Not Tropeworthy: Useful Notes.American Currency

Would anyone argue that UsefulNotes.American Currency actually realizes the Useful Notes mission? Media, media, media. Examples, stereotypes — that kind of things is what's needed.

As is, the only chance for it to survive CutListing is an off chance that cutlister asks for TRS opinion first.

If anyone has good American Currency-centric instances in fiction, I'd like to see them added there soon. Page quote alone is not enough to illustrate the noteworthiness, the rest of the page is a flat historical factdump, which is not what Useful Notes are allowed for.

Edit: Come to think of it, there is one and a half (the second one makes little sense grammatically) in page's ykttw.

• Lucky Luke:
  • The Dalton brothers go after a money forger's secret (fake) money stash. A few adventures later (the money are buried under a huge rock inside a prison yard just to name the biggest obstacle) they finally get the treasure. They're The Chew Toy of the series — so what went wrong? They were all 3-dollar bills.
  • In The Daily Star, the villains at first start their own newspaper to counter the fact that Greely's paper wrote damning articles on them, but start printing money once a counterfeiter joins their gang. One of the last panels is Greely asking the banker at what point he realized the bills were fake, to which he responds "What do you mean, my three-dollar bills are fake?"

edited 6th Apr '15 2:11:40 AM by NemuruMaeNi

Opening this, and yes.

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

You linked to the Useful Notes main page. Did you even read it? The very frst paragraph:

"Useful notes on a variety of subjects, the purpose of which is threefold:

1. To debunk common media stereotypes.
2. To help you understand some media better.
3. To educate, inform, and sometimes entertain. "

What part of the first and third points does UsefulNotes.American Currency fail?

edited 6th Apr '15 7:51:48 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

This thing, which has been applied to non-person UN pages as well.

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

What part of the 10-page-long thread are you talking about, Sept?

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

The first post contains a summary. It has been expanded later to cover UN pages that aren't about people specifically. I am not sure if it was one definitive decision or a morphing.

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

Then the definition of Useful Notes needs to be changed to match. But the original purposes was for those pages to contain information that helps a creator or audience better understand the reality of a subject, as opposed to how it's stereotyped, simplified, or used or misused in Fiction — They aren't trope pages, they aren't intended to be trope pages. Nor are they Works pages. They're Useful Notes

I do hope that we aren't going to embark on another "this isn't directly a trope page, purge them all!" crusade.

For someone who isn't from the US, knowing how the currency system actually works is useful.

edited 6th Apr '15 8:21:38 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I think that while the page is rather bloated and contains a lot of non-pertinent information (a complete metallurgical history of each coin isn't necessary), a few details about the American monetary system is definitely useful due to how often it appears in fiction.

I think listing a little bit more information than the average American can be assumed to know would be enough, especially if it's something that's often mentioned in fiction.

edited 6th Apr '15 8:30:51 AM by AnotherDuck

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The fact that it's a duplicate page is another issue that should be considered. I don't feel creative enough right now to produce a rewrite, but I'll try later this week.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Sometimes I think a giant meat axe should be taken to all Useful Notes pages. There's a wiki out there that devotes itself to being a factual reference, and it is The Other Wiki. It has an article about American currency here. And now that I look, I see that there is also a useful notes page on American Money, which is just crazy. So not only is this Useful Notes page about as pointless as all other Useful Notes pages, it's redundant.

Maybe we should have a Useful Notes page on nickels.

@#3 by Madrugada.

For the first point, not a single stereotype is mentioned in UsefulNotes.American Currency. Readers of Useful Notes are unlikely to know stereotypes themselves, aren't they? If the audience doesn't know the stereotype, how does it recognize the stereotype and stereotype's influence that needs to be taken care of? Is your answer "through performing lengthy and careful analysis and synthesis of large mass of trivia about the subject presented by Useful Notes page"? If not, then what is it?

For the third point. The entertainment value part never comes after the other two, because those informational and educational values are extremely hard to ascertain, the article being hard to trust and looking very much like a lecture to its readers in typed out form, it immediately begs two questions. Do you take lectures from anyone? Why should you take this lecture here? Remember you're on a media, storytelling oriented site, and the article doesn't seem to want to make a connection at all, let alone focus on it.

