New Work Page Workshop Thread

Thanks everyone! I didn't notice that you have to copy and paste the URL that the "add image" box gives you. Thanks for fixing some formatting and commenting out the Zero-Context Examples Synchronicity, I'll go back and add some context.

Sorry to barge in y'all, but I have a question about spoiler etiquette on a works page I'm currently drafting.

Long story short, I'm incubating a page for this obscure Doorstopper of a fanfic—as of this writing I have 152 tropes listed on the main page alone. There are enough tropes relevant to the story's numerous plot twists, in fact, that hiding all spoilers will turn the main page into Swiss cheese, something which I'm sure most casual readers would not appreciate. On the other hand I don't really think most readers will be too captivated by this story if they jump right into it; my past discussions with non-fans tell me that most readers might not want to read past the mildly niche premise, slow-start plot, and wealth of absurdly minor details, to say nothing of the fanfic's overly serious tone.

Should I hide spoilers to preserve suspense? Or should I keep spoilers exposed so readers know what to expect from the original work?

It’s kind of hard to say without seeing the draft itself, but generally, spoilers off should be an absolute last resort (like after you’ve tried and failed to contain everything). Not saying this applies to you or the fic, but some people tend to spoiler everything that’s the least bit surprising, and write all-white entries when those are not necessary or avoidable through careful wording. For example:

• Kill the Ones You Love: In Chapter 12, Alice has to kill her lover Bob in order to unlock her true power, the Heart of Troperia.

vs.

• Kill the Ones You Love: In Chapter 12, the sacrifice of a loved one is needed to unlock Alice’s true power, the Heart of Troperia. As a result, she chooses to kill her lover Bob.

You don’t need to spoiler the chapter in which it occurs, because that’s pointless — how will a casual reader know to avoid it? You also don’t need to spoil the meat of the trope (killing a loved one) as the reader will know it occurs just by reading the name of the trope or clicking on it. Further details in that whited out sentence can be unspoiled depending on how much the reader already knows. For example, if Alice having said power is revealed in the first chapter:

• Kill the Ones You Love: In Chapter 12, the sacrifice of a loved one is needed to unlock Alice’s true power, the Heart of Troperia. As a result, she chooses to kill her lover Bob.

Sometimes it comes down to *relative* spoiler content as well — sure there may be a lot of plot twists tropes, but if there are also a lot of setting or character tropes, the spoiler mass may be diluted.

Hope this helped!

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 10th 2020 at 9:15:40 AM

Many thanks for the response, Synchronicity—much appreciated.

I think I'll need to have someone read over my works page before I can mark up spoilers, seeing as my perception of what counts as spoiler material (at least in the context of Quietus) is heavily skewed. It also doesn't help that the fanfic tends to lay it on thick with the drama every chapter, so I feel as if merely mentioning any tropes related to events past the filler-laden first half of the story might be a potential spoiler for new readers. Yet with all the blather padding out the text in question, I'm concerned that anyone who reads the works page will be disappointed by the original work itself and miss out on all the troping going on (and boy oh boy is there a lot).

I'm still writing up my draft on Google Docs so I can avoid losing my work if the editor times out on me, but I wouldn't mind linking to the draft if that's allowed. If not, I'd be happy to publish it on the Fanfic namespace; it'll just be under major construction in that case, what with all the ZCEs and lack of spoiler text. And if I'm to be frank, the other reason why I didn't just start a new works page on the site was because I wanted to polish it before anyone else saw it. It's my first works page ever and I don't want to waste people's time with a poorly constructed page.

Well, a work’s trope list is not supposed to be indicative of how good or bad the work is, or how easy it is to read. We have pages on Literature.War And Peace (famously a hard-to-read Doorstopper with a ton of exposition and tangents) and Film.The Room (universally regarded as... not that good). It is just supposed to list what tropes are in it.

It is perfectly fine to link the draft here. Consider hosting the text in a Sandbox page (instead of a gdoc) so you can see how the formatting checks out.

Oh, I'm aware that listing a trope doesn't make a work good or bad. (Tropes are tools and all that.) I do apologize for drudging up the same concerns repeatedly, though. My past experiences talking about Quietus with others have generally failed to spark anyone's interest in the story, hence my anxiety over how the works page will be received.

If anyone is somehow interested in seeing my works page draft, they can find it here.

