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All-Purpose Policy and Meta discussion: Administrivia.Trope Repair Shop

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Before making or posting in a thread, read the Trope Repairing Guidelines to see whether a thread you're considering making actually should be made, as well as what is and isn't allowed in an open thread.

This thread is a metathread for Trope Repair Shop discussion. Things like TRS policy, what is needed in a TRS opening post, questions about whether a certain topic is TRS-worthy and questions about why a thread wasn't opened go here.

Some guidelines for when/whether to use TRS:

  • If the trope is fine, but has some bad examples, feel free to clean them up or to start a cleanup project at Projects: Short-Term. Trope Repair Shop is for when cleaning isn't sufficient.
  • If you think there's something wrong with the trope that systematically attracts improper examples, start a discussion at Trope Talk. Use a Wick Check to see whether there's an issue present (and if there is, what the issue is). The following methods are two possible ways to do a wick check (though not necessarily the only ways):
    • You can go ahead with the Wick Check without a discussion if you know what you're looking for. While it's not mandatory, feel free to ask someone for help confirming that you got the issue and the numbers correct.
    • Consult the Wick Check Project thread to collect evidence if you need help.
  • Depending on a trope (or non-trope) in question, a wick check may be determined to not be required, such as for tropes that are not thriving (per the standards for trope health listed on the Wick page). However, there is no problem if you want to do one anyway.

For a more detailed introduction to this forum, click here.

For related projects, see Wick Cleaning Projects and the Wick Check Project.

For a list of wiki pages related to thread outcomes, see the following:

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 12th 2025 at 11:35:13 AM

WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#10076: Jan 19th 2025 at 5:24:41 AM

...didn't the owners specifically say that EWISOTT could stay a disambig? Like this came up before. This one had permission. We were told this one was fine.

And, yeah, that's a page I see no value in bringing back unless it's solely kept wickless as some weird historical relic of a page. The good use was already moved elsewhere and we had literally no other way to stop the potholing.

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
MissConduct (Septatroper)
#10077: Jan 19th 2025 at 5:41:49 AM

To be honest, I wouldn't mind relitigating Daylight Horror - a trope I took to TRS in 2023 that got disambiged that had inbounds in the "iffy" range at 16,394 - since my initial suggestion wasn't to disabig, it was to rework into a genre page a la Sunshine Noir. I stand by the wick check I made at the time and my decision to take it to TRS in general (I, and basically everyone else on the thread, agreed that "this scary thing happens during the daytime" is Chairs, especially when the time of day is coincidental and not a deliberate choice), and I don't think disambiging was a terrible decision (there was not a lot of support for my genre redefinition idea), but if it's decided that the trope must lose its green page status, I would like to offer up the "genre redefinition" idea again. That said, I would like to take this trope back to TRS to get the community's opinion on what to do with it, as opposed to the mods deciding what to do with it unilaterally.

Eggy0 Wizards Don't Own Cats (she/her) (Holding A Herring) Relationship Status: Faithful to 2D
Wizards Don't Own Cats (she/her)
#10078: Jan 19th 2025 at 5:57:14 AM

I just remembered Why We Cant Have Nice Things, which was disambiguated and its core definition — someone ruining something for other people — was put into a new trope titled Someone Ruins It for Everyone.

I just checked and it has nearly 20k inbounds, though the wick check at the time showed an apparent problem of people using it for destruction of things and as a Stock Phrase when that wasn't what it was about. As that was from before I learned about "faulty" wick checks, I wonder if that one was likewise flawed.

So with that in mind, will WWCHNT be reinstated in the light of the recent changes?

HalfFaust Since: Jan, 2019
#10079: Jan 19th 2025 at 5:59:13 AM

Ok, so if I'm understanding correctly, the issue with disambigs is that an incoming user will be expecting to see a standard Trope page, and will not. Could the same logic thereby apply to definition-only pages? Just trying to fully understand things here.

[up][up] Come to think of it, what is the normal policy on relitigating tropes that have already gone to TRS? Feels like this must have come up before but I can't think of anything.

animuacid The girl of the window from Astyr residence in Lilysthia's grounds Since: Jan, 2024 Relationship Status: I love you for psychological reasons
The girl of the window
#10080: Jan 19th 2025 at 7:02:14 AM

Its not that serious though. The new policy only applies to an extremely small amount of trope pages out of 50,000. Literally in the single percentile. This isn't throwing a giant wrench in the system like some people are acting, its just setting aside a tiny percent of pages that will be exceptions to the usual routine. If you aren't specifically attempting to cut, rename or disambig that extremely tiny minority of pages, its business as usual for 99% of pages.

