Fixing zero context examples

I can get behind sending Wacky Guy to TRS.

Most of Fletcher Apts is made of zero context examples. Should they all be commented out, or is there ground for cutting what little content is there?

I think the rule is that if a page has three tropes (with good context) listed, it is ok. That page has some passable examples, so I think it's ok for it to stay.

I'll comment it out.

Literature/Villette is commented out.

Akiko Morishima has lots of ZCE. Anyone want to clean it up, pretty please?

I've done a ZCE cleanup over on the Gundam SEED Destiny character sheet two days ago. Now I'm going to do the same thing on the Gundam SEED character sheet.

edited 14th Sep '17 10:30:53 AM by gjjones

Plucky Girl needs lots of work done on it. Quite a few examples were just "young/old/male version of this trope".

FanFic.The Changeling has nothing but ZCE entries. Should it be cut as a stub, or can we expand upon it?

I don't know if this has been noted, but Break Up Song is mostly made up of ZCE's. It's essentially just a list of various types of break-up songs. Maybe there are only so many explain to say "This song is about a break-up", but still. Grief Song, Anti-Love Song, and Silly Love Songs have fewer ZCE's.

The organization of American Accents is so terrible that it's difficult to go through everything and comment out all of the ZC Es. I may have missed quite a few.

Nearly every example in The Church has no context.

I mean, what can you even say with that trope except "This is an organized religious group from this work?" How do you play with that without it falling into either Saintly Church or Corrupt Church?

Sendokai Champions is almost entirely ZCEs.

That is a good point. Perhaps describing what it does in the plot and its role in the setting. Perhaps its theology.....Yeah, the description is pretty bare-boned.

x2 Oh god that was painful to look at.

The decrisption is (mostly) decent, at least. It'd be a shame to have to cut the page.

User AuraGuardian seems to be having trouble adding proper context to an entry in Characters.Overwatch Junkensteins Revenge. Here's how the entry reads now:

• Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge: Either what he is or is trying to become, indicated by his selection quote (which one is unclear).

WHAT is he? WHAT is he trying to become? What is the knowledge he has or is trying to gain? Why is it forbidden? How did he / is he trying to get it? Referring me to a quote isn't context. Sentence fragments aren't context. None of this is context. Where's the context?

>> WHAT is he? WHAT is he trying to become?

The trope name should make this abundantly clear.

>> What is the knowledge he has or is trying to gain? Why is it forbidden? How did he / is he trying to get it?

This is for a bonus mode in a game that is in turn a modifier for a bonus mode. Lore is scarce. It's forbidden because the Narrator says it is. See below for the quote, which is all the evidence.

>> Referring me to a quote isn't context.

The character quote, which you did NOT paste (for reference, it is "An outcast monk, seeking forbidden knowledge." and just a couple lines above where the trope would be in his entry) outright names him as such, and is already pasted in the link

>> Sentence fragments aren't context. None of this is context. Where's the context? Plenty of accepted examples elsewhere simply refer to a quote. This particular trope is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and the quote says he seeks the primary qualification of this trope.

From the Zero-Context Examples page:

There are also a few varieties that can be sufficient explanation in rare cases, but are considered bad style just the same:

"[Trope]: [short line of dialogue]" (Quoting dialogue usually only helps those who've already seen the work; it's meaningless to everyone else.)

This refers to the dialogue (rather quoting it), and it also expounds, thus doing better than the sufficient-but-bad-style. 100% of the evidence is the Narrator saying as much plus the implications of the same. 100% of the evidence is there.

_________________

The fragment can easily be fixed, but it being a fragment does NOT disqualify it from being context.

edited 12th Oct '17 11:53:49 AM by AuraGuardian

No, it's definitely a terribly-written example that perfectly exemplifies a ZCE.

"The trope name should make this abundantly clear" is NEVER a good excuse for making something a Zero Context Example. In fact, it's against wiki rules to just have the trope title there without going into detail why it applies to the character.

