TV Tropes meta thread

Didn't know that, but wicks Ending With Word Discussion are also orange-linked.

Hey, we finally did away with the wiki namespace.

You mean for like 2 weeks by now?

If I'm not mistaken, a TV Tropes example regarding Wikipedia's early days (I think on Early-Installment Weirdness) says the opposite was true, and Wikipedia used to format links like TV Tropes instead of vice versa. (I haven't seen for myself because Wikipedia's current formatting system had already been implemented by the time I joined it.)

Edit: From EarlyInstallmentWeirdness.Websites:

Also, in addition to what was previously said about Wikipedia's potholes using pipes instead of colons, the times Wikipedia does use colons is for what is basically their equivalent of namespaces (such as Talk: for talk pages for articles), as well as links to sister sites and articles on other languages' versions of Wikipedia.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 21st 2022 at 4:26:55 AM

Hey, I don't usually pay attention to the wiki side if the forums.

just a shout out to all the folks who lurk the left side of the forums, voting on crowners and stuff without participating in discussions. you're important to the process and i appreciate you.

I feel the same but the opposite, people skipping the entire discussion and voting for complete opposite of what was near-unanimously agreed upon before voting was set up as long as it means keeping controversial topics. I value people who can give their reasoning 100 times more than a yes-no-man.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 21st 2022 at 12:43:22 PM

I'm just happy people are paying attention at all. I've heard talk of TV Tropes getting smaller and losing members—glad to see the people who are here are getting involved, even if indirectly.

The site becoming less active is possible, considering this horribly outdated bit of text I removed from the How Crowners Work page (which I removed along with a lot of other outdated text):

First of all, the namespace crowners we've had more recently didn't have triple-digit vote counts. Second of all, I don't think any crowner in recent years has had a tripe-digit vote count, so it might as well say "large-scale efforts like renaming of namespaces require you to win the lottery while getting struck by lightning". Sure, the crowners that purged Troper Tales and renamed Nakama to True Companions may have reached that amount of votes, but that was over a decade ago, back when TRS was significantly more active (not to mention significantly more lenient).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 21st 2022 at 5:43:08 AM

> I've heard talk of TV Tropes getting smaller and losing members

That just goes with being a long running website,it sometimes does feel smaller when there's less familiar faces about

Well back then, the community was closer and more casual so we would get more input with site wide stuff. We had more community events. Most of the people that were on the site when I joined have left but I wouldn't worry about the site engagement. Things just change over time.

Edited by MacronNotes on Aug 21st 2022 at 6:53:15 AM

Going down on "fun" stuff in favor of being more Wikipedia style, and also getting more restrictive on what counts as "content" and "is a trope" probably don't do us favors membership-wise in the long run, but there's nothing to be done.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 21st 2022 at 2:04:48 PM

There's a phenomenon observed in wikis generally that they grow until most of the important material has been covered, and then slowly decline in activity. Even Wikipedia has passed that point (at least the English version). Now unlike most fandom wikis, we (and Wikipedia) never need fear a drought of new content to talk about, since we can trope any fiction at all. But I think there are fewer people coming here and noticing a gap they could fill, which is where new users often start.

RE: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13646132210A95550100&page=375#comment-9367

I would have to disagree. As someone relatively new to the site, how to use the Sandbox isn't really explained, beside the single thread in the forum section.

Unless that single thread is it, but needing a dedicated forum thread for that seems a bit much.

RE: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13646132210A95550100&page=376#comment-9376

Interesting, since that link doesn't seem to go anywhere in particular, just the standard "page not found, would you like to create it" message.

I don't see the need because there's no specific rules for sandboxes and you can create them for anything. It's just that most people create personal sandboxes for general use but you can create sandboxes for specific projects. I don't think we need a page for something that can be explained in 1-2 lines.

If you want to learn how to make one, you just have to ask. Like Amonimus said, we could use a one line on Namespace page but that's something for the outdated administrivia pages thread

Edited by MacronNotes on Aug 21st 2022 at 9:52:15 AM

Having a strong urge for the past month to coin Be Wary Of The Average Troper in some form: "Keep in mind that many editors read only the first few lines of a trope description, only the last post (or just the crowner) in the forum, and only (or none) Administrivia pages featured in Tips Worksheet".

Rule 0 on the tips sheet should really be removed on the basis that nobody uses the Discussion Pages anymore. If you follow that advice you'll be waiting a long time for a reply.

It should at least mention Ask The Tropers as that's were people go to ask questions but that requires admin coding.

Edited by MacronNotes on Aug 21st 2022 at 10:48:17 AM

Disregard this. Things weren't quite as I thought.

Edited by Piterpicher on Aug 21st 2022 at 6:18:41 PM

I agree with making either a page or a line in Namespace explicating what a sandbox is.

Edited by good-morning on Aug 21st 2022 at 2:02:36 PM

I love re-reading old debates and discussions on the forums and ATT because it makes me laugh at how things that I used to think were so serious are now conversations I only just vaguely recall having.

That's just life. Many things which seem serious when we were younger are really not that special when we see them with more experience.

Sure, but it's not even an experience thing, more of just a "man, this is what I was stressed over last year?" thing. It feels more like I move onto other wiki dramas and forget the old dramas until I go back, not because I'm older and wiser but because things on the wiki change fast and once problems get resolved they're no longer worth thinking about.

I do remember seeing some place ranking website traffic (can't remember which one bc they're all under paywalls now) where this site peaked around 2012 or so and then has slowly declined since.

But I don't quite see this as a bad thing: I'm glad this place is so tight it and being kept around, plus there's enough users contributing so it still feels alive in a way actually "dead" sites aren't.

Edited by harryhenry on Aug 22nd 2022 at 1:34:33 AM

I do. I have ambition, as we have 600,000+ articles and 18+ years of work by thousands of users, so we truly deserve better. Sure, the admins say we are growing in terms of percentage of visitors, but corporations are ruthless and use every tactic to ensure they rise above small, caring people like us and make us forgotten among their soulless products. But according to Similar Web (seems to be considered reliable to some extent), we've actually been rising and are now #1834, so I'm not concerned right now. But I admittedly weren't able to make much this month, so I'll take the blame if it falls ever so slightly (I have a great work page in the works, hopefully the readers can enjoy). Still, I'll report any potential changes.

Edited by Piterpicher on Aug 22nd 2022 at 11:37:24 AM