There's a great explanation for why one finds a wiki-lecture on perfectly fine Wikipedia subject outside of Wikipedia: the said wiki-lecture doesn't meet Wikipedia standards. Its author must be incompetent and narcissistic enough to want to preach around wherever else possible. The article must be factually incorrect or pushing a hopelessly biased opinion.

---

Yes, there are two articles. Thankfully, the case of troper tales (probably wrong use of the term) makes that obvious.

My "plan" for the article would be to get three to eight to twelve examples about Useful Notes' subject in media as a huge step in the right direction, blank one of the two articles into a redirect to the other and stop there. IF they don't manage, obliterate both.

edited 7th Apr '15 12:41:28 AM by NemuruMaeNi

I've thought of one thing commonly seen in media that could use a good address. People hauling large sums of cash. Like, how many millions of U.S. dollars can fit into a briefcase and how many kilograms of money that would make.

It would be something really useful for certain plots to refer to as creator. It also vaguely reminds me of an example in Nash Bridges, where something like a half a billion or half a trillion in either counterfeit or laundered bills are a MacGuffin of one plot line (I think it was "Jackpot"). The thing is, it takes a whooping garbage truck for transportation.

Both Useful Notes (American Currency and American Money) are of zero help.

edited 7th Apr '15 11:53:34 PM by NemuruMaeNi

^ Covered in Briefcase Full of Money. The upshot is that a standard briefcase can hold about $2.3 million, but more if you pack your case with euros, since the euro is available in a 500 bill.

For a non-american creator, they (or rather one of them) might have minor value explaining terms like nickels and dimes, and common denominations of bills.

But I'd be hard-pressed to find enough useful info like that to fill a page with, much less two long articles.

It has to compete with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_dollar.

A light overview of the history of American money covering the different types over the years like the buffalo nickel and silver certificate and what years they were minted and why they are special. As well as some trivia like movements to abolish the penny, what are slugs and why some machines can take them, and such would be fine IMO it's a useful thing for writers to have.

But not much more than that I think, if they want a super indepth thing they can go to The Other Wiki lets keep it nice and simple and just cover things writers may use in their setting in a work.

edited 17th Apr '15 5:48:02 AM by Memers

The metallic content of pennies is good information to keep. "Mining the past for copper in the form of pennies" has been used in at least a couple of science-fiction stories I can think of that were written when the composition of the penny made that practical. It's not anymore, since the last change to the metal.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

That's true and the fact that pennies taste different after they changed from 95% Copper and 5% Zinc to 2.5% Copper and 97% Zinc. During the Civil War they contained nickel and actually were gray and in 1943 they were Zinc coated Steel as Copper was used strictly for the war effort.

That's more of the misc facts that would fit in a page yes. However quite a bit of the current page could be cut or moved for being too detailed or just not about the money itself like the whole banking paragraph probably should on a page about banks.

Having a detail like that actually adds something, since it refers to how it's used in fiction and why, rather than dry facts that may or may not matter.

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Referring to fiction usage though stops making it a useful note and more of a trope.

But if it doesn't refer to fiction it stops being useful.

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Facts useful to fiction writers and readers is what useful notes are for, referring to uses in fiction are tropes.

Useful notes is for stuff that is nice to know or need to know about certain subjects that might come up in a work that the reader and writer might not know.

Say a viewer of anime comes across a work set in school and there are huge differences than the school they went to, like why is the school year starting on April 1st? Or a writer writing a school based work in Japan needs to know that. A page giving the cliff notes on those differences would be a useful note. Or if a work set in the Civil War era has a guy find a penny on the ground but it's gray ish white a useful notes page would explain it nice and quickly.

edited 17th Apr '15 8:41:28 AM by Memers

So, Wikipedia?

Check out my fanfiction!

"referring to uses in fiction" isn't necessarily a trope. If that's how you're defining "trope", that's probably part of why you seem to so often be alone in asserting that something is or isn't one in TRS.

"Pennies used to be copper, but aren't anymore" isn't a trope. It is a useful note for an aspiring author.

edited 17th Apr '15 10:52:04 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I guess I should have said 'more like a trope'. It isn't really one but it's not a useful note as well, it would be bogged down talking about works and not the info.

edited 17th Apr '15 8:02:06 PM by Memers