SUMMARY:
The old Oral Tradition was a medium and several genres merged into one page, and Mythology and Myth And Legend redirected to it. We agreed to split this page.
Oral Tradition has been redefined as a medium in which a work is not written or otherwise recorded in any way. We're now writing new pages for the genres.
(By definition it is basically impossible to trope an unrecorded work, so I assume that nothing troped or used as an example on this wiki can actually be Oral Tradition.)
Still To Do:
- 1. New genre pages still to be created (With page type Trope or Trope+Index and Literature Genres index.):
- A. Heroic Literature is in YKTTW
- B. Myth is in YKTTW
- C. Folklore is a disambiguation page and the new version is at the sandbox stage
- D. Other genre pages such as Wisdom Literature, Folktale, Folk Ballad, and Folk Legend have been proposed.
- A. Heroic Literature is in YKTTW
- 2. All of these pages need to be indexed.
- 3. Wicks need to be sorted out.
- A. Oral Tradition, Mythology, Folklore, and the sandbox wicks are not fixed.
- B. Myth And Legend, Legend, and Myth wicks are Done (for now).
- C. Lots of folders and AC's are labeled Mythology, Folklore, Oral Tradition, whatever, but don't generate wicks. Somehow they need a "wick" cleaning.
- 4. Fairy Tales may need to be modified to clarify its relation with Folklore, but that probably requires a separate TRS thread.
- 5. Mythology Tropes is in YKTTW right now. The existing Mythology Tropes page is a duplicate of the works list now at Mythology.
THE ORIGINAL OPis here
1. Acts like/implies all Oral Tradition is really really old. States outright every Oral Tradition trope is from The Oldest Ones in the Book. But this is a medium, not a time period, and of course is still used today. Jokes and rumors, for example, are often circulated this way. Certainly there is no cause to assume that all oral works were composed before writing was ever invented, before 3500 BCE. That's just ridiculous.
2. Makes statements that all Older Than Dirt works have their origin in this medium... which isn't really right. Sure many things that have been written down were, or might have been, circulated in an oral form first. But
- A. Written works, even Older Than Dirt ones, could have been composed first in writing.
- B. Unless they're doing an in-depth textual or archaeological analysis, tropers should not assume one way or the other.
3. The list that follows the description isn't a list of material composed in this medium. It's a list of Mythology and Folklore pages. But those pages include works that were composed originally in written form, with no oral precourser (for example, ancient Greek and Roman plays were composed for Theatre, which is a different medium).
4. Lastly, two of the three sub-types of tropes are red links.
In short, this is a medium, not a genre. I want to rewrite the description into something more reasonable, and move the content to a separate Mythology and Folklore genre page.
edited 12th Jun '13 8:27:58 AM by ArcadesSabboth
Never mind about staying away from TV Tropes. I also did nothing here for more than two months. We're not on duty here 
.
Also, my Legend draft is already in YKTTW, so the Sandbox.Legend is no longer up-to-date.
An YKTTW for a Sacred Literature index is up. Take a look if something is missing (and give hats if it's good to go).
I'm whittling at a Mythology YKTTW but it may still take some days. There are other (RL) things on my plate right now.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I think that Oral Tradition draft looks good so far. The problem with the term "Oral Tradition" is, it can, strictly, be understood in two different ways:
- The act of passing down stories by word of mouth, i.e. a medium, more less a synonym of "Oral Storytelling".
- The stories passed on orally, i.e. a body of works.
"Folklore" is a broader concept but what is relevant to the wiki will be almost exclusively be "Oral Folklore", i.e. traditional stories, poems or songs existing or originating mostly within the medium of oral storytelling. But "Oral Folklore" is really clumsy; people are more likely to refer to these things either as plain "folklore", or as "oral tradition" (using meaning no. 2). Furthermore, after reading up on The Other Wiki, it seems to me "(oral) folklore" doesn't really have a hard definition except "passed down orally".
So maybe we can still have the medium and the works supercategory on a single page. I think we wouldn't have to spend all that much space on "folklore" as a works category, if we only make it a hub that directs the reader to the subcategories like Fairy Tale, Ballad, Nursery Rhyme etc. So the page would still be about the medium first.
edited 10th Aug '12 11:46:31 AM by LordGro
Let's just say and leave it at that.
I'd much prefer to have a disambiguation-style link saying "for Folklore, Myths, and Legends, see X Y and Z pages." Putting them on one page, even with an explanation that they're separate, would probably encourage more misuse.
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Alright, I had no idea this was clocked (there was no post saying so).
