This thread's purpose is to discuss issues within the TLP community and site culture as well as propose solutions to said issues.
Please do not use this thread to report or call out specific users or TLP drafts on this thread. You can make an Ask The Tropers query on the issue, holler, or PM a mod (the first of the three being preferable).
- The community is too bomb-happy. By that, I mean, when a stub draft is proposed, users are way to quick to drop the bombs the moment it's available, and this creates a feedback loop where other users are encouraged to drop bombs as well. It gets to the point where the purpose of dropping bombs to offset hats is lost, and people care more about raising the bomb count than anything else.
- The community is unwilling to teach inexperienced sponsors. All too often, I've seen regulars not even trying to teach sponsors the steps needed to improve, and instead, will just give blunt statements that do nothing to help at all. (Ex: "No description! No examples! Bombing for lack of effort!")
- The overall rudeness of regulars. From my observations, most of the regulars are very prone to delving into snarky and sarcastic comments that condemn sponsors, and this is only creating an unwelcoming, toxic environment.
This needs to be fixed because, from the looks of it, those who were not banned from the 5T incident or didn't participate at all didn't get the memo that this type of mentality is very toxic and is what leads to incidents like that in the first place.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Mar 8th 2025 at 5:31:13 AM
If their edit or TLP histories shows consistent problem with grammar, that can be brought to ATT. If not then I guess they can be left with a reply that their suggestion will have to be edited.
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupSo, ginsengaddict, sponsor of Lactic Loon, seems to be a repeat offender in making substandard TLP drafts or ignoring the TLP rules, and this sort of thing apparently goes back years
. I remember them very insistent that hats were "positive reinforcement" back when their usage was under discussion, but they refused to engage with me when I asked them to explain why they thought that. So I'm a bit concerned about their habit of appearing every so often to toss a troubled draft down and leave instead of fixing things, especially since IDK if they'd actually listen to the updated guidelines.
This isn't to say all their contributions are bad, but they do have a lot of nuked drafts in their history and their modern ones tend to be... not
their
best
work
.
Should I bring this to ATT or something? It's a recurring problem at this point.
Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 1st 2022 at 5:32:58 AM
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall![]()
I'll just say I'm editing the contribution. Their edit history is bizarre. 17 edits to Characters.Fairy Tail Strongest Team in the span of two weeks in 2019, but nothing before or since.
So I would like to know who dropped the most recent bomb on the Pineapple Ruins Pizza
draft because I'm not sure if there are any unaddressed problems that need fixing. Could techno156 be correct that I should transform the draft into a Super-Trope to cover all manner of unconventional pizza toppings? If so, should I postpone the launch indefinitely until I do so?
Isn't voting supposed to be anonymous?
I think you just need to postpone for a bit and get feedback on the rewrite comment from others, maybe it's an unnecessary suggestion. 44 hats means 44 people think the trope is good as-is and 21 bombs could mean anything.
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupDrive-by bombing is incredibly common. Like, I'm sure there's some little cabal of lurkers who hat and bomb things but don't interact otherwise.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallOk, good to know. I hate to sound accusatory (and I apologize), but I thought the most recent bomb was from techno156 expressing their disapproval of the trope's launch as it is, hence why I decided to postpone it and address their recommendation to change it into an unconventional pizza topping Super-Trope more seriously. Well now that that's cleared out of the way, I should be ok to launch, right?
So only like an hour ago Type 40 posted their "Weird Topping Pizza Order
" draft. Amathieu came to argue that it was covered by Bizarre Taste in Food. Y'know, average stuff, and a conversation I was interested in having as one of the people who originally pitched the idea in the first place. But the draft was discarded by Type 40, like, immediately after that comment was made and the bomb was tossed, despite that the draft was still very new and undergoing active discussion.
I kinda want to restore it for the sake of making the discussion more transparent, but at the same time that'd feel rude... What do?
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallPing Type 40 and remind them that when someone comments about thing like that, they should try to argue as well first and only discard when there's conensus?
I think drafts can be un-nuked in certain conditions?
