Ambiguous Name: Swiper No Swiping

This is an old one from back when Trope Namers were allowed. Per Ask The Tropers, it was determined that it could use a rename.

It's basically a Lighter and Softer version of Talking the Monster to Death where you simply tell the villain to stop what they're doing and they comply without a fuss.

Stops Villainy When Ordered is the only idea I can think up at the moment.

edited 4th Apr '14 6:31:48 AM by DracMonster

Where is your proof?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

What was established in ATT was that whether it needed to be renamed or not was a question for TRS. Which is where it is now.

Drac, you need to make a case that it needs to be renamed here, and get consensus here, not simply assume that it will be and jump to what to rename it to.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Oh, sorry.

My case is: I've never seen an episode of Dora the explorer, so this looked like it was about window cleaning or car washing. One other participant who'd never even heard of the show thought it confusing as well, and a couple others (including Fighteer) thought it was worth bringing here.

The other thing is, the trope isn't necessarily about stealing, but stopping any kind of bad thing simply because the good guy says so.

A third point is, it doesn't have many wicks (relative to how long it's been around,) and it might get more with a clearer title.

edited 4th Apr '14 12:36:41 PM by DracMonster

The title is non-indicative. It does nothing to describe the trope. It's apparently named after a fox character named "Swiper" so it relies on the reader having watched the show on Nick Jr to get what it's about, and aside from tropers who are parents the majority of readers wouldn't have context for that.

The title isn't memetic enough to get a pass on Trope Namer Syndrome either. Nor is it old enough to get excluded from it because of Grandfather Clause.

Something along the lines of "Stop, Thief!" comes to mind, but that's not at all the connotation we want for the trope.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Instant Cease And Desist, maybe?

Scolding Stop?

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

It's a good name. Keep.

Let's see some evidence that it's causing misuse, underuse, or confusion.

Misuse: wicks and /or examples are wrong (This means do a wick check and an example check)

Underuse: Too few wicks or examples, relative to how common it is. (It has 40 wicks. That's considered healthy. It has 34 examples.))

Confusion: Examples or wicks that should be going to another trope are on this one instead, or wicks or examples that should be here are instead on another one. (This is also shown by a wick check and an example check.)

"We wouldn't have named it this if we were newly naming it now" is not sufficient cause to change a name.

edited 4th Apr '14 3:32:55 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Nevermind. Didn't read properly.

edited 4th Apr '14 3:32:44 PM by KarjamP

To be specific, the article has been around since at least 2010, and it has only collected 40 wicks. It has, however, collected 83 inbounds since January 1, 2012.

Accourding to Wick, the page is healthy, and needs no actions.

We have anecdotal of people not being familiar with the show to draw the correct meaning from name alone. What we can probably show is that the name has not grown beyond the Trope Namer. I checked a few links in the Analyzing Inbounds tool, and the only page that actually worked was discussing the Dora show specifically. Just referencing Dora may sufficiently explain the 2:1 ratio of Inbounds:Wicks.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Aye, Wick says "Let it grow" but it really hasn't, and it's only barely beyond "standing" after 4 years.

Now in the interest of fairness, as someone pointed out in Ask The Tropers, this may be due to it being a more "limited" concept than some other tropes.

Also my perception may be skewed by apparently being the only living human being besides Wyldchyld that has never seen an episode of the show, heh.

edited 4th Apr '14 6:01:24 PM by DracMonster

Wick says "Healthy, No action needed." Not all tropes are going to become monsters with hundreds or thousands of wicks.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I think it could use some searchable redirects.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Fixed the tag.

Methinks that a wick check would be pointless here, since nobody has complained about misuse. I would ask whether the dialogue-y title is a problem in light of the usage statistics.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Just make some redirects. This trope have few examples and wicks because the trope itself is uncommon.

Just to confirm that I was the 'other participant' who had never heard of Dora the Explorer (despite coming from the 'parent' generation), so found the trope title meaningless. Once I'd read the trope description, I still couldn't see the reason for the trope name.

I wouldn't be able to misuse this trope because it's so meaningless to me that I find it rather unusable. I would simply ignore its existence. It's not because I don't see the trope existing, I don't think the description or the name lends itself well to what it's trying to identify as a trope in the first place. I've only worked out what the trope is by listening to people discuss it. The trope description and name did not (by itself) clarify the trope to me. On that note, I wouldn't say the trope is uncommon, but it was more common in much older children's shows/cartoons. It seems rarer than it was.

Aside from that, Drac Monster has covered most of what I would have said.

edited 5th Apr '14 8:55:19 AM by Wyldchyld

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

Which why I said the following: —> What we can probably show is that the name has not grown beyond the Trope Namer.

If you two could prove that, then we would have a solid case for changing things. As it is, the assumed problem can be fixed by creating redirects that make it easier to find the trope page. If you weren't watching Dora, then what would you call it? How would you google the trope? That is what gets turned into a name/redirect.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

The question we should be asking is, "Does the rest of the site get the name?", not "Do I get the name?"

I made the same mistake a couple of times because either I saw something others didn't, even after I've pointed out (which others then say I'm looking too deep into it) or I suffered from Pop-Cultural Osmosis Failure. And those were mainly in YKTTW and Image Pickin'.

edited 5th Apr '14 9:03:21 AM by KarjamP

I like how this is the answer to everything. Which, it sort of is, except for the part that nobody wants to actually use the redirects....

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

The point of adding redirects is to make it easier to find the page through a search engine. None of our usage stats can gauge that kind of performance, except maybe a keyword search.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

That's how it is now anyway. If that was the original purpose of redirects the site did not do a good job of making that clear (which might have been why they were changed). Still, that makes Redirects Are Free seem kind of misleading.

Not sure why the page is misleading, it doesn't state that redirects are supposed to be wicked anywhere, and it does say they should be used if the name is "not that likely to be easily searched for".

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

It says redirects are not an excuse not keep a bad trope name but if it is not bad enough to rename, redirects are the next best thing. It does not say that redirects are not supposed to be used, combined with the fact the page title used to change to whatever link sent you their (which kind of made page quotes and images important landmarks, that was a system that worked until it was arbitrarily decided redirects were "distracting") gives the impression redirects were originally intended not just free for creation but free for use.

It reminds me of the argument not to switch to the metric system.

edited 7th Apr '14 8:27:26 AM by IndirectActiveTransport