EDIT: OR the clocking post was like a page ago?
Lord Gro, where at are you? I've commented on the Legend YKTTW a while back, but there's been no further activity on it in a while.
edited 14th Mar '13 12:40:27 PM by ArcadesSabboth
Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.
Moderators,
If this gets locked, can I holler from it to get it unlocked later? Would there be a time limit to doing so?
I don't know where Lord Gro got to, but I know that I don't have the time right now and probably don't have the knowledge of the subject to finish the Legend YKTTW without him. I intend to help finish this, but I don't know when I'll be able to. As long as he or I can get it unlocked later when we have the time to work on it, you could just lock this thread for now.
Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.
Well it turns out the YKTTW for Legend is much closer to launch than I thought. The only remaining question is what to do with the disambig currently using that name in Main. What is wiki policy for a genre or trope and a disambig with the same name? I mean using the current url/subpage structure.
Also, can this please have the pending final action star? While we still have decisions to make, they are decisions about where to draw the lines between the new pages, and how to word them.
edited 22nd Dec '12 5:20:31 PM by ArcadesSabboth
Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.
Zzzzzzzzzz
Not starring. That's for when all that's left is the actual scutwork of moving or repairing is left. If there's still discussion needed about what exactly needs to be done, it's not ready for a star.
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World's Toughest Milkman
In general, if a trope and a work share a name, the works get mentioned briefly at the bottom (or sometimes top) of the trope description. I added a suggestion to the YKTTW.
World's Toughest Milkman
At least a couple of the pages listed as disambig are marginal ("Legendz"? Really?), and the whole thing can be summarized as two brief sentences, as I posted at the YKTTW. Adding a gratuitous (and annoying) 's' seems pointless and unnecessarily confusing.
I submitted a YKTTW for Heroic Literature. This should cover everything that can be filed under 'Heroic Epic' and 'Heroic Poetry' (which would become redirects).
edited 5th Jan '13 7:35:05 AM by LordGro
Let's just say and leave it at that.
I think the disambig you added to the Legend YKTTW is fine. We don't need to disambiguate everything that has "legend" somewhere in its name.
My latest attempt to summarize/understand the progress here:
- Sacred Literature, Legend, Mythology, Fairy Tale, and Folklore are currently proposed as the genres to split off from Oral Tradition.
- Sacred Literature has been launched.
- Drafts for Legend and Heroic Legend are in YKTTW.
- Drafts for Myth Legend And Folklore (genre) and Oral Tradition (medium) are in sandboxes. Do these need to be moved into YKTTW?
- Folklore is currently a disambig page.
While we are still working out just what the genre pages will look like, have we basically got consensus that Oral Tradition will be just the medium? I am thinking of writing the new (medium-only) definition and changing the page now rather than later, and taking the removed material to the Sandbox, from which it can be moved to the new genre pages as they launch.
That is, put Oral Tradition through YKTTW or whatever and re-launch without first waiting for all the new genre pages to launch.
edited 14th Jan '13 6:30:44 PM by ArcadesSabboth
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The new Legend page is now up.
You are right, Sandbox.Oral Tradition is ready for YKTTW.
About the "Mythology" draft: Do we make a single page for Mythology and Myth or should these be two different pages? I've whittled at a "Mythology" draft myself, but I've come to think it might be useful to separate these two: Myth (as opposed to Legend) is a story featuring gods and other entities of cosmic significance that seeks to explain natural phenomena and the origin of the world, but "Mythology" is used as a cover term for "complex of interrelated myths and legends" everywhere on the wiki.
Let's just say and leave it at that.
Ah.. so Mythology would be an index of the mythology pages (Classical Mythology, Celtic Mythology, Norse Mythology, etc.) while Myth would list particular works that are specifically myths and not legends, and would discuss the actual genre? In either case, my old Myth Legend And Folklore will need re-writing (splitting), since I wrote it before you suggested splitting out Legend.
We also need a Folklore page, since from what you've said I gather it isn't a synonym of Fairy Tales. A good chunk of Myth Legend And Folklore can be split off to start with.
Lastly, concerning page types: Are medium and genre pages supposed to be typed as tropes? That's how you've set Legend, but I thought these should be indices and/or useful notes instead. Literature is an index. Fantasy is a usefulnote+index.
edited 1st Feb '13 9:50:31 AM by ArcadesSabboth
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Exactly. Mythology would be the index for all the mythology pages, Myth would give a definition of myth (as opposed to Legend) and list only works that contain myth proper.