"The trope name should make this abundantly clear" is NEVER a good excuse for making something a Zero-Context Example.

I was specifically answering "WHAT is he? WHAT is he trying to become?" with that. And nothing else. The trope is something, and that is what he either is or is trying to become. EDIT: (as in, it would be redundant, since the question is about text listed under said trope)

The entire characterization is some banter from him in-game and what the Narrator says about him. Would

• Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge: He either is this or is trying to become this, judging by the selection quote. Whether he has achieved this yet is not known.

work better, even though the quote just given is directly above, the first thing people see on opening the folder?

(That is, in all actuality, all of the context - aside from a skin of dubious canonicity. It's for a bonus mode that is in turn for a bonus mode; most of the characters have very little information about them)

edited 12th Oct '17 4:25:12 PM by AuraGuardian

AuraGuardian, your example violates multiple wiki policies, not just context rules, and your arguments suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of what context is. Moreover, from what I can tell, your example is shoehorned, and Not An Example of the trope at all.

The line, "Whether he has achieved this yet is not known" violates wiki policy because examples must be written in a generic time frame. See Examples Are Not Recent.

The clause, "judging by X" is effectively argument, and Examples Are Not Arguable. An objective trope, such as Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge is, is either unambiguously present or unambiguously not. There is no middle ground.

More to the point, sayiing things like "X is this trope", which is what your example and quote amount to, is Zero Context by definition. That means we may not argue the point; either we accept the policy or we don't edit—and willful violation of the context policy is something the mods do suspend people for.

The example writing guidelines say, among other things, "Don't speculate, don't prognosticate". This means if an objective trope (as opposed to YMMV) has not been conclusively established in an unfinished work, we may not assume it will ever appear, no matter how strong we think the evidence is that it will be included at some future date.

Don't assume the trope name says it all. That's a leading cause of trope misuse because, among other reasons, it strips out all nuance. The trope description makes clear that one cannot be a Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge without forbidden knowledge to keep. The trope is about possessing, not seeking, so the monk is Not An Example unless someone can conclusively prove that he already possesses forbidden knowledge. Other tropes cover the seeking. Ergo, saying "either is or is seeking to become" boils down to, "this trope may or may not be present", which says nothing. Moreover, a trope not being present in a work is very rarely noteworthy.

What does the monk plan to do with the forbidden knowledge if/when he gets it? Will he use it to achieve other objectives? Will he hoard it or only pass it on to a select few who meet his prerequisites? Does he want it to be publicly available, i.e. to purge the "forbidden" part? All three possibilities are plausible, but only the second would make him a Keeper of Forbidden Knowledge; the others would make him an example of different tropes. That's one reason context matters—so people can verify that an example is really an example of the trope it purports to represent.

YMMV.Cheap Thrills has only two examples, and both have zero context. I commented out the former without realizing the latter was a ZCE as well. Cutlist it?

edited 16th Oct '17 11:07:40 AM by Gosicrystal

AwesomeMusic.Guilty Gear is pretty much just a list of nearly every single piece of music in the series, with most examples having no more context than a song title and when the track plays in the games. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe that Awesome Music pages need to have some explanation of what makes the music so awesome for each track listed, which would mean that most of these examples would need to be commented out until someone decides to add the needed context.

edited 16th Oct '17 11:42:25 AM by Zuxtron

Yeah, cutlist the YMMV page.

I gotta say, sometimes I just find the whole policy way too strikt. I mean yeah, examples should explain themselves, but sometimes they just do without any sentence behind it. Lets take Bald of Evil for example. If the rest of the character sheet clearly identifies the character as a villain and there is a photo of him too, showing he has no hair, isn't that clear enough?

What good does it do to put a 'He is evil and has no hairs' sentence behind it? The only contribution that brings is duh.

edited 20th Oct '17 8:50:37 AM by Forenperser