Tropedia

All unique and most-recently-edited pages, images and templates from Original Tropes and The True Tropes wikis have been copied to this wiki. The two source wikis have been redirected to this wiki. Please see the FAQ on the merge for more.

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Tropedia

There are currently a long-term plan from fandom.com to merge the three trope-centric wikis hosted on fandom.com into one: Tropedia, The True Tropes, and Official Tropes. Here are some of my thoughts on this process and any possible outcome. Some of the background of my thinking can also be found in my prior blog post: The future of Tropedia: a manifesto.

I apologise in advance for the somewhat flowery and at times overly formal language below. Think of it as my attempt to pastiche the mock-formal and elaborate language often attempted on TVTropes and its spinoffs, and do it right.

Primo. All of these wikis have their origin with TVTropes via All the Tropes, currently hosted on Miraheze. Tropedia still have some form of formal connection with All the Tropes.

Secundo. None of the wikis have managed to become better at troping than TVTropes, defined as in crafting better trope descriptions, upholding standards like "Clear, Concise, Witty", or clearing out Zero-Context Examples.

Tertio. None of these wikis are well-adapted to Mediawiki, at least as far as the user-facing elements goes. In-wiki search and completion is abysmal, in part because works share the main namespace with the tropes and are not disambiguated from them by default. Navigation for new users is a nightmare. Little or no thought have gone into the presentation of either tropes or the main pages, or how to make best use of the Mediawiki system.

Quarto. All of these wikis were at some degree started by people with a beef to pick with the other wikis, be it TVTropes, All the Tropes, or some of the fandom.com-hosted wikis. My impression is that this largely came down to the handling of individual tropes or bans of the people in question.

Quinto. Expanding on quarto, I have read near-demands that the merged wiki should copy over individual pages from a specific wiki. This to me goes against the wiki spirit of wikis as communal projects, preferably guided by a policy formed by consensus.

Sexto. Troping is something much greater than ourselves as individuals.

Septimo. Based on the above points, I posit that the new and merged wiki will need to work out principles, policies, processes, and principals without any prejudice from the prior wikis. To do otherwise will only guarantee the status quo of being a poor clone of TVTropes circa 2014.