That seems like it could fit Fridge Horror and Squick at once.

Also, 15sok still has grammar problems. I'm gonna PM him.

That page had other problems - trope names in spoiler tags, trope entries given second-level bullet points, no effort to alphabetise them by trope (which seems to be a major problem on Characters pages), and that's not getting into the Zero Context Examples. I just took a pair of scissors to the Repair, Don't Respond violations and cited said rule in the edit reason; hopefully someone who knows the books can address those issues (Socrates The Mudwing him/herself, perhaps, if s/he knows to actually correct the entries instead of making Justifying Edits).

Ugh. Suspended.

Bump.

Suspended. Wow.

Homoerotic Subtext is deliberate. Ho Yay is fans seeing it when it wasn't intended.

Ho Yay is about the Audience Opinion aspect.

Ho Yay is often misused for instances where it was fully intentional, so I'm not surprised if you couldn't tell the difference.

Damn, I've been looking to correct this on the Save The Supers page for a while already, but I just couldn't find the correct (intentional) trope despite my efforts! Now I know, thanks guys.

Cutified.

Expanded and referenced on the discussion tab. Don't forget to cutlist the laconic, either.

Ambaryerno also needs to learn not to link to Complete Monster on character pages. Messaged him about that.

It's not a trope. It seems like it's trying to be a Useful Notes page but there's no mention of what relevance it has to media.

Alright, I'll put this on TRS then

I am fairly sure I saw Fast Eddie state that spoilers in folder names was bad, so yeah move it down.

Yup, and I'll say it often. A label you cannot read is absolutely useless.

How are you supposed to rename them to be non-spoiler though?

You don't.

If someone is looking at a character page, it is assumed that they are prepared to see spoilers.

Is the one with Librarian even accurate? I've been out of Discworld fandom for a while, but I thought that was just Pratchett teasing the readship with an in-universe theory and not confirmed. The one for the Dean could easily move down into the folder, especially since he has spent most of the series as The Dean.

The Librarian's name comes up in The Last Continent. The ape threatens Rincewind when the wizzard starts to say it, among other things. Knowing his True Name could be the foundation of a spell to turn him human again, and he doesn't want that at all. For one thing, he no longer needs a ladder to get to the top shelves. :p

Edit: and spoilers moved.

Eep. Some of the Character pages need work. [[ActualTropeName Play on Trope Name]] and spoilered trope names/whole entries here and there. I'll see if I have time after arguing with my health insurance peoples. Again. At least they have a nice call center; just a lot of rules.

I don't know what the official wiki policy is, but the !! headline does seem redundant if it's already the name of the folder; it would make more sense if the folder listed tropes for a group of characters to give them individual !! headers.

I'm asking because I'm getting caught up in an unnecessary Edit War against KantonKage.

As a general rule, I will keep that format no matter the character, because sometimes there will be folders with multiple characters within that folder. Consistency is something to strive for, and this guy is not (dude doesn't do the same on Characters.A Certain Scientific Railgun, despite having done recent edits there).

Does seem redundant in the folder structure in use in that article. Probably not something to get in a lather over, one way or the other. Very few readers will pick up on the cross-page in/consistency.

So, I should just let it go?

To note, if you're using the header to show off more than one entry in a folder, it makes sense to spread it for all characters, even if it's one per folder. Just for consistency and neatness. For pages where it's one character per folder, it really doesn't matter in that particular case.(albeit, that should be applicable to every page for consistency, but the specific character page alone is somewhat important here)

Does this page have more than one character per folder? If not, there's no need for the header. If there is, then it's not really redundant in that particular case, it's just plain there for consistency and to make them all look organized. Just my opinion on how it could be done.

I do however see an issue if the troper isn't bothering to be consistent among all pages, and it's looking more like some kind of agenda than a reasonable policy. I don't think it matters, but that is particularly odd. Why one page and not the other?

....

seriously though. I'd say the !!Character Name thing might be redundant, but its not much of an issue as its still less important than the details about the character.

What I've been using !!Character Name is for titles and such. So the folder gets their basic name/nickname/whatever they're typically referred to as ("the General," "Max," what have you), and then the !! uses the full name as we know it ("General Faulk," "Maximum Facepuncher"). It's redundant on some pages, but not all. It kinda depends.

