Needs Help: Gang Of Critters

Gang Of Critters is, to put it bluntly, a disaster zone. This is best shown in the results of the Gang Of Critters Wick Check. Note that this is a check of every single wick of the trope that there is on the site (excluding Administrivia, incidices, JFF pages, and its own Playing With page)

• 0/51 Correct uses
• 30/51 ZCEs, or 58.8%
• 2/51 misuses to describe a group of animals, or 3.9 %
• 2/51 other misuses, or 3.9%
• 17/51 were potholes or other unclassifiable references, or 33.4 %

And yes, that is every single wick on the site for this trope, and none of them are correct uses. Every single off-page example is a ZCE or a misuse of some variety.

A lot of the potholes also seem like they would better fit Woodland Creatures, as in "cute forest creatures in general".

The trope has other issues on top of being a magnet for ZCEs, these are secondary, although they should be noted as part of figuring out what to do with the trope.

1. The description is really lacking, it's one paragraph long and doesn't quite enunciate what the key points of the trope are.

2. The trope's own Laconic and Playing With pages disagree with both the main page and each other, or add elements that don't really fit the idea of the trope. The laconic and playing with page both stress that the characters involved must be animals, but the prime examples of the trope given include The Smurfs, who are absolutely not animals, and the page image is of The Fraggles, who aren't really identifiable animals either. The Playing With page also makes it seem like there can be no humans present in the work, or it won't count, but neither the laconic or main page say anything about the presence of humans, and the main page never says the characters need strictly be animals, just non-human creatures of some sort.

3. The on-page examples for the trope are just about as zero context as the offpage ones, so just transplanting the descriptions won't work as a fix.

As for what to do, I'm not sure, as I've never see a trope that's usage is near entirely ZCEs, with the few non ZCE examples being misuses. I'd personally axe it at this point and maybe yard the idea of "fluffy 80s cartoon gang". I considered maybe fixing the description and laconic, but after a troper went through and commented out all of the on page ZCEs, it was left with 3 on page examples, none of which are fully straight examples and one of which relies on the somewhat incorrect laconic description.

Opened, I'm good with cut + yard.

Just cut and yard it, there's nothing here.

Cut and yard

Yeah after my look over it, it's a complete relic of when it was acceptable to just chuck trope names onto example lists and move on. If it does ever get remade it will need a bit of distinction and fleshing out.

Cut and yard

cut and yard, yeesh that's a mess.

Cut.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 9th 2022 at 1:50:15 PM

With 0 correct straight uses even on-page, is it even yardable?

Good point. I revised my vote to just cutting.

I think the concept of a "fluffy cooperative 80s cartoon group" is tropeable, but it would need a total redo.

This was never a very popular trope and is also a rather old one, I think there is enough of a concept to yard even if all of the non-ZCE examples are kind of awful.

But I won't weep if it gets axed entirely either.

Edited by Tonwen on Feb 9th 2022 at 1:51:29 PM

I mean, adding things to the yard is a free action, especially with the second folder being designated for ideas people just sort of came up with one day. We don't need to have any examples of it to throw the idea on there and see who bites.

Slice and Dice.

Even the intro is... yikes. A 1-sentence paragraph (57 words) and that's it? I've seen laconic pages with a higher word-count

Just prodding that this can get a crowner hooked, it's been 3 days and there seems to be unanimous consensus to cut.

The response has been (nearly?) unanimous, but it's only eight posts. A crowner doesn't hurt.

If cut, TLP/Yard is a free action.

Edited by Tabs on Feb 14th 2022 at 9:09:07 AM

For the love of god, I have never seen a page as bands bones at that. It might be good to have it yarded though but a rework is needed.

Understood it was 8 posts, just wanted to say so because the thread was inert all weekend and it's not a trope many people really care about, so I felt it was a good time.

Getting to dewicking it, should I put in a cut request?

You can cutlist the subpages but don't cutlist the main page until all of the wicks have been removed.

All Wicks axed apart from its wick check (which I am cutlisting soon too), its image suggestion crowner entry, and Trope report, all of which are sandbox pages. Cutlisting.

I cut the page. Locking as resolved.