Night Clerk of the Apacalypse.
That might fall under the trivia tab or under a specific trope depending on context.
Who watches the watchmen?
I think that's a job for the wiki for the show in question.
Rhymes with "Protracted."
I can certainly see a Trivia item (or tropoid) Show Terminology, but I question whether having examples of it would work out.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I guess it would help people understand terminology used in examples and in the work's article, but the last thing we need is to encourage inside jokes and other cases of people talking to each other and shutting everyone else out.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Maybe have a disclaimer at the top of every "Show Terminology" page? Something like...
Of course, this could be re-worded as you see fit for how this type of thing ends up working out. I just assumed it could be its own sub-page for each work, but that's just me of course.
edited 10th Mar '14 7:30:16 PM by LightPhaser
Lost in Space
Our job is not to be a reference source for the work. Our job is tropes, full stop.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I think a little expanding off of that wouldn't hurt anyone. Isn't this site called TV Tropes? I'm pretty sure it documents tropes on more than just TV nowadays, no?
Lost in Space
Not the same thing. We may not be about TV exclusively, but we have been and will always be about tropes.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Not the same thing? Yeah, no.
Whether you want to admit it or not, documenting the tropes used in various works is providing a reference source for them. Adding something like this is hardly the huge jump you're making it out to be.
Hey there! Having fun?
I vote for making a tab/namespace/whatever. They do still tend to sneak onto pages because fans use them unconsciously without realizing it. I know I've accidentally used "plot" and "moop" a few times... it can at least provide some frame of reference.
That, or make a Trivia trope...
—Or, you know what? A general Fandom tab. That can contain things like terminology, common fanon, et cetera. that might be referred to.
Yep, my vote's going for Fandom tab.
edited 11th Mar '14 5:07:05 AM by BaffleBlend
"It's liberating, realizing you never need to be competent." — Ultimatepheer
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Again, those aren't tropes.
There's no problem with definition pages on wikis about the work, but we are a wiki about the tropes. You can find works here because works have tropes, not because we are a Buffy the Vampire Slayer or a Doctor Who fansite.
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
edited 11th Mar '14 5:53:00 AM by SeptimusHeap
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
That's funny, because I seem to recall we also have 'Wild Mass Guessing' and 'Headscratcher' sections, even though those pretty much have nothing to do with tropes.
EDIT: Just noticed Baffle Blend's fandom tab proposal. I think it's a great idea, personally 
edited 11th Mar '14 10:42:04 AM by LightPhaser
No, the other one.
I think those are forum pages disguised as wiki pages.
Upon reconsideration, I am inclined to consider Show Terminology as a valid trope, used to explain in-story concepts. Consider calling the temperature at which the Applied Phlebotinum of the show starts working "lambda point" rather than the wordier and less interesting "temperature at which the Applied Phlebotinum of the show starts working" as an example.
I don't think that examples of that should be a mere dictionary. They should also mention who uses it, how it's used and such things.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
I guess so, but my point is that those pages found their way onto the wiki and they aren't really bothering anyone or anything else. What's so devilishly horrific about letting people have a tab they can use for fandom terminology or even fandom things in general? It would be useful to a lot of people, and it would give other people a chance to explain these things where it wouldn't be inappropriate to do so.
Lost in Space
Headscratchers bother me quite a bit, but so far we have lacked the will to try to change them. There are only so many man-hours one can devote to a wiki.
Our guiding principle has, rather, been "leave well enough alone" unless something is causing problems.
Adding an entirely new category of article for fandom terminology seems like the kind of thing that is entirely off-scope. It belongs on each work's own wiki and fansites.
A comparable example of something we reject is game guides and/or tutorials. Our Walkthrough Mode policy arose because wiki articles were becoming littered with Game FA Qs commentary.
edited 11th Mar '14 11:31:37 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
I think you're overreacting quite a bit. I don't see any harm that a "Fandom Terminology" page would cause, in all honesty. Sure, they're not necessarily tropes in a sense, but why should that be a bad thing? It's not like people go to TV Tropes expecting exclusively tropes - lots of websites expand upon their original intents and gain a lot from it.
The problem with Fandom Terminology is that it's not a trope, and while Audience Reactions YKTTW aren't forbidden, they are frowned upon because of that.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
NaNo 4328 / 50,000
Pages like that tend to attract ZCE and misuse of trope names, just like This Troper and Headscratchers. If you've ever done a large wick check or wick cleanup, you've already found how much trouble that can be.
What Septimus is talking about in #16 seems to match up with existing tropes Arc Words and Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp". A specialized name within a work used consistently for a purpose, seems to be a pretty big supertrope that may cover lots of smaller examples.
edited 11th Mar '14 11:55:25 AM by crazysamaritan
Link to TRS threads in project mode here.
I think what we want is not so much Fandom Terminology but a Work Glossary. Something that is a supertrope to things like Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp". Basically a way to categorize all the weird made up words a work uses in one place. It's both simultaneously trope examples, and a way to make works less opaque.
The words fans use aren't really important, but the ones the work uses are tropes in action.
edited 11th Mar '14 11:50:16 AM by shimaspawn
Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick
Well, if you shy away from anything that could vaguely sort of kind of but not really be like This Troper then you won't build the site up very much, will you? Sure, your collective attitude so far spells out rather clearly you don't really want to do that, but what you'd prefer and what could help the site are two different things at this point, no doubt.
edited 11th Mar '14 11:52:38 AM by LightPhaser
Zzzzzzzzzz
We aren't trying to build the site simply for the sake of making it bigger. We want the site content deeper, not necessarily broader. Adding a Fandom vocabulary page is making it broader, but not deeper. Adding a page along the lines of what Shima described — a works vocabulary listing the various Smeerps and such used within the work and how they relate to the tropes used is making it deeper (for instance, noting that in the Pern books, the term "runnerbeast" is used for a riding animal most likely descended from terrestrial horses (making it A Horse of a Different Color) but that on a number of the books' covers, the artist draws them as llama-like (making it Covers Always Lie).) And we don't really need more subpages for fans of a show to argue about what the correct fan-term for something is on.
edited 11th Mar '14 6:57:00 PM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
I'm not proposing to make TV Tropes bigger for the sake of being bigger. Hell, I'll be honest in that I'm not exactly backing a fandom terminology tab anymore than I'm "backing" anything else (although I'd be behind a general fandom tab). However, I don't think it's very fair to say that something would theoretically be deeper than something else when I'd say that's not up to just you to decide. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't TV Tropes a wiki collectively made by anyone who chooses to help out?
A directory of, I dunno, words made up on the show, words that take on a specific meaning in the context of the show, or even the show's definition of a common word, if it's unique. Such words for Buffy might be "splainy" or "growlyface" (or um, something less self-evident), "the Master" or "scoobies", and the show's definition of vampirism.
edited 6th Mar '14 4:14:06 PM by captainlavender