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.
Why would linking to Wikipedia be bad? Or is it just for "too lazy to write description, read wikipedia's" cases?
The only policies to Wikipedia we have is Weblinks Are Not Examples and About Images and Copyright. I don't see why linking to Wikipedia would be a problem besides the phrasing, those other pages were likely cut for being stub or poorly written overall.
Edited by Amonimus TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
linking to Wikipedia itself isn't bad, but examples shouldn't say "more info available on Wikipedia" for the same reason entries shouldn't refer to each other. we don't know what kind of shape that Wikipedia article is going to be in down the road. the information may not be there anymore.
also, JIKTV is a serial ban evader, so if James is them, all their edits get reverted on principle anyway.
It's unlikely James Austin is related to JIKTV and K Jtropes considering edit history, though it's possible. They probably just copied the formatting from other pages (Kensuke Sasaki was made by Cieloazul).
Edited by Amonimus TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
@Amonimus no, the ATT you linked isn't the one I'm talking about. The one I'm talking about made an explicit decision to cull all the "As usual you can find more at The Other Wiki" from all pro wrestling pages. I think the reason it's so widespread is the same reason it's been so hard to purge This Troper from the website - it's so widespread that people think it's something they're supposed to do rather than something to avoid.
I don't think JamesAustin is JIKTV - aside from pro wrestling their interests seem to be different - but I am a bit perturbed that he's just copypasting old cut JIKTV pages back into existence. For example, when I cutlisted Sir Oliver Humperdink, I took a good bit of care to carefully add everything that was being deleted back to the WCW Managers page, fixed some misuse and added a couple things. JamesAustin just copypasted the old version of the page back and deleted my edits to the WCW Managers page instead of importing them over. If he wants to take responsibility for some things initially created by JIKTV that's... well my personal feelings are that if there aren't 20+ tropes for a wrestler they shouldn't have their own page, but that's just me. However, reinstating the content as written by the banned editor is something else.
Edited by McJeff Russell... likes to hurt people... for PEACE.
I think I've found not just one but two ATT about this: [1]
[2]
I've tried to look this line through Google and oh my goooood...
I’m struggling to understand why people think linking to Wikipedia is a bad thing? The whole point as I see it is that it stops people cluttering up our pages with information that is better served by that site while we concentrate on tropable material.
One aspect is that it's unnecessary. In today's world, people know that they can look up almost everything on Wikipedia. It's just irritating to keep reminding people of what they already know.
^ It's a courtesy to our readers. I don't see that as irritating or unnecessary.
Should we instead put The Other Wiki links on every page for further reading then?
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
^ Sigh. Please don't use Appeal to Extremes, that's a logical fallacy. We can have positions between "no links on to Wikipedia on TV Tropes ever" and "link everything on TV Tropes to Wikipedia".
I don't really care if the description links to Wikipedia, but the "As usual" is very irritating. Zap that. It's as if the troper who put it there has some kind of personal Running Gag on all these pages and expects the reader is reading every one. "Ah-ha," says the astute reader, "This page says 'As usual', and I am totally in the know why because I read those other articles and am in on the joke." It's about as "clever" as potholing your own statements to Captain Obvious.
^That's reasonable. Links should have context. For example for wrestlers I like "For a detailed breakdown of their life and wrestling career, see their Wikipedia page here" or something similar.
^ that seems fine to me. just remember that examples shouldn't depend on Wikipedia for context.
For the record, [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/query.php?parent_id=50309&type=att] was indeed the ATT I was referencing.
Also, if anyone here wants to know more about what the problem with KJ Tropes is (aside from the ban evading), I'm going to ask you to look at the edit history for Paul Ellering - I just pulled half the tropes on the page because of misuse. EVERY PAGE HE MADE is like that. It was like he would read the trope's title and take a guess at what it meant.
Russell... likes to hurt people... for PEACE.
To be fair, that's what a lot of tropers seem to do. Pop into TRS and you'll see what I mean.
I don't care if we allow Wikipedia links or not, but it does feel a little superfluous.
Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
I can just go through the search results and remove all "As usual," while keeping the rest, if that's the plan.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
nah the plan is to remove all the wikipedia links from the pro wrestling articles per the ATT
Russell... likes to hurt people... for PEACE.
