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All The Tropes:Works Page Guidelines: Difference between revisions
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Work pages are created with the [[MediaWiki:Works|Works template]]. This template automatically lays out the proper structure for a work page and assigns it to both the Works category and its own category. The easiest way to start a page with the Works template is to use the [[All The Tropes:ATT Page Creator|Page Creator]] (which can be found in the "Troping Utilities" section of the menu which appears along the left edge of every page). Simply go to that page, enter the name of the work in the bottommost field (where it says "Enter new work name") and press the "Create Works Page" button.
There are also several other templates – such as {{tl|tropelist}}, {{tl|franchisetropes}}, {{tl|tropenamer}}, {{tl|tropemaker}} and {{tl|tropecodifier}}, among others – which can be used to mark and set off specialized subsections that a work page may contain. We also have a stock spoiler warning template, {{tl|Unmarked Spoilers}}, for pages which need it. (For more information on these and other templates, see the page [[All The Tropes:Our Custom Templates]].)
Below are a few guidelines for creating a new works page on All The Tropes. Unlike tropes, there is no vetting or refinement process involved – if you want to create a page for a work, go right ahead! [[Works Pages Are a Free Launch]].
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** When naming a work page, if the considerations above do not have you doing otherwise, the name Wikipedia uses for the work is almost always good (although see "Namespaces and Media-type Suffixes", below). For one thing, it makes the "Wikipedia" button that appears at the top of the page work perfectly. If you're not using the Wikipedia page name for some reason, add it to the page template markup using the "wppage" parameter (which would look like <code><nowiki>{{work|wppage=Wikipedia name here}}</nowiki></code>). That way you get to use your name, and still have the Wikipedia button work.
* While we're talking about titles -- make sure you get it right, ''especially'' when defining the page name for the first time. Respect the work's choices in capitalization and punctuation. We don't have to force everything into [[Wiki Words]] and we can have almost every possible punctuation mark in a page name; for TV Tropes refugees, that means there's no need capitalize every word and leave spaces and punctuation out. If you do, an admin will almost certainly rename the page within hours ''and'' drop you a note repeating this advice.
* Mention the title of the work somewhere in the first few sentences. Mark it up properly whenever it appears: movies, books, television series, record albums, and other "big" works have their titles in ''italics''; short stories, poems, individual episodes of a TV program, individual songs, and other "small" works have their titles inside "double quotes".
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** If the work is hosted on a website for which we have a separate page, do ''not'' just link to the website's page or say "see/go to website X". Provide a direct link to the work, even if you must register or subscribe to reach it.
** If the work only existed online but has disappeared even from the Wayback Machine, add the {{tl|MIA}} tag to the page, immediately after the {{tl|work}} tag. (Although we'd rather that you not create a work page for a missing work - see "What ''Not'' to Do", below.)
** If the work (or its host) is [[Not Safe for Work]], put "(NSFW)" next to the link so the reader is aware of what they will be getting into if they click.
* Try to [[All The Tropes:Uploading and Adding an Image to a Page|include an image]] representative of the work. [[:Category:Lobby Card|Posters for films]], paperback covers for books, and title cards for TV shows are all good choices, but anything that clearly identifies the work or gives a sense of its content will do. Google Image Search will almost always have something you can use. Wikimedia Commons is also useful for public-domain and Creative-Commons-licensed images, and we can directly include Commons images in a page without having to upload them to All The Tropes first.
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* Similarly, a good quote from — or about — the work can give a sense of its flavor and feel in just a few words. But only one quote, please, and always at the top of the page. (If you have more than one good quote, put the rest onto the work's "Quotes" subpage.)
*
=== Proper English Grammar and Usage ===
This is ''important'', perhaps more important than anything else on this page: Make sure your writing would pass a ninth-grade English class -- this means spelling, grammar, punctuation -- everything. If your new page reads like it was written by ChatGPT, Google Translate or a dyslexic ten-year-old (or any/all of them working together) it will either get rejected (if your edits are still being moderated) or reverted<ref>Although any user who is not subject to Moderation ought to be writing in proper English already -- it's one of the requirements for leaving "Moderated" status.</ref>. Although wiki admins have been known to step in and do their best to translate user contributions from whatever they were written in to proper English, it is ''not'' their responsibility to do so -- it is that of the user(s) who want to see their page go live in the wiki. If your text is so badly written a reader can't figure out what it means, or your examples are so garbled their relevance to the trope or work you've added them to cannot even be guessed at, it has ''failed'' at what it is supposed to do, which is ''communicate clearly and succinctly'' something about a pattern in storytelling.
Illiterate contributions ''will'' be rejected. And refusing to improve your contributions when this is pointed out to you is grounds for a ban.
=== Notes for if You're Creating a Subpage for a Work ===
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If you set up a subpage, please make sure that the page has the type of information that a casual reader would expect to find on that sort of subpage. Please don't just list tropes on a subpage (not even on a "YMMV" or "Trivia" subpage — please give some context as to ''why'' they're subjective or trivial) — unless a work has so many tropes that we've spun off the work's trope list onto its own page or pages, and not even then if there's an option to add descriptions to the tropes.
Another thing: before you create a subpage, ''make sure you're creating it under the right parent''. We've had people create work subpages under tropes because the trope shared a name with the work, and they couldn't be bothered to check first. In one such case we not only had to move the subpage, we had to ''create'' the work page to give it something to hang from. Take a second to make sure, and save yourself some embarrassment and a note from a mod.
