What qualifies as a work?

If there was a whole story published on twitter, probably. This however instead tropes a real person with questionable obsession.

I think that Twitter posts can sometimes be tropeworthy (in the sense of listing them on a page if they're an example) if they clearly and deliberately invoke a trope. One example would be this tweet:

My "Not involved in human trafficking" T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt.

Clearly the joke there is the Suspiciously Specific Denial, so it's reasonable to list it as an example. I don't think there's enough there for a work page devoted to it, but it might be reasonable to have work / creator page devoted to the author if they frequently write trope-filled jokes on Twitter, though only for authors whose tweets form a coherent "work" created for entertainment, so to speak - a style of humor, a particular verse, etc. Not just some random person's social media account.

eg. dril clearly makes sense to me as something work-page-worthy, since it's someone deliberately playing a character and doing a coherent bit over an extend period of time.

(The Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment definitely applies to anything on social media, though. Some things shouldn't be included because of that.)

Another example - news stories usually don't contain tropes, but consider the way this Harpers article about juror selection in the Martin Shkreli trial was structured. After a whole bunch of stuff about the very serious and legitimate grievances jurors had against the accused that got them excused, it ends on this note:

The Court: All right. We are going to excuse you, sir.
Juror no. 59: And he disrespected the Wu-Tang Clan.

That wasn't an accident; the author structured the article deliberately to make an Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking-style punchline. But again, it would probably only have enough to be listed as an example; the work page, if there was one, would be for the whole periodical or some section of it, in the same way that we have a work page for an entire newspaper comic and not for one day's comic in particular.

Edited by Aquillion on Feb 9th 2024 at 2:02:56 AM

I just want to be clear... we are not considering Twitter posts — like, individual ones — as worthy of entire articles, right?

If someone uses a social media platform to create some kind of coherent narrative work, sure, as long as that's the original source and they aren't hosting the full material somewhere else. But "user xxxknobgobbler69 posted a joke" is not suitable for a wiki article just because it happens to have a trope in it.

We do have a "Jokes" media category in some articles, and it's fine to list examples there that don't link back to parent works.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 8th 2024 at 1:43:48 PM

I was thinking more about

• Publishing a story in a long thread like we do trope forum works
• Roleplaying accounts
• Thematic accounts with narrative like Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter
• Web Video works hosted there instead of Youtube

Yes, those are acceptable. The hosting platform doesn't matter; what matters is the content. Video content posted on X would still be Web Video, for example.

Edit: I'm not sure what you mean by "roleplaying accounts". Individual user accounts are not tropable. If there are accounts that host or manage roleplays, the tropable content is the roleplay itself, not the account. Participants in a roleplay are not Creators in the sense that we use.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 8th 2024 at 1:55:07 PM

Interesting, I've thought a user who consistently uses a fictional character with own background is similar to Interactive Comic

The key idea is that there must be intent to create a narrative work. We have Character Blog as a trope, and I suppose the video equivalent would be a VTuber.

All that matters from a troping perspective is that there be sufficient narrative content to make an article that isn't a stub. That means at least three narrative tropes, as you know, but it should ideally be more.

I could write a three-paragraph story and post it on my X account, and it would technically be tropable, but... come on. There's so much content out there that can be troped without resorting to skimming social media.

We don't have a notability requirement but we do have to exercise a bit of dignity.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 8th 2024 at 2:21:28 PM

Character Blog is probably exactly what I had in mind.

I think in the end it's best to see case-by-case. Some may work out, but if the page is grasping at straws then it'll show.

Edited by Amonimus on Feb 8th 2024 at 10:22:02 PM

Any thoughts on The Land of Ta◊? It's a set of stickers from the 80s that became a meme around 2017-2020 due to how weird some of the characters (especially Geedis) looked and curiosity over who created these stickers and if there was any other media (some enamel pins have been found, but one of them had its veracity disputed) featuring them.

There's no clear lore, plot, or characterization, so adding tropes without going into speculation will be hard, but even then, some tropes are still definitely present based on the characters' appearances. (E.G. Uno is an example of Cyclops, Meaningful Name, and Multi-Armed and Dangerous,)

The question is: if a page was created, what namespace would it be in? Art or Toys seem like the most likely candidates.

We do have an Art mainspace; see eg. Wanderer above the Sea of Fog or The Scream (Munch). I suppose whether something qualifies for a page there just depends on whether it has meaningful numbers of tropes.

