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[Tack]

What's the full story re: birth of AllTheTropes and why TVTropes got shit?

[Akura]

TL;DR version is that TvTropes suddenly and without warning changed their policy, claiming that all user-submitted material was their intellectual property, despite, if I remember correctly, changing such a policy like that nullifies it. This caused a break, were somebody decided to pull as much as they could from the TvTropes servers and used that to found AllTheTropes - something that might have been illegal, although it's difficult to say since what TvTropes did was illegal too.

At least, that's how I read it as.

[Flying Dice]

TL;DR version is that TvTropes suddenly and without warning changed their policy, claiming that all user-submitted material was their intellectual property, despite, if I remember correctly, changing such a policy like that nullifies it. This caused a break, were somebody decided to pull as much as they could from the TvTropes servers and used that to found AllTheTropes - something that might have been illegal, although it's difficult to say since what TvTropes did was illegal too.

At least, that's how I read it as.

Actually, ATT has subsequently reconstructed everything without using any material directly copied from TVT (or so they claim).

There was also the issue of censorship. The official line from TVT was that it was imposed by Google with the threat of ads being pulled. IIRC it originated with people from SA trolling TVT by sending advertisers screenshots with their ads on pages with borderline sexual content, but there's been SJW undertones for years. The advertising shitstorm gave an excuse for a lot of the crappy mods and admins to start banning dissenters while also affording the SJW types a chance to push for heavier censorship.

It's honestly sad, considering that it was a (somewhat shit) joke site that is now being run by a cabal of morons who take it completely seriously. That, and the way it subtly encourages dull, cliched writing and thought--if you think that potholing a link to a trope page is interesting or deep, there might not be much left to save. That's not really the fault of the abusive mods or pro-censorship crowd, though.

But yes, those two factors combined are why it was forked, and why the fork is both completely reliant on donation to stay afloat (Orain was, incidentally, a charity service that hosted wikis for free), as well as why ATT is very specific about the type of license they operate under. Just your friendly neighborhood jerk reminding you now that TVT is run by assholes for assholes these days.

[Sergarr]

subtly

That shit wasn't "subtle" at all. It was quite disconcerting to see dozens of people on a sub-forum dedicated to creative writing engaging in fitting everything around, including themselves, into tropes. "Creativity" for those people apparently meant something very different from the common definition...

[penguinofhonor]

First the social justice warriors took over gaming journalism, and I did not speak out - because I do not read gaming journalism. Then they took over Reddit, and I did not speak out - because I am not a Redditor. Then they came for Twitch.TV, and I did not speak out - because I do not watch gaming streams. Then they took over TVTropes, and there was no one left to speak for This Troper.

[Execute/Dumbo.exe]

Eh, I don't think tropes encourage cliched writing, it's simple, at the density of tropes those sites have, you can't be totally original, as everything can be traced to one trope or another.
Though you can still use them creatively or have interesting characters and such.

[Sergarr]

Eh, I don't think tropes encourage cliched writing, it's simple, at the density of tropes those sites have, you can't be totally original, as everything can be traced to one trope or another.
Though you can still use them creatively or have interesting characters and such.

They do if you copy-paste them whole-sale without having any idea why you're doing it.

It's like, you can't be totally original, but there's still a difference between an story inspired by some classic and an outright plagiarism of said classic.

[Execute/Dumbo.exe]

Eh, I don't think tropes encourage cliched writing, it's simple, at the density of tropes those sites have, you can't be totally original, as everything can be traced to one trope or another.
Though you can still use them creatively or have interesting characters and such.

They do if you copy-paste them whole-sale without having any idea why you're doing it.

It's like, you can't be totally original, but there's still a difference between an story inspired by some classic and an outright plagiarism of said classic.

But you shouldn't blame that on a site that just made those things more visible, people who wrote cliched trite were probably always going to write cliched trite, whether or not they could specifically search for the trope they wanted to round off their crap story.

[scrdest]

Eh, I don't think tropes encourage cliched writing, it's simple, at the density of tropes those sites have, you can't be totally original, as everything can be traced to one trope or another.
Though you can still use them creatively or have interesting characters and such.

They do if you copy-paste them whole-sale without having any idea why you're doing it.

It's like, you can't be totally original, but there's still a difference between an story inspired by some classic and an outright plagiarism of said classic.

But you shouldn't blame that on a site that just made those things more visible, people who wrote cliched trite were probably always going to write cliched trite, whether or not they could specifically search for the trope they wanted to round off their crap story.

If anything, it's the other way around. A lot of cliche writing is not consciously trying to be trite, it's just blissfully unaware that what they wrote was done before a million times better or has thoroughly been discredited. You don't blame composers for using music theory either, do you?

Knowing the common story elements opens up more possibilities, since you can knowingly mess with them and get something new.

[TempAcc]

While there certainly was A LOT of weird and shady stuff in the old TVTropes (the TroperTales on incest and lolicon were specially disturbing), fasteddie did really kind of arbitrarily remove anything he thought would cause Google to pull their ads, which means a lot of stuff that was actualy related to a certain work, from anime to literature, got pulled. Today TVTropes is mostly just an anime and TV series catalogue with some occasional info on other media and much more limited scope.

I'm not sure if the whole "Something Awful/Ebaums people sent google bad screenshots to take TVTropes down" thing is entirely true, and even if it is, they sure didn't need make up anything to get TVTropes in trouble with google. Really, anyone could just browse a tropertales page, take a screenshot and send it to google. If anything it was an SJW clique of sorts, who then blamed it exclusively on SA.

[BFEL]

(the TroperTales on incest and lolicon were specially disturbing)

DAMN YOU MORBID CURIOUSITY!

[TempAcc]

There is a more or less complete archive of the deleted tropertales somewhere on the internet, but linking it here would probably get me punted by the banhammer.

[Bouchart]

How come every umbrella I've ever owned gets destroyed by the slightest breeze?

[Arx]

How come every umbrella I've ever owned gets destroyed by the slightest breeze?

The easiest way out is not to own one. I rely on a rainjacket and faith that God will make it stop raining whenever I leave the house instead.

[Rolan7]

Ironically that's pretty much what I do
Though usually I pray for light rain.  Getting rained on just a little feels nice.