Talk:Main Page

How do I make a Tropes page?

You can find everything you need to know on the page All The Tropes:Trope Workshop Guidelines.

Consensus reached to do this, then some shortened links were found to be monetized (in violation of ATT's "no ads" policy) so this was implemented without a formal vote.

"goo.gl" is going away in 2025. I just finished changing all of our goo.gl links to point at the actual pages instead.

I would prefer to not need to do that again. Thus, I propose that, as a matter of style, we don't use link shorteners at all on All The Tropes. goo.gl, bit.ly, the one built into the wiki itself, whatever else might exist - don't use them.

No draft paragraph yet - I'll wait until we know in principle whether this is or isn't wanted here.

Pinging many tropers, but everybody is welcome to comment: @Agiletek @Bauerbach @BeesFan12 @Coffee Lover @Dominicmgm @Fixguy53ae @GentlemensDame883 @H-Games~Documentation @Haggishunter @HelljmprRookie @HeneryVII @H-Games~Documentation @Ilikecomputers @Jlaw @Just a 1itt1e bit further @Lequinni @MilkmanConspiracy @RivetVermin @Tad Cipher @The23rdCamper @TheEric132 @Umbire the Phantom @Utini501 @Xemylixa @Labster @Looney Toons @GethN7 @Robkelk

That sounds like a good idea! These URL shorteners could shut down at any time, breaking all of the links that use them!

That’s reasonable. Link shorteners have the most value where bare urls can’t be shown in full, or in size sensitive applications like QR codes. Since the style guide specifically says not to use bare URLs, I can’t imagine a legitimate reason to use a link shortener on a typical page.

Edit: Word choice

I think that makes sense.

Agreed on this.

I could agree on this, as shortened URLs can rot.

I believe this is a good idea to implement.

Agreed. Robkelk's reason makes sense, plus I prefer to see the actual destination when I hover on a link.

Looks like we're agreed on this. Now to write draft text for the Style Guide.

The community has already spoken, but I'll just squeak "yes, agreed!" over here in my little corner.

Here's the first draft of the paragraph, to be inserted after the bulleted list on All The Tropes:Style Guide#External Links.

Link shorteners such as goo.gl, j.mp, bit.ly, and (by default) tinyurl.com obfuscate URLs in order to make them shorter for use in social media or print media. (Without following the link, where does https://allthetropes.org/m/i take you?) All The Tropes has plenty of room and no character-length limit on individual examples; we don't need to shorten our external links. And as the footnotes illustrate, the services can go away at any time. Please don't use link shorteners, not even the one built into this very wiki.

MOD: This is no longer open for debate.

I just discovered that at least two tinyurl.com links that we received from TV Tropes routed people through VigLink, a link monetization service. Those two links have been deleted as per All The Tropes strict "no advertising" rule.

Second draft of the paragraph, which I'm adding to the Style Guide now:

Link shorteners such as goo.gl, j.mp, bit.ly, and (by default) tinyurl.com obfuscate URLs in order to make them shorter for use in social media or print media. (Without following the link, where does https://allthetropes.org/m/i take you?) All The Tropes has plenty of room and no character-length limit on individual examples; we don't need to shorten our external links. As the footnotes illustrate, the services can go away at any time. Also, we discovered in July 2024 that at least two tinyurl.com links that we received from TV Tropes routed people through VigLink, a link monetization service. Those links have been deleted as per All The Tropes strict "no advertising" rule. Link shorteners are forbidden on All The Tropes, even the one built into this very wiki.

Looks good to me, except it's "Libyan", not "Lybian".

Oops. Why didn't my spelling checker catch that?

Thanks, LT

Requester was pointed at All The Tropes:Trope Workshop Guidelines

How do I make a tropes page?

See All The Tropes:Trope Workshop Guidelines for info.

Is there an option that lets me view the spoilers? I'm just wondering is all because I don't care about spoilers.

Yes.

If you're using a computer (as opposed to a smartphone or tablet), hover the mouse over the spoiler to view it.

To turn off spoilers altogether, load the "Gadgets" tab of your Preferences page, select "Spoilers Off" and deselect "Hovering Spoiler Toggle".

Thank you so much for telling me this.

The second draft of the proposed change was added to the policy.

