All The Tropes:How to Get a Rule Changed

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Unless it is a matter of legal requirement[1] or directly affects the safety and future of the wiki, the wiki administration will always respect the will of the users when it comes to the rules and policies affecting All The Tropes. We are not TV Tropes. We do not rule "top-down", imposing our wills on the poor hapless tropers whom we've trapped in our website. We are a community that decides as a whole what we do and don't want our rules and policies to be. The admin staff may lead in this regard, proposing and/or imposing rules and policies on their initiative and on a per-case basis, but no rule or policy is absolute — almost anything can be challenged and potentially changed.

So if you've run headlong into a rule or policy and you think there's something wrong about it, here's how you go about changing it:

  1. Go to the forums and propose the change in a new topic. Identify the specific rule or policy you think should be changed. Explain what you think it should be changed to, even if that's to eliminate it entirely, and explain why you think it should be changed. Don't forget to ping the All The Tropes Moderation Staff (you can do this by adding "{{admins}}" to the end of your post).
  2. With luck, debate on your suggestion should manifest. If it doesn't, it's okay to go to users' talk pages and ask them to weigh in.

You or an administrator can call for a vote at any time, with the following caveats:

  • You need to establish a consensus -- AKA a clear majority -- that the change is wanted. This is at least three more "Yes" votes than there are "No" votes. (In the simplest case, this means three users need to vote "Yes" with no one opposing.)
    • Your own vote counts, so you should always have at least one "Yes" vote.[2]
  • Lack of response by the other users is not to be considered approval of the change. You need explicit "Yes" votes, not simply an absence of people saying "No". Disinterest or apathy from other users means you haven't made your case.
  • Voting periods should run at least 48 hours. Not every user is on every single day.
    • Given the reason for this rule, the vote should run longer than 48 hours if that span includes a holiday such as Christmas. The idea is to give people an opportunity to vote, not to run out the clock.
  • All votes are final. Once a consensus one way or the other has been determined, that's it. No retries, no begging the Governor of Georgia to find extra votes in your favor.

If the consensus supports your proposed change, the moderation staff will make the change to the rules.

Some hints for the potential rule-changer:

  • It helps immensely if you are an established editor with a history on the site. While we won't dismiss a newbie out of hand, having "street cred" will get more (and more serious) attention paid to your suggestion.
  • Be polite (or at least calm), even if — especially if — the discussion isn't going your way. Getting snarky or insulting because you're not finding the support (or immediate compliance) you want is not going to win you points with anyone.
  • Badgering the mods or issuing demands that they change something will not result in anything but being pointed at this page. Follow the procedure, and your proposal will be treated seriously.


  1. ↑ We're never going to stop requiring licenses for uploaded images, for example.
  2. ↑ If you don't, why are you even proposing the change?
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