Deleting a YMMV entry because your mileage is different

I rarely visit YMMV pages so I am not sure about the deletion policy there. I posted a Strangled by the Red String entry recently on YMMV.Fallout 2024 and it instantly got removed because someone thought it's not applying because there was Meet Cute moment I missed to take into consideration. I still stand by my opinion. How do such differences usually get resolved on YMMV?

Usually it boils down to how the community at large feels, if such a thing is possible to quantify.

It largely depends on how much energy you want to devote to the example. You can message the editor who opposed it and discuss it directly since this may be just a 1v1 conflict, and/or take it to the discussion page for something of a community vote. On rare occasions, as it's not the intended purpose of the forums, you could bring it up in the work thread and see what others think if you're not getting traction in the discussion page (it seems to have several recent threads so shouldn't be an issue).

Generally speaking, YMMV pages are subject to edits and repairs as any other page. Outright deletion of an example should be careful, unless it's just factually wrong (ie a Ron the Death Eater example reads as just Base-Breaking Character).

My impression is that requests to resolve editing disputes usually go to Ask The Tropers.

The intention of Audience Reaction pages is that they do not reflect a single troper's opinion, but rather that of a significant chunk of the fanbase. If there are enough people out there who agree with you that this is Strangled by the Red String it can probably stay if you can defend it and explain why the presence of a Meet Cute moment isn't enough to dissuade the feeling. If it's just you trying to enshrine your own opinion on the wiki, you're probably going to keep getting pushback and maybe even face a ban.

The work's content doesn't strongly matter. If there are a lot of reviews or comments saying one thing, it's worth documenting even if all of them are wrong.

Not sure if right and wrong are suitable terms when it comes to audience reaction. What I get from this discussion is that I probably should not rely on my own impression alone when creating an entry. Would it seem legit to cite online sources where others have expressed the same sentiment over the aspect at hand? Like I could point to this reddit thread where a handful of users expressed their dissatisfaction with the forced romantic arc (while others found it natural).

If it's just a "handful" of users, I don't think it's a common enough opinion. More like Broken Base at best.

Might be unrelated, but why does Strangled by the Red String describe itself as an Audience Reaction, even though it's on YMMV.Home Page? That could obfuscate things more, since part of it is objective.

...Because YMMV pages are audience reactions? I'm confused by what you mean with that.

The objective part is the "fandom consensus" part (and even then it's hard to be truly objective about how a community at large feels), but YMMV pages are very much audience reactions.

Well, technically YMMV and Audience Reactions are different designations lumped together on a subpage.

"Characters abruptly become one another's Love Interest" is very much something that happens in-story, which is what I meant by objective. Either the sudden romance is there or it isn't; perception of the concept isn't automatically the same thing as actual attitudes around the concept, and I really wish people would stop thinking that it is.

...That said, I do think that even if there are in-story reasons for SBTRS, it can still be a valid point of view. What I get from the part of the description mentioning "the subsequent lack of 'volume' in the Romance Arc" is that the opposite side of the coin can apply: people not caring about the abruptness of the romance, just at what point the viewer is expected to stop seeing it as totally 100% realistic. I think YMMV tropes in general have that sort of implied demarcation line.

Yeah I guess that's fair, I don't think there really is a properly defined difference between the two ATM. I think even a couple mods are unclear on it though I could be wrong

Edited by Coachpill on Apr 24th 2024 at 9:53:25 AM

If I'm being honest I don't really get the exact line between the two. I feel stuff like High-Tier Scrappy, Glurge or Growing the Beard are also Audience Reactions even if they aren't labelled as such. Seeing that Even Better Sequel is labelled as an Audience Reaction but Sequelitis is not is making me even more confused about the difference.

I don't really agree that it's an objective thing. The romance is objective, sure, but how do you objectively define "abruptly"? Character writing and pacing aren't exact sciences.

A YMMV page not being labelled as an Audience Reaction doesn't mean they are "objective" YMMV pages. Take Scrappy Mechanic for instance: It isn't labelled as an Audience reaction and while there are several things that people might consider that count as "poor video game mechanics", it's still highly subjective.

Edited by UchuuFlamenco on Apr 24th 2024 at 7:39:03 AM

The difference is "not everyone will agree it is an example" and "this describes out-of-universe stuff". I admit the line isn't clear.

There is a vagueness over which tropes are reporting an audience reaction and which tropes are opinions by themselves, but they are both still YMMV.

Strangled by the Red String specifically is basically an unconvincing and plot derailing Romance Arc, which is why it's YMMV. The purely objective version is covered in Last Minute Hook Up and Satellite Love Interest.

Well, Audience Reactions is specifically for argenfargles that catalogue things that happen on the audience side. e.g The Scrappy. YMMV meanwhile is a category for tropes that require significant judgment calls, e.g Complete Monster, but also tropes which have an audience reaction component e.g Creator's Pet

From reading the past policy discussions, I got the opposite impression than Morgan about the purpose of YMMV tabs: They were never supposed to "not reflect a single troper's opinion, but rather that of a significant chunk of the fanbase" because we didn't want to determine how widely held an opinion is - it's still an opinion either way. The notion that only widely held opinions should be documented came later.

I think Morgan was talking about their current purpose, as the past few years of consensus have indeed been that we want common opinions (as otherwise damn near every YMMV trope would be on damn near every YMMV page)

Also, a lot of YMMV entries, if allowed to reflect just a single troper's opinion, would devolve into complaining/gushing (and many come perilously close to that as it is).