Dear TVTropes editor,
May. 5th, 2010 09:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mcityI understand that you spent a lot of time adding tropes for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ursulav's Black Dogs. In fact, you claim to have been the only editor for the page until I came along. I cannot confirm that, as the page history seems to have been wiped by a glitch, which is why I assumed all the tropes on the page that are clearly not in my copy of my book were added by a troll.
Recently, you PMed me to inform me that you were pissed that I had deleted all your hard work, and that the tropes were from a first draft of the second Black Dogs book originally on Vernon's Elfwood page, since taken down. I check the book's entry, and lo and behold you've added not only some of the tropes from the sequel, but a partial summary.
Here's the thing; you are wrong.
One of the hardest things for any person to accept is the idea of sunk costs. Not only did my reply PM explain to you why adding tropes from a first draft--which all of my Google-fu cannot determine actually existed, BTW--is a terrible idea, it also pointed out that things frequently change between versions, and TVTropes doesn't use tropes from leaks unless the series or work has officially been cancelled, leaving the leaks the only material left. Your little disclaimer about how the book would be the same "barring massive rewrites" does not count for anything, as books occasionally undergo, guess what, massive rewrites. In addition, you never indicated whether the tropes were from the original book, or the leaked draft, spoiling people if the final does hew close to the leak.
I'm not going to delete the tropes again, since it would just lead to an edit war. But I wish you would understand that it was a bad idea to add them in the first place.
-Jonn
ursulav's Black Dogs. In fact, you claim to have been the only editor for the page until I came along. I cannot confirm that, as the page history seems to have been wiped by a glitch, which is why I assumed all the tropes on the page that are clearly not in my copy of my book were added by a troll.Recently, you PMed me to inform me that you were pissed that I had deleted all your hard work, and that the tropes were from a first draft of the second Black Dogs book originally on Vernon's Elfwood page, since taken down. I check the book's entry, and lo and behold you've added not only some of the tropes from the sequel, but a partial summary.
Here's the thing; you are wrong.
One of the hardest things for any person to accept is the idea of sunk costs. Not only did my reply PM explain to you why adding tropes from a first draft--which all of my Google-fu cannot determine actually existed, BTW--is a terrible idea, it also pointed out that things frequently change between versions, and TVTropes doesn't use tropes from leaks unless the series or work has officially been cancelled, leaving the leaks the only material left. Your little disclaimer about how the book would be the same "barring massive rewrites" does not count for anything, as books occasionally undergo, guess what, massive rewrites. In addition, you never indicated whether the tropes were from the original book, or the leaked draft, spoiling people if the final does hew close to the leak.
I'm not going to delete the tropes again, since it would just lead to an edit war. But I wish you would understand that it was a bad idea to add them in the first place.
-Jonn
