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External articles

• TVtropes.org’s Treasure and Trash, from Believermag.com. An interesting view of the TV Tropes from the outside.

An Analysis of TV Tropes Communication

TV Tropes is a wiki dedicated to cataloging many tropes found in various forms of media like television, films, comic books, novels, video games, or anything found on the Internet. Like other wikis, the Moderators moderate TV Tropes Wiki and make sure that everything runs smoothly as possible. Communication plays a huge part in the moderation of the wiki.

Communication with the moderators is based on interpersonal roles, which is “interaction with supervisors, subordinates, peers, and others out of the organization”. Communication with the moderators is considered a form of vertical communication because it “flow[s] up and down the organization, usually along several reporting lines”. The users are the subordinates and the moderators are the managers and higher-ups of TV Tropes. Users can post under “Ask the Tropers”, and moderators or other users immediately respond to their users’ concerns and act upon them as best as they can. Users can post on the Tropes Repair Shop to send criticism on the various Tropes on the site and repair them for future users. “You know that thing where?” is used to launch new tropes based on how many examples they receive. “Remember that show?” is used to find shows that may or may not be in the TV Tropes wiki. “Lost and Found” is used to find a trope that fits the example posted by the user. Administrivia is used to guide the new user in understanding the ins and outs of TV Tropes.

Since TV Tropes emphasizes interpersonal roles, they also emphasize interpersonal communication. Oral communication includes “face-to-face conversations, group discussions, telephone calls, and other circumstances in which the spoken word is used to transmit the meaning”. Written communication includes “memos, letters, reports, and other circumstances in which the written word is used to transmit meaning”. TV Tropes is a combination of the two, and thus it has the advantages of written and oral communication. The users can use the TV Tropes Forums to send messages to their fellow users by posting about whatever they want to talk about or talk about them discretely and quickly over private messages (TV Tropes Forum, 2014). The users can edit the TV Tropes Wiki to convey a message to their fellow users or correct any mistakes made by any ignorant users.

Interpersonal communication gets complicated at times, so TV Tropes uses communication networks to sort things out much better. A communication network is basically “a pattern through which the members of a group or team communicate” The TV Tropes Forum is divided into sub-forums, and then those sub-forums are divided into forum topics where users can congregate and talk about the topics they are interested in. Some of these users have gathered into groups and chat on personal forums created elsewhere. The users who frequently use “We Are Our Avatars”, a forum roleplay where the user gets to roleplay as their avatars, fittingly have a site called “Avatar Alliance”. The forum itself has very few topics, but the chat is very active most of the day. In a sense, this particular group can be considered an all-channel group because “everyone participates equally, and the group’s leader, if there is one, is not likely to have excessive power” because the group has other moderators to balance out the leader’s power. This group can be considered a grapevine because they are “an informal communication network”.

The communication on TV Tropes seems good at first glance, but like other wiki-based organizations, TV Tropes faces barriers of communication. Conflicting signals can occur when user posts are not monitored correctly or when an edit goes awry. The users’ credibility on tropes is often questioned by literary critics or analysts with differing perceptions. The moderators and users are reluctant to communicate on criticism from other websites and their poor listening skills hamper their communication even more. Sometimes, the moderators abuse their powers and ban anyone who criticizes TV Tropes. Noise and Overload can occur because the TV Tropes servers are overloaded with users or because the connection to TV Tropes went down. Language differences can occur because TV Tropes slang is based on the various tropes on the wiki.

If TV Tropes decides to improve their effectiveness in communication, most of their problems will be alleviated. By developing better listening skills, the Moderators can improve TV Tropes for other users. To encourage two-way communication, they can be a little more lenient on banning people. TV Tropes can enact a rule encouraging the use of slang from other websites to get their users to be aware of the posting language and the language’s meaning.