Our discontent is not just because of this, it's because there have been too many changes and new rules in a very short time and most of these have been enforced without our vote. First it was the abrupt deprecation of the queue, which had some supporters but at the same time there were concerns about overwhelming our scarce manpower and discussion ability. Then, mods became much more watchful of wick checks adding new guidelines that none of us had any idea of before and that aren't in How to Do a Wick Check. They also forced us to salvage Maturity Is Serious Business instead of cutting it because there is no consistent pattern. And we can't do it without using TLP for the new concepts. The mods are telling us that we shouldn't make disambiguate tropes like Cool Old Guy that genuinely were split into two and cases in which it's unreasonable to give priority to one over the other possible target. Kory's post here continues the same train of thought with the implications that disambiguations shouldn't be used for TRS at all. The change that has really left a bad taste in the mouth is the name reversions and the fact that there are more to come, undoing months of work. So yeah, with all this stuff, we are suddenly feeling much more limited in what we cand do for tropes in TRS and that has caused several regulars to take a break.

The new inbounds rule is affecting many of the tropes that we take even if they don't have high 7-day popularity because many tropes created before 2012 have accumulated more than 10k because of web crawlers and chinese forums, not because the name or concept was popular off-site. So this change just penalizes bringing older tropes to TRS, which tend to be the most murky, problematic or misused. For example, in the thread for Music to Invade Poland to, it's been noted that it's oddly specific for a YMMV item and that valid examples could be moved to Regional Riff, Common Knowledge What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?, but because of having a little over 10000 inbounds despite only being wicked around 120 times, the OP is unsure that a disambig is possible. The minimum for banning disambigs without admin approval should be higher, probably around 25 to 50k inbounds.

And while on the topic of disambigs, I think they have their place in TRS. There could be a compromise to be slightly more attractive towards off-site viewers and that way traffic losses would be less of a concern. Take for example, VideoGame.Harvest Moon, in addition to giving the two relevant links, it explains the discrepance between the Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons titles for the videogame series. It even had an image until a while ago. Couldn't we make disambiguations of tropes similar to this? Maybe with explanations about the previous usage, more direct connections to the linked tropes, etc.

I'm concerned that with the heavy restrictions on TRS, pages that would have been cut/disambiguated because their usage is not worth salvagin will instead be turned Definition-Only and we will have a proliferation of these that could be more likely to be misused, when D-O was mostly designedfor Omnipresent Tropes (like plot and The Hero) fanspeak (like kuudere), extremely contentious concepts (like Mary Sue) or pages that are too NSFW to allow examples (like Panty Shot). It could be a mess for pages taken to TRS that don't fit these categories but have to be made D-O because a cut/disambig is not allowed.

And, yeah, that's a page I see no value in bringing back unless it's solely kept wickless as some weird historical relic of a page. The good use was already moved elsewhere and we had literally no other way to stop the potholing.

Count me for another vote not to touch EWISOTT. It was a troper verbal tic that hurt the site and others like I Am Not Making This Up and So Yeah were permanently cut to stop their potholing. At most I can consider the redirecting of EWISOTT to Work Info Title, because the latter trope admits examples of the original definition of self-descriptive titles.

Discar Since: Jun, 2009
#10081: Jan 19th 2025 at 8:54:28 AM

I should point out that I made the TLP Overly Literal Name in large part to pick up some of the Exactly What It Says on the Tin misuse... and it's still having a lot of trouble, because it's a very broad idea. For the record, it seems to be heading in the direction of supertrope/index.

If Exactly What It Says on the Tin has to come back as a page, then I think the only way it can work is as a definition page. And I'd call even that a stretch.

Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.
jandn2014 SMILE! from somewhere in Connecticut Since: Aug, 2017 Relationship Status: Hiding
SMILE!
#10082: Jan 19th 2025 at 9:07:59 AM

I’m going to play devil’s advocate here and state that while I don’t want Exactly What It Says on the Tin back as a trope, I wouldn’t be opposed to making it a definition-only page solely to catch inbounds. Even if the actual trope had long degraded, it was still an iconic piece of the wiki—and sure, iconic status isn’t necessarily a good reason to preserve something on its own, but I think it’s a legitimate concern if the page in question has over 100k inbounds. It was already discussed a week ago that disambigs—as a more “technical” aspect of the site—aren’t exactly intuitive for people coming in from off-site links, so even if the trope itself isn’t resurrected, there should at least be an actual page for people to look at.

