First Person Writing Cleanup

So, it's been told that first person writing is not allowed on wiki articles. And now we have an Administrivia page for First-Person Writing providing further details.

The huge undertaking for this is that first person entries are rampant out there; more in Fridge, Headscratchers, WMG, and Gush articles. A lot of them are very old, and there is no absolute idea on who wrote it. It gets worse that it's written on thread mode aagreeing or disagreeing on that paragraph, using "This troper...", and in troper tales format.

So, it goes without saying that this is an opportunity to start a cleanup for first person writing in wiki articles.

Such cleanup will need the following recommendations:

• DMOS threads get a pass, as long as they have signatures written.
• Do not use signatures in speculative pages.
• When removing first person entries outside of quotations, reword the entry while keeping the original meaning.
• Remove an entry if it's mainly on troper tales.

To spread awareness to this thread, consider the following:

• Check the page's history;
• Track down every troper who used first person writing;
• Check their edit history;
• If they had any recent activity of at least 4-6 weeks, contact them that they had used first person writing of said page, and link them to this thread.

So, yeah.

Edited by alnair20aug93 on Mar 6th 2020 at 5:03:06 PM

OP's note: I had been inspired to make this thread after observing the Headscratchers, Fridge, and WMG page of My Immortal. Given that I had the whole night to clean the pages, and contacting the recent tropers to fix them (most they could do was apologize to me amd nothing else). And since I know that that there's a whole lot of them entries throughout the whole wiki, It gave me a thought to ask you guys for help.

In the Wiki Talk thread, I had considered on cleaning up the Headscratchers page of How I Met Your Mother, but since I didn't had the time at the time, and as of this moment, it's WAY past my bedtime, I'm asking you to help cleanup the page by using the guidelines I have provided at the above post.

Please and thank you.

I would assume Gush/, WMG/, and Headscratchers/ are more informal anyway, so I don't think this cleanup should apply to them.

At the very least, Gush/ feels like it'd be the opposite of DMOS, which allows first-person; it feels weird to edit out people's first-person edits on such an informal, opinionated, back-of-the-wiki page.

Bumping this one, as this needs a bit of a concern.

Informal, yes. But we could make it as informal as so while making it less of like the page has a Multiple Personality Disorder.

Man, like I said, Gush is the Sugar equivalent of DMOS. It should be one of the few places first-person writing is acceptable. It's not on the main wiki, it's a very subjective area of the site, and it should be exempt.

True. But unlike DMOS, which requires signatures, Gush doesn't seem to have signatures, and there's no requirement for such, which adds to the confusion in my opinion.

Edited by alnair20aug93 on Apr 14th 2020 at 8:31:12 PM

Bump.

There is an issue of first person edits on Headscratchers.Harry Potter.

The mods said that first-person isn't allowed on Headscratchers, WMG, and Fridge, but I don't think it should be removed on Gush since it's the opposite of DMoS and not part of the main wiki.

It's weird that Fighteer said here that Headscratchers "should be threaded like a forum conversation", but since it's a wiki page, it has to be free of first-person. What? If it would be better as a forum, why shouldn't it allow first-person?

Edited by rjd1922 on Apr 18th 2020 at 5:24:24 AM

Looking at it, that sounded confusing. It could mean that Headscratchers would be edited in a forum-like manner without the first-person. I don't know...

We should talk further to Fighteer about this.

And while we're at it, I have finished the Headscratchers page of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. and that's 1 out of 17 Headscratchers pages.

A little help would be appreciated on this cleanup, please and thank you.

I've made it clear before that I don't think this is worth anyone's time. I did remove first-person from one of my own Headscratchers entries, though.

Edited by rjd1922 on Apr 20th 2020 at 9:58:54 AM

I honestly don't get the point of Headscratchers pages. Isn't this sort of thing why the forums exist?

Not anyone wants to deal with forums, and they can get derailed.

Didn't it used to be a section of the forums when it was IJBM, and then for reasons it was turned into the namespace IJBM, and then from there to Headscratchers?

I don't know the history behind why it was initially moved away from the forums to begin with, except maybe that having it on an actual page stopped people from asking the same questions over and over.

Headscratchers is basically a FAQ page, so that the forums don't get the same questions asked all the time. (Well, less of the time.)

However I would like to know if we have guidelines as to how to edit those of others; I feel I can do some work on Headscratchers.Neon Genesis Evangelion, intending to only correct spelling and grammar, formatting, and removing first person and some word cruft ("You should watch the rest of the series") and leave the substance of each entry alone, but I would like some reassurance that this is within policy.

If the edits are recent, then message that troper to not use first-person edits then direct them to here. If the edits are older, but the troper activity is recent, same thing. You can otherwise freely edit entries if that troper hasn't been active for more than six months.

It has come to my attention that there's a thread by Warjay 77 concerning cleaning up Headscratchers. Considering that her thread is broader, and old Headscratchers pages are littered with FPW and natter, should I merge this thread with hers?

Happiness Tropes has first person I removed from the description, but persists in the examples. I don’t know how to reword every example.

Um, a lot of indexes do that. It's just a fun way of describing the tropes. It's not actual First Person writing.

Besides what said, replacing every instance of "I" with "we" doesn't actually change writing's first-person status.

OK. Sorry. What do I do now?

Found Putous during cleanup. It's written entirely in first person.

The work description is also a Wall of Text.

Hello! I was told to come here with a query of mine. The Fridge page for Better Call Saul has a lot of First-Person Writing. I’m not sure how to go about fixing it.

Link to the page?

Edited by ChillyBeanBAM on Nov 29th 2020 at 2:36:24 AM