Suggesting new namespaces

I'll use my argument in that case, then.

To be frank (and I hope nobody uses it against me), I have advanced in the mod forum the idea of redesigning the wiki database to have the top-level namespaces be 'trope', 'work', 'creator', and so forth, with metadata identifying genre, medium, publication date, etc. That's part of a (as yet) completely hypothetical site redesign, not something to be tackled in the current system.

The existing namespace methodology works adequately for what it needs to do.

edited 24th Jan '14 2:58:45 PM by Fighteer

The only thing I would hold against anybody there is the usage of discussion venues.

Other than that, I'll reaffirm my stance in favour of keeping networks under Creator/.

We would never introduce such a system without public comment; we just want to be able to float ideas between ourselves without inviting a lot of cross-talk and "the sky is falling" user panic.

edited 24th Jan '14 3:13:19 PM by Fighteer

'Sorry, but I deeply oppose the "don't organize well, just organize 'good enough'" thought process.'

That is not the thought process Fighteer described. The suggestion to add a Network/ namespace is not necessarily to make the current system better, it's to make it different. It's not "organize well" versus "organize good enough", it's "organize this way" versus "organize that way".

(And "this way" works better.)

edited 24th Jan '14 5:25:57 PM by rodneyAnonymous

I wasn't trying to start anything here. But yes, I do realize that Fighteer wasn't suggesting that they encourage half-assing organization or anything. As a matter of fact, I understood that when he explained what he meant a page ago.

What do you guys think about Original Character Tournaments?

The few of them that have been namespaced use WebOriginal/. While I understand this namespace is official, it isn't encouraged. Would an OCT/ namespace be warranted?

edited 4th Feb '14 12:29:27 PM by StFan

I was thinking about suggesting that as a namespace. Anyhow, I support. It seems to be a good "medium" and we've got many pages for it.

Bumping for more opinions on Original Character Tournament.

I've never heard of them and my first blush was to say it's too niche-y for a new namespace, but given how many OCT pages have already been written, I'd throw in my support.

—R.J.

On the subject of the suggested Spoilers/ namespace: what I would propose is that it should be exactly like the YMMV/ and Trivia/ namespace, in that it is for listing tropes whose very presence constitute spoilers, and only those tropes.

To use a concrete example: when I was adding Don't Look Back (which retells the story of Orpheus's rescue of Eurydice as a platform game), I added the game to Reset Button Ending but I did not add Reset Button Ending to the game's page. If the Spoilers namespace existed, Reset Button Ending — which is flagged as "may contain unmarked spoilers" — could be added to the Spoilers/ namespace, and people who wanted to analyze the ending of the game could go to that page and discover the name of the trope which describes that ending. As it is, the only way to include that trope would be to include a major spoiler that could not be spoilertagged.

I'm not proposing all spoilers belong on the namespace. Often a Heel–Face Turn is also a major spoiler, but the mere presence of a Heel–Face Turn in a work is rarely a spoiler, so it would remain on the main page with spoilertape over the necessary bits. But having a specific list of spoiler-tropes seems in keeping both with the spirit of Handling Spoilers and with the mission of crosslinking tropes and works to the maximum extent possible.

That sounds like a sorting nightmare in making. Also, other discussions have repeatedly rejected spoiler segregations, and that namespace would be spoiler segregation+.

I hoped to make the sorting as mechanical as possible: if a trope is such that the page requires a "Warning: the presence of this trope in a work is a spoiler" tag before the example list, it goes on the Spoilers/ subpage, otherwise it does not. Sorting should be as or less difficult than deciding which tropes are YMMV.

Edit: The other motive I'd have for the existence of such a page is that it makes it a lot easier to explain why trope names can't be spoilertagged on example lists. Because the inherently-spoilery tropes (like Dead All Along) would move to the new page, anyone arguing, "But listing Irony under this character entry would be a spoiler!" is automatically dealt with, or at least directed in a more productive direction.

edited 16th Apr '14 10:35:06 AM by RobinZimm

Not really. We have some pages where the tropes say "these might be spoilers" instead of "these are spoilers", and what is a spoiler for one work isn't a spoiler for another.

For example: Ice Person isn't usually a spoiler trope, right? But what about a cartoon where the heroes have been fighting a man in a suit who burns people to death, and at the climax of the second season, it's revealed to be the daughter of the first queen, who was taking all the "cold" from people's bodies?

I asked about what namespace motorsports related pages should go under in Ask The Tropers yesterday, since they're split between Main/ and Usefulnotes/ at the moment, and checked back today to find an interesting discussion on the topic (I'm being serious) including a suggestion of the possibility of a Racing/ or Sports/ namespace. I'm kind of partial to the latter since right now we don't have a home for any of the other sports related pages like Baseball, The Beautiful Game, American Football, Rugby Union, Cricket, etc. (similarly split between main and useful notes).

Also, though this may be a discussion for another time, it was mentioned that we shouldn't be troping individual sporting events since they don't have a narrative and it would essentially be troping real life, but we could trope gameplay within the sports, and I can see what they're saying in that regard, though it would involve a lot of cutting of things on the individual sports pages (especially Formula One) and I'm not sure I fully agree anyway, though for now I'll leave it at that.

We would still have Useful Notes for sports as a guide for those wishing to include them in their works, just as we do now. But if we're going to list out tropes found in those sports, we need a media namespace for them.

The sports themselves should not be used as tropes.

^I agree in full (and wasn't proposing using them as tropes, though if it sounded like I was, then I apologize for my bad wording) which is why I made this proposal

Bumping this at the top for two namespace suggestions:

• For the Classical Mythology and Chinese Mythology pages and similar pages with tropes listed, I am suggesting Mythology/ as a super-namespace. They are currently classified as UsefulNotes/ which is wrong as they are properly work pages.
• Echoing an earlier proposal; such pages as the Evil Overlord List which talk about storytelling but don't have tropes listed, Tropology/.

What does the Wiki Hive Mind think?

Happy to see a Mythology/ proposal.

Not sure about Tropology. The Evil Overlord List is a duplicate of a work from outside of the wiki, with potholes everywhere. I'd rather see that page specifically in Just for Fun/, and don't understand why we can't make a work page instead of copying the list.

The Evil Overlord List is kind of a documentary on tropes - it's the original text that interests us. We are allowed to host it under the term that the original list is not modified, hence the potholes and the page lock.

Just for Fun would be completely wrong since the page does have a troping purpose, which is why it's indexed under Books on Trope.

Mythology/ yes.

Not that hot on Tropeology/, though — that sort of stuff is closer to Web Originals in my mind.

—R.J.

Any more support/commentary for Mythology/ and Tropology/?

I would suggest the namespace to be shortened to Myth/ to be more inclusive, both of whole mytholgies and of more specific myths and legends whithin, or for separate myths without a more inclusive mega-page. Otherwise, yes, I'm all for this new namespace.

It could include not just wide mythologies but also relatively more recent folklore pieces, like Nautical Folklore or King Arthur.

Methinks that a specific myth or folktale are a different animal from a mythology. I would put them elsewhere.

They are different, true, but they can be under the same namespace. We usually use a wide definition for a namespace to avoid multiply them; like "Ride/" is for whole Theme Parks and specific rides, or "Literature/" is also used for Gamebooks or Web-published novels.