Lost in Space
We already have a forum thread
dedicated to the maintenance (and removal, if necessary) of Real Life sections in trope articles. The guidelines are in the pinned header post. Please feel free to participate in that conversation.
Note that we will not unilaterally remove all Real Life examples. They can serve a useful purpose for illustration of tropes. For the full policy, see Real Life Troping and No Real Life Examples, Please!.
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 19th 2023 at 12:42:10 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
He/Him
I always thought they were a way to show how a trope has Truth in Television, only disallowing RL examples for tropes that about morality, sex, gender, or just stuff that's too common.
Art Museum Curator and frequent helper of the Web Original deprecation project
That and because storytelling happens even outside of formalized stories.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
i'm at the combination she and it
i feel like i can see the point that it demonstrates tropes are Truth in Television, but i also feel like this is the reason we cut troper tales anyway; very often it's someone trying to shoehorn deliberate storytelling conventions into real life, where that doesn't happen. it's also the whole reason our Real Life page is a JFF page that makes fun of the idea of the real world being a narrative work. there are so many times where we need to do pruning and cleanup on tropes because real-life examples are shoehorned at best or absolutely tasteless as worst that it does make me wonder what the point of keeping them is when we can just say "this can happen in real life" and leave it at that
As mentioned, Tropes Tales was a mistake that took us down the path of the worst of Reddit or 4Chan.
But a general Real Life section is pretty much mandatory because all narrative works are rooted in Write What You Know. Even the driest history book is trying to present the information in a logical, compelling format. A lot of Tropes are based on real life concepts or trends, ignoring that reality would leave those pages as feeling a bit empty without the real life context.
Do you not know that in the service one must always choose the lesser of two weevils!
Lost in Space
Note that there is an existing No Real Life Examples, Please! policy discussion thread here. With that in mind, this thread will probably be locked.
Edit: The question of whether Real Life trope examples are permitted in general is far too broad and is not really up for debate.
Edited by Fighteer on Sep 20th 2023 at 3:49:05 PM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Lucas the Dreamer
Personally the wiki has helped me learn a lot about how things work in real life by comparing how tropes show up in fiction versus how it would work in the real world. They make the wiki a decent, if perhaps not credible, Unconventional Learning Experience. I do agree with fact checking entries though.
Edited by TheLivingDrawing on Oct 24th 2023 at 10:36:13 AM
Why waste time when you can see the last sunset last?
To be frank the real life section of tvtropes is a mess. Aside from how using tropes which are made to describe fiction and stories to describe real life things is stupid, there is just no moderation or standards being kept here.
Like i've seen people make claims that a simple wikipedia search would disprove, while citing no sources.
Either require the bare minimum of providing sources or get rid of the section.