What qualifies as a work?

Note that "art tropes" and meta-tropes, such as Discussed Trope, are not generally suitable to qualify for the minimum of a viable work article.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I'm thinking of the Manipulative Editing caveat we put in place for Reality TV, and what the equivalent of that is for a memoir. I would think that being a graphic novel, meaning it had to be deliberately drawn as such and subject to feedback by the editor/publishers, already pushes some of these past "simply describing real life" territory.

In general I do think memoirs/autobiographies are tropable because of that "pick-and-choose" filter. Take The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist. There were probably several industry events in real life where Tomine had a good time or was not plagued by self-deprecation, but he chose not to include them because they don't fit the story he wanted to tell: that he is insecure about his career.

That does mean something like Anne Frank is iffy, but meh.

Edited by Synchronicity on Sep 19th 2022 at 3:54:43 AM

Anne Frank is known to be heavily edited, with several filters against the real events that occurred, including translation for English-readers.

Certain forms of non-fiction are not intended to be "stories", but the concept of story-telling to convey information is so tied into how we communicate to begin with that I've always had trouble with the idea of allowing NRLEP for documentaries and reality tv. Memoirs are no different.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Linking a couple recent discussions on tropability/creative works to have them in one place:

• several posts on this page ^note linking a post in the middle of the conversation because it spun off from cleanup discussion and doesn't really have a clear starting point
• several posts starting from here

To be clear, the primary issue that I have with McCurdy's memoir is not our general rules on tropability but rather the gossip problem, in that it presents tropes about real people without any opportunity for them to be disputed. While we may put fake glasses on it because she's "crafting a narrative", it's still going to be taken by people as license to do this kind of second-hand RL troping.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I keep seeing this alluded to but I'm not clear what an "art trope" is or why it "doesn't count". (It makes sense that paratext and simply mentioning a few tropes that exist don't count, though if the entire work is about discussing tropes then TVT should have a page on it simply to point to other places where tropes are discussed.) Is there a definition written down somewhere?

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Sep 19th 2022 at 11:11:44 AM

The Revolution Will Not Be Tropeable

I still think there should be a "tropability" Administrivia page (or at least section).

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

If meta-tropes don't contribute to a work page's trope count, does this mean the Books on Trope aren't tropable.

Edited by SharkToast on Sep 20th 2022 at 11:40:00 AM

Yeah, I find it kinda odd to suggest that discussing media concepts isn't a tropeworthy endeavor since while sure you're not really creating new content, you're still analyzing tropes much in the same way the site does. If the site really does have to be limited to only explicitly creative content then that's never really been established and in fact most of us have been lead to believe the opposite (that these things are tropeworthy) is true.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I also don't know about design tropes implicitly not counting. For one posters, costumes etc. are recommended sources of tropes for Creating a Work Page for an Upcoming Work, which implies that it does count towards the minimum.

Edited by Synchronicity on Sep 20th 2022 at 1:45:52 PM

Yeah, the idea that design tropes, art tropes, and discussed tropes are on a lesser degree of "tropiness" doesn't really match up with my experience

Absolute destiny... apeachalypse?

The reason we have pages on Books on Trope is because they discuss tropes, not because they use tropes. There's a difference.

So yeah, I think Books on Trope are not tropable. We collect them for an entirely different reason than diegetic works.

Let's just say and leave it at that.

But under Fighteer's interpretation those pages shouldn't be up at all because they don't have enough tropes to count. That's the issue.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

We also have a bunch of work pages for reviewers and video essayists. While some add skits to their content, many just discuss media and tropes. Should we get rid of those pages?

Edited by SharkToast on Sep 20th 2022 at 3:19:55 AM

I don't really see what the problem is here. These have always been our standards. We go through phases of people ignoring them, then we enforce them and folks get mad, ad infinitum.

• The fundamental point is that tropes are only present in creative media, not in real life. This is not up for dispute; it's been our definition for literally as long as the site has existed.
• Secondarily, while we may list all sorts of examples of design, style, filigree, and meta-tropes in the articles, only narrative tropes count for whether a work qualifies to have an article on our site.
  • Specific media may have tropes that qualify in lieu of narrative. For example, games have gameplay tropes, music has music tropes, art has art tropes.
• When a work adapts or incorporates another work, as in a sequel, fanfic, review, Let's Play, reaction, etc., only original, transformative content may be troped.

Under these standards, the vast majority of content in which someone discusses, reviews, plays, or reacts to works is not tropable. We are not negotiating on this point; it's been our rule since shortly after the wiki was founded.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 20th 2022 at 10:10:23 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I'm not upset, but I do think that if it's a rule it's been so badly enforced that it made everyone else think that these things were tropeworthy since for the most part the only one ever arguing that they're not is you. And maybe everyone else is wrong but there's definitely some sort of... disagreement here

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I guess one thing we can say is that it's better enforced now than it used to be, what with the Web Video cleanup and all. (Although I've only been here since late 2019 (and active on the forums since late 2020) so I can't 100% verify that statement.)

So I guess the next question is, what do we do with Books on Trope?

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

Right, like, obviously I agree with the principal of the matter... but if the rule has always been so strict that even discussing tropes doesn't cut it, that just feels a little off to me and it'd mean people have been wrong for ages especially when another mod in this same discussion is arguing for the exact opposite interpretation of the rule.

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 20th 2022 at 10:15:26 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Well, in the 13 years I've been here, I never seen it laid out like that. I don't doubt that the site was founded with narrative tropes on top of the hierarchy when it comes to work pages, I guess it was mostly a "in spirit" than a hard rule. I don't think we focused on tightening our standards until we switched administers.

Edited by MacronNotes on Sep 20th 2022 at 10:24:25 AM

Macron's notes

I have no problem with saying that discussed tropes don't count towards a work's trope count. I'm just surprised because, as has been pointed out, that rule hasn't really been enforced.

Edited by SharkToast on Sep 20th 2022 at 7:22:53 AM

You can still list discussed tropes in a work's examples list, but there has to be additional narrative content to qualify that work for an article in the first place. I'm not sure why anyone would think that Books on Trope are allowed to break this rule, unless it's some sort of flattery thing. I suppose we could enumerate them without giving them articles if that's such a concern.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

The concern is that they currently exist, have pages, and have been treated as normal for years. Not even in the "nobody brought it up yet" way, in the "people have been told they're okay" way.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Well, honestly they aren't that much of a concern. They aren't violating Real Life troping. If it matters so much to people, they can stay for now.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 20th 2022 at 10:41:43 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Frankly, my impression was that the art tropes and meta-tropes don't count thing is the personal preference of a few tropers which some folks mistake for policy.

The problem with Books on Trope is that they are currently namespaced like works, even though we don't trope them like works. Way back when folks proposed a Tropology/ namespace for such things, which could also include Evil Overlord List and friends.

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

If we allowed those tropes, someone could make a work with an Alliterative Title, put a Dateline in the opening, and have someone discuss a trope for five seconds, and that work would technically qualify for an article.

Again, this is about common sense standards that go way back to Eddie's rules.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"