Recap Pages: Are they good or bad?

After getting into a few discussions with other tropers about my recent failed attempt to summarize a Harry Potter chapter, I got the impression that a few of us don't like the recap pages and think that all they do is spoil the episodes or whatnot. I just wanted to get some other people's input: are recaps okay, or do they need to go? I'm thinking that the entire literature section might need to go.

Are you trolling? No, we are not removing Recap sections, and no, we are not removing Literature. What the fuck?

Recaps allow a more detailed look at the tropes that are involved with specific episodes of a work. The rules for Recaps are clear: no future spoilers. If you read a given Recap article, it is assumed that you have seen that episode and everything before it.

No, I'm not trolling. I'm just asking a question. I'm not trying to upset anyone. My intentions are good. I probably should have reworded my original post and the title. I've had a hard day, so I might have accidentally let my emotions affect the thread.

edited 30th Oct '14 4:55:02 PM by katethegr8

Fighteer, I just realized my mistake, and I really wish I could take back my post. You can lock it now if you want to, I want to be a good troper and not make a huge blunder like this again.

To clarify: katethegr8, when you said "the entire literature section might need to go", I take it you meant "all the Recaps for works of literature", and not the Literature namespace itself?

edited 30th Oct '14 6:17:52 PM by PaulA

The original ATT discussion was centered on the necessity of chapter recap pages, not literature recaps in general. (It seemed like the consensus was generally against chapter recaps.) Drac Monster also questioned the purpose and necessity of literature recaps as a whole, which appears to have contributed to the creation of this thread.

All of which is to say, if this was a dumb question to ask, it was a dumb question that several people were wondering about, so don't beat yourself up over it too much.

edited 30th Oct '14 6:25:32 PM by MrL1193

II meant all the Recap pages for literature, but I take it back now. Since the moderators are in charge of the site, I really don't want to be stepping on their toes, and it seems that's what I've done.

I think recap pages for tv series-es are good. What other recap pages are there?

There are recap pages for most forms of media (bar those that can't be recapped without creating redundancy with the main page, such as films). In any case, I do think they're good, and I had no intention of causing trouble.

Recaps for chapters in a book is stretching it IMO.

Yeah, if you're taking out parts of a single work, I don't think it quite fits the purpose. However, if the chapters are released separately I could see a point. Single chapters from one physical book, not so much. That's like recapping specific scenes out of a film.

That's equivalent to "chapters are released separately", which is why I think it's a good use.

edited 31st Oct '14 4:40:38 PM by AnotherDuck

Yeah, I agree. But I think the episode-by-episode recaps are okay.

Yeah, I think Recap pages are inappropriate for anything that isn't an episodic work.

Then you're out of luck, since we ruled some time ago Recap/ was the catch-all namespace for any kind of plot summary page. Any pages currently in Synopsis/ are supposed to be moved to Recap/ (a project that obviously isn't very high priority), and no new such pages created.

You can read up on this decision here.

Ah, I didn't even know we had a Synopsis namespace. (Which was sort of the theme of the OP in the other thread ). I still kind of question the value of such a thing (personally I think Recap is useful largely because you can show tropes that apply to a particular episode), but I'll accept wiki policy.

I'm pretty much going to fall in with what is saying: While theoretically having a recap page for a single standalone work isn't against the rules, I do think it would be kind of silly to have that sort of needless duplication of trope lists when the main works page would work just fine.

Having trope lists for a single-work recap is obviously redundant. In those cases, the namespace could be used for a more comprehensive plot writeup than is possible in the main article.