About First Person Pronouns in Speculative Pages

It's been told that this query of mine should be better placed here, so stating a thread.

After looking at the Fridge, Headscratchers, and WMG pages of My Immortal, I found out that those pages are littered with edits made in first person. I have asked this in two ATT threads if editing in first person is OK, but there were different answers. Some say it was OK, some not, and some say that it's a blurry line when it comes to such in speculative pages, and it's hard to crack down in such.

They told me that Headscratchers is not a speculative page, but pardon if I include it in speculative for conversational convenience's sake.

My complaint when it comes to first-person pronouns in those pages is that it's like I'm the one who wrote it, and it's I'm on a one-way conversation when it's bulleted. And it's a problem for me to edit them as it may alter their thoughts. My solution so far on the My Immortal speculative pages was to add troper signatures on those first-person edits and to notify recently active tropers for that.

The second problem I have was some of the edits were before 2010, and I have no idea on who wrote them, so I just added "anonymous" to them.

And I have went to other speculative pages such as How I Met Your Mother and The Emperors New Groove, but paused halfway because:

1. Even if I have lots of free time, I get overwhelmed which such an ordeal, considering it's all over every speculative pages on this wiki;
2. I might be notified if I do this even further;
3. To be clarified this issue on whether first-person pronouns on speculative pages is okay or not, and should there be an enforcing of the "This Troper" rule on those pages.

That is all.

Edited by alnair20aug93 on Nov 5th 2019 at 6:07:47 PM

The confusion was based on a miscommunication. There is no place on wiki articles where first person is acceptable, even in the "This Troper" style. This is an absolute prohibition.

If you want to spend the effort to clean those Headscratchers pages... I mean sure, knock yourself out. It's not exactly the highest priority, especially for something so old. But don't change them to "signed" entries. That's not a requirement for those pages either. Just rewrite to remove the first-person.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 5th 2019 at 6:47:03 AM

Ah, thanks.

Same goes to WMG?

Correct.

I thought editing other people's questions, answers, and guesses was discouraged.

I think it's discouraged to edit what they mean (like changing a WMG from saying "This guy from part 1 will return" to "This guy from part 3 will return"), but correcting grammar/style, formatting, or simply removing them if they're trolling is allowed.

What about Dethroning Moment (as it require editor to sign example)?

Signing examples on pages like Dethroning Moment of Suck or Most Triumphant Example is necessary since it's one per troper. WMG or Headscratchers don't have such a limit.

Yeah, any article that requires example signing is an exception to the "no signing" rule, but should avoid first-person writing if possible. Write from a generic point of view. That doesn't mean you can edit other people's DMOS entries, though, and since that sits over in Darth Wiki, it's less of a problem.

Headscratchers should always be written from a generic POV, and if something can't be fixed without substantially modifying it, it's probably better to just remove it if the original editor isn't actively participating any more.

"If something can't be fixed without substantially modifying it", shouldn't it just be left alone? I don't think we should be deleting headscratchers unless they're blatant complaining or trolling.

Well, the alternative is to leave Headscratchers littered with first-person entries that violate our rules. Look, I have no love for that section. It should be threaded like a forum conversation, not a wiki article. But until we fix this, we have to make do with what we have.

If you think it should be a forum conversation, then why do you want to want to edit it to remove first-person? Just because it's technically a wiki page even though it might as well be a forum?

Done editing the Headscratchers, Fridge, and WMG pages to make them less first-personny. I think I might have missed out some things, especially with the vast size of the WMG page.

It's the first step to cleaning up the speculative pages of this wiki. Next up, How I Met Your Mother.

I have tried to contact the tropers with recent activities who edited this. The replies were mostly just apologizing to me and not editing their edits.

My intention was to invite them to clean up their edits to be less of a hassle.

Edited by alnair20aug93 on Nov 7th 2019 at 6:30:42 PM

The classic WMG.TV Tropes page has a lot of first-person, mostly in the first folder.

Care to notify the recent tropers who edited in first person for a cleanup?

I still don't think this is worth anyone's time, but I'm not going to try to stop it.

One page at a time, I guess. Slow, but sure.

Also, bump.

I was supposed to clean HIMYM, but I cleaned The Room instead.

Edited by alnair20aug93 on Dec 1st 2019 at 2:11:13 AM

Bumping. While I was lurking on Gush.New Media, I found out that it was littered with first person pronouns. So I commented out several of them that used that and messaged the more recent tropers to edit their edits.

I feel like first person edits also littered everywhere on Gush as well.

a long time ago, I cleaned Gush.Live Action Tv. It took so much time, especially since I tried to re-write it without the first person. I'm not siure it was even worth it...

But the use of "this troper" on WMG, Fridge pages, headscrstchers or gushing pages is bad.

First person should be used only on "sign your entries" pages, like dethroning moments or most triumphant examples... But TBH, I don't care much about any of these pages.

Yeah. They're only on Dethroning. Speaking of signing, costanton11 deleted the signatures on Fridge.Music when they should've edited/removed the first person edits as well. Those signatures were there to signify who wrote it.

I still think the whole signature thing is sidestepping the problem rather than fixing it. Unless something is purely subjective, like DMOS, slapping the troper's name next to their example goes against the whole "nobody owns any content on the wiki" ideal.

True. That's why I just edited first-person edits to be less anecdotal, and removing Troper Tales entries if they get too anecdotal.

Speaking of which, tweaked certain entries of Headscratchers.The Belgariad that used "this troper". May edit others soon, or may contact recent tropers to edit them.

If anything we should make a proper LT/P projects thread for this, and Fridge / Headscratchers cleanup in general to cut down on natter, thread-mode, etc.

Headscratchers I've found easy to clean up; make sure each question is at one bullet, and each answer is at two bullets. If someone adds a first bullet question to an existing folder, give it a new folder. If someone indents an answer more than two bullets, change it to two. Can get a little annoying, but not particularly difficult.

Fridge is a different beast, and not just because you have to be familiar with the work to have any idea what needs cleaning. Natter is still a problem on Fridge pages (though it used to be much worse), but the exact solution varies. Sometimes it's a valid related point, so I'll indent both points under a header, like you'd indent two examples of one trope. Sometimes the natter disproves the fridge example, so the whole thing should be removed. And sometimes it's a valid point but not a whole other example, so I have to figure out how to integrate it into the existing point. And of course Fridge that demands an answer (such as most Fridge Logic entries) go on Headscratchers.

That's all annoying and a pain to clean. But another problem I've been seeing, even on Fridge pages with perfect example indentation and no natter, is that they can get very big, and there is little attempt to organize them besides Brilliance/Horror. Long running series will sometimes organize them by season, but that only barely helps. I don't really know how to fix it.

...and I just realized this is all way off topic. So I'm mostly just randomly ranting.

Eh, if we make a cleanup thread for these things, then it's no longer off-topic

But what made me mention it was stumbling upon the chaos of Fridge.To Boldly Flee.