Since it appears that some people think "freedom of expression" trumps everything else (which it doesn't), I propose adding the following to "We are not censored" on All The Tropes:What we aren't:

This does not give anyone carte blanche to post absolutely anything here, though. Quoting from our policy on Academic Freedom, "If it's not on the topic of creative works, it never belonged on the site in the first place." Someone's desire to exercise their freedom of expression on any matter other than tropes or troping doesn't mean we have to provide them with a venue to do so.

@Agiletek @GentlemensDame883 @Haggishunter @HeneryVII @Ilikecomputers @Jlaw @Lequinni‎ @RivetVermin @Umbire the Phantom @Utini501 @Labster @Looney Toons @GethN7 @Robkelk @QuestionableSanity @Derivative @SelfCloak

Fair enough.

Agreed.

EDIT: If it won't be too much, maybe also add something like: "We are not a government and are not bound by the First Amendment (US) or equivalent. We are allowed (and indeed in some ways and/or jurisdictions required) to restrict what may or may not be discussed here."

Seems fair

Though I agree with the principle, in practice we are thanks to the servers being on the United Kingdom (correct me if I'm wrong). This country has no official Constitution, extended censorship laws, have refused ratings for videogames such as Omega Labyrinth that is the same as censorship since you can't sell unrated games, sent police to people's house for tweets.

They literally register how many people complained about a television program on BBC, a state channel I may add, that given enough calls is always answered by the government with a positive answer they will never broadcast that thing again, and the streaming service of their national television channel has deleted from its services sitcom episodes that may offend someone.

In resume, the United Kingdom is one of the most censorship-happy countries of all Europe. Let's not even talk about democracy, this country doesn't directly elect its leaders.

So, should we count HLIAA14YOG's vote, considering it's backed up by disinformation, misinformation, and outright lies? (The UK most certainly does have an official constitution, and the BBC is no more a "state channel" than PBS is.)

MOD: This is All The Tropes, not All The Politics. Please stay on-topic.

We should. It is not our place to judge the validity of a vote, even if we know it is made based on bad information. If we start deciding which votes to listen to and which to ignore, we might as well be running the site by fiat.

EDIT: We should encourage our users to be well-informed, but for too many people that's far too much effort to put in, so we shouldn't expect or require it.

I admit, maybe I was being pessimistic. We are not censored, we are invisible. If Westminster and the government of His Majesty the King Charles III ever discover we exist, we would be forced out before I can say the word "hentai", because the moment those smart, aware of people of the Parliament, that totally don't make "not-smart" decisions, discover we have pages describing virtual pornography, they will instantly think we are what the locals call "nonces".

So, until that happens, I think the truth is "yes". So I change my vote to yes.

Agreeable to me.

Second draft, incorporating Looney Toons's suggestion:

This does not give anyone carte blanche to post absolutely anything here, though. Quoting from our policy on Academic Freedom, "If it's not on the topic of creative works, it never belonged on the site in the first place." Also, we are not a government, and so constitutional protections of freedom of expression do not apply to us. We are allowed – and in some cases required – to restrict what may be discussed here. Just because someone has a desire to exercise their freedom of expression on any matter other than tropes or troping doesn't mean we have to provide them with a venue to do so.

Looks good.

I have no objections.

Looks good to me.

Looks OK to me.

Looks like we're in agreement. I've added the second draft to the policy page.

Turned off for most pages, but left turned on for Talk pages.

It appears to be impossible to get the Visual Editor to abide by the wiki's Style Guide -- it consistently strips out whitespace that we want left intact for readability purposes, and it alters existing crosslinks so that they are longer than they need to be. This makes it difficult to see what content has actually been changed in a page edit and which changes are things that the Visual Editor code decided to do without being told.

The moderation team spends a non-trivial amount of time fixing what the Visual Editor breaks - time that could be devoted to other tasks.

Thus, we propose to turn off the Visual Editor. (Assuming, of course, that Flow will let us do that on talk pages.)

