TVTropes Entries Need Hierarchical Pyramid-Style Trope Entries/Indexes Restructure

1. Pyramid Hierarchy: All Entries

TV Tropes entries/indexes need a clear, simple, hierarchical pyramid organization restructure, for sake of user navigability and ease of understanding.

Reason: Hard for fresh and even experienced users to explore and find entries in a systemic, organized manner.

2. Authoritative 1-Index-Per-Entry: All Entries

TV Tropes entries/indexes each need to be categorized under 1 chosen most-relevant hub entry (index), separate from the related hub indexes. This means you can associate as many relevant hub entries (indexes) with an entry/index as you all desire, but only 1 index should ever be chosen as the main category under which a single entry or index is categorized under.

Reason: The lack of an authoritative organization structure decentivizes using this website to browse tropes, and incentivizes just using fandom wikias instead since their organization choices are often more authoritative and navigable than here anyway.

3. Index Link Below Title: All Entries

The main singular index any entry/index is categorized under, must have a link directly under the title of the entry/index, not at the bottom of the page, for sake of quick immediate user navigability.

Reason: It takes too long and is too tedious and unintuitive to go looking for the existing folders buried at the bottom of each article on each trope, which likewise lack basic aesthetic enjoyability due to lack of thumbnails, boring folder icons, and only having bare minimum looks.

4. Pyramid Map: All Entries

The main pyramid map all entries are categorized and organized with should have its own page the entire website is built around.

Reason: If I am a new user, I need a main hub that clearly delineates a straightforward organization structure that is satisfying to navigate and enjoyable to look at. If I do not have that, I am incentivized to go to wikias or just not bother at all. There needs to be a bedrock of user-friendly consistency if you want more users to stick around and be involved with the site -a main pyramid map as described would provide that.

5. Thumbnail Image Next To Main Folder Link: All Entries

All index/entry folders and links should have a small thumbnail image that appears right next to it, for sake of user ease of navigation through visual cues, without manually having to read everything over and over and tediously having to filter through things by reading instead of simply seeing the relevant thumbnails next to each link and folder.

Reason: This site and its folders looks really outdated, overly reliant on text instead of image aesthetics, and small folder icons with a little title next to them is fundamentally inferior to large aesthetically enjoyable thumbnails directly relevant to what the entry is about while pleasing the end user.

6. Drag-And-Drop Hierarchical Entries Interface: All Entries

The most ideal possible solution interface-wise to arranging/rearranging entries is for admins, mods, and users, to have the ability to visually drag and drop entries, as if they are files, into a visual hierarchy of folders, with each folder being a trope in itself that contains all the other tropes.

Changes at certain higher layers would be saved as suggestions, that are sent to the mod+admin team for review. The topmost master tropes could be locked to highest-level mods/admins for approval.

There may be less code-intensive ways of achieving this without resorting to a visual drag-and-drop interface, but this is definitely the most ideal reasonably possible solution.

Reason: Would be rapid, visually intuitive, easy for user to do/suggest.

Additional Notes: As it stands, TV Tropes is relatively unnavigable due to lack of a simple, immediately visible, singular committed hierarchical visual pyramid structure all users can follow to access all other entries, resulting in thousands of entries most users will never in their lives ever see even if they are trying to fully explore the site. This likewise results in the efforts of all the contributors to this site mostly not being seen barring the most popular or broad entries and indexes on this website.

This means make hub entries that discuss the broadest tropes that all other tropes subjectively relate/derive from, and connecting those hub entries to even broader tropes, with all entries connecting to the broadest trope.

Meta tropes are the second-broadest trope entry conceivable: (tropes that explain tropes); the most broad trope entry conceivable is multi-meta tropes: (tropes that explain or refer to the act of explaining or referring to other tropes). I am unsure if this site already has something akin to meta tropes and multi-meta tropes, but something that basically embodies those should serve as the core hub entries all other hub entries connect to. If we have entries already embodying those 2 concepts accurately, use them as the main hubs.

Convey all of this in a visual authoritative dedicated pyramid structure of thumbnail images linking in a top-down web to sub-entries, until all entries in the site are included and navigable. This could if coded well eventually be evolved into its own mobile or desktop application.

