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Author Topic: Tv Tropes Informal Poll  (Read 14093 times)

GTM

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Re: Tv Tropes Informal Poll
« Reply #45 on: June 07, 2011, 10:08:05 pm »

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1) How often do you use/visit TV Tropes? Do you edit it, or simply read it?
Any time a link to it comes up.  Didn't know it could be edited.
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2) How useful and/or interesting do you find the site? Which parts do you find the most useful/interesting
?
The concept is fascinating, that stories are really these common tropes all weaved together with different dressings.  It'd be crazy to break down a whole story into its component tropes, compare, etc kind of like what they're doing with the music genome project. 
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3) What criticisms do you have toward the wiki? What criticisms have you heard from others?
Too much crap that only weird nerds are interested in (no offense to the weird nerds, I count many as my friends).  What I mean is that you have to wade through pages and pages of "in shin obscuru animu, taro-chan's relationship with the giant anthropomorphic chinchilla is an example of X.". It would be nice to have some kind of significance filter.
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FuzzyZergling

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Re: Tv Tropes Informal Poll
« Reply #46 on: June 07, 2011, 10:13:01 pm »

Huh. Personally, the anime sections are my favorite. My least favorite is live-action television.
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G-Flex

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Re: Tv Tropes Informal Poll
« Reply #47 on: June 07, 2011, 11:40:22 pm »

3) People editing pages occasionally need to put a little bit more thought/research into things, but mostly, the editor pool seems to have way too many people obsessed with popular culture (or specific works) in ways that negatively influence their editing judgment, to put it lightly. This is especially true when you see a page that is obviously edited primarily by *fans* - not critics, or impartial patrons of fiction, but *fans* (wrong angle from which to approach literary criticism, that's for sure). Also, people need to stop using tropes as in the post directly before mine here (although I assume that's parodical in that case). It's as if they're trying to hammer the sapir-whorf hypothesis directly into their brains, or invent newspeak. Tropes are useful terms but they don't have to be used eighty-six times per sentence, or treated as gospel.
Actually, I disagree with this. I think TvTropes should be written by fans, and try to stuff as many tropes into a page as possible.

I think you misunderstand where I'm coming from on this.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be written by fans. I'm saying it shouldn't necessarily be written from the perspective of a fan. Even a fan can be at least a little rational and objective, I would hope. Also, you're making an assertion without backing it up here: Why should a page for something be written only by its fans and not its critics? That's not exactly how good articles get written.

Also, regarding use of tropes in sentences, I mean that some editors seem to try to pigeonhole everything in existence into the form of popular tropes from tvtropes, as if they're part of some grand unified cosmology; they aren't. Tropes are tools for explaining things. Using them is great, but there's use and then there's slinging them around as if they apply to everything in the universe as-written without qualification or other description. That kind of speech actually limits good thought and understanding.

So yeah, the problem isn't "lots of links", just the way they tend to be used sometimes, especially in the more fan-oriented sections (like Troper Tales, which we obviously need, because the world isn't complete without anime fans talking about how they "took a level in badass" by freaking out at someone in gym class, while pretending to write in the third person by find-and-replacing "I" with "This troper" in Windows Notepad).

Huh. Personally, the anime sections are my favorite. My least favorite is live-action television.

The lucky thing about sections is that you don't have to look at them all, though. I do happen to think anime (as well as certain authors like Joss Whedon) tend to get a little overrepresented or glorified, as that's the nature of the fanbase, but I generally like the way the sections are set up and auto-hid.
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fivex

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Re: Tv Tropes Informal Poll
« Reply #48 on: June 08, 2011, 12:11:11 am »

1) About, .... once a week or so? usually I come there to look at a work and then end up going through half the wiki.
2)Not much, really.
3) ...
Too much to list, really. But here are some:
The YMMV subpages NEED to go. At the very least, put them back on the main page and use that YMMV symbol, like there was before the YMMV thing was introduced.
Just Bugs Me shouldn't have been renamed to Headscratchers.
Fridge ____ shouldn't have it's own subpage.
Trope Repair Shop. Pages have discussion pages for a reason.
Various renames of pages to more "boring" titles, like the You Fail ___ Forever pages being changed to artistic license pages.
All of that is less than a fraction of my list of complaints.
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Leonon

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Re: Tv Tropes Informal Poll
« Reply #49 on: June 08, 2011, 12:44:29 am »

Fridge ____ shouldn't have it's own subpage.
I was going to disagree with you because some of those lists are huge but then I remembered that the main page could just have those huge lists as a folder.

I'd like to add another part to my 3rd answer
Why has no one running the place decided to just put some of these alternate pages for the work on the main page in folders?
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Darkmere

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Re: Tv Tropes Informal Poll
« Reply #50 on: June 08, 2011, 04:01:07 am »

Sidenote: Anyone who's read much of Troper Tales, especially the parts that have since been closed down (yes, they were that bad) knows exactly what is wrong within the editor community there.