@GentlemensDame883 @Haggishunter @HeneryVII @Ilikecomputers @Jlaw @Lequinni‎ @RivetVermin @Umbire the Phantom @Utini501 @Labster @Looney Toons @GethN7 @Robkelk @QuestionableSanity @Derivative @SelfCloak

We have, I suspect, incorrectly punished at least one user in the past for things that were actually the Visual Editor's fault, before we became aware that it did stupid shit. I don't like that. I don't like the Visual Editor, either. I vote yes on turning off the Visual Editor, burning it to the ground, and finding its author and shooting him. Or at least just the first of those three.

Aw man, I exclusively use Visual Editor because I always struggled with editing without it. I had no idea it messed things up, and if I've caused any issues because of it then I'm genuinely sorry for increasing you guys' workload. It's not going to be easy to adjust, but I'm willing to do it if it makes things go a lot smoother.

Don't worry. Whenever someone submits a page that was particularly mangled by the Visual Editor, we let them know and gently suggest using the Source Editor. If you've never gotten one of these messages, you've never caused us extra work. Or at least we never noticed that you had. <grin>

So uh... I just realized something embarrassing. Somehow, I got the Visual Editor and Source Editor mixed up and only just now realized it. I've exclusively been editing with Source because Visual was the one giving me problems and not the other way around, ha ha. Sorry for the confusion!

So yeah in that case, jettison the Visual Editor into space and don't look back!

Yep, I agree the visual editor is not fit for purpose and should be killed off for real. I stopped using it after one of those gentle suggestions and don’t miss it.

Arrivederci To Visual Editor is my take, I support this. Flow will work in source mode, it does have fallback coding for that, so that won't be an issue.

Note, we can, with a minor backend change, restrict it to talk pages only:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:VisualEditor#Changing_active_namespaces

Oh, I like that. I don't mind it on talk pages -- it's not like we have pre-existing content there we don't want munged.

I agree too with turning off the Visual editor. It's cumbersome on desktop and almost unusable on mobile.

Source editor is like old.reddit.com -- the only official interface that doesn't feel like you're fighting the program.

Just philosophically, this seems to be one of those goals for programmers who want to make things look exactly as they do on the page to attract more "unsophisticated" users. It makes things look slick. Nearly all of these programmers use vim or emacs. And they somehow don't realize that everyone else wants the best tool for the job too, not something that looks pretty. And like, the hours I've spent fighting MS Word to get it to what you want it to do.

TL;DR: this is an Agree . Might change my mind if I see a contrary opinion, though.

I straight up run a custom userscript that deletes the "edit" button, leaving only the source editor available. Of course I'll support turning the visual editor off.

Well. All four of the active mods are in favor of shutting it off (no surprise, we've been discussing this among ourselves for quite a while), and so far everyone else is also in agreement. We've certainly exceeded our standard threshold for determining consensus (three more votes for one option than for the other), but this is such a big change that I suspect we're going to wait until more folks weigh in.

Agreed on waiting. The proposal has only been up for 20 hours as I post this; let's at least give it a full day.

In favour, get rid

It's less of a big change, and more of a minor change that could make people angry for changing their workflow.

If you're interested in finding out people who are actually using VE, well, Special:Tags has a way for you to do so. Check out how sparse Recent Changes is when limited to Visual Edits.

I am in favor of this proposal. Every time that I used Visual Editor was a major pain, and I will not miss it.

Hi, I got invited here by Looney Toons because I seem to be one of the few tropers that uses it. I just used it because I thought it was more easier than editing the source. Aside from me getting whitespace when I create pages, I never knew Visual Editor was this problematic.

Invited by Looney Toons, I would like to agree to turn it off. I have used the Visual Editor, which is more convenient than the Source Editor. However, if it is causing a problem with pages, then it would be best to turn it off to ensure more stability.

I wouldn't mind not having Visual Editor! Although the WYSIWYG aspect is nice, there's still Preview mode!

So far, we have thirteen tropers (including all four active mods and three tropers who use Visual Editor) in favor of turning off Visual Editor -- two with a caveat that we keep it for Talk pages -- and nobody against.

Leaving this discussion open while checking whether we have rights to change the $wgVisualEditorAvailableNamespaces setting.

I am okay with turning off the Visual Editor. I prefer working in Wiki Code, anyways.

Robkelk, what effect would this proposal have on those that use the VisualEditor's source editor (i.e., not visual editor mode and sometimes referred to as the 2010 wikitext editor)? I can see disabling the visual editor mode, but disabling VE's source editor is going to be problematic.

