Discussion about the Hong Kong 97 verse and similar verse which possibly have controversial political contents

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Being illegal in certain countries isn't enough for a deletion. Or the game/movie "Sucks" isn't enough either. But if it contains internationally illegal that the UN or something is strongly against, then I would say no.

 

[Agnaa]

So you're saying that Hong Kong 97 is internationally illegal, for containing:

• Pictures of real life people.
• Dead bodies.

Despite the fact that both of those exist much more commonly than they would if they were "internationally illegal", the former being prominent in media, and the latter being prominent on internet gore sites.

I really do not think there's grounds to claim that it's internationally illegal.

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Just saying, the game over screen in Hong Kong 97 is from the mondo film "Death File - War", which shows that the man in the game over screen is a victim of the Bosnian Genocide. So, it's not as extreme as it looks.

I was informed about this on Discord, so perhaps nevermind the dead bodies bit regarding illegal stuff. Though, it's still copyright.

 

[Agnaa]

Copyright issues might be a reason to delete it, but I'll hold off judgement until Wokistan gets a chance to comment again. He knows much more about the background behind it than I do.

I don't know under what circumstances the images used are allowed to be re-used (as I've said, pictures of real people are used in verses without being a copyright issue), so I can't tell if copyright is a legitimate issue here or not.

 

[DarkGrath]

I mean, wouldn't a work have to be published before we even consider posting it on the wiki?

Like, I genuinely don't care about things like the quality, notoriety, or general attitude towards the game itself.

But if it was literally never published, than it's analogous to an author publishing a verse on here for a book they wrote because "my friends read it". This isn't an official piece of media by any stretch.

 

[Antvasima]

DarkGrath and Medeus make good points. I do not think that we should host an unpublished and possibly illegal obscure work.

 

[Agnaa]

How many times do I have to re-quote that we already allow dozens of unpublished works?

It isn't though. We have tons of self-published works. Parahumans (Verse) and SCP Foundatio as some of the most notable examples.

And, like every other time using copyright as a measuring stick has been suggested, that is an absolutely awful way to decide what works are allowed. Firstly, copyright is automatic, so everything gets it by default. Secondly, if you want a more manual thing like trademarks, then any sufficiently obsessed shitty author can get their work trademarked through a few forms and a couple hundred bucks. It'd merely weed out legitimately popular creators who just don't bother with that.

Read the bloody thread. It's like none of you are thinking of the consequences of removing things for the reasons you want to remove them. You're not considering all the unpublished verses everyone's okay with that would be hit by this.

 

[Antvasima]

I think that it is the combination of several issues at once that is the main problem with this game, not just one of them.

 

[DarkGrath]

Hm. Well, alright. If we allow unpublished works on this wiki under certain circumstances, the this might be acceptable.

We still really have to evaluate what exactly these circumstances are though. If we say that just about any unpublished verse is allowed, irregardless of circumstances, then we lead into problems like the one I mentioned before; regarding authors making verses on here for books they've never published.

We do frankly need to treat unpublished works by a different standard than we do published works, as even considering them an official piece of media is extremely dubious. At what point would the characters within an unpublished verse be more appropriate for something along the lines of the FC/OC wiki, and how do we determine if it is still appropriate for this wiki instead?

 

[Antvasima]

DarkGrath makes a good point. We need to draw the line somewhere, but where exactly is ill-defined.

 

[Agnaa]

The circumstance we've always come to are simply; notability outside of vs debating communities, a coherent canon & continuity which feats can be drawn from, and being able to be reliably translated into English.

The first takes care of authors making profiles for their own things, as well as verses like Suggsverse.

The second takes care of things like asdf movie, a popular yet incoherent series of animated meme skits from which meaningful profiles are nigh-impossible.

The third takes care of situations like Golovachov verse, where statistics come solely from one supporter who can't provide independent translations, making the profiles unreliable.

 

[Antvasima]

I suppose that makes sense, but do we have this defined in our Site Rules or Editing Rules?

