. We should have a code repository and a testing wiki up soon. I'm more than eager to see the code, so I can actually contribute. At least one site is using the code, but he needs to make sure all of the proprietary code is out before we see a release -- splitting off stuff like advertising widgets that we won't want anyway. Since he had been dealing with lawyers to sell part of his business, along with a lot of other life events that put themselves on top of his todo stack, it's been slow going. But like I said, it looks clear from now. I suppose I could get started in writing some of the wiki norms-type pages, but I really feel like I should have a wiki so we can do that collaboratively. Sorry about the six month wait and all. I never imagined that I would actually finish my fanfic before the wiki started. -- ∇×V 
That's good news to hear, Brent. Can't wait to see how it all comes out.
-- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak.
From my chat logs today:
Evan ''JabberWokky'' Edwards: Oh, by the way: I'm working through a few last errors in the installer. You had a wiki a couple times today. Brent Laabs: Lol okay. Evan ''JabberWokky'' Edwards: I should have a stable one by tomorrow. Note that doesn't mean a fully functioning wiki with all the content, but it does mean we're a lot closer to it. -- ∇×V
Sorry about not getting back to the trivia stuff. Been looking at it, but haven't had a good time to just go through the list methodically.
I *think* most of it is fine either staying in Trivia, or moving to either Main (with a "Production Notes" index) or a Production Notes namespace. With maybe a few things that seem like they fit better (based on how other stuff is handled) in YMMV. As for whether Production Notes should have it's own namespace or not... hell if I know. What is and isn't it's own namespace seems kinda weird sometimes. -Morgan.
I haven't exactly been busy on the project either, Morganni, so all is forgiven.
I'm starting to wonder if changing Trivia to Production Notes automatically is a good idea. If there's a lot of division on the Trivia subpages, I'm not sure I'd want to write a program to try and sift through bullet points. But as to making it in the first place, again, I don't know. A lot of the content of Trivia seems to be driven by TRS decisions, which are decided on a case-by-case basis rather than holistically. Some ideas aren't tropes, because they're not about the writing itself. Some are just lightweight YMMV tropes that people didn't want to get a red dot on the main page. So it becomes a catchall grab-bag of whatever people want to put in there. What is its own namespace is dependent on how much people complain, I suppose. So I'll complain a bit. If you can come up with a more elegant design, Morganni, I'd be all for it. I'm not entirely sure there is a better plan than the status quo, though. I think in the future, what were namespaces may end up getting loaded as tabs on the main page, so there's a little easier to access the other content. Either that, or folders might turn into tabs. I think there's a lot we can do on improving the interface, so feel free to make suggestions. ---- Oh, and one more thing. And I almost hesitate to bring this up, because I think it might get people mad at me, but there's the whole "No Natter" policy on TVT. They went pretty far over into that policy, with all of their natterfications and such. But... I have a hard time with no tolerance policies in general, and this one is no different. Some but certainly not all of the comments in the text were funny and entertaining. And it gave the site a certain amount of informality -- a sense that there were real people writing the site in a big community. Now, obviously, if the comments aren't entertaining or informative, wiki editors should feel perfectly fine cutting them or refactoring the text into something usable. So, is it possible to replace the "no natter" policy with something more subjective like: "All edits to the wiki should be either informative or entertaining. If you want to comment on a trope's use in a work, go ahead, so long as you can keep it short, entertaining, and on-topic. And on the other hand, if you see something that some other troper wrote that isn't informative, entertaining, or on-topic, you should feel free to improve the page by rewriting or deleting that bit of text. After all, a good story editor knows when to cut or change stuff that just isn't working, and a good wiki editor should do the same." Would that work, or am I too naïve to think we could use something so subjective on a large userbase (I hope), fanboy-fueled site? -- ∇×V
As long as you don't set a policy in stone, you can change it later...
-- 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 
Including "Entertaining" as an additional "or" criteria for acceptable comments will likely be problematic. Random Wiki Editors will have quite a variety of humor and senses thereof, and you will probably get yourself edit wars over people add/removing what they think is (or isn't) a funny-but-natter comment. You may wish to specify that comments should always be on-topic and generally informative; entertaining is a bonus and not a qualification.