Not an issue. Disabling the VE mode will result in us falling back to source mode editing only via the stock MW code version, no loss of function is to be expected aside from the VE specific mode (non-source version) being turned off by removal of Visual Editor.

I use source editor so no opinion on Visual Editor mode.

Was it me who broke something? :O I know I was using VE previously.

Looks like I'm iceskating uphill, though, way things are going. Shall abstain.

Well, we definitely let this run for more than one day. (Mind you, some Internet High Drama intervened.)

I've submitted Miraheze Phabricator request T11156 for this change.

Per their advice, I have disabled VE in the main namespace (where all trope/work pages are). Turned out to be the only namespace needing it, left VE for all talk pages since it does no harm on those.

Great news. I've gone ahead and put a note about that in the SiteNotice.

Great!

Um, guys? I'm still seeing both "Edit" and "Edit Source" at the top of pages in the Main namespace, and I've confirmed "Edit" opens the visual editor still. The damned thing isn't dead yet.

Strange, I don't see it, it should be off for the "Main" namespace. Left on the talk pages for the Main namespace, but I can confirm it's off in the settings. Try flushing all cookies and cache and log in again.

You're right, that's what's going on. I was on a machine that I hadn't refreshed yet.

Policy has been updated to allow YMMV comments on YMMV subpages, keeping in mind the wiki's policy against Gushing About Characters You Like.

I see that All The Tropes:No Lewdness, No Prudishness currently includes this bullet point:

Personal opinions on hotness. Examples should stand on their own without the introduction of YMMV material. Adding your own thoughts and feelings on an example is an opinion, same as calling an example good or bad. Don't do it. Don't try and extend your feelings to a larger group of fans either, e.g. "...and fangirls everywhere rejoiced". You're not fooling anyone.

I'd like to re-phrase that to say YMMV examples are allowed on the YMMV and Crowners subpages for works. But before I start writing, I'd prefer to know whether there is consensus to say this, and whether the idea needs any work before I start turning it into actual policy text.

@Gadg8eer @GentlemensDame883 @Haggishunter @HeneryVII @Ilikecomputers @Jlaw @Lequinni‎ @RivetVermin @Umbire the Phantom @Utini501 @Labster @Looney Toons @GethN7 @Robkelk @QuestionableSanity @Derivative @SelfCloak

IMOHO, if you have to consider whether something belongs on that page or not, it probably does.

I have no problems with the rephrase.

I more than agree with the rephrase.

Seems like a good idea. Can you please post the rewritten text for us to comment on?

As soon as I've written it, I will.

I concur as well on the rephrase

I agree with the rephrase.

The idea seems agreeable.

This is going to have to go onto the back burner. Somebody needs to check every single work in Category:Cult Classic to weed out the works that a new troper with a Small Reference Pool added to the category.

My apologies for the inconvenience.

Here's the first draft of the replacement bullet point, for comments and suggestions.

1. Personal opinions on hotness. Examples should stand on their own without the introduction of YMMV material. Adding your own thoughts and feelings on an example is an opinion, same as calling an example good or bad. Don't do it. (The YMMV and Crowners subpages are places for opinions, so there's some leeway there, but we do ask that you refrain from Gushing About Characters You Like or People You Like even on those pages.) Don't try and extend your feelings to a larger group of fans either, e.g. "...and fangirls everywhere rejoiced". You're not fooling anyone.

@GentlemensDame883 @Haggishunter @HeneryVII @Ilikecomputers @Jlaw @Lequinni‎ @RivetVermin @Umbire the Phantom @Utini501 @Labster @Looney Toons @GethN7 @Robkelk @QuestionableSanity @Derivative @SelfCloak

I like.

Concur, I like as well

Good.

Agreeing with this rewrite.

It's been five days and nobody has objected to the proposed wording, or offered any edits to it. The policy has been updated.

Second draft of the proposal was accepted without dissent. 'We are not a "reception wiki"' has been added to the list of what we aren't.

Since All The Tropes:What we aren't is one of the pages that explains exactly what All The Tropes is and is not, and we respect our Tropers' opinions, I thought it best to get some discussion about a proposed new section before either adding, modifying, or discarding it. Some people consider all pages in the All The Tropes space to be policy pages - or at least guidelines pages - so we should discuss whether to change them.

