How convenient. I was just thinking of bashing TV Tropes.

It's a cool site, but the reason it's such a time absorber is that they give every subject such an obscure and ridiculous name that most of the time I'm clicking on the site I'm just trying to understand what the heck those links on the page mean.

Such as:

Horsenstoompher

A horsenstoompher is silimalr to a black coffee or a beguiling ruffian, but should not be confused with an enemy mine or brother's keeper. It may often team up with the scheherezade or comic infantilist to form a pack of wolves or ducks of a feather. A cosmic journey or voyage of learning often includes a horsenstoompher along with the crazy hairdresser and used car salesman.

Examples

• Luke Skywalker of Star Wars is a classic horsenstoompher and Han Solo is a textbook black coffee
  [*]This troper believes that Han Solo is more of an adventurer from the land of dreams
  [*]Both of those tropers are idiots because Han Solo is a librarian with a hobbit [/list:u:4d582d26e2] [/list:u:4d582d26e2] [/list:u:4d582d26e2]
   

I am immune to TV Tropes.

Seriously.

Wikipedia is a much more efficient waste of time.

My ol' buddy TMX, the tropeyist guy I know, is probably crying right now

Also

SO...

NOO!!!!

It's not the first time, it'll probably be back up soon.

I must admit I'm torn. On the one hand, it's annoying to have someone mention tropes to you when you're trying to come up with a new story, character, or idea for fiction. On the other hand, it's fun to see things I'm familiar with categorized, and they certainly have an entertaining style to them. It also helps if I'm deliberately trying to recreate a certain idea to see other examples of it. But yes, ultimately I'll have to agree that it is a major time-waster, sucking up more time than I need to spend on it.

And hacking a site like that is reprehensible. I don't know if the guy had any grudges to settle or felt there was something morally wrong that the site was doing, but trashing a site like that is the work of a vandal, pure and simple.

has not this happened before

Yeah, somebody made a topic of it in the SPA, but it was back up before the first reply. It's back now, anyway.

Unencyclopedia is a much more efficient waste of time, and in some circumstances, giving you click on the right link, funny.

I love TVtropes; and I find it a useful tool for looking up ideas I have for fiction, RPs, et cetera, to see if it's one of those things that's been-done-too-many-times (which too many people think is the definition of a trope; it's not), and if so, how I can tweak said idea to be more fun, original, and creative - I find just reading a tvtropes page on an idea I've had helps my creative process.

And yes, it's a major timewaster - I grow more and more convinced that *any* wiki is a timewaster. But even if you dislike it, what's the benefit out of hacking it? =/

The guy who hacked it left behind a page saying that he hacked them to show them how flimsy their security was...

Oh well.