Topic on User talk:QuarlJarr

Thank you for your contribution, but...

7
Looney Toons (talkcontribs)

...in the future, please either use the ATT Page Creator (linked in the menu to the left, under "Troping Utilities") or manually use the Works Page template. It'll save you a lot of effort and make your page look like all the other works pages on the wiki.

-- Looney Toons, Admin

QuarlJarr (talkcontribs)

Oh, okay, thank you.

QuarlJarr (talkcontribs)

Oh, by the way, this story has shown up in a few places on some TVTropes pages, despite being NSFW. While it'd be really easy to copy-pasta what was put in those pages, I'm betting that'd be dishonest. And I don't mean LINKING the page back to the TVTropes example pages, I mean just using the base descriptions and whatnot.

Looney Toons (talkcontribs)

Not dishonest, but definitely illegal, as it would be a copyright violation unless you wrote them yourself. Also, point of law: The list of tropes is not copyrightable, as it's pure information. The description of how each trope applies to the story is copyrighted. If you can rewrite each trope entry to be original -- and that doesn't mean changing the words of each individual sentence, but creating a new entry from scratch -- then there's nothing wrong with taking the list of tropes and putting them here. But please put something for each trope, as we don't want Zero Context Examples.

Now, one more thing -- in the hour or so since I posted that first message, I was editing and expanding it with more advice. Give me a minute to rescue it and clean it up a bit and I'll post it below.

Looney Toons (talkcontribs)

First, when creating pages please either use the ATT Page Creator (linked in the menu to the left, under "Troping Utilities") or manually use the appropriate page template. It'll save you a lot of effort and make your page look like all the other pages of that type on the wiki.

Second, and possibly most importantly, we are about tropes and how they function in works. We are not about cataloging the mere existence of works. Don't just dump three sentences and bail. Actually take the time to list at least a few tropes that you've noticed while reading the story. You get a pass this time for being new, uninformed, or both -- but we'll be watching your future contributions, if any.

So, three sentences is not a sufficient works page. Presumably because you're creating this page you've actually, you know, read the story in question. Tell something more -- you know, like a bit about the plot. Whyinhell would I want to read this? What you posted does absolutely nothing to convince me it's worth my time.

Two more very important things you left out -- first, the author's name. If you're going so far as to throw a half-assed recommendation that takes you all of ten seconds to write up on our wiki, don't you think the author should get a little credit?

Oh and just as important -- if the work is so good that you want other people to read it, you should take the entire extra time it would require to include links. Real links, not abbreviations of site names -- not everyone will know what and where "AFF, QQ, and HF" actually are. In my personal case, despite being a fanfic author of 20 years standing, "AFF" is the only site I can guess at; the other two are absolutely opaque to me, at least before some Googling. (I was able to find the Adult Fan Fiction and Hentai Foundry pages for the story, but no search of Questionable Questing turns it up. This is why you don't just say "it's on QQ" -- care to share?) And if I were someone who wasn't entirely sure I wanted to read this fic, the lack of a link would definitely tilt me in the direction of "don't bother". Is that what you wanted?

Also... you don't need to put the entire URL to pages on the wiki -- you can just put the page name in square brackets, like so: [[Ranma ½]]. It's far less work and doesn't add spurious "external link" icons to the potholes.

Final word of advice for you: the less work an admin or another user has to do to make your page actually useful and informative, the more friends you'll earn here, and the less likely your contribution will be deleted as effectively vandalism. Please keep this in mind when you create your next page. And I suggest you review the following pages:

Now, please go take a look at how I've re-edited your new page to make it fit with our style, usage and other requirements.

-- Looney Toons, Admin

QuarlJarr (talkcontribs)

I'm kind of chuckling, because I was in the process of putting in a few examples of tropes, largely by eyeballing how they were set-up in other pages, before I saw that my page had been edited, or your replies just now. I'll peruse what you've written and linked before I mess around with the page anymore.

Looney Toons (talkcontribs)

See my new note in the new thread.