Cleaning up the Laconic Wiki

Hm, going down my list, Laconic.You Fail Gun Safety Forever might be bad. I think I just copied it over from somewhere else. I'll decap and shorten it.

Laconic.Juggling Loaded Guns was mostly a pothole definition, should I remove them?

I think Laconic.Splash Damage is good, if two sentences.

Laconic.Orion Drive is as blunt as I can make it, but I'm worried about misinterpretations.

Someone brought up that the Laconics of some of the Artistic License tropes consist of an all caps X DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY running gag. Should these all be removed?

They should certainly at least be changed to normal capitalization, but I'd say they're functional, barely.

I originally had a different one. When it got changed (I keep the pages I've launched Laconics on my watchlist) I pm'd the troper responsible. I don't know if they were the one who started it or what. Did you think mine was better?

I think yours is much better. I changed it back.

Simply Allcapping X DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY! doesn't really say what the trope is.

edited 28th Jul '11 5:44:53 PM by Madrugada

How do people feel about links? I'm strongly of the view that they shouldn't be used in place of text. That is, a laconic should capture the trope by itself and the reader should not be required to go off to one or more other pages for it to make sense.

For example, Fight Off the Kryptonite:

This can't be read as a simple text description of the trope. Would forbidding that kind of thing make sense as a rule? (Not suggesting a rule against all potholes, just a rule against links-as-text-replacement.)

edited 30th Jul '11 12:10:55 AM by Camacan

If you cant read it without potholes then it shouldnt be like that. (Potholes are just for added effect and reference.

Again, I'd rather not see it as a hard-and fast rule, my personal feeling is that, even more than the main pages, you should not have to follow potholes to understand. If it becomes possible to use the Laconics as mouseover text, they must be standalone.

If the mouse-over text has a character limit, is there any kind of mark-up we can use on longer laconic pages to cause the tool-tip to pull a shortened version?

Something like:

Laconic Page

Long winded but clear laconic entry.

[[Mouseover: Short, less clear, but gets close enough laconic entry]].

edited 8th Aug '11 12:59:38 PM by Meeble

I have two questions. 1. What should be done about tropes that are Exactly What It Says on the Tin? Should we just restate the title? 2. If a sentence in the Main sums up the trope very well, can we just put that on Laconic?

1. Example? 2. Yes.

"Exactly What It Says on the Tin" is not a good Laconic, if that's what you're asking.

I understand that Exactly What It Says on the Tin is a pointless laconic; I actually changed one of those. The kind of trope I'm thinking of is Dangerous 16th Birthday. The Laconic is "not-so-sweet sixteen," which is less clear than just the title.

Changed it to "Turning sixteen is a milestone. In these cases, it puts the character in danger."

Ptitles are done. All of them. Except the Everythings X snowclones, since that whole group is under TRS. Here are the ones I fixed:

• Laconic/.hack
• An Offer You Can't Refuse
• Laconic/And That's Terrible (just added one word)
• Attention Deficit...Ooh, Shiny!
• Buffistas.org
• Can't Argue With Elves
• Chekhov's Boomerang
• Couldn't Find A Pen
• Does This Make Me Look Fat?
• Does This Remind You Of Anything?
• Don't Explain the Joke
• Don't Shoot The Message
• E.T. Gave Us Wi-Fi
• Even The Rats Won't Touch It
• Gaia's Vengence
• Genius: The Transgression
• He Didn't Make It
• He's A Friend
• Hey, It's That Guy!
• Honest John's Dealership
• I Ate What?
• If I Can't Have You
• If You're So Evil, Eat This Kitten
• Is That What They're Calling It Now?
• It's All About Me
• It's Been Done
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!
• It's Short, So It Sucks
• Let's Fight Like Gentlemen
• Mr. Exposition
• Name's The Same
• Noblewoman's Laugh
• Orphan's Ordeal
• Sammy's Glass Eye (under TRS right now, so might get changed again later)
• Schrodinger's Butterfly
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!
• Screw The Money, I Have Rules!
• Screw The Rules, I Have A Nuke!
• Screw the Rules, I Have Plot
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right
• Screw The War, We're Partying
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here
• Show, Don't Tell
• So Beautiful It's A Curse
• So Okay It's Average
• Sorry That I'm Dying
• Spell My Name With A ___
• That's All, Folks!
• That's What She Said
• The Name Is Bond, James Bond
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything
• They Just Didnt Care
• We Haven't Learned Anything Yet
• What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made On Drugs?
• What Do You Mean, It's For Kids?
• What Do You Mean, It's Not For Kids?
• Will They or Won't They?
• You're Not My Father

Also had to add or modify a few others.

• Imported Alien Phlebotinum
• Inner Monologue
• Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game
• New World of Darkness
• Older Than They Think
• Old World of Darkness
• So Unfunny, It's Funny

There's also this one. I just could not think of anything better, but it needs something.

• Have You Told Anyone Else?

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go sleep for a week.

edited 3rd Sep '11 11:18:26 AM by Discar

I hope that "it has to be standalone" does not become a FE-whimmy rule to forbid all trope links in a Laconic. Cases like the above ("overcoming kryptonite factor with heroic willpower") are perfectly understandable with the links to the tropes in place, and that makes the laconic pretty laconic, not to mention concise and to the point. I mean, really people, we are an hypermedia resource.

It needs to be clear without forcing a wikiwalk. If the tropes used in the laconic are all Exactly What It Says on the Tin, it's ok.

Yeah, there's a difference between:

"A form of Theme Naming based on flowers."

And:

"A Xanatos Gambit crossed with a Spanish Prisoner."

The first isn't really a big deal. The second makes you go on a wikiwalk to understand the trope.

That's why I said "cases like the above", yeah. They are pretty obvious. I'm not asking to have "A Motor Mouth Lightning Bruiser Xanatos Speed Chesses a Lysistrata Gambit" for a laconical. I'm just fearing that... a certain someone, is gonna declare a war on potholes because of that.

EDIT: meh, try as I might I can't get where does the "i" in Lysistrata go right at first try...

edited 11th Sep '11 11:04:13 PM by SilentReverence

Like Shima points out, our best trope names read like plain English in a sentence anyway so it's a non-issue there.

When the name isn't that good, cases where plain English equivalents are not practical are quite rare in practice. Potholing is inappropriate for laconics — it's a "subtext" that the reader might or might not access.

edited 11th Oct '11 3:23:52 AM by Camacan