Brought up in the Trope Repair Shop
, we need to take out the in-jokey Understatement references. People are using it to make any given example "witty" rather than actually using the trope.
It's is extremely excessive, by early calculations there is a 95% misuse rate in that regard. But don't worry, the actual number to fix seems to be less than 9,000 (about 8700).
{Note, as of 12:30 am September 19th, the tally is down to 4228; We've gotten over halfway.}
{Note 2: as of 8:37 pm September 29th, it's down to 2412}
{Note 3: as of 6:16 Am October 3, there are 1868 wicks remaining. If the original assessment of ~90% misuse turns out to be correct, there will be between 800 and 900 good wicks left when we're done.}
{Note 4: As of 2:50 pm, October 6th, there were 1079 wicks remaining.}
{Note 5: as of 8:58 am on October 10, there were 729 wicks remaining. The entire list had been scrubbed. 111 of that 729 are those that a software glitch counts even though the page it's supposedly on no longer exists.}
{Note 6: Fast Eddie has modified the wick counter so that it no longer counts the dead namespaces "JBM" or "Crowning *". This killed off 75 of the phantom wicks remaining, for a final tally of 655 good wicks remaining of 8700+ original wicks}
Cleared Punctuated titles starting with:
- Completed!!
Cleared unpunctuated titles starting with:
- A-Z!
edited 21st Oct '11 8:54:57 AM by Madrugada
Unpunctuated W done
@ 50, I've used "per TRS"
Think of the mooks!
I've just been using "Removing Understatement sinkhole" - and I just CTRL+c, CTRL+v to make sure it gets in every time.
I think I may have finally solved all my home network issues (I just moves), which means I may soon be able to start doing this from home as well. I want to give it an hour or two of steady working before I dive ahead, though.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.
Cleared the rest of the Punctuated I titles.
Down to 7035 wicks. 
Think of the mooks!
Cleaned out B- through Beetlejuice. Next is Behind The Veil.
7016 left.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.
Unpunctuated J done.
Just A Face And A Caption is locked. 7001 left.
edited 5th Sep '11 1:59:30 AM by Osmium
Unpunctuated B up to (but not including) Bertolt Brecht done.
Found one correct usage.
Down to 6956 wicks.
Zzzzzzzzzz
Got Just A Face And A Caption.
Sing out if you hit any more locked pages.
edited 5th Sep '11 9:06:32 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Think of the mooks!
Ah, I had just posted to the thread about editing locked pages (Fighteer helped me with Whale Wars)... wasn't sure how much this thread would be monitored for cleaning these out of locked threads.
I need to find a more efficient way to do the edits at home. While I use Opera for most things, it annoyingly hides the "search" box when I click outside of it, and I'm forever hitting control+F to bring it back up after each edit. Seems I've found the one task that Opera actually performs worse than IE at.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.
V done.
Think of the mooks!
Okay, cleared through Bk-. Black Adder is next.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.
Zzzzzzzzzz
Currently at 6661 left — I'm diving into Pokemon...
And done with the punctuated Pokemon. 6636 left; we've cleared 1/4 of them so far.
edited 6th Sep '11 10:51:13 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Think of the mooks!
Next up in B- is Blood Drive. Total number is at 6538.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.
Next up in B is Blossom Morphine.
EDIT: Okay, Blossom Morphine is one of those weird blank pages that are somehow in the "Related" list. The next actual trope page is Blown Across the Room.
Also, someone appears to have cleared out the rest of the Punctuated titles.
edited 8th Sep '11 5:40:14 PM by Nocturna
Think of the mooks!
High five to everyone who worked through the punctuated titles. You guys really plugged away at that.
Picking up with Blown Across the Room, under 6400 left.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.
Friends forevermore
Joining in. Let's do this. LEEROY... JENKINS!!!!!
I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.
Think of the mooks!
Okay, next on the list is Broken Aesop. 6126 to go.
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.
Next up is Broken Messiah.
Friends forevermore
I'm not going to be a main part of the sinkhole removal thing because of other commitments, but I can participate.
I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.
Zzzzzzzzzz
If you zap any you happen across, that would help.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
"In distress", my ass.
In regards to explaining why, perhaps it's not clear enough, but I've just been using "Gratuitous "understatement"", saved in the buffer so I can just ctrl-V it into the edit reason box, if not doing anything more than cleaning up sinkholes (sometimes the "understatement" sinkhole is one of the lesser problems with an entry 
).
Friends forevermore
I've been sent a notification for natter. Uh... what? I'm just cleaning up sinkholes.
I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.
Dread Sorcerer of Auchtermuchty
send them a PM asking why. It's probably an accident, and they wanted to send it to someone else.
Keeper of The Celestial Flame
There's an autocomplete feature on the edit reason box that allows you to pick the same edit reason as one you already used. I've been using "Sinkhole to Understatement deleted." Typing in "sink" brings that one up as the 1st choice.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.