Concerning page type: I thought that genres are tropes in a very broad sense. Many genres have the trope (or trope+index) page type: Gothic Horror, Adventure, Science Fiction, Mystery Fiction, Alternate History... Although I just noticed that some (like Horror and Speculative Fiction) have only the index type (but not "useful note").
edited 2nd Feb '13 8:36:20 AM by LordGro
Let's just say and leave it at that.
Alright well I've got Folklore and Myth split off. Will you please grab the legend works lists from Myth Legend And Folklore and put it into where it goes? It looks like most of the list is Heroic Legend.
How much description of each genre (Myth, Legend, Folklore) should be on the Mythology page? Should any of the Legend description that's there now be kept, or should Mythology just be a really short "body of more-or-less connected, interrelated Myth, Legend, and Folklore, intertextuality; work list BLAH"? Where is the draft you started?
Oh yeah, and can I please take Flying Spaghetti Monster and especially Atlas Shrugged off of Sacred Literature? No actual religions or religious cults are based on them (the cult of Ayn Rand is explicitly non-religious).
EDIT: About page types. How about make most of them trope+index or just index, and make the media (Sacred Literature and Oral Tradition) usefulnote.
edited 1st Feb '13 10:25:53 AM by ArcadesSabboth
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The "legends" work list from Sandbox.Myth Legend And Folklore is already on Legend. I removed it from the Sandbox.
My draft(s) are not yet online. Give me a little time to look at Myth and Mythology.
Yeah, you can remove Atlas Shrugged and The Gospel Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster from Sacred Literature. At least you have my support.
About page types — this is a topic for Wiki Talk. But AFAIK all pages with the "useful note" page type are supposed to be in the Useful Notes/ namespace. In other words, medium pages and works indexes are not useful notes.
I personally would prefer giving genres the "trope" type, as it means you can use the "trope relationship" button. So you could define Science Fiction and Fantasy as kids of Speculative Fiction, etc. But mere indexes which are not genres are just "index" (Sacred Literature is not a true genre, I suppose).
Let's just say and leave it at that.
Somebody has made a Mythology Tropes index, but it contains no tropes at all. Instead it's just indexing Classical Mythology, Popol Vuh, etc.
EDIT: The Oral Tradition YKTTW is here.
Do you think Myth is ready to YKTTW, too?
edited 3rd Feb '13 11:19:48 AM by ArcadesSabboth
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I put up the first part of my Sandbox.Mythology draft. There is still much missing but it just gets longer the more I keep working at it. So I decided to put up the unfinished draft so you can start bringing your criticism.
I did not mention Music as a medium of mythology because music itself does not contain any mythological story or information. Musical theatre is filed under Theatre on the wiki and narrative song under Literature.
I would prefer you to wait with ykttw-ing Sandbox.Myth.
Regarding the individual mythology pages on Mythology Tropes, I think there is a latent confusion about what function and, accordingly, page type these pages are supposed to have. Some people seemingly think they are tropes. But the more relevant question probably is whether they are Useful Notes or whether they should be treated like works.
Edit: I expanded the description on Sandbox.Folklore. I think it might be useful to split folktales, folk legends and folk ballads off to a separate page/index under the title "folk narratives". "Folklore" would be an index containing the various subtypes of folklore.
edited 5th Feb '13 8:54:00 AM by LordGro
Let's just say and leave it at that.
I'd honestly rather not split up Folklore. We already have Fairy Tales as a separate page, and I'm starting to get really confused with the number of genre pages we're making.
Regarding Music, I was thinking of narrative songs, yes. Though if they aren't written down that isn't Literature, so wouldn't they then be Music? Or Oral Tradition?
EDIT: I incorporated the parts of my old sandbox that you hadn't mentioned (inspiring Fantasy and Mythopoeia) and the list of mythology pages. I think those should be type Work because they have character pages, often tropes lists, and are in some ways similar to the DCU or Marvel Comics Universe or Transformers or other shared fictional universes with multiple authors and works.
edited 7th Feb '13 7:40:49 PM by ArcadesSabboth
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Started an alternate draft on Sandbox.Myth. The old draft is still at the bottom.
Do you think it is a good idea to separate Myth from Mythology, or will it confuse people? Or, to put it differently, how would you describe the relationship(s) of the term "mythology" towards the terms "myth" and "legend"? I thought about that for some time now, but I would like to hear another person's spontaneous opinion to make sure I am not in the clutches of a Personal Dictionary.
