"Zeno's Race" is non indicative, and kind of complaining.: Ptitle96cc44ei

Not really only one arc has ever dealt with him actually finding his dad (the current one) everything else was him wanting to do it, Any actual Myth Arc probably disqualifies from this.

A myth arc sounds like the perfect example of this.

Luffy's goal of finding One Piece and building a full crew seems like an example, considering he got the first 4 members of his crew in the East Blue arcs, the next 2 in the next few arcs, and then the amount of new crew members dwindled into an occasional one-per-arc.

Killing Aizen did certainly count when they were actually fighting him in the Winter War, since every time some progress was made, he skipped ahead. Luckily, that ended after a while.

edited 2nd Mar '11 5:13:01 PM by Scardoll

So this should be a per-goal trope rather than a per-series trope, then?

"Really? Say if Ash Ketchum needs eight gym badges for his quest, gets four gym badges in the first series, two in the second, one in the third, he's doind less quest related stuff, no?"

That means the padding is doubled, not cut in half ad infinitum. Basically Zeno's theory in fiction would mean the arc always seems closer to being resolved, instead of seeming longer.

No, it's still correct, because the traditional explanation of Zeno's paradox ignores the fact that it should take half as much time to travel half the distance. It's treated more like: first you go half the distance. Then you go 1/4 the distance, then 1/8 the distance, then 1/16 the distance, and so on.

The fact that it takes less time to travel shorter distances is the solution to the paradox, not the paradox itself.

Still a major stretch to apply it to this. If you have to explain it that much, it's not an intuitive name. This is about trying to stretch the show out when the resolution is obvious, more than deliberate similarity to Zeno's theory.

First let's be certain we're renaming this at all, then we can start arguing what to rename it.

That means the padding is doubled, not cut in half ad infinitum.

Ta-da!

The progress is cut in half ad infinitum.

edited 3rd Mar '11 3:16:57 PM by SomeSortOfTroper

Myth Arc has a set goal but no real measure on how far it is to get there. The problem with anything other than Video games is you have to have a measure like finding the 7 dragonballs (which is right in Dragon Ball 30 episodes the first time like 60 the second time the DBZ it varies wildly to offscreen or a war fought over them.) or getting the 8 badges.

edited 3rd Mar '11 3:58:54 PM by Raso

@DBQ, SSOT: Exactly the same as in Zeno's Paradox!

I repeat, you still had to specifically point out how it fit, which still doesn't make a good trope name, as it's named for an obscure theory.

Them having to explain it here isn't a problem with the name, but a problem of the description, which, to be honest, I understood on the first read. As for not knowing at all what Zeno's Paradox is, it's a legitimate complaint, but not a big enough one to rename the trope over. Once you've been informed or had your memory jogged about what the paradox is, it makes perfect sense.

The name should stand on its own without having to explain it. Someone might have to explain the trope namer, but not why it fits.

Which is why I suggested Zeno's Pace as an alternative. I'm neither for nor against renaming this one right now, I'm just saying you not understanding it immediately isn't grounds for a rename, although I'm willing to agree that "race" may not be the best word for what it's doing. Zeno's Pace or Zeno's Padding would likely work better, but I've not seen a compelling argument for a name swap.

edited 3rd Mar '11 6:48:05 PM by Wulf

Zeno's Race currently has 10 wicks and 29 inbounds.

Let's look at some other tropes about Pacing Problems:

• It Gets Better has 305 wicks and 353 inbounds
• Twenty Minutes with Jerks has 134 wicks and 595 inbounds
• Cosmic Deadline has 64 wicks and 595 inbounds

This trope is either very new or not working.

I prefer Zenos Pace to the current name. Though I'm not sure whether this trope has enough examples to deserve it's own page.

I like Zeno's Pace or Zeno's Pacing.

With regard to the "Zeno's" bit... I think it describes the trope pretty well, and I understood how it was relevant straight away. The description of the relevant paradox from Wikipedia is "Suppose Homer wants to catch a stationary bus. Before he can get there, he must get halfway there. Before he can get halfway there, he must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a quarter, he must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on." This is nicely analogous to the idea of the plot progressing a smaller amount in each installment of a work.