I don't care if it's redundant, all the character pages on my watchlist have the same format, and I will make sure they stay that way.

It's too bad if it becomes an Edit War.

That sounds like an ownership issue.

Ano Baka Desu, you do not get to dictate page formatting. We operate by consensus, not the whims of a single user.

Threatening an edit war? Over this petty stuff? Thanks for the warning.

Maybe just put the syndication on a line under the bullet. Use \\ to force a line break. It may also look cool to use the font-shrinker [--text--] to make that line small print.

Thanks. I'll try that.

Yep. Check out the forums.

Dormant normally means the fic is on hiatus. Dead means the author has given up on it or generally not updated it in a long time.

I can't remember where the discussion was, it was a few years ago, but the statuses that were generated from it are:

• Complete - Exactly What It Says on the Tin
• Ongoing - The fic is being updated on a regular basis^note which can mean anything from a few days to a few months.
• Dormant - Either: The author has placed the fic on hiatus; or the fic has gone for several months to a year or more without an update but the author has not pronounced it dead.
• Dead - The fic has not been updated in several years, or the author has specifically said that it will not be updated.
• Frozen - This Fic has been locked away on advice of ice trolls until it learns to control itself.

^note That last one might not be real, "Frozen" would just be a fic on hiatus

It seems to have some kind of Javascript issue that causes it to stop working periodically.

I see. Well, I'll have to wait until it's solved. For the record, the page where I found the offending edit was in Love Triangle, but I already fixed it.

You might want to report it in the Wiki Talk forum thread about the issue.

Fixed. The input form accepts line breaks but they mess up Eddie's code for the widget.

Separate entry

Is that somewhere on administrativia, or some reliable source i can quote as edit reason?

Example Indentation in Trope Lists about solitary bullets levels, for one thing. The example/folder sorting rules as well.

ok.

In context, that does sound extremely suspicious.

That is a Zero-Context Example, to begin with. Second, audience opinion is not part of that trope.

I would remove it.

Removed.

Question, you guess that it is a good idea create a short time or long time projects thread to clean up misuses of expy?

bump because I've never seen Expy used correctly personally.

Truthfully, I'm wondering if a name change might be in order. I'd never heard of the term before I discovered tvtropes. Maybe a wordier title like Intentional Resemblance Shout Out might clue people in?

Not gonna happen, the rename. It's a term that has caught on widely.

But has it caught on correctly?

According to past threads, yes.

Speaking about misuses, 21 mar, Beacon80 removed some examples in Western Animation and posted in the discussion page that said examples sounded as misuse. 12 apr, Alternative Cola put the examples again.

^^ I'd question that, Septimus.

check this page out, Dynasty Warriors Wu Kingdom. tell me if any of those "expies" are actually expies and not just Suspiciously Similar Characters.

EDIT: Huang Gai and Ding Feng, I was so sure there were lots of "expies" in the DW character pages, turns out they're also spread out on the kingdoms.

besides, how the hell are we supposed to know for sure if character "Alice" is deliberately crafted to be very similar to another character in a different work?

I was talking about offwiki. Onwiki most if not all examples are questionable. It's a common issue with all the Expy/Shout-Out family of tropes.

I was also talking about offwiki. I've seen this argument made convincingly for Xanatos Gambit before, but I'm not so sure about whether people offsite are really using Expy any differently then they are here.

About "how the hell are we supposed to know for sure if character "Alice" is deliberately crafted to be very similar to another character in a different work?", the only method that i know is with Word of God.

huh? don't we rename stuff regardless of outside spread? like in the case of Rape Tropes and Double Standard tropes?

No. Outside behaviour is one of the primary reasons we can find it important to rename. The reason why we collect tropes and examples is to share them with an audience who aren't tropers. If the audience is consistently using a term differently than how we use the term, then we change our term, not theirs.

If we are using terms or phrases that upset our audiences, then we change them to please the audience. We are ideally a neutral wiki, not praising immoral acts, which is part of the complaint that was levied aagainst us for those tropes. That is one part of the reason the P5 exists now.

Why are you guys talking about renaming? Nobody said anything about renaming anything.