Edited by Amonimus on Sep 5th 2022 at 9:34:52 PM
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupI mean, if we get consensus here...
I'll just ping 'em. Don't like doing things over PM.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallNot to dogpile on Type 40 or anything (and I don't think this is bad enough to require a more formal report on ATT, but...
Type 40 creates a lot of drafts. Like, a LOT. I'd guess no fewer than 1-2 a week. Which isn't an issue in of itself, but often times these drafts are very obvious duplicates of already existing drafts. As in, if you took maybe 1-2 mins searching the site, you'd know that Yes, We DO Have This One. Today's draft (and subsequent immediate discard) was for Deadpan-Ham Duo
, which we have already as Ham and Deadpan Duo. But here's a brief list of others from the past couple of months:
- Standard Response Vs. Actual Response
- Bait-and-Switch Comment
- Boogieman
- Things That Go "Bump" in the Night, which has Bogeyman as a redirect
- Doomsday Weapon
- Doomsday Device
- Fade Into The Ether
- Fading Away
- Power As Hair Dye
- Power Dyes Your Hair
- Weapons From Thin Air
- Summon to Hand and/or Spontaneous Weapon Creation
- Practical Over Fantastical Combat
- Fights Like a Normal
And on it goes.
Sometimes, we have ideas that we later find out via discussion aren't so different from existing tropes. I get that (and this also happens to Type 40 frequently, but it just comes with the territory of drafting so frequently). But these are like...near replicas, down to even the name sometimes, which to me is a sign that they often aren't even doing the most cursory check on their own to see if we have it already. Like I feel like that's part of the whole point of Trope Finder and the Trope Idea Sounding Board: to avoid filling the TLP with drafts that we already have.
Granted, it's not too much of an issue since Type 40 discards drafts just as quickly as they make them when it's pointed out. But idk still feels cluttery. Maybe just to me since I participate in the TLP so often myself.
I did tell them as much on the Deadpan And Ham Duo draft before posting here, but since it was discarded, I thought I'd post here too.
Edited by amathieu13 on Sep 7th 2022 at 8:45:02 AM
I've noticed that too, I think it's good you said something to them.
So it's, uh, a special feeling when you check the history of someone to confirm they've bombed your draft and see that not only was that hunch correct but everything else in their history consists of hats, even for drafts in poor condition. It's... I don't know what to make of it. I'm really curious to know what's up but I don't want to be a dick and confront them, it's also why I'm not naming names here (but if needed I can). It just... like it feels targeted but that could just be paranoia and I have no idea why this person would specifically target me for any reason. Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
Do they comment on drafts they hat or it's so happened to be a coincidence? If they've bombed your draft without giving a reasoning, it may violate TLP ethics.
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupI don't see them comment often, they tried a draft and it failed pretty badly but I wasn't the only person who commented on it so yeahhhh
Okay I'll just be transparent, it was Arsenius, I was curious when I saw they edited my draft (just to add an examples tag, don't worry) and then a bomb appeared, so I checked and saw what I saw.
And like... it's one bomb, whatever, maybe they had reasons. It just feels a little shadier than that considering that they seem to hat most other things. This is the only reason I'm even saying anything.
Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 7th 2022 at 12:17:10 PM
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallIs being able to check someone else's TLP history a thing anyone can do?
Vehicle-Based Characterization | Grief-Induced Split | Locker MailYeah, it's as simple as just editing the URL of your history page with ?for=troperhandle. It's completely public just like comment history and edit history.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallAsking for others to look at the Review Bomb
draft as the description appears to be lifted nearly wholesale from the Wikipedia article
.
Ran the draft description and the opening wiki paragraph through a plagiarism detector, which spat out 55% as its text match. I also, coincidentally, learned that plagiarism check websites exist.

I just received a very long-winded, error-filled, and potentially (?) irrelevant submission to my draft
. It's the one by Will426.
I can't grammar notifier TLP entries, can I? If I do end up including their suggestion, it'd be rewritten from the ground up by me. What's the policy for dealing with submissions of that type?
Vehicle-Based Characterization | Grief-Induced Split | Locker Mail