Sometimes tropes manifest in a variety of ways that can be divided into a few groups. Whether or not these variations are distinct enough to merit individual
Sub Trope articles, the encompassing trope (or
Super Trope) will end up with a quick list that shows all the variations at a glance (sometimes called a "soft split"). Consider the following example, based on one of the all-time classics:
MacGuffins can come in a few varieties:
- An egg that will hatch into a baby creature.
- A person of interest.
- A crystal or elemental substance.
This is not a problem
by itself; the problem is sooner or later that editors will start referring to individual variations by their type label only, like this:
Show contains examples of these tropes:
And what, exactly, is "type 3" supposed to mean?
This is a
Zero Context Example — a bad citation — for several reasons:
- It doesn't actually explain the variation in play. It doesn't answer the 'who' or the 'what', the 'where' or 'when', the 'why' or 'how' of the example; it relies on a separate page to fill in the missing gaps, when it should be giving a full explanation on the same page.
- The list in question may be subject to change later. If somebody adds, removes, or reorganizes the list items in a way that impacts what number/type labels correspond to what, this will render our references to that list misleading or invalid. For further explanation, say that instead of our original list above, we presented it in this order instead:
- A crystal or elemental substance.
- An egg that will hatch into a baby creature.
- A person of interest.
- Or, we later add another item to the list:
- Pieces of an ancient artifact that must be re-assembled.
- A crystal or elemental substance.
- An egg that will hatch into a baby creature.
- A person of interest.
- By this point, a "Type 3" could mean three completely different things, depending on which version of the list we were thinking of when we added the citation. How is anyone else supposed to know?
- You should never have to visit any other page (off or on the wiki) to understand an example given on the page itself. Yeah, this is basically repeating point number one all over again, but it deserves the extra emphasis. When you're explaining an example, fully explain the example.
It's worthwhile to note that there are ways to prevent this problem from developing in the first place. The following tip comes courtesy of (the
original)
Murphy's Law:
Do not assign positional number/letter labels to a soft split or sliding scale.
To revisit our original example, note the lack of numbers or labels on the list now:
MacGuffins can come in a few varieties:
Yes, this means that while the
numbered-list markup (lines starting with '#' ) is a convenient way to present lists, tagging items with numbers is just plain unnecessary and all it does in the end is provide opportunities for
misuse. The same goes for using letter types ("A, B, C", etc.) as shorthand identifiers. The better alternative is to present your types as an
unordered, unlabelled list of items, with no shortcuts for lazy editors to make bad citations with.
Of course, unlabelled lists are a little inconvenient in the short term; like it or not those numbered typed labels did make for some easy menmonics...
There is another solution that works — a sort of compromise, in fact:
Providing a short descriptive label for each item in a list. Rather than relying on positional labels (A,B,C or 1,2,3) to identify the items, come up with descriptive phrases of your own, treating them as if they were separate
Sub Trope articles with distinct names already. For example:
MacGuffins can come in a few varieties:
- A Dismantled MacGuffin: Pieces of an artifact that must be re-assembled.
- A Mineral MacGuffin: A crystal or raw elemental substance.
- The Egg MacGuffin: An egg that will hatch into a baby creature.
- Mr. Living MacGuffin: A person of interest.
Descriptive labels provide fixed mnemonics which won't (usually) get mixed around if the list is changed or reorganized in the future, and even if it does they still provide
some context to help interpret the example without having to leave the page to check. Meaning that our original "Type 3" citation (which was a problem) will instead look like this:
Show contains examples of these tropes:
This still doesn't explain everything about the example (the "who" or "where", etc.), but it's worlds better than a mere number or letter designation.
Sub Trope of
Zero Context Example (the general faux-pas of poorly explained citations), and a
Sister Trope to
Weblinks Are Not Examples.
