Both a
Wiki Trope, and a
TV Tropes guideline.
Sometimes, the example section of a page gets bloated. The reasons why vary, but we typically deal with it in one of these ways:
- Prune the examples: Editors review the example list looking for ones that are poorly written (or off-topic) which can be removed from the page, leaving behind the good examples.
- Kill It with Fire: Delete the entire article as having poor focus.
- Create a set of subpages for it: Useful if the page is sufficiently popular, and also sufficiently objective, that deletion is undesirable. (The results may possibly be put under Sugar Wiki or Darth Wiki if not objective, and sufficiently popular and straightforward (e.g., Crowning Moment of Awesome, So Bad Its Horrible.)
- Cut and prohibit all examples from the page: The course of action for which this term is named — what's left is a readable definition and some scar tissue saying "No examples please. This only defines the term." Everything else goes in the wastebasket. note Sometimes, the Example Sectionectomy is pre-emptive, as was the case in the launching of Pet Peeve Trope
- Leave the trope where it is, but make the example section a separate page, sometimes on the Sugar Wiki or Darth Wiki.
- Rename a trope. Sometimes it's the title which can cause the whole mess. See Everything You Wanted to Know About Changing Names for more detail on that front.
- Move examples to another wiki entirely.
Examples of type 2:
Examples of type 3:
- Any page that was on Multipage Tropes back when we listed those.
- Fridge Logic → now largely located in the Headscratchers namespace → Now combined with other Fridge thoughts in its own section.
Examples of type 4:
Example of Type 5:
Examples of type 6:
Examples of type 7:
Examples of Types 1 (and to a lesser extent, 2) are virtually unlistable. Due to the way the Wiki works, they are easily lost in the mists of Wikihistory.
Mixed examples:
- Mary Sue received somewhat of a 2/4 hybrid, with the article being (almost?) completely re-written and losing all the examples. Though now it seems the new page is a stitched-up combo of the two versions a-la Frankenstein's monster... We're not sure what to call it.
- Logical Fallacies initially had a spin-off page (Insane Troll Logic) for listing non-specific examples as the page had become rather bloated, and a release valve for non-specific examples was thought desirable (type 5). And then the original page was reorganized so that all the fallacies contained therein were spun off into their own pages (type 3), while the original spin-off had developed through a sort of reverse Trope Decay into a full trope in its own right note An argument so riddled with flaws as to enter the realm of either parody or Poe's Law..
- Everything listed in No Real Life Examples counts as a example of a partial Example Sectionectomy; the scar tissue differs in that it contains "No real life examples, please!" rather than "No examples, please. This only defines the term.", as Real Life is the example subsection most prone to need pruning, for various subtly obvious reasons.
- Wikipedia's "in popular culture" sections have more than a whiff of this.
