It's been around a year, ATT is still here, and I want to thank all who made it possible
Around a year ago, All The Tropes opened for business with the bold and daring plan to create an alternative troping site for the disenchanted ex-TV Tropers to trope on and for those who didn't want to get anywhere near Fast Eddie or his minions because they didn't want to edit on a wiki where you can get banned for the dumbest reasons and where perversion and some of the more sad aspects of fandom pollute the internet with messed up drivel.
Our goals were lofty, but we decided that to stay open for more than a little while, we had to radically alter our approach if we wanted to avoid the perversion and fail that has rightly made TV Tropes a laughingstock in the eyes of many, and this post is a massive thank you to various parties I credit with our success:
The Drunkard's Walk forums: In many ways, they were the birthplace of ATT, and where we came up with many of our founding goals and principles. It was there we hammered out most of our basic policies, established our site culture would be more academic yet laid back, and where we decided that our site, were it to have forums, they would be for site related matters only. These decisions helped us avoid the cesspit that the TV Tropes forums have become and in many ways still are, and so far, I have yet to hear any complaints that the staff of ATT are dictators. (Please call me out if I'm wrong on that score)
Bob Schroeck and his forumites (many of whom are members of ATT) have my eternal thanks for being our support, and I look forward to our continued partnership in building a better troping wiki.
The Project AFTER forums: I stumbled across this place when I was looking up what people thought about TV Tropes, and I decided to enter the discussion about the site, frankly admitting my intentions for our troping site and offering to ask questions and soliciting any advice they might have for avoiding TV Tropes's fail.
To be honest, they were brutally frank, and I'll admit it did take me aback somewhat how critical and somewhat cynical they were about our goals and intentions, but given the precedent set by TV Tropes, I considered that understandable and decided to accept any criticism and attempt to improve ATT based on it.
It was from them they have highlighted the festering turds we inherited from TV Tropes like some of the more retarded aspects of the Just for Fun/Darth/Sugar Wiki, the massive amounts of pointless auto-fellatio in adulation of TV Tropes, and worst of all, the Unpublished Works, the rotting brain drivel of things that will never be published we agreed was utterly pointless and needed to die. They also expressed horror and disgust at the Fetish Fuel/Troper Tales pages, and while we were going to toss them out anyway, it was the PA community who have eliminated any doubt they deserved to be thrown in a shallow grave and clubbed with a rusty shovel until they quit twitching.
To this day, they still point out retardation from TV Tropes we can avoid, and while I may not agree with everything they have to say (though to be honest, I've disagreed with very little they've said to this point), they have in many ways served as our conscience regarding content we might wish throw overboard or alter in the name of good taste, and I hope they and I can continue to work together to make at least one corner of the internet a lot less scummy than is (sadly) the norm for the greater troping community.
The Fuck No TV Tropes Tumblr: This tumblr has rightly mocked some of the more appalling social aspects of the troping community, especially some of the more noisome and insensitive BS spewed by tropers in ignorance and bigotry, and while I and ATT do not agree 100% with all the opinions expressed there, neither do we shy away from at least hearing our critics out, and I'd like to thank them for being a reminder that a wiki is a community that is part of the greater internet as a whole, and as such, we need to be mindful not to become a hive of arrogant jackasses, and they have pointed out many cultural and societal flaws in articles and attitudes in the troping community, and I have taken many of their points under advisement in attempts to avoid having us tarred by the same brush of douchebaggery that has soiled TV Tropes.
It's my hope that Mark (the one who runs the blog) continues to do the excellent job he has done in exposing the fail and suck of the troping community, and I'd like to personally wish him my best in his other endeavors as well.
The Something Awful Forums - SA and TV Tropes have had a long and contentious history, dating all the back to when a goon named AnneBeeche and Fast Eddie butted heads, he called the site a "vile pit of hate", and ever since then, they have been engaged in eternal war with one another, with Fast Eddie banning "SA traitors" and goons mocking the crap out of TV Tropes, calling them a hive of pedophiles and perverts, despite the fact that they had a pedophile as a mod for five years straight and some of the SA community have been revealed to have some truly depraved fetishes, so their accusations are a sad case of the pot calling the kettle black.
However, despite the contempt they showed in their own TVT mock thread concerning this blog, I have taken notes from some of their more salient criticism and have taken it into consideration, and I still have one anonymous yet still brave goon to thank for showing the moral courage to accept my offer to discuss our views on the troping community, and not only do they still have my thanks, I will never forget how they pointed out the festering hive of perversion that was the Fansadox articles and assisted us in pruning the perversion and leaving one page that was stripped of obvious masturbatory comments, as the original version we imported was written by a pervert of the highest order, and I personally torched that obscenity off and left what is hopefully a less abhorrent yet honest article (and a rather blunt review of the work itself), and I will continue to make sure nothing that perverse is allowed to fester on our site again.
