Frequent Redlinks
Red Links are often misspellings, abbrevs., or works we don't have pages on yet.
Here is a list of the common causes of red links and how to fix them.
- Misspellings
- Example: Anti-Villian instead of Anti-Villain
- How to fix: Correct the misspelling.
- Punctuation difference
- Example: Anti Villain instead of Anti-Villain
- How to fix:
- Plural Trope Names
- Example: Complete Monsters
- How to fix: Put the trope within two square brackets with the plural letter(s) outside the brackets.
[[Complete Monster]]s becomes Complete Monsters -- or just pothole it like [[Complete Monster|Complete Monsters]]. - Referring to pages that without a work type makes a redlink
- Example: using [[Groundhog Day]] when only Groundhog Day exists.
- Solution 1: Edit the link to include the text -- a Help:Links pipe trick will automatically skip the parenthesized text when it is viewed. So [[Groundhog Day|]] (note the "|" at the end) displays as Groundhog Day.
- Solution 2: Add a redirect for the page, or a disambiguation page if necessary.
- Works we don't have pages for yet.
- Red links for works pages should not be removed. If you are familiar with the work, feel free to launch the page.
- Pages Needing Restoration
- At least a couple hundred pages were deleted by the admin staff of TV Tropes for failing to meet their advertisers' standards of moral hygiene after The Second Google Incident. At one time we had a list of known censored pages, but by late 2017 everything on that list had been accounted for. However, that doesn't mean there might not still be links to censored pages we didn't know about. It may be worth looking up the name of an obvious work on Google, and if it's Hentai, Porn, or simply suitable for persons more mature than TVT's P5, you may want to see if the Wayback Machine has a record of a TVT page for it -- one that vanishes after about April 2012. If so, grab the last intact version you can find dating from before July 9, 2012 (when TVT changed their license) and use that to reconstruct the page. If you're lucky, the Wayback Machine will have archived the source, and you'll be saved some of the work.
The following are particularly common Red Links. If you have the time or are bored, you can help out by fixing them. The links will lead to a list of pages that have the Red Links. Ideally, they should be empty. If you clean up all the wicks, please write a note beside the link of the clean up date.
Different wikis have had different policies for editing other people's contributor pages. TV Tropes had a strong rule against it. Wikipedia discourages it in general but allows occasional edits by others "to address significant concerns".
Common Redlinks
1. Misspellings
- Looney Toons (Should be Looney Tunes or the contributor User:Looney Toons, depending on context) - last cleaned up 2016 August 12
2. Plural Trope Names
- Complete Monsters [dead link] (Should be marked up as [[Complete Monster]]s) - last cleaned up 03/05/2012
Should be expanded:
- CMoA (Should be Awesome Music or Moment of Awesome depending on context) - last cleaned up 1/10/2012
- CMOAs [dead link] (Should be Awesome Music or Moment of Awesome depending on context) - last cleaned up 1/10/2012
- CMoF [dead link] (Should be Funny Moments) - last cleaned up 1/11/2012
- DA2 [dead link] (Should be Dragon Age II) - last cleaned up
- DnD [dead link] (Could be any number of things, possibly Dungeons and Dragons)- last cleaned up 1/11/2012
- DS9 (Should be Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) - last cleaned up 2016 August 12
- GoF [dead link] (Should be either Galaxy on Fire, Grave of the Fireflies, or Harry Potter/Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, depending on context) - last cleaned up 1/11/2012
- HL1 [dead link] (Should be Half-Life (video game)) - last cleaned up 1/14/2012
- HL2 [dead link] (Should be Half-Life 2) - last cleaned up 1/14/2012
- KotOR [dead link] (Should be Knights of the Old Republic (video game)) - last cleaned up 3/18/2012
- KotOR2 [dead link] (Should be Knights of the Old Republic (video game)) - last cleaned up 3/10/2012
- L4D [dead link] (Should be Left 4 Dead) - last cleaned up 1/15/2012
- L4D1 [dead link] (Should be Left 4 Dead) - last cleaned up 1/15/2012
- L4D2 [dead link] (Should be Left 4 Dead 2) - last cleaned up 1/15/2012
- ME1 [dead link] (Should be Mass Effect (video game)) - last cleaned up
- ME2 [dead link] (Should be Mass Effect 2) - last cleaned up
- ME3 [dead link] (Should be Mass Effect 3) - last cleaned up
- MGS1 [dead link] (Should be Metal Gear Solid) - last cleaned up 1/11/2012
- MGS2 [dead link] (Should be Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty) - last cleaned up 1/11/2012
- MGS3 [dead link] (Should be Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater) - last cleaned up 1/11/2012
- MGS4 [dead link] (Should be Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots) - last cleaned up 1/11/2012
- MSG [dead link] (Could be any number of things, possibly Madison Square Garden, the band Miranda Sex Garden, the anime Mobile Suit Gundam, or a typo for MGS as listed above) - last cleaned up
- OotP [dead link] (Should be Harry Potter/Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix)- last cleaned up 1/11/2012
- PoA [dead link] (Could be any number of things, probably Harry Potter/Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban on this wiki)- last cleaned up 1/13/2012
- TF2 [dead link] (Could be Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen or Team Fortress 2) - last cleaned up 1/21/2012
- WMGs (Should be Wild Mass Guessing; can be quick linked with [[WMG]]s)- last cleaned up 1/14/2012
Other:
- AMVs [dead link] (An abbreviation and a plural "trope" name; if it is referring to AMV, set it as a plural abbreviation [[AMV]]s. - last cleaned up 1/18/2012
- CoS/COs [dead link] (Depending on the context, it should be Commanding Officers or Harry Potter/Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets and should expanded respectively) - last cleaned up 1/15/2012
- MMORPGs (An abbreviation and a plural "trope" name; should be either changed to one of its expanded forms [dead link] or set as a plural abbreviation depending on which flows better in context) - last cleaned up 1/18/2012
- NPCs (An abbreviation and a plural "trope" name; should be either expanded into [[Non-Player Character]]s - last cleaned up 1/18/2012
- RPGs (Depending on the context, it should be [[Role Playing Game]]s, except when referring to rocket-propelled grenades - last cleaned up 1/18/2012
5. Works we don't have pages for yet
These should not be fixed.