Toys could work, too, since it's a bunch of stickers.

I think I could probably come up with at least the bare minimum required number of tropes for that just by focusing on traditional fantasy-art tropes that it represents. But we don't have to create a page for everything just because we can.

Edited by Aquillion on Feb 12th 2024 at 9:25:28 AM

If you're having to engage in pretzel twisting to find enough trope examples to qualify something for a work article, chances are it doesn't merit one.

I'm pretty sure Art would be the right namespace for The Land of Ta.

I just found Website.Asexuality Archive and looking at the pages and examples I really don't think it's a tropeable work. I wanted to know what you guys think

Thanks for bumping this thread.

Dear Zachary

This is a documentary that while using some tropey (As when Zachary's death is announced and the screen turns red and an scream is heard) stuff to convey the horror of what happened, is pretty much just the Real Life case with absolutely ZERO narrative reframing. It's just the case being conveyed with no narrative re enactments.

And tropers naturally could not resist treating like a piece of fiction in really ghastly ways, most notably the "DONT READ BELOW IF YOU WANNA WATCH UNSPOILED" and commenting on factual footage from Real Life as if it was a horror movie.

I was going to bring this up in the thread but I dont know what thred we use for this.

EDIT: I posted this on ATT and almost everyone agreed this is not tropeable.

Edited by AegisP on Apr 17th 2024 at 12:22:12 PM

I agree; I don't see much reason not to cut that page.

I am astounded to learn Mein Kampf has no narrative and absolutely no one ever tried to get rid of it.

The only excuse I see is that this is one of those controversial works that Tropers point to and say "We are not book burners, we keep stuff like Mein Kampf around!" But at least Victoria and The Turner Diaries, as shitty as they are, at least have NARRATIVES to them.

I've actually said before that I'd be fine with cutting it (or moving it to a different namespace like Media Notes) but it was never a big subject

I know you didnt meant that as "We must keep this no matter what!" but do actually have other bigots manifestos on the site? Do we really need this on the wiki?

Edited by AegisP on Apr 21st 2024 at 5:42:21 AM

Uh

The reason it wasn't a big conversation was that it was sort of just brought up once or twice while we were discussing stuff like Snoot Game and Victoria. We didn't spend much time actually discussing it. It wasn't so much that we decided to keep it, but rather that the conversation never took off.

As for the alt namespace idea, that's only because it's still a significant and impactful work.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 21st 2024 at 8:48:20 AM

Well, significant for all the wrong reasons.

I originally pointed out Mein Kampf being a work to AegisP since the Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski's) manifesto Industrial Society and Its Future is also a tropeable work with little reason to be one.

Sure, but it's worth diving into that. Not to be like "read this important book", but to be like "here's what this book is and what impact it had on history and media".

Like I'm not that pressed about salvaging it, I just think we could.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 21st 2024 at 9:35:48 AM

I'm 100% in favour of cutting Mein Kampf, or moving it to Media Notes if it's considered too historically important to cut. Hell, I have no problem with the latter option at all.

But it's not a narrative work, so I see no reason to keep a trope page for it. We're not Propaganda Tropes. Same thing goes for Industrial Society and Its Future.

It's listed under Non-Fiction Literature, which isn't a small index, and describes delusional versions of historical events, so I can't confidently say it doesn't fit as a work.

I'm not against the likes of the Unabomber's Manifesto or Mein Kampf being documented on the site on the principle of their politics — there's a lot of works with troubling or outright dangerous opinions like The Turner Diaries, but I understand the historical/analytical value of them. Thinking about it, they perhaps would belong and be allowed to stay by virtue of adequately being like "this is a work of someone's opinions, not an endorsement of them — this is literally just what the text is saying within the confines of the work".

I guess my issue is more of like, how to handle YMMV reactions, because it feels way easier to be disingenuous and use the existence of the page as a work to exposit politically provocative opinions on the politics of an explicitly political essay itself designed to be provocative instead of telling a fictional story. Perhaps they do strictly belong as being bits of Useful Notes — for the Unabomber's Manifesto in specific, perhaps it's more useful to have a page solely on the history and politics of Ted Kaczynski himself (bc frankly the page on Industrial Society and Its Future already skirts around being just that).

But I thought we ALSO had ANOTHER policy "Not to trope people's opinions." Not that we enforce it, less vile people DO have their opinions unremoved despite being against the rules.