Your early troper shames.

Looking back at the Trash Heap and Thread Anti-Necromancy, it was very much full of the posts that exemplified the worst aspects of my previous personality before I shaped out and matured. I really don't remember that time fondly. It's very much a source of Old Shame that I heavily regret.

In my earliest days here, I used to look for opportunities to take potshots at Pokémon X and Y. I still don't particularly care for the games, but the way I kept going on about them was really bloody annoying.

There was an entire fiasco surrounding the revision of Filk Song, and launching of Fan Music involving me (the one who started the motion) allegedly pushing an agenda of some sorts. That ended up getting my thread temporarily locked on the basis on me speaking out about my issue with the page in a ludicrous amount of different forums. Of course, things did turn out well enough, I proved I didnt't try to "push anything" and my thread was brought back, but I still feel like I must have done something horribly wrong for that to even happen in the first place.

Edited by AoeAbility on Aug 10th 2022 at 10:20:35 AM

I joined back in 2012 and I would complain about fandoms and characters in head scratchers and the forums. Now 10 years later, I’m ashamed. I also realized that I was way too sensitive and now I get annoyed when tropers do the same thing.

It wasn't *as* early, since I'd known the site for years by then, but it was at the point where I first started visiting this site more regularly: I once started a TRS without providing a proper wick check, only six or so on-page examples.

Also, the first draft of the page I made for Power Bomberman was launched with Needs A Better Description tacked on.

A minor one, but I remember mildly wincing at me grammar-cleaning-up on a Complete Monster entry before I knew the cleanup thread for the trope existed. I was sure I didn't notice it there the last time I saw the page but only thought to look at the page history much later.

Also, some old crosswicked examples I wrote may have been in past tense.

My opinion on RWBY took three U tuns, I pointed a page for my RWBY fic and I wish I didn't I shipped Neo and Jone when I wrote it.

I found the site back around 2010/2011 when Cracked linked to it in some articles. I was just out of college and in a slow call center job back then with a lot of downtime and this site wasn't blocked, so I did a lot of reading and lurking.

Then Mass Effect 3 came out in 2012. I hated the ending so much and lashed out with lots of complaining anywhere I could, it's sub-pages, Gainax Ending...it's super shameful looking back.

But...then I started adding some other tropes from the game and then the series and then other series I like and...now over 10 years later, here I am, troping away. I've launched tropes, helped rewrite descriptions, fleshed out series I love...

I've come a long way for someone who probably would have gotten banned three edits in nowadays.

Edited by BeerBaron on Sep 1st 2022 at 10:50:14 AM

I first found TV Tropes in 2009, first started posting on the forums back in 2010 and, well, I said things that would've (rightfully) gotten me at minimum suspended if I'd said them now.

Learning how to shut the fuck up is probably one of the best things I've ever learned.

I did the sin of creating a TLP draft with no real examples for it. Luckily it was back in like, 2012, when things were way more relaxed over there and people were just like "hey good idea but do you have examples?" rather than "bombs ahoy".

Seeing this topic bumped reminded me: it's not on the wiki itself, but I have a document somewhere from right around the time I originally discovered TV Tropes (2011?) where I troped my own comics, which is absolutely riddled with bad troper habits purely because I was trying to imitate what I saw on existing pages. It's always been in the back of my mind as an object lesson of why cleanups are so important.

I wrote multiple Woolseyism examples that were overly gushy.

I thought Rolling Updates was plagiarism, so I left people on TLP scratching their noggins over why I was rewriting their examples in my own words, with one troper even thinking I was doing it to get a "sense of ownership" when actually nothing could be further from the truth.

pre-something awful goon rush i was an active contributor to Troper Tales and vaguely recall leaving something on the Fetish Fuel page. small wonder i and some friends wound up on something awful's mock thread

^ fyi you should report that; the moderators are trying to cut down on snark and weird aggressiveness from the more policy-minded tropers

Edited by MsOranjeDiscoDancer on Sep 5th 2022 at 4:38:15 AM

Most of the edits I made on my first account before I lost the password and (years later) made this one. I was in middle school when I joined, so that explains a lot of it.

