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:
openBashing Troper
I just want to go ahead and say I don't watch Supergirl so I have no two cents in this one way or the other.
So on Supergirl, there's a character named William who apparently is not liked at all by the fanbase. I suppose that in and of itself is fine to put on YMMV pages since it's a notable Audience Reaction, but there seems to be a problem with bashing rather than just stating. Specifically, Starbrand 1987 has made many, many edits just talking about how much fans hate William. (They also have several grammar problems like no punctuation and no capitalization, but that's beside the point.)
Here
Starbrand adds And The Fandom Rejoiced about William possibly dying. Here
they put in an entry saying that William flirting with Kara after she turned him down on an episode that aired on International Woman's Day...is Narm.
Most of it is here
on the YMMV page. Starbrand puts a large edition to an entry talking about how poorly-received William is, an entry about how his actor and Kara's actress have no chemistry, adding William and Kara's romance under Audience-Alienating Premise ("Not one regular supergirl media reviewer approves of the relationship."), basically accusing the writers under Trolling Creators, and several subbullets under The Scrappy that got deleted.
Forenperser has deleted some entries, but with the reasons "Stop this silly obsession already." and "Natter, poorly written and just plain obsession," I'm afraid this is going to get hostile soon. They were reported to ATT before
, but it seems they're still at it.
openAgenda-based editing?
Malcolm Crown added these to the most recent edit on the YMMV.Them 2021 page:
- Audience-Alienating Premise: A lot of people weren’t interested in the idea of yet another TV show with a black main cast focusing on black pain and Woke Identity Politics at the expense of good storytelling. As such, many viewers both white and black just wanted a new and original horror story in the vein of Film/Us in which the main characters being black was just a matter of fact, as this would have done much more for fair representation than racism being the crux of the story, thus once more reducing people of colour to nothing more than the colour of their skin and the suffering that can come with it.
- Broken Base: Some think it’s a great, terrifying horror story that conveys the suffering of the black community in the 1950s in a visceral way that hits you like a gut punch and leaves you feeling relieved with the Catharsis Factor of the final episode, others say that it’s degradation porn and others think it’s just Woke shit.
They also added this to the Unfortunate Implications part:
- All of the black characters are completely good and all of the white characters are corrupt, weak or pure evil. This is in stark contrast with other stories about injustice such as To Kill a Mockingbird or X-Men which makes a point that immorality and bigotry can come from either side of the aisle.
- As in Get Out!!, the most despicable among the white human antagonists is a woman, which is full of Unfortunate Implications of racist misogyny towards white women, not helped by the recent emergence of the Karen meme. What makes this worse is that Alison Pill has herself described Betty as a "Karen".
Their edit reason was: "Much as I love the show, it's not above criticism." No citations for their Unfortunate Implications and violating the 6-month wait rule for Broken Base aside, the "woke shit", "woke identity politics" phrasing and seeing Betty's storyline as racist towards white women are rather concerning.
I've also checked their edit history and I'm not sure what to make of it since I'm not familiar with these other works, but I've also found an edit on YMMV.Torchwood that removes mention of Torchwood being believers in "extreme imperialistic and racist British nationalism" to just "extreme nationalism", with the edit reason being "Torchwood are never shown to be racist and not everyone would say that imperialism and nationalism are necessarily evil."
Outside of that, their other edits including on the other Series.Them 2021 pages seem fine, but these still feel like red flags.
Edited by CommanderVisoropenBan Evader
I have reason to suspect that The Master Chand
is ScumBagMan
. He focuses on many of the same works (Catherine, Mega Man, Xexyz, Godzilla, Mass Effect, and Star Trek) and the Unintentionally Unsympathetic example he added to The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is suspiciously similar to the one Scum Bag Man added back in 2019. Compare.
Scum Bag Man's example: "One may forgive it for not saving the Nightmares, but more than a little harsh that it lets even those had nothing to do with their schemes die as well. Leaving the guy who saves him stranded in the ocean and clinging to driftwood isn't particularly nice either."
The Master Chand's example: "You can forgive him for letting the Nightmares die, self-preservation motives or not, but the general residents of the island are harder to overlook. There's also the issue of leaving the guy who just saved his bacon stranded in the ocean clinging to driftwood."
