Category talk:Trope Workshop

The proposal failed, but the number of tropes in the workshop was reduced by the normal processes over the following fifteen months.

Eighteen months ago, we had 40 candidates in the Trope Workshop. In order to reduce that number, we instituted a rule that no one person could have more than three trope candidates in the Trope Workshop at a time. We grandfathered in the existing trope candidates.

Unfortunately, it appears that some people (no names) have chosen to interpret "a trope was just launched" as "a trope was just launched, so now I can propose a new trope candidate". Thus, while we quickly dropped from 40 trope candidates to 30, we have been sitting close to 30 candidates ever since then.

In order to make another attempt to reduce the number of trope candidates, we instituted a rule that any trope candidate that was untouched (other than minor housekeeping edits) for six months would be summarily deleted. This was taken as "a trope candidate was deleted, so now I can propose a new trope candidate".

It looks like we need to be more strict in order to clear the backlog.

I am thus proposing that we limit the Trope Workshop to fifteen candidates total, with no grandfathering.

As to which fifteen get to remain in the Workshop... the ten that we inherited from TV Tropes cannot be returned to their proposers', so they have to stay. I'll have RANDOM.org put the list of the other eighteen trope candidates into a true random order, keep the first five in the Trope Workshop, and move the other thirteen to their proposers' sandboxes -- this gives a candidate proposed by the newest Troper and a candidate proposed by a founding admin exactly the same chance to remain in the Workshop. As we launch (or reject) tropes, I will pull candidates out of the sandboxes in the same order that they appear on the random-order list -- which will be posted here in its own thread for transparency -- in order to bring the count back to fifteen. Trope candidates that are currently in sandboxes will be added to the end of the list in random order. After that, it's "first in, first out": brand-new candidates that do not currently exist on the wiki will be added to the end of the list as trope proposers bring their candidates' sandbox pages to my attention.

(I am aware of approximately two dozen tropes that a founding admin wants to write, but has not started work on. He has not created sandbox pages for these ideas, so they do not get to be added to the list here.)

If we finally get to the point where the waiting list is empty and there are fewer than fifteen candidates in the Trope Workshop, then trope candidates will be allowed to be submitted directly to the Trope Workshop until there are fifteen candidates in the Workshop again. Whenever the Workshop has fifteen candidates, the list will be in effect.

Pinging the usual folks that I ping, and anyone with a current trope candidate, for comments: @Agiletek @Bauerbach @GentlemensDame883 @Goo Monster @HeneryVII @Jlaw‎ @Kuma @Lequinni‎ @RivetVermin @Umbire the Phantom @Utini501 @Labster @Looney Toons @GethN7 @Robkelk @QuestionableSanity @Derivative @SelfCloak

I'm okay with that.

I'm okay with that, too... but I'm going to propose launching One-Dollar Retainer because (conflict of interest admitted), I believe it's ready to go.

As long as you don't replace it with anything, launching a trope reduces the number of tropes in the Workshop ... which is exactly what this rule is intended to do.

Toe-Tapping Melody already has a proposal to launch, as well.

Disagree. A hard number of "15" expects, and to a degree ensures, user population only remains stable at best.

I don't see how. We aren't limiting the number of tropers, and the majority of active tropers do not propose new tropes.

It's not like it's impossible to change should circumstances require. It only needs a proposal just like this one.

Oh, we should also go through everything and see if there's anything that qualifies for deletion under the "abandoned candidate" rule.

I'm going through the old tropes from TV Tropes and seeing whether any of them can be "launched", as well.

I found four. Now to wait for votes about them.

I also found one to delete. Nobody cares enough about Spell My Name with a "The" to put in the work (over the last nine months) to save it, so I've tagged that one as a candidate for speedy deletion.

Mm. I may have to do it, as I'm doing up a work page for a story with two characters subject to that trope. I'd rather not lose it.

Yeah, I'll see if I can't contribute something to that as well and make up for my absence + my contributing to the reason we need this proposal.

And I see that many of those trope stubs that we inherited from TV Tropes could have been launched months ago if people had bothered to pay attention to the Trope Workshop process. (One of them has even had the same proposal made three separate times, but never gathered three votes.)

Yes, I am upset about this. Yes, this current proposal remains open for discussion, even if we clear all of the old TV Tropes trope stubs from the list. This appears to be the only way to get people to care about trope candidates other than their own.

Not sure about this one. Think I'll abstain on it.

I am going to let this discussion run for at least a week, since it is a substantial change to Trope Workshop policy.

I'll also point out that it takes less than a week to launch a trope candidate, if it's ready. Please do not abuse this loophole.

My concern here is that it may contradict the rule that a user can propose three different trope workshops at a time. Maybe that rule can be rewritten to say that within the 15-trope workshop cap, one can only have three workshop pages proposed?

