Outdated Administrivia Pages

Re: How to Do a Wick Check:

I've previously mentioned how the page doesn't cover how to use wick checks for anything other than misuse, such as if a trope is Chairs or a duplicate, or if it should be YMMV, Trivia, IUEO, or a Useful Note.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 8th 2021 at 11:13:38 AM

I'll make the sandbox soon, just haven't had time yet. Ping me if I don't get it done before, idk...early morning, and I'll do it before work tomorrow.

Okay, Wick Check Rewrite is up. My changes thus far have been small- just changing the "what to look for" list with a more accurate and broad version, and listing the three ways I've seen people randomize these checks while also referencing potential benefits and drawbacks of each.

Wick Check Rewrite seems OK to me.

I actually found How to Create a Disambiguation Page in this thread, no idea why I mixed it up with War Jay's list. Anyway, the point stands that the exact formatting of a disambiguation page is a small thing that requires neither a consensus nor a policy page and there is in fact a cost to having a lot of them.

For Wick Check Rewrite, I think you can mention it can be used to prove the trope is just "X appears" that aren't necessarily lacking in context. One of these tropes was Landlord deemed PSOC with an example being "There's a landlady at Rent Office and you have to pay her every month or else she'll take away money you get at your job", or some we did for Phone Booth.

As for How to Create a Disambiguation Page, I wouldn't worry about the number of policy pages. The proportion of Administrivia/all pages used to be over 1/1000 in 2018 and is now less than 1/1000. Now, we could consider the optimal proportion to be 1/250*x^0.96 with x being 100k number of our articles, so 1/1172 rounded down right now, and then it is a bit too much, but I don't know if we should accept it yet.

Edited by Piterpicher on Jun 9th 2021 at 3:23:32 PM

Ratios have nothing to do with this. Raw numbers do, as it means extra work for people keeping them up-to-date and those asked to read them.

Yes, but new rules may need to come up if needed as pages increase and people will be able to take more things into account as internet users are generally becoming more mature, they can adjust to some extent, and more people who are experienced help with keeping them up to date. A proportion can still help give an estimation of freedom. I'll change my formula in a moment as I realized it gives 400 as a result in every case, though (will adjust further to pages/250*x^0.97 if still too strict, may need to think further later).

Yeah, now that I'm home, this results in an increase of 5 every 100k pages... even if we don't want too many admin pages, that's definitely too little. Sill hinking.

Edited by Piterpicher on Jun 9th 2021 at 6:16:34 PM

Alright. I think the algorithm for the number of Administrivia/ pages should ultimately be log5((n/1000)^0.85*(3.28-n/5000000)) rounded down, n being the number of pages. I believe it'll ensure that not too many pages show up too quickly and account for stuff like redirects. For the foreseeable future, the totals will be:

• 550000 pages - 472 Administrivia/
• 600000 pages - 507 Administrivia/
• 650000 pages - 541 Administrivia/
• 700000 pages - 575 Administrivia/
• 750000 pages - 607 Administrivia/
• 800000 pages - 640 Administrivia/
• 850000 pages - 671 Administrivia/
• 900000 pages - 702 Administrivia/
• 950000 pages - 733 Administrivia/
• 1000000 pages - 763 Administrivia/

Still WJ, don't forget I left feedback for the wick check page earlier.

Edited by Piterpicher on Jun 9th 2021 at 10:02:28 AM

I saw. Though since I'm not entirely sure about what you mean by that, if you want to edit the sandbox yourself, go for it. The sandbox is open to all who may wish to take part.

As for the Disambiguation page, it does seem useful to me not as a hardline rules page but as a "if you want to do this, here's how" thing. But that may be pushing the namespace a little...

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 9th 2021 at 1:33:37 PM

thank you. I'll add it to that page tomorrow.

We've got Administrivia.How To Move A Page, which is also a how-too. I'm actually wondering if there is enough overlap to simplify the presentation and merge those two concepts? Outside of fixing typos and the occasional new english translation of a work obsoleting the title of the page, most moves probably happen in the context of creating a disambiguation anyway.

For my personal taste, both HTMP and the proposed HTCD are far too detailed to be maximally useful. If somebody is doing advanced things, I expect them to already know how to edit and create a page, how to change the page type, and how to request a custom title —no need to walk through those steps here.

I'd disagree on How to Move a Page actually - in my experience, some steps (particularly re: discussion pages) are frequently missed.

I've found that The Second Google Incident contains this excerpt.

Evidently, since this incident occurred in 2012 and we're on the forums right now, this did not actually happen. It's severely out of date and should probably be removed.

But that's my point - Whole steps like that disappear into the background and are easily missed because there is an overly-detailed 5-screenshot series on how to copy the content of a page. —The screenshots are useless, BTW, because of the image width limitations— If a troper can't find the More>Pagesource option based on a couple of sentences, they are not ready to try to move a page.

The Google Incident pages are kept as they are for historical/archival purposes.

That said, the only necessary fix would be to write it in past tense.

So, "some tropers considered" instead of "some tropers have started to consider"?

Does Wick Check Rewrite look good? Any last tweaks to be made?

I don't know why it would be hard-enforced for the Google Incident pages to be kept as written, even if they are "historical". At the very least they should be written in the past tense and clarified that some of the proposed changes didn't actually go through.

Edited by WackyPancake on Jun 11th 2021 at 5:38:42 PM

What about adding a note to the top of the Google Incident pages explaining their purpose and noting that they're kept for historical purposes, while leaving everything else alone? Those pages are in the Administrivia/ namespace and not the Archive/ namespace (with the latter namespace being the one that contains pages that absolutely cannot be changed), so I don't see why they can't be at least slightly modified.

Alternatively, maybe they could be moved to the Archive/ namespace without any other changes being made.

Edit: Administrivia.April Fools Day 2013 might also be considered archival, but it's not locked, and I recall removing a wick for In Theory when it was being cut.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jun 15th 2021 at 8:33:12 AM

Last bump before I update the Wick Check page with the sandbox.

Also, I just realized that an Administrivia page on common TVT bugs might be useful. You see posts in the bugs query all the time about overly long titles, note glitches, and lock glitches, and an Administrivia page that can explain these things might be useful. Just a thought.

I think one could add these to FAQ, I think.

So I was directed here from Ask the Tropers.

I recently cleaned up a link to an emulation/ROM hosting website that, despite it being against trope policies to link to piracy websites, we don't actually have an Administrative for it. This struck me as odd considering we have pages on the other rules of TV Tropes, so I figured it might be worth pitching here.

Maybe something like Administrative/{{We're not Pirates}} or TV Tropes is not a Pirate or something along those lines.

I'd say it could work, though I think it should be an overall guideline page as to what links are suitable (so no second-party download/listen sites for soundtracks, no places where you can buy it commercially that's not the creator's official site, etc.). Definitely put priority on piracy sites as they're the ones that can actually put us in danger (as I don't think creators obsessively go after the former), though.

Edited by Piterpicher on Jun 21st 2021 at 2:21:32 PM