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There's also the fact that people would pothole things like Understatement at every opportunity, often when it barely applied, and even misused at points. It makes everyone look like they have incredibly low standards, or don't even know how their own stuff works. The site's supposed to be about documenting tropes as they happen in media, not tropes as random folks on the internet use them. That is a whole lot less fun.
Thanks, AzureSeas. I still think banning it is too strict when the trope isn't misused, though. Two questions: Why doesn't the Pothole Magnet page warn against it? Are pot holes (or wicks at all) even allowed on Playing With pages?
Edited by MathsAngelicVersionnrjxll, you have good points. I guess that some self-referential humour won't cause too much exclusion and that for instance fixing Zero-Context Examples is more important, but it's hard to know how much is too much. I can't know what someone new to this wiki will think when they read the pages, and we don't want to risk losing potential future readers/editors. Thanks for clarifying. Anyway, are Pot Holes and wicks allowed on Playing With pages if they for instance apply to the hypothetical characters or scenarios?
Edited by MathsAngelicVersionLet me clarify: Neither tropes nor self-references are inherently funny. The idea that mentioning or potholing tropes, including humorous tropes, is in itself humorous, is wrong.
A lame pun doesn't magically become clever and witty just because you pothole it to Incredibly Lame Pun. An anticlimactic list is funny or not, but potholing it to Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking is not what makes it funny. A joke works or it doesn't work, but a joke that relies on a potholed trope to "work" does not actually work.
I assume you are a fairly new editor? Please consider that for tropers/readers that have been frequenting the wiki for years, there is nothing remotely original or new about potholing understatements to Understatement, stealth puns to Stealth Pun, running gags to Running Gag, overused running gags to Overused Running Gag, and so on. It has been done to death. It has become repetitive and predictable, and repetitiveness and predictability is the opposite of humour.
As much as we may amuse ourselves with our attempts at cleverness, it becomes old after a while. A very short while.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I changed the text to an excerpt from Lord Gro's post above. The rule that was there was a bit murky.
I'm not sure how someone could read the Pothole Magnet list and not get the point. I suppose you have to be like painfully blunt to get the point across.
Edited by FastEddie Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty

I've found a new rule on Sinkhole about pot holes because of internal use of tropes on TV Tropes itself. First of all, was this actually agreed upon or did someone just put it there because it was his or her Pet-Peeve Trope? I'm asking because I can't find references to it anywhere else on the wiki, unless we count in-universe only tropes like Understatement. The sarcastic comment "is the writer describing the entry and pointing out their own "witty" use of a trope within" further makes me believe that KJMackley (the one who added the paragraph about the rule) just tried to exterminate something he or she dislikes. If it turns out that I'm wrong, I'd like to apologize in advance.
Personally, I think it's a stupid rule because I can't see the harm of some self-referential humour by using tropes in examples and pot holing to them. Unlike the other types of sinkholes, these pot holes don't cause confusion and/or annoyance. A legitimate example of for instance Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking doesn't stop being an example only because it's from TV Tropes and not from another form of media. Also, cleaning up all wicks of that kind would be a lot of trouble and not accomplish much except for making the wiki less fun. I'm not saying that TV Tropes editors should shoehorn tropes into their examples as often as possible, but some self-referential humour doesn't hurt.
If the rule turns out to be legitimate, I've also posted some questions on the Discussion page of Sinkhole and will probably post more.
Edited by MathsAngelicVersion