Also, for what it's worth, Zeno's Paradoxes are pretty famous - I remember being taught about them in maths classes at school. Obviously not everyone is going to be familiar with them, and that's suboptimal, but it's not like he's some obscure person whom only people with a doctorate in philosophy have heard of. If it describes the trope better than any other title put forth it might be worth confusing some people, and it doesn't seem any worse to me than Chekhov's This or Xanatos That or Rosseau Was The Other. Granted, my view may be skewed since I immediately understood the reference to Zeno. And I understand there was some movement to change the Xanatos tropes but they were considered too ingrained.

Them having to explain it here isn't a problem with the name, but a problem of the description, which, to be honest, I understood on the first read. As for not knowing at all what Zeno's Paradox is, it's a legitimate complaint, but not a big enough one to rename the trope over.

I consider that completely to be the sort of thing we'd rename over. It's isomorphic to renaming a title that is only understandable to a specific fandom, if you map "fandom" to "people interested in ancient mathmatical paradoxes".

@ DQZ: I'm just trying to make clear what the trope is and the point of the name so that if a rename goes through and the description changes, we have a clear hook on what was agreed to be the distinct factor of the trope. I was also trying to think of a more TV Tropes standard intro, in case it didn't go through.

How well is the paradox known? But even if it is well known, how many know the paradox only by the name of the guy who stated it? Is there a way to state the paradox in the title, or at least the part that relates to the trope?

You have just opened a can of worms.

Zeno had several paradoxes. One of them was a race, you can see it in the page image. It was also known as the Achilles paradox or Achilles and the Tortoise.

There's the one which actually maps to the description and the idea of trying to complete a quest. Apparrently that is known as both the dichotomy paradox and the race course paradox.

Then there's the arrow paradox which is very distinct.

SSOT, I'm very off-put by your blanket revert of my rewrite of the page. The version you reverted to starts with an example above the example line and has numerous sentence structure, clarity and (fittingly enough) pacing problems, including stating the Example as a Thesis /twice/. I really put a lot of effort into having the introduction explain why it's called that in the blandest and most succint possible terms, after stating what the trope is about, not to mention various tweaks to the rest of the article.

"We're not sure we're even keeping the page with this name" is no reason to kill the Wiki Magic.

edited 4th Mar '11 10:32:24 AM by TripleElation

I presume by the "example above the example line" you mean I just used a name that wasn't the inanely boring Alice and Bob? I don't care. There's actually nothing wrong with that, considering we have to put one up there anyway.

There are also things I still think was bad. The use of Alice and Bob is boring, the front loading of the paradox of the description means we start far off the point, the hottip is unnecessary and encourage further going off the point in articles. There are some things I think are better than they were but still wrong (the multi-media description bit at the end for instance) and there are things you didn't change but think you should have.

I would have done something similar to what you did but a) I would have done so differently which means it i was to do my own honest edits, it still wouldn't look like it does now and b) I felt that since a discussion was going on, I didn't want to appear to be presumptively moving forward (while still trying to get stuff done) and also felt that it is easy to collect points that people make and wait for them to get a chance to consider it rather than to act and then fiddle with it to slip their points in later.

The reason that I put the Alice and Bob Example as a Thesis on that page is that there were (and now, again, there are) two Examples as Theses on the page, so I picked one and ended up tweaking it. Nothing more. I'm against gratuitously harping on about specific works in trope descriptions, because it violates the "all works are equal" spirit of this wiki. It's not some uber-principle I'm not willing to compromise on, but I do think it's important.

As for the "discussion in progress" thing, the meaning of the trope and what the page was going on about stayed constant throughout. This is a renaming discussion, so I don't get how it disrupted the discussion in any way.

Anyway, there were all sorts of possible solutions to your concerns that aren't a blanket revert. Say, add a less generic touch to the Example as a Thesis, or swap its place with the paradox introduction. When dealing with an edit you take issue with, you should try to incorporate the good points and deal with the bad points. Blanket reverts should be a last resort. But if the options you're giving me are stand down or edit war, I choose the former.

EDIT: I tried again, this time trying to address your concerns. See the edit reason and let's keep any further continuation of this conversation thread to the discussion page.

edited 5th Mar '11 5:13:32 AM by TripleElation

OK so, it's a crappy name, it has taken, it's confusing. Can we just call it three day o clock?!

Wait, we have a "we're going to skip the single prop crowner due to apparent unanimity, if anyone objects speak now or forever hold your peace" protocol? I didn't know that. I mean, it makes sense, but I've never seen it happen.

edited 5th Mar '11 5:13:01 AM by TripleElation