All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XXIII

[Bob Schroeck]

Is there a reason why "The Hymns of Callimachus" wouldn't work?

[robkelk]

Please point me at a few instances and I'll doublecheck.  Initially I checked all their contributions and they were clean, but I eased up a bit after the first dozen or so.  If they're copying stuff then we need to act on that fast.

There's this one still in the queue, although on second look the entries might just be missing separator pipes between the trope names and pothole text.

[Umbire]

Is there a reason why "The Hymns of Callimachus" wouldn't work?

None really, just that one of you guys might've had better ideas. :B

[Umbire]

Also, YKTTW question: Do we have a trope for characters who have one or more eyes replaced with/functioning as a camera lens?

[robkelk]

Our page for The Six Million Dollar Man uses Better Than New for Steve Austin's replacement eye... although that's focused on the "replacement" part, not the "eye" part.

EDIT: Checking the examples on Better Than New suggests Electronic Eyes might be the trope you want.

[Umbire]

Our page for The Six Million Dollar Man uses Better Than New for Steve Austin's replacement eye... although that's focused on the "replacement" part, not the "eye" part.

EDIT: Checking the examples on Better Than New suggests Electronic Eyes might be the trope you want.

Righteous. Thanks.

[Bob Schroeck]

Please point me at a few instances and I'll doublecheck.  Initially I checked all their contributions and they were clean, but I eased up a bit after the first dozen or so.  If they're copying stuff then we need to act on that fast.

There's this one still in the queue, although on second look the entries might just be missing separator pipes between the trope names and pothole text.

Completely original, and yeah, that looks to be the case.

[robkelk]

Looking at the sitenotice, and I'm thinking it's too big.

Does anybody mind if I make the "changes are being moderated" section less verbose (along the lines of what I added to the freebie wiki), and delete the "these works need laconic summaries" and "We have some issues that may affect our Category structuring" notices altogether (if anybody was going to pitch in to either of those, they would have months ago)?

And should we keep the "If there's a rule here that you think should be changed" section?

[Umbire]

Looking at the sitenotice, and I'm thinking it's too big.

Does anybody mind if I make the "changes are being moderated" section less verbose (along the lines of what I added to the freebie wiki), and delete the "these works need laconic summaries" and "We have some issues that may affect our Category structuring" notices altogether (if anybody was going to pitch in to either of those, they would have months ago)?

And should we keep the "If there's a rule here that you think should be changed" section?

For whatever little it's worth, I (personally) would keep the Laconic and rule change things. The Category structuring bit can go, though.

[Bob Schroeck]

I've no problems with thinning it down.

[GethN7]

I've no problems with thinning it down.

Me either, proposed changes sound good to me too.

[robkelk]

Done.

[Bob Schroeck]

Has anyone else seen the new reply in the thread on Magnificent Bastard's Talk Page about the "don't use this as a replacement for Complete Monster" notice? I'm kind of at a loss how to respond, and I'm hoping someone else has an idea.

[robkelk]

Do we really need to link to that thread? It's presented as a throwaway reference on how not to follow the process, so it doesn't really add much (if anything) to the page the link is on.

[Bob Schroeck]

No, I don't think we really do. I think it's only there because that was one of the precipitating incidents that prompted the page explicitly laying out how to get rules changed.

[Umbire]

What a nice surprise - I check in for updates on this thread and find snowflakes falling. I miss touches like that.

Regarding that other thread, I wasn't really sure how to approach that...

[robkelk]

Are we sure that "Iloveicecream" isn't trolling us?

I ask because of this edit - taking the first mention of the work name out of boldface, deliberately moving a trope entry so that it's no longer in alphabetical order, breaking up a quote... and possibly other issues, but I lost patience reading through the diff.

And we've already explicitly referred this person to the Style Guide. Twice. And we've mentioned style issues here (referring to the wiki's style in the thread title) and here (implying a style issue but not directly saying so).

Are we looking at a "Refusing to learn from honest mistakes, or repeatedly making the same honest mistake after it's been pointed out" level of inability to follow the Style Guide at this point?

[Bob Schroeck]

Yeah, I've been sitting on this one in the mod queue for a little while because of some of those things. They've claimed some problems with formatting caused by their device, but that wouldn't explain some of the changes.

I honestly don't know. I've been trying to be the good cop with them; does someone else want to be the grumpy cop over this?

[robkelk]

Just noticed something: We have at least one case of two categories that are defined as subcategories of each other,

   

This infinite loop causes problems with the more advanced capabilities of HotCat, and thus needs to be fixed. (HotCat assumes the existence of a category tree, not a category kudzu.) Considering that we had to specifically request HotCat, I assume we don't want to get rid of it - thus, it's the category tree that needs a tree surgeon.

In this particular case, which category should be closer to the root of the category tree?

[Bob Schroeck]

Looking at them, I would say Continuity Tropes should be the supercategory, and Canon Universe the subcategory.

[robkelk]

Thanks, Bob. I've made it so.

[robkelk]

I think this hasn't come up before... How long does a web comic have to be on hiatus before we declare it defunct?

Asking because the strip that we cover at "Namir Deiter" stopped at the start of the pandemic, then came back for a few weeks in February and March of this year to finish off the then-current storyline. The comic hasn't updated since then, and the site hasn't updated since June... but it's still on the live web.

I'm reluctant to call it "defunct" just yet -- these are trying times, after all -- but we don't have anything in writing to back me up on not adding the tag, not even a guideline statement somewhere.

[Bob Schroeck]

We never formally defined things... we just created the "defunct" category the first time we came across a web comic that no longer existed. That said, I'm willing to throw out an arbitrary guideline to start discussion with.

We give a website a year from its last update to update again. If it doesn't, we consider it "moribund" -- whether that gets a category or anything is up to folks to decide later. "Moribund" becomes "defunct" after... how's three years sound? This can of course be overruled by things like the website vanishing or the author saying "I've quit, there'll be no more".

[robkelk]

I like the moribund/defunct levels.

I'm not sure about the timing, given that a web comic can be added to the "Webcomics Long Runners" page after three years of daily updates. Maybe one year for moribund, and another year (two years total) for defunct?

[robkelk]

Could somebody who has time today check JCVDFTW's very first edit against TV Tropes, please?

I don't know whether to tell this troper "please use the page templates and read All The Tropes:Trope Workshop Guidelines" or "please use the page templates, read All The Tropes:Trope Workshop Guidelines, and read All The Tropes:So You're a TV Tropes Refugee"