For this discussion
As we all know, the purpose of TV Tropes is to document tropes used in creative media. However, the fact that a work exists doesn't necessarily mean it can have an article on this site. Before creating such an article, we should confirm that it meets the standards that we have established. The main ones are Notability, Verifiability and Tropability, and there is a separate, superseding standard in our Content Policy.
Please note that even if a work notionally passes these standards, the article we write for it must still be of reasonable quality: stubs may be cut and Zero Context Examples may be removed. See How to Create a Work's Page for more information.
Notability
Notability describes the cultural significance, public interest, and/or popularity of a work.
While sites like Wikipedia may have notability requirements, it is not a standard that we apply on TV Tropes. As long as a work has sufficient creative content to give rise to a minimum number of trope examples, it is good enough for us to document.
In turn, the significance, interest, and/or popularity of a work doesn't give it a pass on our other rules except in very rare cases. "A lot of people like it" is not a valid reason to have an article for something if it doesn't meet tropability standards or violates the Content Policy.
That doesn't mean we automatically have articles for every work, though. Someone still has to put in the effort to write them. If you have to ask, "Why don't we have an article for this," the answer is usually, "Because nobody has made it yet." Please don't ask people to create articles for you. If you don't have time to do it yourself, add it to the List of Shows That Need Summary.
Content creators, including fanfic writers, may make pages for their own works. However, The Fic May Be Yours, but the Trope Page Is Ours and Auto-Erotic Troping apply in such cases.
Verifiability
Verifiability is the ability for any random person to check that the trope examples our site claims to be found in a work actually are found in it.
This means that a work cannot be wholly private, viewable by invitation, or exist only in the mind of its creator. It also has to be released to the public. Works hosted exclusively on chatting platforms like Discord or transmitted via messaging services like email are considered private even if they have free-to-join links. Commercial works are verifiable as long as the general public can pay to watch, read, or play them—these include works that exist behind online subscriptions (e.g., Patreon tiers).
What about works that don't exist yet, or have ceased to exist? This is where notability starts to come into consideration. To prevent Speculative Troping, a commercial work has specific rules for when an article may be created, usually involving a release date and actual content (a trailer or gameplay preview). Content Leaks are not permitted as source material. Fanfics and other non-commercial projects may be troped by their creators as Unpublished Works, but may not be moved to the wiki proper until they are released. Video games that are in closed alpha or beta and under NDA may not be troped on the basis of any material that is subject to those restrictions.
The original language of the work doesn't matter as long as it can be translated, but all articles on the wiki must be written in English before any non-English versions are created. (Between American and Commonwealth English, the preference is for the work's country of origin first and whoever writes the article second.)
Works that cease to exist are rare thanks to the Internet preserving nearly everything, but it does happen. If it can be shown that a work has been taken down and is no longer available, and there is no extant marketing material, reviews, Let's Plays, or other evidence that can be referred to, our article may be cut or moved to Darth Wiki, depending on the situation. Such cases should be brought up on Ask The Tropers or the forums.
Tropability
Tropability is the existence of distinct, creative, narrative content in a work.
- Distinct means that only content that appears in a work can be included. Derivative Works may reference or incorporate tropes from other works, but those are only considered and listed as examples if they appear in or are discussed by the derivative work. This includes Roleplays, Let's Plays, Reaction Videos, and Video Review Shows: we can't list the tropes from the thing that is being played, reviewed, or reacted to, only tropes that appear in the work itself.
- Creative content means that there must be some creative elements to the work. Biographical and documentary works, news reporting, vlogs and blogs, encyclopedic works, sporting events, and so on are typically not designed with creative expression in mind and thus aren't interesting to us. They can be creative in their presentation and framing: such works would be indexed under Non-Fiction.
- Narrative content is important because we are about storytelling. A vlog or essay may have technical tropes, but unless there's some kind of story being told, it's not interesting from our perspective. In mediums that may not inherently have a narrative structure, such as songs, games, and art, tropes distinct to those mediums, such as gameplay or show rules, may substitute for narrative tropes.
With these things in mind, to be tropable, a work must contain some content that gives rise to plot and characterization tropes. This means that it needs at least three examples that fall into those categories. Setting, Paratext, and Narrative Filigree tropes do not count towards this requirement, nor do Trivia or Audience Reactions.
Real Life Troping is generally prohibited in work articles, meaning that we cannot list trope examples that apply to writers, actors, performers, artists, players, vloggers, users of a website, or any other people who are not explicitly characters in the works themselves. In particular, TV Tropes does not recognize Kayfabe as an excuse to trope real people. If an article spends an excessive amount of time troping real people, it may not have enough narrative content to be worth keeping.
Creators may have TV Tropes articles, but those articles must concentrate on their body of work and Trivia related to it. They may not apply tropes to the real people as if they are characters. A person without a body of creative work may not have a Creator article, although if they are significant for cultural or historic reasons, they may have a Useful Notes article.
Websites should not normally have TV Tropes articles unless they are credited in the production of tropable works. Sites that host works without receiving publication credit are not tropable. Communities where people collaborate on works are not tropable, but the works they create may be.
Internet memes are not "community-made works" or fanworks; they don't get their own articles. If they're based on another work, they are Audience Reactions and are troped under Memetic Mutation. The same applies to Creepypasta works without a central story. To qualify for a work article, there must be a creative effort that can be credited to a specific individual, group, or company. "Stuff that the Internet does as part of its collective consciousness" is not tropable as a discrete work.
Works that discuss tropes, such as Analysis Channels and Video Review Shows, without creating their own narrative content are not generally tropable. See Books on Trope for specific exceptions.
User-generated content in videogames that allow freedom of creativity and interaction are not works. However, Game Mods that significantly change the narrative may be troped as fan works in the VideoGame namespace. As noted above, Let's Plays are not considered "user-generated content" and are not tropable unless they add significant, original content that does not exist within the work itself. Examples of the latter:
- Creating a fictional/roleplaying narrative that is distinct from the game being played or the real person doing the LP.
- Using the game as a medium to craft original content: songs, videos, machinima, and so on.
- "MSTing" or creatively riffing on the game's content, as long as it's sufficiently transformative.
The Content Policy
Regardless of any of the above rules, if a work does not pass our Content Policy, it may not have an article on the wiki. This includes Porn Without Plot, works that sexualize children, and works whose main purpose is to pander to fetishes, including fetishized violence.
