TVTropes Ideation Dataset: Collaborative Trope Development on the Trope Launch Pad (2020-2022)

The research context is TVTropes.org, an ideation wiki website where users create and share tropes used in a wide range of creative works such as television, films, literature, and comics. Tropes, which are descriptions and instances of plot conventions and devices, serve as tools that creators use to convey their ideas to the audience in storytelling. They facilitate guiding the audience through the story in a familiar and comprehensible manner. For instance, the trope “Hero’s Journey” is commonly employed as an archetypal story pattern in adventure stories like Star Wars, describing a hero who embarks on an adventure, overcomes a crisis, and returns home transformed.This website uses a subwiki, the Trope Launch Pad (TLP), for new trope ideas (henceforth referred to as TLP tropes) to be proposed and evaluated by the wiki community. For each TLP trope, there is a working title, synopsis, and a description of the idea usually containing hyperlinks to launched tropes for references. These hyperlinks underscore the existing launched tropes connected to the new TLP trope. They enable users to directly access related tropes, facilitating immediate browsing and deeper engagement with the content of the TLP trope. On the TLP trope page, users can comment in the discussion section, edit the trope content, and cast anonymous positive or negative votes. When positive votes exceed negative votes by at least five, the TLP trope can be launched. TLP tropes without sufficient positive votes will be discarded eventually.The TLP functions as a collaborative ideation space where each new trope idea is pitched by a sponsor – the first user to propose the idea – and is then open to evaluation and editing by the broader community. In this crowdsourcing idea refinement setting, community members participate by discussing the trope, suggesting amendments and related tropes, and proposing examples of the trope in various media. Ideators may choose to post responses to the feedback given and/or integrate their suggestions into the crowdsourced idea via the editing function (see Figure 5.2). This interactive process is essential for evolving a trope from a fledging idea to a robust entry in the TVTropes.org catalogue. Notably, the site allows any member to edit a trope, and if the original sponsor steps away, another member can assume responsibility, effectively broadening the ideation team.To quantitatively analyze the creative process, a Python scraper was utilized to collect extensive data on the TLP from May 14, 2020, to December 23, 2022. The dataset includes 4,498 trope proposals with outcomes ranging from successful launches to rejections. Through this research, the dynamics of collaboration and innovation in digital crowdsourcing platforms are better understood.

本研究背景设定于TVTropes.org，该网站是一个创意维基百科，用户在此处创建和分享应用于广泛创意作品（如电视、电影、文学和漫画）中的情节惯例和技巧。这些情节惯例（又称‘惯例’）是对情节惯例和技巧的描述及实例，是创作者用以向观众传达其思想于叙事过程中的工具。它们有助于以熟悉且易于理解的方式引导观众穿梭于故事之中。例如，‘英雄之旅’这一惯例常被用作冒险故事（如《星球大战》）中的典型故事模式，描述了一位踏上冒险之旅、克服危机并最终蜕变归来的英雄。该网站采用子维基——情节启动平台（以下简称TLP）——来提出并评估由维基社区提出的新颖情节想法。对于每个TLP情节，都有一个工作标题、概要以及包含对已启动情节超链接的思想描述。这些超链接突显了与新的TLP情节相关联的现有已启动情节。它们使用户能够直接访问相关情节，从而便于即时浏览并深入探究TLP情节的内容。在TLP情节页面上，用户可以在讨论区发表评论、编辑情节内容，并对匿名投以正负投票。当正票数至少比负票数多出五票时，TLP情节便可启动。缺乏足够正票数的TLP情节最终将被淘汰。TLP作为一个协作创意空间，每个新的情节想法都由赞助者——即首先提出该想法的用户——提出，随后对更广泛的社区开放以供评估和编辑。在此众包创意精炼的设置中，社区成员通过讨论情节、提出修订和相关情节的建议，以及提出该情节在不同媒体中的实例来参与其中。发起者可以选择对反馈进行回应，并/或通过编辑功能将建议整合到众包想法中（见图5.2）。这一互动过程对于将情节从萌芽的想法发展成TVTropes.org目录中的成熟条目至关重要。值得注意的是，该网站允许任何成员编辑情节，如果原始赞助者退出，其他成员可以接替其责任，有效地扩大了创意团队。为了定量分析创意过程，研究者利用Python爬虫从2020年5月14日至2022年12月23日收集了TLP的大量数据。该数据集包括4,498个情节提案，其结果从成功启动到被拒绝不等。通过这项研究，对数字众包平台上的协作和创新动态有了更深入的了解。