Um, well I did way up there. That's what spawned this discussion. but it looks like the Hive Mind is not in favor overall, so I withdraw my suggestion.

I missed that. yeah, Expy has been through the rename grind at least twice, with no luck in dislodging it from its entrenched position.

crazysamaritan — OIC.

Fast Eddie — twice?! better check TRS as to why.

Since I might get ninja'd.

I saw the broken title thread. the guy pretty much nailed it in the head (made by same author vs Captain Ersatz by another name).... and then the fix (if it was even done, which it looks like it wasn't) was to tweak the description which made it even more confusing.

then come the Misused thread... apparently, the impending rename wasn't done because of a certain problem. also, what's a "CC thread"? and the discussion practically went nowhere with new problems surfacing for every breakthrough.

... no wonder it still has the name. Is a fix even possible with all the things that needs to be considered? (offsite use, insite use, wicks, wick transfer, etc.)

bump, I still got questions on this. see above.

Try this.

That's it. Thanks.

Nifty, is there one for the forums?

Bottom of every forum page.

hmm, doesn't work the way I want it to. I meant I was looking for a list of threads where I posted like for the one in Discussions.

You want this

Ah that's exactly it, thanks!

We don't have an official media category for sports, aside from Pro Wrestling, because for the most part they lack a narrative that can have tropes. They're basically a form of Real Life.

They should probably all go under Useful Notes, then, if they don't have a narrative.

No. I think a race is analogous to a story. I can see having a Racing namespace.

Useful Notes is not a dumping ground for things we can't sort into other categories. It has our take on facts and how those facts impact storytelling.

And also for Real Life things that impact storytelling, as we have many stories based on sports, including football, Baseball, Cricket, and Hunting.

I don't see a narrative in a sport. That was the basis of my opinion.

Obviously the tropes associated with those sports heavily influence media; that's why we have them as tropes. But we don't need to be documenting the sports themselves; that's not our purpose. Recap.MLB 2014 Toronto Vs Baltimore Game 3... seriously?

I can see how you would qualify stuff like certain techniques and common occurrences in racing as tropes, following a "sport = gameplay" analogy. It's a bit hard to wrap your head around that, though.

Recap.NASCAR 2014 Race 25 Daytona Speedway

Recap.NFL 2014 Week 5 Dallas Vs Washington

That's the kind of thing we're talking about. It's absurd.

Yeah, so? "It's absurd" does not lead to "it's not tropable".

Well, it is not tropable. Real life sports (that aren't performances, like pro wrestling) don't have narratives; hence they don't have tropes. Now, the media surrounding the sport does have narrative; we could hypothetically document ESPN Sports Center under Live-Action TV, for example, assuming someone wanted to go to the trouble. But the tropes would be limited to the "performance" of the show, not the real life people involved.

"Narrative" is not the same thing as "gameplay"; at least to my knowledge. These things certainly have "gameplay", that's for sure. And we do trope that.

We trope gameplay in the sense that we'd trope rules for sports, but not individual events.

We trope gameplay choices that the designers actively put in. We don't, for example, trope professional gaming tournaments' gameplay as that's real life and not what we do.

Now, for something like NASCAR we could trope things like Competitive Balance, Obvious Rule Patch, and the like. Basically things that the guys who make the rules implemented in order to make the games more interesting. That would fall under TV Tropes' mission. But things like troping everything that happened during a game, or even a career? That's just troping real life.

A Sports/ namespace would seem to be indicated for general stuff like that mentioned above.

And Useful Notes "subpages" for the sports happening in fiction or references to sports heroes in fiction.

made one.

NVM

Usually happens pretty quickly, if it is going to happen at all. If it has mod post after the initial post and is locked, that means it won't be opened.

Yes, and merge the discussion, the page's examples or content over.

Reverted and suspended.

A look through their edit history seems to show that they have rather serious grammar problems as well, including inconsistent or inappropriate verb tenses (e.g., "didn't liked"), spotty use of articles, spotty use of the verb "to be", subject-verb disagreement... there's hardly an edit there that doesn't have some sort of grammar issue.

Mind sending him a PM with a reference to the help thread so we don't come across as badguys for suspending him a second time in one day?

PM sent. Should we embark on a cleanup of the grammar of past edits, or should that perhaps be set aside as an exercise in improving English writing skills for the editor in question?

