Soapbox-y description: Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys

The description, instead of being about the trope and perhaps a short analysis, is more or less a preachy soapbox on how wrong the trope is. Which isn't really relevant. A lot of it doesn't even seem fit for Useful Notes, since, as I said, it reads like a soapbox speech.

Seems fine. It is quite possible that the 18,054 people who were sent to the wiki to read the article were sent because somebody enjoyed the article.

edited 23rd Jul '11 11:14:56 AM by FastEddie

I don't see the problem with it. We have plenty of tropes that point out in their description when the trope is wrong or inaccurate.

edited 23rd Jul '11 11:27:46 AM by Ghilz

Yes, and briefly summarizing why is fine, but this is an essay about how wrong this trope is. It's unnecessary and says nothing about the trope.

OP has a point. It is a bit preachy.

I do think there's a lot of text (too much, in my opinion), but WOW that's a lot of inbounds. Maybe move some of the essay into Analysis?

That would not change the inbounds. They'd just go to a page without the content they expect (And you'd have to hope they guess which page we put it on). And since we can't hack other websites to fix their links...

That can be solved by adding an explicit link to the analysis page.

Yeah needs trimming, although I think we should keep a line or two in to explain that it isn't Truth in Television and it is a very recent trope. I'd cut the Real Life section too as natterbait.

edited 23rd Jul '11 3:08:04 PM by CrypticMirror

Why do we even have those? They're always either Natterbait or Flamebait.

tropes tend to turn up in Real Life and 90% of the real life sections are under control and no more nattery than the rest of the wiki. We just tend to see the ones that aren't under control in the TRS due to sample bias.

For example, this trope has a lot of problems with justifying edits and natter due to it being one that is massively present in fiction, but almost in stark contrast to real life. The few real life examples that could be tropable are much more complicated than most readers appreciate (I bet most readers are not experts in French Military-Political History). It has an insulting name (which is fine for fictional examples, but offensive when it comes to real life), and of course it is politically charged with certain key demographic actually pushing this trope as fact. It's kinda a perfect storm for natter and justification on both sides. Most tropes with real life sections don't have that though.

edited 23rd Jul '11 3:27:20 PM by CrypticMirror

This. TRS tends to see the bits of the wiki that are broken. If a Real Life section isn't broken, it doesn't come here.

I wonder if a rename might actually help this one (for once), it is a rather provocatively titled trope. It kinda almost invites a challenge as it is.

I normally hate renames and love quirky titles, but this one is a bit pugnacious which can't help but encourage natter and an edit beginning "actually..."

edited 23rd Jul '11 3:37:16 PM by CrypticMirror

And the Rename Hammer rears its head in the forum of nails.

Yeah. When I saw this thread I thought, "We have a Trope for the French surrendering all the time? That is going to piss off everyone who is French".

Maybe that's how it turned all preachy in the first place.

Not just people who are French, but also anyone aware of history and who disagrees with that certain political group who like to push this trope (the group we shall not name, we all know who they are). The trope, or at least the cataloguing of the trope, is fine. It is a trope that is used in fiction (I hate stories that use it, but that is by-the-by) so we do need to catalogue it. Just do we need to give it such an offensive title?

Maybe something blander like French Army Seen As Weak or something less confrontational? It makes it clear it is a perception and not a fact, and is neutral on the usage.

edited 23rd Jul '11 3:45:13 PM by CrypticMirror

The description is way too long, and should mention up front that this is a Discredited Trope — at least as soon as it mentions Acceptable Nationality Targets.

That said, I think the name is descriptive of the trope, and wimpifying the name might only make it seem more acceptable.

edited 23rd Jul '11 3:57:35 PM by Xtifr

Well, for starters, I zapped the RL section, as TVT policy guidelines make problematic RL sections subject to deleting. I've not the time to thin out the trope description, though.

I trimmed a lot of the lecture out of the description.

I don't think it needs a rename. It's no more offensive than Blondes Are Evil or Rape Is Love. I think you'd have to be pretty thick to think that that's what the website is suggesting.

I'm not sure how often this trope is actually used in a serious we-actually-believe this way. I see it generally used as more of a Running Gag than a serious belief Americans or Britons have. I'd avoid using terms like "conveniently forget" for just that reason—the trope is not always malicious.

Isn't this a stereotype trope? I thought we didn't put RL sections on those because there's not point?

Edit: oh good, it's gone. Also, why is there a "fan work" section? Shouldn't that be in the Web Original folder since it's an Abridged Series.

edited 23rd Jul '11 9:58:49 PM by Deboss

It might stand a bit more trimming. At the same time, a bit more information to indicate where the trope came from (my understanding was that quite a bit of it built up during the lead-in to the current war in Iraq, which the French government was opposed to), as well as something a bit more worthwhile to use as a counterargument than the fact that the French helped us over two hundred years ago (more recent examples of french badassery of course include being the Trope Namer for La Résistance during World War II; it might also be worth mentioning that France has been one of America's bigger allies in Afghanistan since that war first started).

Also, France training our military? I had never heard the claim before reading this article that the French had trained the Continental Army. Rather, credit to that is traditionally given to a Prussian officer, by the name of Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, credited not only with creating the first American military training drills, but also with being the Ur-Example of the American Drill Sergeant Nasty. Mind you, if France did help train the Continental troops, I'd be interested in reading about that, if anyone has a cite.

France was a staunch ally of the Americans during the revolution and it's very likely the war would have been lost without them. I don't know about the training thing, but it's worth noting that one man is unlikely to be able to train an entire army on his own. Hell, even if the people he trained went on to train others it'd be unlikely to be traceable (even if it WAS traceable) back to one guy. I'd assume that since the French were working so closely with the Americans it's likely that Americans did learn from the French, at least partially. But I'm getting into semantics here. Anyways, it's been stated on occasion that if there's one thing France does, it's war: They have the largest standing army in the EU, and the third largest in NATO, presumably so if Zombie Hitler comes back they'll be ready.

Anyways, I think this stereotype is blatantly untrue enough that it's worth noting in the description.

edited 13th Aug '11 10:49:00 AM by savage

Bump, Can we please cut that bullet list in the middle?