TVTropes Ideation Dataset: Collaborative Trope Development on the Trope Launch Pad (2020-2022)

The research context is TVTropes.org, an ideation wiki website where users create and share tropes used in a wide range of creative works such as television, films, literature, and comics. Tropes, which are descriptions and instances of plot conventions and devices, serve as tools that creators use to convey their ideas to the audience in storytelling. They facilitate guiding the audience through the story in a familiar and comprehensible manner. For instance, the trope “Hero’s Journey” is commonly employed as an archetypal story pattern in adventure stories like Star Wars, describing a hero who embarks on an adventure, overcomes a crisis, and returns home transformed.

This website uses a subwiki, the Trope Launch Pad (TLP), for new trope ideas (henceforth referred to as TLP tropes) to be proposed and evaluated by the wiki community. For each TLP trope, there is a working title, synopsis, and a description of the idea usually containing hyperlinks to launched tropes for references. These hyperlinks underscore the existing launched tropes connected to the new TLP trope. They enable users to directly access related tropes, facilitating immediate browsing and deeper engagement with the content of the TLP trope. On the TLP trope page, users can comment in the discussion section, edit the trope content, and cast anonymous positive or negative votes. When positive votes exceed negative votes by at least five, the TLP trope can be launched. TLP tropes without sufficient positive votes will be discarded eventually.

The TLP functions as a collaborative ideation space where each new trope idea is pitched by a sponsor – the first user to propose the idea – and is then open to evaluation and editing by the broader community. In this crowdsourcing idea refinement setting, community members participate by discussing the trope, suggesting amendments and related tropes, and proposing examples of the trope in various media. Ideators may choose to post responses to the feedback given and/or integrate their suggestions into the crowdsourced idea via the editing function (see Figure 5.2). This interactive process is essential for evolving a trope from a fledging idea to a robust entry in the TVTropes.org catalogue. Notably, the site allows any member to edit a trope, and if the original sponsor steps away, another member can assume responsibility, effectively broadening the ideation team.

To quantitatively analyze the creative process, a Python scraper was utilized to collect extensive data on the TLP from May 14, 2020, to December 23, 2022. The dataset includes 4,498 trope proposals with outcomes ranging from successful launches to rejections. Through this research, the dynamics of collaboration and innovation in digital crowdsourcing platforms are better understood.