Delete: Self Demonstrating Article

Most examples of this are a mix of unfunny injokes and poor writing. Canada Eh doesn't need so many "eh"s- it just clutters up the page. Did You Actually Believe...? is, for some reason, composed of one man talking to himself. Talks Like a Simile, as you can guess, has way too many similes. At best they're unprofessional, childish, and anoying, and at worst (which is most of them) they get in the way of describing the trope and its examples. Character pages especially don't need to be written in the style of their character, but it looks like that's already being handled.

We should delete the pages and fix their examples.

I think rather than outright deleting those pages, it would be a better idea to move them to the Self-Demonstrating namespace and then work on having more normal trope pages for each one on the main namespace.

I would look to something like the normal Brian Blessed page and the self demonstrating one for an example of how to go about doing something like that. In any event, I think this may be grounds for a thread in the special efforts forum, actually.

edited 13th Aug '11 2:17:18 PM by LouieW

While I agree that some of the examples of Self-Demonstrating Article need fixed (either because they have no business being self-demonstrating in the first place, or they need toned down because they reach the level of Overused Running Gag), I am vehemently against nuking one of the Tropes Of Legend pages which has been running effectively for years with only minimal complaints.

Dealing with them on a case-by-case basis, I could get behind. Arbitrarily axing the entire category? No.

I absolutely disagree. While some of the self-demonstrating articles could be fixed/done better, the index itself is needed and I am a huge fan of self-demonstrating articles in general.

I disagree with nuking this too. Self-demonstration can be good for certain articles, it could save some explaining. Some fixing might be due, though.

If we put self-demonstrating articles in a Self-Demonstrating namespace, then the Self-Demonstrating page could be an auto-index.

The only good Self-Demonstrating article I've seen is Dinosaur Comics.

Which itself was brought up on TRS...

I love me a Self-Demonstrating Article, personally. Against it.

edited 14th Aug '11 1:51:32 AM by Aldheim

I'm against bad ones. Bad ones are ones that are difficult to understand if you don't get the joke. So, I've got no issue if someone wants to rewrite them.

I'd go with (as I think someone already sorta said) putting the current version of these articles in their own pages under the Self-Demonstrating namespace and rewriting the Main pages. That way, both parties here are satisfied.

So what will you do with Orwellian Editor? It's impossible to make a non self-demonstrating article for obvious reasons.

How is it impossible to make a non-self-demonstrating article for Orwellian Editor? The one we have now isn't Self-Demonstrating, and it shouldn't be on that index.

Orwellian editor isn't "editor who removed something". It's "editor who attempts to remove any mention of something, then tries to deny it ever existed because there's no record of it."

The only way to even come close to making it a self-demonstrating article would be to blank the edit history after every edit.

edited 14th Aug '11 9:08:43 AM by Madrugada

I think that was an attempt at snark.

Darth Wiki has a whole list of articles that will never be self-demonstrating. But that's beside the point.

I think we have a few good self-demonstrating articles, and several bad ones. The bad ones should be discussed, but I oppose removing them all. Sometimes we have self-demonstrating ones that are worth keeping, but not as the main article (like SelfDemonstrating.Finnegans Wake). Some (like Book Ends) are subtle enough that the self-demonstrating aspect is no big deal.

There are some good Self-Demonstrating articles out there. Brooklyn Rage, for example, is largely readable, but for some vernacular and the replacing of "the" with "da."

One more against. There's no reason to ax an entire index and its contents just because you don't like them. If some are bad, then move them to the Self Demonstrating namespace and/or rewrite them. Nuking the whole thing is a waste.

Few people are talking about deleting. If the Self-demonstration is getting in the way of the trope description (You No Take Candle used to be like that), move it to the Self-Demonstrating namespace. Otherwise, leave it.

My problem is the misuse on the index. It's written as though it's a self demonstrating title, which not only should apply to This Trope Name References Itself, it also means things are being listed that are not self demonstrating articles, just to have with with the title.

Then clean up the index. If a page isn't self-demonstrating (either in the description or in the section headers), it shouldn't be on there. No big deal.

Actually, what I mean is I think we should drop trying to do the index items that way, as it's being self demonstrating with the titles, not the article.

How the heck did Die Sendung Mit Der Maus get on there?