All The Tropes:So You're a TV Tropes Refugee

This is the "advanced tour" for new users of All The Tropes, offered exclusively to members of other troping wikis -- particularly those who are considering migrating over from TV Tropes.

If you came over from TV Tropes, then you have a pretty good idea what this site is about, natch. We talk about tropes, works, and creators on this site. If you're somehow lost at this point, check out the New User Introduction instead.

Editing Quick Start
For our impatient folks, this will get you started:

To link to another page in the wiki, use double square brackets around the name, like:. If you want to display alternate text in the link, put a pipe character "|" after the name, like so:. External links use single brackets, like. To use alternate text with an external link, put a space between the URL and the text:

Lines starting with an asterisk "*" make new bullet points. Quotes use the quote template, like this:  -- but anything after the quote text is optional.

And finally, if you need to mark an spoiler, put it in a spoiler template, like:

Those few things will deal with about 80% of the markup on the wiki -- check out Help:Editing for more when you need to know it.

So What's Different About This Site?
This is probably the biggest question you have now, so let's jump in.

Software
The biggest difference, obviously, is the wiki software. We're running the current version of Mediawiki, which is the most widely used wiki software in existence. It may not be perfect, but it is significantly more flexible than the closed-source fork of Pmwiki that TV Tropes uses. Useful features that you didn't know you've always wanted:
 * Titles with any characters -- and custom titles that don't work can still be achieved with  markup.
 * Links can have formatting embedded in the link text -- no coding three or more links just to have an emphasized word in the middle of a pothole.
 * Categories allow you to add a page to an index while you're editing that page.
 * Full access to page history, which in turn gives you...
 * Easy reverts of vandalism
 * Simple page moves
 * ... and plenty of bot software to help clean up the links afterwards.

Even more features are available in your user preferences, like spoilers that are revealed when you move your mouse over them, or automatically refreshing Recent Changes. And if there's any feature you want that we don't have, we can find it in the huge Mediawiki community, or code it up ourselves. Feel free to ask on the forums.

And of course, we have lots of Help with Editing pages.

Less Censorship
No, not "zero censorship". You can't go around insulting every day users. You can't post porn. But those were covered in the All The Tropes:Terms of Service, which I'm sure you read.

But what it does mean is that yes, we have all of the Porn Tropes and Lolicon works, because we have All The Tropes. We believe in Academic Freedom: The idea that if you engage in honest Literary Criticism, you shouldn't have to worry that the subject you're talking about is forbidden. You should have confidence that if you want to talk about tropes, works or creators that your work is valued and on-topic.

A More Creative Focus
This one's hard to explain, but TV Tropes has been drifting more toward being a place where content is classified, rather than a place where content is created. While identifying tropes is great, and a good portion of what we do, we shouldn't let identification of the tropes be a hindrance to creating entertaining new wiki pages.

One of the consequences of this is that "Natter" is allowed, to an extent. While some of it can be pointless, much of it adds personality to our wiki, in a way you just can't get from Wikipedia. This site is about snarky fan commentary as much as it is about tropes.

What this doesn't mean is that tropers are allowed to ramble on in pages. Content should be either entertaining or educational -- if it's neither, it's good to cut.

Happiness is no longer mandatory
Dissent is okay. Telling the ATT administrators that they're Idiot Ball-carrying Bakas on the wiki is okay. We want a community where everyone allowed to express an opinion.

No Advertising
The Situation, The Second Google Incident...

There are a variety of reasons for leaving the TV Tropes Mothership. It's Popular, Now It Sucks, a desire to see occasional Natter when it was actually interesting, Revenge, curiosity at us crazy folks who decided to Start Our Own wiki. Either way, there's a place for you here. Our administrator's own reasons for leaving are detailed on Why Fork TV Tropes, but you don't have to share our values. All you need is a desire to create and improve pages about creative works and the tropes used therein.