Here is my breakdown of the pages for the first two letters of the alphabet (I can do more, but I wanted to get back here before y'all might have finished the conversation.)

Tropes whose Headscratchers articles have redeeming content among the Troper Tales (that is, anecdotal evidence), including those which use anecdotal evidence to illustrate a point rather than attempt to prove or disprove a rule, but should definitely be cleaned up as per the guidelines and restrictions we are discussing for near- future implementation:

• A Degree In Useless
• All Just A Dream (Really needs to be cleaned up, but it seems to be one of the older pages amongst Tropes' Headscratchers pages, and most of the This Troper-ing is toward the top parts of the page).
• Animal Wrongs Group (One pretty big personal example of something to provide credentials for a statement. Really only a borderline example.)
• Bigger Is Better in Bed (...Yeah. There are redeeming factors, but it would take a while to filter them out properly, though nowhere near as long to filter them out lazily.)

Tropes whose Headscratchers articles have almost nothing in the way of Troper Tales (that is, anecdotal examples):

• Action Girl (Has one example of a person planning to use the trope in their writing)
• Alternate Universe (One response which is something along the lines of "Yeah, I was thinking about that, and came to the conclusion X".)
• Always Chaotic Evil (Surprisingly, doesn't have any personal anecdotes aside from a troper bringing up being called "demeaning to his race" for being, presumably, black and playing a Drow as D&D canon says drow should be played [and not as a black stereotype, or black anything for that matter].)
• An Aesop (One-line response mentioning their authorial intent and Death Of The Author pulling the trope into play.)
• Balance Between Good and Evil (contains a few opinions, but they're all based off of the page description or understandings/refutations of the page description, and the only reason I'm even putting this in Bprderline is because someone technically used their preferece of the Dragonlance system as a personal anecdote. This is, i think, one of the best examples I've seen of evidence toward keeping the current system even if we rename the Headscratchers/Tropes namespace.)
• Bluenose Bowdlerizer (I have an old edit there which is sort of a personal anecdote, though I tried to limit it to what would help with the clarification of what I was asking. I clearly under-limited myself, though. There's also a Troper Tales-ish response to an entry further down the page.)

Tropes with NO Headscratchers-page Troper Tales (as far as I could tell from a more-than-cursory skim):

• Ambiguously Gay
• Americans Hate Tingle (Needs to be cleaned up for unrelated reasons; mostly just one person using the page as a platform for another issue at the bottom of the page.)
• Amoral Attorney
• Averted Trope (Some of it should be on the Discussion page, in my opinion, but no personal anecdotes.)
• Be Careful What You Wish For
• Belligerent Sexual Tension (Has a reference to what may have been a personal example regarding a fictional couple, the actual example having already been excised.)
• Bishonen
• Blind And The Beast
• Blood Bath
• Bound And Gagged
• Butch Lesbian
• Butt Monkey

Special Needs pages:

• Animation Tropes (This single example should go in a page for a single animation trope, but I don't know which one off the top of my head. I do know that the answer is usually to make it look more high-budget and feel more realistic.)
• Better Days (...is a Work, not a Trope.)
• Blind Idiot Translation (...has been cut or wiped; I'm not sure which.Either way, it isn't locked.)
• But Not Too Black (I'm really not sure what counts as a personal anecdote and what doesn't for this trope. I'm not sure if that Headscratchers/Trope page has redeeming content not better suited for the Discussion page, but it gives me a headache to try to figure out what all these ractists, non-racists, and/or racists-who-think-they-aren't-racists mean, especially since I would first need to figure out which are which, and that's even more of a headache.)

There was a lot of cleanup I wanted to do, but this is already a tangent from something less important that I was working on. I don't want to go on a tangent that's less important than this, because that really is a slippery slope...

There has probably been some definition slippage as the list went on and I gained more context, but I tried to keep the slippage guided away from my favour, to try to keep things from becoming significantly biased.

edited 28th Jun '12 4:24:35 AM by JET73L

Calling crowner in favor of cutting all Headscratchers pages for tropes.

Is there anything else that needs to happen before cutting them? I'm not sure about disposing of all of them the normal way, since that would clog up the cutlist, but sometimes it does get dozens of the same type of thing at once so I guess it's okay. If we want to preserve any with over 10 inbounds (highly unlikely though that is), they can be made redirects to the main trope page, or possibly the Analysis tab if there is one.

