Character Trope Rename: Ted Baxter

First shot at this, but the Ted Baxter needs a rename, it just doesn't illustrate the trope that well. Ted fits the trope but he's from a 70's sitcom that people have possibly never seen nor even heard about. There's probably better replacements for it as well.

edited 6th Mar '11 11:28:09 AM by Apocali

"Ted Baxter found in: 879 articles"

Your argument is invalid.

Ted Baxter has the same thing going on as The Mario. We'd think that the title would be confusing and not work, but it turns out it works anyway and we aren't sure why.

Unlike The Mario, however, this one definitely Needs Redirects for searchability.

Shouldn't it at least be The Ted Baxter?

I added it as a redirect, but there is no point in switching them for the sake of snowcloning.

Either way, I think it needs changing (wick numbers aside). The name means nothing to me, and I keep mixing it up with Baxter from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The name Ted Baxter tells what the trope is about to a T. Wicks and inbounds are really nice too. New Redirects only IMO unless you can prove misuse.

Ted Baxter found in: 883 articles, excluding discussions.

This title has brought 423 people to the wiki from non-search engine links since 20th FEB '09.

Who?

edited 8th Mar '11 6:43:14 AM by Raso

The name Ted Baxter tells what the trope is about to a T

Not in the slightest. If you have no idea who he is, it indicates the trope is about guys named Ted Baxter.

The lack of obvious misuse means I don't support a rename, but the name is in no way indicative if you don't have the background to understand it. Just saying.

edited 8th Mar '11 3:05:20 PM by nrjxll

Same here — the title may as well be random ASCII characters for all it tells me about the trope.

Also agree that it's a bad name.

More importantly, can we get some samples as whether this is getting linked for the trope versus the character ? With a focus on potholes.

edited 10th Mar '11 1:02:46 AM by Stratadrake

There are a hell of alot of Works pages linked to this.... skipping those lets see some random ones.

• Every Year They Fizzle Out
  • Compare Fake Ultimate Hero, where most people seem to realize they are not that great, and Ted Baxter, when it's the person himself who has a bloated self-esteem
• Heroic Sociopath
  • Prussia from Axis Powers Hetalia is a Ted Baxter character who's all too happy to fight — but, being Hetalia, no-one's evil, so he's a... hero. And a sociopath. Hence, a heroic sociopath.
• Informed Attractiveness
  • On one episode of Cheers, Cliff is ashamed that the woman he's dating is ugly (you'd think that he'd be glad to have anyone at all; think again). She ends up getting a makeover and having men drooling over her even though, from the audience's point of view, it would seem that the makeover isn't working.

• "Knock Knock" Joke
  • An episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show had Ted Baxter write his own knock-knock joke, but getting stuck on the punchline:

Anna Maria Alberghetti

There is one

• Nonuniform Uniform
  • The late US Chief Justice, William Rehnquist, adorned the sleeves of his black judicial robe with four gold stripes, an idea he got after seeing a similarly-dressed character in a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe.

• Positive Discrimination
  • Lampshaded and Averted in King of the Hill'', where Peggy envisions herself as the suffering smart one but is actually far less sensible than Hank.

Hmm actually finding this potholed in places is rare. ~95% of the 885 wicks are character pages. Which would mean its used correctly?

edited 10th Mar '11 1:19:47 AM by Raso

Now Ted Baxter Close Up however isnt being used at all... Its about when a Ted Baxter character gets an episode dedicated to him for Character Focus and breaking down the character to something more normal. 17 wicks.

edited 10th Mar '11 1:23:50 AM by Raso

the name is fine, its is used widely and correctly. No need for a rename.

This needs a rename. I have no idea who Ted Baxter is and having to read the trope page to find out kinda defeats the point of having Trope titles.

edited 21st Apr '11 10:43:11 AM by TheMalignancy

This. I actually read the trope page quite often because I fail to learn what Te Baxter was supposed to mean again.

"and correctly"

Unless you verified the wicks, that claim isn't valid.

I'm personally against the rename, the current name isn't causing any problems and it's been here for ages.

Problems have arisen. People are saying the name is confusing and unindicative.

Unindicative? Yes. Confusing? Show your work. Where is there confusion over the trope's meaning? It sure hasn't failed to catch on.

edited 22nd Apr '11 6:42:18 AM by Shale

<Mod Hat ON>

Ok, people. If this turns into "NO U!", I'm going to shut it down.

The first instruction on the page about renaming says "If the name works, don't change it." We know it has a lot of wicks and a fair number of inbound links. We can't check the inbounds for accuracy, but we can check the wicks.

If you are going to say that the name doesn't work or that it's confusing, the best way that you can do that it to check the wicks and see whether it's being misused or not. If on the other hand, you say that it isn't confusing and it is working, the best way to support that position is the check the wicks.

Simply pointing fingers and saying that the other guy should do the checking is completely counterproductive.

<Mod Hat OFF>

All the wicks might be correct, my point is that among the people reading (not writing) there are many that don't get the name and have to check it via link. There's no way to prove there are writers who fail to remember the trope because of its name, because you don't see them linking to the trope.

Over 800 wicks is a hell of a lot of wicks, far too many for that to happen... Also Redirects Are Free!

edited 22nd Apr '11 8:26:09 AM by Raso

Fortunately, you don't need to check every wick. Thanks to some tropers who are good at statistics, we have a very loose guideline for this sort of thing: check the square root of the number of wicks, minimum 50. That will all but guarantee that any systematic misuse of the trope will be in the sample. In this case, 50 randomly selected wicks will be sufficient.

^ Cool. I wasn't aware some one had figured out a statistically valid formula. So check 50 randomly selected wicks on any page that has fewer than 2500 wicks; or the square root of the number of wicks if there are more than that... Neat.