Hm?
Agreed, this definitely needs renamed. The name is completely opaque to those not familiar with the Trope Namer, and misleading to those who are. In the trope discussion there was also mention of renaming it, brought up months ago but most recently commented on a couple days ago. Perhaps they'll stop by.
“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
Teutonic Tomboy T-Girl
Wow, I've seen some tropes where the Trope Namer isn't an actual example, usually based on some minor technicality, but I think this is the first time I've seen the Trope Namer be an almost complete aversion of the trope.
Jet-a-Reeno!
Lost in Space
We have You Meddling Kids, which isn't this trope. This trope makes me want to Face Palm at the name.
edited 30th Sep '10 9:07:40 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Mighty pirate!
Not that it doesn't need a rename, but the description is wrong - the Hardy Boys, at least the 1920s-era stories, do fit this trope more often than not. There were a bunch of books where Frank and Joe's "investigation" ended up with them hiding in a corner or tied up by the villains until their father and the police force arrived to save the day.
Hm?
Even if the trope were to be rewritten to be correct, there's still the fact that the name isn't clear. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think 1920's era Hardy Boys is very well known to most people who edit this wiki.
“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
The Hardy Boys are pretty famous. More so than Nancy Drew the female spinoff.
Still the later incarnations of the Hardy Boys are not this trope as often.
I see two possibilities:
Option one: Rewrite the trope to be about non-police investigating a crime (do we have that? Amateur Sleuth or something?) and doing a better job then the police. In that case the Hardy Boys would apply and most people would get the connection.
Option two: Rename to something that fits the trope: Leave Detective Work To The Pros?
Mighty pirate!
My only problem with doing both of those is the possibility that the first isn't distinct enough from the overlap of You Meddling Kids and Adults Are Useless to be its own trope.
Zzzzzzzzzz
A trope can be the combination (or intersection) of two others, if that combination is commonly enough used that it has become a storytelling convention itself.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
curiously, i'm more familiar with nancy drew than the hardy boys. might be reverse-Fan Myopia or something, though.
@Sackett— i think Amateur Sleuth is definitely a related trope. Hardy Boys Investigation is when an Amateur Sleuth decides to investigate, but doesn't solve the mystery/catch the bad guy by him/herself. the difference is that Amateur Sleuth is a characterization trope, while this one is a plot... thing. i think?
@Shale— technically, there shouldn't be that much overlap between those tropes.
Hardy Boys Investigation: when the main characters (usually kids, but they don't have to be) set out to investigate something, but fail.
Adults Are Useless: when the kids get it right (they have to be kids, or at least younger than the rest of the cast, for this one) and the adults don't, or the adults just don't intervene at all and leave everything to the kids.
You Meddling Kids: this one's more for the stock phrase. still, it wouldn't make sense to use that stock phrase in a Hardy Boys Investigation because the main characters had nothing to do with the bad guy getting caught.
not saying overlap can't happen (you never know, the bad guy might still blame the useless kid just because), but it's probably rare— or it happens in some episodes and not in others (i'm thinking Scooby Doo).
anyway, i think the description of HBI is pretty clear, it's just the name that's completely off. You Fail At Sleuthing? (could create confusion because it doesn't have anything to do with the other You Fail X Forever tropes). Sleuthing Fail?
edited 1st Oct '10 7:40:40 AM by carla
Hm?
No on the snowclones. They're not clear at all. They'd probably lead to actual misuse, instead of just an unclear name.
“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
yeah, that's what i was thinking. 
anybody got any other suggestions? so far we have Leave Detective Work To The Pros, and that's pretty much it.
Except half the time the Scooby gang does catch the villain by themselves.
The Scooby gang does. Scooby himself? Not so much.
Hm?
Police Work Is Not For Amateurs isn't great, but it's not bad, and probably the best we have so far. Any other ideas?
“Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
Rock Solid!
This is sort of the inverse of Police Are Useless, in which the amateurs do all the work and the police don't accomplish anything. So perhaps Amateurs Are Useless?
Yeah, I've read quite a few Hardy Boys published in the eighties/nineties when I was little. Things like high speed chases and taking down what was essentially Sniper Wolf. And exploding bats.
Ahem. Back on topic.
The "Police Work Not For Amateurs" is somewhat lengthy, don't we have a no-no on lengthy trope titles?
Amateurs Are Useless would expand it to non-crime fiction. That'd be okay, actually.
edited 4th Oct '10 9:05:25 PM by JackMackerel
Half-Life: Dual Nature, a crossover story of reasonably sized proportions.
i wouldn't mind Amateurs Are Useless— already a bunch of the examples are not about sleuthing anyway (Captain Planet, i'm looking at you). only thing is that this is a trope for main characters, unlike in the case of Police Are Useless, where the police tend to be more background characters, usually. we could probably specify that.
how about Leave It To The Pros?
I see the Awesomeness.
Lost in Space
I really like Leave It To The Pros as a title in general.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Zzzzzzzzzz
Amateur Detectives Are Useless or, if the only examples are kid detectives, Kid Detectives Are Useless.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
those last few work, except that most of the examples aren't really from crime fiction, which might be misleading. but how much does that weigh in the name-changing business?
perhaps we should set up an alternate names crowner... which i have no idea how to do, btw. -goes to look for instructions-
edited 6th Oct '10 10:08:30 AM by carla
I like You Useless Meddling Kids best. It implies they meddled alright, but they're not the ones who stopped the bad guy in the end.
Crown Description:
i think something should be done with this one. the description explicitly states that the Trope Namer does not fit as an example.
it has 8 examples, 13 wicks and has brought 28 people to the site since 20/feb/09. the oldest archived edit in the page history is from 10/sept/10, but it seems like it wasn't the first edit as they're just "changed line X" instead of "added line X". a quick search of YKTTW tells me the trope has been around since at least the beginning of 2010, unless it underwent a recent name change (can't tell).
out of those 13 wicks (and not counting the page itself):
i think this trope isn't living up to its potential. perhaps a name change could help. or maybe someone else has a better suggestion?
edited 29th Sep '10 4:14:13 PM by carla