The growing problem of inscrutable titles and text

Look what I found:

I wonder how many of our inbounds are like that? I mean, some sort of... Outside context entry pimps... or something... Slyly slipping it into conversation and then other people going "lol wut, forced meme is forced"? The Analyzing Inbounds red link beckons...

I like this tool. I like it very much.

edited 15th Aug '11 5:37:51 PM by TripleElation

Well, looking at The Libby with that tool turns up a metric ton of different webcomic sites, as well as quite a few manga and anime sites. Lots of links from Facebook too (which seem to pretty varied). Fairly eclectic mix among the rest of the links also.

This gives us some idea of where the term is popular. Webcomics I can understand, since my experience tells me a lot of webcomic artists and fans think highly of us. Anime and manga is anyone's guess, but who knows.

Not a lot we could do about that. I don't think that a clearer name is going to stop people doing that sort of linking, if they think it makes them look superior or some such thing.

edited 15th Aug '11 5:46:45 PM by TotemicHero

The Libby type is really big in High School Anime s, where it is often used with The Ojou.

edited 15th Aug '11 5:48:51 PM by Raso

<shrugs> I don't really follow any manga or anime right now, and haven't really seen/read that much in the past. I'm hardly the expert.

Hm. So maybe it's a difference between "lol wut" and "I completely understand what you are saying, and it is stupid". Maybe it doesn't behave like that. Lots of exploration left to do, there.

Okay. What makes for a good inbound?

Not misusing the trope - that's a given. What else? Using the name rather than pointing at us using it? Other people understanding what the person using it was on about, or at least not being bewildered?

What makes for a good collection of inbound links overall? Largeness, and what else? Diversity? If a disproportional amount of the inbounds for a Universal Trope are coming from the same fandom/medium, that bears investigation.

edited 15th Aug '11 6:35:34 PM by TripleElation

Given the nature of inbound links, they'll always be "pointing to us using it"; if they weren't, it wouldn't have been recorded as an inbound link. So looking at that won't tell us much.

I don't think "All coming from the same fandom" is a cause for concern in itself; however, it could correlate with misuse. For example, if all of the inbounds for Dodongo Dislikes Smoke came from Zelda fansites, it would warrant investigating whether it's being linked as a reference to the meme instead of the actual trope.

edited 15th Aug '11 7:18:59 PM by troacctid

1. I meant "Captain example is an Insert Trope Here [link]" (good) vs. "I was browsing TV Tropes the other day and they call this sort of character an Insert Trope Here [link]" (less good).

2. Why don't you think it's a cause for concern? Suppose we find out that 90% of the inbounds for Gainax Ending are coming fron Anime forums?..

edited 15th Aug '11 10:39:24 PM by TripleElation

My experience with Web Comics on the wiki has been almost entirely positive.

How about adding a link to the referral history tool next to where the "get usage counts" button in the TRS is?

First, I have a question/suggestion: is it neccessary to keep (for example) Kuudere as a separate example-less page from Sugar-and-Ice Personality? Af far as I can say, the sensible solution would be making the first a redirect for the second — like it was done for Nakama and Yangire.
Cute and Psycho (which Yangire is a redirect to) page says, "In some anime fandoms this character is referred to as a yangire, an informal fanspeak term." — the same is true for Kuudere.
So I propose making "fan-speak" pages into redirects for corresponding tropes — Kuudere, Dojikko, I'm sure there are others.

Second, continuing from previous point, I'd say that using Japanese trope names is completely acceptable in articles and trope examples of Japanese works. Is that right?

And third, I ask to remove custom naming from certain tropes — such as "bishoujo" and "yuri" into "bishoujo genre" and "yuri genre" — as it breaks things when those tropes are used in sentences (among other things), such as "Yuri couples get them too" turning into "Yuri genre couples...".
If a trope name really needs to be changed and redirecting will not cut it (I read a bit of discussion about Bishoujo split/change), then wicks should be changed manually.

edited 19th Oct '11 6:50:21 AM by OneMore

Ok, I'm a complete newb so I'm going to try to summarize what seems to me to be the problem.

This is basically about non-English titles being unclear as to what they mean/are and that this breaks the "be clear" guidline, right? But that titles that are in English, but just as obscure to the average person are Ok?

For example: Nakama is not clear, but Chekhov's Gun is? Tsundere isn't, but Applied Phlebotinum is?

To whom is it clear? Us, or "the average person"? I can tell you right now, if I randomly asked a person on the street or in a store what any of those are, 9 out of 10 would probably not know. So who is this wiki for? People interested in the mechanics and intricacies of fiction and their commonly used ideas and tools? Or for the "average" person that doesn't know anything about that and doesn't have much interest?

My impression is that maybe we're all "too far into the trees to see the forest." We're too close to subject to make objective evaluations. Let's face it, if you're post/arguing/editing on a wiki, you're probably NOT the "average person."

Maybe we should all take a step back, relax, and talk to more people outside of this wiki, outside of any fandom. The kind of people that ask, "What's a trope," when you tell them about this site.

For me, I always thought T Vtropes was there as resource and database. A place that could teach me a little something I didn't know, in a humorous and witty way.

Just my thoughts.

edited 22nd Oct '11 5:05:45 PM by Uldihaa

We're still all about witty info. Tsundere and Nakama are not witty, they're just Japanese.

Chekhov's Gun is a preexisting term for the trope in the language the wiki is written in.

Nakama is a term in a language the wiki's readers aren't expected to know that means something other than the trope it was assigned to.

So yes, the former is a better title, for several reasons.

edited 22nd Oct '11 5:21:07 PM by INUH

This is a large part of what the debate was centered over.

Apparently (and unfortunately) there isn't really any way to poll this. No one had posted any links to off-wiki opinions about this, but I guess the bias is too large to create concrete evidence.

That's the impression I get, anyways.