 

[Tllmbrg]

The circumstance we've always come to are simply; notability outside of vs debating communities, a coherent canon & continuity which feats can be drawn from, and being able to be reliably translated into English.
The first takes care of authors making profiles for their own things, as well as verses like Suggsverse.

The second takes care of things like asdf movie, a popular yet incoherent series of animated meme skits from which meaningful profiles are nigh-impossible.

The third takes care of situations like Golovachov verse, where statistics come solely from one supporter who can't provide independent translations, making the profiles unreliable.

Seems good to me

 

[Agnaa]

I'm not sure if the third point is mentioned, but the first/second is mentioned in Editing Rules (albeit, without a definition of notable/popular):

The VS Battles Wiki is, first and foremost, a fictional character indexing site. All featured characters in our profiles should originate from actual stories, from notable or popular works. A story includes a plot, a fictional setting, and having a defined canon. At the very least, the setting should be entirely fictional in nature, with no true bearing over the real world.

I also failed to mention that there's a dozen other bits of criteria that target certain niches of content. Like how that last sentence there targets review shows/reaction youtubers with lore. And how other rules target reality TV, memes, advertisements, talk shows, music videos, stage personas, educational program hosts, corporate mascots, fanfiction, etc.

 

[Agnaa]

As an aside, using copyrighted content might be an issue worthy of deleting HK97, but I'm not sure yet. It would need to be made into an actual rule alongside deleting HK97, and I'd also need to check with Woki that those concerns are legitimate.

I'd also wonder how it would affect verses like Red vs Blue (or to a certain extent, even DotA 2) that started off very shady on copyright before going legitimate, or verses like JoJo's Bizarre Adventure that still run into issues with copyright (requiring workarounds like Filthy Acts at a Reasonable Price). I'd like something like this to be carefully considered with experts on those at-risk verses before being implemented.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. This should preferably be properly evaluated, yes.

 

[Tllmbrg]

JoJo mainly runs into copyright issues because of Stand names tho, it doesn't really extend any further then that so in practice just means anime has to change names of stuff

 

[The_Impress]

I honestly don't see a problem with just deleting a verse without having to make rules that **** up completely legitimate verses in the process and lead to more loopholes.

Just delete the profile if almost everyone agrees it doesn't belong, consensus matters on this wiki more often than not and in my opinion the staff as a collective should hold enough power amongst themselves to know when to rightfully delete a verse which may be harming the wiki's reputation, without having to put 90 different guidelines

 

[Antvasima]

Well, as you have probably noticed, I have a very hard time making up my mind about this, as both sides have valid arguments.

 

[The_Impress]

It's an unofficial and unimportant alongside joke verse that violates copyright to a massive extent and is tasteless enough to add people's corpses without permission in its game over screen. Add to that the fact it's unreleased and politically incorrect to quite an extent. I acknowledge some other verses do this too, but then don't do ALL of them to THIS extent.

I don't think there are many arguments to protect it except finding loopholes in our rules to justify it existing. Just removing it is a better case IMO before folks start using it to justify their own poorly made verses, and then we'd have to add ridiculously authoritarian rules to limit many characters for little to no reason.

 

[Tllmbrg]

Can't you argue removing this verse can lead us to a downward spiral of verse banning because they're in good taste?

Honestly only real issue is the possible copyright issues, also as Agnaa said this place already has rules to cover people trying to push in their verses

 

[Kepekley23]

Agnaa, going by your own logic, our "notability outside of VS debating communities" standard is compltely arbitrary, meaning we could potentially twist the rules enough to allow the Suggsverse and other similarly spurious works to have profiles here.

 

[Antvasima]

Okay. I think that we should remove this then. There are only 3 pages for the verse, and it isn't popular at all. It isn't that big a deal to do so.

Hong Kong 97

Chi

Tong Shau Ping

 

[InfiniteSped]

Should prob wait for Wok to comment since he made the profiles?

 

[Everyone_is_die]

would you want pages for the enmeys in hk 47 profiles = equal popularity faith is popular yet theres only two paiges

 

[The_Impress]

Wokistan said he was personally neutral overall if the verse gets removed, however he'd like to have a say in the matter nonetheless.