--- The Master said: "It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who can perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself." >Analects: Book V, Chaper XXVI
Mm. The antinatter fanatics were my first early warning that the site was mutating into something I wouldn't like. I don't like encouraging the pseudoacademics who think everything should be like Wikipedia, and I remember that one of first and best recommendations for TVT (from Bruce Sterling, IIRC) was based in part on its "wry fanfic-style commentary". I want to see "wry" and even "snarky" come back to the new wiki, because I think that irreverent attitude is what made TVT special. Losing that, well, it didn't kill the wiki, but it certainly pushed it firmly in the direction of the ICU.
I would rather have humor and have to debate over cutting the unfunny, than make the default state of the wiki unfunny to begin with. -- Bob --------- Then the horns kicked in... ...and my shoes began to squeak. Ankhani Wrote:Including "Entertaining" as an additional "or" criteria for acceptable comments will likely be problematic.Oh, I'm certain it will be problematic. Policy, like programming, is a game of choosing which problems you want to have. In this case, it's a question of whether it's a bigger problem if people feel like they can't express themselves on the wiki, or if they express themselves too much in stupid ways. robkelk Wrote:As long as you don't set a policy in stone, you can change it later...I'd say it's safe to assume that very little will be set in stone. However, it is important that we get things right early on, because we're going to have a major competitor. I think that there's some advantage to be had by modeling the new site on the earlier, community-oriented wikis like Ward's Wiki, and letting TVT develop towards the Wikipedia-style information-and-bureaucracy model. But I don't want that to be imposed from the top, so I have to ask what would be a bridge too far. -- ∇×V
Okay, I've been spending some time just going through Trivia pages one at a time.
This could take a while. (Especially since I keep catching myself starting to wiki walk...) But there's a few things I'd like to mention, and possibly get some input on. -At some point I seem to have ended up under the impression that "Trivia" was it's own namespace. This is wrong. And that's okay. -I'm also starting to feel like most of the Trivia entries really do fit there. So there's probably not a huge need for wholesale changes to things. -There are things that really look like they belong in Audience Reaction (and thus under YMMV). Why is "Acclaimed Flop" Triva and "Cult Classic" not? -And what about creator's reactions to things? There's the "Creator Standpoint Index". (Although I'm not sure why "Creator-Preferred Adaptation" isn't in it.) It doesn't feel like the handling of this is quite right, but I'm not sure what would be. It's not a trope, it doesn't fit the way YMMV works, but Trivia doesn't seem quite right either. It's probably not a big deal if it continues to live there though. -It seems like a lot of the potential "Production Notes" stuff is coming out of "Real Life Writes the Plot". (For instance, this contains the various "Method Acting" entries, a big part of what got me onto this to start with.) And there's some real weird comparisons to make here. Take two items that involve the status of a character changing due to the status of the actor changing. But "Character Aged with the Actor" goes on the main page, while "The Character Died with Him" goes in Trivia. That doesn't seem quite on. And there's some examples there that seem like they should go the other way - how is "Christmas Rushed" a trope again? -Morgan.
I think you must have picked up the namespace thing from me. I've tended to use the technical definition, relating to PmWiki's use of it: anything before the slash is a namespace, like "Main". I will be broken of that habit on the new wiki, I hope. In this case, there are Trivia subpages for a bunch of articles, which house examples of Trivia Tropes (I'm sure you know this, but I'm saying it for clarity).