If the Overly Literal Name draft is “heading in the direction of supertrope/index”, perhaps that’s what can be done with Exactly What It Says on the Tin as a compromise.

Edited by jandn2014 on Jan 19th 2025 at 12:36:03 PM

kory Admin (Life not ruined yet) Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Admin
#10083: Jan 19th 2025 at 9:23:22 AM

And I ask again: what should we have done in that case? There was like 5% correct use in the wick check:

Doesn’t matter what happened before since the mods and admins weren’t involved, we are now. 5% isn’t zero and still amounted to a lot of examples. Misuse isn’t the big evil thing you all are making it out to be and isn’t justification for removing tons of content. As I said before, pages don’t need to be perfect and never will be. So we need to stop trying to control every tiny thing and putting everything under a microscope. It isn’t helping the site like you all are thinking. People don’t come to TV Tropes because every example is 100% exactly correct. They come because it’s fun to read, even if an example isn’t 100% technically correct, it’s still interesting to read.

If you don't like what we're doing, get involved at the time and suggest alternate solutions that make sense for the observed problem, or provide evidence that we've misread something. Don't just arbitrarily revert months of work we did in good faith to improve the functioning of the wiki. You're breaking the wiki's cardinal rule: "Don't be a dick."

The owners weren’t aware of exactly what TRS was doing and had no idea hundreds to thousands of pages were being made into disambigs with what they view as weak justifications.

You tend to have a bad attitude and almost always sound condescending so that’s very pot calling the kettle black starsword. I’m just doing my job and conveying the wishes of the owners when the owners said to do it.

...didn't the owners specifically say that EWISOTT could stay a disambig? Like this came up before. This one had permission. We were told this one was fine.

That was when they weren’t fully aware of the thousands of disambig pages that were made in a short time and a good chunk of them being very popular pages with lots of inbounds.

Now Monitoring Query Bugs and Query Wishlist
WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#10084: Jan 19th 2025 at 9:23:26 AM

idea[up][up]That was kind of what I suggested before. I can see value in keeping historical def-only pages as long as we make sure people don't just default back to spamming it. If there's an issue there I think it has more to do with how we tend to think of def-only / fanspeak pages, as defined terms. EWISOTT is more of a phrase, hence the potholing, but I still think a def-only thing would be the only real way to salvage it.

[up] Still, it makes me a bit uncomfortable to think that they'd go back on the one thing they specifically approved. I get the others, I do. But EWISOTT just doesn't feel fair, assuming it really is on the table.

Also I'll point out that the issue with EWISOTT wasn't "bad examples". It was being used as a pothole magnet akin to stuff we quite literally burned and salted back in the day. It's not a matter of misuse- it's a matter of upholding the established rules about potholing and troping our own jokes.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 19th 2025 at 12:29:41 PM

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
animuacid The girl of the window from Astyr residence in Lilysthia's grounds Since: Jan, 2024 Relationship Status: I love you for psychological reasons
The girl of the window
#10085: Jan 19th 2025 at 9:31:22 AM

I think EWISOTT could keep the disambig status while having more content about its history or something. That's what I kind of mean with making disambigs more attractive to viewers. It would be a middle way between D-O and disambig, because with full D-O the bad potholes may come back.

Edited by animuacid on Jan 19th 2025 at 6:32:39 PM

themayorofsimpleton Short-Term Projects Herald | he/him from the Island of Koridai (Captain) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
Short-Term Projects Herald | he/him
#10086: Jan 19th 2025 at 9:33:17 AM

I've admittedly been lurking and I feel I need to cut my hiatus short for this question:

If misuse isn't a valid justification, what is? What is the purpose of TRS then?

And furthermore, does this, in any way, affect the Projects subforums? The purpose of many threads there is to remove misuse — are we now allowed to remove misuse at all? Can you clarify what you/the owners mean by that statement Kory?

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jan 19th 2025 at 12:37:09 PM

Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall
MB74 Since: Feb, 2024 Relationship Status: Non-Canon
#10087: Jan 19th 2025 at 9:41:26 AM

5% isn’t zero and still amounted to a lot of examples
Thats still 95% of misused examples. Reverting the page would mean the main issue at hand (extreme potholing) very likely would pop up again.

The owners weren’t aware of exactly what TRS was doing and had no idea hundreds to thousands of pages were being made into disambigs with what they view as weak justifications.

