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All The Tropes:Trope Namer Syndrome (view source)

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changed some instances of "Trope Namer" to "trope name", because the page makes more sense that way; changed TVT-specific terminology
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(changed some instances of "Trope Namer" to "trope name", because the page makes more sense that way; changed TVT-specific terminology)
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We were thinking of naming this page "The Adam Effect".<ref>However, not everybody remembers The Bible - specifically the Book of Genesis, where Adam was given the task of naming everything.</ref>
 
Sometimes editors place a little ''too'' much importance on creating a new [[Tropetrope Namer]]Name.
 
Make no mistake: We're perfectly happy to coin terms for literary phenomena when it's clear no one else has done it for us already. We have quite a few [[Trope Namers]] spread across the wiki and, frankly, these witty pop-culture references are one of our unique attractions.
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But due to the size and popularity that the wiki has grown to, the old days of sitting around in closely-knit circles of nerds and naming tropes directly from our favorite works of fiction [[Gone Horribly Right|are Over]]. [[Deader Than Disco|With a capital O]]. Sure, we're still a circle of nerds (and proud of it) and we still like to [[Entry Pimp|plug our favorite shows and characters]] here and there, but the goal of this wiki is (still) to document tropes in ways that are actually useful for all the ''other'' people who aren't familiar with the same things we are. Not everyone is familiar with the works/characters we are and "[[Clear, Concise, Witty]]" (while not strictly enforced) is the trope-naming mantra to live by.
 
So, naming tropes after characters or examples in fiction is a thing to avoid. There are occasional exceptions where a good new [[Tropetrope Namer]]name can be created, but this is [[Sturgeon's Law|very rare]] and ''extremely'' difficult to do, as there are very few universally-known works or characters out there and chances are people don't remember them for the same reasons that we do. It's easy to mistake something that ''you'' know and love for something ''everyone'' knows and loves—we call this [[Fan Myopia]].
 
[[Trope Namer Syndrome]] primarily manifests itself in the YKTTW, theTrope workshopWorkshop where we pound out names and descriptions for new trope articles. It's easy to spot the occasional trope (er, proto-trope) where the editor is trying a little too hard to create a [[Tropetrope Namer]]name, at the expense of developing a good name and definition that everyone will "get". These tend to get immediate responses of "[[Needs a Better Title]]" and/or "[[Needs a Better Description]]", and may also be criticized as "Bad Trope Namer".
 
There's a wide range of symptoms to Trope Namer Syndrome—all of them minor faux-pas by themselves, but on watch for several occurring simultaneously in the same draft:
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