Finally, despite what appears to be an incredibly childish fear of "touching the poop", I still extend an olive branch to any goon who wishes to contact me discreetly via email, and I will be happy to address any questions and concerns you wish to share with me concerning All The Tropes.
Orain - I and Brent Laabs chose this wiki farm as opposed to ShoutWiki or Wikia for our main branch of All The Tropes because they offered far more freedom, no ads, and no censorship (aside from not posting pornographic imagery, which we considered eminently reasonable), and despite some early trouble in the first few months (technical issues related), Orain has become of the best decisions we ever made, and frankly, I consider their staff (of which I serve in a minor capacity) to be competent, a pleasure to work with, and some of our IRC sessions have made my sides split from some of the quirky humor we've shared.
Seriously, some of those IRC chat logs are comedy gold, but I digress.
In all seriousness, Orain has a mission of bringing a wiki farm with a ton of freedom and a minimum of screwing over it's users, which aligned perfectly with our own mission of providing a troping wiki that had similar intentions, and to this day, I'm still proud of the hard work they have put into helping us and the other members of the Orain community.
Wikia - Originally, I got my foot in the door managing the 'Tropes Mirror Wiki" on Wikia, which was originally founded by a guy named Jack Butler after a retarded falling out on TV Tropes between him and Fast Eddie, and frankly, his wiki was an unfun Serious Business vortex of fail, according to what I could tell from older revisions. It was later taken over by a libertarian from Romania named Anime Addict, who was better, but he had a frighteningly large amount of contempt for copyright law and a foolish insistence on some bizarre and frankly useless indexing schemas. I took over after he left the place for a few months, did my best to import non infringing content to replace the copyright violation minefield he ran, and Fast Eddie saw fit to cry about how I was a thief (despite using legal content and promising to remove anything that was infringing) and told me GTFO his website and never return.
Around that time, I got together with Brent Laabs, and ATT Orain was born.
However, Wikia had been incredibly nice to me, and it seemed like a horribly dick move to leave them with a flawed, partial import of content while the Orain branch had a better version, so Wikia staff helped me import a May 2014 version of ATT Orain's content (text, not images due to size reasons) so both could be on somewhat more equal footing content wise. This also resulted in the content of the Tropes Mirror Wiki being replaced entirely by All The Tropes (Wikia) [done partially because the old content still had some legally questionable material I had no interest in retaining].
I want to add that despite Wikia having ads, they have never been an impediment to our content, and have censored us about as little as Orain, so no complaints there either.
Their staff are all friendly, helpful, and extremely competent, and I consider an honor to work with them, and Wikia has my gratitude for allowing ATT to have a Wikia branch for those on Wikia who don't wish to trope on Orain.
In closing, all of these parties have been incredibly important in our success, and I just hope we'll have another year just as wonderful. :)
Our goals were lofty, but we decided that to stay open for more than a little while, we had to radically alter our approach if we wanted to avoid the perversion and fail that has rightly made TV Tropes a laughingstock in the eyes of many, and this post is a massive thank you to various parties I credit with our success:
The Drunkard's Walk forums: In many ways, they were the birthplace of ATT, and where we came up with many of our founding goals and principles. It was there we hammered out most of our basic policies, established our site culture would be more academic yet laid back, and where we decided that our site, were it to have forums, they would be for site related matters only. These decisions helped us avoid the cesspit that the TV Tropes forums have become and in many ways still are, and so far, I have yet to hear any complaints that the staff of ATT are dictators. (Please call me out if I'm wrong on that score)
Bob Schroeck and his forumites (many of whom are members of ATT) have my eternal thanks for being our support, and I look forward to our continued partnership in building a better troping wiki.
The Project AFTER forums: I stumbled across this place when I was looking up what people thought about TV Tropes, and I decided to enter the discussion about the site, frankly admitting my intentions for our troping site and offering to ask questions and soliciting any advice they might have for avoiding TV Tropes's fail.
To be honest, they were brutally frank, and I'll admit it did take me aback somewhat how critical and somewhat cynical they were about our goals and intentions, but given the precedent set by TV Tropes, I considered that understandable and decided to accept any criticism and attempt to improve ATT based on it.
It was from them they have highlighted the festering turds we inherited from TV Tropes like some of the more retarded aspects of the Just for Fun/Darth/Sugar Wiki, the massive amounts of pointless auto-fellatio in adulation of TV Tropes, and worst of all, the Unpublished Works, the rotting brain drivel of things that will never be published we agreed was utterly pointless and needed to die. They also expressed horror and disgust at the Fetish Fuel/Troper Tales pages, and while we were going to toss them out anyway, it was the PA community who have eliminated any doubt they deserved to be thrown in a shallow grave and clubbed with a rusty shovel until they quit twitching.
To this day, they still point out retardation from TV Tropes we can avoid, and while I may not agree with everything they have to say (though to be honest, I've disagreed with very little they've said to this point), they have in many ways served as our conscience regarding content we might wish throw overboard or alter in the name of good taste, and I hope they and I can continue to work together to make at least one corner of the internet a lot less scummy than is (sadly) the norm for the greater troping community.
