Ambiguous Name: Gonna Fly Now Montage

The trope itself is quite healthy having 364 wicks and 366 inbounds. But more than half of the wicks (208) are from the redirect Training Montage. This is not suprising, considering that this is the name the whole world but us uses for this trope.

The high amount of wicks of the redirect are not a result of a merge gone wrong. According to archieved discussion this redirect was added to the existing trope.

If the redirect is that more succesfull as a trope name we should swap the name with the redirect and give the trope the more intuitive and better known name.

A redirect added to an existing trope is much more used than the actual title. That sounds like an excelent motive for swapping names for me.

edited 6th Mar '12 1:09:46 PM by Elbruno

I concur. If there is an established term, then we should use that instead of something we made up ourselves.

Could you break off Gonna Fly Now Montage as a stock shoutout to the Rocky movies, and Training Montage as just that- a training montage?

edited 6th Mar '12 2:10:39 PM by nman

But... why? This seems like a solution in search of a problem. What I'm hearing is, this trope is seeing healthy levels of use, thanks to a re-direct that's working quite well. Is there any mis-use? Any problems with the current name at all? I don't like changing trope names just for the heck of it, even if it's just to switch it with a redirect.

It's not for the heck of it. It is because there is a common real-world term for this phenomenon, and where possible we prefer to use real established terms for a trope name.

It is the redirect, which is working, not the trope name.

The trope name is a made up term describing something which is known as Training Montage. The current name is neither overly witty nor more concise than the real therm. There is no point in using the worse name as a trope name if we have a good alternative which is already accepted widly in the wiki.

It's not "made up" as much as it is slapping the name of a song and "montage" together.

... But, again, what is the problem that we're trying to solve here?

Is there misuse? Is the page not thriving? Is the current name causing confusion? Like, are half the wicks actually about montages of people building Flying Machines? I would like to see a problem before we try to solve it by changing a trope's name. I dislike trope name changes except where they are necessary. Is a trope name change necessary in this case?

I think this is an odd case and I have mixed feelings about it.

The problem is there is a term people outside this wiki fit with the trope, and when that is the case, that name is preferred. It's about clarity.

I think this would fall under our "pre-existing terms" policy wouldn't it? Namely, use them.

Precisely. It's simply an aversion to Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp". For example, if a special movie effect is commonly known as a Stop Trick, then we're not about to call it a made-up term like Jeannie Cut instead, because the former is far clearer.

Or, more accurately, we did call it Jeannie Cut, then renamed it to Stop Trick because that's the common term everybody else uses for it. Likewise, we renamed Raimi Vision to Shaky P.O.V. Cam, because nobody outside T Vtropes, not even Raimi himself, uses the term "Raimi Vision". There's plenty more precedent for this, and it's a good idea because it makes the site more understandable to the public in general.

Well I mean, on the one hand, Training Montage is basically just a better name, and it's commonly used outside the wiki, and it's commonly used on the wiki, and it's basically just what the trope is called in practice. But of course on the other hand, it's not as if the current name is causing any problems—this is a great example of how effective redirects can be at helping out a sort-of-awkward title to keep a trope healthy. And the thing with the redirect is that people who are looking for this trope will never have any trouble finding it. (The comparison with Stop Trick and Raimi Vision is weak because neither of those were really thriving the way this one is.)

I think the biggest advantage to renaming here is that having Training Montage as the main title is going to help the page show up higher in Google search results. That could be a big deal. Could help a lot with exposure.

The other factor that makes me willing to rename is the wick stats on the redirect. I mean, how often do you see the alt-title racking up so many wicks like that? You normally only see that for alternate spellings, or for renamed tropes whose wicks haven't been changed. It's an odd circumstance, but it does seem to support the redirect swap plan.

Yeah, thinking about it, I'd be okay with a redirect swap here. Yeah...yeah, it sounds fine. I could roll with that.

edited 6th Mar '12 3:34:45 PM by troacctid

Renaming a trope because we hope that the new name works better includes normally a certain risk. We have no garantee that the new name will work better or fix anything. Therefore changing a name has to be done carefully.

But in this case we have a number prooving that the other name works better. The name is not only the accepted term outside this wiki, it is the accepted term in this wiki. The editors already prooved that they prefer the redirect over the "real" name.

There are other reasons to avoid unnecessary name changes, besides uncertainty as to how well the new name will work. There's also factors like stability, like the name being a part of a trope's identity, and the wiki's. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" and "lack of reason for a rename is itself a reason to keep the current name, and the reverse is not true" are very important principles when it comes to renaming tropes. And enough people ignore them as it is.