=== Minimum Requirements ===
Yeah, that's asking a lot. But it's for a good reason and a good cause. And to be honest, we'll be okay with a work page that doesn't hit all the points above. But there's a level beneath which a page is unacceptable and is likely to get rejected in Moderation or deleted by a staff member. There's no hard-and-fast rule on this, but if your page is lacking most or all of the necessary markup, doesn't have tropes, doesn't have much in the way of a description of the work and/or completely ignores our [[All The Tropes:Style Guide|Style Guide]], you can be pretty confident it's not going to last long (or even get out of the Moderation queue). Basically, the more it looks like it was dumped into the wiki by a [[Drive-By Updater]] who didn't care about our look-and-feel or our mission of communicating clearly and well, the more likely it is to be deleted.
You are always free to try again, of course. But if you don't take the time to understand ''why'' it was deleted and correct for that, don't expect the second try to last any longer than the first.
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::First paragraph of page text, ideally with a [[Title Drop]].
* After the description comes the list of tropes. This starts with the {{tl|tropelist}} template. Tropes then are listed, one to a line, starting with an asterisk to tell the wiki to insert a bullet point, with square brackets around the trope name to code the link. Tropes are listed in alphabetical order, ignoring "a", "an", "the" and punctuation. If you're using the source editor, it should look something like this:
* Add a category for the work's medium, like <nowiki>[[Category:Film]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[Category:Literature]]</nowiki> or <nowiki>[[Category:Anime]]</nowiki>. There are sometimes also subcategories (like <nowiki>[[Category:Children's Literature]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[Category:Young Adult Literature]]</nowiki> or <nowiki>[[Category:Science Fiction Literature]]</nowiki> for <nowiki>[[Category:Literature]]</nowiki>) that might apply to the work; include these along with (''not'' instead of) the larger media category.▼
{{quote|<code><nowiki>{{tropelist}}</nowiki></code>
<code><nowiki>* [[A-Team Firing]]: Explanation here.</nowiki></code>
<code><nowiki>* [[The Abridged History]]: Explanation here.</nowiki></code>
<code><nowiki>* [[Accidental Kiss]]: Explanation here.</nowiki></code>
... and so on.}}
:If you're using the Visual Editor, well... we suggest you don't. It's pretty, but it's hard to work with and does stupid stuff to the page code behind the scenes.
▲*
* Add a category for the decade that the work was created - or, if it's Literature or Theatre that dates from before the 20th century, the appropriate century. [[:Category:Media by decade]] lists the categories that we have (if you don't see one that you need for a particular work, [[All The Tropes:Contact us|ask us to create it]]). If more than one category by decade applies, add them all. (For example, ''[[Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms]]'' gets both "Films of the 2010s" and "Anime of the 2010s", and ''[[60 Minutes]]'' gets all of the "Live-Action TV of the..." categories from the 1960s to today.)
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* If you copy a work's description from Wikipedia or another source that has a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (which is just fine; we use the same license here), don't try to pass it off as your own work. It's okay to say "I got the description from Wikipedia" in the edit summary instead of on the work page, but if you don't give credit at all, we could get into some legal trouble.
** Copying a work's description from a source that has a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike or Attribution-ShareAlike-NoDerivatives license, such as TV Tropes, is '''''not''''' fine; those licences are not compatible with ours. We could get into some legal trouble even if you do credit the source. (No, CC licences are not all the same.)
* Don't cram multiple versions of a work into a single page. If you're creating a page for a novel which also spawned a film, a miniseries and a Saturday morning cartoon, each version of the work gets its own page; stuffing them all together just makes a mess, especially if there was considerable [[Adaptation Decay]] involved.
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* Don't create a work page for an incomplete work of your own to use as a notepad or development space. That's what your Sandbox is for.
* Don't create a page for a work that hasn't been released yet. We've had pages created from film trailers or book previews before the matching films or books were released, only to see the troper lose interest in troping before the work was released, leaving behind a page for a work that was changed between the time the publicity materials were released and the work itself was released. Again, that's what your Sandbox is for.
* Don't create a work page that consists of one sentence of description and one trope. And ''definitely'' don't create a work page that consists of a single trope and nothing else! (Don't laugh, we've found pages like that which had remained untouched since we forked from TVT.) If you like a work enough to create a page for it, put a little effort in.
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* '''Do not link to TV Tropes in order to include a trope we don't have documented here.''' If the trope is ''so'' important that you just ''must'' have it in the work page, propose it in the [[:Category:Trope Workshop|Trope Workshop]] and then add it to the page when it passes muster. We ''do not'' link to TV Tropes for any reason — some of the staff there still go into fits of frothing apoplexy at the mere thought of our existence, and we don't want to stress the poor dears any further than they already are.
* Don't create trope entries for tropes we don't have, period. Even -- ''especially'' -- if you don't put link markup on the would-be "trope name". The whole point of a trope entry is to provide a reference to the more detailed description of what the trope is and how it functions which can be found on its page. Entries for tropes that don't exist might as well be nonsense made up out of whole cloth. If you're automoderated, they will be deleted as zero-context examples. And if you ''aren't'' automoderated, edits attempting to cite non-existent tropes will automatically be rejected in Moderation. Again, if it's ''so'' important you ''absolutely must'' have it on the page, propose it in the Trope Workshop first.
** Maybe you're trying to cite a trope that we've renamed. It's your responsibility to find the right trope name in that case. You are allowed -- encouraged, even -- to ask mods and other users if you aren't having any luck, though.
=== Namespaces and Media-type Suffixes ===
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[[Category:{{BASEPAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Administrivia]]
[[Category:Wiki FAQs]]
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