The Fuck No TV Tropes Tumblr: This tumblr has rightly mocked some of the more appalling social aspects of the troping community, especially some of the more noisome and insensitive BS spewed by tropers in ignorance and bigotry, and while I and ATT do not agree 100% with all the opinions expressed there, neither do we shy away from at least hearing our critics out, and I'd like to thank them for being a reminder that a wiki is a community that is part of the greater internet as a whole, and as such, we need to be mindful not to become a hive of arrogant jackasses, and they have pointed out many cultural and societal flaws in articles and attitudes in the troping community, and I have taken many of their points under advisement in attempts to avoid having us tarred by the same brush of douchebaggery that has soiled TV Tropes.
It's my hope that Mark (the one who runs the blog) continues to do the excellent job he has done in exposing the fail and suck of the troping community, and I'd like to personally wish him my best in his other endeavors as well.
The Something Awful Forums - SA and TV Tropes have had a long and contentious history, dating all the back to when a goon named AnneBeeche and Fast Eddie butted heads, he called the site a "vile pit of hate", and ever since then, they have been engaged in eternal war with one another, with Fast Eddie banning "SA traitors" and goons mocking the crap out of TV Tropes, calling them a hive of pedophiles and perverts, despite the fact that they had a pedophile as a mod for five years straight and some of the SA community have been revealed to have some truly depraved fetishes, so their accusations are a sad case of the pot calling the kettle black.
However, despite the contempt they showed in their own TVT mock thread concerning this blog, I have taken notes from some of their more salient criticism and have taken it into consideration, and I still have one anonymous yet still brave goon to thank for showing the moral courage to accept my offer to discuss our views on the troping community, and not only do they still have my thanks, I will never forget how they pointed out the festering hive of perversion that was the Fansadox articles and assisted us in pruning the perversion and leaving one page that was stripped of obvious masturbatory comments, as the original version we imported was written by a pervert of the highest order, and I personally torched that obscenity off and left what is hopefully a less abhorrent yet honest article (and a rather blunt review of the work itself), and I will continue to make sure nothing that perverse is allowed to fester on our site again.
Finally, despite what appears to be an incredibly childish fear of "touching the poop", I still extend an olive branch to any goon who wishes to contact me discreetly via email, and I will be happy to address any questions and concerns you wish to share with me concerning All The Tropes.
Orain - I and Brent Laabs chose this wiki farm as opposed to ShoutWiki or Wikia for our main branch of All The Tropes because they offered far more freedom, no ads, and no censorship (aside from not posting pornographic imagery, which we considered eminently reasonable), and despite some early trouble in the first few months (technical issues related), Orain has become of the best decisions we ever made, and frankly, I consider their staff (of which I serve in a minor capacity) to be competent, a pleasure to work with, and some of our IRC sessions have made my sides split from some of the quirky humor we've shared.
Seriously, some of those IRC chat logs are comedy gold, but I digress.
In all seriousness, Orain has a mission of bringing a wiki farm with a ton of freedom and a minimum of screwing over it's users, which aligned perfectly with our own mission of providing a troping wiki that had similar intentions, and to this day, I'm still proud of the hard work they have put into helping us and the other members of the Orain community.
Wikia - Originally, I got my foot in the door managing the 'Tropes Mirror Wiki" on Wikia, which was originally founded by a guy named Jack Butler after a retarded falling out on TV Tropes between him and Fast Eddie, and frankly, his wiki was an unfun Serious Business vortex of fail, according to what I could tell from older revisions. It was later taken over by a libertarian from Romania named Anime Addict, who was better, but he had a frighteningly large amount of contempt for copyright law and a foolish insistence on some bizarre and frankly useless indexing schemas. I took over after he left the place for a few months, did my best to import non infringing content to replace the copyright violation minefield he ran, and Fast Eddie saw fit to cry about how I was a thief (despite using legal content and promising to remove anything that was infringing) and told me GTFO his website and never return.
Around that time, I got together with Brent Laabs, and ATT Orain was born.
However, Wikia had been incredibly nice to me, and it seemed like a horribly dick move to leave them with a flawed, partial import of content while the Orain branch had a better version, so Wikia staff helped me import a May 2014 version of ATT Orain's content (text, not images due to size reasons) so both could be on somewhat more equal footing content wise. This also resulted in the content of the Tropes Mirror Wiki being replaced entirely by All The Tropes (Wikia) [done partially because the old content still had some legally questionable material I had no interest in retaining].
I want to add that despite Wikia having ads, they have never been an impediment to our content, and have censored us about as little as Orain, so no complaints there either.
Their staff are all friendly, helpful, and extremely competent, and I consider an honor to work with them, and Wikia has my gratitude for allowing ATT to have a Wikia branch for those on Wikia who don't wish to trope on Orain.
In closing, all of these parties have been incredibly important in our success, and I just hope we'll have another year just as wonderful. :)
To another successful year. *clink*
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