Trope Description Improvement Drive

The second to fifth paragraphs?

Yes, that seems good.

Yeah, axing them would do the description good.

I actually think The Pampas is a Useful Notes page. If the author was thinking about a trope, s/he forgot to describe it.

edited 25th Oct '14 4:42:02 AM by LordGro

Actually, the page does describe a trope - a setting trope - with the 6th paragraph:

In fiction, the pampas are a wild and lawless territory, populated by brave Gauchos, skillfull and honourable riders and cattle-herders; or fearsome banditos, malevos (depending on the author) and murderous Indians. This perhaps was partly Truth in Television in the past, but today the pampas are mostly vast farmlands owned by the argentine oligarchy, highly man-modified, and interrupted by huge cities like Buenos Aires and Rosario, and medium towns like Paraná and La Plata in Argentina. Uruguay, on the other hand, is entirelly part of this region, with many characteristics (geographical and cultural, economical and historical) shared with Argentina.

This trope is for sure Older Than Radio, and most probably Older Than Steam, as the origins of the name date from the Incaic empire, and it was (sort of) present in the conquest chronicles (like the works of Ulrich Schmidl) and early poetry. As a side note, in many early works, as the Facundo, "the pampas" were more generically called "el desierto" (The Desert). But "pampas" is more widely recognized as the Argentine "desert" -not in the sandy, hot and dry meaning, but the not-a-fucking-soul one-, as even one province ^note according to many people the most depressive place in the world is called "La Pampa".

This trope is very, very common in the Argentine Literature, and shared by many works depicting the South Cone countries. Compare to The Savage South; contrasts with Latin Land and the Mayincatec conceptions of Latin America and misconceptions like The Capital of Brazil Is Buenos Aires.

You could have quoted only the first senctence:

This is the only actual trope description we get. But a look into the example section reveals that almost all of them are only "[work] is set in the Pampas" or "the Pampas are seen in [work]", without any hint of how the Pampas are portrayed. There are only two examples that actually refer to the Pampas as a trope (of which one is a "deconstruction" to boot).

Which is not sufficient to warrant a trope page of its own by our "at least three examples" rule. So it's either back to YKTTW, or make it a Useful Notes page.

I think sending it back to YKTTW is the best option; it looks like it does exist as a trope and we just need examples.

Problem/Question 1: Is Eurovision Song Contest supposed to be in the Main namespace? Is it a trope, or a Useful Notes page, or a series...?

Problem/Question 2: The page doesn't actually say what the Eurovision Song Contest is until the fifth paragraph. After loading the page, I literally had to scroll to see the part that actually explains what the hell the article is about. Not to mention, it takes that paragraph only two sentences to get the point across, more or less.

Who Wears Short Shorts seems to be a trope that explicitly and only consists of an article of clothing. Given that I've recently seen a few examples of Tropers emphatically arguing that "an article of clothing" cannot possibly be a trope in and of itself, it seems that either this trope description needs elaboration or the page needs to go away.

Am I mistaken?

Also, due to the above, the page is full of Zero-Context Examples, but that's a problem for another thread.

Sounds a bit People Sit On Chairs to me.

My thoughts exactly.

I mean, as far as I get this trope, it's basically "this character wears short shorts".

Precisely. So... should it be cutlisted? It currently is wicked from 518 articles, which seems kind of like a lot. But then, if it's Not A Trope, it's Not a Trope.

Short shorts (or any of the unusual clothing tropes, really) is more about the character types that wear them, because they aren't a normal part of the average person's wardrobe, male or female. Think of it like the difference between People Sit On Chairs and someone who sitting on their Cool Chair- one is meaningless, another is a prop reflecting the character.

Have a new one for ya'll to work on, too:

Knockback- written as an exclusively video game trope, when it pops up all genres(especially any genre with Wire Fu, magic, or Psychic Powers), used in the exact same way, and its subtropes (Blown Across the Room, Punched Across the Room)are appropriately written as universal tropes.

edited 28th Oct '14 7:38:48 AM by Scorpion451

Take a look at Who Wears Short Shorts and tell me that has anything to do with the characters that wear them. And if you manage that, take a look at the example list and do it again.

Would Trope Repair Shop be appropriate for Who Wears Short Shorts?

Re: Eurovision Song Contest: Yeah, needs namespacing. I would probably move the fifth and sixth paragraphs ("The format of the show has changed over the years...." and "Songs must be original, no more than 3 minutes long....") to before the third. ("The contest has run since 1956 and....")

Oh God, I really do not want to go around fixing wicks for that monster... Would this be appropriate for a STP or something?

Might want to add it to the Appearance Cleanup queue, here.

I assume you were referring to Who Wears Short Shorts—done. :D

I want to nominate Instant-Win Condition. The more I read it, the less sense it makes. The Example As Thesis introduces all kinds of irrelevancies that masquerade as part of the trope. I think it could be clarified. A lot.

Could we possibly have a non-Self-Demonstrating version of Big Brother Is Watching? The current version is so thoroughly Self-Demonstrating that it's not clear what defines the trope. The core concept is pretty obvious, but any finer points are completely lost.

Going Through the Motions: the first three pragraphs do not explain what the trope actually is- permision to fix?

Richard Nixon: What's the point of such a lengthy description of Nixon's political career? That's not why people come here. If people want to read about that on the Internet, they go to Wikipedia.

I think that without using citations, writing about such a controversial topic at length is a bad idea. In my opinion, the page should only give a brief, non-controversial summary of Nixon's political career and list his appearances in fiction.

I Read It for the Articles seems excessively focused on the origins of the trope.

Yeah, that paragraph can go.