I'd like to continue pushing my vote to keep or move instead of outright cut, since I think it's unfair to take the crowned action without logging discussion of alternatives.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13087344150A43140100&page=1#22 The post linked above gives a good reason why we can't just have people discuss this in the forums, and posts above it preemptively agree with my reasoning of why this stuff can't be discussed in the Discussion namespace (because Discussion is generally for discussing the pages, not the subjects, except when the page and subject crosses over). If I'm wrong, I think it would be good for efficiency and tranquility to make it more clear that, for trope pages, Discussion covers the trope as well as the page.
I couldn't find Analysis in that, but it may be because Analysis was made after (if not in response to) that discussion. Again, I'm under the impression that Analysis is meant to be more of a place to propose and discuss interpretations rather than request explanations (which itself is the purpose of Headscratchers for works, so why not tropes? That's not rhetorical, I really want to know why Headscratchers by a different name for Tropes is such a bad thing to have, when Just Bugs Me by a different name was considered a cross-namespace improvement), but that's my understanding from seeing the pages in use, and it could just be that every single person whose entry I've seen was completely missing the point. If that's the case, then not only should an informative banner be put up in Analysis telling people how to use it, but logistically (not, in my opinion, ethically) every such use of Analysis should be wiped to more easily allow the intended, Headscratchers-esque use of the namespace.

Looking at some of these, I noticed that many of the trope head-scratchers are actually leftovers from IJBM, long before the change to Headscratchers. I wouldn't bother picking through the pages and salvaging anything.

For the record, after trope headscratchers are cut, what's the new appropriate place to have a discussion organized by question, as seen in Headscratchers.Super Deformed and Headscratchers.Half Dressed Cartoon Animal? I imagine that after a consensus has formed around an answer, it'd be moved to Analysis, but I'm not sure we want to have Thread Mode in Analysis while forming the consensus. I thought Headscratchers was supposed to keep CITMP out of document-mode namespaces.

This may answer your question

If the question is about how the trope functions or its applicability, then it would go on the Discussion page or in the Trope Talk forum. If it's about how the trope came to be and its role in media, society, etc., then it's a subject for Analysis.

So... are we free to start cutlisting these pages?

@JET 73 L: I'm going to be honest; waiting until now to say this, whatever your actual intention, feels a lot like an attempt to circumvent the crowner.

I had been (mis?)using HS and WMG for the Fridge Logic implications of a given trope, just as Required Secondary Powers covers such implications of a given character's extraordinary abilities. For example, Super Deformity requires Super Neck Muscles, Bat Stretchy Clothes, and Bat Hair Cleaning Tools.

Septimus Heap proposed in #21 to ask questions in Trope Talk and summarize answers to Analysis. I've also seen Writer's Block used for this if someone is trying to flesh out the use of a given trope in one's own work. So if HS (and possibly WMG) pages for tropes are to be cut, whatever is already answered needs to be salvaged for Analysis first, and there needs to be a clear explanation on the namespaces' respective home pages (Headscratchers.Home Page and WMG.Programme Note): "These pages are for specific works. If you have a question about the trope itself, or about works in general that use this trope, ask questions in Trope Talk and summarize answers to the trope's Analysis page."

edited 5th Jul '12 12:03:35 PM by DamianYerrick

The "clear explanation" can also go on Headscratchers.Tropes.

OK, I have started in cutlisting headscratchers subpages and moving useful content over to Analysis. I'll also check for unindexed analysis subpages when I have time.

I just did two: Analysis.Mermaid Problem and Analysis.Half Dressed Cartoon Animal. Am I on the right track?

So what happened to this? Still seeing trope pages with Headscratchers? Like Fan Myopia.

The crowner is overwhelmingly in favor. I'd say let's start the cutting.

If it's possible, instead of the basic cut page, I'd like it if we could turn them into something along the lines of "Tropes don't get Headscratchers pages. If you have questions, use the discussion tab or create a thread in Trope Talk." Or would that be too difficult?

The Headscratchers.Tropes page will become this, as was said earlier in this thread. A tech-level solution isn't worth the effort.