Not actually being interested in the trope articles

LouieW

BaronGrackle,
This is something I found out about here, which I never really expected.
Show of hands; how many of you just don't really care about the
tvtropes articles, but really really love the forums? The concept is
just baffling to me... there are forums everywhere one could go to
instead.

I think that different forums tend to have different atmospheres and memberships. For example, I found Serebii.net's forums to be quite different from IGN's which I would say are not very similar to BrawlInTheFamily's even though each one focuses on roughly the same type of topic (video games). I may just be stating the obvious.

I have seen the phenomenon you described before though and I can understand why it might seem pretty odd. One time I remember that one forum I used to frequent (BZPower) had a large contingent of people who were no longer interested in Bionicle even though all but two forums were exclusively about discussing Bionicle. I guess part of that may have had to do with friends that one has made on a forum that one does not want to leave or forum rules that one liked. I guess some people just find trying to search for another community uncomfortable as well or just dislike change in general.

Sometimes I think people who have one interest in common find that they also have other interests in common so even as they lose the first interest they keep the others and thus still want to stay in contact. I would guess that tropers are similar given that some do not really edit the wiki much, but still hang around on the forums.

I like the wiki and I probably would do wiki walks if I did not feel like they tended to suck away the hours at a disturbing rate. Though I am not really good at editing, adding examples, or any of the other technical wiki stuff, I try to contribute through the Trope Repair Shop forum when I can.

That being said, I think I can understand why some people might not like that kind of thing.

CommandoDude

The forums really aren't that spectacular. The format is really unintuitive. The mods are the most puritanical I've seen.

The only points it has going for it that there's less trolls and shitposts then any other forum, and they can hotlink to tvtropes articles.

inkblot

^ The mods could be so, so much worse.

I only edit a few videogame-related articles, like Real Is Brown.

Vorpy

Looking at the wiki and finding tropes you like is like using bulbapedia/smogon/serebii/official guides to look up pokemon and all of their stats.

After awhile everything becomes uninteresting and plain, and you only worry about the good things, and hate the crappy, bad things.

So a long time ago, when you thought Scyther was the most badass pokemon in existence, you looked it up in the guides, found others with higher stats, better move pools and easier strategies to use and suddenly, your favorite Scyther feels like it sucks, or you feel like only keeping it around as an artifact mon that you refuse to get rid of.

Turtle

"when you thought Scyther was the most badass pokemon in existence"

Are you me?  Because Scyther was the 'mon I wanted to catch when I first got into Pokemon.

RedEyedAbyss

It just bugs me that Pokemon has become a game of stat-mongering thanks to the dominance of the metagamers. Though this is partially Game Freak's fault for not providing a sufficiently compelling alternative to battles.

MoeDantes

To be honest I don't recall Pokemon ever NOT being about "stat-mongering."

RedEyedAbyss

Hence the part about Game Freak.

LOL Pokemon Hijack.