Whew. Exactly What It Says on the Tin is suffering from severe Trope Decay in the wicks. It's being potholed, sinkholed, and generally wicked incorrectly all over. The examples on the page have been cleaned up several times, but there hasn't been a full-on wick-scrubbing effort.
Until now.
There are 11,472 wicks. We don't know how many are bad, but the trope is not a terribly common one, as we define it.
The definition we're cleaning it to is this:
"...the premise or plot of the story is all right there in the title."
or this:
"That next door neighbor you never talk to? Tell her the title and see if she can give a one sentence description of the plot. If not, then the title is NOT Exactly What It Says on the Tin."
or even this:
"It isn't enough for the title to just be relevant or accurate — everything meaningful has to be conveyed in the title."
Some other ways that wicks can be bad:
- If it's one of those super-long Victorian-style titles, change the wick to point at the subtrope, In Which a Trope Is Described.
- If it fits on Excited Title! Two-Part Episode Name!, move it there.
- If it's not about the titling trope, it's a sinkhole. Get rid of it.
I'll be keeping a running tally of what's been cleaned up and what's left to do, so pick a letter in the "related to" list and post which one (and how far you get through it, if you don't get it all done.)
Also, please leave an edit reason, something along the lines of "Wick clean-up for Exactly What It Says on the Tin". We don't want to see anyone getting in trouble for making large numbers of deletions with no explanation. That would be bad.
Have at it folks!
As of 10/29/13, 2:29 pm: Wicks remaining: 11,472
As of 11/13/13 12:06 pm: Wicks remaining: 11,394
- All the redirects have been cleaned.
- "A" First one unchecked is Academy of Adventure
- "Q" done
- "Z" done.
edited 13th Nov '13 10:29:18 AM by Madrugada
Zzzzzzzzzz
I've done the redirects, and started on "A". Next one undone is A Boy and His X
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
diplomacy
Do people's names qualify for this trope?
Zzzzzzzzzz
Nope. That would be Meaningful Name or A Dog Named "Dog", probably.
edited 31st Oct '13 9:52:30 PM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
diplomacy
Z is done, with one I'm not sure about.
ZorphbertAndFred: It's not in the title, but a description of the plot appears in the subtitle / page header.
edited 1st Nov '13 3:59:52 PM by diplomacy
There is no Planet B
I'll help. :-) I try checking Characters/ namespace first. There are lots of wicks there and mostly misuse.
Need some minor scut work to do. Start on Q.
ETA: Q done.
edited 13th Nov '13 6:14:23 AM by kjnoren
Do tropes count for this trope? Like Quarreling Song?
No, I am not seeing how that title describes every aspect of the trope. The Song Of The Reasons For The Quarrel, might.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
That one sounds more like In Which a Trope Is Described to me.
Zzzzzzzzzz
Trope names: Same criteria as anything else: everything meaningful you need to know about the trope is in the name; in other words, there no room for "I Thought It Meant". Most trope names are not that explicit.
Zorphbert and Fred. Looks ok to me, the subtitle does pretty well encapsulate the comic.
First post updated.
edited 13th Nov '13 10:05:00 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Starting on T.
ETA: Breaking for now. No audited wicks survived.
edited 14th Nov '13 6:18:32 AM by kjnoren
Continuing on T. Commented out the wick in Taishou Yakyuu Musume instead of deleting, in the hope that someone will provide a translation.
For some reason, we also have a wick from Tabletop Games, that I have no idea where it comes from.
First unchecked under T is Talk Show. Taylor Swift. Teana's Travels Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Tegami Bachi
If someone knows French, please check Tatouage Animé
edited 29th Nov '13 1:15:47 PM by kjnoren
Anyone else working on this?
Zzzzzzzzzz
I'm nibbling at it. Oh, and by the way, go ahead and double post. Editing your last post don't mark the thread as having a new post, so I wasn't checking it.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Continued with T, first unchecked is Web Animation.TGQTSBFH
(Avatar by Coffee)
Reporting for duty. I will start work when I'll return from the army.
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
(Avatar by Coffee)
First unchecked is Acid-Trip Dimension. Also, archives aren't edited, right?
