Discuss TV Tropes itself, such as observations you've made about the site/forum/wiki.
NOTE: Keep it civil; try not to get into any Flame Bait-y territory, per the forum rules
(in particular, drama importation and popcorn posting are not allowed, and this thread is for discussion about the site and not the users). In addition, while discussing the Edit Banned thread is not prohibited on its own, discussing and/or alluding to specific ban/suspension cases is not permitted.
One thing I've noticed is that for all how the page for They Might Be Giants claims them to be the unofficial official band of this wiki, there's relatively few people on this site who seem to ever reference them.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Oct 13th 2024 at 12:59:03 PM
The worst is when complaining tropes go through TRS. Those usually don’t end up changing because the options to fix them are voted down. Bile Fascination had that happen.
Or if they do change there’s pushback like what happened with What An Idiot. I have a bad feeling about They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot too, although that could just be me being paranoid.
Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper WallTo be fair, complaining has always been hard to tackle. The TRS is best at fixing trope-related problems, but people using a trope to complain is rarely the trope's fault, so oftentimes it's less that people don't want to fix it, and more that people just can't fix it without completely deconstructing the trope, and sometimes the trope itself is fine and just needs a cleanup.
TRS doesn't do great at TVT cultural issues.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallI think old TVT has a negativity bias but cleanup threads have a positivity bias. Media criticism is often rooted in, well, criticism, and while there's a problem with the Caustic Critic nowadays, sometimes it feels like perfectly reasonable YMMV concepts are barred from discussion just because people use them to whine. You can discuss negative examples (like The Scrappy, which is definitely a thing even if we're the ones who really gave it a name) and explain objecively why they don't work and/or why/how the fandom dislikes them.
Like Jay said, it's often only worth cleaning up, as the problem's with the editors and the culture rooted into the site.
Edited by mightymewtron on Apr 25th 2022 at 4:38:27 AM
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.I’m actually aware that complaining tropes are often a cultural problem. (I wasn’t really in a good mood when I wrote that admittedly.) That’s why I don’t bring complaining tropes in anymore unless I have a definitive solution. For example I brought Extreme Sport Excuse Plot in because my solution was simply to make it Extreme Sports Plot, which is what happened. Likewise I already wanted to make Eight Deadly Words Def-Only, which was why I brought it in.
Generally that’s a pretty good rule of thumb for complaining threads—can this trope be fixed in a way that helps with complaining? That’s how I determine when a complaining trope needs TRS. I leave complaining tropes alone if I can’t find a way to fix it in TRS.
Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper WallThat's a good rule of thumb for every issue, actually. Is there a problem? Can this problem be solved by altering the trope? Is that the only way this problem can be solved? If so, then it should be taken to TRS.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallThat, plus the anonymity effect. It's harder to see internet people as being real people because you don't have a real human connection, so there's less empathy and thus people are more willing to rage.
It's also why road rage is a thing.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallCome to think of it, the only negative YMMV entry I can remember adding is Unintentionally Unsympathetic on Temtem.
I recall rewriting the intro of Outdated by Canon shortly after the trope launched to make it more understandable: the biggest change among many being adding that entire example paragraph about Bob's mother, since I felt it wasn't clear enough that the trope was talking about fanfiction.
Edited by RacattackForce on Apr 26th 2022 at 2:08:43 PM
Eh, doesn't always work. Again, it didn't save The Autographed Ball
(Read here if you want to know the story.
I'm still bitter about it.)
I swear, the Toei's Super Hero Time airing block (Kamen Rider, Super Sentai, Pretty Cure) must have the most regular amount of editing issues. Because they have own very large wikis, formatting from those tend to carry here with disregard of how to actually write examples or character sheets.
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupAs much as the site had loads of issues in the early years from what I have seen, I'm really glad that the moderation never let the wiki get invaded by white supremacists and other extremists like other places on the internet with anonymous users and (by then) low regulation were. Aside from creepy things from Troper Tales and some problematic deleted tropes, it is good that most issues on the site usually are simply people complaining or gushing about a work and the such instead of more serious things.
oh hey how are you doing?Oh, we've had people like that in the past, but they're extremely transparent and get bounced very fast.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallI feel like every time a cleanup thread spins off TRS, people just use it to continue TRS. But if you reopen the TRS thread it sometimes devolves into example vetting. It's like people blend together the purpose of a cleanup project and a TRS project (or are just eager to do what they personally want).
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.I see quite a few of TRS are sort of just shoved into Short-Term to free up the slots because cleaning over thousands of wicks it too much in one go, but less is fine to keep up in TRS indefinitely.
Edited by Amonimus on Apr 26th 2022 at 2:18:37 PM
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupTo a degree I think that's true; some of it also comes down to the nature of the tropes themselves. Some of them just require more work and discussion than normal wick cleaning efforts allow for, and sometimes there really is nothing that needs changing, so normal cleanup is all we have to do.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallIt just occured to me that there aren't that many (relatively) open Projects threads, do mods sometime check and close complete ones?
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupThat doesn't really happen. Project threads usually don't get closed until someone hollers. As for why there aren't that many threads, people just aren't making as many threads as they used to I guess.
Macron's notesTechnically, project forums have no real rules against necroing as long as the necro is on topic and productive. So they're all "open", people just need to be interested in the project.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall

RIP The Autographed Ball, you'll forever exist in my memory as the most immediately decaying trope ever launched.
Usually it's the title at fault. Well, the tropers too, but there's a reason we need to make titles as obvious as possible nowadays. Otherwise, people will just continue to invent their own trope definitions and use 'em.
And yeah, people who are very attached to specific definitions tend not to budge on them even when all the evidence says they're wrong. It's pretty aggravating and only ever derails the discussion.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall