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 is for:
- • General questions about the wiki, how it works, and how to do things.
- • Reports of problems with wiki articles, or requests for help with wiki articles.
- • Reports of misbehavior or abuse by other tropers.
Ask the Tropers is not for:
- • Help identifying a trope. See TropeFinder.
- • Help identifying a work. See MediaFinder.
- • Asking if a trope example is valid. See the Trope Talk forum.
- • Proposing new tropes. See TropeLaunchPad.
- • Making bug reports. See QueryBugs.
- • Asking for new wiki features. See QueryWishlist.
- • Chatting with other tropers. See our forums.
- • Reporting problems with advertisements. See this forum topic.
- • Reporting issues on the forums. Send a Holler instead.
Ask the Tropers:
resolved A Concerning Trend
I'm not sure where else to discuss this so here goes. Tropers.vidkid has a habit of deleting "negative" tropes and wording about My Hero Academia's League of Villains, usually through downplaying their crimes or claiming that the "negative" trope is Alternative Character Interpretation, without any discussion. In other words: Draco in Leather Pants.
Link to vidkid's edits. (Every single one of their edits has been for My Hero Academia's pages since August. Not a reason for concern but just something I noticed.)
On August 30th 2020 vidkid deleted a bunch of "negative" entries from My Hero Academia - Tomura Shigaraki with the edit reason that they were supposedly "Alternative Character Interpretation". The Alternative Character Interpretation they used was incorrect (it ignored canon facts and was thus removed by Rebel Falcon at a later date).
On October 18th vidkid deleted part of Blue-and-Orange Morality from Toga's entry on the Characters.My Hero Academia League Of Villains (which said Toga was lying and mentioned her anger that someone considered her a victim) and completely deleted Hypocrite's entry (another "negative" trope).
Today, vidkid deleted a line from NightmareFuel.My Hero Academia about the implication that Toga killed an old woman to take her blood in order to trick Uraraka. For context, Uraraka says "You mean you stole that woman's blood, killed her, just to ask me a question like that?" in response so it's not Fridge Horror.
These are only a few of the concerning edits I noticed. Some are minor, and there is nothing wrong with liking the villains of a show, but I feel it's reached the point of DILP-ing, especially with the deleting of "negative" tropes on the characters' pages. I hesitate to call this an "agenda" but something is certainly going on.
I think the deleted entries should possibly be re-added. What else should be done?
Edited by EmeraldSkyresolved Report Troper Pt. 2
Basically, a previous ATT got really long, so it was suggested that someone re-consolidate the information into a new report. So here I am, and I would like to report Mr-ex777 for concerns with their edits. I'll include citations from the previous thread.
Trigger warning: The first bullet points repeatedly refer to rape and link to edits that discuss it in a fairly detailed manner. If you'd like to read anyway, skip to the second first-level bullet point.
- They really seem insistent on inserting rape into their edits for no real reason. This first was noticed when he inserted hypothetical "brutal rape" into a recent discussion so many times that multiple people were begging him to stop, but it happens in edits too.
- It particularly happened on the page for SoYouWantTo.Write A Complete Monster (more on that later). Among other examples, Ex edited the page to add references to rape, often with no provocation, here, here (an entire paragraph this time, continuing to repeat the "brutally raped" verbiage), here, here, here, and here. I know we're dealing with the Complete Monster trope and rape comes up there a lot, but this is a genuinely distressing amount of focus on that particular crime on that page.
- On NightmareFuel.Criminal Minds, he tweaked his own entry just to add more references of rape and torture to it. He added an entire paragraph about a rapist from the show and his actions here as well - ditto this (which he felt the need to add more detail to here), and this (which was later tweaked to add in more rape to an already rape-filled entry here). In a vacuum, it's nothing considering the show, but considering how much he fixated on it in discussion and how the rapists (and the occasional other CM) are the only entries he seems to edit, it's really noticeable.
- EDIT: I'm just gonna put this one on a separate bullet, but here he is again altering one of his previous entries to repeatedly reference rape, even though it already referred to it.
- Ex serial tweaks constantly. He once edited the SYWT page at least 23 times in a single day, usually only changing a single word, but I'm not the only one who noticed he seems to do it to every page he edits. Edit history for reference.
- This was a one-off among everything else, but he randomly added the entire country of Cambodia to Overshadowed by Controversy. This ended up causing confusion when Siegfried 1337 tried to ask if it should be allowed and it instead came off like he had added it to the page.
- He keeps adding examples to Sandbox.Former Complete Monsters before the discussion has anywhere near concluded, requiring him to go back in and fix it if the discussion changes course. The most notable times of this rushed editing were Kor Phaeron (where he added the entry before the cut was actually finalized, created a "Tabletop" folder for it without moving the other tabletop examples to it, added with natter about how vile he is and with grammar mishaps that had to be tweaked several times, and then later added more natter to alongside a typo) and Cinder Fall (again, the discussion had literally just started - the cleanup thread hadn't even reached a new page yet, much less reached a consensus - but he also didn't italicize the show title, add a colon after the show's title, or give more than a barebones cut reason).
- He did the same thing to the SYWT page - within an hour of Cinder being brought up for cut, he adjusted the page to list fanfic versions of her as Adaptational Villainy (which is not at all accurate in the first place - just because she's not a CM anymore doesn't mean that adaptations where she is have to make her more villainous).
- Update: He recently edited an entry seemingly just to reference how vile the character is despite that being unrelated to his cutting.
- Additionally, when he added Echidna's examples to Former Complete Monsters, he felt the need to add in a dig about how Echidna had a few examples not make it through the voting process. May not be related to anything else but it feels like a needlessly mean spirited jab for no real reason.
- Last but not least, he's basically turned the entirety of SoYouWantTo.Write A Complete Monster into a natter and cruft-filled dumpster fire. It's filled with walls of text, "examples" that either rely on Fan Myopia or are so detailed that they derail the entire page and, when you look in the history, countless tweaks of single words or small phrases, often one after the other in a short period of time (as previously mentioned, at least one of them was 23 times in 24 hours). Another user checked and, out of the 64 pages of edit history, Ex had 40 of them, with the furthest of his edits only being August of 2022note I got bored and did some math - that's only 527 days ago, and at 15 edits per page and 40 pages total, that's slightly over an edit a day, but mostly consolidated over the past few months. Make of any of that what you will. The previous ATT thread has basically moved on to that page being the primary concern because reversion isn't really possible (no matter the reversion point, "clean" edits would get hit in the crossfire) but the page is such a mess that no one knows where to start.
Since the previous ATT got really long and slightly derailed, I wanted to bring the focus back to the original problem. Basically, Ex has several editing red flags and issues, and I think several people would like to see if there's a way to address them.
Edited by STARCRUSHER99openDarkon44 removing social justice-related YMMV
Darkon44 removed YMMV from Pathfinder about tabletop games often being criticised for being neocolonialist and white, and removed a line about drow being weird because they're drow and not because they're black.
Also minor, but they removed an 'X-Card' reference from Monsterhearts - for context, 'X-Card' is practiced by some tabletop groups to bypass or drop scenes with content a player doesn't want, usually violent or sexual in nature. As with anything related to social justice, the mere mention of an X-Card gets a lot of people pissed.
Maybe this is kneejerk, but agenda-based editing makes me wary. I've restored all three examples.
openTroper with rude edit reasons
jerodast has a habit of using rude edit reasons in their edits.
- On this page, they uncommented out a couple of ZCEs, believing they had enough context. While it's sometimes debatable as to whether an example has enough context, edit reasons like "I could copy a description of the trope into the text here, because it describes exactly what happens, but that would be an incredibly irritating and redundant thing to have to do" and "Are we expecting a full description of all skin she shows instead of concluding the completely self-explanatory reasoning that there are various sexy shots of the character throughout the movie? Christ" are rather rude.
- Here, while it's fine to point out that the trope entry shouldn't refer to "above" or "below" examples, was it really necessary to add " DON'T TRY TO PULL THIS CUTESY CRAP"?
- Here, they start by saying "This is just nonsense" in reference to someone using "Mr." instead of "Dr.", before going on a long-winded discussion that qualifies as a small Wall of Text by itself.
- Here, they deleted a natter-y sub-bullet. But rather than putting something like "removing natter" or "repair, don't respond", they put "this comment literally adds nothing. actual examples or don't bother!"
- Here, the edit reason starts with "This is SUCH a borderline example, Jesus", and goes on to mention "the concentrated power of fan hate".
I've sent a notifier or two, still waiting for a response. I thought I may as well bring up the issue in case I don't get a response, or their reply is of a similar level of rudeness.
Edited by Shadow8411openRude Troper
Johnny_Joestar has a pretty bad problem with being needlessly rude in their edit reasons. In particular, they like to use the word "dumb" very often. Just looking at their first page of edit history, most of their edits have a rude edit reason. Edit history here
Some of these rude edit reasons include:
"The guy who wrote that doesn't know anything about law [...] so is pretty dumb to affirm [...]."
"This division is dumb and cofusing."
"The reference is too dumb, vague, and a complete reach..."
"Erased a lot of dumb, awkward reaching."
"Erased it on the ground of being a very dumb and tangent nitpick..."
However, most of their comments—to the point where I'm wondering if this is a Single-Issue Wonk—is apparently incorrect pronouns for characters. On the first page of their edit history, edit reasons include some variation of "dropping dumb pronoun" ten times. Again, just on the first page.
On June 1st I sent them a PM for one of these rude reasons: "Dropping dumb, inaccurate, incorrect and unnecessary gender pronoun for a character who is, looks, is coded, and identifies as female. Seriously, TV Tropes has a serious problem with editors assuming characters' wrong genders." But on June 24th, they left yet another "dumb pronoun" edit reason.
Edited by iamconstantineopen Suspected ban evader
Chris Keller was reported here for their poor grammar and serial tweaking habits. They were banned for trying to evade via multiple accounts.
Then they tried to ban-evade as Tyrion Lannister.
Then they tried to ban-evade as Dexter Morgan.
Then they tried to ban-evade as Donnie.
Then they tried to ban-evade as Dagmer Cleftjaw.
Now I'm pretty sure Detective Wagenbach is yet another sockpuppet account. Same pages, same behavior, another username that's taken after a fictional character. I have no idea how they're managing to do this so many times, but...yeah.
Edited by iamconstantineopenRecurring Problem Troper Web Original
Troper Bowserbros tends to have major and recurring issues with Fan Myopia and overly-lengthy entries in many of their edits across multiple pages. Oftentimes they will use the YMMV pages to soapbox about personal grievances while pretending those opinions are held by a large number of fans, and also a tendency to for said entries to get bogged down in Nattery excessive and irrelevant details that are not informative (one example here). A great deal of my edits to the Vinesauce page are, essentially, me performing janitorial duties on their entries to make them comprehensible (in addition to the above, they have a lot of issues with Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness and overly-stiff prose), or to remove instances of misuse or shoehorning.
I am not the only person to have issues with them. Some other examples of people talking about edits of theirs can be found here and here (attribution here, in responsible to a post by me about the same troper here).
Other issues that don't quite violate trope etiquette but are still worth noting, are that a lot of their edits are about external drama or the personal lives of video game streamers and let's players, things that are still technically tropeworthy but mildly creepy.
I have PM'd them in the past about their issues, but while they seem to be sincere in their efforts to improve, it has largely been falling upon deaf ears.
Just recently they made yet another edit to Vinesauce that AGAIN, seems to be absurdly lengthy for the amount of meaningful information they intend to convey. Not only that but it seems to be an ROCEJ violation at that, as I was not even aware of that controversy until now because of them, and don't believe that matter should have even been brought up on the page in the first place unless people were actually making edits of that nature.
Edited by AlleyOopopenReport Troper
Alright, there are two threads dedicated to the same problem Troper and it's getting a little ridiculous, so I'm gonna consolidate everything and file an official complaint.
A troper named DL 32918623 (edit history here) has been bouncing up this page recently because of a film called Brotherhood and its sequel, of which the pages consisted of nothing but an image that had been tweaked upwards of thirty times. It was reported here, at which point it became clear that the troper in question had blanked the page in an attempt to move it somewhere else and replace it (instead of using a disambig), only to then leave the blank page while tweaking the image constantly. This was not an isolated incident, as they created multiple subpages filled with blank folders and a few images. When confronted with this, they complained (twice) that the pages had been cut without giving them notice and proceeded to point the finger at pretty much everyone involved, including sending someone a notifier for removing a page from the index ahead of cutlisting it and outright accusing the site of not properly representing British culture (as commented below), then created another thread to help clean up their mess.
There's also evidence that they plagiarized The Other Wiki in their page for the musician Stormzy; their response to the accusation suggests that the bio is, in fact, plagiarized, though they’ve now apologized and claimed it was “a mistake”.
Overall, the issues involved include creating stub articles, blanking pages, adding unapproved images, inappropriate notifiers, plagiarism, serial tweaking, complaining when no one else would trope the works they like, opening two separate threads calling for backup to trope pages, being evasive and confrontational when confronted with their issues, and deflecting blame to the site itself for their own mistakes.
Edited by STARCRUSHER99openPossible Whitewashing on a Dictator's Useful Notes, and Possible Ban Evader
UsefulNotes.Francisco Franco recently got a couple of pretty large edits from new user Tropers.dd23zz
The biggest of them was changing a section about his politics from this:
to this:
with the edit reason of: "The previous description about ideology was flawed and was made either by a non-neutral biased person, or a poorly informed one."
I believe that this may be Tropers.Ryzov_meister9247 ban-evading. Ryzov was heavily focused on promoting the works of alt-right author Robert Mitchell, most notably FanFic.Sister Floriana, a "fanfic" of an art collection by Japanese artist "Diva" that engages in historical revisionism focused on whitewashing Francisco Franco and his regime.
He was banned for campaigning to restore our page on Stonetoss (a neo-nazi propaganda webcomic) and editing pages related to the Spanish Civil War (the above page, Homage to Catalonia, etc.) to insert entries along the lines of "Historical Hero Upgrade: The enemies of Franco were actually murdering communist rapists" or "Historical Villain Upgrade: Franco was actually a hero defending Spanish Christians and opposing the Dirty Commies", etc. He has also ban-evaded in the past using the account Tropers.Book Buccaneer
Given their identical Single-Issue Wonk of "Francisco Franco was actually an anti-communist hero and totally not a fascist" and dd23zz's first edits coming a week or two after Book Buccaneer was banned, it seems pretty conclusive to me.
Edited by Dirtyblue929open Problematic Troper in two YMMV Discussion pages
I'm hollering for a mod to cast a gander on Tropers.Mimic 1990, who (in addition to just being downright rude) is unironically spouting and defending textbook white supremacist ideologies. For example, parroting the argument that immigrants are inherently a negative on modern society, and also saying that being called a Nazi is worse than calling someone the other N-word. When someone argues against their points, they not only become hostile, but accuse that the people they're arguing with of "knowing they're wrong deep down, but not wanting to admit it".
Their statments actually began on these ATT queries. They've also demonstrated a complete misunderstanding of how Strawman Has a Point works as an Audience Reaction, and then tells everyone else they're wrong when corrected.
Edited by NubianSatyressopenTLP Rudeness issue
Comet Z The Anti Brony proposed a trope that received some standard criticisms (you can look in the draft history to see what it was previously like), but they responded in a way they even admitted was snarky, where they suggested that the only reason we were criticizing their proposal was an aversion to new ideas (which is a pretty silly criticism to make in the Trope Launch Pad) and saying that we "learned nothing."
Now on their tropers page, they edited the section where they'd listed the proposed trope to instead say "fuck you again." This reads like a jab at anybody who didn't like their proposal. Is that too far? (They're not a super new editor either, their account dates back to at least January.)
Edited by mightymewtronopen Rude Troper
Someone may want to talk to Hacktastic Jeste about their rude behavior. Their edits reasons are filled with caps-lock screaming.
WHAT THE FUCK IS THE DECIEVER?!
EPONYMOUS IS A MYSTERIOUS WORD THAT LACKS ORIGIN!!!!!!
NO MORE FULL FUCKING NAMES YOU MORONS!!!!!
NO MORE SON FUCKING GOKU!!!!
openRogue discard and possible agenda-based edit
mewt rogue-discarded a Useful Notes draft for the Black Lives Matter movement despite a net positive hat count and no calls for discard. On its own, that's just normal bad troper protocol, but (thanks to homogenized for catching this) apparently their only edit in the past year was to change "George Floyd's murder" to "George Floyd's death" with an edit reason of "accuracy." They've made about one or two edits a year (they were last regularly active in 2013) that don't appear connected to racism debates, but their recent behavior combined looks like an agenda.
Edited by mightymewtronopenAgenda-based editing?
I'm not quite sure what to make of some of LunaSea's most recent edits. On Music.LOONA, they changed the entry for Queer Romance to LGBT Romance (the latter redirects to the former), without bothering to re-alphabetise it. And on the AwesomeMusic.LOONA subpage, they deleted the "Q" from two separate uses of "LGBTQ".
Should these be reverted?
open Complete Monster image changed to Boss Baby Western Animation
On the Complete Monster subpage for Marvel Animation, there seems to have been a mistake, as now the page image is The Boss Baby, when it's supposed to be Ultron from Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow. Looking at the Sandbox page, it doesn't look like somebody changed the image. The image pickin' thread also had the image replaced. So, I think what happened was that somebody uploaded the Boss Baby picture and it shared the same URL as the Ultron image, so it automatically replaced it.
Since the original image was a custom collage, could somebody upload the original picture so we can bring it back to normal?
Edited by chasemaddiganopenUser restoring audience reactions to work pages (with occasional rudeness).
I've recently been attempting to scrub mentions of audience reactions (from both fans and critics) from past work pages that I made or otherwise contributed to in an attempt to bring them in-line with the site's rules about work pages. I myself was unaware of the "no audience reactions" rule until then, which is why it took so long. However, Nicky99 has been systematically adding them back in, apparently unaware that critical responses count as audience reactions/value judgements; the few edit summaries they left also sounded aggressive/defiant in tone (such as this one, this one, and especially this one).
