Neutralizing: Useful Notes.Canada

The page, as it currently stands, is vastly different from many, many of the other Useful Notes for other countries. Compare UsefulNotes.Britain, or UsefulNotes.Germany. It currently uses first person plural to describe itself. The nationalism, while fairly harmless, is completely at odds with all of the other country pages. Do we approve of the tone, which emphasizes identity and culture? Or would we rather it bit drier, in that sense? No matter what, I definitely think third person is needed and some nationalism be adjusted. It also lists tropes about the country, and I don't think I've seen any other page do so. Is that appropriate for a Useful Notes?

Didn't want to touch it without drawing in a discussion to avoid raising some ire.

ETA: Stop hating me, mark up. I only want to make you happy.

edited 3rd Aug '11 11:40:03 PM by helterskelter

I agree with making it more neutral and shifting it to the third person. First person automatically sounds subjective — why would anyone write a Useful Notes page like that?

The list of tropes is kind of ridiculous, but you could argue that (1) this is no different from having tropes for "Real Life" all over the wiki, and (2) why not? TV Tropes isn't Wikipedia. In fact, Useful Notes pages without tropes (listed or potholed) would be pretty redundant next to the Wikipedia pages on the same topics.

But Useful Notes isn't a Real Life section.

That's not exactly the point they were making. A Useful Notes page should provide insight into Real Life topics and how they pertain to tropes. A trope page might actually help with that. Even fixing the general tone of the article, so much of that is oversimplifying and YMMV when compared to a country. Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other is used so awfully I want to burn the whole page with fire. Almost all of the tropes seem to be about how other countries are wrong to underestimate Canada and how Canada is always helping other people out and how Canada/some other country don't really dislike each other.

I'm not sure what to make of it. Almost all of that seems like it would be better suited to a far less nationalistic paragraph. Perhaps tropes could be a model, in that sense? Try to apply what tropes you can to a country in thought, and build an article around what could be listed about it.

edited 5th Aug '11 9:37:35 AM by helterskelter

Besides, shouldn't we have something to crosswick real-life examples to?

No, we do not need to make pages just to allow Real Life examples to be crosswicked.

As I also said on the discussion page, I'd love to read a TV Tropes article on the Canadian provinces (and smaller cities?) to rival that on the USA states. Not knowing enough about it myself I can't write it but I'd love someone to get it going.

I agree with this topic in general, the page is weird and not like other country Useful Notes.

In an effort to keep improvement from stagnating, I'm going to start cleaning it up.

The problem is still here. Not as strongly, but still here.

edited 6th Oct '11 7:37:06 PM by Chytus

But when a page is already there, it would still make a convenient crosswicking target.

I'd like to know whether to pull the tropes or not. I would like to keep them, and I like the idea behind them, but most of them are up to a *lot* of debate, considering Canada is not a fictional country. That said, I don't think I'll be discerning with my editing, and I'll remove what doesn't seem objectively applicable.

As for the description, I'm a bit more leery of what to cut. I'll do my best to trim away the nationalism, but certain things I think are actually useful to understand with tropes, like Canadian in-fighting amongst provinces. I suppose it could be put in more technical terms, but I don't feel like making it a dry history recitation is what a Useful Notes page for TV Tropes needs.

ETA: I'm not sure how to handle some of it, so I'm going to sandbox it. Here.

edited 11th Oct '11 10:17:47 PM by helterskelter

Alright, I cleaned up the sandbox. The only part that I'm not really sure how to fix is the Crowning Moment Of Awesome paragraph—much of it is of historical and cultural importance to Canada, but...well, you can see the massive nationalist twist to it.

How does it look now? Too much neutering, or more neutering needed?

edited 11th Oct '11 10:33:17 PM by helterskelter

There is still a prevalent problem with the Useful Notes. I may be wrong but there is still a bit of Natter going on, especially in regards to the achievements of Canada. Maybe it's because it looks like a great deal of using first person terms, but I just wanted to note.

If we want something more along the lines of the awesomely and frightenly thorough British useful notes, I would love to start providing them. Province/Territory pages would be simple to start, keeping the military on their own page, and including a sports one (more about the CFL and La Crosse, things that are uniquely Canadian; not just hockey).

The problem being that, while quite familiar with Canada, I'm a selective Luddite, and HTML-type things (as well as figuring out how to create/sub-divide pages) I choose to leave beyond my abilities. If anyone else wants to set up those provincial pages, I will fill them out.

Canada is the best country in the world so the page should have nothing but endless praise for the successful financial socialist paradise.

Okay, it's not the best country on Earth but Canadians are stereotypically uber patriots, if the useful notes reflect that they've done their job.

I zapped the "we, us" stuff.

Bumping—the sandbox I made is still there. The only thing I didn't change is the second paragraph, since I'm not sure what to do with it.

edited 7th Jan '12 1:21:18 PM by helterskelter

Alright, well, I cleaned it up. Calling for lock.