Inconsistency between namespaces and categories on trope pages

My initial question on Ask The Tropers was why Studio Ghibli feature films are sometimes listed on trope pages in the category Anime & Manga and other times under Films—Animated. This led to a larger discussion about the underlying logic of our categorization which I want to continue on here.

I drew up a matrix in Excel to help me better understand the issue with our overlapping namespaces and categorization. You may want to have a look. Note, this is just an assumption and lacks completeness.

Basically, we operate in four dimensions:

• Medium (animation, live-action, etc.): this is the strongest factor and builds the backbone of our namespace definitions.
  • Issue: On trope pages Manga and Anime are merged though they present different mediums (and namespaces).
• Country of origin: At some point Manga and Anime were split off from Comicbooks and Animation to form their own namespaces.
• Continuity (single work, series): Inconsistent dimension that has never been fully developed.
  • The only medium where we cared to separate stand-alone works from series is Film. TV shows got their own namespace Series, but then we go on to call it Live-Action TV on trope pages.
  • Sometimes series are called Franchises even though they do not cross namespaces (e.g. Die Hard). Other overarching canons don't feature a Franchise page, like LOTR. Definition of Franchise?
• Runtime (short/feature): Subtle dimension that only applies to Animation and Film but is not used consistently:
  • Animated Films splits Western Animations by runtime. On tropes pages, it's done differently: Short animations stay under Western Animation, feature animations move to Film - Live Action. Same goes for Anime. Question: Why would the length of a standalone work make a difference for our categorization?

The way I see it, there is a trade-off between a) the amount of categories we want to have on trope pages and b) the level of consistency in our grouping. Leaning toward a) a consistent categorization could look like this:

• Manga
• Anime - Features
• Anime - Series
• Film - Features
• Film - Series
• Western Animation - Features
• Western Animation - Series
• other categories stay the same

Alternatively, if we only want to remove confusion where to place Anime features (my initial question), we could just change the category "Films - Animation" to "Films - Anime & Western Animation" (or "Films - Eastern & Western Animation")

edited 23rd Dec '14 2:27:17 AM by eroock

Anime and Manga are under the same namespace because so much of Anime is based on a Manga series and vice-versa. Given that the anime usually has the same tropes as the manga does, it doesn't make sense to have two nearly identical pages.

The Franchise namespace is for well... franchises... that have four or more works in the same universe. IE: four films would qualify for a franchise page, so would a novel, a tv series and two movies that are all part of the same "universe".

The mods can correct me if I'm wrong.

Franchise is for when there are 3 or more pages in different media, so the 4 films example does not qualify. The "Novel, TV series, 2 Movies" example would but only if we actually have pages for the novel, the series, and at least one of the movies.

First we must be clear about the terms:

• Namespace, as I use it, refers to the folders on the domain. Manga and Anime have their own.
• Categories refer to the folder structure used on trope pages, which may differ from namespaces.

Both differ, because namespaces are build around the dimensions Medium and Country of Origin, while example lists on trope pages try to accommodate all four dimension (where applicable), which leads to a clash. Basically that is my concern.

I am not so familiar with Manga and their Anime derivates. Do these combo works usually have their work page under either Manga or Anime? If not, we run into problems. If the trope example only mentions the Manga version, then the cross-wiki for the Anime is lacking. If both are mentioned we still have redundancy. I see the same issue popping up with books made into films. In the example list, sometimes the film refers to the literature section for explanation, sometimes the film is not mentioned at all, even though the trope applies. But we are talking about 10-20% of books2films, which is not a big deal.

How does this qualification process work out? Apparently, the rule (3 or more pages in different media) is not being enforced.

edited 23rd Dec '14 2:38:55 AM by eroock

Namespaces and folders are not entirely consistent with each other, for practicality reasons. Also, I think that using "Folder" to refer to namespaces is a bad thing.

Franchise/ articles can be made if a) a work is represented in at least 3 mediums and b) at least 3 different mediums have their own articles.

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

A big issue here is path dependency— changing things would be massive undertaking without much practical benefit

Anime adaptions tend to be very faithful to their source material, and as such generally share a work page (under the namespace of the original). Anime and manga share a folder because a lot of the examples would have to be duplicated otherwise (light novels should probably be folded in too)

The Eastern Animation namespace excludes Anime.

Edit: oops, apparently there's four, I was using Eastern Animation interchangeably with Asian Animation.

edited 23rd Dec '14 4:59:09 AM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I am happy with dropping charges on Manga/Anime series separation, seeing the reason for merging. I am still unhappy with:

• Anime and Western Animation clustered by Runtime instead of Continuity
  • Short animations like Paperman should go under Film-Animation instead of Western Animation, same as short feature films already go under Film-Live Action. This way we have a clearer split between series and features: Categories Western Animation and Anime & Manga are reserved for series (are there any standalone Mangas?), and Film-Animation and Film-Live Action for features.
• As an extension to previous point, we should better communicate that Feature Animes go under Film-Animation. Otherwise we are stuck with people misplacing it all the time.
• The namespace Series makes little sense. It should either be called Live Action TV or the Series should be in the category name of TV shows somehow. or it remains a brainfart of the past.
• Franchises: I now have seen three different definitions. The rules should be more clear and enforced (remove Die Hard franchise page?).

