Here's a thread where you can help us clean out sinkholes, be it a joke fulfillment link, All-Blue Entry, or anything else. Normally, you can just remove them yourself, but if in doubt or you need assistance, feel free to ask.

Edited by Brainulator9 on Jan 17th 2020 at 6:40:25 AM

I've started working on the chain sinkhole problems on the Creator.John Kricfalusi article.

This being a sinkhole cleanup thread, I'd advise to be on the lookout for Captain Obvious shoehorns (sometimes replacing Exactly What It Says on the Tin or being put in somple words like "Duh!"), because these are awfully common.

We have Captain Obvious cleanup here. I left it at ~4800 wicks here when I considered it done.

This ATT query said that ROCEJ warnings and sinkholes should be removed. Perhaps start now?

The ones on a redirect here are smaller. Maybe start there?

Once again naming Blatant Lies, Sarcasm Mode, and Understatement for potential cleanup.

Same with Don't Explain the Joke, Incredibly Lame Pun (which isn't even a trope), Up To Eleven, Running Gag, and Rule of Three (the last two of which violate Weblinks Are Not Examples in a way), if anyone's got the time.

Added a list of pages, including Administrivia pages and redirects, that attract sinkholes like flies to a banana.

Does Tropes Are Tools and its redirects count as such a magnet?

I once saw one of the mods declare Incredibly Lame Pun as a lost cause, if that means anything. Though Just For Pun is the same problem, if anyone were crazy enough to actually try the cleanup.

I've seen plenty of Moments sinkholes (mainly to the ones on Sugar Wiki) on non-YMMV pages. Well, with the exception of Shocking Moments, since it's a very recent addition to the family... though I'd imagine its predecessor, Holy Shit Quotient, has probably been sinkholed a lot.

Re: Rule of Three: A pet peeve of mine is when Rule of Three is sinkholed to the third item in a list with more than three items, even more so than when it's sinkholed to the third item in a three-point list.

Re: Incredibly Lame Pun: Septimus Heap did indeed call those sinkholes a lost cause, though I forget which thread that was in. (Edit: Here's the post in question.)

Edit: Flat "What" and Precision F-Strike are common sinkhole targets. Flat "What" sinkholes often ignore the "Flat" in the name.

Edit: I don't know how I missed this one in my previous revisions to this post, but "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer is an IUEO trope that is prone to getting sinkholed, despite the prominent warning in the description. It's nowhere near as a bad as I Am Not Making This Up was, but it's still something I've seen.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 18th 2020 at 9:41:33 AM

On WrittenByTheWinners.Real Life, there is this header at the top:

To minimize the danger of history politicizing discussion, please do not add any examples that are less than 200 years in the past.

Since we recently decided that most ROCEJ potholes are no longer allowed on the wiki, should we remove the second pothole in this header?

Why remove the banner? It's there to state that examples from less than 200 years ago are not allowed.

Edited by FridgeGuy2016 on Feb 27th 2020 at 4:00:39 AM

I would say so yes.

It should be brought up in this thread to see if it's worth being put on No Recent Examples, Please! or if we should just remove the banner altogether.

Edited by Serac on Feb 27th 2020 at 5:29:47 AM

I would say Tropes Are Tools counts as a sinkhole magnet, since it's about not writing entries as "good" or "bad" for a particular trope to be present, but its redirect, Tropes Are Not Bad, gets thrown around to say "but I like this", which is misuse.

Also, don't forget potholing the trope on the list, like:

• Frozen Evil in a Lake:

Edited by maxwellsilver on Mar 10th 2020 at 1:24:47 PM

There's this from Lemon:

By the way, we don't want to get into trouble with our advertisers again, so No Examples Please.

Of course, it's bad enough when potholes are adjacent, but it's worse when a single word is split to fit multiple potholes. Also, since Example Sectionectomy seems to refer to different types of example removal rather than "no examples, please", should that be changed?

Swapped out for a more standard notice.

I remember someone saying we don't pothole Vanilla Protagonist, among other tropes often used to bash. What are some other examples of "character" tropes that get potholed a lot, that aren't allowed?

YMMV character tropes (like Vanilla Protagonist), and all other pages marked as YMMV, shouldn't be wicked in the main wiki^note Unless on a page also marked YMMV. An exception can be made when they are being used in-universe, although if possible you should instead link the page-in-question's in-universe counterpart.

This type of sinkhole is referred to as "covert opinions".

Edited by FridgeGuy2016 on Apr 9th 2020 at 10:42:05 AM

Isn't the whole point of Sarcasm Mode to be potholed to indicate sarcasm? Also, I constantly see the word "cunt" potholed to Country Matters, and "fuck" is often potholed to Precision F-Strike even if it doesn't actually fit the trope.

Edited by rjd1922 on Jun 1st 2020 at 7:44:59 AM

Sarcasm Mode is apparently meant for in-universe sarcasm, but it isn't IUEO. So even I'm not sure what it is aside from a sinkhole magnet.

Square Peg, Round Trope directly states it's not to be used for random potholes of sarcasm itself.

Sincerity Mode explicitly states it is meant to be potholed to indicate sincerity, so I think Square Peg, Round Trope is wrong here.

I mean, if they're meant to just be pothole magnets then why are they also tropes? Misleading.

I only see them being potholed on tbe forums.

Now Sarcasm Mode might have merit as I have seen it being used in comics and such. But Sincerity Mode seems to only be used over be use in our forums. In fact, I think that's pretty much the only reason why it exists

Edited by MacronNotes on Jun 1st 2020 at 11:12:15 AM

So are all these various modes actual tropes ?

I thought they were just for forums hence why they don't have any examples on page.