The text of the proposed change is below the cloud of pings.

Pinging the usual folks, but everybody is welcome to comment: @Agiletek @Bauerbach @Coffee Lover @Dominicmgm @GentlemensDame883 @H-Games~Documentation @Haggishunter @HelljmprRookie @HeneryVII @Ilikecomputers @Jlaw @Just a 1itt1e bit further @Kuma @Lequinni‎ @RivetVermin @Tad Cipher @The23rdCamper @TheEric132 @Umbire the Phantom @Utini501 @Xemylixa @Labster @Looney Toons @GethN7 @Robkelk @QuestionableSanity @Derivative @SelfCloak

---

We are not a "reception wiki"

According to the definition used by Miraheze, a "reception wiki" exists to let people post about works that they really like or dislike (one or the other, depending on the particular wiki). While we do have Audience Reactions pages, they are not the focus of this wiki; writing well-thought-out and grammatically-coherent pages in the Analysis section, as small as it is, is much preferred here to simply posting bullet-point lists about what people like or dislike about a work.

We have also had core policies in place here since we founded the wiki, without changing them. One of those core policies is tolerance for others: "You may not agree with an editor, but you should always be able to respect another editor." Doxxing and edit wars are frowned upon here; if you aren't willing to at least pretend to be tolerant, you probably won't be comfortable here.

Believe me, I want nothing to do with those "wikis." Even the guy who started them with Crappy Games voted for them to close, disowned them, and even erased his own existence from the internet out of disgust for how they ended up.

Seconded. I tried (in vain) to help them bring some chaos to order, but trust me, they thrive on chaos, they are in no way conducive to orderly submission or debate. Anything they did that results in drama I agree should not be emulated here.

A lot of good users tried to fix the wikis. In the end that RfC was the only option.

Yeah, I've seen them on Telepedia as New Qualitipedia. And believe me with all the good users gone, they're even WORSE. More vandalism, bickering, insanity, stupidity and they ignored the founder's last advice to shut up about politics because their flipflopping made them an enemy of the left, right and middleground and tripled down on it. And I saw all this looking at a single recent changes. New Qualitipedia doesn't exist to fix the mistakes that ruined them, it exists so addicts can get their fix.

Looks okay to me.

In rereading the whole page to put the new section into proper context, I noticed the following sentence which is not accurate and needs revision:

We also do not permit advertisement of any sort, such as spam, either by bot or human editor produced, and it will be removed with prejudice and the poster tempbanned.

We have been permanently banning spammers pretty much from the first, and still do so when they post in places that don't get moderator review, such as the user pages. We also employ the Moderation system to permanently shadowban those who try to post in protected namespaces. This sentence should be revised to reflect that fact.

I concur with this. We haven't had actual humans try to slip spam past us, but it's not beyond possibility it might happen, just as a "just in case".

I like this new section.

Personally I would add merge some new ideas into this section:

• Yes, we have YMMV pages. Yes, YMMV pages are subjective, but 99% of YMMV tropes aren't related to the quality of something. The usage of the tropes that are regarding reception, like Sacred Cow, is tightly controlled. Under All The Tropes:Not a Trope, both Complaining About Shows You Don't Like and Gushing About Shows You Like aren't tropes.
• (Elaborating "While we do have Audience Reactions pages, they are not the focus of this wiki") Yes, we have other pages that are quite opinionated, like So Bad It's Horrible and Gushing About Shows You Like, but those aren't the focus of the wiki. While our users can choose to go there, the majority of them don't, and chooses to focus on troping instead.

This should clear up confusion users have when they go "wait a minute, this page is about the reception of something".

Wait a minute, what does that mean for the "review" feature of the wiki? Or the funny, heartwarming, awesome, tear jerker ones? Is something we inherited from TvT. Those are kind of subjective.

I consider Funny, Heartwarming, Awesome, and Tear Jerker to be audience reactions, which are mentioned as a group.

We should add Reviews to the part about Analysis, yes.

It looks good to me except what if an editor writes something subjective on a page that isn't YMMV and the like?

