Needs Help: Company Town

Company Town has a really bizarre description and a nonindicative name; seems to be some sort of industry slang. We would like to repurpose it for this YKTTW on its historical meaning, i.e. the company owns the town and everything in it.

The name choice is absurd and the examples have no context. I don't think we would lose much from such a change.

+1 support.

I really don't get the name. The trope seems to be about works set in show business, which does sound like a legitimate genre or trope.

Considering how not thriving the page is, I think a rename is in order, and not only to make place for something else.

Like I said in another thread (new YKTTW fixing thread, I think), as-is Company Town is a non-starter in regards to being a proper trope.

Movieville for a rename, perhaps? Not really all that enthusiastic about the suggestion, though. Just something that popped into my head as a possible option.

Thanks for starting this TRS StarSword.

As for renaming the current, a few ideas: Behind The Scenes Setting, Set Behind The Set, Studio Setting.

^ Of those, I like the first the best. With the second one, the first "set" could be misunderstood to be a noun instead of a verb. The third trips up on more than one definition for "studio" (a studio also being a type of apartment), I think.

edited 11th Feb '13 10:03:55 AM by Nohbody

I prefer Studio Setting. It's the only one that sounds like a trope name.

Studio Setting is the most concise and tells me immediately what the trope is about.

My first choice, Set Behind The Set. Second choice, Studio Setting.

Since we seem to have a consensus, I'm making the single proposition crowner to formalize it here.

edited 11th Feb '13 1:06:54 PM by StarSword

A crowner-making tip: Put the "Should we ...?" into the crowner option and the problem "This trope is about <X>, but the trope name is better suited for the YKTTW <Y>" into the crowner header.

Thanks for that.

Also, while it isn't a problem in this case (It was just a cosmetic change) - editing a crowner option after it has got votes is only OK if the option's meaning wasn't changed.

Actually the vote was me. See what you mean, though.

Note that the name itself refers to an old practice where a company would build a town next to their mine or factory or whatever, and they'd literally own the town where their workers lived. Some went so far as to issue their own money (company scrip) which was required to be used in the company store—the only store in town.

(The line "I owe my soul to the company store", from the old song "Sixteen Tons", is a reference to this.)

The term has been broadened over the years to refer to towns that are primarily dependent on one major employer, or one particular industry (Detroit, MI, has been called a "company town" for the auto industry). But it's never ever been about what this trope describes, except so insofar as what is being described is a movie-industry version of the broader concept.

eta: the tl;dr version: horrible, misleading name should be changed. :)

edited 11th Feb '13 2:01:42 PM by Xtifr

Covered in the YKTTW.

Another black mark on Company Town I just noticed: there's no YKTTW archive hooked to the discussion page. Now, I don't know how old the "new tropes go thru YKTTW" rule is, but the earliest edit is from November 2010.

And, uh, can we get the crowner hooked? I've hollered twice now.

Eddie overruled the "all tropes must go through YKTTW" thing. It's not a thing any more. But not going through YKTTW is still generally a pretty bad sign.

Anyway, we seem to have 100% agreement about renaming this so far....

Ba-da-bump.

Consensus looks pretty clear, though more votes would be nice.

What number of votes would be preferable before renaming it?

Depends. With as one-sided a vote as this is, we probably have enough to call it, if you can attract the attention of a mod.

Go forth and rename!

Important question that I hasn't really been answered: What to do with the Zero Context Examples (which is pretty much all of them} of the new Set Behind the Scenes (pre-crowner Company Town)? I know ZCE policy is to comment them out, but they're the only examples on the page.

Or should the move to the new page be made anyway to free up "Company Town" for the rework, and address Set Behind the Scenes elsewhere? (ZCE thread in Long Term Projects, maybe?).

edited 25th Feb '13 1:49:31 AM by Nohbody