Needs Help: Sturgeons Law

I think there was a former collective thread at some point for making tropes YMMV, similarly to how there is a collective trivia thread in long-term projects, but when I asked in ATT I was advised to make a TRS topic for this.

I want to suggest making Sturgeon's Law a YMMV item. Despite being one of the trope Laws and Formulas, it is about a fundamentally subjective evaluation. Namely, that 90% of everything is crud. It's an observation about an Audience Reaction that good works of fiction are relatively rare compared to those catering to the Lowest Common Denominator.

I second the motion as well as the idea of an LTP

Thirded.

Agreed.

I disagree because how are you supposed to add examples for this? By definition it's about media in a collective sense, not about individual works.

Besides, it's just asking to be a complaint magnet.

edited 7th May '16 8:00:40 PM by Karxrida

I fail to see how this is a trope. Maybe you could try with in-universe examples but I don't think there are enough instances of characters actually discussing the concept instead of just mentioning the law by name.

edited 7th May '16 10:12:50 PM by DeisTheAlcano

Wouldn't making it a YMMV encourage people to post it on the respective pages for works, which would ultimately be a label reading "this work is shit"? It's already exampleless, and based on a (very cursory) look over the wicks, beyond the fact that's it's used on Fanfic Rec pages for works in the header, it's pretty much just potholed in, more often than not in reference to fan works.

Actually, I never looked to see what is was at the moment. Leave it as exampleless. It is a value judgment either on the quality of the work at hand or other works in the same genre. And therefore it will be the biggest complaining magnet and gushing magnet since the last one we had to delete.

edited 8th May '16 12:49:34 AM by TheOneWhoTropes

This doesn't need to be YMMV. If anything, it should be a useful note or stay as an exampleless concept. I do think the page could use a good cleanup and trimming. All the addendums and corollaries seem to make the concept more complicated that it should be. At its core, it's saying that every work cannot be a masterpiece. If anything, the rule places emphasis on the true great works, rather than on the crud.

After reconsidering, it might actually be better as a Flame Bait item than a YMMV item. It doesn't belong in the Main wiki as it's still subjective as all hell, but I don't think it's a Useful Notes either—it actually seems to do the exact opposite of debunking media stereotypes by saying that most everything is poorly-written garbage.

edited 11th May '16 7:50:36 AM by Morgenthaler

It's a generalization of literary media as a whole, so it's worth noting, but I suppose that doesn't really put it as something you could put into the category of "trope" or "useful note" etc. It's not something that SHOULD have examples anyways, disregarding Flame Bait potential.