Franchise was intended as a Multimedia Franchise namespace. I'm working offline on a report about how effective this namespace has been for that purpose.

edited 23rd Dec '14 7:44:59 AM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Ugh. What you're getting into now is stuff that happens because a certain amount of ambiguity is inevitable. We don't have a way of making certain that every editor is familiar with the minutiae of categorization. No matter what we call the folders, there's going to be some amount of unclear cases

The point about Series/ is valid, though. It's just, most people figure out what it means pretty quickly and there's no easy way to change it

x3. There are many standalone mangas out there. For Anime/Manga/Light Novel they are placed in which ever came first, take the original Code Geass it got a manga and a light novel adaptation of the same material but since the anime came first it goes there, new material outside the direct adaptations get different pages and linked to the franchise page Code Geass.

The only time an adaptation is split off from its source would be when it is different enough to warrant it like say Persona 4 and Persona 4: The Animation or Negima! Negima!? (second season).

edited 24th Dec '14 8:39:40 AM by Memers

I don't think anybody's addressed the initial Ask The Tropers question, which is that Anime feature films, which are listed under the Anime namespace, are apparently supposed to be listed on trope pages in the "Film" folder rather than the "Anime" folder. That could not be more counter-intutitive.

Pretty much the big reason why anime movies should stay in the anime section is because for 99% of anime movies do not get any kind of theatrical release in the west and are released in the exact same way episodes of series are released there isn't any difference and are not sorted differently in places like Best Buy and such.

Interesting angle. How do we define Film? Anything on film reels? Doesn't work anymore in the digital age. Anything with a theatrical release (in the west)? That would exclude most short films. Where do these go?

edited 24th Dec '14 7:55:55 PM by eroock

Films are well Films, they are sold in the films section of stores as opposed to the TV section. The anime section is separated by itself and no distinction between Anime Movie and Anime anything else is made.

If I understand you correctly, Anime & Manga will comprise everything that is distributed under that label, regardless whether feature, series or else. And for all other works we break it down according to Medium type. For Film we would break it even further down to Release type (theatralic/non-theatralic) which takes care of the Film/TV separation (for live action and animation). That sounds like a straight forward and easy to follow rule.

One suggestion I would make then is to rename Western Animation to TV-Animation (we are not concerned with Western since Anime is clearly labeled) so it falls into place with the other three categories:

• Films-Animation
• Films-Live Action
• TV-Animation
• TV-Live Action

edited 24th Dec '14 8:26:15 PM by eroock

Anime does not cover Korean animation.

If films are films, why isn't Spirited Away a film? It is sold in the film section of stores.

edited 24th Dec '14 8:28:41 PM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

The idea is not look at Anime in terms of Medium type but in terms of Country of Origin and simply stash it with Manga. It might be a bit illogical but it could help to resolve the confusion once it has been clearly communicated. Unless there is a strong need for users to see Anime Features separated. This is something to find out.

I am not familiar with Korean or other Asian animations. If they share many features with Anime, they should go there I guess.

edited 25th Dec '14 1:02:32 PM by eroock

Avatar: The Last Airbender shares many features with anime. Does that mean it belongs with Chinese cartoons? You're starting with a goal: "put all Anime in one folder", and then justifying the methods because they reach a goal.

What is the goal of separation by medium to begin with?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I was talking about Asian Anime. Airbender is of Western Origin and should be treated that way. No change to the current system in that regard. The new approach would only move Anime Features originating in Asia back to the Anime & Manga folder.

If I understand correctly, the rule is that feature-length Anime is supposed to be listed under the Film folder on a trope page, which is where the confusion lies. It seems to me that it would be more logical and certainly more intuitive to class everything in the Anime namespace in the Anime folder.

Calling movies "films" might be The Artifact but it's still useful to keep things separated. So far as I know all films are listed under Film regardless of length—Charlie Chaplin 10-minute shorts are listed in the Film category.

Asian Anime is a nonsense term. You either mean Japanese Animation (anime), or you mean Asian Animation (which is not only anime).

You call Avatar a Western Animation, when the studios that drew it were Nickelodeon Animation Studios, DR Movie, JM Animation, MOI Animation, and Titmouse. Very few works are made in only one country nowadays. We use Western Animation because that is the policy set when tropers wanted to separate the Anime from the American animation.

Let's leave the discussion of anime versus western Animation versus asian animation. Moving to Name Space versus Media Categories:

• What media category does a Discworld work go under?
• What media category does a Disney work go under?
• What media category does a Magic: The Gathering work go under?

Your question of mixing works is covered by the third question in Media Categories FAQ.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

• Discworld: Literature?
• Disney: Films-Animated or TV-Animated depending on theatrical release
• Magic - The Gathering: Tabletop Game?

