Here's my suggestion to help with prevention and awareness:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13432836340A31480100&page=1#1
Thing is, by removing instances of This Troper, we reduce the risk of new users seeing it and thinking "oh, you're supposed to refer to yourself as This Troper, I'd better do that in future edits".
Of course, I wasn't saying a Search and Destroy effort is a bad idea.
Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.
Avatars may be subject to change without notice.
Another thing... apart from the advantages in cutting down on natter, as far as the phrase "This Troper" itself goes, I also see it as sort of like the policy of scrapping recently launched tropes with dialogue-like titles. Yes, we could just rename them, but this way, knowing that such tropes will be scrapped deters people from launching them with dialogue-like titles. Likewise, I think scrapping entries containing "This Troper" might be a better deterrent against it than removing just the phrase itself.
Well, maybe there is more to it than I am aware of, but it's just an analogy, and I'm not trying to make it a perfect one.
edited 28th Jul '12 5:13:14 AM by HiddenFacedMatt
"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart
I'd rather keeping good examples around were valued over finding a way to punish editors. If you want to deter the editor from doing it again, find out who they are and PM them - that's way more reliable than deleting one of their examples and hoping that they'll notice it someday.
Consider that there's a critical, chronic shortage of editors doing the grunt work of removing problems, cleaning wicks, etc. Deleting a badly written entry and trusting Wiki Magic to bring it back if it's legit takes far less time than carefully reading it, and the page description, to determine if it's legit, then rewording it to remove the offending language.
Frankly, there're more constructive uses of limited time.
Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.
Fully agree with Arcades. Plus, entries with This Troper already are Troper Tales and we don't want these,
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I've been wondering something. On Fridge pages, if it includes This Troper, but is also is signed by the person, do we delete that entry? I'm inclined to say yes, but I'm not sure.
This Troper is not acceptable anywhere. I don't think there is a need for first person there, but if there is, use "me" or "I".
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
In uffish thought
Fridge pages are meant to be signed. That needs an SE thread, really.
That was the amazing part. Things just keep going.
Deleting a badly written entry and trusting Wiki Magic to bring it back if it's legit takes far less time than carefully reading it
Yeah, it takes less time. That's pretty much the only good justification for it. But it could lead to legitimate examples being deleted and never brought back. At least post the example somewhere for someone else to fix if you can't bother doing it yourself.
edited 28th Jul '12 1:59:56 PM by abk0100
An example with This Troper in it is Troper Tales, not a legit example.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Not necessarily. I've seen entries which are legitimate examples, but have an opinion, or an "if this troper remembers correctly", tucked in there among the actual example. Those should be trimmed, not removed entirely.
I've seen such entries too (I usually just edit them), but far more Troper Tales (which I just delete)
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I've also seen entries that were free of This Troper before, but then someone else put their own opinion in either at the end or in brackets. It'd be pretty unfair to just nuke those ones.
Hypothetically, would it be worth the effort to modify the parser, to hide bullets containing the phrase "this troper"? and possibly all sub-bullets thereof to avoid confusion
kinda like how YMMV items turn the bullet red, only the whole line vanishes
it sounds a lot stupider out loud i guess
she her hers hOI!!! i'm tempe
Yeah, that really would be unfair, wouldn't it.
On the other hand, those are the easiest to fix without deletion.
Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.
"An entire show entry, filled with bulleted contributions gets deleted because of a single This Troper in the root? Too bad. You should know what will happen and accept the consequences."
...When does that happen? Improperly written content of valid example should be repaired, not deleted.
Lost in Space
Kuuenbu, I'm not sure what got into your craw about this, but please don't deliberately misrepresent wiki policies.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Based on past comments, I think his(?) intention was less to misrepresent wiki policies then to state what he intends to do to any example with a "This Troper" he finds.
Lost in Space
Though I disagree with the strong position, I think it was genuine and not for lulz.
Lost in Space
We don't need loose cannons. If someone is going around deleting entire articles and/or entire examples merely for containing This Troper, they are violating our policies and will be dealt with as such. We expect intelligent editing from our users, not punitive editing. We aren't "punishing" people, we're making the wiki look presentable.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I do think it's true that we've gone a long way towards killing off "This Troper" - but on the other hand, I never go on any of the pages where it tends to thrive, so I can't say that with any certainly.