Go ahead and fix things. The objective is a good-looking wiki first.

Right you are - grammar fix under way. There's not quite as much work involved as I at first thought, as there are a few other editors who have cleaned up Fakhrulez' grammar in certain articles.

Apologies for re-visiting this, but Fakhrulez hasn't acknowledged my PM, hasn't posted in the "Get Help With English Here" thread, and has continued apace with grammatically dodgy edits. Should I send another PM, or is sterner action called for? (In fairness, it has only been two days.)

'K, well, he's been warned. Fair is fair. Suspending again.

Perhaps my PM was too easy-going; I presented going to the "Get Help With English Here" thread more as a friendly suggestion than as an emphatic instruction, as English is rather clearly not Fakhrulez' first language and I didn't want to strike too negative a tone.

Anyway, I'll clean up the most recent edits where I can (I'm honestly not sure what some of them are about).

Failing on the side of politeness is the best way to go.

He's saying that the trope was invoked. Putting the [[invoked]] markup in the example will keep it from being flagged.

Does that really count as invoked, though? Even if a creator afterwards comments on it, it's not like he set out to make Mega Khangaskhan a Game Breaker.

And if he had set out to do so, wouldn't it fall under Purposefully Overpowered?

Well, he's sort of a franchise. People don't talk about his personal life a lot. Mostly about his work. I'd say it's cool.

If we don't want personal life stuff on headscratchers should we remove the entry about him getting annoyed when fans ask him about whether or not he has a "foot fetish" based off of apparent camera focus on feet in his works?

It should be kind of obvious why that's an impolite thing to ask anyway.

Yes

I'm okay with the Headscratcher being deleted as, like you said, it's a stupid question and obvious why he'd be annoyed.

However, it's not really "personal life stuff" since it's a question based on his Creator Thumbprint, which is readily apparent in his works.

But yeah, just a dumb, dumb question.

Conversation in the Main Page would be what you're looking for.

Conversation in the Main Page.

That is their page. Subpages are shared among works with the same title, unless you hard split them and make the primary one a disambiguation. So he's incorrect.

They are a potential indication of plagiarism, so should be checked.

Some material on that page is plagiarized from Wikipedia, apparently.

There's about 3 entries that have those brackets.

Yes, the examples are copy-pasted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_on_a_grenade

Should we hammer that article entirely? It seems sort of dodgy for a Real Life section, even if it is complimentary rather than critical.

Film. Live Action TV is for series, really.

The major difference between Film and Live Action TV in media categories is length, not broadcast medium. Strange, but that's how we do it. So they would be categorized under Film.

Not so strange, really. A movie has generally 90 minutes or more in one clump to tell the whole story. A series has multiple, generally 30 to 60 (really 24 to 48, allowing for commercials) minute segments and they must be written in a way that each of those segments can be watched at a different time, separated from the ones on either side by anywhere from a week to nearly a year (Yes, I'm looking at you, HBO) if you don't time-shift or wait for the DVD and binge. So the pacing and conventions are different. That's not getting into ratings and watershed, and scheduling.

Well I'd disagree, but I guess it's pointless to do so. Thank you for the info.

It's part of the Adult Fear TRS. I came across it when I swept through all sandboxes to see for those which could be cut, and I left that one alone.

Moved it the Anime/ article and PM-ed Az Tech 341. Which are, by the way, things you could do, too. :)

Ugh, popping him again for a chat.

Anyway, I think he's confusing it with Needs Wiki Magic Love.

He... keeps doing things wrong. He'll get tapped for that thing and then do something else wrong instead. It's not exactly malicious but he seems to have a serious shortage of common sense. And these monomaniacal tears he goes on means the wrong thing gets spread to a bazillion pages in short order.

While banning seems overly harsh here, I'm not sure how else to curb this.

Eccly messaged me a bit ago — you're right in that he's not malicious, he definitely seemed friendly enough. He does have the wrong idea about what Needs More Love means, because he thought Elfen Lied counted for it because only half of the manga was adapted into the anime.

I've sent him a message back explaining what it actually means, so hopefully I can get him to understand.

I note that a lof of people who get reported are for repeat offenders and those who don't want to improve after being asked.

