Ambiguous Name (Page Action Crowner 11/13/14): Why Would Anyone Take Him Back

Yes, I object. I don't see any reason to rename that's backed up with evidence of misuse or confusion caused by the name.

hbi2k, looking back through the thread only one person is clearly agreeing with you, with the rest disagreeing.

^^ What do you find less-than-compelling about the sizable body of evidence already cited? People continue to mistake it for a gender-specific trope and use it as such, labeling female-transgressor / male-forgiver examples as "inversions" which they are not, and failing to use the proper redirect.

The name and the trope description don't match. There is advantage to changing the name to one that does and no advantage to letting the broken name stay. It doesn't get much more simple and straightforward than that.

edited 12th Nov '14 8:58:07 AM by hbi2k

The "sizeable body of evidence" consists of lots of examples that are perfectly fine, even if they're potholed to the name using the other gender, and 2 out of over 100 that were wrong. 2% misuse does not constitute "broken and in need of changing". There's no indication that lots of people are being confused by the name, or that they're misusing the trope because of the name, or any other damage the name is doing. We change trope names because they're broken, not because someone doesn't like them. You have given no evidence that the name is broken, only that you don't like it.

A wiki operates by consensus. You have not gained a consensus in support of your suggestion. The consensus goes the other way, in fact: all but one of the people besides you who have posted in this thread have disagreed with you that it should be changed.

edited 12th Nov '14 9:57:13 AM by Madrugada

I count three people against the current name (myself, Leaper, and Exagge), two people strongly against changing it (yourself and Zyffyr), and the rest either expressing no strong view or going back and forth. Which I recognize still doesn't constitute consensus (generally defined around here as 2:1 in favor), which is why I'm trying to talk it through and see if consensus can be reached one way or the other.

As previously stated and as supported by the wick check, there is a significant amount of misuse / confusion that we can point to, plus the fact that the current name discourages female-transgressor examples which is more difficult to quantify, plus the fact that it sounds like dialogue, plus anecdotal evidence in the form of multiple people in this thread chiming in to say that they find the name awkward or confusing.

The next step would seem to be to propose solutions and see if they're better or worse than the problem. We've got your suggestion to take it off the Double Standards index and correct the bad potholes. I find that a bad solution because:

1.) As currently named the trope is a Double Standard. The solution to that isn't to sweep it under the rug by taking it off the index, it's to fix the Double Standard.

2.) When one in four potholes are bad, just fixing the ones that are out there doesn't solve the problem. A long-term solution that corrects the misuse going forward is better than a short-term one which means it'll just need another cleanup effort in six months.

So we're back to a rename. I'm inclined to put my voice behind Breakup Houdini. It seems to solve the problem without introducing any new complications that I can see and costing only a small amount of short-term work which I'm more than willing to take upon myself. If there are arguments against it that I'm not seeing, I'm all ears.

edited 12th Nov '14 12:53:11 PM by hbi2k

Um... what wick check? No proper wick check has been posted in this thread yet. And by wick check, I don't mean the "female examples use male pronoun" wick check. I mean, a "this example is using the trope wrong by definition" wick check.

And this isn't a Double Standard trope. It apply to guys just as well as girls, and the name being masculine has nothing to do with it being a Double Standard and everything to do with the English language's lack of a gender neutral singular pronoun. None of which are good reasons to change a trope name when the trope itself isn't being misused.

The improper use of potholes implicitly suggests that male-transgressor examples are considered the "default" and female-transgressor examples are inversions or variations, which is at odds with the trope as defined.

It also provides indirect evidence that the current trope name discourages the addition of female-transgressor examples, and since I know of no way to directly measure the number of times an example is not cited when it could have been, indirect evidence is about the best we can do there.

It also sounds like dialogue.

It has also been called out in this thread by multiple parties as awkward and/or confusing.

Any one of those points on its own might not be enough to bother with a rename. All of them together make a pretty compelling case.

Removing it from the Double Standard list isn't sweeping anything under the rug. That listing is for when the trope itself is a double standard, not for when the name might be read as such. Its listing there is misuse. Amusingly, the only definite misuse in your wick check.

So the instances where it was implied that this is a male only trope (since female examples are "inversions") are not misuse?

However, I'm behind just making the trope name Why Would Anyone Take Them Back, and just redirecting Him/Her to it. It's simple, not very disruptive, if at all, and grammatically acceptable.

Seconding Why Would Anyone Take Them Back. Using them/they to refer to a hypothetical person or person of unknown gender is quite common, and wouldn't come with any gender related baggage.

^ I still prefer Breakup Houdini for being shorter, clearer, and not sounding like dialogue, but Why Would Anyone Take Them Back does take care of the gender issue and is better than the name we currently have.

^^^Any name change will require that the wicks be changed, or there's no point in doing it; people will continue to use the name they see elsewhere on the wiki, and in this case that means they will continue to use "...Take Him Back?".

I've hooked a page action crowner.

edited 13th Nov '14 8:11:04 AM by Madrugada

^ A metric butt-ton of wicks will need changing anyway for using the incorrect pothole. Changing ALL the wicks is more work, but not by that much.

edited 13th Nov '14 11:19:06 AM by hbi2k

4 days out and the crowner is at

NO : 5 (8-3)

Kind of : -1 (5-6)

YES : -10 (2-12)

Unless there is a massive voting swing, this proposal is dead in the water.

edited 17th Nov '14 3:57:54 PM by Zyffyr

13 days, and the voting is now N:4(9-5), S:1(7-6), Y:-10(3-13)

Seems safe to call this as "Do nothing, lock it up".

Calling the crowner in favour of "no action" and locking thread. I'll take the trope off the Double Standard index.