We're All The Tropes. We make a gentle suggestion first. If they take the suggestion, great. If they don't reply or never come back to even see the suggestion (something that is all too common, sadly), it'll eventually get relocated through the Wiki Magic. And if they get belligerent, well, we'll still give them a couple chances to do the right thing; if they don't, they get (temp)banned and the material moved anyway.

On the larger scale, I very much doubt Miraheze is going to implement some kind of opinion cop waiting to drop the hammer on ATT because of a misplaced bit of subjective content. We don't have to worry about small issues like that. We're already very much not what they're trying to avoid.

On the larger scale, I very much doubt Miraheze is going to implement some kind of opinion cop waiting to drop the hammer on ATT because of a misplaced bit of subjective content.

I've already received assurances from a Steward that hammer-dropping won't happen here. They like us - we only bother them when we can't solve our problems internally.

Here's the second draft of the addition that I proposed. It's longer than any other section on the page other than "We are not a revenge or troll site opposing TV Tropes" and "We are not officially affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation"; perhaps it could be trimmed a bit.

---

We are not a "reception wiki"

According to the definition used by Miraheze, a "reception wiki" exists to let people post about works that they really like or dislike (usually one or the other, depending on the particular wiki). While we do have Audience Reactions pages (YMMV, Funny, Heartwarming, Awesome, Tear Jerker, and others), they are not the focus of this wiki, and contentious pages of any sort are monitored more closely than other pages are.

Writing well-thought-out and grammatically-coherent pages in the Analysis and Reviews sections, as small as they are, is much preferred here to simply posting bullet-point lists about what people like or dislike about a work.

While our readers and Tropers can choose to read contentious pages such as Gushing About Shows You Like and So Bad It's Horrible, the majority of Tropers don't, choosing to focus on troping instead.

We have also had core policies in place here without change since we founded the wiki. One of those core policies is tolerance for others: "You may not agree with an editor, but you should always be able to respect another editor." Doxxing and edit wars are frowned upon here; if you aren't willing to at least pretend to be tolerant, you probably won't be comfortable at All The Tropes.

---

And here's a draft of the change that @Looney Toons suggested, adding in an edge case that should be mentioned EDIT and with a link to our wiki host:

---

We are not soapbox/advertisement space

(two paragraphs snipped because they are not changed)

We also do not permit advertising of any sort, including spam, either by bot or by a human editor. It will be removed with prejudice and the poster permanently banned without warning. (Our wiki host occasionally holds fundraisers, which do not fall under this prohibition.)

---

These are still draft proposals - feel free to continue making suggestions about them.

I'm not sure what you could trim from the new draft -- it seems both comprehensive and concise. And thank you for including my proposed change (and the edge case that I didn't think about).

Looks good. Perhaps add an external link to Miraheze and a note saying it's our host?

I've edited a link to Miraheze into to the proposed new text.

Ah, I was meaning a link to Miraheze for the "We are not a "reception wiki" section. This still gets the job done though; no need to change anything. It still serves as a good introduction to what Miraheze is.

We should add a line to We are not a "reception wiki" about how All The Tropes:Complaining About Shows You Don't Like goes into more detail on the matter.

Yes. We should. Add something about how we discuss each work instead of simply listing bad traits.

That's already in the second paragraph of the draft.

Seems fine to me. More focus on "what we aren't" as positive than negative.

I'm not seeing anybody opposed to the additions, and the discussion has resulted in some good changes to the original version of the proposal.

I'm making the change now.

Setting is now on the list on the Main Page

We do not have the setting pages along with the other sections at the bottom of the mainpage, does anyone know how to fix this?

It's been added some time in the last three years. But we should have an icon for the listing - preferably an icon that's already on Wikimedia Commons. Any suggestions?

EDIT: While we're at it, any suggestions for an icon for Source?

Technical discussion between Miraheze sysop and All The Tropes founding moderator, not updated in five years. The technical issue in question has been resolved.

Hey guys,

Do you mind updating Orian infos to Miraheze?

(I have technical permission but I won't do it.)

Sure.

If you want to update the Orain information yourself, please, do so with my blessings.

Well, I was told by higher sysadmins (SPF/John) to not to do anything sysop-py things unless it's technically needed. Anyway, did it.

(For downtimes, I restarted the HHVM. SPF and John will investigate it.