Character trope rename: The Libby

And in spite of that disadvantage, a lot of people are using the name and using it correctly.

Redirects...I wouldn't mind.

Renaming one of the Tropes of Legend? No...

This is Mimi-don't let her cuteness fool you-she's got spunk.

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I actually didn't realize it was named after the Sabrina character until reading this thread. I always assumed it was a stereotypical lispy and valley girl pronunciation of "Lippy" because that's what they do, they flap and smack their lipstick coated lips.

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...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Come on, how are we supposed to discuss whether or not this name is good, if we can't discuss what makes a name good?

^ The burden of proof is always to show that the name is bad, not to show that it's good. Especially when it comes to one of the Tropes Of Legend.

Is The Libby a great name? No. But it's a name that is working quite well and is firmly entrenched. Changing it now would only cause more confusion, not less.

^^ Quite simply, Eternal September. You talk about this trope name and how it measures up to the criteria on Everything You Wanted To Know About Changing Names. The question at issue right now is not "Is this a "good" trope name?" It's "Does this trope name need to be changed to work?"

Right now, the first thing you need to deal with is the very first item in the list of "When NOT to rename": The name is working. It has healthy wicks and inbounds, and there's no significant misuse. A meta-discussion of "what makes a good name?" is not the reason for this thread. Make a thread in Wiki Talk for it if you really want to.

edited 27th Mar '11 10:18:21 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

To play Devil's Advocate:

The renaming of this trope would be a good idea for two major reasons (Pulled from the above mentioned page on Renaming Guidelines):

1. It is named for a character, and the problem with this trope is: Does it mean someone (Usually a female) who acts in a 'bitchy' manner towards other characters? Does it mean the most popular girl in school? Is it the girl who holds the highest social status in high school, and also suffers from Chronic Backstabbing Disorder?

2. Debatably, could be considered work dependant. To use the guideline example, if I said 'Jean Grey Escalation' to a fellow troper who had not come across that particular trope at all, they wouldn't know what I meant. If I had said 'Never Live It Down' then said troper may have a better idea of what I mean. Similarly, a troper would have an easier time identifying a trope called 'Alpha Bitch' over 'The Libby'.

edited 29th Mar '11 1:41:49 PM by X3

That's ALOT of stuff you realize would become broken links, if the name changes. Why not just simple redirects. I honestly didn't watch too much Sabrina, so I never knew the "mean girl's" name. But actually, when I read this trope for the first time, "The Libby" my brain DID automatically think, "that sounds like a name of some snobby sterotypical popular brat-teen".....and, what do you know, she is!

But hey, not everyone would, I can see and understand, come to that same conclusion as I have-which is why I think redirects wouldn't be a bad idea.

This is Mimi-don't let her cuteness fool you-she's got spunk.

Those only come into effect if it passes the reasons not to rename first. This doesn't.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

"Jean Grey Escalation" is not a good comparison because the trope title didn't accurately describe the trope even to people who know who Jean Grey is.

@Madraguda's last: from what I'm seeing of the OP's reasoning, the fact that the name works is actually the problem, in that it's working too well for how little connection people make to the source of the name. Funny idea, I know, but not that strange, really.

To put it another way, the name works because it's been used and become familiar, not because of a theme inherent to the name or the recognizability of the character from which it was initially derived. It meant nothing to me when I saw it used on another page ("The Libby character is in a skimpy red dress." from Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains examples) and had to follow it simply because I didn't know what concept was being attributed to the character in question there. It works for this concept because it's a common girl's name, which means it would also work for ANY trope title describing a high school girl, from the preppy to the goth to the nerdy outcast to the tomboy jock. Without context it fits any of those equally well; with context it's a useless label for a Prom Queen Bitch.

I struggle to understand why "it's the way we've always done it" is held up as such a strong argument in wikis. The only reasons I can come up with are "change is inconvenient" and "we like it," neither of which is any more impressive as arguments go than the OP's "this name has no relation to this concept other than what we've pushed on it" and "we might make the name seem negative in reality." Both sides are sorta weak, which only reinforces my view regarding the trop title being token, at best. If it weren't, something to support it in a significant fashion should have surfaced by now.

I rarely edit things (so rarely, in fact, that I struggled to remember my password to respond to this). I'm unknown. I realize my opinion likely has little value. All the same, looking at this from the point of view of concept communication, I'd say the title would be better off changed to something that actually reflects the trope it heads rather than remain a name that can signify just about anything female.

A rename is inherently undesirable because of the confusion it causes. There's a longer explanation of the philosophy that I don't remember, but I think it boils down to "Stability = generally good." Or something along those lines. So, the general policy we have is against renaming established tropes unless there's a problem with the current name.

With The Libby, we know it isn't too obscure because it's getting lots of traffic, and we know it isn't too confusing or ambiguous because it's being used correctly. If the name were too opaque, we would expect people to be using it incorrectly or not at all.

Also, your opinion has as much value as anyone else's around here. We all get just one vote, after all. So don't worry about that bit.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

With that logic, you could as well say that Mary Sue, or The Casanova, are bad titles, because until they started to become slang terms for character types decades ago, they were at one point random names. (even though the latter is now in the dictionary, and the former is also understood everywhere). Once, they didn't mean anything, but now large communities use them for certain concepts, so they de facto started to meaningfully represent those concepts.

It's the same thing in this case, maybe on a smaler scale, even if The Libby is not a pre-existing fanspeak term. Or rather, in a certain sense, it is a pre-existing term, based on early T Vtropes fanspeak. Thousands of tropers started to use it for a concept, here and spreading to other sites, so many, that it de facto became a generic noun.