I am thinking that in this specific case a rename may be alright, because it does seem like a very unusual case. However, I am scared of setting a bad precedent. Renames happen far too often, and are suggested far, far too often as it is. A trope being renamed despite having no problems whatsoever with the current name sets a bad example — people might take it as an invitation to start bringing up even more tropes for renames with even less evidence behind the proposed change.

"Hey, we changed that trope's name even though there were no actual problems with its old name, so why do I have to prove that there's actual problems with this trope's name before changing it?"

The above post, which to me seems like it comes down to "the only reason we don't go around changing every name on the wiki is because there's some uncertainty as to how well the new names will work", just makes me even more worried about sending the wrong message.

So, I simply think that there are good reasons to keep the current name for the health of the wiki as a whole. A rename here may do a lot more harm than good elsewhere in the long run. And there's no particular reason to think it will actually help this trope... not least of all because the trope doesn't really need any help!

Setting a bad precedent is something I'm a little worried about, too. But the circumstances here really are quite atypical. I think that if we're setting a precedent here, it's a tightly-qualified one. We have a case here where not only is the pre-existing term more common outside the wiki, it's more common within the wiki as well. And by a very wide margin—like, almost 2:1.

So I'm okay with that precedent given those stats.

I don't see how "go with the term people have shown the are familiar with" can be bad. In fact, it's a good thing.

Although I can see girlyboy's point, I think it's clear, as said, that this is a very atypical case.

I don't think this would cause a sudden burst of name-changer TRS threads, especially as the circumstances behind the possible change are quite clear here, and I don't think we'll be seeing another case like this one anytime soon.

"We have a case here where not only is the pre-existing term more common outside the wiki, it's more common within the wiki as well. And by a very wide margin—like, almost 2:1. So I'm okay with that precedent given those stats."

I suppose that makes sense. I guess we can hope that either people won't think of this as a wider precedent, or will be shouted down if they do try to take it too far.

... I guess I'm on board with the name switch too, then. In this specific case, because of the above-mentioned very specific circumstances surrounding it. Count me with the consensus.

... But now I feel all dirty.

edited 6th Mar '12 7:06:52 PM by girlyboy

It's not really a "preexisting term" as in something someone coined to describe this trope. It's just an intuitive, clear term.

I have hangups about changing it, though. TV Tropes has just as much right to select or make up a name as any other source. Why did we go with Hanging A Lampshade over Hanging A Lantern or Hanging A Red Flag, variations of the same term writers used to describe that trope? No reason, it's just what we chose. So technically, Gonna Fly Now Montage is also a valid name for this trope, even if people use Training Montage instead.

But if we rename it as usual, we'll probably wipe out all the wicks and references to Gonna Fly Now Montage. That's contributing to a monoculture of trope terminology. Doing so has its ups and downs, just like the benefits and losses of having a single language versus many languages; clear communication at the cost of variety.

That said, I wouldn't object to changing the name, as long as we don't follow our normal procedure and utterly destroy the previous name, since there's no proven fault. Leave the wicks and a line on the description "AKA the Gonna Fly Now Montage, named for the famous montage from Rocky."

Yeah, that's some of the worries I have as well. However, I think it's fair to call it a "pre-existing term," because, well, it does seem like lots of people have used it throughout the internet with the same meaning we've given it. At some point that has to count. If that were the case, but the current name was the more widely used one on the wiki, I'd still be against the rename, though, since the trope is healthy. But as it is, with all the wicks leading to the redirect... Ehhh. Unsure.

And yeah... I'm kind of assuming we're just going to switch the redirect and name, so the current name will just become the re-direct, just as the current re-direct will become the new name. There's clearly no need to actually go around deleting uses of the previous name — just leave them (and any future uses) as perfectly valid uses of a perfectly valid redirect.

If anyone here is thinking of deleting uses of the current name, or not leaving it as a valid redirect, I'm 100% against the change again. D:<

edited 6th Mar '12 8:51:12 PM by girlyboy

Clarity trumps variety unless it's existing jargon.

It's a trope that's is not being misused and for people familiar with the Rocky movies they are almost guaranteed to know EXACTLY what it is offhand. Since it has a strong redirect and, again, not being misused it is one of those trope names that are the best of both worlds.

people familiar with the Rocky movies they are almost guaranteed to know EXACTLY what it is offhand.

And that is the reason the redirect is more popular as the "real" name. Not everyone knows the movie, or the name of the song playing in this scene. I never heard someone using "Gonna Fly Now Montage" to describe the trope. The editors in the wiki prooved that they prefer the term everyone in the world uses over a more or less obscure reference.