Huh? People don't agree with that. This thread sure doesn't, anyway.
Edited by WarJay77 Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
I wouldn't miss the link lines if they were gone, like, I'm very very OK with the links being gone. If they stay, rephrase the sentence so it's not telling readers to go off-site.
Edited by Tabs
James Austin is definitely not JIKTV, not unless they've moved to a different country. As for the Wikipedia links... one of the basic principles of operating a wiki is that you should not send people to other wikis. The more page views we get, the more ad revenue we get, the more engagement it drives in our rankings, etc. Sending people off to Wikipedia defeats that purpose.
Secondarily, if anyone hasn't heard of Wikipedia by now or doesn't know that they can look up wrestlers there, it's not our job to tell them. The "why don't we link every page to Wikipedia" counterargument may be a strawman, but it's not that much of a strawman. It's actually quite valid, in fact.
Thirdly, Wikipedia is a tertiary source, and bibliographical rules say one should preferentially link to primary or secondary sources. In the case of our media articles, a primary source might be the original of a written work (like a fanfic) or a creator's YouTube channel. If a pro wrestler has an official fan page, that could be a valid link, but we don't put tertiary sources (or secondary sources) in article descriptions.
(Note that sources should not be commercial in nature, so if the "official fan page" is their merch store or something, just leave it off. It's not that hard to search for "Dipshit McGee", or whoever the latest popular wrestler is.)
Edited by Fighteer "It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
^^^^ McJeff, that ATT thread is from four years ago. Consensus can change a lot in that time, I don't think you can rely on eight entry ATT from 2017 as justification in 2021.
Edited by Exxolon
^^ imho, if someone wants to know more, all they need to do is copypaste the page title to the URL bar. Saving rare someone 2 clicks isn't that much of a charity. But we do use The Wiki Rule where it's needed.
Fighteer, so you say we should go through those search results and cut these hook lines entirely?
Edited by Amonimus TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
^ "Wrestler has a Wikipedia article" is not The Wiki Rule. That is utterly nonsensical. Maybe if there were, for example, a John Cena Wiki (which there might be, who knows), it would apply, but not otherwise.
And yes, we should remove all Wikipedia links in media article descriptions, period. Doesn't matter what they are for.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
^ I did not relate wikipedia to wiki rule in my comment. Anyway, unless somebody does it before I get to it, I'll do the cleanup tomorrow since I've brought it up.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
I take IMDB links at the end of the description fall under the same logic.
Edited by Amonimus TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Unsurprisingly, almost all pages that follow this pattern appear to be created (or added to existing pages) by KJTropes and JIKTV in 2013-2015 and got copycat'ed by others later.
Edited by Amonimus TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
As requested, I've bulldozered (from Film.MonstersCrashThePajamaParty to Wrestling.JasonTheTerrible) over 300 cases "you can find the basics on The Other Wiki". Besides some odd spacing, I haven't touched anything else.
Yes, IMDB links are also inappropriate.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I went to the Professional Wrestling page and combed through the Wrestlers up to Glacier. I think this should be given a short term clean up thread, because there are so many to go through and check.
CSP Cleanup Thread | All that I ask for ... is diamonds and dance floors
I personally think that linking to Wikipedia (or any external page) is just lazy. If you're writing an article here, you can and should provide the basics about the subject yourself, in your own words.
"But... nobody told me I needed a signature!"
I've went ahead and made a thread in Short Term to not clutter this query anymore, there's a lot more cases like this.
I know there was a discussion here on ATT in which it was decided that it was inappropriate to include a Wikipedia link on pro wrestling pages. The thing is, I can't find it - I saw a link to the thread as an edit summary but I have no idea which page it might've been, and I haven't been able to find it with a search.
The reason I ask is because I've been cutlisting a lot of JIKTV/KJTropes wrestling pages, and an editor named JamesAustin has been recreating the pages, complete with JIKTV's 'troping quirks' And "As usual, you can find the basics on The Other Wiki" was a thing that started with JIKTV. JamesAustin isn't the only troper I've seen adding wikipedia links - heck, I thought it was encouraged until I blundered across the thread deciding not to do it - and I'd like to have the link so I can advise other tropers not to do that.
Edited by McJeff