Trope-Based Episodes

I've noticed that some work pages for serial works have what appears to be an artifact from the old days: a folder for "Trope-based episodes". See for illustration pages like Trope Based Episodes, Star Trek: Voyager, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. I think they're problematic for several reasons:

• They encourage Zero Context Examples, listing only the name of the episode;
• They are redundant to the Recap/ pages;
• Taking a single trope as encapsulating all of an episode is a pretty subjective assertion to begin with;
• The format doesn't seem to be standardized for the wiki as a whole, which favors alphabetization in trope lists on work pages. It also makes it harder to find and add tropes.

I would therefore suggest that we phase out this formatting and re-integrate them into the alphabetical system. What does everyone else think?

edited 30th Apr '15 2:55:55 AM by Morgenthaler

I agree with all your points and especially #1 and #3.

Saying it's the theme of an episode is fine, but the examples should be expanded further so they give justification. Obviously a Time Travel episode has Time Travel, but using "The Woobie" probably requires more detail.

Time Travel from when to when, what "speed", and what method?

It's an artifact from before it became standard to list tropes alphabetically instead of dividing it among a dozen folders. I've seen some listed as "tropes used once" and "tropes used multiple times" and the editing and organizational problems by using those kind of folders is a nightmare. Trope based episodes is not quite as bad, but I don't think it is as useful a division as it should be.

We have character pages for character tropes, recap pages for individual episodes, and there is slowly building some seasonal trope folders and even entire sub-pages (where it's okay to have repeating tropes because you are isolating when it occurs).

edited 1st May '15 11:54:49 AM by KJMackley

Does this topic require more discussion? I think we're in agreement that the content of these folders, which are themselves redundant, could by and large be migrated to the Recap pages.

Or even possibly the work's main trope list.

Should this thread be moved to short-term projects?

Sounds like a plan.

Moved to Short Term Projects.

Alright, I've fixed the folders on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Enterprise, Supernatural, and Smallville. If I find any more, I'll post about it here.