What to do with: What An Idiot

What An Idiot examples tend to read like Complaining About Idiot Balls You Dont Like. There are substantial justifying edits like 'yes, however there's this to take into account'. Not to mention, some of the subpages are ridiculously long and clattered.

Seeing as we already have Wall Banger for all types of complaints, I don't think this page needs examples. As such, I propose we cut them.

The page is pointless without examples. I say cleanup instead.

This... doesn't seem worth saving, yeah. But it's one of the Tropes Of Legend, so I don't know if we'll be able to cut it.

The way it is, I would suggest cutting it completely at this point, and perhaps making it a redirect.

It is? I can't find it on that page.

edited 25th Jan '12 9:51:16 AM by lu127

It's listed as a subtrope of Idiot Ball.

Options are either cleanup or cutting.

Oh, if we do cleanup, we need to tag it as a just for fun page, not a YMMV page.

At least, I think it's more of the former than the latter.

edited 25th Jan '12 10:45:46 AM by Arha

I favor in Cleanup, I'm never a fan of cutting examples because readers like me need examples for clarification.

We need to stop killing everything that gives us even a LITTLE BIT of trouble, so I suggest cleanup.

We do extensive cleanups on seriously troubled articles all the time. In this case, though, there's not even a trope — it's just a place for people to say "I think this character acted really stupid when they did this thing", which is not what the wiki is for.

This is not a trope. It is an audience reaction, sort of like moment pages, on some Idiot Ball or Conflict Ball, and basically boils down to complaining. Wall Banger exists for complaints and if you question why a character grabbed an Idiot Ball and did what he did, there's always headscratchers.

On top of that, the subpages are impossible to scroll down, since even the slightest mishap seems to merit an entry to some people, thus filling the pages with natter. I see no value in keeping this.

edited 26th Jan '12 12:35:22 AM by lu127

Our main purpose is to catolouge tropes and not reactions.

We shouldn't have to put so much effort into fixing something that isn't really part of our mission in the first place.

edited 26th Jan '12 9:18:27 AM by DrStarky

Yeah, but it has about six hundred hundred inbounds. Counting the subpages, it may be close to a thousand. Just axing it seems unproductive, so I think we should clean it up and declare it Just for Fun. It doesn't even really seem like a YMMV trope, which is how it's tagged now.

I agree on the inbounds, so maybe we could make it a redirect to Idiot Ball?

We could just remove the examples. We still have a term people can use to describe fiction.

That kind of ruins the point of the page.

We could potentially shuffle it off to Darth Wiki and appoint curators. If people really love having the pages, they shouldn't mind doing a little extra work to keep them around, right?

I recall asking in another thread whether this belongs in Darth Wiki, but then I'm not sure if its function there would be any different from Wall Banger.

Regardless, moving it is definitely a better idea than leaving it on the main wiki.

edited 26th Jan '12 10:56:41 AM by lu127

It has a lot of exposure. I'm loath to just delete it.

I second making it a redirect to Idiot Ball.

What about making it an in-universe reaction instead of an Audience Reaction? Or do we already have that?

edited 26th Jan '12 11:11:30 AM by MyTimingIsOff

Why Don't You Just Shoot Him?, maybe? Or is it too specific?

It accomplishes nothing, is subject to constant complaining and the inbounds can be covered by making it a redirect. I can't see how keeping it helps.

Why Don't You Just Shoot Him? is not a character reaction trope. That trope is when a villain comes up with an overly elaborate method for killing their enemy instead of doing it the easy way.

edited 26th Jan '12 11:40:06 AM by MyTimingIsOff

I think making it a Character Reaction would help.

Fair enough, my recollection was a bit off there.

Agree with Shimaspawn.

So making it a character reaction would still kill all the current examples wouldn't it? Since we would be in essence creating an entirely new thing should it be sent through YKTTW?

Just looking through some of the pages for lampshade I saw at least three or four good example if we make it a character reaction, and I didn't look through all of them.

We would have to ax most of these pages though.

edited 26th Jan '12 12:07:25 PM by EHK