About the Music medium: Since we only trope works that are written down somewhere, I don't think we have to bother about the eventuality of a song existing only as Oral Tradition. Any song is music plus text, but the relevant part for the genre of mythology is text only, i.e. literature.
About the mythology page type — I think there are arguments to be said both for a works type and a Useful Notes type. But we can spare that question for a different thread, it isn't high priority right now.
Regarding Sandbox.Folklore — I'm feeling the "Folktales" section should probably be merged with Fairy Tale. Though that will need a TRS all of its own. The problem with an index page named "Folklore" is that the name is not very indicative. There's a whole lot of very different things that can be subsumed under "Folklore".
edited 8th Feb '13 1:07:12 PM by LordGro
Let's just say and leave it at that.
Are we sure we aren't splitting too many hairs here?
A split between mythology and myth makes only sense if one of them is a definition page. Too much overlap would exist in any sort of examples or indexes.
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I do think splitting Folklore into subgenres, and splitting Heroic Legend from Legend, is kind of splitting hairs. Like if High Fantasy, Low Fantasy, Pulp Fantasy had separate genre pages.
About Myth and Mythology being separated... well I wasn't planning on doing it, and I expect it may cause confusion. But I wasn't planning on separating myth and legend into their own pages, either. The mythology "work/usefulnotes" pages we have now encompass both of what we're now calling myths and legends.
Certainly, if Myth and Mythology have separate pages, Myth shouldn't list anything. The lists can go on Mythology and Sacred Literature and Legend.
EDIT: I looked at Sandbox.Folklore and except for the link to Nursery Rhymes, nothing is listed there that isn't either a folktale, or a character or creature that appears in folktales. So I don't see any reason to split Folklore.
edited 9th Feb '13 8:40:44 AM by ArcadesSabboth
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In fact High Fantasy, Low Fantasy and Heroic Fantasy do have separate genre pages (and so have Dark Fantasy, Gaslamp Fantasy, Historical Fantasy and Science Fantasy).
Which doesn't surprise me, because we're a wiki for analyzing fiction, and documenting genres is part of the wiki's mission. Therefore I don't think there is anything wrong or bad with "fine-splitting" genres, so long as it adds something worthwhile to the wiki.
My reasoning for having separate pages for Myth and Mythology was that the former would give a core definition of "myth" (a "sacred story"), while the latter is about the systems of tradition that are called "mythologies" which are centered around myths proper, but which also contain legends as well as underlying beliefs, i.e. things that aren't even works.
For example, Sandbox.Myth now contains a list of various common types of myths (one of them, Creation Myth, has had a page on the wiki for a long time now). I don't think we could legitimately cram this information on a Mythology page. It would be getting too long and detailed.
Another thing to consider is that "mythology" is also used colloquially for things that aren't traditional or tied to religion. There's "Arthurian mythology", for example, or the Cthulhu Mythos. These aren't real-life mythologies in the sense of "a body of myths", but conscious literary creations without a religious dimension. I would consider listing these "shared universes" on a "Mythology" index, but under "Myth" they seem out of place.
And yeah, I have noticed that the mythology pages, like Classical Mythology, Celtic Mythology etc cover both religious myth and heroic legend. Which was part of the reason why I suggested separating the Myth genre page from the Mythology index in the first place.
edited 9th Feb '13 12:21:21 PM by LordGro
Let's just say and leave it at that.
Crown Description:
Should we split Oral Tradition? Proposal to split this page into the medium Oral Tradition (for works transmitted orally), and the genre Myth, Legend, and Folklore, based on the draft at Sandbox.Myth Legend And Folklore.
Ugh, so here I am apologizing for being gone how many months? Recently we even lost internet access, but for now it's back.
I finally caught up on reading this thread, so here are my thoughts:
The Legend sandbox is very good. Gro, you've been much better about actually writing stuff than I have lately.
I notice that the Folklore section on the first sandbox is way longer than the Myth and Legend sections. I support separating Folklore, Mythology, and Legend into separate genre pages. I'd also be fine with a Folklore page only listing works that aren't already on the Fairy Tale page.
I don't support turning Folklore into the new Oral Tradition page, though. The medium overlaps with Mythology and Legends, after all. I would rather draft an Oral Tradition sandbox that explains the medium and then links to Mythology, Legends, and Folklore as the main genres that use it.
Here's the start of an Oral Tradition sandbox that's specifically the medium: Sandbox.Oral Tradition
Boy, I suck at informal writing on academic subjects, don't I?
edited 22nd Jul '12 3:56:10 PM by ArcadesSabboth
Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.