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The TVTropes Thread
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Comments
^Every time anything happens on TV Tropes, this site completely turns to shit for a couple of days. It's been slightly better recently, though.
It's more that if certain members come here from TVTropes (like, say, after a ban), TVTropes immediately becomes the hot topic for a few days, and it's really annoying. Not to mention that, frankly, you haven't been here for much.
I think the "one TVTropes thread" idea might work, though.
^ He put it more harshly than I did (I held back a bit), but it's true.
Well, again, this is why I say there should just be one TvTropes thread. It sounds like that would solve your problems better than any of the other solutions I've seen proposed. It's hard to moderate a whole site for this shit; not so much one thread.
I've been here for a very long time, actually. I simply didn't register until a few months ago, and didn't start regularly posting until just a week or two ago. Granted, I didn't pay a terribly large amount of attention when I lurked, but I was here and there.
Yeah, that's probably a good idea. Should we make that this thread?
Not true, a lot of drama has went on there this year (and December last year) without us being affected. Though your point still stands (or, considering those episodes didn't get talked about here besides a page or two in IJBMer Updates, your point is reinforced).
I still want to screen for DravIchiGeNu's, of course, but the thread idea seems great.
Sure, if you rename it, I suppose.
Because you were too busy being reactionary for the sake of catharsis...?
I think people've thought of this before, but was never applied.
^ Really? I feel like I would have hopped onto that idea. Depends in how long ago it happened.
I do. Mostly because the forums can be fun if you're good at passive-aggressiveness.
Still, I think you're way too focused on blaming TvTropes for everything. TvTropes is annoying and at times awful, but it's not omnipresent and it's not worth the amount of hate you seem to have for it.
It's a simple, observable truth that we've had to deal with TVT drama by proxy, multiple times. Most recently, a banned TVT user started a bunch of drama by bringing here what got him banned on TVT. Pretty much every time something disruptive happens, it's by proxy of TVT. Usually via banned TVT members who think their behaviour will fly here.
So then your problem is a bad user. TvTropes can be blamed in a very indirect sense, in that this bad user got here from our inherent connection to TvTropes, but considering that you said yourself that these bad users are usually banned from TvTropes, it's not as if TvTropes is endorsing their behavior while we don't. They're bad users, and they'd be bad users even if they got here from outside TvTropes.
In the case of our most recent dramatic upsurge, TVT provided an enabling environment for the bad user in question. There's also the fact that people have a perception of this place as a sort of TVT "afterparty", where behaviour not normally allowed is acceptable.
Besides, it's just an observable pattern -- heavy discussion of TVT leads us nowhere and often just ends up stirring the shit basin. I disagree without outright banning discussion of it, but at the same time there needs to be a limit so we don't encourage focus on the place (as was liable to happen in the past). This isn't about hating on TVT -- hell, if anything, it's about neutrality. Most often, drama revolves around TVT being bashed and that goes nowhere.
Obviously, discussing about the site will occur naturally in some contexts, but we don't want to encourage "political" discussion of TVT because of reasons already explained. There's nothing to be said that hasn't been said, and it's high time for this community to move on.
We had something like that on HH; it ended up being much more trouble than it was worth and the only consistent source of drama on the site, so eventually we just got rid of it and instated a general rule against TVT drama talk. I think the thing is that having a TVT thread encourages otherwise level-headed people to go there and complain about TVT.
@Madass,
This is true, and regardless of where they come from bad users should be gotten rid of. However, what concerns me is not whether or not we allow discussion of TvTropes here (I don't much care), but rather what the policy for actually letting people in is. If we went with the totalitarian nonsense being proposed half-jokingly before I myself wouldn't have been able to join, and I don't personally think I've been a bad user in any real way. I think bad users should be punished, not a whole group of potential users just because of where they come from.
By having just one thread on the matter, we can contain and perhaps even direct the flow of TvT conversation, and thus curtail drama and also help TvTropes-originating users branch out, rather than having them just creating strings of TvTropes-related threads. To me, this is the best overall solution, because to me, the problem was never users from TvTropes, but rather the moderation strategy being used to deal with it.
That's definitely a concern.
And...that's not going to happen. Why are we still talking about this?
Because Everest has brought it up repeatedly and I have no reason to think it wouldn't have been done if some other option hadn't been found, in the long-run of things...?
Because Glenn and I at least posted saying that auto-rejecting TV Tropes users was a bad idea, and I doubt we'd go through with something as big as that without a modteam consensus?
Wouldn't it be better to funnel people to Beyond the Lampshade?
Fair enough, though I'm not so much convinced as I don't really feel like arguing the issue with you.
It's interesting: when there were flare-ups of TVT-related drama, it worked very well at keeping it contained. But when things were quiet, it seemed to just encourage pointless arguing. It's like the presence of a TVT-specific thread kept people thinking about TVT stuff when otherwise they wouldn't have cared.
That said, we also found that the other extreme, i.e., prohibiting all mentions of TVT, was more trouble than it was worth as well. You don't really notice until you're specifically policing it, but you get a lot of people making casual references to TVT (to compare the site layout or to ask what someone's username there was) that wouldn't have led to drama anyway.
(Not to mention the people who think saying "the site that must not be named" doesn't count as talking about TVT. -_-)
inorite
you'd think he'd at least put some effort into it
GMH would not have gone for that, full stop.
It was pretty obvious Everest wasn't being overly serious about it.
Several other mods disagreed pretty quickly.
There were a lot of points against it that became pretty obvious as soon as you actually thought about it.
And last, but probably not least; the mods here aren't dumb enough to try and institute something like that anyway.
Incomplete, lopsided analysis is still analysis. :P
Anyway, it's kinda ironic that... ...yet they actually do it themselves, to some extent. Just not in any formal or even very much organized manner.
It's not analysis in any formal sense that gives a well-organized perspective on the greater meaning of a work, but it is analysis in the sense of being people's wrestling with that question to various extents.
Yep, just because I say that a feature is possible doesn't mean that I support its implementation.
There actually aren't that many threads about TVT, you're right. BUT, every thread about TVT has a high chance of becoming a drama magnet, and thus a headache for us mods, especially when those threads were created due in part to drama on TVT. Such as this most recent time, when we got this one big-ass thread that got fucktons of drama and a ban to top it all off.
You're right, that we don't get threads about every bit of drama (thank goodness for the rule here and there against drama import/export), but when we do they're liable to becoming drama magnets.
I really wouldn't like to make a blanket rule against discussing TVT here, as I really enjoy the free speech atmosphere here and such a rule would go against the spirit of this site as a place to talk about (almost) anything and everything.
The issue, I think, is how to make sure whatever conversation we're having about TVT issues remains intelligent and level-headed.
Yeah, isn't BTL basically the place to talk about TVT policy and userbase issues anyway?
Interesting observation. That at least tells us that this thread here shouldn't be on the useful threads list.
Should have said commentary. Analysis barely fits what I've actually seen there.
It is analysis, but not critical analysis. The term "analysis" doesn't mean much; it would apply to a site that kept statistics on what book cover colors are most common.
Well, keeping stats on book cover colors is just keeping stats, but when you start asking what those cover color trends mean then it starts being analysis.
Yes, but we don't mean just any type of analysis. I mean, otherwise, we wouldn't really be having this debate at all. We're referring specifically to critical analysis, albeit using analysis as a shorthand/abbreviation for it.
^^Okay, so a site that kept stats on what colors are common for what genres, then. My point is that just saying something is analysis doesn't mean much.
Fair enough. What counts as critical analysis?
Analyzing why the work does what it does, and what it's trying to convey by doing so.
That might not be the best definition >.>