TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Ask The Tropers

Go To

Have a question about how the TVTropes wiki works? No one knows this community better than the people in it, so ask away! Ask the Tropers is the page you come to when you have a question burning in your brain and the support pages didn't help. It's not for everything, though. For a list of all the resources for your questions, click here. You can also go to this Directory thread for ongoing cleanup projects.

Ask the Tropers:

Trope Related Question:

Make Private (For security bugs or stuff only for moderators)

Serac (Troper Knight)
2021-09-14 13:32:10

That's not how Example Indentation is supposed to work, all of the examples are zero context, and Video Game Settings is an index that shouldn't be listed as a trope on work pages. The person who's cleaning it up might not be familiar enough with the game series to be able to fill in context.

Cutting those examples is perfectly fine, as the alternative is splitting off each subbullet, alphabetizing it properly, and commenting it out because there's no attempt at context.

Edited by Serac
laserviking42 Since: Oct, 2015
2021-09-14 13:48:56

If you feel a particular cleanup has been "hamfisted" by "self-appointed janitors" you can always bring it up here to see if the deletions are warranted. The edit you linked certainly was called for, I didn't see anything salvageable there.

Honestly, this post sounds rather hostile and you'd be better served by toning it down a few notches when discussing edits and deletions.

I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
McJeff Since: Jan, 2001
2021-09-14 13:52:08

I will absolutely not tone it down, as every one of those was easily salvageable to anyone who cared to bother (and that's what I'm doing right now). The attitude the lot of you are demonstrating is the attitude that caused me to come here - the whole "it's not done right and that's all that matters to me, fixing it is someone else's problem."

Edited by McJeff Russell... likes to hurt people... for PEACE.
Tabs MOD Since: Jan, 2001
2021-09-14 13:53:18

Not if they don't know the work.

Edited by Tabs
McJeff Since: Jan, 2001
2021-09-14 13:54:08

If they don't know the work they should bring it up on the work's discussion page beforehand. Alternately, mind their own business.

If it's that bad (which it only is in the case of obvious and critical misuse), it should be posted to the works' discussion page for rewriting and improvement.

Edited by McJeff Russell... likes to hurt people... for PEACE.
Serac (Troper Knight)
2021-09-14 14:00:11

So... you think that only people who are familiar with every work of fiction ever can be involved with mass cleanup projects? There's already a shortage of people willing to dewick things, and we don't need any further gatekeeping on it. Especially not an absurd condition like that.

Edited by Serac
AegisP Since: Oct, 2014
2021-09-14 14:00:56

Mc Jeff, If you keep this up you risk being suspended, y' know.

Edited by AegisP As long as this flower is in my heart. My Strength will flow without end.
HeavyMetalHermitCrab Since: Sep, 2018
2021-09-14 14:06:00

I, too, think it's a good idea to punish the person who cleans up after the dog, and not the dog who shits on the floor.

laserviking42 Since: Oct, 2015
2021-09-14 14:09:52

Can't help but notice you went ahead and re-added Video Game Settings and all of the ZCE examples right back to the page despite being informed that it's an index and should be listed as a trope.

Also it's edit warring since you didn't gain any consensus on adding it back either.

I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
McJeff Since: Jan, 2001
2021-09-14 14:14:05

laserviking42, that is not quite what I did, as you'd know if you if you actually did your due diligence. I am in the process of correctly filing those tropes, which you can easily see in the edit history. I just find it easier to return to the list as it was rather than muck about in the history copypasting things out of it.

Heavy Metal Hermit Crab, I prefer the analogy of someone who cleans up dogshit by throwing bleach all over the place not caring what else gets damaged as long as the dogshit gets cleaned up.

Russell... likes to hurt people... for PEACE.
laserviking42 Since: Oct, 2015
2021-09-14 14:16:55

So you did or did not add back Video Game Settings as a trope after being specifically told it's an index and not to be used as a trope?

I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
HeavyMetalHermitCrab Since: Sep, 2018
2021-09-14 14:21:54

Mc Jeff, you're acting like someone deleted a huge chunk of the page to solve a spelling error. Someone deleted an index being used as a trope, a bunch of single-word ZC Es which were also improper indentations. The offending example was removed and nothing else was damaged. So your "analogy" is hyperbolic to the point of being out of sync with what actually took place.

Hey, it would be great if everyone could treat every example like a super-special snowflake, but this is the real world, not the magical land of If I Was In Charge. And in the real world, people do what they can with what they have. And it's neither realistic nor reasonable to expect someone to research a game just so they can correct an example that the original writer couldn't be bothered to give the slightest bit of effort.

Edited by HeavyMetalHermitCrab
McJeff Since: Jan, 2001
2021-09-14 14:31:30

Okay, well, obviously I'm a minority opinion on the subject and I did reintegrate those tropes back into the page properly - finding some errors in the process.

Russell... likes to hurt people... for PEACE.
WarJay77 (Troper Knight)
2021-09-14 14:33:05

In other words, the onus is on the example writer, not the cleanup crew. If everyone stuck to only cleaning works they know, the wiki would never be cleaned at all.

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
mightymewtron Since: Oct, 2012
2021-09-14 14:36:55

If you wanna keep track of the numerous tropes that were cut while adding them with context, why not just keep the history of the Video Game Settings section open in another tab, instead of adding Video Game Settings back to the page itself for some reason?

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.
Arctimon (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
2021-09-14 14:54:07

There's a few people in this query that really need to tone down the mini-modding.

Mc Jeff, you did expand the examples, which is good. However:

If they don't know the work they should bring it up on the work's discussion page beforehand. Alternately, mind their own business.

