Thread:Forum:Wiki Talk/YMMV integration/reply (4)

The current list of YMMV has things like Most Annoying Sound, Dry Docked Ship, and Idiosyncratic Ship Naming which I agree don't need to go to the main page, but on the other hand YMMV includes tropes like Moral Event Horizon, Designated Hero, Mary Suetopia, and Moe. which properly describe the work itself.

For example, I've been thinking that H. G. Wells made First Men in the Moon have an Idiot Plot on purpose. I think the main character isn't very smart or perceptive at all to the point of being an Unreliable Narrator, and then the Idiot Savant inventor of the space ship and and the hyper-specialized natives of the Moon are really meant to be Too Dumb to Live as an authorial choice to express Wells's chosen philosophical/political themes. As other characters barely appear, an Idiot Plot is the natural result. I don't think this kind of analysis belongs to the section about audience reactions.

There is a YMMV element to the nine D&D alignments, but that's largely because the D&D definitions of Law and Chaos are collections of disparate traits so that, for example, "keeps one's desk orderly" and "has no imagination" are both under the Lawful umbrella. Someone may be extremely Lawful in some ways and extremely Chaotic in others. It is a bad system for classifying characters.

I think the YMMV section is trying to be two things at once: a dumping ground for real tropes that could invite arguments and a page about things relating to the fandom. A character being or not being a Mary Sue has always an element of judgement in it, but the same goes for things like determinining whether an ambiguous character is an Anti-Hero or a Villain Protagonist.

I don't think the right response to edit wars is to hide the object of contention out of sight. I think the best way to deal with controversial tropes is to enforce some rules about not letting rebuttals, counter-rebuttals, and counter-counter-rebuttals get out of hand. I think we could limit any trope controversy, even for the tropes not currently on the YMMV list, to both sides getting to make their point, with editors encouraged to strengthen the point for their side rather than sniping back and forth.

Like this:


 * Character so-and-so is a Purity Sue because X, Y, and Z.
 * On the other hand, she also A, B, and C, which makes her not so perfect after all.

No third level needed or wanted.