All The Tropes:Creator Page Guidelines
All The Tropes is not just about tropes and the works that use them. Frequently information about an author, actor, director, producer, mangaka, composer, animator, developer, or other creator will be relevant to our understanding of the tropes in their works. To that end, we have Creator pages.
These pages document information about creators pertaining to their works and the tropes they use. Any creator can have a page if someone is willing to make it. However, we want to see pages with substance – please spend the time and effort to tell us something about the creator and his work. If you can't say more than a single sentence about them, it may be deleted as a "Zero-Content" page. (And if the creator and his work inspire you to create a page for them, why can't you say more than a sentence?)
Creator pages are created with the Creators Page template. This template automatically lays out the proper structure for a creator page, and assigns it to the Creator category. We also have several other templates – such as {{actorroles}}, {{discography}}, and {{creatortropes}} – especially designed for use on Creator pages. (For more information on these and other templates, see the page All The Tropes:Our Custom Templates.)
Note that not all pages about people will fall into this category. Some, such as The Presidents of the United States of America, are Useful Notes and/or Historical Domain Characters.[1] Unlike TV Tropes, though, we count performers of all stripes – including musicians, bands, and professional wrestlers – as Creators. Please note that even though we include professional wrestlers (because of Kayfabe), professional athletes of other kinds are not counted as creators. Professional athletes who are only athletes, who have not also made efforts in a creative field such as acting or writing, are outside the wiki's scope. We are not All The Sports. Being able to hit a baseball, bowl a wicked googly, or score a goal does not make a person a "creator".
And it should go without saying, but do not create pages for fictitious or bogus creators. Doing so will get you permanently banned. (Describe fictional creators on the "Characters" subpages of the works that they're from, please - an example here is Drosselmeyer from Princess Tutu.)
What can go on creator pages
- An overview of works they've created. A simple bulleted list of works they've been involved with is usually a good place to start.[2]
- An index. Some creator pages use their bulleted list of works as an index for those works. This is usually reserved for higher-level creators like Video Game Companies. Examples include Valve Corporation and Dark Horse Comics.
- Tropes that appear frequently in their works. If a creator has a Signature Style, their creator page is a good place to talk about it. For example, Michael Bay's page lists tropes like Stuff Blowing Up, Summer Blockbuster, and Technology Porn.
- Trivia about them. We have lots of tropes and trivia that can legitimately apply to creators, like Dyeing for Your Art, Trolling Creator, Pen Name, Creator Breakdown, and Author Existence Failure. Most of these are okay to include on a creator page, or on their Trivia subpage as appropriate.
- Conversational Troping. Normally, we don't trope Real Life people. But creators often give interviews, or tweet, or other such forms of Word of God, and they often talk about tropes. So if they're discussing, conversing, lampshading, or invoking tropes, those tropes are fair game for their page.
What should not go on creator pages:
- IMPORTANT: Copying verbatim from TV Tropes is copyright infringement, and a good way to earn speedy deletion. See All The Tropes:Copyrights if you want to know why.
- Tropes applied to the creator as if they are a fictional character. Please resist the urge to apply character tropes to Real Life people. We've had a lot of Square Peg, Round Trope issues in the past with this,[3] so as a general guideline, it's best to apply No Real Life Examples, Please to creators. If it seems harmless, it might be overlooked Just for Fun, and there is an exception for Conversational Troping as mentioned above, but on the whole this is something best avoided.
- Tropes that apply to individual works they've created. Any tropes listed should be relevant to their work as a whole, not to just one work. So if a trope only applies to one work they've made, please list it on that work's page instead. (If that single work doesn't have a page yet, see Works Pages Are a Free Launch.)
- Creator Bashing. Creator pages should not be used to complain about how much a person sucks. We're not here to hate on people. It's okay to have problems with their works, but that doesn't give you a license to abuse a creator. Please keep it reasonably neutral. If it can't be kept neutral, and/or descends into an Edit War, All The Tropes may have to lock the page – or worse, delete it and then lock it. We don't want to have to do that. Don't make us.
- Subjectivity and YMMV. We don't list YMMV items for real-life people. That includes creators. Please don't list Audience Reactions or YMMV for a creator.
- Drooling. In the past, we've had pages for actresses that consisted primarily of gushing about how hot they are. This is not okay. It's inappropriate and will not be tolerated.
- ↑ Unless, like Ronald Reagan, they were both creators and politicians... and sometimes not even then.
- ↑ If one or more of their works does not yet have a wiki page associated with it, please list them as Red Links to make things easier in case the page gets created in the future.
- ↑ And we've had similar issues with Tropers who refused to check what some tropes are actually about - in one case, to the point that the Troper was banned for repeatedly inserting false information into pages. Please don't be that Troper.