We do it for Roleplays too, though it's specifically because an inaccessible Roleplay is inherently not a public work, so it must be moved to Darth Wiki as a result of not being published in a public setting.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallI find it hard to decide about it.
On the one hand, all tropeable works should be accessible to other readers/viewers. Other tropers should be able to verify that what's on the page is accurate. For example, if we do cleanup for ZCE or specific often-misused tropes. Without working links, it's really uneasy to find old fanfics.
On the other hand, I dislike the idea that works that once existed and somebody made the effort to create a page for them should be deleted. If anything, their TV Tropes pages can be taken as proof that it was once a thing.
Many fanfic writers also try to dance around "The fic maybe yours, but the TV Tropes page is ours" policy with this approach. They try to delete every copy and every link to their fic on the internet, and then state it here as the cutlist reason. And often it really does get cutlisted.
Moving to Darth Wiki as a compromise... I'm not really sure about it. A work that was once accessible and real is different from something that only exists in unpublished drafts or the author's head.
While true, sometimes (like if the page was made by the author), there might not be proof the work has ever existed in a published form once the content disappears. If an archive couldn't snag it, well...once a couple years go by, it becomes less and less likely anyone has ever read it. By the time we start re-examining the page, if the content is lost and can't be found, how do you know it was ever publicly available?
This is again more applicable to roleplays than fanfics (where the lack of a link on the trope page can create a major headache for us if Google can't find it), but it can happen to fanfics too.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallA major work, like a TV show, novel, or mainstream video game never really "disappears". There are reviews of it, people remember it, it may be archived in various places or streamed; there may be Let's Plays of it. There's more than enough evidence for its existence even if it suddenly stops being distributed, played, sold, or whatever.
Less prominent works like fanfics and roleplays have a much more tenuous existence. If there is only one source, it may not be archived or mirrored in any way that someone could reasonably find. "Anything you put on the Internet is there forever" may be a meme, but in truth there's so much content that it's entirely possible for obscure material to quietly slip away.
If it can be demonstrated that there is zero information publicly accessible about a work in this category: nobody's seen it, read it, played it, reviewed it, put up a video about it, etc., then it could be said to no longer exist and it would be a candidate to cut from our wiki. But only in that case.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I think the difference is whether the work was ever published or releasednote versus always being private.
I've wondered about whether we could make pages for things like lost films that have imagery and descriptions, but not the work itself. The 1917 Cleopatra film comes to mind; we have a contemporary plot description, a some scene descriptions, plenty of images and stills, advertisements, and even a 20-second clip, but not the full thing. Someone did make a reconstruction of sorts using remaining materials, if it means anything.
Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!
I don't see why not. There's enough there to trope, even if it's not the full movie.
And what about the cases in which the work in question, mainly fanfics, no longer exists on the net, but one has the copies of the work in question to claim that it really exists?
For example, I have several copies that I saved in my computer of several fanfics that no longer exist, since these were published in personal pages before fanfiction.net or similar sites existed, but I have not wanted to create pages in TV Tropes for fear of having some legal problem. (As far as I know, the fanfics I have on hand disappeared simply because the pages where they were hosted closed, and their authors didn't bother to publish them in other places afterwards)
I doubt there are any direct copyright issues, since by making a fanfic the original author is already in violation of someone else's copyright, but I'm not a lawyer. I don't know if copyright attaches to the original parts of an unauthorized derivative work. In those times when I've browsed collections of fics and stories, I frequently see the same ones reposted by people who are clearly not their authors.
Regardless of the above, the theory that we operate on is that someone could, hypothetically, still find and experience the work, or find someone else's documented experience with the work (as in a Let's Play). There may be reviews, forum threads, media coverage: evidence that the work existed and of its content.
With a fanfic, that may genuinely not be the case. If you are literally the only person in the world who has a copy, and you don't share that copy, then there is no way for any other person to verify what you're saying about it. In that case, an article for it might as well go on Darth Wiki, or preferably not be written at all.
I have original writing on my computer that I haven't shared with anyone. If I wrote an article for any of it, it'd go on Darth Wiki. It's the same basic idea.
Edited by Fighteer on May 2nd 2020 at 6:34:03 AM
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I'd say the fanfic author does have a separate copyright to any unique expression they add to the original work, having looked over some cases that may be of interest. I think the original fanfic author would be able to ask to take down unauthorized publications of their work, but you can really only go so far with enforcement and proof of ownership when the copyright has not been registered. As such, I can't really say whether you could republish those and be safe, though I could see many such authors not minding.
Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!If I recall correctly (it was a long while ago, and I wasn't paying much attention), the original intended purpose of Unpublished Works was to deal with a recurring problem where tropers would add examples from their own stuff even though that stuff wasn't published anywhere, by giving them an officially designated space for that stuff and making it a formal rule that they don't get wicked in the main wiki.
So in that spirit, I think the distinction between moving defunct works to Darth versus leaving them in main is whether the page was the work of the author or the audience.
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.this is only partially related, but i'm on a kick of adding tropes for works related to Shifty Look, which has a similar dilemma of being taken down from official access. in this case there are backups for all of the content (web comics and series here
, Namco High here
), but it's still content that is officially out of circulation, which leads to a similar problem. should there be a separate index for "lost" media like this?
Keep Circulating the Tapes functions as a listing of "lost media."
TBH, I kind of hate the "remove the webcomic because it got removed" thing because the fact we made a page for it while it was accessible is very different from making a fanfic page for something that was never accessible. On the other hand, it also makes it easier to add false info that can no longer be denied. So IDK.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.i always forget Keep Circulating the Tapes exists
but yeah it's an odd situation regardless and i'm not sure how i feel about lumping in things that used to exist but got taken down with things that never existed to begin with
The ATT thread
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If pages for once-accessible webcomics were to be deleted or moved to Darth Wiki on the basis of the only existing archives of them being unofficial, by that logic the pages for Star Wars: Uprising and other Defunct Online Video Games should also be deleted or moved to Darth Wiki, or limited to tropes from trailers. (To be clear, I'm against that idea)
Edited by Twiddler on Apr 27th 2021 at 6:10:51 AM
Since I started the ATT thread I should probably throw in my two cents here :)
This was kickstarted when I had to petition for Natty Comics to be restored after someone nuked the page (after the creator decided to delete the comic and let the hosting expire) on the grounds that it no longer existed therefore the page was redundant and should be cut.
It seems like we don’t have a clear policy on this and leaving it up to individual mods seems off to me. I’m pretty much of the opinion that except in the case of works that were never actually published (and there’s still Darth Wiki for those) we should keep the page based on a work that’s no longer extant - we can always lock it if people are worried that unverifiable stuff might get added. Likewise we can have a page about a "lost" work by basing it on secondary sources - reviews, commentary, photos, snippets etc. - this is why we can have a page on The Day the Clown Cried even though it’s never been released.
I do however support cutting pages that are obvious hoaxes or have zero evidence of existence anywhere.
Edited by Exxolon on Apr 27th 2021 at 3:13:11 PM
Personally, if there are no plans on publishing the work/making it public, it shouldn't go on Darth Wiki. It shouldn't go up at all.
I realize that policy is never going to go anywhere, because that would involve deleting, like, half of the Darth Wiki.
Our take on no-longer-accessible works is that if they were published long enough to be troped by an audience, they're "defunct" and stay in main despite not existing anymore. (e.g. City of Heroes) Otherwise they get kicked to Darth.
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.Should Unus Annus be cut listed? Per the page itself:
"There was a 12-hour livestream, culminating with the on-stream deletion of their entire social media presence, including deleting the YouTube channel itself when the clock hit zero. Mark and Ethan also gave a last request to their fans to not re-upload any of the content from the channel, letting the videos stay permanently gone."
The work has been fully deleted and its creators have asked it not to be circulated, meaning there is no way to verify existing tropes or add new ones.

I've heard of pages for no-longer-accessible fanfics being moved to Darth Wiki. But this is not done for other types of works, such as games whose servers were shut down (e.g. Star Wars: Uprising), or webcomics whose servers crashed or were shut down (e.g. works hosted on Webcomics Nation). (At least, I haven't heard of webcomic pages being moved to Darth Wiki.)
So my question is, where is the line drawn? Is it enough if the work can be verified to have existed? Do excerpts of the work (e.g. screenshots) need to be able to be found? For games from major franchises, you can expect to find playthroughs online, but the more obscure the game, the less you'll find. Kisses & Curses was a mobile game whose page I contributed to before the app was shut down. There's screenshots floating around the internet, but much of the page content I'm pretty sure is no longer verifiable.