Then bring it up. Make a thread or something. Don’t barge in and revert a community decision just because some people think it’s a weak justification.

I’ll lift my face, and run to the sunlight.
kory Admin (Life not ruined yet) Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Admin
#10088: Jan 19th 2025 at 9:41:42 AM

Also I'll point out that the issue with EWISOTT wasn't "bad examples". It was being used as a pothole magnet akin to stuff we quite literally burned and salted back in the day. It's not a matter of misuse- it's a matter of upholding the established rules about potholing and troping our own jokes.

I’m sorry but potholing magnet? Jokes? that sounds like even less of a good excuse than misuse and doesn’t help your argument.

If misuse isn't a valid justification, what is? What is the purpose of TRS then?

And furthermore, does this, in any way, affect the Projects subforums? The purpose of many threads there is to remove misuse — are we now allowed to remove misuse at all? Can you clarify what you/the owners mean by that statement Kory?

Nothing is really valid justification for removing popular content, hence the new policy.

As far as removing misuse, if something is blatantly wrong and not even close then sure. But if an example is on the right track and kind of portraying the trope in a way, that’s fine to keep. Most people have no idea what tropes even are, let alone if they are 100% portrayed exactly correct. Only trope veterans would know the difference. 99% of our traffic are from the general public, not experienced tropers.

Now Monitoring Query Bugs and Query Wishlist
themayorofsimpleton Short-Term Projects Herald | he/him from the Island of Koridai (Captain) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
Short-Term Projects Herald | he/him
#10089: Jan 19th 2025 at 9:43:20 AM

But if an example is on the right track and kind of portraying the trope in a way, that’s fine to keep

Sorry to keep asking, but I'm a little confused as to this definition. What would and would not qualify? This definition seems very fuzzy.

Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall
WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#10090: Jan 19th 2025 at 9:48:29 AM

It's against our rules, and has been for over a decade. We eradicated So Yeah solely because it was a pointless pothole magnet. I think that was the one Eddie went full scorched Earth on and created a tool to zap every instance of the trope on the wiki. Like, you may not find it valid, but it's been considered a problem since the beginning. See Permanent Red Link Club for more examples.

What we're doing here is literally nothing new. EWISOTT's burning has years of precedent, dating back to Eddie. (If I had time and wasn't on mobile I'd try to figure out the exact year this began, but it was longgggg before the current TRS stuff)

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 19th 2025 at 12:51:21 PM

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
animuacid The girl of the window from Astyr residence in Lilysthia's grounds Since: Jan, 2024 Relationship Status: I love you for psychological reasons
The girl of the window
#10091: Jan 19th 2025 at 9:51:50 AM

[up]That means that It Makes Sense in Context, despite its high popularity and being top #15, is a horrible pothole magnet that violates the rules. Per the Tropes Needing TRS

And yeah, I've only seen It Makes Sense in Context potholed to any ridiculous sounding moment.

themayorofsimpleton Short-Term Projects Herald | he/him from the Island of Koridai (Captain) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
Short-Term Projects Herald | he/him
#10092: Jan 19th 2025 at 9:58:17 AM

Oh, and I'd like to ask a modified version of this again, since this was not addressed:

Given the previous statement on misuse, what will be the fate of the Projects subforums? Will threads be shut down? Should we expect any major changes over there?

Sorry to use Bold Inflation, I just want to make sure this is addressed as this is potentially existential to part or all of the entire maintenance site of the site.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jan 19th 2025 at 12:58:33 PM

Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall
kory Admin (Life not ruined yet) Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Admin
#10093: Jan 19th 2025 at 9:59:16 AM

Sorry to keep asking, but I'm a little confused as to this definition. What would and would not qualify? This definition seems very fuzzy.

Thats going to be subjective based on the trope and the example. If an example doesn't even come close to portraying the trope and is just blatantly wrong then it obviously shouldn't be there, sure. But if an example is almost correct or would-be correct say for some small detail, then it shouldn't be removed and certainly isnt justification for removing an entire page if a bunch of the examples are close but not technically correct. Its the nit picking extremism that needs to stop. And again, this isn't just the owners, the mods also agree the extreme nitpicking and the "we want every trope page to be perfect or we throw it out" needs to stop.

