Editing "This Troper"s out of articles: what's the policy?: This Troper

I'll turn this back on you: if you can't be bothered to write your example in the proper voice, why should we go to the trouble of editing it down? This wiki has never been about having first-person conversations with the audience, and This Troper has always been deprecated.

Most This Troper examples that I delete are also Natter anyway.

edited 13th May '11 8:12:56 AM by Fighteer

Right. It isn't much fun to be assigned a rewrite chore by some guy that can't stop talking about himself long enough to write an example.

It's a chore, yes, but if somebody bakes a cake and it comes out looking sloppy you don't just light the cake on fire. You need to put some candles on it first.

...in all seriousness, though, while I agree that it's not fun to go through fixing examples, it is better than just dropping perfectly good ones that only have the problem of not being in third person.

That is not what is happening, or at least it shouldn't. If there's any actual value in the example, it's good form to rewrite it properly. However, in my experience, 99% of uses of This Troper aren't useful examples anyway.

I don't put candles on a cake made from shit. I throw it away.

edited 13th May '11 12:06:30 PM by Fighteer

The only case I've seen where it could be rephrased are cases on YMMVs like "many people (me included) thought Bob was The Scrappy."

edited 13th May '11 12:07:59 PM by SpellBlade

Usually it is not a chore. For example, I came across this on the main page for The Office:

"** I think being a manager at DM in general could be considered an idiot ball. Michael is pretty self-explanatory, Charles starts off quite competent, but ends up trusting Dwight and ultimately being shoehorned out by Michael, Jim goes from being a top salesman and likely the most reasonable of everyone who works in the office, to being completely overwhelmed by the management position. Then there's Deangelo...not to mention Jan's breakdown, Ryan's arrest and David's BSOD. In fact, the only successful examples of DM managers are Josh and Karen. Josh escaped to Staples before it was too late, and Karen wasn't in the position all that long before the company was bought out by Sabre."

Obviously not written by somebody who wanted to talk about him- or herself, nor by somebody who meant any harm. What I did was change it to the following:

"** Being a manager at DM in general could be considered an idiot ball. Michael is pretty self-explanatory, Charles starts off quite competent, but ends up trusting Dwight and ultimately being shoehorned out by Michael, Jim goes from being a top salesman and likely the most reasonable of everyone who works in the office, to being completely overwhelmed by the management position. Then there's Deangelo...not to mention Jan's breakdown, Ryan's arrest and David's BSOD. In fact, the only successful examples of DM managers are Josh and Karen. Josh escaped to Staples before it was too late, and Karen wasn't in the position all that long before the company was bought out by Sabre."

edited 13th May '11 6:54:34 PM by KilgoreTrout

Then you did the right thing. Although that entire entry reads like a Wall of Text that might be better shortened to, "As soon as anyone gets promoted to manager, they get handed one of these."

"I still have this ykttw for this, called "There Is No 'I' In 'Example'"." - Dragon Quest Z

Huh? That YKTTW seems to lack a description, and seems to have several blank replies.

Maybe, Fighteer, but I wouldn't want to do that to the person. It might take a long time to read, but it probably took a longer amount of time to write.

You see, when I first began reading and editing this wiki, whenever somebody would drastically change our outright delete something I contributed I felt as though I'd been slapped in the face. I got pissed and got into a few edit wars. Now I've learned to take it a lot better since then, but I still won't like it if something I contribute gets pulled down, and I don't think too many other people care for it when their contributions get pulled down either.

As far as that specific entry goes, I don't see it as a problem because despite that particular part being sort of WallOfTexty, the entry itself still doesn't take ages to read. Compare that to the page for The Simpsons; when I first looked at it, I was overwhelmed by the number of tropes and examples there were. There wasn't any Wall of Text I could see, but I still knew I wasn't going to come close to reading it all in one sitting. Does that mean it should've been trimmed down? I'd argue no. I'm interested in seeing what everybody has pointed out about the series. I'm interested in seeing other people's counterpoints (which may qualify as natter, but I still like reading them). If you cut it down, it often becomes a lot less interesting and/or entertaining.

Can't say I agree with you, and I'm pretty sure most people don't. I never maintain that anybody's writing is somehow "sacred" or untouchable just because they spent more time working on it. More time to make a natter-filled rambling entry is still a natter-filled rambling entry. If it can be cut down and simplified, do so.

A page full of trope entries isn't that big of a problem. Single trope entries which go on and on and on are much worse. It's a single wall of text rather than many smaller factoids that can be digested in bite-sized chunks.

If you feel really bad about deleting a bad entry outright, just do what I do, put it in discussion and leave a note saying so.

I added "There Is No I In Example" as a redirect. Put the main title in the cut list, but I'm not sure if it will be approved.

Uh... I don't think I can approve something like that without some prior discussion, especially not if it involves a renaming for which there has been no consensus, unless consensus was arrived at in some discussion I missed.

The article, as it currently stands, exists basically to inform people of the problem with the term. I'm unconvinced that cutting it would actually fix the problem.

Oh nevermind, looks like somebody else did it.

edited 14th May '11 2:53:24 PM by BobbyG

I'm also not sure about official policy, but from the looks of Portal's High Octane Nightmare Fuel page, it seems someone's been going through pages and deleting all instances of "This Troper". Not deleting the entire comment, mind you, or changing it to third person. Just the words "This Troper" have been taken out, leaving behind the odd stranded 's, sentences that start in lowercase, and third person he's and she's that pop out of nowhere.

Why the heck was the article cut? Anyway, can we restore the old version of the article? Also, the new version gives no inaction that the phrase is bad on Troper Tales.

"This Troper", "this editor", "I", "me" — or any other form of referring to yourself in an article is bad wiki writing. The article you are writing is for the reader. It is not about you or for you. It's for the reader. Leave yourself out of it. TV Tropes isn't a forum or blog.

By the way, in Troper Tales and the few other places where the story is about you, you should never really need to use This Troper, you could just use "I", or your handle.

Adding commentary to examples

For instance:

• In Firefly, Earth has become inhabitable and is now called "Earth That Was".
  • This Troper thinks the word you're looking for is "uninhabitable".

This is a wiki, and you are allowed and expected to edit other people's general examples. Examples that are full of corrections or that contradict themselves will lead to confusion. The proper thing in this case would've been to quietly add the "un", rather than gloat over a simple mistake.

Telling about your own shenanigans

• This Troper and his best bud in middle school also came up with a Zany Scheme or two.

If you want to tell personal stories, we're interested. Just use Troper Tales, where it is okay to use your handle.

Equivocating

• If this Troper recalls correctly [...]

Be bold. Just put in the recollection.

Soapboxing

• In this Troper's opinion [...]

The articles aren't really about your opinion. Discussions pages are there for that sort of thing.

Validation

• Many people (this Troper included) [...]

Your personal stamp of approval is unnecessary.

Just let the article and its examples be about the trope. It isn't about you, it's about the trope. We're interested in your opinion, but keep it to the discussion page, or a Review page.

edited 17th Jun '11 10:19:44 AM by nuclearneo577

Why rez this discussion when it was clearly over — not to mention not on topic for this forum? Anyway, the article was not cut; Eddie decreed that it shall be in its current form and that's that.