Edited by SammettikopenUser with consistent complaining, edit war and bias issues
I previously made an ATT query
on Jondoe 1265 after noticing a lengthy edit war on YMMV.Punisher 2022. However, in the time since the query was made, several other users, myself included, have noticed several edits from there consisting of complaining, edit wars, and edits that are biased or violate Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment. Many of their edits seem to be on works that are infamous for having mixed/negative reviews.
- An edit
adding Artist Disillusionment to Trivia.Joker Folie A Deux that uses two No Real Life tropes (Pyrrhic Victory and Gone Horribly Right) to complain about Todd Philips.
- Three edits to YMMV.Saints Row 2022 complaining about the game - the first
adding a sub-bullet to Uncertain Audience to complain about political correctness, the second
adding Fan-Preferred Cut Content, and the third
adding a complaint-heavy Replacement Scrappy entry. After the Uncertain Audience entry was cut, they readded it
.
- An edit
to Series.Out Of Jimmys Head changing "mixed critical reception" to "immensely negative reception among viewers".
- An edit
to YMMV.I Am Not Starfire adding several complaint-heavy tropes (Bile Fascination, Critical Dissonance, Glurge, Too Bleak, Stopped Caring and Unintentionally Sympathetic) alongside a zero-context Fanon Discontinuity entry.
openReport Troper
I'm going to be honest, I was going to wait for tomorrow to thoroughly go through Neeku-Nekku-Nakuru-Nikua's edit and forum history to file a long and comprehensive report, but the situation's simplified itself by becoming an Edit War.
- Here he is
over-potholing a CM entry with an edit reason that for some reason talks about grammar
- Here it is
being reverted to bring it back into entry guidelines
- Here he is
reverting it back and threatening to report the other user if they change it again.
There's a whole lot of other stuff on the CM thread of him asking a bunch of questions that are all answered in the pinned post and then not listening to the answers we give him, but this makes the whole situation pretty simple honestly.
Edit: Their most recent post really summarizes the problem - beyond the threatening tone
, he says "don’t make grammar issues of any kinds", which is kinda a problem for someone basically declaring themselves the grammar police.
openDogwhistle 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.
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 Shadow8411openReport 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 STARCRUSHER99openUser 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 bowserbrosopen ROCEJ Potholes?
Something I've noticed time and time again on this wiki is people punctuating entries on dicey topics with condescending remarks like "and that's all that will be said about that" potholed to the ROCEJ page.
I feel like it's kind of awkard and in violation of ROCEJ in and of itself because of the slightly arrogant tone that adds to the text and because it comes off almost like it's daring some idiot to start an edit war over the entry in question
It's a habit I almost think should be banned and an effort started to clean it off the wiki.
openTroper changing a lot of stuff without discussions Live Action TV
Troper robin8821
seems to be on a editing spree for character pictures.
While that in itself is not something bad, he has changed a whole lot of stuff (see here
) without any discussion I could see.
He seems to replace a lot of pictures and even outright
delete
some of them, without any real apparent reason.
Edit: Keeps going
as we speak. I honestly think most of his pictures aren't an improvement, quite the contrary.
EDIT 2: He also left a whole lot of "Some caption text" captions.
Edited by ForenperseropenJHD's impatience
I've avoided an ATT report because this has been largely restricted to the fora, but nothing has really happened after two hollers, so I figured it's worth another report.
JHD has a habit of impatience in the Projects fora, which results in them either berating people for not focusing on what he considers important (without taking any initiative himself) or taking unilateral action despite a lack of consensus. Some examples:
- In the So Bad It's Horrible cleanup, they kept asking if we should remove some listicles from Horrible.Other and the Music subpages. The discussion didn't reach consensus, but when their attempt to revive it was overlooked, they just removed the lists unilaterally
instead of just reviving the discussion. (They did eventually make a spinoff thread to properly discuss the issue.)
- In the Deader Than Disco TRS, they got snappy
about not receiving constant updates on how many wicks were left, despite that being visible from the Related tab. Note that they weren't really doing much wick cleaning themself.
- They've had a history of impatience in the Wick Check Project especially. Their early posts in the thread were first a lot of double-posting about their progress
doing a Deader Than Disco wick check, and once they decided they weren't good at doing wick checks, they got fairly pushy
about us doing that wick check (they've admitted that changing that trope was the main reason they joined the site). Then after deciding they didn't have time to work on the Ho Yay wick check (which is fair enough), they were still ignorant
about exactly how to fix the trope despite previous failed TRS threads, which again, is fair, as they can't solve everything. But they seem very reluctant to even try. And now today they just tried to cutlist the newer Ho Yay wick check
because "It's dead, and will never go anywhere" despite nobody else giving up on the effort and people working on numerous other threads at the same time. Once again, they just decided to make a decision based on their own feelings about a situation rather than actually discuss an issue properly.
