We are not Wikipedia and There Is No Such Thing as Notability. Therefore, while you may find the occasional Wikipedia Updater (or Syntaxer), most Tropers are much more jovial, relaxed and snarky than Wikipedians may seem to be.
So you would expect that when you meet a Troper when you're on Wikipedia they'd be equally jovial, silly, footnote-loose and citation-free, right? Well, not necessarily. While some Tropers avoid Wikipedia for its formal, citation-reliant style and insistence on notability, others enjoy it.
On The Other Wiki, you might find that they might want to merge, or even delete, an article you just launched. Or start adding those annoying [citation needed] tags to it.[citation needed] This may come off as mean... this could lead to you being confused by their apparent wikipersonas being so different. You've just been rumbled by Dr. Pedia and Mr. Trope, though you might personally conclude Dr. Pedia to be more of the monster.
Please bear in mind Dr. Pedia isn't necessarily trying to be mean or formal. They are just attuned to the the two different styles of either wiki. They know what does and doesn't fly on Wikipedia and therefore try to be a good Wikipedian. Here, they know the (considerably more relaxed and flexible) rules and therefore write to that style instead. And guess what, some actually enjoy the differences, liking the order and structure of Wikipedia as an intellectual exercise, and coming here to relax and chill out about things.
As for what those Wikipedia Syntaxers and Wikipedia Updaters we previously mentioned are, well...
- uh...
Wikipedia Syntaxer
- This version of the wikitext markup is gonna take some getting used to...
A Wikipedia Syntaxer either is someone who hasn't realised that [[TV Tropes]]... 'scuse me, TV Tropes, which uses a somewhat distant relative of PmWiki, has different syntax (aka codes or formatting) from [[Wikipedia]]... sigh... Wikipedia and the many other MediaWiki wikis; or is someone who has been spending their time updating both (literally, if they have two windows or tabs open) and has momentarily forgotten which one they're currently editing.
This means they mix up the syntax, leaving a page full of broken Wicks (that look [[like this]]) and Potholes (that look [[other example|like this]]) and all manner of other formatting problems that either they or another troper must unpick and fix.
Not to be confused with a Wikipedia Updater, but the two may sometimes overlap. It's quite possible to go the other way and accidentally use TV Tropes syntax on a [https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki MediaWiki], err... MediaWiki
wiki too.
For a relatively brief period in 2013, the "classic" Wikipedia method looked about to become a Discredited Trope, as that summer Wikipedia began to beta-test the Wikia format (i.e. a WYSIWYG editor tool) on its own site ... which, coincidentally enough, Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales had a hand in as well.{{cn|date=October 2016}} People who prefer the traditional format can use the "Edit Source" function on any given article to keep using the Good Old Ways. As of the following fall, however, Wikipedia is back to using its old method and seems set in that way for some time.
And then there's BBCode, used in many forums, which uses its own syntax - square brackets, but a different way of using them, as can be seen in the [url=http://www.bbcode.org/reference.php]official guide[/url]... uh, official guide.
And *then*...darn, then Reddit came around, which requires yet another [syntax](https://www.reddit.com/r/raerth/comments/cw70q/reddit_comment_formatting/)... uh, syntax entirely in its posts, which is made even worse if you use [GitHub](https://guides.github.com/features/mastering-markdown/)... sorry, GitHub or any other service which can interpret Markdown.
And then there’s HTML5, the code you see when you use the View Source function in your browser, and which all of the above compile to on the server-side to be sent to the browser; you may be familiar with this syntax if you operate a <a href="https://neocities.org/">NeoCities</a>... um... NeoCities site.
It's basically impossible for anyone in the habit of writing in all five styles to not make mistakes every now and then, resulting in a series of edits as they systematically fix their syntax, forget something, fix it again...
==Wikipedia Up...
Uh.
Wikipedia Updater
Wikipedia is all about trying to get a reputation as an authoritative source.[citation needed] To this end, it enforces all sorts of rules, such as constraints about how "notable" a subject has to be to get an article, a demand that claims be backed up with secondary sources, and so forth and so on. If a long-time Wikipedia editor decides to give TV Tropes a go, you can bet that they will bring some of the culture with them.[citation needed, again]
This can be a bad thing, because it means that out of habit, or just for lack of knowing any better, they can get hung up on things that do not matter on this wiki and set its goals back.[citation needed, AGAIN] The big one being humorous language. They might quibble about taxonomy, take issue with "vague" and "imprecise" wording (which is just our writing style), or insist on pursuing a source for a claim that reasonably stands on its own.[citation needed for the last time] They will go beyond the reasonable effort to write in an objective tone all the way into writing dull, terse, and detached prose.
Wikis are about people sharing what they know (or suspect) about a topic. Wikipedia is just one of them, with its own goals and culture, and with all due respect (and there is respect), our goals are different and our culture is different.
In TV Tropes, There Is No Such Thing as Notability.[need citation!] If you say something, we'll take your word for it and figure that if you're wrong, someone will come along and correct you. We're more about a fun, entertaining, pithy style than about dotting our ts and crossing our is. And the software does that automatically anyway.
If you came here from Wikipedia, capitalize on the editing practices you brought with you that are also good here and stay away from the ones that aren't, and you're bound to make yourself useful.[CITATION!] To make this work, we're going to need effort, input, and inspiration from all across the Order Versus Chaos axis — so go ahead, trim some Thread Mode and cut on the Purple Prose. Go on, have fun![definition needed! what is fun?]
Related to Damn You, Muscle Memory!.
[[Category:Self-Demonstrating Article]] [[Category:Self-Demonstrating Article|{{PAGENAME}}]][[Category:Just for Fun]][[Category:Just for Fun|{{PAGENAME}}]]
...GODDAMMIT!
Ugh, you know what? Screw This, I'm Outta Here! We're off to a coffee break. Hey, you can join us if you want!