That was what I was thinking... Of course, it allows five people to flood the Workshop with three tropes each. I'm counting on people being sufficiently mature to avoid doing that.

Apologies for doing that; I thought I was following the rules. But yes we'll avoid flooding.

You were following the rules. I'm just proposing a rule change... which isn't guaranteed to actually happen.

Inclined to disagree, but only because I believe we can solve the issue of backlog without having to enforce something like this just yet.

It's been two days into the week that I promised to let this run, and we're already down to 20 entries in the Trope Workshop. Three of those are sandbox pages.

Which means that, if we can decide what to do with two more tropes and then keep the number of tropes in the workshop at 15 or less, this rule won't need to be put into effect. (And I know one of the current tropes is just waiting for a third vote to launch. No, I won't say which one here; the whole idea here is to get people interested enough in trope candidates that other people proposed to work on them...)

Okay. Which tropes do you think would need the most TLC to get them out of the workshop?

I would start with Kuma's trope candidates. Now that Kuma has had a professional prereader go through them, somebody should double-check whether anything else looks odd ... or if they're good, propose they be launched.

We're approaching the end of the week that I promised this would run... and we're still over 15 candidates, so I made the random-order list.

And it looks like one trope that only needs a third vote to launch will be one of the tropes sent back to the proposer's sandbox.

This would be a horridly ironic thing to have happen - a trope candidate that is literally one vote away from becoming an actual trope would have to wait until after tropes that need work have cleared the Workshop, and then start the "can we launch this" process all over again.

Which one needs the third vote, @Robkelk?

As mentioned up at the beginning of this thread,

Toe-Tapping Melody already has a proposal to launch, as well.

Bet, giving it a look over before I weigh in.

Thanks so much since that one is mine!

I think Fantastic Tribulation is ready, as is Heartbreaking in Hindsight. Thoughts?

It would be best to have the "vote to launch" discussions on each candidate's talk page - that way, they won't get mixed up.

We're approaching the end of the week that I promised this would run... and we're still over 15 candidates, so I made the random-order list.

Toe-Tapping Melody and Adaptational Weakling have been launched, which brings us down to below 15 tropes in the workshop.

Lucky trope candidates - Toe-Tapping Melody was 16 on the random list, and Adaptational Weakling was 17.

And I am grateful for that. While I want to add a version for Defiant Captive or Adaptational Personality Change, trying to avoid flooding the workshop. When should it be okay to add entries again?

Since this rule didn't pass - the vote was two in favour and two against with one abstaining - the rules are still the same as they were two weeks ago: No more than three trope candidates per person.

My preference would be to hold the workshop to somewhere between ten and fifteen candidates at a time, since having more means many candidates sit ignored for months. But that's just my preference.

Trope proposed and processed through the Workshop.

Exactly What it Says on the Tin. This is a subtrope of Kid Hero, with the distinguishing feature that people under thirteen are excluded. To use an example from the studio I make too many edits about, Satsuki (11) and Mei (4) from My Neighbor Totoro does not quality, while Arrietty (14) from The Borrower Arrietty qualifies for this trope. Both examples currently qualify for kid hero. However, I am a bit afraid that there's too much overlap between the two tropes.

@Labster @Looney Toons @GethN7 @Robkelk @QuestionableSanity @Derivative @SelfCloak @Umbire the Phantom @Jlaw

Feel free to tag any other editors you know.

There's also the requirement that a character's age must be explicitly stated in the work. Nausicaa's age is given as sixteen by some sources, however this is not confirmed in the film or manga, so it doesn't qualify. If the age is not stated, the examples should go to Kid Hero.

The trope is designed specifically to appeal to teenagers, while Kid Hero can appeal to pre-school children, pre-adolescent children, and teenagers. It can be used to frame a more mature work, like in Neon Genesis Evangelion.

So would it be 13-18 or 13-19?

I'm thinking 13 - 18 to appeal to those who hasn't yet come of age, as that is the usual demographic for the kind of shows, but 13 - 19 is an equally valid point.

Big problem with 13 - 18 is that it's too close to Kid Hero. In reality, my vote goes to 13 - 19 even though that's not my preference.

If I do 13 - 18, then I'll have to add a disclaimer "Hey 19 year olds don't count", which just gets in the way of reading and troping.

Really, I think this could be broken up even further into 13-15 year olds and 16-17 year olds. The two blocks tend to be very different in execution, especially since 16-17 is actually considered an "adult" in a fair number of fantasy works.

If that's the case, I'll resubmit this as "Young Teen Protagonist Kiddo Teen Hero", age between 13 and 15. I don't really have the resources available at the moment to do "Older Teen Protagonist" due to the utterly insane amount of projects I've got going on in other parts of the wiki.

Submitted as Trope Workshop:Middle-Aged Kiddo Hero. Biggest difference here is that the age range is now 12 - 15, and the requirement that the age must be explicitly stated has been removed. Would appreciate a couple of helping hands here.