 

[Tllmbrg]

Agnaa, going by your own logic, our "notability outside of VS debating communities" standard is compltely arbitrary, meaning we could potentially twist the rules enough to allow the Suggsverse and other similarly spurious works to have profiles here.

But like verses like Suggsverse aren't allowed because can't be tiered using the tiering system rather then anything to do with popularity

 

[Kepekley23]

> But like verses like Suggsverse aren't allowed because can't be tiered using the tiering system

They can, so this is wrong.

 

[Tllmbrg]

Aren't charcters there above omnipotent tho? At least that's what the work says, dunno doesn't seem tierable here man

 

[Tllmbrg]

Okay. I think that we should remove this then. There are only 3 pages for the verse, and it isn't popular at all. It isn't that big a deal to do so.
Hong Kong 97

Chi

Tong Shau Ping

Worms verse legit only has 1 profile so amount is irrelavant tbh, also if we judge via popularity then how we define not popular? I could say RPC Authority isn't popular since it's competing with SCP Foundation and losing hard so do we delete it?

 

[The_Impress]

It is tierable. The yield is feckin stupid but screaming "OMNIPOTENT" doesn't make one so, as Beyonder may let you know. So it is very definitely tierable

 

[Tllmbrg]

Aren't all the statments in the series about how the charcters are above omnipotent tho? Or a vast majority of them?

 

[Kepekley23]

So? The Pre-Retcon Beyonder was said to be "omnipotent" in every comic run he appeared in. A no limits fallacy does not translate into untierable.

 

[Tllmbrg]

But don't they just have those statetaments and feats that revolve around beating a more omnipotent dude?

Pre-Retcon Beyonder actually had feats which are not on par with an omni

 

[Antvasima]

Virtually all Suggsverse characters would be tier 0, even their fodder. I would much prefer if we do not spam said tier with at least dozens of entries from extremely obscure self-published nonsense.

Anyway, I am fine with if we delete these pages and move on, but suppose that we should wait for Wokistan.

 

[Agnaa]

@Tllmbrg There's not just the stand names (which do cause a legitimate copyright issue), there's also Ungalo.

Agnaa, going by your own logic, our "notability outside of VS debating communities" standard is compltely arbitrary, meaning we could potentially twist the rules enough to allow the Suggsverse and other similarly spurious works to have profiles here.

I don't understand your argument here. All our standards are arbitrary. We could always change the rules to let in other verses. We could change this website into FC/OC wiki if we wanted. Or we could make it "Western tv shows battles wiki". What you're saying just doesn't make any sense to me.

@Zark2099 Not everyone agrees that it doesn't belong. How the **** is this harming the wiki's reputation? (And by the way, in all the other threads about what we allow on the wiki, many staff members were staunchly against deleting verses because "muh reputation").

I'm not looking for loopholes to justify its existence, I'm following the evidence I have to where it leads me. When the pages were first being worked on, I thought it might have reason to be deleted. I talked to people and thought about it, and came to the conclusion that it shouldn't. I'm not some rabid gremlin trying to push this verse through even though I know it shouldn't be here, or something like that.

How does this justify people posting their poorly made verses? I've already gone over the guidelines that we've been using for years and how they stop people from doing that, even if this gets allowed.

Also this part about "we don't even need guidelines anyway!" sounds like you can't write guidelines for it without ******* things up. Like any reason to delete HK97 would also delete other verses but you still wanna do it anyway, so to avoid hypocrisy on this front you claim common sense of the staff members (which don't even unanimously agree with you). If deleting it based on a concrete guideline is troublesome, maybe it shouldn't be deleted.

 

[Tllmbrg]

@Agnaa I see, well I suppose we can always just use localize names for the sake of avoiding that like most subs for JoJo do

 

[Agnaa]

I don't think that's anywhere near necessary. Censoring copyrighted content but still allowing those verses sounds like the worst of both worlds, imo.

 

[Tllmbrg]

I mean it's really light version of that, as log as the feats,abilities and scaling aren't effected I think it should be okay

 

[Agnaa]

Regardless, we do not face issues with copyright by using the real names for JoJo's stands. No change there is necessary.