TvTropes going all PC

[Rageaholic]

What the hell happened to you TvTropes? You used to be so cool, didn't take yourself seriously, and generally let users have fun with their submissions (while still having some guidelines). But now that they're trying to be all "objective", they've become so much stricter and uptight. The list of "no real life examples" tropes are growing and so are the number of pothole edits. Anything that's remotely controversial is now edited in a flash.

[HYHYBT]

Well... for some of them, "real life examples" serves as a way for people to make political digs. That sort of thing devolves very quickly left uncontrolled; it gets nasty and drowns out the sort of content a page (other than one specifically for that purpose) is about.

If you want to blame anyone for limiting that, blame those who abuse freedom to the point of ruining it for everybody.

[SongsOfDragons]

I blame the egotistical dickwad who runs the site. Fast Eddie I think his name is.

I've stopped referring to the site for about a year and a half now. Every user I come across is rude and self-centered, and the entries have been pruned, renamed, rearranged and deleted so much it is just no longer useful. I search for a fandom's Wiki now instead of its TV Tropes page.

[s_stabeler]

first, TV tropes cannot be completely unrestricted, because they need to attract advertisers. Some pages were removed due to controversy putting off advertisers.

Second, TV Tropes is mainly about tropes in FICTION- the Real Life sections were never supposed to be that big in the first place.

[Andara Bledin]

Yeah, I'm with S_Stabeler on the Real Life stuff. It's TV Tropes, after all. You could maybe have some "life imitating fiction" bits, but it's best to keep them very minor.

As for keeping the politics out of it: Good. They have no place on a site like TV Tropes in the first place.

[Duelist925]

Not to mention that the real life examples got fucking ridiculous. To the point that theres a wiki being developed purely for them. An entire wiki.

And that doesn't even get into the on page flame-wars that sprouted up.

[dendawg]

Isn't this also part of the reason the Troper Tales section was removed?

[gremcint]

I never understood the fanfiction inclusion personally.

[Duelist925]

Isn't this also part of the reason the Troper Tales section was removed?

Yep. People got squicked at some, and parts of it were just getting ridiculously big.

I never understood the fanfiction inclusion personally.

Why so? Fanfiction is a medium for storytelling, which seems to be the only pre-requisite for something to be included. Comics, cartoons, tv shows, visual novels, movies, podcasts and the like all have their place there--why not fanfic?

[Andara Bledin]

I'm with Duelist. If they include webcomics, there's zero reason to not also include fanfiction.

[Rageaholic]

Okay troper tales probably needed to go (too much squick), but a lot of the other stuff is just moderators overreacting. Deleted every pothole to any controversial trope? Ridiculous. I think it's safe to say that something like the holocaust is "Nightmare Fuel" or that Hitler was a bad guy, but the PC police delete any pothole to those tropes even when it's so obviously justified. Little things like that is what made the page fun and laid back, but now I have to ask "Why so serious?".

[s_stabeler]

Um, actually, the Holocaust isn't Nightmare Fuel as such. Nightmare Fuel is a fictional depiction of an event that scared absolutely everyone. The Holocaust was horrific, but the only people scared were the victims. When I learned about the Holocaust in school, it didn't give me nightmares. It's Moral Event Horizon for the ones who willingly participates, granted. but not Nightmare Fuel.

Second, Nightmare Fuel is almost always YMMV. It belongs on the YMMV page for the work, not as a pothole in the actual page itself. So the PC police are actually correct- there is a page specifically for the tropes that are a matter of opinion. Use that, instead of the main page for the work.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Re: Fanfics

I find that tricky. On the one hand, it's absolutely a medium for storytelling and its one that many actual writers engage in. It's also a medium people consume.

On the other, it's unsanctioned derivative storytelling. I probably wouldn't include it if it were my page (which it isn't) unless you're also including short stories and books released on the web that aren't fanfic. Unless Tropes is including "Mark From College"'s story about a spooky vase that kills people that twenty people have seen, I don't think Fanfics should go there either. What fics tend to do is come with a built in niche audience and allow writers with no fanbase to build one extremely easily if their writing is of sufficient quality. That's something no original writer is going to have unless they're well connected.

It also makes me wonder if someone just started shoehorning pulp fiction and New Yorker short stories would people also get a little bit tweaked about that? To me it's the same thing: perhaps overly obscure stories with an extremely niche audience. You just see more of a TVTropes presence because it's a specifically web based form. Still, it's a site for funsies so does it really matter? Probably not.

[Hyena Dandy]

Unless Tropes is including "Mark From College"'s story about a spooky vase that kills people that twenty people have seen, I don't think Fanfics should go there either.

If that story is in a place that can be accessed, yes, it would be accepted. If he just showed the person making the page, then no. But if he put it up on a public Google Doc, then yes.

It also makes me wonder if someone just started shoehorning pulp fiction and New Yorker short stories would people also get a little bit tweaked about that?

By their standards, they shouldn't. New Yorker stories would go in Literature. The fact that they're not there has nothing to do with them being obscure, just the fact htat people who use TVTropes tend not to read The New Yorker.

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

Oh I know it's about overlap. Hell, the Avenger's TV tropes page fills several pages. Hannah and Her Sisters or even The Empire Strikes Back tend to look like "just some film" by comparison. Genres pretty much work the same way for the same reason: network effect. I probably won't bother fleshing out the "Fools Rush In" page for the same reason. There's not much fun in collaborating with one other person to find every little thing that's going on.

I'd disagree with the last part though. The New Yorker is fairly well known for its fiction and it's hardly of minor circulation. I think it's more that of the people that read and use TV tropes, there's just no particular utility in taking the time to add the short story you read this month. Like most things, you have to get something out of it.