Fixing zero context examples

I always leave an edit reason, asking that people add content where they can, so even people looking at "recent edits" know about it.

It was The Big Bang Theory Character Page. Can you imagine what that looks like in the edit history without an edit reason? I plan on combing over the page and filling it in, so don't worry about editing it out.

I guess when it comes to certain tropes I personally don't see the pressing need for explaining the use of a trope, mostly for something fairly self-explanatory like Statuesque Stunner (she's tall!) or Raven Hair, Ivory Skin (he's white and has dark hair). It's those more complicated tropes that certainly need more description like Manic Pixie Dream Girl or Hypercompetent Sidekick.

Statuesque Stunner is more than "a woman is tall", though. They need to be more attractive In-Universe because of that. Same for Raven Hair, Ivory Skin too.

I'd like to say that character sheets are among the worst offenders. Not only do people add tropes without context, they often delete the mark-up without adding context when it's commented out. (It happened multiple times on Characters.Dexter.) Then people think it's fine if the character pages are just a list of contextless tropes and start new pages that look just like that.

I'm with Septimus. There is often more in a trope than is obvious from the name. Almost no trope name is self-explanatory.

With beauty and attraction tropes, it's better to list how other characters react to said beauty and describe the character a bit.

ETA: BTW, KJ Mackley, I just saw the history of Characters.The Big Bang Theory and what you did can actually result in ban from editing. Knowing that you did it in good faith makes it less bad, but you had better fix the page as soon as possible.

edited 17th Nov '13 10:55:51 AM by XFllo

I have faith that TV Tropes will launch a proper investigation to understand what happened, I have had like one post thumped in my entire history here. From my perspective this instance was either a vandal or a troper with a skewed sense of formatting.

Just a last note, for something like Statuesque Stunner I have seen examples that were technically not zero context but still just boiled down to "tall and attractive." That's why I have a different opinion of the danger of Zero Context Examples, cause I don't think reiterating the definition of the trope changes anything and even just placing a name next to a trope allows the reader to associate the two together without needing a paragraph of information. If they know what the trope is that association is much simpler to make.

That's just my feelings, I'm not opposed to the campaign in principle, just not something I personally will put in the effort to mass edit.

edited 17th Nov '13 8:10:13 PM by KJMackley

See ask the tropers. It's already been settled.

IMO saying a character "is attractive/hot/sexy/beautiful" without anything from the respective work to back it up is an opinion. If the character is attractive the then the work should portray them as such. That means The Beautiful Tropes, Attraction Tropes, Fanservice Tropes or making them a Love Interest.

Also, "tall"? This is fiction, saying a character is tall means a pretty broad range.

So, if you come across entries that are just "tall and attractive" feel free to remove those.

Yeah, the character pages are so plagued by this issue that I know of at least one that had to be locked (for Teen Wolf).

That page was locked because of a ban evader who kept adding shoehorned and Zero Context examples.

The Zero Context Example page does link to the Special Efforts thread.

Context doesn't need a paragraph of information, just a sentence or two from the story explaining how it fits the trope. Statuesque Stunner needs to be taller than most men in her setting. Statuesque Stunner and Raven Hair, Ivory Skin are Attraction Tropes so the character needs to be considered attractive in-universe, meaning we're told that this is the case by another character or the narrator.

I managed to add context to most of the items on Characters.Repo The Genetic Opera, but there were a few I couldn't manage.

edited 18th Nov '13 3:44:18 PM by Terrie

I commented out the zces on the following. If you're familiar with them, please add context:

Silent House
The Tenant
Characters.Criminal Minds I got most of these, but there's still several, especially for the various UNSU Bs.

edited 21st Nov '13 8:06:06 AM by Terrie

I recently came across the Visible Sigh page which is almost nothing but zero context examples. As I told Shimaspawn, usually when I come across such pages, I add context to them and sort them out. But I'm not familiar with most of the works listed on the page. So I figured I'd leave it here for anyone who might know enough about them to fix it.

Insane Equals Violent — I find the lack of context disturbing.

^note 

• Andrea Cavalcanti/Benedetto in Gankutsuou... (has context)
  • Also, The Count.
• Akito of Fruits Basket.
  • Also, Ren.
• A few characters in Code Geass. Namely Rolo, V.V., and Mao.
• Yuno Gasai of Mirai Nikki. But there's many others too considering how most of the cast is almost as Ax-Crazy.
• Haguro Dou of Wolf Guy Wolfen Crest.
• Katsuragi of Sakura Gari.
• Krad of DN Angel.
• Hansel and Gretel of Black Lagoon.
• Bryan Hawk from Hajime No Ippo.
• Vision Of Escaflowne: Dilandau. BURN BURN BURN!!!
• Clair Leonelli of Heat Guy J

edited 26th Nov '13 4:43:06 AM by ShanghaiSlave

Some pages that need some help, after I commented out the ones I couldn't fix:

Lipstick Lesbian
Twisted Echo Cut
Mega Twintails
Light Feminine and Dark Feminine

Lipstick Lesbian's RL section, on the other hand, is going to be going away under No Real Life Examples, Please!, so don't worry about that.

I commented it out just for consistency, but I'll be happy to see it go.

There's a type of entry that's been bugging me. It usually goes:

• Work:
  • Example -good description
  • Example -ZCE
  • Example -ZCE

So the ZC Es need to be filled out or commented out. But when they're commented out, should the formatting be:

• Work:
  • Example -good description

or

• Work: Example -good description.

I always use the latter, as that is the correct example indentation for what's visible. I leave the commented out examples double-bulleted, though.

I did some cleanup on Housewife, though I'm not familiar with some of the examples, or am unsure of how to best describe them.

Also The Hero is awful. Almost all ZC Es. I'm reluctant to just comment out the bad examples, because I'm not sure it will leave much behind.

I did some work on the anime section. You were right; most of it was ZCE.

Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go! needs its Zero-Context Examples commented out.

Done on the main page and character sheet.

How to Train Your Dragon, Detentionaire, Kaijudo, Kid vs. Kat, Rosario To Kiva, The Dragon and the Bow and The Dragon and the Bow might use some commenting-out. I am not up for that now.

edited 13th Dec '13 5:05:26 AM by SeptimusHeap

As I've noticed, Zoophobia and Yenny both have a lot of Zero Context Examples, and the former's Character page is just as bad in that regard. May I put forward a motion that context be added to as many examples on all three pages as possible?

Given that I am not familiar with either work, I'll suggest to comment out the bad examples and put the note cited in the thread header at the top of the page.