Evil Overlord List: could it be organized better?

Natter is when users are having a conversation on an article page, instead of its discussion page or the forums.

I'm currently working on Cellblock A. What I'm trying to do is to summarize the entries, and make them shorter. It seems that the people writing it have swallowed a whole dictionary/thesaurus and were unnecessarily expanding on a point, that instead could be addressed in only one to a few sentences.

I'm still getting the hang of what is Natter and what isn't as I haven't been on TV Tropes the long.

While not a comprehensive guide, look suspiciously at all sub-points with ** in front, and if it seems like the subpoint would be starting a conversation with the next level up, it's highly likely that it could be cut with a lossless compression of data, or worked into the original point if it clarifies or adds detail to it.

Entries with three * in front of it are, in my experience, almost always chainsaw fodder unless there are other points (and even then are "guilty until proven innocent" as far as I'm concerned)

As for entries with four (or more) stars (only 3 show in the displayed page), should you meet someone in real life that makes those entries I believe in some jurisdictions it's legal to punch them dead in the face.

What should we do with sub-points that can work as their own entries or with entries that are really two points in on? that On the one hand, I don't want to add anymore points then we already have, on the other hand, some of the subpoints are better then then the point they are under.

And I'm cleaning up Block I.

Edit: It's looking better except for entry 18 which I don't know what to do with. I'm tempted to cut it completely

edited 7th Sep '14 7:48:24 PM by ObsidianFire

Two- or three-bullet points that can stand alone should be moved to a single bullet point. Take a look at what I've been doing to Cellblock E; compare the before and after conditions.

^^I would cut the subbullets, or perhaps rewrite them to be their own bullet points. They don't have to reference the #18 item.

The trouble with that entry is that point 18 sets the stage for it's own sub-points. Without the sub-points being there, point 18 makes no sense. Without the main 18 point, the sub-points make no sense.

Cleaning up Cellblock H and G.

edited 8th Sep '14 8:36:54 AM by ObsidianFire

I chainsawed Cellblock I #18 down to the base point and a statement that it will minimize the effects of fraternization between the to groups. It doesn't need detailed explanations of how it will work in any given situation.

edited 8th Sep '14 8:25:38 AM by Madrugada

Finished Cellblock G. Guess I'll work on Cellblock F now.

If we wanted to categorized the lists, here's some rough categories that always seem to come up.

Base Construction: Guidelines having to do with building bases. Anything to do with prison cells, ventilation shafts, etc. goes here.

The Hero: Guidelines having to do with how to handle the hero(es).

Weaponry: Guidelines having to do with weaponry.

Employees: Guidelines having to do with Mooks, The Dragon, and anyone else the Evil Overlord employes.

I'll probably come up with more.

Are we still on this, or have I just savagely kicked the dead horse?

Hmm.... This page has so many posts... I really hope that this doesn't get missed here, and I don't have the doomsday superweapon to destroy others and move mine up to the top. Let's try it anyways.

We should transport these prisoners to new cellblocks, or camps, or categories, or whatever you want to call them. Whereas the current cellblocks are kind of like a refugee camp, with new prisoners getting tossed into the next available cell, these new blocks would be categorized, sticking the prisoners with their own kind. Although this goes against the advice of #36 on the original list,^i.e. Prisoners of the same party should not be kept in the same cell/cellblock,they may be happier this way and these are not the heroes; they are the peasants in our psychological study. I think we'll be safe.

A few proposed camps:

• On Holding Prisoners
• On Combat Tactics
• On Weapon Tactics(may or may not constitute two lists)
• On My Women and Children
• On Their Women and Children(Definitely needs two lists)
• On Public Relations
• On Dungeon Design(do we need sub-categories, or are there just a lot of repeats?)
• On Legions of Terror(or On Outfitting your Armies)
• On Personal Conduct

Obviously, we can clone the prisoners between the camps, and camps will prevent them from seeing their clones (or twins or close-looking relatives), who would inevitably spook them out; we don't need the panic like we've got in the current cellblocks. On the same note, this will be a chance to cull prisoners who carry the exact same information as others. If we need both, but they aren't distinct enough, we can do some gene-splicing. It would also be interesting to put conflicting prisoners^aka Condtradicting pieces of advice right next to one another and let them duke it out for our amusement and convenience, so we don't have to be the voices in their heads. On that note, the move to categorized camps will enable us to cull and/or cure all those pesky schizophrenic prisoners who have popped up in more recent cellblocks, starting around cellblock C. Be wary; this version of schizophrenia is actually contagious, as their neighbors will think it's okay and not fight the stigma so much.^aka If already-posted suggestions have conversations on them, new writers will follow that pattern instead of following the proper layout. Herd mentality and all.

When cloning new prisoners into the categorized camps, it will be so much easier to check if they're already in the system, instead of hunting through ten~twenty lists. It won't matter if they're in another camp already. It will only matter if they're in that specific camp.

^{For example}  "I will make sure my love interest is properly trained in hand-to-hand combat, and armed combat." would be in both the Women and Children of My Side camp and the Combat/Weapon Tactics camp. "I will never take the Hero's love interest into my private chambers to have my way with her." would be under Women and Children of the Hero's Side, Personal Conduct, and Holding Prisoners. Anything about Adopting Orphans (for positive goals) would fall under Public Relations and Women and Children of My Side. The Legions of Terrors' helmets would fall under Outfitting your Armies, whereas their guns would fall under that and Weapon Tactics.

Organizing the EOL into sub-pages sounds like a good idea. But for now, we should first get rid of unnecessary entries on the lists.

I just went through and added the "start this numbered list at something other than 1" markup, but since it doesn't support nested lists (Natter usually) I had to stop at cellblock E.

AHI-3000 has been chainsawing through the mess and grouping pages into exactly 100 items each (which is probably what we should have done from the beginning, really)

so question, do you have any backup saved of the items you couldn't salvage? I somehow doubt the original mess coincidentally had 1000 total items in it, and this wiki's formatting of edit histories kinda flies over my head when I'm trying to track anything other than simple one-line changes.