I don't know what prompted the creation of namespaces like Discworld and Disney in the first place.

Thanks for the Media Categories FAQ link. The argumentation on there is not sound, IMO. First they argue for a separate Film category for Anime and Western Animation features, for the sake of reducing confusion. Later, they note that many users are either extremely interested in Anime or not at all, which calls for Anime to stay in a separate place. That is two different approaches. I would go with the second one. Disputable works like Avatar can go where the majority feels it belongs.

edited 25th Dec '14 6:02:09 PM by eroock

IIRC, the Disney and Discworld namespaces are grandfathered in from before there was a serious movement to standardize namespaces. No idea on MtG, though.

All your safe space are belong to Trump

Fighteer has suggested that namespaces as a way to demarcate mediums for works may go away entirely as a result of the database overhaul; we'll still assign works to mediums for other reasons, but I doubt any major changes will happen to our media categorization scheme until then.

Actually, Anime was the very first "medium" to be split off from TV, before works were even given their own namespaces for reasons other than disambiguation, due to the unusually large anime fanbase the wiki had even in the early days and the very different tropes it used. Had that not happened, it's possible "country of origin" would not have become a delineating factor... or maybe it would have, as I'll get to later. Again, this goes back to why it's called TV Tropes; originally, work pages were only placed in a separate namespace in order to disambiguate them from tropes with the same name, so less attention was given to the "name of the medium" than that it was a series and not a trope or something else. More specifically, I suspect this convention has to do with TV Tropes' roots in Buffy fandom and that fandom's tendency to refer to Angel as Angel the Series. Animated Films were somewhat confusing, because sometimes they'd be placed under Western Animation, sometimes under Film, and they're still not consistently placed in their own folder in trope pages, which was supposed to solve the problem, which may be one reason why modern short films tend to get thrown under Western Animation (their work pages tend to be listed under Western Animation/Anime unless they're Disney adaptations of older stories). Japanese animated films have always gone under Anime, partly because a lot of them are extensions of series and/or OV As that we used to trope as though they were series, partly because Japanese stuff (including much of its live-action) is more like each other than any Western equivalent medium, as I go into more detail on below. I don't think I've ever seen any Japanese film in any Film folder, certainly any non-Miyazaki Japanese film, and this is the first I've heard that this should be the case.

Short films from The Golden Age Of Animation just completely break any attempt at a "common sense" delineation of media, because your question about the difference in runtime could as easily be asked about the distinction between TV and movies, especially with the rise of heavily-serialized shows that are more like really long movies; they're both media involving moving pictures and sound. Golden Age shorts were originally released in theaters, but theaters in those days almost filled the role television would fill later, and anyone born between the 60s and the 90s would associate them more with TV; many, many animated TV shows throughout the history of television have attempted to ape them through the Three Shorts format.

One thing I've always liked about TV Tropes, and which I sometimes worried the Fast Eddie regime tried to destroy, was its no-bullshit, common-sense approach to things. No dancing around what everyone knows about a certain work, often to the point of being the only thing people care about about a work; if a work is known primarily for its Hate Dom, that would be the first line in the description. The imposition of the YMMV ghetto and attempt to enforce NPOV on work pages (seriously, anyone who would seriously try to strenuously defend the Chick Tracts probably isn't smart enough to find TV Tropes or even make their way around the Internet in the first place) led to a lot of invocation of Tropers Law, I think, for this reason.

But the notion of a "common sense" categorization of media, as opposed to a strictly logical one, is still a vestige of those freewheeling older days, even if, as the case of Anime suggests, it originally accrued in a very ad hoc fashion. Logically, the distinction between anime, live-action TV, films, and Western animation (and in the case of manga, Western comic books) doesn't make sense, but culturally the works in each of those "media" do form distinct clumps that suggest separating animation from live-action, and Japanese animation from Western, and not just (but significantly) because of the tropes used (with the trouble with Animated Films being that they share in both the Film and Western Animation cultures, in part because the Animation Age Ghetto seems to be less potent, without really having a culture of its own). Moreover, I think this is more useful than a strictly logical delineation, because of how the fanbases break down; when reading trope pages, I tend to open every folder except Anime/Manga and Video Games, meaning I do open Western Animation and Comic Books but not their Japanese counterparts. Just seeing heavily anime-influenced (as in, "mistaken for being made in Japan"; Avatar doesn't qualify to me) but Western-made series in Western Animation, or Japanese live-action shows and movies in Live-Action TV or Film, seems off to me.

As mentioned above, we added the "Western" qualifier because of the huge Anime fanbase that got it split out first. For the long time Western Animation was a redirect to Animated Shows (and for all I know still might be), which you may want to bring back.

I was once told that Discworld/ shouldn't exist, while Disney/ is allowed because they love to adapt much older works, by name, that may have other Western Animation adaptations.

edited 26th Dec '14 2:42:04 AM by MorganWick