When you say that the Trivia tropes "really do fit there", what exactly do you mean? I'd like to be able to have something clear that we can tell people when they ask what kind of trope something is, rather than just to say, "Well, Trivia is all the things that aren't other kind of tropes." Because that's not really helpful at all, and especially so to newcomers. Main/Trope Wrote:"Trope" has the even more general meaning of a pattern in storytelling,Despite the fact that this seems to be contradicted by Administrivia/Not A Trope, I'm starting to wonder if this list is the summary for each type of trope and which work subpages we should use:
-- ∇×V vorticity Wrote:Despite the fact that this seems to be contradicted by Administrivia/Not A Trope, I'm starting to wonder if this list is the summary for each type of trope and which work subpages we should use:There's the business side of the entertainment industry (marketing and promotion, for example)... but does this project care about that? vorticity Wrote:Why the heck am I, a Discordian, trying to order everything?...Because, as a Discordian, nobody can tell you not to... 8-)[/list] -- 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 vorticity Wrote:In this case, there are Trivia subpages for a bunch of articles, which house examples of Trivia Tropes (I'm sure you know this, but I'm saying it for clarity). In retrospect I think this might be what confused me. Trivia (and YMMV) pages for works are in those namespaces, but the entries for Trivia and YMMV items are in Main. Which is really kind of freaking weird. I'm starting to think changing that would be in 'cure is worse than the disease' territory though. Quote:When you say that the Trivia tropes "really do fit there", what exactly do you mean? I'd like to be able to have something clear that we can tell people when they ask what kind of trope something is, rather than just to say, "Well, Trivia is all the things that aren't other kind of tropes." Because that's not really helpful at all, and especially so to newcomers. Well, I'm not sure it's the best way to state it, but my basic idea for what should live on the main work page is "Things that are visible in the work itself". Not everything that doesn't fit that criteria is Trivia, but I'm finding most of what they've got there seems to fit fairly well. Of course, I'm only on the Ds, so there's a lot of ground to cover yet. Still, there's more that feels like it works where it is than I thought there would be when I was skipping around. I'm not sure whether Production Notes should be a subpage or on the main page. I'm leaning towards "main page", but that's in large part because of concerns about both the proliferation of subpages on popular works, and the way it often looks like subpages exist when they are actually blank. (I'm sure I've asked if you've done something about the latter, but I can't remember if you said anything. Sorry!) If that last part was dealt with, I'd be a lot more supportive of subpaging them. Quote:Christmas Rushed is a trope because rushing the product affects the quality of its content, usually negatively. It affects the 'telling' part of storytelling, so it's a trope, though the examples on the page are ... meh. Huh. Still seems kind of borderline to me, but okay. Quote:Acclaimed Flop and Cult Classic both seem like audience reactions, though they're both reasonably easy to provide concrete evidence for. My guess is that at some point TRS voted to keep Cult Classic off of YMMV, but I can't tell for sure -- I'm still banned from reading the TVT forums. But they are essentially the same idea (subset of people really like the film that doesn't do as well with the general audience), and thus belong in the same place. Probably YMMV. Hadn't someone figured out that you could get read access again by deleting the login cookie from your browser? I'm not seeing evidence as really being part of whether it's an audience reaction or not. I mean yeah, you can prove the audience reacted, but it's still the audience reacting and all. I'm for putting them both in YMMV too. Quote:Character/Actor relationship: Belong together, and I'd guess in production. Though you could make an argument for storytelling. But there's no reason for them to be separate. When I think about it, there's kind of a chicken/egg question with some of them. Take the one about disabled characters being played by disabled actors. I'm pretty sure I've seen examples of the character being disabled because they wanted to do something with a particular actor, and I've seen examples where they started with the character. And on one level, I feel like the first belongs in "Trope" and the second "Production Notes", but there's not enough difference between the two cases to be separate things, and so it can only go in one. I think I'm leaning more towards the whole lot belonging in PN. Quote:Why the heck am I, a Discordian, trying to order everything?... I can't help you with that one. (I can, however, ask if that's why there's all those weird font tags that do nothing in that line, or if it's just Yuku being weird. My money's on Yuku being weird though.) I'm coming at this as a Preservationist, and to me a key part of that is maintaining the ability to find and use things. robkelk Wrote:There's the business side of the entertainment industry (marketing and promotion, for example)... but does this project care about that? There's stuff that comes up on the wiki about it, but I'm not sure there's any major issues with the current handling. On a side note, it's kind of petty, but I still feel this strange desire to have one of the first things I do when we've got a wiki be making a page for "Hiiragi Shougakkou Renai Club"... -Morgan. Yuku, yuku, why must writing replies with quotes be such a chore?
Okay, it's been a while, but I can finally necro with some news. Evan's father passed away right after New Years', so I hadn't had any contact with him since, well, late December. I knew what was going on due to his Google+ post, but I decided to give him some space. Things can be very hectic when a loved one dies, so asking for attention to a volunteer project is not very helpful.
Anyway, he finally called me today, and says that the software is essentially done. Except for the inevitable bugs on certain versions of IE, natch. So that's good news. @Morganni: Yeah, that was Yuku wierdness applied to my trying to make the font small. It looked fine in preview. As for the discussion above, it seems like we're not going to move Trivia en masse, so we might as well wait until we have an actual wiki to continue. Which means your research was useful: it told me what not to do. -- ∇×V |
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