Self Demonstrating Folder Titles

Recently on Ask The Tropers, someone brought up whether we need self-demonstrating folder titles (see Blatant Lies, Could Say It, But..., and more). That thread was starting to disrupt ATT, so we're moving here.

Personally, I strongly dislike them, with only a very few being subtle enough to not be annoying. Gratuitous Japanese works fine since the English is right next to the Japanese (and the other Gratuitous Foreign Language tropes the self-demonstrate should probably follow that example), and Excited Show Title is barely even noticeable. But most are just annoying, confusing, and make things more difficult than they need to be.

Do we need them? No. we don't need Self-demonstrating anything. We also don't "need" page images, or the Laconic Wiki, or the whole Drinking Game namespace, or stingers or ...well, you get the idea.

But unless they're so convoluted as to be opaque, there's nothing wrong with them and no reason to get rid of them.

Well, in my mind, funny stuff is actually a good thing to have ... so as long as it's actually funny and not interfering.

So Could Say It, But..., Excited Show Title and Gratuitous Japanese for example are OK since the medium is still easily readable.

Could Say It, But... is so convoluted as to be opaque. Gratuitous Japanese and Excited Show Title are perfectly fine, but anything that tacks another dozen words onto the folder title seems utterly pointless and extremely frustrating.

Sometimes it's fine, as shown by Excited Show Title and Gratuitous Japanese. Other times it's confusing (the first time I read "This Folder Contains Silence" I had no idea what the folder is about) or annoying. Example of the latter is "The Following Is A Work Of Fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, are definitely coincidental." - way too long and it doesn't even say clearly what it is about, so if you use Ctrl+F to search for "Real Life" you won't find that particular folder.

On ATT someone mentioned that folders are always in the same order, so having different names is not a problem. I don't know if the order is fixed, but even if it is, it helps only if people know the standard order of folders. Those of us who have not memorized it need to actually read the names to find a particular folder (if it's even there, because not all pages have all folders).

In short, I'd rather have the standard short-and-to-the-point folder names than long, witty, and potentially annoying and confusing, folder names.

For those of us using compact folders, overly long folder names are partially hidden, and you need to mouse over them to see the full folder name. And even without that, I've always found a sentence for a folder name to be disruptive. If you have to parse the text, it's overstayed its welcome.

The order of folders isn't consistent, since all folders don't always exist.

I said this in the Ask The Tropers discussion, but one of the problems with self-demonstrating pages in general is that very few of them seem able to avoid running a joke into the ground, and the folders are particularly bad because there's so many of them on each page, which means that after the fifth or sixth variation it tends to get pretty tiring (one example I read recently was What Did I Do Last Night?). So while I think some people have overstated how confusing non-standard folder titles are, I think some of the time they're also just plain annoying.

Could Say It, But... is NOT OK. Not all titles are readable if you have compact folders enabled, Films - Animated, and Comic Books are NOT visible for compact folders, and only the 'fan' part of fan works is visible. The same problem exists (with more folders) on Blatant Lies.

edited 18th Oct '14 3:30:16 PM by TheOneWhoTropes

Gratuitous Japanese works because, thanks to the font used, the English names stand out much more strongly than the Japanese names. While the folder names are unusually long, they are not as long as most examples, and the sheer difference (both in alphabet and font appearance) means they aren't too problematic for quick scanning and identification.

Excited Show Title works because the folder name is affected in terms of punctuation. The wording is no different to normal.

I don't think Could Say It, But... works, however. It suffers from the same problem as Blatant Lies: not only are the folder names hidden within excessively long text, but it's a joke that gets old so fast it only really works on one folder. The repetitiveness of the joke throughout the rest of the folder names is painful.

I think it's useful to consider the purpose for using folders in the first place. Isn't it to create a clear, clean and snappy method of organising a page? By that I mean, at a glance, you can tell what trope sections exist on the page and where to go for the works you're interested in. The minute folder names become convoluted, or a string of sentences rather than a quick sign post, the purpose for the existence of the folder is lost. At least, that's what I think.

edited 18th Oct '14 3:47:58 PM by Wyldchyld

The problem is similar to Self-Demonstrating articles. Huge drop in Clear for a tiny gain in Witty.

