All-Purpose Policy and Meta discussion: Administrivia.Trope Repair Shop

I don't know how this suggestion would help anything - it merely creates another congestion. Also, the amount of programming work is much better spent elsewhere. Too much opportunity cost.

Very well, I'll explain. My suggestion doesn't add a level of complexity at all, quite the opposite. What my suggestion would do is ensure that only threads that were really worth discussion would even exist in the first place to the farthest extent it could be practical, and it would ensure tropers weren't creating more TRS threads to address issues that have already been ruled out or even already addressed over and over again and cluttering up this part of the forum as a result, "separating the wheat from the chaff" basically. As a result Tropers interested in contributing can thus focus all but entirely upon a Trope Repair Shop filled with interesting and valuable threads they might actually care about contributing to, instead of wandering through dozens of uninteresting junk threads and getting burnt out as a result.

Once the Trope Repair Shop is (eventually) cleaned up and the ban on new threads is lifted, tropers are going to start creating more Trope Repair Shop threads, and many of those threads are going be just generally uninteresting, unimportant, disrespectful, petty, or just plain whiny enough to end up locked or sitting unanswered for a long time just like what's happened up to this point, and in a couple years at the most the Trope Repair Shop is going to end up right back in the conditions that necessitated banning new threads in the first place all over again. My suggestion would stem if not completely stop this from happening. Lots of tropers that care enough to contribute to the Trope Repair Shop are either going to be around or they aren't, but either way there's not really going to be that much that T Vtropes can do to encourage the former and prevent the latter, all this website can do is try to deal with the symptoms of the latter as best it can.

Am I being clear here?

edited 19th Sep '15 11:00:21 AM by immortalfrieza

What you're suggesting is to move from threads locked from the start that opens on moderator approval, to threads suggested in a thread, and then moved to a new topic by moderators.

That's still about moderator-approved threads, with the difference that with your suggestion they have to also create the threads and do that busywork. There are also no locked threads around, which take all of five seconds to check for tropers willing to do work.

The functional difference is more work for moderators, while the TRS forum works exactly the same as it does now.

What would be helpful would be to actually display an icon for threads not yet opened. If nothing else, the locked icon would work well enough.

Seconded.

On the topic of unopened threads, there are some that are waiting to be opened and taken care of, yet went unnoticed by mods for months. I notice there's one that hasn't been opened since January, for example.

edited 20th Sep '15 3:28:05 PM by Berrenta

Yeah, I was not keen on a number of these threads because a) many of them are poorly argued and b) the significant backlog.

Could we have a discussion about ways to address issues with the articles that has nothing to do with Troper Repair Shop at all? Seriously. If TRS was closed, how would the wiki suffer? In some way worse than it suffers from TRS backlog? Probably not.

TRS was begun as a place to resolve conflicts about fixes to articles. Not as a place to have a long discussion about each and every change.

Suggestion: Clear out Trope Repair Shop today and use it only to resolve edit wars. If there is a war, there is clear evidence that someone is willing to actually apply a fix. Rename TRS to something like Edit Conflict Forum.

Some cleaning efforts that are put in TRS do fall under regular maintenance.

The problem with allowing all changes that don't involve conflicts is that sometimes a trope can be changed a little, then a little more, then a little more, to the point where it's mutated to something else entirely, which renders most of the examples referring to a different trope than the one described.

I think good reasons for TRS threads are name changes, definition changes that affect examples written according to the original definition, and cases where cleanup efforts aren't enough or just don't work.

I don't see an issue with declining threads that are poorly argued or don't show much effort. That includes at the minimum clearly showing (not telling) what the problem is so that people reading the thread don't have to do research to figure that out (double checking is of course still good practice).

What Another Duck said.

We can't allow trope definitions to be changed without discussion and a crowner. A good case of what happens otherwise is Genre Savvy (which was cleaned up recently): first it underwent trope decay because people kept mistaking all kinds of savviness for the trope. Then a "helpful" troper (withou discussion or any attempt to reach a consensus) added a paragraph to the trope description that made the trope fit the misuse. This, of course, encouraged further decay.

Indeed. In scope for the future design of the wiki's software will be the ability to lock article descriptions without impacting the ability to add examples. Tropes in particular should be prime targets for this. In the meantime, however, we have to deal with what we've got, which is a lot of people eager to make tropes fit their pet ideas.

I have noticed that despite the "no new threads" dictum, new threads are still getting made. Someone just made one. Seems odd that the new thread functionality would still be enabled.

As far as the discussion above re: the practicality of TRS, it is pretty clear that TRS is an utter failure. The issues with dozens and dozens of unopened threads, and dozens and dozens of conversations that peter out and die, are well known. Even when action is taken, action isn't actually taken. There's a crowner for Weird Moon. The thread was started in November 2014, nearly a year ago. The last post in the thread was ten months ago. No action has been taken.

Seems like there needs to be a new approach. Maybe moderators should just make changes themselves. Users can suggest X, Y, and Z, and the moderators can decide to do X, Y, and Z, or not, and then do it. Then the thread is closed and the moderators take action. Maybe issue appeals for help with actions that will take a lot of work. But the way the forum is set up now is non-functional.

The issue is in part that TRS work is very time consuming to implement. And none of the moderators has that time available.

