Needs Help: Did Not Do The Research

So, apparently this index is getting a name-change to Inaccuracies Index. I believe this is because the current name is being used as if it is a trope, instead of an index. No problem so far. However the name change looks as though it was abandoned mid-stream, leaving the index broken. The old page (Did Not Do The Research) has been deleted, its contents replaced with a redirect to the new page (Inaccuracies Index). However, the content of the index has not been copied over, leaving the new page blank, and the index is therefore completely out of action. I would copy the content over myself, but the Inaccuracies Index page is locked for some reason.

EDIT: Is there any particular reason why it was deemed necessary to get rid of the index of writer inaccuracy tropes? Was it a redundant index and, if so, where is the preferred index that lists these tropes? I happened to find this index particularly interesting, and the fact that a lot of people were misusing it as a trope doesn't seem to me to negate its usefulness as an index. Am I missing something?

EDIT: Okay, I see the following on the Permanent Red Link Club page: "It was merged with other indexes and christened the Inaccuracies Index for a few days, until it was determined that we don't need that either." How, and why, was this determined? I can't be the only avid nitpicker who thinks it's useful to have a list of all the different ways writers have goofed. I've seen various discussions of the problem, but I'm confused as to how consensus was reached to simply nuke an entire index because it's easier than fixing the problems associated with it.

edited 10th Sep '12 8:04:20 PM by JakeTheYak

Both pages have been intentionally cut and redlinked.

Yeah, this one was a redundant nitpicking index. Everything on it could be indexed elsewhere, like Artistic License, so this one's more trouble than it's worth.

Is it possible to redirect it for the inbounds?

I'll also search through the place for unindexed pages.

Yeah, we really should redirect it. It had thousands of inbounds. And even before we cut Inaccuracies Index, we successfully faux-redlinked Did Not Do The Research and redirected it.

We can't. If we edit the page, the redlink goes away.

edited 11th Sep '12 12:56:52 AM by lu127

I think the only thing to do here is to search for unindexed pages. Don't think we can fix DNDTR unless we find a way to make the redlinker tool non-edit-sensitive.

^^ Are you sure? Eddie redlinked DNDTR and it continued to redirect to Inaccuracies Index. If it's still on that faux-redlink list, it may stay relinked if we insert a new redirect.

It's not a list, methinks. It's an ad hoc databse feature that disappears as soon as the database entry changes (i.e gets edited)

No. The redirect was already there before the redlink was placed. If you edit the page in any way now, when the redlink is in effect, you're basically recreating the page, so it'll shift to a bluelink. Happened once with This Troper, too.

Why can't Eddie just re-redlink it? I know there is a reason, but I can't remember it.

Is the page going to be repaired/redirected? Because I can't find any examples or anything.

At the moment, my suspicion is that the only repair as such that might be done to the page is to remove the redirect to the defunct Inaccuracies Index, and that's assuming it can be re-redlinked after the redirect is removed; if it can't, it will likely stay as it is, as Fast Eddie seems seriously disinclined to revive it for multiple reasons.

Speaking as the one who removed the nearly four thousand wicks to Did Not Do The Research (I'm still not sure how I didn't go completely insane in the process), I'm honestly glad to see the back of it. The wicks were almost overwhelmingly one of the following:

• Examples of Artistic License that should have been filed under the appropriate trope on that index (in some cases very minor deviations that have no discernible effect, good or bad, on the narrative),
• Passive-aggressive (or sometimes active-aggressive) sniping on WMG and Headscratchers pages (or sometimes self-deprecation by Wild Mass Guessers who admit they haven't fact checked), or
• Complaints about long-running comic book series where a particular change of writers meant a surge of character derailment and careless retconning (aren't there Continuity tropes for that?).

Whatever the spirit in which the page was originally created, it had undergone near catastrophic levels of index decay. (Not trope decay, as it wasn't a trope.) There wasn't even any consensus on whether it qualified as main page fodder, YMMV, or Trivia - in some cases, I found it in the trope lists on two or more of those pages for the same work.

Jake the Yak: are you the only person on the wiki who enjoys that sort of nitpicking? I'm sure you're not, but there's always the Artistic License index. The name and nature of Did Not Do The Research just invited rampant misuse, and it's hard to discount the possibility that bringing it back in any way, shape, or form will do the same. (There are still wicks being added - even perma-redlinking doesn't quite get the message across to everyone - but at least it's slowed down in a huge way. I think the total number of wicks that have been added since the perma-redlinking is less than the number that were still being added during the week it took to delete the existing wicks.)

I do remember seeing the case made in the old TRS thread that perhaps it should be kept on in some way for in-universe examples of characters who get stuck up a certain waterway without a certain implement because they didn't check their facts before going into a sticky situation. However, if there isn't a trope about this already, there is surely a better name for it, hopefully one that can make it clear that it pertains to in-universe examples only. (Although even if a neon red "In-universe examples only!" warning were added to such a trope page, it would likely be subject to rampant potholing, in the same vein as Punctuated! For! Emphasis! or Precision F-Strike.)

One thing I will say, though, is that there were some tropes which were listed under Did Not Do The Research which did not make it onto Artistic License; whether that is because they simply weren't copied over before the page was deleted or because the tropes themselves (if they even qualify as tropes per se) are also being phased out, I'm not sure. If the former, perhaps there's an old version of the page floating around somewhere from which they can be copied?

edited 13th Sep '12 7:45:39 PM by mlsmithca

^Artistic License now lists only AL-I entries. For the others, we would need the page source.

Perhaps we should delete the link to this page in the main sidebar.

That's done.

I suppose the difficulty I had was that the page seemed to vanish with no explanation. The history just showed that it had been redirected, and the redirect was itself a red link.

I'm now satisfied with the explanation given, which I think can be summarised as:

The tropes listed that were genuinely about inaccurate portrayals of science/history/etc can be listed under Artistic License. The rest were fairly egregious examples of YMMV.

So, I'm happy. Thanks everyone.

As an endnote, while several of those tropes could be listed under Artistic License, they have not yet been.

Perhaps a Special Effort could be detailed to get at least the SisterTropes and other same-level tropes of this type is in order...

We kinda need a trope for cases of not doing the research involving the rules of the setting.

Hm. Can you give an example of the sort of thing you mean?

I think you mean Plot Hole or something similar?

Also, is this thread still necessary?

No.