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According to Handling Spoilers, it's because if the entire example is hidden, how will you even know if you want to click on it? At least if you can see it's a Death Tropes and nobody in the series has died yet, you can know not to click on it.
Ideally, we usually don't want the entire example hidden anyway.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.If you have to click on the example to know whether it's something you already know or not, then why is it hidden to begin with? Also, there are ways to make spoilers less self-fulfilling. For example, putting a death trope on the character sheet is almost always a bad idea, as that's an inherent spoiler that wiki policy forbids you from tagging. So instead, you can put it on the main page so that it won't be immediately obvious who the death trope applies to.
Or, if the spoilers get so bad, just remove the tags altogether. Seriously. It's better to slap a warning and let people read at their own risk than to cover the page in tags.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallExactly. Tv Tropes purpose is to document tropes, and if you want to read up on what tools are used in the telling of a story, you are likely going to be spoiled on events in the story. That's just a given.
You cannot have it both ways. We try to spoiler things as much as is reasonable, but if it comes down to a choice between spoilering something and general readability, then the latter wins.
Edited by DarkHunterBut what about death tropes under character pages/folders? That gives away who and what it applies to.
The best answer I have is not to visit character pages if you don’t want to be spoiled.
This made me think character pages should be Spoilers Off as:
- Those who don’t want to be spoiled are unlikely to want to read character pages in advance. If they want to see if they’re interested in the work I don’t think they’ll check out anything more than the main, YMMV, and/or Trivia.
- Character pages are about more specific details than regular that makes it harder to avoid spoilers than regular pages. Details someone who wanted a general overview to see if they want to see the work but not so much they’d be spoiled would care for.
I have been of the opinion that character pages should be spoilers off, but this does sort of clash with the "character pages are just extensions of the work page" idea...
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.Unfortunately, death tropes are one of the things that actually do belong on character pages because they're about the character, unless you want to justify it as them being a thing that happens to the character.
Again, the alternative is just to make the page spoilers-off and expect people to be smart, which I find much better than trying to move spoiler-y tropes to the main page. The House of Anubis characters page was declared spoilers-off at some point while the normal work page isn't, and I think it works since the page would have a lot of redundant spoiler-tagging and with a mystery show it's hard to know where the line is for the character stuff.
Edited by WarJay77 Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallAs the original question has been answered and we're now discussing policy, it may be prudent to migrate this to Wiki Talk.
That's about spoilers and PD works, not the policy in general. I know this because I was deeply involved in the debate.
We'd need a new thread if we want to address character pages and death tropes.
Edited by WarJay77 Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper WallA mod
has already stated that death tropes don't belong in character pages. I've been moving them to works' main pages whenever I see them.
Welp, if that's Word Of Mod then I guess that's that.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall^^ There's almost no actual consensus. It's been a problem for a while.
Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall^^ Agreed. Several death tropes also obviously rely on the characterization of a character, like Death by Irony, Karmic Death or Defiant to the End.
Overall I don't think we should use character pages for purely for "characterization" tropes if we can't even decide what those are.
Edited by BlackMage43Y'all should make a Wiki Talk thread for the death trope / characterization trope issue since this has gotten off topic.
I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Why don't we cover the actual trope in spoiler brackets along with its description? If the entire description is hidden wouldn't it make sense to hide the trope name as well so the viewer can't put two and two together?