This is a thread to discuss those Administrivia pages in need of a little updating- you know the ones. The ones that still cite rules we've long since changed, or the ones that don't properly cite our current standards. Some of them are even scattered in Main/!
So, this is the place to take those pages and fix them up with the help of the community.
For a list of current projects, see Outdated Administrivia Pages.
Note: This thread is not for asking mods to make one-off edits to Locked Pages, Administrivia-related or otherwise, such as requesting additions to an Example Sectionectomy index. Please use this thread
for that.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Apr 21st 2023 at 9:12:02 AM
"Up For Grabs does not mean it's a free launch. You still need to act like any other sponsor would, which includes resolving all lingering issues and rekindling discussion if need be. A "sponsor" that doesn't contribute to an abandoned draft before launching is still a rogue-launcher."
?
Edit:
sounds good to me.
Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 22nd 2020 at 8:08:33 AM
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallOh, rekindling discussion before launch is important to mention too. Maybe two added paragraphs, then:
When you take sponsorship of a draft, you need to rekindle discussion and resolve any lingering issues the previous sponsor didn't take care of — especially if the draft has been abandoned for significantly longer than the standard two months. While sponsors do occasionally abandon perfectly launchable drafts, it is far more common for an abandoned draft to need substantial work before it's ready.
Edited by wingedcatgirl on Aug 22nd 2020 at 5:18:09 AM
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.I foresee another problem. Adding those
paragraphs clarifying that cleanup and launch announcements still need to be done is all well and good, but the second paragraph on the Up for Grabs page could potentially undermine that message. I've bolded the problematic part.
Edited by Miss_Desperado on Aug 22nd 2020 at 9:12:02 AM
If not for this anchor I'd be dancing between the stars. At least I can try to write better vampire stories than Twilight.*reads that page* "It goes without saying that No Launching Please includes Rolling Updates without that having to be stated separately."
... no it doesn't?
Maybe things used to be different, but I don't think No Launching, Please conveys any information that's different from the default state of TLP, nowadays.
Edited by wingedcatgirl on Aug 22nd 2020 at 9:14:29 AM
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.I'd suggest rewriting that page to
This is the default state of TLP, and doesn't technically convey any new information — but sometimes the reminder is necessary.
A draft that has been abandoned for two months or longer still becomes Up for Grabs, even if the sponsor once said "no launching".
and removing the "opposite of No Launching, Please" line from Up for Grabs entirely.
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.We can also add that sometimes "No Launching Please" is phrased as "No Rogue Launching", which gets the message across more clearly.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
The Up For Grabs revisions, especially after seeing someone in edit banned/suspended essentially saying "but the page didn't say I couldn't rogue launch it!"
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Another outdated page, Rolling Updates
[...]
Additional note: To keep from irritating other tropers, when using Rolling Updates, please put a tag linking to this page at the top or bottom of your OP, so that other tropers see it and know what you are doing.
Rolling updates is the default now, contrary to what's implied here, and I think the part about copy-pasting might be from before going through TLP was mandatory for creating tropes.
When did TLP become mandatory for new tropes, anyway? Would be good to have on Timeline.TV Tropes. Also when it was renamed from YKTTW.
To my knowledge, sometime in 2017, the same time it was renamed from YKTTW.
Edited by ccorb on Aug 22nd 2020 at 1:23:36 PM
Rock'n'roll never dies!According to this thread
, it was somewhere between April and May of 2016.
I don't think TLP being mandatory was implemented until 2017'ish when Main namespace was locked out to non-moderators
Edited by MacronNotes on Aug 22nd 2020 at 10:33:02 AM
Macron's notesShort Titles appears to be a remnant from before the wiki supported titles that short (it was fixed in the early '10s, I think), or perhaps from shortly after the limitation was removed.
I'm just going to copy what 𝕋𝕒𝕓𝕤 posted about the page's contents and my response to that post (posting both for the sake of context):
Tabs:
Me:
Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 23rd 2020 at 12:50:32 PM
I got a rock for Halloween.Seems to be an easy fix. We can probably rewrite the first line to be something like "An index for articles with three or fewer letters in their title."
