There Is no Such Thing as Notability, but we do have standards. One of those standards is what to include on work pages. How to Create a Work Page provides instructions on the basic formatting, but some media blur the line between characters and Creators. This page provides guidelines on how to make sure you trope the work, not the creator.
Although the following rules are broken up by specific media, they apply to all creators and their works.
Music and Musicians:
While it is common to include their birthdate and their first performance, these pages should be about documenting the tropes involved in the songs they perform and the bands they have participated in. No troping their real lives.Wrestling and the Wrestlers:
While it is common to include their birthdate and their first performance, these pages should be about documenting tropes involved in their wrestling matches, promotions, and the behind-the-scenes documentaries. It is not for gossiping about the person's life outside the ring. Several famous wrestlers have gone from acting in the ring to acting in Hollywood. For those success stories, it is encouraged to split off a Creator/ page and index their Wrestling persona as one of their original roles.Roleplays
Roleplays (RPs) are a special category of creative work in which real people are actively participating in the creation of an ongoing story, typically for an audience or for publication. In case it's not clear from these rules, TV Tropes is not your record-keeping site. Don't try it. Roleplays are treated like normal work articles, with the following caveats:- A roleplay must be accessible to the public in order to have a work article. This means either that ...
- Anyone can read or watch the RP without a private server invitation, a login, or a paywall note .
- Private RP content is published for general consumption, in whole or in part, at some point in time.
- Only public content may be troped.
- The players and/or game masters are real people and may not be troped. Not even a little. Not even that funny thing Sue did that one time.
- All participants in the RP are considered creators and must follow the rules for creators when editing the article.
Websites
Websites (including wikis) fall into an unusual category between works and creators. Rarely is a site itself credited in a creative work. Instead, its users may (collaboratively or individually) publish creative content on the site, using it as a platform. If these guidelines result in no tropable content, then we should not have an article for the website.Some guidelines:- A website is not a creator unless it receives an authorship credit as itself.
- A website is not a creative work, although content published on it may be. note
- A website may be a publication or distribution platform, but it should not have an index of works unless it is in some way involved in the production of the content as well as its distribution. (Netflix makes original shows and publishes shows from other creators. Only its original shows would be listed on its article.)
- The users and administrators of a website are real people and troping them is prohibited. Yes, even if they adopt personas.
- Forums are not authors of creative media. Forums are not creative works. Subforums are not authors of creative media. Subforums are not creative works.
Web Videos
WebVideo/ is a frequently misused namespace. Before you create page in this namespace, please review this.The Web Video namespace is for:
- Work pages about a live-action short, film, series, or channel originally or exclusively released online.
- Live-action videos, not animated, made with video game assets, or focusing on showing another work (like gameplay in a video game).
- Video works, not audio works that happen to be hosted on YouTube such as a Podcast.
Common misuses and where they belong instead:
- For big-budget series exclusive to streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu, or television programs rebroadcast via video services or network websites, use the Series/ namespace if it's live-action or the appropriate animation namespace like Western Animation or Anime. Streaming-exclusive films likewise belong in their medium namespaces.
- For animated videos released online (except streaming service exclusives), use the WebAnimation/ namespace.
- For narrative videos created with video game assets, use the Machinima/ namespace.
- For Let's Play videos and channels (video game walkthroughs with commentary), use that namespace.
- Fan Films of any duration can be placed in Web Video if they're released online and use original live-action footage and scripts. Animated fan videos released online are Web Animation. If it was created for a theatrical release like a film festival, use Film/.
Other things to keep in mind:
- The namespace is capitalized Web Video, not all lowercase as Webvideo.
- Remember to trope the videos, not the people creating them. This includes YouTube channels and other collections of videos. Web Video Creators are real people, not fictional characters or works.
- "Reaction channels"/"reaction videos" are rarely tropable. They must engage in something creative like a skit, not just watch something and display emotions about what they're watching. Trope their use of production and artistic tropes, not what they're reacting to. It also helps if they're covering fiction, not real life, as that falls into the same general category as gossip.
- Everything on Examples Are Not Recent still applies.
What not to include:
- The biography of the creator
- Subscriber numbers and view counts
- Subjective commentary like how "famous" or "popular" they are
- Other works liked by this work's fans or in a similar style
- Gushing or complaining about the creator or their works
- Links to the creator's social media accounts or where to donate to them
- A complete listing of every topic ever covered on the channel
