All The Tropes:Wick

The number of pages which internally link to a page, as seen on its "related to..." button. These are the lifeblood of our trope articles -- they place an article within the TROPER hivemind's awareness, channeling the Wiki Magic its way.

The term is not a back-formation from "wiki," like it might seem; it's named for troper User:Morgan Wick, who made lists of inbound links before the software automated the process.

There seems to be a magic minimum number of inbound links that determines an article's survival. More links are perfectly fine, so long as they are not forced. Go below the threshold, however, and the article withers, lost thousands of edits below Recent Changes's surface, only to see the light of day in redundant YKTTW queries.

If you feel like doing a good deed, check out the list of pages with twelve or fewer wicks to see if there's some constructive linking you can do.

Note: These refer to links within the site, not externally.

The S-Scale of trope health is outlined below: (1 IL = 1 Wick)
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 * Wick Range || Rank || Action Needed || Special ||
 * 1-13 Wicks || Starvation || See if the Trope needs expansion. Link it to related tropes and series that give examples. May require lumping with similar tropes. If this is a newborn trope, renaming holds little consequence and might benefit growth. If it's been around for more than a few months, further investigation into why it's failing to thrive is in order. Put this on Pages Needing Wicks (exception: indexes). || A lot of administrative and policy pages like this one have very few wicks. They are something of an exception as they are either referenced within discussions or specifically sought out by people looking through the indexes. ||
 * 14-35 Wicks || Standing || Further refining and linking. Try to avoid letting splitters have their way this early. || This is the minimum level for a healthy trope. ||
 * 36-99 || Healthy  || None, just let it grow naturally. || A good Series entry will have this many references around the wiki. ||
 * 100-999 || Renowned || No action needed, though discussion may deem a split necessary -- renaming a trope in this range should be done only on good evidence that there is misuse or confusion (this means bad wicks -- wicks that are incorrect. Like links to Heroes if Heroes is meant.) (The Funny, Heartwarming, and Awesome Moments don't count.) Enough work has gone into it and it has too much name recognition (perhaps even outside the wiki) to screw around with it. || One of the better-known tropes or series on the wiki. Expect a lot of discussion and work to have gone into the page, and people will be watching it like a hawk. ||
 * 1000-2499 || kiloWick || For a Series, vet out weaker examples that might not fit. No real work needed. || The most popular series and strongest tropes go here. ||
 * 2500+ || The truly awesome || Stand back and stare in fear and/or awe. || The really popular tropes as well as super-popular works like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Mass Effect, and Discworld. ||