After this happens, we are not renaming tropes For Great Justice, just because in retrospect, the term didn't deserve to become a word. As long as it is working, it is as good for us as any other word.

edited 3rd Apr '11 3:52:11 PM by EternalSeptember

^ Mary Sue I'll grant you. While it works in my head well for what it means, that's just how I interpret the name, not because the name's inherently linked to the concept, so it's similar in that way; the fact that when I hear "the Libby" my first thought is "the shy librarian" rather than "the school's head bitch" isn't any kind of litmus test for whether the name fits - it's a personal reaction. If they had the same lifespan for character concepts they'd probably be on even footing in this conversation, so good comparison. Slight difference in that Mary Sue's named after the character that essentially kicked that notion off in terms of fanfiction, isn't it? As opposed to Libby which is named after some entirely forgettable character created long after the trope was thriving and popular. Similar, but different.

Casanova, on the other hand? No comparison. That wasn't some random name picked from an assortment of character candidates (though, funny sidenote, I wanted to write that as "an assortment of Lotharios"). I'd never call someone a Mary Sue in reality (not only because it would never apply), but Casanova is a descriptor beyond just its use as a character trope. That and its usage here is not mainly negative, unlike the other two listed above, which makes it harder to compare.

All that aside, I agree, from the point of view I listed above Mary Sue doesn't make much sense as a trope title in that it doesn't convey any useful information about the trope by just being a relatively generic name, though it does have the benefit of having originated outside TV Tropes (meaning more points of reference prior to trying to create the term as a label for a concept here out of next to nothing).

edited 3rd Apr '11 4:59:06 PM by Shjade

I have to agree with Shjade. The name is not descriptive of the trope at all. The fact that most Tropers are used to the name doesn't change this fact.

I mean, I always forget what The Libby is, and every time I have to go back and read it again, simply because the title gives no hints about it.

But see, we can say with a pretty high confidence that it isn't problematic, because we can objectively measure whether it's attracting usage. And it is. So, we aren't quite sure why it works, but it works.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

^ Eh. It depends on what you're calling a problem and whether or not how/why it's being used matters to you.

For instance, unnecessary addition of gender to non-gendered terms (eg: "foxess," "skunkette," "rangeress") can be problematic: it looks (and sounds) goofy; casts the writer in an unfortunate light (depending on audience, of course); it is, as mentioned, completely unnecessary; etc. I can also tell you it's quite popular in some circles. Somehow I don't see the niche popularity of the practice justifying its usage as not being an issue.

Growing to understand and accept something within a community makes it workable, but that's working around a problem rather than solving it; anyone new to the community will have the same issue everyone now accustomed to the term did before they got used to it. Having a title that just made sense at a glance would remove that issue.

edited 3rd Apr '11 6:42:11 PM by Shjade

You are missing my point. I brought up other examples specifically to show that it doesn't matter how they originated. It only matters how well-known the terms are now.

We aren't the Grand Masters of Language Evolution, to decide that certain examples are based on "entirely forgettable characters", so they don't deserve to become words, once people are already using it.

If The Libby would be created nowadays, a better title would be suggested, that would be more likely to catch on, but since this name was chosen years ago, it gathered almost 6000 off-wiki links, that means it caught on anyways, so we can't just back out because "it wasn't supposed to" catch on.

That's easy. For our purposes, a problem is something that hurts the Wiki's popularity.

We are trying to write a popular website here, and for that, we need many writers and many articles. If something alienates our editors, or readers, it is bad. Conversely, if something resonates well with editors and readers, it is good.

You try to claim that The Libby is the former, based on your personal experiences with it, but we know from past experience that when a title is universally misleading, it gets frequently misused, and when it is universally meaningless, it falls out of usage.

The Libby did neither. It fills it's purpose of being listed on many work pages, and leads many readers to this site through wicks.

These are the purposes why this wiki exists. To have pages listing many tropes, and have many people reading them, and editing them. This is the only objective way to define if something is working, everything else is a personal theory, opinion, subjective preference.

edited 4th Apr '11 3:28:33 AM by EternalSeptember

Yo guys, perhaps, if we renamed The Libby to something more indicative, like Alpha Bitch, it could become even more healthy, more properly used, and more used altogether? People seem to remember what The Libby means quite well, but an indicative name never hurt anyone, especially when it can be as short as Alpha Bitch?

That's possible, but not likely. The Libby is already more popular than 99% of our other tropes. It's one of the best we can get, one of the Tropes Of Legend.

And even if there would be possible benefits of renaming it in the long term, there are certain disadventages in the short term. Maybe some of the few newcomers are confused by it now, but the thousands of experienced editors would be all confused by suddenly having a new name for the trope that they used for years.

According to the Wick page, the limit where tropes are so renowned that "screwing around with them is problematic" is around 51-299 wicks. This page is two levels later, in the highest tier, where the appropriate action is "Stand back and stare in fear and/or awe."

Then it would appear no change is in order from the perspective of the wiki. Unfortunate, as its working nature in no way changes the conceptual issues with the name, but if it's much too late to alter course, well, no great loss, either.

Even though I don't have any love for character trope names, I don't think a name has to tell you everything you need to know about the trope at first glance.

This name is very deeply entrenched in troper vocabulary; It has a lot more than high wicks.

That dosen't make it untouchable, but it's not causing any problems that are worth renaming it.

edited 4th Apr '11 2:00:00 PM by DrStarky

Put me in motion, drink the potion, use the lotion, drain the ocean, cause commotion, fake devotion, entertain a notion, be Nova Scotian