Macron's notesAh, I remember there being an issue with Western Animation/Up, which was, er, fixed by placing it in a namespace.
But is it even necessary? It's a mishmash of pages 1-4 characters long.
If it's no longer an issue, then just Cut List it.
We seriously don't need an index of "titles that are only 3 characters long". C'mon.
Oh, right... I should have said what thread those posts were in. It was in this TRS thread
for the More Like A Footnote Than Anything Else index.
I don't really care about it being cut either way. Just made a suggest since pages are usually brought here to be updated in some way.
Macron's notesI'd rather keep it. It does seem like it helps with searching to some extent and some of those short titles are hard to find if the work isn't popular. When I search for Spy, I end up finding Series.Spy on the third page. When I search for Sin, I don't think I could find Manga.Sin. And I couldn't find No when searching for Film.No. Of course, it does depend on how popular the work is (like VideoGame.Dex was the first result for Dex), and an editor like myself can easily alter the URL, but it doesn't seem like something relatively useful for more casual readers interested in those works. And sometimes, it's just fun to find out those works. Though admitttedly, "no film" would give me Film.No as the first result, so this would mainly see use in the really casual audience which I don't know should be browsing TVT in the first place.
I'd be fine with keeping the original first line, maybe changing it to "Articles with three or fewer letters in their title can often be difficult or impossible to find for the casual reader. This page lists them." to make it more clear it's for them these days.
Edited by Piterpicher on Aug 24th 2020 at 9:49:42 PM
Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)Why just three though, doesn't that problem arise for any One-Word Title? Searching "mermaid" does not give me Animation.Mermaid right away.
Edited by Synchronicity on Aug 24th 2020 at 10:27:42 AM
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It's really insulting to people's intelligence if you think they don't know how to narrow their searches with additional terms, like "manga sin" or "film no". That's how every search engine works. If you think a "casual" user doesn't know how to do that, but they're totally willing to go look at some random index (that they probably wouldn't even know exists, because why would they if they're a casual user?), then I don't know what to tell you.
Like, if I couldn't find The Lost Room by normal means, I wouldn't go looking for the index Works With Protagonists Named Joe. Nobody would.
Edited by Primis on Aug 24th 2020 at 10:44:58 AM
Yeah, if anything it'd make more sense to just turn One-Word Title into the index, but then you'll be left wondering why other title indexes don't get the same treatment, and then it'll become a whole rigamaroll.
Are the wiki's search engines very great? Not really. They kinda suck actually.
But Google doesn't. Any time I try to find a TVT page using Google, it's always one of the first few results. If you know how to narrow the search, like Primis mentioned, you're golden.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallWell, yeah, I know that. This is why I've ultimately realised that it's mainly for the really casual (stupid) people who probably wouldn't be browsing this site or searching for works or searching for those works. Admittedly, there's a precise search engine for works which doesn't work right now (it should be on Wiki Tools somewhere), which lets you search for pages which contain an exact string of text in the title, and it requires at least three letters, but that would take away from the potential three letter functionality of this page, and only make it useful if we had up to two letters, which is probably too few pages and would be found by the search engine and more precise terms as you said.
Ultimately, I've been stupid and this one has lost its practical use due to the software updates on this site and should be deleted (after all, some disambiguations have been deleted due to the auto-disambig feature rendering them largely useless).
Speaking of which, One-Word Title has its own problems. Somehow it lists works that are numbers like 1213, even though the wiki word is clearly VideoGame/TwelveThirteen and makes it clear it's two words. Those should probably be removed, and only things like WesternAnimation/Nine be kept.
Edited by Piterpicher on Aug 24th 2020 at 8:11:17 PM
Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)I always thought that Walkthrough Mode was supposed to be a general prohibition on turning wiki articles into game guides. But, as written, it currently defines itself as a type of natter. Specifically, it can only apply when people are arguing with each other in a wiki article about the best way to do something in a game. Should this be changed? I'm currently having a bit of a debate with ~taylorswiftscat about the strategy tips on Final Fantasy I and its character page.

That, right at the bottom of the page. Does that sound good?
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.