You've piqued my curiosity, can I ask what kind of stuff got axed? PM is fine if you don't think it belongs here.
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And then, they will be weaponized. Like everything in this game, from kittens to babies, everything is a potential device of murder.
So if baseless speculation is all we have, we might as well treat it like fact.

Darvi

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Re: Tv Tropes Informal Poll
« Reply #51 on: June 08, 2011, 04:03:29 am »

I think that stuff got put into videos on youtube. Can't be bothered to look though.
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RF

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Re: Tv Tropes Informal Poll
« Reply #52 on: June 08, 2011, 04:09:36 am »

Sidenote: Anyone who's read much of Troper Tales, especially the parts that have since been closed down (yes, they were that bad) knows exactly what is wrong within the editor community there.
You've piqued my curiosity, can I ask what kind of stuff got axed? PM is fine if you don't think it belongs here.

I believe the incest pages, the "smart but lazy" pages and anything sexual because tropers were just posting their fucking creepy sex stories.
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Darvi

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Re: Tv Tropes Informal Poll
« Reply #53 on: June 08, 2011, 04:10:10 am »

Oh. That stuff.
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Leonon

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Re: Tv Tropes Informal Poll
« Reply #54 on: June 08, 2011, 06:15:29 am »

I believe the incest pages, the "smart but lazy" pages and anything sexual because tropers were just posting their fucking creepy sex stories.
Well someone has to appeal to the creepy guy demographic.
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Muz

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Re: Tv Tropes Informal Poll
« Reply #55 on: June 08, 2011, 08:53:57 am »

1) How often do you use/visit TV Tropes? Do you edit it, or simply read it?
Rarely, only to refer to things these days. Sometimes when when I read a good book, see a movie, I look it up on TV tropes as kind of an analysis. Honestly, it's miles better than all those literature stuff they teach in school, and helpful in that it notes other examples.

2) How useful and/or interesting do you find the site? Which parts do you find the most useful/interesting?
I DM some games. With these games, it's tough to see how far ahead you need to plan, and I use the story generator to flesh out random characters with random backgrounds if needed. It's by far, the most interesting character generating tool on the net, because it doesn't generate weird stuff like "the battle-worn pacifist", and even when it does, it gives tons of examples of how that might work.

It's also great for describing some things. You can describe politics, history and entertainment with tropes too.


3) What criticisms do you have toward the wiki? What criticisms have you heard from others?
I don't see what people mean by it sucking up your life. It's really not that addictive, but there's lots of stuff worth browsing through.

I don't really like mundane examples which have nothing to do with the trope, but it's not really a problem now.

And I wish some of the trope names were more obvious. Stuff like "brick joke" is way too unintuitive.
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Dr.Feelgood

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Re: Tv Tropes Informal Poll
« Reply #56 on: June 08, 2011, 12:44:19 pm »

Sidenote: Anyone who's read much of Troper Tales, especially the parts that have since been closed down (yes, they were that bad) knows exactly what is wrong within the editor community there.
You've piqued my curiosity, can I ask what kind of stuff got axed? PM is fine if you don't think it belongs here.

I believe the incest pages, the "smart but lazy" pages and anything sexual because tropers were just posting their fucking creepy sex stories.



Tropers' tales
* Brother and sister, cousins, etc. incest stories
* Covert Pervert (pedos)
* Fetish Fuel and Persevere sexual lust
* Complete Monster, For The Evulz, etc. (animal abuse and other psychopathic stories)
* N Word Privileges (racism)

There's also a disturbingly lengthy article about an obscure and graphic lolicon show. It's probably still there.
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Leafsnail

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Re: Tv Tropes Informal Poll
« Reply #57 on: June 08, 2011, 12:53:47 pm »

I'm pretty sure you don't want to see them, but there is the This Troper series on Youtube which probably contains most of the deleted Troper Tales pages.
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Darkmere

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Re: Tv Tropes Informal Poll
« Reply #58 on: June 08, 2011, 02:26:15 pm »

Yep, that explains that. never really went there for those. I don't feel like I'm missing out on much, but thanks for the info.
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And then, they will be weaponized. Like everything in this game, from kittens to babies, everything is a potential device of murder.
So if baseless speculation is all we have, we might as well treat it like fact.

Lord Shonus

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Re: Tv Tropes Informal Poll
« Reply #59 on: June 08, 2011, 02:55:47 pm »

ms do you have toward the wiki? What criticisms have you heard from others?
The fact that TVTropes has turned into a whiny "WE CAN'T INSULT ANYONE THEY MIGHT GET UPSET T_T" bitch fest. Creation of the YMMV tab, removal of "It Just Irritates Me" (or whatever it was called) and that sort of stuff. Took most of the fun out of it and basically just turned it into another wiki.
It Just Bugs Me is still there. It;s been renamed Headscratchers because the purpose was pointing out Fridge Logic, not bashing th e work, and the old title encouraged people to do just taht.


My bigges issue with the Wiki is that a number of authors have huge undeserved hatedoms, so as many pages as possible are filled with "examples" that are either extremely distorted, taken way out of context, or just made up. Tom Clancy, Harry Turtledove, and Stephen King get this a lot.
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