Given the previous statement on misuse, what will be the fate of the Projects subforums? Will threads be shut down? Should we expect any major changes over there?
No

It's against our rules, and has been for over a decade. We eradicated So Yeah solely because it was a pointless pothole magnet. I think that was the one Eddie went full scorched Earth on and created a tool to zap every instance of the trope on the wiki. Like, you may not find it valid, but it's been considered a problem since the beginning. See Permanent Red Link Club for more examples.

I dont know why users keep bringing up the previous owner. He hasn't owned TV Tropes for many many years. What he did is completely irrelevant to the new owners. A lot of potholing doesn't sound like good justification for removing an entire page, especially if its popular.

Edited by kory on Jan 19th 2025 at 10:04:05 AM

Now Monitoring Query Bugs and Query Wishlist
themayorofsimpleton Short-Term Projects Herald | he/him from the Island of Koridai (Captain) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
Short-Term Projects Herald | he/him
#10094: Jan 19th 2025 at 10:03:21 AM

[up] Thank you for getting back to me. I'm glad Projects will be left alone.

(Just so you know Kory, if an example would be correct minus a small detail, it already wouldn't have been removed, just whatever the small detail would be would. Project threads don't only delete, they also rewrite — we have an entire Wall of Text cleanup, for example, for overly long entries that need rewrites to chop them down.)

Apologies if I confused you at all in my wording, I'm not always the best at wording things.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jan 19th 2025 at 1:17:59 PM

Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall
TMH-Sir-Iron-Vomit The clown of STEEL from Ichnusa Since: Mar, 2024
The clown of STEEL
#10095: Jan 19th 2025 at 10:05:57 AM

We keep mentioning Eddie because, well, it's the reason we're discussing about this site at all. He was one of the most important figures of Tv Tropes since his creations, and we're supposed to follow his ideals and guidelines.

These new site owners, meanwhile, just come across as savage capitalists.Ok, I was proven wrong.

Edited by TMH-Sir-Iron-Vomit on Jan 19th 2025 at 7:15:47 PM

Oo oo ah ah
lu127 Paper Master from 異界 Since: Sep, 2011 Relationship Status: Crazy Cat Lady
#10096: Jan 19th 2025 at 10:10:56 AM

I'm sorry, can people here stop talking about Fast Eddie as if they personally knew what his vision was?

Because I personally knew Fast Eddie, and I can tell you he would never have approved all these disambiguations. Fast Eddie would shut down TRS threads that tried to apply an overly narrow definition to a trope and he would never have allowed multiple disambiguations to keep happening. He was one of the first people to point out that TRS was too literal and was against clinical renames. You would not have gotten Once Original, Now Common through Fast Eddie, and you would not have disambiguated "Funny Aneurysm" Moment.

Fast Eddie was about fun. He often preferred things that kept the site fun, rather than 100% correct. That's a fundamental difference here.

Edited by lu127 on Jan 19th 2025 at 8:11:55 PM

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer
animuacid The girl of the window from Astyr residence in Lilysthia's grounds Since: Jan, 2024 Relationship Status: I love you for psychological reasons
The girl of the window
#10097: Jan 19th 2025 at 10:31:15 AM

While on the topic of fun in Tv Tropes, I think TRS recently detroped the Hair Intakes trope (via redirecting to Anime Hair) because its examples were boring. TRS regulars demand any Appearance Trope to have a consistent meaning for the narrative and Hair Intakes didn't have that. The wick check showed that the vast majority of examples were all like "She has two intakes that look like cat eats" and that may feel uninteresting. But on hidnsight, maybe the intakes are a distinct visual quirk and they are always intentional in a design, in addition with a likely association with moe... Synchronicity has argued in an IP thread that Idiot Hair doesn't need a specific personality as a requirement of the trope, just the loose hair strand. Well, a silver lining on all this is that we are reflecting that we may have applied People Sit on Chairs too harshly.

kory Admin (Life not ruined yet) Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Admin
#10098: Jan 19th 2025 at 10:33:12 AM

just so you know Kory, if an example would be correct minus a small detail, it already wouldn't have been removed, just whatever the small detail would be would. Project threads don't only delete, they also rewrite

Thats great to hear. Im just trying to help with curbing the content removal, however i can. That's what the owners main concerns are, content being removed that doesnt violate the content policy and isn't hurting anyone.

Fast Eddie was about fun. He often preferred things that kept the site fun, rather than 100% correct. That's a fundamental difference here.

Well then thats something that the new owners and eddie definitely have in common. I feel like we need to get back to the more fun side of things instead of being so critical something isn't absolutely perfect. The owners just care about content being removed, especially popular content. But if you dive deeper it seems like it's only happening because everyones treating trope pages like they are going to be graded and everyones needs a perfect score or its the end of it.

