Statler And Waldorf stingers: Part 2

Bring it up on the page's discussion.

Well, the annoying/not funny case is pretty strong. They are mostly annoying and not funny. Especially the ones that diss the wiki. Not everyone gets that it is self-disparagement, mostly because — like me — they would have to look up who "Statler and Waldorf" are.

The joke relies on people being in on the joke. Bad play, since every page is potentially the first page anyone reads.

The joke relies on people being in on the joke.

Again, we can be saying this about almost every stinger we want to name.

You Will Be Beethoven's stinger is just a stupid pun on 'I'll be back.' Infant Immortality's is a reference to a Blue Oyster Cult song. I can't even figure out the joke in the stinger on The Stinger.

Honestly, I don't like stingers on Wiki pages as a whole. The Statler and Waldorf ones just annoy me more than others.

The "I'll be Bach" thing is at least short and doesn't diss the wiki.

The S&W stingers are several lines of 'doesn't work.'

"Diss the wiki," you make it sound like Statler And Waldorf's opinions are supposed to be taken seriously (or even actually existing).

And not all of these existing stingers are even about the wiki, anyway.

Regardless, short or long, diss or no diss, every stinger we got here is still worth about the same in the end: A trite attempt at casual and/or referential humor that any given reader is going to either get or not get, like or dislike.

edited 7th Jan '11 12:04:38 AM by SeanMurrayI

So ... yeah, I'd agree that stingers are more don't work than does work.

I think Fast Eddie nailed something that annoys me particularly about S&W stingers as opposed to "regular" stingers : their format makes them at least three lines long, while nearly all the others I've seen are much shorter (usually only one short line). This may be an explanation of why they feel so intrusive to some people.

I mean, a long stinger kinda defeats the point, doesn't it ?

I dislike the fact that the presence of these puts an article on an arbitrary index that has nothing to do with the trope/work articles themselves.

I would generally agree that these should probably be limited to articles that involve either the source material, or stinger/Statler-and-Waldorf-Routine related tropes.

So, the proposed action is to cut the S&W index and to zap stingers that are not immediately relevant to the article. Works for me.

edited 7th Jan '11 5:00:16 AM by FastEddie

I don't have an issue with the Statler And Waldorf page itself, as it will remain a useful place to collect those stingers that do stay. I just think that it should not be an index.

edited 7th Jan '11 5:49:47 AM by Meeble

You know, I just thought of something that might work for everyone. What if we turn Statler And Waldorf into a Just for Fun page, and put all their jokes about pages there? We can do it in a format like:

• Apologises a Lot
  -> Statler: It looks like they're sorry for creating this page.
  -> Waldorf: Yeah, and I'm sorry for reading it!
  -> Both: Do-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho!

That way, people still get to make the quips and it won't annoy people who don't go to the page.

edited 7th Jan '11 10:23:43 AM by shimaspawn

It already is a Just for Fun page. (Fast Eddie took down the tags on those pages for some reason I have not yet determined.)

I suggest that we we compromise: keep them, but put them in soiler tags

^^So that's why I'm not seeing tag on the S&W page anymore.

So, the proposed action is to cut the S&W index and to zap stingers that are not immediately relevant to the article.

Though even when a stinger is relevant to a page, it still isn't contributing much to the page as a whole apart from a trite laugh that isn't ever all that necessary to any page. Their only available defense under all circumstances would be, "It's Just for Fun."

edited 7th Jan '11 10:57:13 AM by SeanMurrayI

Random note: Statler and Waldorf were a pair of Muppets in the Muppet Show who usually dissed the other Muppets or the show itself. Or anyone, really. They were Caustic Critics.

Wish that we could keep them, but if admin fiat wins, people have to deal. Not that big a deal in this case anyway.

That being said, may I (sorta offtopicly) say that having anything in a page in supersecret spoiler text isn't that good of an idea? At that point you could just comment out the stinger (or whatever it is) and leave it for people in the code. At least spoiler tags you can turn off, or have those little lines at the side to tell they are there.

edited 7th Jan '11 11:27:41 AM by TheInferno

so is it safe for me to start deleting them yet?

We're certainly not going to spoiler-tag Statler And Waldorf. That's... backwards.

Also, having to ask "okay do I have consensus/permission to do controversial action X yet?" in a thread like this is never a good idea. It's technically called for but it violates the delicate ballet dance of resolutiodynamics. For one thing, someone has suggested we at least let the S&W bits hang out in a place of their own, and we wouldn't be able to salvage them if you went around deleting them now.

But per Eddie, moving seems to be okay.

edited 7th Jan '11 12:05:19 PM by TripleElation

The plan of moving them to the S&W page seems to be a good middle-ground.

edited 7th Jan '11 12:02:12 PM by FastEddie

so is it safe for me to start deleting them yet moving them to the S&W page yet?

edited 7th Jan '11 12:07:45 PM by dontcallmewave

As an aside, a suggested list of pages which are candidates for actually keeping a S&W stinger regardless (though maybe get a less groan-inducing one), and therefore we should hold our horses on moving:

• Accentuate the Negative
• Anyone Remember Pogs?
• Boke and Tsukkomi Routine
• Crossover Punchline
• Edutainment Show
• Everything's Better With Muppets
• Fantastic Sapient Species Tropes
• Greek Chorus
• Incredibly Lame Pun
• Memetic Mutation (Live-Action TV)
• Memetic Mutation (TV Tropes)
• The Muppet Show
  • A Muppet Family Christmas
  • Muppet Viral Videos
• Name and Name
• The Nostalgia Critic
• Statler and Waldorf
• Take That (Live-Action TV)
• Those Two Guys
• [Trope Name] Injokes
• TV Tropes Wiki Drinking Game

edited 7th Jan '11 12:42:04 PM by TripleElation

I've started moving them, I would appreciate some help with this.

You... mean the ones other than the ones I listed, right?

I started moving them before I saw your post. I haven't had time to move more than a few though

^^^^How exactly is Anyone Remember Pogs? fitting Statler and Waldorf's MO (assuming that this is the criteria you're using)?

It's also pointless to have on the TV Tropes Wiki Drinking Game if we're going to move them off most, if not all, pages they're on (The stingers on that page are even actually longer than the page description).

In fact, any list we'd want to make for pages to keep this is going to wind up looking pretty arbitrary (already, we're overlooking their appearance on the MST 3 K page but want to call their appearances on Nostalgia Critic and Greek Chorus pages keepers—even though they're not even a Greek Chorus to begin with).

edited 7th Jan '11 1:12:50 PM by SeanMurrayI