There was a suggestion to expand the Natterfy button to cover several topics besides natter, but it's been asleep for a while.

A lot of these people are ignoring "Don't do that" warnings embedded right on the page they're editing. In some cases they delete the mod note.

I'd be all in favor of raising awareness, but like Sep said, a lot of these people are willfully blind until the mods personally smack the stupid out of them.

Yeah, but I've seen my share of confused newbies (I was one, too, though I didn't go far enough to merit a whack). Raising awareness is good, as is the suggestion Septimus mentioned.

There's also sending the tropers a PM before reporting them, with the link to the article in question. I've found most tropers don't mind it, so long as you're friendly.

True. For example, I've been PM'ing plenty tropers who've recently added a wick to a work without the namespace when the Main/ redirect had already been deleted, to raise awareness to this problem. So far, I've only got positive responses, most thanking me for bringing this to their attention. (There was one troper who asked the why of this policy, which I responded to the best of my knowledge.)

I don't know. Maybe send a mass PM redirecting to Administrivia.How To Write An Example and urge everyone to read it in its entirety? For the newly registered users, it should at least be the very first page they visit.

There is a tech wishlist item underway to send first-time editors to page they need to click through to get to the article editor. That page will do what it can to lead the horse to water.

Animated Film.

I usually see films - animated

It's easier on the folder alphabetizing and keeping things straight to do the Film -Animated thing. Either way, it won't go under Western Animation.

What Septimus said.

You should prefer to use folders as a default, rather than add them later when categories get too large.

The issue with repeated use of phrases in trope names is more related to the snowclone epidemic than any particular dislike of repetition. As long as it's not trying to play off another trope name as a kind of in-joke, it's probably okay, assuming it satisfies other naming policies of course.

We already have Mundane Fantastic. Does that cover what you're thinking of?

A Slice of Life story might be in any setting/subgenre. I'm not sure we need a separate article for each. Historical Romance Slice Of Life, Alternate Universe Slice Of Life, Cyber Punk Slice Of Life and so on. Could what you want to say about fantasy re slice-of-life be added to the Slice of Life article?

Hmm. Maybe there is a case for SliceOfLife/Fantasy, if there are similar subtropes for genres/settings.

^^Didn't know about Mundane Fantastic, it might' be what I'm looking for? I'm honestly a little confused by it's description, but I'll check.

^H-hi Fast Eddie-sensei! I actually intended Fanastic Slice Of Life to include all of those. Basically anything that is about daily life in an out-of-the-ordinary setting. Like Gone with the Blastwave, about daily life in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. But I'll look more closely at what tropes we do have before I do anything anyway.

That folder is definitely a misuse, and all examples in it should be transplanted (or removed if they're duplicates).

Nearly all transplanted (with one moved into the correct media folder in the same page)— but except one example what I can't ascertain the media. Can somebody help?

It's about a TV series of that name.

I think it comes from http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0364828/?ref_=m_nmfmd_act_5, which would be Las Vegas.

Thanks all for the help! All transplanted, folder deleted, note put on top of examples.

Redirect them to this thread.

Also, I smell spoiler policy violation in some places.

He was banned a while back.

...Man, how did you figure it out? I mean, his skill in subterfuge is right up there with a three-year-old covering his eyes and going "Nyah nyah, you can't see me!"

Yeah, it's him. Nuked and reverted a bunch of edits.

Rat Packs, though, are a trope. They show up all the time. I'll take a look to see if that is not clear from the article.

Okay, so now we don't have a page for the original Rat Pack, not really, and I'm not sure what a "Rat Pack" is, other than an All-Star Cast.

I did some checking of the related tab, I think it's being used almost entirely to refer to the Trope Namer, rather than as a trope in its own right.

Well, that can be fixed. It is not important for us to have a history lesson about the Rat Pack. That is Wikipedia's job. They are of interest to us only insofar as they exemplify a pattern.

A name change might be in order? Since it's not propagating as an actual trope. I think the Sinatra-specific associations of the name are probably hampering it, based on what I saw on wicked pages.

ETA: Also, it seems like the Rat Pack could be a valid Useful Notes page. They certainly impacted media in ways relevant to our mission. (The references on the site seem proof enough.)

