Tutorial Draft

Hello new troper! You may be wondering why you're on this page.

Have you ever played a video game where you need to learn the controls and the basics before they let you do anything? This is like that, but more important. Don't worry, most of this is easy! (But listen anyway, there will be a test. We mean it.)

Lesson #1: This is a Wiki. You can edit it.
We know what you're thinking, "Well, duh, what kind of numbskull doesn't know that?" But some people don't seem to grasp all the implications of it.

Take this for example:


 * In episode 23E of Star Trek: The Original Series, Picard kisses Uhura.

If you are sufficiently geeky, you know that Picard wasn't in the original series, it was Kirk. (If you're really geeky, you know that in Shatner's memoirs he states they didn't really kiss to avoid offending viewers at the time. But let's not waste time on that.)

So you open the page and correct the example. If you really get how a wiki works, you will change the above sentence to:


 * In episode 23E of Star Trek: The Original Series, Kirk kisses Uhura.

Tada! This is a beautiful edit. Wasn't it easy?

But suppose you don't really get how a wiki works. If you don't, you're liable to do something like this:


 * In episode 23E of Star Trek: The Original Series, Picard kisses Uhura.
 * Actually it was Kirk; Picard wasn't in the original series.

We know you weren't going to do this kind of thing, but just in case you were DON'T DO IT. It's not so very ugly in that state, but other people will see you and turn it into this:


 * In episode 23E of Star Trek: The Original Series, Picard kisses Uhura.
 * Actually it was Kirk; Picard wasn't in the original series.
 * And it wasn't episode 23E either. It was actually episode 46B.
 * Do either of you idiots know how the numbering system for Star Trek works? There are no letters in it!
 * No, actually this is the only episode ever made that used that numbering system.
 * None of them used that numbering system. That episode was 23 of the 4th series. No numbers.

Around here, the above is referred to as Natter. You see how ugly Natter is? That's why you shouldn't do it. (And, by the way, if you see something like that in a page, please just delete the whole thing.) Don't be afraid to edit other people's examples. You are allowed to do that. Don't worry! It's fine!

Lesson #2: Using First Person
Never refer to yourself if you don't absolutely need to. Take the above example again.


 * In episode 23E of Star Trek: The Original Series, Kirk kisses Uhura.

Changing it to


 * I think it was in episode 23E of Star Trek: The Original Series that Kirk kissed Uhura.

or


 * In episode 23E of Star Trek: The Original Series, Kirk kissed Uhura. This Troper squee'd.

doesn't add anything to the example, does it? You're not really the subject of the example; Kirk is the subject of the example. Let him do his stuff, ok? (By the way, for examples that are supposed to be about you, go click that link at the top of the page that says Troper Tales.)

Lesson #3: Spoiler Usage
Use spoilers wisely. Now, this one may take a bit of explanation: spoiler:some stuff comes out as (highlight it). This is called "spoiler tags". They're a great thing when used sparingly but not such a great thing if you slather the entire example in them. An example (and if you don't know any spoilers about Citizen Kane... frankly, we really don't know what to tell you.)


 * In Citizen Kane, the narrator spends all of a long movie reconstructing Kane's life for the viewer to figure out what Kane's final word, "Rosebud" meant. He never finds out what it meant, but the viewer finds at the end of the movie it was

That was a good use of spoiler tags. But this is bad form:


 * In Citizen Kane, the narrator spends all of a long movie reconstructing Kane's life for the viewer to figure out what Kane's final word, "Rosebud" meant.

and this is just ridiculous:


 * In Citizen Kane,

Also notable: Never spoiler tag leading trope names. If you think a series is an example of a trope, we want to see the trope on the examples list. Even spoiler hounds get annoyed when they see



Just put:
 * It Was His Sled

If you really think the very mention of a trope will "ruin" a work, then either A) don't mention it at all, or b) mention it as a spoiled part of another trope example on the list.

So, moral of the story? Don't spoiler tag things that aren't spoilers!

Lesson #4: How to Avoid an Edit War
Look, the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement says that 99% of this wiki is not looking for a fight. Honestly, we're not. An Edit War is one of these fights. An Edit War is defined as when certain edits are constantly and repeatedly taken down and brought back up. It is an ugly, godawful mess. These things can happen for many reasons. Maybe another troper disagreed with your statement, but you put it back up. Maybe a mod had forbid something, yet you put it back up (that's a no-no.) In any case, if Fast Eddie, who wields the Ban Hammer of this website, and can nuke your page while riding on a unicycle and yodeling, decides that there has been too much conflict about a page, he locks it, which means we can't edit it.

We don't like locked pages. If we're lucky, the page itself survives, so we can copy and paste it into something else and edit some stuff out. If we're unlucky, FE will nuke the page, meaning that it's gone. And then we have to go to page history and salvage the whole thing from there.

So, the best idea would be to just not Edit War. How can you do this? It's simple. Just follow a couple tips.


 * 1: Do not post anything that you know will start an edit war. Self evident, right? No actually, you'd be surprised how many people have, for example, listed Mother Teresa as an example of a Complete Monster. Now, you, me, and the guy who posted that all know someone is just going to cut that, so why bother? Either you let it get cut (so you've wasted the effort of adding it in the first place) or you start an edit war (and get banned). See also the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement for some more on this.
 * Corollary to this: never attack something or someone that has fans. Maybe you think George Lucas is a talentless hack, but there are plenty of people who actually like him and who will certainly edit out any unreasonable criticism of him. (What is "unreasonable", you ask? You can say "many people felt that Jar-Jar Binks was annoying" but you cannot say "Jar-Jar Binks (or even worse, George Lucas) was an idiot".
 * 2: The discussion page is there for a reason. If you or someone else has ignored the above advice, all is not lost! There is a page on which you can discuss the example and avoid an edit war! What is this magical page called, you ask? Why, the discussion page! You can get to it by the word balloons icon at the top of the page. (A note though: many random editors do not check the discussion pages regularly, so make sure you tell other editors to go there if you want someone specific talking to you.)
 * 3: The edit reason box is there for a reason. On the other side of that last comment, if you notice someone's deleted one of your examples, the first thing you should do is check the page history; it's fairly likely, if they had a reason, they will have added the reason to the edit reason box on the bottom of the editing page. If they didn't, you may add it back once with an edit reason directing them to the discussion page; if they continue to ax an example without any discussion, go to the forums or Ask the Tropers and call a mod over.
 * 4: If they mods say you shouldn't post it, don't post it. If, when you edit a page, there are some percent signs at the top of the page in front of a note to the tune of "please do not add an image to this page" that you can't see when you edit the page, a mod added that and they almost certainly have a damn good reason why you should not add an image to the page. Plus, of course, you simply cannot win an edit war with a mod; the best you can do if you want to ignore one of those comments is ask about it on the discussion page or the forums and see if you can argue against it with the mod who placed it there. Probably after you hear their reasons you won't want to, though; the mods here have very good judgement easily 90% of the time.

TO BE CONTINUED.