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So, what should we do about the page then?
Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!The writing in the trope description could be improved. It's rambling and I feel that it could be written in a clearer, more concise manner. In particular the section about the origins of the trope, which is a wall of text with run-on sentences.
The trope description also isn't clear about the distinction between the trope - which seems to be a plot trope about personal relations - and the broader, real-life imperialist concept which the Kipling quote is about.
I don't have the time to do a wick check right now, but there might be some risk of misuse if the trope definition is much narrower than the common usage of the term (which is about the relations between races in collective, not just about relations between individuals).
But none of this is relevant to the OP, of course. The trope may be used in works in a racist way, but of course that doesn't mean that we're condoning racism by documenting that usage.
Edited by GnomeTitan^ I think the current name is being misused. What the trope seems to be documenting is what's more commonly called the "white savior narrative", which does apply to stories about individuals (because they reflect implicit worldviews), while White Man's Burden is more often used specifically in connection with imperialism.
To take the it to TRS we'd need to prove misuse with a wick check. If it turns out that a lot of the examples are about imperialism rather than a white person's personal relation to a POC, TRS can either rename it, split it or change the trope definition, but we need to do a wick check first for that even to be considered.
Yes, I agree. This is not the only trope that has a misleading name like that, and unless it’s shown to cause problems they usually get to keep their names. That's why I mentioned gathering evidence of misuse: unless the misused name leads to misuse of the trope, it's not ground for renaming the trope.
Edited by GnomeTitan

Back in November, GulFlanders made a large edit
to White Man's Burden, removing the image, large portions of the description, and various examples. This was all done under the edit reason of "taking out stuff that implies segregation was a good thing".
I'm not exactly sure what they were trying to say, but I'm guessing they interpreted the message of "works where a white person helps an underprivileged person of color tend to be Glurge-y" as "white people and people of color should never interact or help each other"? I'll admit, some parts of the description were rather negative (all tropes should be presented naturally), but this is still excessive and pointless.
Strangely enough, this was their first edit since early 2017, and only their second ever.
Edited by jandn2014