Which is why I presume the page was tagged as a Useful Notes. They are also of use to us as creators (imitated several times), but I am not familiar enough with them to know what they've done aside from Oceans11.

Administrivia.How To Write An Example. Keep It An Example: "Making a blanket statement on the behavior of '70s Live-Action TV may be interesting information, but it technically doesn't add anything new as an example. If you feel the information is important, then add it to the description (or the Analysis subpage) instead of the examples. Examples are about specific works and instances in them; the description is the general behavior of the trope."

It is kind of tricky to find. I initially found it by wandering around.

Not only is this a YMMV page in a creator page (something not allowed), but its only entry is a completely different YMMV being forced into something else.

Yeah, I say cutlist that thing.

:)

I took care of it. Thanks for the report.

But, but... t'is a silly page, really.

Some edit reasons just boggle my mind.

Whenever something like this happens, don't hesitate to point the troper towards The Fic May Be Yours, but the Trope Page Is Ours.

Couple that to the fact that they never even touched the page before, and...

...and he's just hung a vacancy sign on his ass, and Fast Eddie's foot, as well as those of the mods, are looking for a room.

All Sugar Wiki is YMMV.

Hokay, a little cleanup project to take care of then...

I added it to the Audience Reactions index, which should flag it as YMMV.

Ok good, I was going to mention it's not showing up as wrong on those pages.

I guess "historical artifact". I would support moving it to Analysis.

Anyone else?

Sounds fine to me.

Okay, so can we change it?

I can do so (you left out a few steps when you did it), but I would like to see one or two more supporting votes.

Okay.

Then I will share mine. I'm fairly sure that the majority of the namespace tropes are housed in the Main/ namespace since it is, ya'know, the Main trope namespace.

Okay. Anyone else?

Agreed.

I don't know, but Lost and Found might.

So.. which ban evader is this? At first I thought Nate but there's not enough exclamation points and frowny-faces. He put a slightly more coherent rant on the ROCEJ discussion page, btw.

It's sonicthecat.

<Sigh> Another in the "persistent evader" roster?

bounced

Hell yeah, it was absurdly long before too if you ask me. If the quote is unable to illustrate the point in 3-4 lines tops, then it's time to find a better quote... or no quote at all. No placeholder is better than a terrible one.

Zapped it.

Billy Dee, China called. They want their wall back.

Agreed that that is problematic. Unfortunately, Dumbass Has a Point: there is no rule here requiring that examples be short. We try for clear, concise, and witty, but that's a guideline and not a hard and fast rule because sometimes one of the three needs to be sacrificed for the other (e.g. when conciseness drains the clarity and wit to make a Zero-Context Example that belongs on a laundry list, it needs to be a lower priority, and when wit turns something into an unclear and long inside joke, it needs to be a lower priority)

It's just too bad this guy isn't bending the guidelines for any kind of good reason. :(

Well, the mods may state that Clear, Concise, Witty is more than a guideline, the thing here is that there's no need to keep adding stuff to an example just because you can and There Are No Rules against it -which is not true, there are several wiki standards beyond being polite and the invoked The Troping Code-, because the info ceases to be "context" and becomes a recap of the narrative, in any case exceeding what the trope in question covers.

Agreed, and I'm not really in the fandom in question. I'm just saying, sadly enough, he has a point even if it's buried in all the stupidity :(

Yeah, those edits haven him covering way more than necessary, many times with a wording that makes the examples sound (I'm not a follower of the show in question) like the information in them will be irrelevant in a short while.

Bending the rules for his advantage won't do him any good. Rules Lawyers get the same treatment as regular bad editors as far as I've seen.

We don't have hard and set rules precisely so the mods can ban stupidity at their discretion without getting bogged down in pedantic arguments.

It allows them to just say "because I'm in charge here" to cut short BS.

I was actually just about to post a query here about when it is or isn't okay to condense someone's Wall of Text examples. For instance, the Silas/Qetsiyah Vampire Diaries example on this page. Is it alright for a troper with knowledge of the examples in question to condense, or should they just be left alone?

Of course. People have no ownership over their entries. If you see something wrong with an example, like misinformation or a wall of text, you go and fix it, no questions asked.

We'll call him in to chat. Feel free to "reduce" his work.