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I'll make the following changes then:

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

I thought a bit more, and ultimately, I can't come up with any indexes or types of tropes that'd have tropes have some expected size standard. The only two are Overdosed Tropes and Pages Needing Wicks, and those are intentional. So I don't expect adding anything to Wick about requiring comparison with other similar tropes.

I suppose the FAQ page and suggestions look good right now. Though I think the paragraph about replacing quality/non-transparency in images requiring discussion is false, I've seen people fix those things without posting on the thread and just updating the indexes (I'm speaking from experience as a retired IP guy and other people who are/were IP regulars).

Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)

Too tired to completely review the discussion (maybe I can come back to it after I've slept), but I did start thinking about another trope more after a mod approved of Olive Garden's thread due to the wick count.

There was another case of a supposedly healthy trope coming up for having an unexpectedly low amount of wicks. Bug Buzz was brought up on Ask The Tropers a while back because its wick count is is in the double digits (I checked the Related tab and it's lower than Olive Garden's count), despite being a common trope that's also Truth in Television. The name makes it sound like it's simply about insects making buzzing sounds (which would be Chairs), but it's about insect noises annoying people.

I haven't checked, but it wouldn't be surprising if there are wicks that interpret the title literally, since that's why Bad Dreams was renamed. Checking for misuse would definitely require a wick check, but perhaps the wick count would be enough for a TRS thread. Either way, if the wick count is sufficient for a thread, I already thought of a new name — Bugged By Buzzing Bugs.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 4th 2020 at 7:58:46 AM

Currently sick, so less active. If a Trope Repair Shop thread needs attention, holler or ask an engineer.

Part 1: Thoughts (don't read part 2 if you're not prepared):

At the very least, Bug Buzz does have problems other than "low" wicks (so did Olive Garden).

Just having "low" wicks (by "low" wicks, I mean being >=24 after >=4 years but still being considered unsatisfactory somehow) is not a reason to consider a trope to perform poorly, TBH. After all, the minimum example count has been 3 and minimum wick count to be considered okay was 13 for a while, we have more than tripled the minimum requirements for launching and nearly doubled the minimum requirements for survival within the previous year. I believe that we have already raised requirements significantly, and Moving the Goalposts much further in the current time may not be the best idea.

As for thinking a trope should be more popular, that can be a frustrating concept. After all, I'm sure Bubblegum Popping is common, but it only has 91 wicks - other than that, it's performing well. No tropes which had Seen It a Million Times have one million wicks (feel free to laugh at me in 2040). Simply put, there are so many works, many lost due to time, format change, or pure ignorance, and people are unable to keep track of all works/tropes, that I find it ultimately impossible to ensure that a trope will always have hundreds of examples even if it is supposedly popular. However...

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Part 2: Thoughts for Improvement

As the website is more than 15 years old now and tropes should thrive to at least some extent, I am willing to continue the progression on Wick, with a potential requirement for tropes that have 16+ years to have 48 wicks as the minimum? I'd say it leaves a pretty good long-term goal for tropes like Fourth Wall Shut-In Story (which has been mentioned to have more potential wicks) and The Kindness of Strangers (which has been removed from Tropes Needing TRS due to meeting standards, even if barely). Like, if they don't get enough wicks by 2027/2029, they're out (for expansion, not necessarily deletion).

Then again, Bug Buzz would need to have 64+ years to be viable for Not Thriving if we continued progression and it had less than 96 wicks.

I am considering whether Wick should adopt a powers of 3 instead of 4 years approach to wicks. So to be Standing would need the trope to have:

• 12+ wicks by launch
• 24+ wicks by 3 years
• 48+ wicks by 9 years
• 96+ wicks by 27 years
• 192+ wicks by 81 years (yeah, let our children take care of underused old tropes)

This still wouldn't get Olive Garden and Bug Buzz Not Thriving, but it'd be a fair bit higher bar to clear. Are we okay with this? Or should we go for some even lower number for years progression (like 2.5, which would become [0, 2.5, 6, 15, 39, 97, ...] most results rounded down)? I could also recalculate wick requirements altogether or create other categories if needed. Something like "Barely Standing: The trope can live as is in terms of wicks but if similar tropes are doing better or there are problems leading to disuse definitely consider if it could be improved".