Worked through the backlog listed in this topic and am now adding things as I write them and space opens up.

I have several pretty much complete trope candidates just waiting their turns in the Workshop, but because it's been so crammed full of other people's stuff for months, I have been waiting until it empties out a bit before proposing anything. Grail Quest was just the first of many; here's a list of what I have that's ready for prime time. What sounds interesting enough to throw in the Workshop next, once Grail Quest gets launched?

• Filing Their Nails - How do you know a female character is bored or unimpressed? They're filing their nails.
• Great Wall - Really big walls, surrounding/protecting entire countries
• Limited Time of Operation - A plot-critical device has an arbitrarily or unreasonably limited amount of use, prone to running out at bad times
• One-Dollar Retainer - Getting a professional's services and loyalty for a token payment
• Thirty Pieces of Silver - The use of Judas' payment as a metaphor/symbol of betrayal

Pinging the Usual Suspects: @Agiletek @GentlemensDame883 @Goo Monster @HeneryVII @HornyLikeIAmA14YearOldGirl @Lequinni‎ @RivetVermin @Umbire the Phantom @Utini501 @Jlaw @Labster @Looney Toons @GethN7 @Robkelk @QuestionableSanity @Derivative @SelfCloak

I vote for Great Wall.

Not sure if Limited Time of Operation is needed, I think there are quite a few similar Tropes, like Timed Mission, Race Against the Clock, Exact Time to Failure, and Right on the Tick

I have one example for Great Wall (the infamously bad MTG card), and one pair for One-Dollar Retainer (a pair of RPG modules that note asking for this doesn't count as unheroicly demanding a reward) off the top of my head. Otherwise no preferences

I think One-Dollar Retainer sounds most interesting to me, but I don't have any examples to contribute to any of them just yet.

I have the advantage of having seen all of Looney Toons' draft trope candidates (and have already offered an example for Filing Their Nails). Of these, I'd like to see Great Wall next.

Oh, and if I recall correctly, Limited Time of Operation doesn't really have anything to do with Timed Mission, Race Against the Clock, or Right on the Tick. I can see overlap with Exact Time to Failure, though.

Well, that's three votes (so far) for Great Wall. As soon as a certain someone (who shall remain RobKelk <grin>) launches Grail Quest, I'll put it up. Unless, of course, the vote count changes by then.

The vote count didn't change - now you're stuck with proposing "Great Wall". :)

If anyone wants a sneak peak, it's now in my sandbox.

And now it's in the Workshop. Have at it.

And if that's not enough, I've put One-Dollar Retainer up in my sandbox now, too.

And One-Dollar Retainer is now in the Workshop. Time to pick the next candidate from my collection. What do people want to see next?

Thirty Pieces of Silver!

Thirty Pieces, I guess, but is it really common enough?

Looney Toons doesn't put a trope candidate into the Trope Workshop until his draft is at the point where almost anybody else would be saying "just launch it already". It's common enough.

Thirty Pieces of Silver is now in my sandbox, warming up for the Workshop.

And I just moved it into the Workshop yesterday.

Meanwhile, Filing Their Nails is now in my sandbox for anyone who cares to check it out.

And Filing Their Nails is now in the Workshop.

Trope finally launched as Collectible Cloney Babies.

I feel like Beanie Babies, and their phenomenon has entered fiction. There is a morbid fascination, and I don't think we have a trope currently that covers it.

Criteria:

1) The toy is a collectible.

2) Adults and children both want is as a periphery demographic. Sometimes adults buy for the kids, or for themselves.

3) The toy goes viral. Sometimes it may have consequences like an emptied wallet.

There is Beary Bubbies in The Berenstain Bears, Tickle-Me-Wigglys in Black Friday, Beefy Babies in Pearls before Swine, and so on; so there are enough for an entire trope page.

The problem is that I don't know what name should go with the "Beanie" or "Babies" part. No synonym is alliterative. Any thoughts?

Cloney Babies?

Hmm, not a bad idea. I wonder what words similar to "knockoff" start with the letter "B".

There don't appear to be any. Thesaurus.com offers a couple dozen or so, but none start with "B".

Dang. I suggested some options below as well.

Perhaps Borrowable Babies? Beany Bastard? Beanie Knockoff Brood?

Some synonyms for babies that are alliterative:

Babe

Brood

Bambino

Bundle

Bantling

I like Cloney Babies, it isn't alliterative, buy it rhymes and that's close enough.

Popular Plushies, if you want the alliteration and the reference to a phenomenon that began with stuffed toys.

Okay! I'll think about choosing between Cloney Babies or Popular Plushies. My concern with Cloney Babies is if it creates any confusion about cloning tropes. (Which would be a cool idea of plushies that can clone themselves.)