Now Monitoring Query Bugs and Query Wishlist
themayorofsimpleton Short-Term Projects Herald | he/him from the Island of Koridai (Captain) Relationship Status: I won't say I'm in love
Short-Term Projects Herald | he/him
#10099: Jan 19th 2025 at 10:43:44 AM

The only thing I want now is specific TRS guidelines, as in what can and cannot get TRS, what to consider with wick checks, etc.

Kory mentioned that the mods are working on something like that in Slack. That's good — having defined guidelines will dramatically help TRS in its current state, I think.


I'm going to say something a bit controversial and say I'm not happy with the regulars here. Kory's statement that mod opinion is being factored into reversions, the recent approval of a 400,000+ inbound page move to Analysis (along with a concurrent statement Kory made about the policy not being black-and-white) seeming to imply that the new guidelines are not a total kneecap on TRS progress, the fact that defined guidelines are being worked on (as mentioned), and the fact that new solutions have been found for tropes other than disambiguating or cutting (or even renaming, as The Sociopath's thread shows)note  are proof to me that, if nothing else, the admins aren't totally against TRS (they could have literally deleted the entire subforum if they genuinely were) and that the community has become too defeatist and unwilling to really think outside the box — I think the defaulting to cuts and disambigs is further evidence of defeatism in the community.

This is what I think needs to happen:

  • Again, we need clear guidelines. Knowing what exactly (or close enough that our questions are answered) can be brought in and handled will hopefully help satiate the community's concerns over a lack of clarity as to what threads/solutions are and are not allowed.
  • The mods do have a point in that we're too quick to cut or disambiguate, and the community needs to, again, think outside the box in that regard. The Sociopath couldn't be renamed, so it's being made a definition page with new tropes split off. We found a way to save concepts and probably examples from that trope without pissing off the admins. I'm sure we can do the same with other tropes.
  • At the same time, I think (and I know I have no say in this, I'm just expressing my opinion) the admins need to work on how they word their responses. Or I guess PR, from a business sense. I don't think the responses Kory gave would have been as poorly received if they hadn't come off as confrontational and aggressive as they were — one of the tropers who is on break even expressed as such. Responses can be firm and calm at the same time — I personally think aiming for that will go a long way in helping repair community ties.
  • One thing I want to stress that I wish more people would recognize is that cleanup threads aren't always ineffective. I'm well aware that some threads haven't been able to do much — the Hindsight and Reality Ensues ones, for one — but they aren't always useless distractions either. Nightmare Fuel's cleanup dramatically helped improve a set of pages so bad, they were getting us mocked offsitenote  and So Bad, It's Horrible's cleanup has served as effective maintenance for one of the more controversial parts of our site. Cleanup can't fix everything, but it isn't useless either — and it serves an important role on our site all the same.
  • I honestly wonder if we can revive discussions about how to encourage more TRS participation in general. Kory keeps arguing that TRS (and maintenance in general) are a tiny part of the site — but I don't think they have to be. I encourage the admins, mods, and regulars to help come up with ways to bring some more blood into TRS and the maintenance subforums, a solution I think will help with several things. It will help bring more creative and inventive ways to save tropes in. It will help us get more cleaners for wick cleanup actions. And I think it will help give TRS and the maintenance half of the site a better pulse on the community at large, coming up with better ideas that will satiate larger numbers of people.

(I do agree with Animuacid that 25-50,000 inbounds is a more realistic range than 10-20,000 too, but I know I have no say in that so I won't pursue it.)

These are just some thoughts I have. I don't expect a lot of people to agree with me, but this is what I'm seeing in looking at this.

Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall
WarJay77 It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000) from My Writing Cave (Troper Knight) Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
It's NaNo, Bay-beeee! (3,795/50,000)
#10100: Jan 19th 2025 at 10:53:04 AM

To be entirely clear, I wasn't bringing up Eddie as some kind of a "gotcha". I never spoke to him personally and strongly disagreed on a lot of his ideas and ideals. I was really just trying to explain where the EWISOTT concern came from, to support the argument I was making about it not being something we want. I brought him up because his actions back then established a strong precedent regarding pothole magnets specifically, not because I think the current owners should follow his vision or whatnot. Was really just stating facts and explaining the reason for our mindset.

Just wanted to clear that up.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 19th 2025 at 1:54:47 PM

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