Stuff like this in particular, if you want a taste (which I somehow didn't have the good sense to edit until recently):

I was there when it happened, and it was over a year ago, so... bit too late now. (If I remember the correct troper, then they were actually already bounced.)

Let's see... I was a serial tweaker, left edit reasons for every edit I made (which isn't inherently bad, just unnecessary), and created my first works page with "Needs A Better Description" tacked on. I also didn't understand how wick checks worked, so I made several posts in TRS with either poor wick checks or no wick checks. Pretty sure I also commented every time I voted on a crowner (can't remember that well but wouldn't be surprised). I've gotten better, but I do still screw up on here from time to time - at least it's less frequent

Funnily enough, "commenting for every crowner vote" has been seriously suggested as a solution to the recent concerns we've been having. You were ahead of the curb.

Yeah I think My Final Edits comments on his crowner votes as well—and I actually like that he does, because it makes the votes less ambiguous.

Now that I learned this thread exists after catching up with the Newsletter, I can add mine from over a decade ago that still embarrass me to this day to think about. These are from my high school/early college days, like 2008-2012.

I didn't realize you had to like.... collaborate with other tropers and communicate with them to launch tropes or work on some Just For Fun kind of pages. So I had a double whammy where I tried to add Zak Saturday from The Secret Saturdays into one of the Pantheon pages (which I still don't understand tbh, but whatever) and got mad when someone went and removed him like hours or a day later. But I also didn't know that there was a preview function so I just spent like 15 minutes making edits to my formatting and manually checking them on the page, which I'm sure looked really obnoxious on the page history.

I also tried to start a trope myself — again, without realizing you're supposed to vet these kinds of things first — about how fireflies in visual media are always super super bright and essentially like the bug equivalent of lightbulbs. I wanted to call the page "Florescent Fireflies". I guess Lighting Bug is kind of what I was getting at, but I distinctly remember watching the Lady And The Tramp sequel and getting inspired from a scene in that.

I tried to create essentially a character sheet for my OCs on my profile page without realizing that it would show up on the Related tab, or whatever — I had someone randomly come in and edit the name of a trope for me and then a while later I got a PM that I shouldn't be using the Wiki for that purpose. I also made a page for my then-planned webcomic that never actually happened. I'm too afraid to search and see if the name actually comes up if I look for it, despite ever putting maybe 5 tropes and 2 lines of text on the page.

Edited a CMOH page once and not realizing the whole Examples Are Not Recent thing. My example was a link to a fan blog saying "this thing that the community organized was heartwarming, go to this fan blog to read about it" without thinking, you know, in about a week that recent blog post isn't gonna be relevant any more.

The last time I think I got any kind of cringe after something I edited was I put some trope under one character's entry from an anime I was into, then I think I checked back a while later someone had removed the trope and had the reasoning in their comment that the trope didn't fit because the trope is for X and Y. Kind of made me feel embarrassed since this was around like, 2016 or so.

Edited by Keeyla on Sep 26th 2022 at 10:22:30 AM

I felt the embarrassment all the way from here. I'm glad the only mess up I had related to the Trope Pantheon was being impatient on having Alphys being replaced by W. D. Gaster, a better rep(in my opinion) which resulted in Alphys not being replaced.

I used to misuse tropes a lot and insert my opinions into examples. I also misinterpreted forum games a lot and ended up posting the wrong thing, although that's a more recent shame

I used to provide edit reasons for every edit I made. I also serial tweaked a lot more than I used to and my pages weren't quite up to scratch and had spelling errors. But I think I'm getting better now.

Wait, like every edit? Even basic spelling mistakes or easy to miss formatting mistakes?

I wouldn't say that I did too many seriously bad things, as I had also been lurking for a while prior to actually getting an account and even then was pretty shy to make any contributions for quite a while, but I really didn't understand how Playing With pages worked. I didn't let that stop me, though.

I remember making Playing With pages for some Audience Reactions and otherwise having no idea how the formatting worked.