He was brought up earlier
for his somewhat judgmental ATT questions, but I didn't think it was that big of an issue because he seemed to be listening. But he's still continuing to be disruptive, even after multiple warnings to stop this hasty behavior. Their role in the projects is less contributing to the effort and more yelling at other tropers to contribute because they gave up on trying to help, despite the fact that these are collaborative efforts and we've given him many tips on how to contribute.
openTroper with pretty problematic edit reasons and poor editing behavior
I want to call attention to Tropers/liberty3's tendency to make suspicious edits that don't have a good edit reasons which can be outright rude at times.
- They removed a couple of Thor's tropes because "they didn't agree with it". No factual debunking, no reason as to why it’s not a straight or good example, they just didn’t agree with it.
That’s pretty poor if you ask me.
- This edit reason sounds incredibly aggressive and condescending
. Also, they’re incorrect as well as in the trope itself it’s literally stated that a Smug Super is "a superhero or villain who knows they've won the Super Power Lottery and won't hesitate to remind others".
- Now this is just plain biased and rude
.
- They also have a habit of removing tropes without explaining why
.
As you can seem this troper is bad at being objective, removes tropes out of personal beliefs instead of factual explanations, and can be downright disrespectful in their edit reasons.
openSingle-issue wonk over a character's butt
A rather alarming amount of edits by WateverIdk
are about Nightwing/Dick Grayson's butt or sex scenes. This character is a Mr. Fanservice whose nudity is milked by DC Comics all the time, so it's understandable that he would fit a lot of sex tropes, but the user in question still appears to be way too enthusiastic about this topic. Some of their noticeable additions include:
- Harley Quinn page
: "Of course, many scenes show off his ass in its full glory, like the photo shoot where we get close-ups to it completely bare in some nice poses, or that one time he covered himself with a towel with two giant holes that perfectly framed his buttocks."
- Gotham Knights
:
- "Both gameplay and cutscenes make it almost impossible to avoid noticing Nightwing's rather glorious ass."
- "Similarly to Barbara, it's pretty much unavoidable during his gameplay that you'll be starring at Dick's famous buttocks in Sensual Spandex. Many cutscenes play with the trope as well, an example being when he meets Harley and the perspective changes to give us quite the close-up shot of his ass. It has to be said that the developers have admitted to feel very comfortable with the size of Nightwing's backside, with some skins making his suit more noticeably skintight to showcase it in full glory."
- Mr Fanservice
: "Nightwing (2016) has issue #26, which opens up on Dick taking a shower, and issue #35, which shows him entering a cold bath; both instances going as far as showing his bare buttocks in their full glory."
Wondering how the examples in question should be modified, if necessary.
Edit: Actually, scratch that. Took another look at this troper's edit history and virtually all their edits are about men's butts, either animated or live-action. Looks like some serious one-handed troping...
Edited by TantaMontyopenIP Check Requested
A spin off of this
thread. I'd like for the mods to check into morpmorp's account. Based on details outlined in that other thread, it's suspected that Morp is actually Lily Orchard herself, ban-evading and edit warring to keep her page the way she wants it.
Even if Morp isn't Lily, they're exhibiting serious ownership issues and are attacking other people, having made two other threads specifically to call out editors they were fighting with. They're also insistent on labeling Lily's ex as abusive, when that's a controversial claim and not the neutral stance they claim to be taking.
All in all, something doesn't add up here.
openTroper with ROCEJ / possible agenda-based edits on JK Rowling pages
Troper nargleinfestation (joined in Jan 2023, three pages of edits) has rewritten Creator.JK Rowling's intro today، cutting most of the ROCEJ thread's agreed phrasing re her trans rights stance, as well as the intro's reference to some of the problematic/racist tropes identified in her work.
Previous version, as agreed on the ROCEJ thread:
New version:
The page has a ROCEJ conment, which didn't say tropers must consult the thread, but cautioned against significant unilateral edits.
The Write What You Know example on the page was also amended to remove direct mention of Rowling's views on trans rights.
This intro change has now been reverted and a notifier has been sent.
A couple of hours after the notifier they also added lengthy Common Knowledge examples to YMMV.The Ink Black Heart and YMMV.Troubled Blood which also read a little defensive about Rowling.