Edited by Piterpicher on Aug 4th 2020 at 6:23:29 PM

Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)

This is getting too much hung up on exact numbers. Not all tropes will get the same number of wicks even when they are of the same health. If Big Bad had only a few hundred wicks that would bespeak a serious problem, as that trope is very widespread, even though Wick would consider this "healthy". The reason why I opened that thread is because stereotypically Italian settings are common across works and yet that trope had fewer examples than comparable setting tropes.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Frankly, I believe this wiki does not rely on numbers for ruling and standards enough. Just saying that a trope is common is not guaranteeing it actually is, or just seems common to you because you know works that have it (I'm sure something like Fourth Wall Shut-In Story is more common and it has been complained that it doesn't have enough wicks, but I have no specific examples to add to it). At least, a number standard is objective and works everywhere unless it's too low/high or specific, justified exceptions are needed.

And let me reiterate that stereotypically national settings are not going to show up a lot all the time (like, Italy is popular, but as popular as other European countries, France or Spain, mentioned in that thread, just see this) and there are no real categories which would meet a similar level all the time. And it wasn't even that much less popular (it was more than half of the lowest trope it was compared to and nearly one third of the highest, maybe it'd be more serious if it was one tenth or something).

Edited by Piterpicher on Aug 4th 2020 at 6:47:23 PM

Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)

I'm with Septimus on this honestly. We just can't judge every trope by the same standards. Some are just more common than others. This is why I was concerned in that New Tropes thread- the ones I launch are, generally speaking, not super uncommon, so they should have Wick counts that reflect that, but many seem to be underused- not because of the tropes themselves, but due to lack of publicity.

Meanwhile, overuse of wicks is also a problem. A relatively specific trope having a massive number of wicks can indicate misuse.

Frankly, relying on exact numbers has just never really sat well with me. It puts everything into a box when some of those things don't belong in that same box.

Current Project: The Team

I wonder... If we know how old a trope is, not on the site, but in cultural history... If that would help figure out how many actual examples there are...

Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576

I suppose you are right. Admittedly, tropes are not always at the same level of frequency (I think I've actually said that before). Wick has always been just the minimum requirement, one size fits all (not counting time), and I thought it can always be increased if needed. And it does seem like quite a few tropes go too far in terms of size, like Adorkable or Getting Crap Past the Radar, but the Wick would only think they are the Truly Awesome and "stand back and watch in fear/awe.", which is a rare reaction.

I think it could be modified at the cost of quite a bit of work, but I'll need to think a little more. As for how old they are, we have indexes like Older Than Dirt.

Edited by Piterpicher on Aug 4th 2020 at 10:30:47 AM

Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)

I'm considering a mini personal project where I study new work pages being made to see what kind of tropes they use- ones that are well-established? Ones that aren't? Ones that might belong to subtropes? Ect. If I can get enough data we can figure out if there really is some sort of issue, as new work pages should be expected to use as many tropes as possible- so the overwhelming lack of newer or smaller tropes could be sign of a problem.

If it's that project then I already know

Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 4th 2020 at 4:36:50 AM

Current Project: The Team

I do have something for work pages that I plan to propose eventually to improve minimal standards, but that's a secret until a certain condition is met and several days after that (if I told you what it is, it wouldn't be a secret). We're getting close to it, though. I do think that experiment could help as well. [edit to clarify plans]

Edited by Piterpicher on Aug 4th 2020 at 10:46:59 AM

Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)

It's been brought up here that the rules listed on the IP discussion thread need to be updated.

Currently, they imply if not outright state that IP threads are only strictly necessary if an image is changed after it was already chosen by a prior IP thread, which is apparently untrue. IP threads are apparently always required, except when adding an image to a page that didn't use to have one.

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Personally, I'm of the opinion if a new image is obviously better than the old one then starting a thread is just pointless, even if the change was done without discussion. We are always near capacity in that forum, hell, we're over-capacity as of this post, do we seriously need a thread just to go "yep, that was a good change, alright"?

