Ambiguous Name: Literature.Mother Goose

This was erroneously listed on the Classic Literature index, presumably because someone thought it was about Charles Perrault's Tales of Mother Goose fairy tale book, and then it has been moved to the Literature/ namespace with the rest of the index.

However, it appears it was (and content-wise, still is) actually a trope/genre page for Nursery Rhyme (which redirects to Mother Goose).

My suggestion is to (a) reset the page type to "trope" and move it to Main/, and (b) rename it to Nursery Rhyme in the process. 'Mother Goose' is unnecessarily ambiguous (there are Perrault's Mother Goose Tales, there is a specific nursery rhyme called "Mother Goose", and I assume not all people know that 'Mother Goose' stands metonymically for "nursery rhymes").

edited 25th Apr '12 6:39:14 AM by LordGro

If it is just for nursery rhymes, it should be called Nursery Rhyme. That's what the rest of the English speaking world calls them.

The only arguments to potentially not rename it that I can think of:

1) "Mother Goose" is specifically connected to English nursery rhymes and nursery rhyme characters (Old King Cole, Humpty Dumpty, Old Mother Hubbard, etc). So strictly speaking, not all the world's Nursery Rhymes are "Mother Goose rhymes".

2) "Mother Goose" is a folklore character, an "archetypal country woman" to whom the telling or the origin of nursery rhymes is ascribed. She also is the subject of her own nursery rhyme, and figures in a traditional pantomime.

I did a wick Wick Check (total). Number of wicks is 65 (not counting 10 wicks for 2 „Nursery Rhyme/s” redirects). 'Mother Goose' was:

Potholed behind „Nursery Rhyme(s)“: 24 times

• Americanitis
• Cool and Unusual Punishment
• Anathem
• "Day of the Week" Name
• Doctor Who S10 E3 "Frontier in Space"
• Extreme Omnivore
• In Spite of a Nail
• Ironic Nursery Tune
• Is That What He Told You?
• Living Toys
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover
• Nursery Crime
• Oral Tradition
• Private Eye Monologue
• Psychic Static
• Really Dead Montage
• Red Herring Mole
• Repurposed Pop Song
• Stylistic Suck
• That Reminds Me of a Song
• The Film of the Book
• Music
• Thursday Next
• Happy Fun Ball

Potholed behind a reference to a specific nursery rhyme: 6 times

• Artistic License – Biology
• Darwin's Soldiers
• Savannah Reid
• Unicorn
• Team Fortress 2
• Theres Good Boos Tonight

Used as a synonym (but not a pothole) for Nursery Rhyme(s), as “Mother Goose rhyme”, or as “Mother Goose characters”: 16 times

• Amys Eyes
• Erstwhile
• Babes In Toyland
• Chronicles of Chaos
• Fractured Fairy Tale
• Frank and Ernest
• MAD
• Public Domain Character
• Ravens and Crows
• Literature
• One for Sorrow, Two for Joy
• The Man in the Moon
• Flashback Effects
• Cultural Cross-Reference
• Hidamari Sketch
• Seen It All

Listed in the trope list section of a work, meaning that nursery rhyme(s) occur(s) in story, or are referenced, or that nursery rhyme characters figure in the work: 9 times

• Jasper Fforde
• JRR Tolkien
• Little Audrey
• Mutts (zero context)
• My Fair Lady
• Stardust
• Wee Sing
• Wooden Rose (lacks context)
• Alice in Wonderland (zero context)

Referenced as a character, appearing as a character, or the name of a character in-story: 9 times

• Little Audrey
• Manic Pixie Dream Girl
• Mother Goose and Grimm
• Mother Goose Rock N Rhyme
• Pantomime
• Nier
• Puss In Boots
• Daryl and Susie
• Fate/EXTRA

Referring to The Tales of Mother Goose (a book): once

• Charles Perrault

So the page is used:

• As a general synonym for Nursery Rhyme (inclusive the 10 wicks from Nursery Rhyme redirect): 34 times = 45 %
• For "Mother Goose rhymes", which may or may not imply a specific set of nursery rhymes (namely, the English ones): 31 times = 41 %
• For the folklore character connected to nursery rhymes: 9 times = 12 %

edited 25th Apr '12 12:24:23 PM by LordGro

I vote for a rename. The current name is misleading.

The current name is extremely misleading. So misleading someone put it in the wrong namespace! That is exceptional misuse.

Vote to rename.

Literature.Mother Goose should be about the book. Move the trope to Nursery Rhyme.

edited 25th Apr '12 1:38:28 PM by lebrel

Do we need a crowner for that, or is our agreement here sufficient to take action?

Move to Nursery Rhyme. I don't think we even need to crowner this, since the name is incorrect.

I moved the page to Nursery Rhyme and expanded the description. Comments and feedback welcome.

Literature.Mother Goose has no inbounds and has brought 1 person to the wiki since Jan 2011. I think it might be warranted to cutlist it.

Edit: I cleaned up the wicks. There are, however, those wicks that legitimately link as Mother Goose, because they refer to the English nursery rhymes, respectively nursery rhyme characters, like Old King Cole, Humpty Dumpty, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Jack and Jill etc. (basically these are Public Domain Characters).

So you could say these wicks do refer to nursery rhymes as "works" rather than as a "genre", or trope. What do we do with these? Can we just leave them directing to this page, or should we maybe make a (quasi-)work page for "common nursery rhymes"?

Edit: Cutlisting Literature.Mother Goose and requesting a clock.

edited 1st May '12 1:49:37 AM by LordGro

Clocking by request.

I think it looks good.

There could be a page listing those Mother Goose nursery rhymes. I'm not too familiar with how exactly it's considered, so it could be either a subtrope or a work page. If the latter, the previous location would be fine.

Is there anything else to do?

For the rhymes itself treated as works, with a list of tropes, I'd suggest a collective page at Literature.English Nursery Rhymes, or Literature.Mother Goose Rhymes.

For the use of nursery rhyme characters, the trope should be Nursery Rhyme Motifs — paralleling Fairytale Motifs.

Of course, this requires that someone actually takes the trouble to write up/YKKTW those pages. I probably won't do it anytime soon and I don't expect a whole lot of volunteers, so I think it's okay to leave the page and the wicks as they are for the time being and close this TRS.

Once we have this other pages, the wicks of Nursery Rhyme can be checked through and rerouted in cases where they don't refer to "nursery rhyme" as a genre/trope.

Edit: "Nursery Rhyme Motifs" is probably no trope. "Story features characters from nursery rhymes" should probably be considered a subtrope of Fractured Fairy Tale, at least in the most cases.

edited 2nd May '12 8:44:09 AM by LordGro

Closing up.