The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground
Yeah, they aren't.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
First uncleaned on T is The-Hetalia-RP.
edited 4th Jan '14 4:01:52 AM by kjnoren
Voluntarily got rid of a wick in the description of A Dog Named "Dog", as this was labeled as a Super-Trope.. (I may have made an error in removing the wick entirely, however, as it may still have a relation... more like first-cousin.)
But, just to ask, if an animal (species), place, etc. has a name where "everything important about the animal/place/etc. is in its name," would it still count here (as an In-Universe Example), be Shaped Like Itself, or be completely invalid? What about names that only catch all the appearance aspects (like "Winged Tiger")?
Ketchum's corollary to Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced tactic is indistinguishable from blind luck.
Bump. This has been stale since February. Motion to close?
The imaginative Christian Asperger
I don't think just a cleanup effort would work, since tropers still don't get the gist on what the trope's actually about.
You've cleared everything up to "T", right?
Well, this was added on the 6th October of this year, on Super Smash Brothers:
- Exactly Whatit Saysonthe Tin: For Wii U/3DS presents Classic mode's difficulty by numbers from 0.0 to 9.0, with each range of numbers having a difficulty name. 9.0 is titled "Nothing Harder". You can't go higher than 9.0, so there really isn't a more difficult setting.
(BTW, I had since removed it from the page.)
Here's a list of film titles I have removed and what IMHO they should have been to be this trope.
Do you agree? (if I'm wrong, I'll be happy to put them back)
Film
- Cowboys And Aliens > Cowboys in an alien invasion
- Alien Vs Ninja > Ninjas defend their village from aliens
- Penn And Teller Get Killed > Penn and Teller do magic tricks, provide edutainment and die except not really.
- Big Ass Spider > Big Ass Spider Escapes
- The Women > A woman starts hanging out with other women after a breakup
Some ex-entries from series with my comment:
- "In Arrow each episode represents a reoccurring theme of the episode (example "Betrayal")" > I hardly see how a single-word title can be this trope when there is a plot.
- "Dog With A Blog. Even though the blog isn't that important on the show." > If it's not that important, why is it this trope?
- "A lot of episode from the next-gen era Star Trek episodes." > Seems mostly like just accurate titles, not Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
- "2 Broke Girls. Not always, but usually yes." > ..the title tells me absolutely nothing about the series. Do they become hookers? Are they running from debt collectors? Do they become thieves? Do they live on the street? Do they become stealing hookers who live on the street, running from debt collectors?
- "* Jennifer Paterson and Clarissa Dickson Wright hosted the cooking show Two Fat Ladies. They were not exactly waifs." > "Two Fat Ladies Cook" would have been this trope.
edited 30th Nov '14 2:15:09 AM by W3irdN3rd
Whew. Exactly What It Says on the Tin is suffering from severe Trope Decay in the wicks. It's being potholed, sinkholed, and generally wicked incorrectly all over. The examples on the page have been cleaned up several times, but there hasn't been a full-on wick-scrubbing effort.
Until now.
There are 11,472 wicks. We don't know how many are bad, but the trope is not a terribly common one, as we define it.
The definition we're cleaning it to is this:
"...the premise or plot of the story is all right there in the title."
or this:
"That next door neighbor you never talk to? Tell her the title and see if she can give a one sentence description of the plot. If not, then the title is NOT Exactly What It Says on the Tin."
or even this:
"It isn't enough for the title to just be relevant or accurate — everything meaningful has to be conveyed in the title."
Some other ways that wicks can be bad:
I'll be keeping a running tally of what's been cleaned up and what's left to do, so pick a letter in the "related to" list and post which one (and how far you get through it, if you don't get it all done.)
Also, please leave an edit reason, something along the lines of "Wick clean-up for Exactly What It Says on the Tin". We don't want to see anyone getting in trouble for making large numbers of deletions with no explanation. That would be bad.
Have at it folks!
As of 10/29/13, 2:29 pm: Wicks remaining: 11,472
As of 11/13/13 12:06 pm: Wicks remaining: 11,394
edited 13th Nov '13 10:29:18 AM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.