I advise you to read over Zero-Context Example to be clear about what is considered sufficient context. An example that explains where and why the trope happens is still zero-context if it doesn't explain what happens.

I think creating Sandbox.Quietus might be a better move here. You are free to play around with formatting, linking, and spoiler markup.

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 12th 2020 at 4:03:07 AM

Thanks again to all for the advice—I truly do appreciate it. I'll move my works page draft to the Sandbox starting tomorrow and test the formatting (including spoiler tags) there.

If anyone stumbles upon it after tomorrow, I'm still writing up or revising each example so don't be too surprised if only about 10% of the examples aren't ZCEs or Square Peg, Round Trope. And yes, I actually counted. I have a LOT of work to do to meet site standards.

All right, I've prattled on long enough. I'll finally get out of your hair now. Unless you're bald, in which case *falls off*

ETA: The draft is officially on the site now.

Edited by KIMJONGUNBABIES on Oct 13th 2020 at 2:56:06 AM

In an effort to Clean up the YMMV.Arthur page, i created a draft for the Film in Sandbox.Arthur 1981. Should I make a separate page for the tropes on the sequel or can i leave it?

The film already has a page at Film.Arthur. Do you mean to split it off to avoid subpage collision with the cartoon? In that case, make Film.Arthur 1981, copypaste everything, and change the wicks.

And yeah, you might as well take the sequel tropes with you.

I created the work. But the year isn't in parenthesis. Do i have to custom it?

Yes, see How to Make a Custom Title

Evangelion: The Hangover was created earlier today and everything is curlybracketed. WHY.

Ugh...I hate that almost as much as I hate when people put Main/ as a namespace on trope names.

Fixed it up a bit.

I’m working on a creating a works page for Inhibit. I’m currently keeping it under Inhibit, and would like feedback on it.

Edit: Launched!

All of those issues have been fixed. Thank you!

Edited by audgetrouble on Oct 25th 2020 at 7:12:29 AM

• The work title should go in italics. Double single quotes, like this: ''Inhibit''
• Articles at the beginning are ignored when alphabetizing, so An Ice Person goes under I, not A.
• "Everyone at the facilities (Earl, Larner, Miller, and Urquhart) are there" <- should say "is there", not "are there", since the subject is "Everyone".
• The Power Nullifier entry needs to explain that the inhibitors suppress trainees' powers.
• Super Cop is for superpowered cops, not cops dealing with superpowered people. If they are non-superpowered people tasked with fighting superpowered people, they're Cape Busters.

Hello guys, first time posting here.

Have noticed that the list of major names in Formula One is getting rather cluttered, and in a few years time would probably break the page in the process.

Was thinking of creating a Characters/FormulaOne page to place all of the names listed there, particularly World Champions, multiple Grand Prix winners (non-champions), and probably other highly notable drivers. I know this is not a request thread, so I'm posting here to ask the tropers' opinion on this, so I could decide whether to go ahead or not.

In related terms, I'm also planning to transfer the Blood Ravens character entries from Characters/DawnOfWar into their separate Character Page, so as to allow inclusion of other characters outside of the video game series of the same name. I'm also hoping for your opinion on the matter.

Edited by CelPrevXXVI on Oct 28th 2020 at 2:13:52 AM

I'm pretty sure we don't do character subpages for Useful Notes.

Yeah, real people aren't characters.

, , how about the second query, then?

That's not a particularly long list by wiki standards but regardless, as people have said, real people are not characters. On your second inquiry, it seems reasonable if the article is getting too long to be readable.

Edited by Fighteer on Oct 28th 2020 at 10:10:36 AM

Yes, here's the thing: Useful Notes are supposed to be concise. It's not supposed to be a Wikipedia-esque article listing everyone. The fact that it's getting so long is less indicative of "it now needs a subpage" and more "it has to be trimmed down".

We don't trope real-life people, and sports by themselves are not tropeworthy. (The only gray area is Reality TV, where editing and producers, etc. still play a role.)

Feel free to split the character page. Not familiar with the work so I can't really weigh in on whether or not that makes sense.

Edited by Synchronicity on Oct 28th 2020 at 3:20:47 PM

Hey y’all, back again with a different work page (I’ve been trying to give pages to some of my favorite webcomics).

I’ve started a works page for Cornucopia, and I would really love it if I could get a second pair of eyes to check it over and see if there are any issues I’ve missed.