I tried sending them a PM about it, but it's been a couple days and they haven't responded or reverted their restorations despite continued activity on the site; I don't want to risk an edit war.
Edited by bowserbrosopenDogwhistle on Memetic Mutation Videogame
So i was reading the YMMV page for the cancelled Video Game/Hyenas, and i came across the following example of memetic mutation:
- JOIN THE ACK- explanation At the end of the announcement trailer for the game, the slogan "JOIN THE PACK" is supposed to be displayed. However, due to the fact that You Tube puts the thumbnail of the next recommended video on the screen at the end of every video, said thumbnail ends up covering the word "PACK" and turning it into "ACK"—a common exclamation for sudden dismay or frustration—making it seem like the writer of the slogan got into some unfortunate incident and couldn't finish writing it. The abrupt cancellation of the game itself just adds to it.
The part "common exclamation for sudden dismay or frustration—making it seem like the writer of the slogan got into some unfortunate incident and couldn't finish writing it. " really bugged me, this whole sentence felt really weird. That feels terribly specific and it's overall just a clunky piece of writing.
So i decided to investigate on google for "hyenas "join the ack" " and my suspicious were validated, all of the results containing the phrase where from Kiwi Farms and 4chan, with true context of this "Ack" that the troper pretends it's a "common exclamation for sudden dismay or frustration—making" was actually a mockery of the suicide of transgender individuals, one other example of "join the ack" that i found was an steam user making a community post with this as the title and going full transphobe.
Now, the point i'm trying to make is that based on my research, there is absolutely no way KB Zheng 123 didn't know what the context of that was about, which means they intentionally and knowingly added a transphobic joke to the site and tried to pass off as a regular joke, and that requires action by the moderators, as there should be zero tolerance for transphobia and transphobic users in this site.
resolved Start of an Edit War/Possible Sockpuppet? Western Animation
Hello! So I recently posted this in the "Is this an Example?" thread, and haven't really got replies, though they have been leaning to my side.
I found something that screams shoehorning from a biased source.
From the YMMV page of The Owl House:
- Broken Aesop: The Series Finale has two major ones;
- Earlier in the series, the show railed against the concept of a Chosen One, and said that people should carve out their own paths. Just before the climax however, it's revealed that the remnants of the dead Titan has been actively helping Luz in learning Magic and has picked her to be the one to stand up against Belos. Guess what? That makes her a fucking CHOSEN ONE!!!
- After Belos is defeated and no longer a threat, he starts begging for Luz to save him from death, saying that is she doesn't, she'll be just as "evil" as the witches, and "We're Human, we're better than this!", only for Eda and friends to push Luz aside, smugly say to Belos "Well we ain't!" and then gleefully stomp him to death and laugh, proving that despite everything the show preached, in his final moments, they proved that everything Belos said had some merit of truth to it.
Two huge problems with this. First, it's very clearly overly hostile and biased against the show judging by it's language, and attempting to whitewash Belos by suggesting he has a point. Secondly, both examples are taken completely out of context to form a rhetorical strawman. The first one isn't an example because she wasn't born with any special destiny. She only got the Titan's approval due to being her kind and loving self, especially to his son. The second is just plainly absurd. It's attempting to play moral judgement on some of the people who have suffered the most under the genocidal psychopath, when he had just made his second attempt to commit genocide against their species.
I took the liberty of removing the example from the YMMV page. Now that would be fine on it's own, even if I heavily disagree with it... If it weren't for this entry literally being a copy paste of something that was posted on the main page of the show which the troper Gamermaster removed. The weird part is that it was copy pasted onto the YMMV page by an entirely different user, and the first user has a total of two edits on their entire edit history, both of which are super hostile to modern Disney properties. Later on the person who posted it on the main Owl House page posted it right back on the YMMV page exactly as is without going to the "Is this an Example?" thread, and added further shoehorning. I removed those too... but now I am wondering if this is some sort of sockpuppeting situation due to the reasons listed above. At the very least it could warp into an Edit War.
On February 1st, Tropers.Captain JJC made this edit on The Rising of the Shield Hero, which I later edited for containing Word Cruft like “but one must consider the following”.
Twenty-one days later, he fully reverts my edits and reinstates his own saying (paraphrasing since I’m currently on mobile). “Guy who told me not to add word cruft added more of it”, making it clear that it was a retaliatory edit, as well as a post > edit > revert Edit War. I sent him an automated PM for rudeness.
I’m bringing this here because the edit in general really seems to be overly verbose and all over the place in getting to the point, but I don’t want to edit war further.