This has seemingly always been a problem with this trope. Not all the guesses are wild! A few months ago, this problem was supposedly solved by making any sane guesses no longer be on WMG pages. One big problem though: what happens to the legitimate theories? We would need a new trope for this, or maybe at the very least split all examples on a WMG page between "sane" and "insane, " or something like that.

If you have a legitimate theory, why not share it with your friends, or on the show's wiki, or on its IMDB forum, or on our forum thread for the show? Why post it on one of our pages? Our pages are for tropes.

I mean, maybe have a WMG-esque page for legitimate theories.

But why? Why here?

Despite its breezy atmosphere, TV Tropes is a website designed for literary criticism. If we have WMG, we should have a section for less insane guesses too.

I've always seen WMG used for both "wild" and reasonable theories.

But this isn't really an issue for the TRS, so moving to Wiki Talk.

Routerie when we first started it was called Epileptic Trees (legitimate) or Poison Oak Epileptic Trees (not legitimate).

Wild Mass Guessing SHOULD refer to the nature of the page as a whole, not individual guesses. Sane guesses should go on pages, unless people have insider information and realise they're spoilers.

edited 4th Apr '12 3:18:51 PM by TheOneWhoTropes

This has been brought up before, and I believe there was consensus to soft split examples. Now, that decision was in regards to Grand Unifying Guesses (crossover WMG) and other types of WMG, but it could easily work here as well.

Mind, I don't think it really matters. The WMG pages are doing just fine right now, with serious and silly theories mixed together. The only real problem is on the really big pages, where Jossed and confirmed theories are mixed with all the rest, but generally those eventually get soft split elsewhere (see the El Goonish Shive page) without any concentrated cleanup effort by more than a couple editors.

I see no reason at all to create new pages for different kinds of guesses.

The most fundamental problem with this idea is that the is no objective way to determine what constitutes a reasonable theory.

The second problem is that it would take an insane amount of effort to split up existing WMG pages between "reasonable" and "wild" theories. We already have a great deal of other things going on right now, between Trope Repair, other Special Efforts, various initiatives in Wiki Talk etc, to say nothing of creating new tropes and work pages.

This would be a great deal of work for very little pay off, and would distract people's effort from our core mission of documenting tropes. The private theories are interesting, but are not our core mission. We don't need to have multiple page types and namespaces for that sort of thing.

Solid guesses aren't as annoying to me as the people who run to the WMG pages after an episode to be the first to post one word: "Jossed" on the WM Gs that are disproved. Or worse: Jossed

As if that isn't obvious what it is.

edited 4th Apr '12 4:15:58 PM by pittsburghmuggle

I oppose. Like it's been said above, problems with that page aren't very high on the wiki's priorities, and being a mix of serious and crazy guesses is by no means a problem.

Personally, my only problem is when people make the same stupid WMG over and over again. That one character was Pony Time Lord Haruhi being dreamed by Tommy Westphal was amusing once, but the joke was murdered via hanging ages ago, and people are just laughing at the corpse.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, get new material. Just because you're funny once doesn't mean you're funny forever.

If you have an illegitimate theory, why not share it with your friends, or on the show's wiki, or on its IMDB forum, or on our forum thread for the show? Why post it on one of our pages? Our pages are for tropes.

I don't think the "poison oak" variant is that old...

It's old enough that it was there when I came here, so while it might not be that old, it is certainly older than the current pages.

How would we even sort "reasonable" and "wild"? Especially with Mind Screw-y works.

edited 5th Apr '12 2:27:04 AM by ThatHuman

Yes, who would decide what was reasonable and what was wild?

I've seen a few WMG pages that are soft split between "serious" WMG based on stuff from within the work's canon, and "just for fun" or "funny" WMG for stuff like "its all Ashes to Ashes and X is Gene Hunt", or "X is really a Y(from alternate franchise)" and "X is really a Wholesome Crossdresser(based on no real evidence but they saw a Rule 63 fanart that looked cool)" stuff. That always seemed reasonable to me. No need to create a fresh page when a simple soft split would do. Anything that is a bit borderline can be writer's choice where to put it when they create the entry.

edited 5th Apr '12 8:05:23 AM by CrypticMirror

Indeed, I split the WMG.KingdomHearts page this way. Open theories, jossed theories, confirmed theories, and silly theories all go on their own page. I didn't find it too hard to split them up.

But on pages that aren't threatening to break the wiki, keeping them all together on one page shouldn't be an issue, soft split or lumped together.

Yep, Naruto is split that way too (too much WMG there).

I don't see the reason to split a separate trope/namespace/whatever for normal theories. It's going to be a lot of work for something that isn't actively hurting anyone.

I don't see the need to do this. Many much more pressing things (TRS backlog, wick migration, TRS wick changes, natter cleanup, etc.) are in dire need of editor hours.

Plus, the WMG explanation page already notes that jossed, confirmed, silly, and serious WMG are supposed to be lumped all together.

Yeah, it would be pretty hard to determine what is reasonable and what isn't at some points, and there would likely be fights over a theory fitting one way or another.

If we create the silly/reasonable pages in the first place, then it would be left up to the person adding the WMG, wouldn't it?

I know most of my WMGs would go on the silly page.

Considering that anything put up on the wiki is open for editing, and there will be disagreements on whether something is reasonable or otherwise, I don't think "leave it to the person who posted it first" is a good idea.

Guys, this is what I was referring to.

But that says "The dead serious, the crazy-yet-scarily-accurate theories, and the out there with no basis theories all fit in WMG" If anything that completely destroys your point.