The view on the ROCEJ thread was that this should be flagged here, so bringing it to ATT as recommended.
Edited by Mrph1openTroper with nattering issues
This troper
frequently goes into Thread Mode, adding their personal opinions to trope entries, arguing with examples, and calling out other tropers on adding things they find disagreeable (not in the edit reasons, in the examples themselves).
- Asking if
an Ass Pull entry really is an Ass Pull, because "The movie is hardly going to give away the twist".
- Griping about Karen haters and misogynists
.
- One case of them calling out a troper directly
on the work's main page.
- Another case of contesting an example
.
- Natter that causes the example to go against itself
.
Also, most of these insertions of natter aren't capitalized properly. They also added a rather red-flag-raising entry on this page
.
openTroper Report
So we've got a troper on the CM thread who's now hit strike three on a bit of a Single-Issue Wonk. Their name is Cartoon All Stars, and they seem very determined to get some CMs from Kamen Rider Saber. No problem in itself, but their way of going about it is just to keep asking the thread about it, even though they've been told multiple times to stop asking because none of the "regulars" watched it.
First they asked here
on the discussion day, only to be told that neither of the two people that reserved it ended up watching it. Then, they got aggressive about it
(the post was thumped, but it was "calling" the tropers that usually discuss the show to discuss it, even though they both said they didn't watch it). Then, they posted suggestions themselves
, at which point they were advised to check it out themselves - advice that they didn't take, because they just asked about it again
.
For what it's worth, asking the same question multiple times in spite of getting a response is not new behavior for them - they did the same with Aldrich Killian, where they asked about him
, got a response immediately
, then asked again later for no reason
. There's only so many ways we can ask someone to stop or just watch the work themselves before it becomes clear that they're not actually listening to what we say, and I don't really know what else can be done but ask for mod intervention at this point.

Edit: Ugh, I'm sorry this is such a wall of text, but I think all the information is important, so I can't trim it too much :(
That something is related to Tropers/{{4tell0life4}}. Now, I want to preface this by saying that I'm not doing this to try and get them suspended, as I think their actual editing is fine, and no big issues have been caused by this so far. I just think it's something that needs to be resolved, as it's been grating on my nerves for a while now, and is a recurring pattern of behavior with them.
They seem to have an issue with the whole... "Consensus" thing. You don't need to take my word for it- their new signature even confirms this; but their actions do, too. Take, for instance, their old TLP record- at least twice, they'd attempted to overrule draft consensus and push their own feelings forward, once where they tried to ignore a crowner going against their opinion
, and of course, that time they threatened to change examples on a draft because they didn't want them to be there.
They were already banned for being rude on the TLP, but this isn't to do with that- it's to do with their unwillingness to accept that the wiki has to work by consensus, and that big changes need proper discussion.
Why am I bringing this up now? Well, there's been a specific trend on Trope Finder where he'll suggest an unfitting trope, myself or someone else will point out they're using that trope incorrectly, and then they'll insist that the trope itself needs to be changed. This in and of itself isn't a big deal- but they always seem to want to make these changes on the Trope Description Improvement Drive, despite that changes like this actually change the meaning of the trope, and require Trope Repair Shop.
Here's
one debate I had with them over how to fix Assumed Win, and the ensuing TDID post
where they did in fact attempt to change the trope's meaning there. Just recently, the same thing is happening with Relative Button: They're declaring the trope not broad enough
and taking it to TDID, rather than TRS
, because they think changing the description like this doesn't change the meaning of the trope, I assume because they already believe the trope's description is "wrong"- rather than that it just doesn't trope what they think it should. There are a lot of similar Trope Finder debates we've had that weren't immediately taken to the forums, and we also had similar arguments on TLP and the forums itself, where it just felt like I was arguing with a wall, who seemed to think that wiki-consensus on things like cut tropes and appearance tropes
is just bureaucracy and that the solution is more cleanup, not fixing the problem at it's source.
All in all, this just really worries me, not to mention that their new sig may actually be a shot at me; I don't want to make accusations, but I've used the term "consensus" in a lot of conversations with them, so it makes me a little wary. It all just adds up to someone whose attitude about wiki-issues is at odd with the rest of the wiki's, and someone who doesn't seem to enjoy getting proper consensus before they change things (or, alternatively, dislike what consensus produces).
Edited by WarJay77