A good example is the one that started this discussion: the Henry Stickmin Series. Old image◊ vs new image◊. This change was a year ago, and anyone with enough sense can see the new image is better, so is a thread really necessary?

Think we should maybe put further clarification on how namespaces and wikiwords work at NamespaceGoesHere.Title Goes Here? Despite the lock, people still think they should be creating new pages there, so they keep coming into ATT asking why they can't.

Trouble Cube continues to be a general-purpose forum for those who desire such a thing.

If it matters (though I'm not sure if it does), Bibble Bobble is a blue link now, to explain the now-infamous crowner bug.

Currently sick, so less active. If a Trope Repair Shop thread needs attention, holler or ask an engineer.

We need to do something with Work Pages Are a Free Launch; we either need a way of making it extremely clear that this shouldn't just be spammed on the TLP, or we need a second page to use when people do spam it on the TLP.

I may seem angry right now, and I am, and it's not really because of this, but this is something I can direct my frustration toward. People won't stop using that page every time someone posts a work draft to the TLP, despite that 9 times out of ten, drafts like these are in abysmal condition and the sponsor shouldn't be encouraged to post it without TLP if they aren't going to use the effort. It shouldn't be a page that people can just post willy-nilly. I blame the title personally; the actual page says that TLP can be used for work pages, but the way people use it, you'd think the TLP was banned for it or something.

Current Project: The Team

In regards to my previous suggestion. Thoughts?

Trouble Cube continues to be a general-purpose forum for those who desire such a thing.

Current Project: The Team

I was thinking put that at NamespaceGoesHere.Title Goes Here and put redirects to it from the other common erroneous pages currently on the PRLC.

On reflection, we could additionally and/or alternately polish up How to Create a Work's Page so the bit that people get tripped up on is clearer.

Trouble Cube continues to be a general-purpose forum for those who desire such a thing.

I mean, I'm not sure how to make it more clear, but we can try.

Current Project: The Team

While I was throwing this together, I noticed that the existing step 1 had writing the work's description lumped in despite being titled "Find the blank page to edit". That should be split off into its own step even if we decide not to edit anything else.

Current:

My suggestion:

... It's pretty lengthy, but I'm going for clear over concise here.

Not entirely sure whether that last note is a good idea or not.

Edited by wingedcatgirl on Aug 29th 2020 at 1:13:27 AM

Trouble Cube continues to be a general-purpose forum for those who desire such a thing.

I think I would pothole How to Make a Custom Title rather than The Ptitle Replacement System in the paragraph about the page title, as the latter is a page about wiki history rather than a tutorial page.

Right, I keep forgetting that The Custom Title System redirects to the page on how it's replacing ptitles...

Trouble Cube continues to be a general-purpose forum for those who desire such a thing.

Speaking of titles, is it just me, or do a lot of Administrivia pages have very unmemorable, overly-wordy titles? It makes things a pain, because trying to point someone to a policy page can take several tries because the immediate thing you think it should be called isn't actually what it's called. Most of them seem to harken back to the stock-phrase era, where being able to treat the title like a sentence was more important than making it memorable or sensical.

I just ran into it with List of Shows That Need Summary, and I know it happens a lot with other ones. Since a lot of these pages need to be typed out for other people to look at, wouldn't it make more sense to make these pages in line with Clear, Concise, Witty?

Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 18th 2020 at 4:55:07 AM

Current Project: The Team

I feel like we have bigger fish to fry, and those Administrivia pages aren't titled for easy linking, since you would only ever use them deliberately and with specific reference to the points they make.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Right, but because they're not titled for that purpose, actually linking to them when needed becomes super difficult. Could we at least get redirects or something, so that actually being able to send people certain policy pages isn't rendered an absolute chore?

Administrivia is already sort of shoved into the corner of the site anyway and is really hard to access unless you know how- keeping the titles super unwieldy and unmemorable doesn't help anyone. It just makes it harder to reference them when they're actually relevant. I just see no point to not updating them to make it much easier to actually access them, even if just because there's less words to remember in each title.

...Also, still would like some feedback on the Work Pages Are a Free Launch issue. We need some way of preventing people from spamming the damn thing. Asking them not to hasn't helped.

Current Project: The Team