I can live with Gratuitous Japanese and Excited Show Title. Blatant Lies, Could Say It, But..., and What Did I Do Last Night? seem overly obfuscated.

Some other pages with self-demonstrating folders (or sub-page links):

• Bad Liar
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb
• Cluster F-Bomb
• Leet Lingo
• Suspiciously Specific Denial
• Tyop on the Cover

edited 18th Oct '14 7:58:22 PM by MrL1193

Could just be me, but the self-demonstrating (or "self-demonstrating" depending on how kind you're being) folders on No Budget really obscure the what the folders are about, unless you know what the two to four letters are referring to, and even then, it's rather annoying. Can we please get rid of them on that page?

It also fails as a joke, since an excessive amount of text is spent on excuses and natter in the description.

Translation Train Wreck has self-demonstrating folders too, though they do have the proper name in parentheses.

Most of the names are too long for compact folders.

I agree, its not that self demonstrating is a bad idea, its just that some pages go way overboard. it should really be decoration to the titles like Excited Title not bogging the titles down.I mean its the same reason we allow custom titles right? we dont custom title Long Title to something ridicousluy unweidly just to self-demonstrate, but we do custom title Punctuated! For! Emphasis! because its just adding a little bit to the title (Punctuated! For! Emphasis! has good self demonstrating folders, too)

Also, do you think the self demonstrating folders on Long Title work? They're very long, certainly, but they all start with the folder's offcial name, which does make them easier to scan. I don't think they're that good personally, but they're certainly not as bad as Could Say It, But...

edited 18th Oct '14 9:44:09 PM by PistolsAtDawn

Long Title works, yes, for that reason. Compact folders isn't an issue there either. It's sort of like how it's usually better to write an example with the work name among the first words, so people scanning the list can easily see what work it is from, rather than having to dig through the entire text to see that.

I think rodney Anonymous put it best: Whether they're funny or not, I seriously doubt the gain in "Wittiness" outweighs the drop in "Clearness", and dern sure not the drop in "Conciseness" in most of the examples.

I'm inclined to argue for removing them from Main namespace pages entirely for the sake of consistency, but I wouldn't see a problem with keeping the relatively harmless ones like Punctuated! For! Emphasis! and Excited Show Title.

Gratuitous Japanese doesn't look bad on my screen, as someone else mentioned, because kana is so different from Roman characters that it's easy to quickly parse. But on the other hand, I don't use compressed folders, so I'm not sure if it interferes with that.

As I said in ATT, I think they look ridiculous and want to dump them entirely for main articles. They eviscerate clarity.

edited 20th Oct '14 9:49:55 AM by Fighteer

On Gratuitous Japanese, only Anime and Manga is at all affected with compact folders, and there only "Manga" is cut off, which honestly isn't a big deal.

Like self-demonstrating articles, I prefer discouraging them to banning them. The many that are too long, too obscure, or too hard to read should go; the few that are simple and obvious and don't cause technical problems, though, I'd rather keep.

Full disclosure: I launched The Case of..., but, while someone else added the self-demonstrating folders, I like them and think they're reasonably clear. But I'm not sure if they're too long or not, though, so I'm neutral on keeping them there.

That's why I think they can live in Self-Demonstrating versions, but the main article should be kept clear.

That really sounds like the most appropriate solution. It allows them to exist for the folks who like them, but in a place that is clearly appropriate. That way the conversation of "should they or shouldn't they" is just bypassed entirely.

I'm still not sure why the titles are confusing. It's only a few sentences, and the articles are not supporsed to be laconic.

I'll support something like SD moving, or like what Gratuitous Japanese did, put what goes in them in parenthesis or bold them somehow.

There is a difference between being laconic and being straightforward. Laconic simply means "using very few words". The issue here is more than just folder titles being too long (though that is one of several complaints).