It's weird to tell us to mind our own business when you were the one that brought this to ATT to begin with. Someone correctly deleted the examples which had been there since 2013, according to the history. If no one in seven years had expanded upon them, why would be keep them on the page?

McJeff Since: Jan, 2001
2021-09-14 15:00:58

(I was writing this post while Arctimon was writing his. In the context it seems like I was quite rude to him for no reason. Was not my intention but I apologize anyway.)

It's because when I edit wikis I do a lot of cut/copy and paste, and I don't like tabbing between windows. It's not like I didn't intend to redelete it as soon as I had the page fixed up.

Honestly, I'll admit this was a bad one to make my case on, since it was a LOT of zce tropes and fixing it did take some effort. And if it's a page I've been editing a long time (and I've been on TVT for a long time and editing Legend of Mana since the very beginning) I sometimes don't notice errors until someone else points it out since it's been that way for so long. So I suppose I owe an apology.

I'm sorry for getting aggressive and self-righteous over something I should've fixed ages ago.

THERE.

But I have seen people "clean" pages and leave the formatting messed up behind them. I've seen people delete or comment out zce's that weren't zce's at all but multiple instances of a trope - the deleter just didn't bother to read one line down. I've also seen people delete well-written examples because the name of a trope changed or a trope was changed into a disambiguation. I stand by my opinion that a lot of janitors don't do adequate diligence when cleaning.

Edited by McJeff Russell... likes to hurt people... for PEACE.
Zuxtron (On A Trope Odyssey)
2021-09-14 15:19:27

^ If a trope is turned into a disambiguation and it's hard to tell which one it is based on the context alone, then I think that yes, deleting it entirely is the correct course of action. If you know which trope it belongs as, then you can add it back under that, but it's not the responsibility of the ones doing the cleanup to figure it out.

It's better to lose the example entirely, than to have something that's no longer a real trope on the page.

perkeez Since: Aug, 2018
2021-09-14 15:19:44

You're not alone. I know someone that is overzealous in deleting or changing up edits in bulk so that they're barely recognisable. These tropers do not help the wiki. It seems like many people don't understand how annoying this is. What should be done about these people?

Just trying to improve any page that needs it.
shadowblack Since: Jun, 2010
2021-09-14 15:30:40

Telling us who these people are and showing us some of their edits so that we can see for ourselves would be a good start, perkeez.

sgamer82 Since: Jan, 2001
2021-09-14 16:07:17

Note that should be done in its own thread, not here.

Edited by sgamer82
Octoya Since: Jul, 2014
2021-09-14 16:13:46

Yeah like, there doesn't need to be any new policies or whatever you're suggesting "be done" about such people because the process for reporting them already exists. Just bring it up in ATT. Or message the person directly. This sounds like a problem with individual people and not with the overall policy of preferring not to keep crap jobs on a page.

WarJay77 (Troper Knight)
2021-09-14 16:42:22

As someone who often deletes examples during TRS cleanup, I specifically only delete the ones that don't have the context necessary to fit another trope. Anything I can move, I do.

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
perkeez Since: Aug, 2018
2021-09-14 16:54:55

Just look at rva98014's recent edits. He has unnecessarily changed a trope, or deleted example in the past. His edit reasons are not always justified either.

Edited by perkeez Just trying to improve any page that needs it.
HeavyMetalHermitCrab Since: Sep, 2018
2021-09-14 17:08:24

Perkeez, you're going to have to be specific because I looked at several of their last edits and I didn't see anything untoward. In fact, most of the changes I saw were improvements.

I did see, however, where they changed one of your entries to make it more specific and detailed. Hopefully edits of that nature aren't the impetus behind what you're saying, because there's a huge difference between "doing something wrong" and "doing something I don't like."

Edited by HeavyMetalHermitCrab
Synchronicity MOD (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
2021-09-14 17:10:00

Please make a separate query to discuss a separate issue.

perkeez Since: Aug, 2018
2021-09-14 17:19:57

He's changed my edits several times for no reason, perhaps to feel like he's in charge. I'll monitor his future edits to see if there's anything untoward.

Edited by perkeez Just trying to improve any page that needs it.
laserviking42 Since: Oct, 2015
2021-09-14 17:24:24

perkeez, if you have issues with a troper's edits, open a new ATT report.

When you do, list the edits that you have an issue with, and what rules/guidelines you feel they have broken. Otherwise it sounds incredibly juvenile to complain about someone and cast aspersions, without being willing to bring up an actual edit or edits that are problematic.

Also, this thread has run its course and should be locked.

I didn't choose the troping life, the troping life chose me
perkeez Since: Aug, 2018
2021-09-14 17:27:56

I personally don't think it's juvenile to be concerned about someone's edits.

Just trying to improve any page that needs it.
Walkinshadows Since: Jun, 2012
2021-09-14 18:03:01

Yes, please lock this thread. Others have already clearly explained why my edit wasn't wrong.

Also, for future reference, my pronouns are they/them. Not he/him.

WarJay77 (Troper Knight)
2021-09-14 18:07:51

Perkeez, please, make a new thread. You're derailing this one. Plus you and Rva have been bickering for months on end and both of you refuse to make a proper ATT report, so things remain this crazy because you aren't doing what people are telling you you should do.

Mods, please lock this before things get more out of hand.

Edited by WarJay77 Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
perkeez Since: Aug, 2018
2021-09-14 18:22:08

We haven't bickered for ages. Everything is settled. He has sent hostile P Ms to me in the past though.

Edited by perkeez Just trying to improve any page that needs it.
crazysamaritan MOD Since: Apr, 2010
2021-09-14 18:42:33

This thread has been locked for going off-topic and the original topic having been resolved.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
Top