Statler And Waldorf stingers: Part 2

Alright. This went down in flames last time in Ask The Tropers; let's see if we can get any farther this time without the discussion vanishing without a trace.

So, Statler And Waldorf stingers. People make them up, stick them below the examples section on trope pages, add them to the index.

They aren't funny or witty, just annoying and overused. I believe the main argument for them was that they were "harmless"... but that same justification could be used for a lot of things, like tacking on knock-knock jokes, Bel-Air segues, and so forth all based on the trope pages in question. What makes these stingers different from all of those? If you're looking for some sort of "harm", let it be whatever harm adding those would be, or simply not having a clear policy against them itself. It's irritating that the stingers get special treatment.

Since some people do seem to be fond of them, why not move them all to Statler And Waldorf or a new, separate page and eliminate Statler And Waldorf's use as an index?

How many pages actually have these stingers? I've seen maybe four or five.

I walked away from that discussion thinking was that they probably are best kept off of work pages, but do no harm on trope pages. So, the burden again is to prove that in fact they do harm.

The full list is on the Statler And Waldorf page, and it is a fairly long list.

Edit: And this thread probably, like the Ask The Tropers discussion, would probably go better on Wiki Talk.

edited 29th Dec '10 9:30:37 PM by TotemicHero

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

So 83 pages.

The entire point of having them as the stingers is that they can be read on-site (on-page), as that is where they make the (somewhat) comedic effect. Moving all of them elsewhere, and even worse putting them together, pretty much defeats the purpose.

TO me, this is one of those nice things that the fandom has that are good and lost because of the Fan Dumb (or the Hate Dumb), leading to the invocation of the well known meme. I don't see them as making harm, unless people who visit this site have such an insipid sense of humour that somehow their comprehension of topics is detrimented by them seeing what amounts ro a final commentary which they happen to not like (or worse, getting butthurt over it).

Would be a shame to lose them, as happens with all good, witty things.

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?

If they were actually interesting or funny, I wouldn't mind them, but I have yet to see a good one.

Infinite Tree: an experimental story

That's some hardcore Fan Myopia and lack of perspective right there, and I don't care how iconic the characters are. How about we append to the end of every page Team Rocket making some horrible pun and being blasted off again? Yakko Warner spinning the Wheel of Morality?

Not to mention none of the ones I've seen are anywhere in the neighborhood of funny.

edited 30th Dec '10 3:11:10 AM by TripleElation

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

I found some of them funny.

And I don't mind them much, but I don't see the point of having them anywhere except trope pages. For instance, they're on JustBugsMe.OrderOfTheStick

edited 30th Dec '10 4:17:33 AM by Yej

Da Rules excuse all the inaccuracy in the world. Listen to them, not me.

I put one on Stan Freberg Presents The United States Of America just to homage the "We goin' out on that joke?" gag from the first sketch on the album. Personally, I like the Statler And Waldorf thing because there's something about them that kind of says "Vigilante Taxonomist."

But soft! What rock through yonder window breaks? It is a brick! And Juliet is out cold.

The Deadpool one is amusing. So does the Candle Ja

There are 83. As Fast Eddie pointed out when someone threw a hissy fit over the number of Locked Pages (80 at the time of the hissy fit,) there are over 80,000 pages in the wiki. That means there are Statler and Waldorf stingers on fewer than 1/1000th of the pages in the wiki. I submit that one-tenth of one percent is hardly "everywhere".

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

80k? No wonder it took me so long to first run into one.

But soft! What rock through yonder window breaks? It is a brick! And Juliet is out cold.

Concur

edited 30th Dec '10 7:39:27 AM by blackcat

Agreed. I've seen some that are lamer than others, but I don't think they're doing that much harm.

My problem isn't so much the number of their appearance, but that a lot of their comments don't really suit the Statler And Waldorf as presented in The Muppet Show and thus, making them kind of pointless. If they are present, they should deliver some jab against TV Tropes, somehow based on the trope in question, not just some random pun.

E.g, the one at the end of Darkseid is really good, while the one at the end of Good Troi Episode isn't.

edited 30th Dec '10 8:37:24 AM by eX

A year and a half? I been here since August and I ran into at least twenty of them.

That is a good argument for getting rid of some of the bad ones if there is consensus on the bad ones.

edited 30th Dec '10 11:12:22 AM by blackcat

Okay, reading the Deadpool one just changed my opinion. I just wish more of them were that good.

Infinite Tree: an experimental story

The reason why the Deadpool one is good because it is a break from the original format.

Personally, there should be less S&W about how TV Tropes Ruins Your Life.

Most of them aren't funny, but in all honesty, most TV Tropes Running Gags aren't. So that doesn't bother me.

What does bother me, and I admit this is terribly anal retentive, is that they're written in the quotes format, and I think quotes are near sacrosanct things.

The quotes thing doesn't bother me. It just that there should be more originality.

Pretty much going to re-itterate my point from Ask The Tropers: They are harmless. It's just that the vast majority got beaten up by Sturgeon's Law: Almost all of them are so bad/lame it's painful  ^*

. Still, a few are genuinely funny and they don't really cause harm, I don't see much of a reason to remove them at this point.

That being said, I see no reason not to improve the general quality. Make a forum thread to improve on the more awful stingers.

edited 31st Dec '10 10:20:58 PM by Ghilz

Not a bad idea per se. There are about five S&W that make me roll my eyes, those could be improved. As per the instances using the quote format, well that's the kind of purpose they serve in-page. What other format do you propose they could use?

Fanfic Recs orwellianretcon'd: cutlocked for committee or for Google?

Variant on Sturgeon's Law:Given any thing, ninety percent of people will dislike it.

I'm feeling strangely happy now, contented and serene. Oh don't you see, finally I'll be, somewhere that's green...

^Don't buy it. That implies that everything is objectively of equal quality.

Infinite Tree: an experimental story