I don't doubt that it does take a long time and is time intensive. There are tropes with thousands of links out there and I'd hate to be tasked with fixing them.

But there are two parts to the process here, one would think. TRS is about the first part, the decision-making part. Does Trope X need to be fixed? If the answer is Yes, then the second part, the grunt work that takes a long damn time, becomes a problem. But that's not strictly relevant to the utility of TRS as a decision-making tool.

The only argument against closing it and renaming as Edit Conflict Resolution in this thread so far has been the creeping-definition problem. Which TRS as-is doesn't address, particularly.

In the edit conflict resolution scenario, someone might be trying to widen a definition and another might be trying to constrain it. This is a conflict that could be resolved by the new board.

What about the "a redefinition needs to be propagated outside of the definition" problem?

Evidently, nothing about the current formulation addresses that issue.

I suppose that in the new approach, it could be required that the person who wants to make the change must do the propagation work. A change, that is, other than a return to the status quo.

Possibly (just possibly) it could be a standard that the trope in question would be locked until all the prop-work has been done.

This would make it so that drifting a definition would not be at all a casual thing for a person to undertake.

edited 5th Oct '15 3:14:15 PM by eyebones

Personally, I think that there's a simple way to fix the problem of the TRS being so much of a load on the mods, and leaving the community with so much Bystander Syndrome: let go, and let the wiki be a wiki.

I'd suggest a system something like what already exists in YKTTW- someone posts a ticket, people vote on whether they agree its a problem or not, if it gets enough hats it gets opened for discussion. If it doesn't get hats or goes inactive for a long time, its clearly not something anyone else feels strongly about, and can be safely discarded. Basically, hand the TRS over to the community, and leave the mods' only obligations as occasionally deleting derelict tickets and extinguishing out of control flame wars.

If the repair shop isn't under the direct case-by-case management of mods- thus making everything in it The Mod's Problem- then it makes it clearer that TRS is neither a substitution for nor a ban on You Could Always Edit It Yourself; only a way to prevent Edit Wars and get consensus on major changes like redefinitions. No mod fairy is going to come along and magically fix the issue you're complaining about, nor is there any reason you can't fix something that obviously needs to be fixed instead of dumping it off at the TRS. (Something I've been guilty of myself with pages I don't feel like rewriting out of a Signal To Noise Trainwreck, for instance.) If someone thinks there's a problem, at the end of the day they have to be the ones making sure it gets fixed.

If they don't care enough to do that, and no one else does either, it goes to the big trash can in the sky. Sometimes a formal decision isn't needed; if a ticket never leads to any discussion, or never reaches a formal decision, or a small group agrees on something and neither they or anyone else actually does it... well, sometimes Chirping Crickets are all the answer that's needed.

Case in point: despite the three pages of meandering discussion and a crowner on Weird Moon, it's been a dead ticket for nearly a year, with the last post expressing confusion about what the problem was to begin with. Seems like an answer to me at least.

edited 5th Nov '15 10:20:23 AM by Scorpion451

The problem hasn't been getting people to agree on "is this an issue?", and the new rule that mods must approve a thread before it is open solves the remaining parts of the "is this an issue?" debate.

The problem is people not actually getting around to doing the work that the community determined needs to be done. Case in point: every thread with an orange asterisk is a thread that is ready to be closed, if people can just do the work already explained.

I think we just have too many threads open at a time. If we only allow like 10-15 threads and prevent work on others until there's an open slot, maybe we'll get people to contribute more. Right now there's God knows how many thread and people aren't motivated to try to work out of the lockdown because there is too much to do and little focus.

"The problem is people not actually getting around to doing the work that the community determined needs to be done."

That is not true. If that were true, we would be looking at a situation where thread were continually getting resolved, crowners called, actions agreed upon—but nothing after that is being done.

That's not what's happening. Or rather, that does happen sometimes, just as often we never make the determination in the first place.

I just scrolled down. There are about 40 threads with the orange asterisk. There are 11 with crowners. Weird Moon, as you say, has a crowner, and hasn't had a post in the thread in over nine months.

No Koreans In Japan has a crowner which returned a decisive result—a 21-1 vote to turn the "trope" into a Useful Notes article. Nothing has been done.

Ship Mates has a crowner with a decisive result—a 20-2 vote to take the trope back to the original definition. No action taken, crowner and thread still open, no posts since January 2015.

And of course there are dozens and dozens of threads that have sat here for months, dead. There's a thread charging misuse of The Brigadier. Started 11 months ago in December 2014. Last post in the thread was made in April. It's still sitting there, active, no determination ever made.

Congratulations; you selected four threads randomly and three of them are exactly what I said;thread were continually getting resolved, crowners called, actions agreed upon—but nothing after that is being done.

The exception in your list is The Brigader, which was begun before the mod-open policy. That's the only one where discussion is ongoing (for a given value of ongoing :/)

You do seem to have proven what you were arguing about there.

I've called a bunch of crowners right now.

, Are you guys contending that thread are routinely getting decided? Look down the list. Several dozen threads just sitting there, forgotten.

Decided, yes. But the solutions are not implemented.

I count 88 threads that have been opened and do not have a crowner or an orange asterisk.