All communities either die, or adapt to survive. Improve or be replaced.

Edited by JoyradProcyfer on Jun 9th 2023 at 8:39:26 AM

Maybe it's because of my ADHD but I have a hard time understanding a good majority of your post.

Can you write an example under the structure you're proposing? It can be for any trope.

EDIT: Regardless, I can navigate this site just fine

Edited by Cutegirl920fire on Jun 9th 2023 at 1:10:27 AM

I'm also confused.

Navigability is not an issue, TVT is notoriously a browser narcotic, and I think being less navigable actually improves that situation.

If it's extremely navigable, people would just go where they want and be done with it.

Further, images are bad, actually. They take away from text. There's a reason illuminated manuscripts fell by the wayside when printing was invented, and it's that A. they're more expensive (this is true of images too, though to a much lesser degree) and B. they convey less information than text. Illuminated manuscripts would still exist today if they were a good idea outside of specific circumstances

Momentumwise, it would also be a bad idea because you'd need an individual IP thread for everything that came up in deciding on an image for all things. Further, you're suggesting three levels of change. You're suggesting site redesign (admin level) namespace moving (mod level) and index restructuring (accountbearing user level). One of those is flatly not happening. (site redesign is unlikely and would be hated by the existing userbase, even if it got updated to what is ostensibly better, you need a userbase to sacrifice to buy the userbase you claim this would give, which is not a gamble worth making.)

A pyramidal structure may technically make the site more navigable, but as I said before, navigability is not a concern for TVT as far as I can tell. Now, a search function that works consistently would be nice.

New users also don't normally get dumped onto the main page. They get dumped onto a trope page from an external link. If they are to become a long-term user, either they wander onto the forums (which is unlikely to happen unless they were already interested in becoming a long-term accounted user or they spot an error and attempt to correct it.)

The current aesthetic is quite good, actually. That's a matter of taste. If it's not to your taste, that's not an issue, because it's to most people's taste. Further, individual pages are perfectly navigable, it's getting between them that's the trick (and it's what the search function is for, when it's working, if you don't want to wikiwalk it.)

I do think a pyramidal structure would be useful for works pages. It's a pain in the ass navigating from a character subpage back to the main page if somebody didn't manually type up the link at the top of the page.

For most pages, there's a little collection of tabs at the top of the page anyway if there's a separate character, ymmv, or whatever page, which is no different from an in-text link really.

And if they must have in-text links, you can add those if you like.

I don't think it should be strictly policy though.

Edited by Florien on Jun 9th 2023 at 3:36:08 AM

Even ignoring concerns about manpower, this wouldn't even be how I structure the site ground-up. Tropes don't fit neatly into a hierarchical structure and function more like an interconnected web. If you want to look at similar tropes, the indexes are perfectly serviceable and if an entry is missing, that problem would exist regardless.

Character sub-page.

Those links rely on matching names between namespaces. If a character page is under a different name, like Girls und Panzer - Oarai Academy - Anglerfish Team, then those don't work. You need to manually add the links, and it's annoying.

I'm down to improve navigability of third level pages (e.g. character-specific pages, Tropes A-C), but that might be outside the scope of this thread.

Here are some visual demonstrations from Know Your Meme, a meme wiki known for their more visual approach to wiki-style documentation.

Know Your Meme sometimes shows a single authoritative index (main entry) an entry is a sub-entry of.

In this case, the authoritative index is Internet Slang, and the sub-index is Snowclone.

Know Your Meme likewise ensures any shown sub-entries, in this case sub-entries of the Snowclone main entry (index) DO have their thumbnail shown, instead of showing lifeless folder icons, which improves aesthetics and user navigation.

These demonstrate a link below the title, thumbnail images whenever a linked index/entry is shown, and what a simple authoritative navigation scheme could look like to the end user.

With all due respect that layout is hideous.

I much prefer the current one.

It's rather telling when the website's most intuitive immediately observable user navigation feature is a random article button, rather than just having a simple link to a higher-level main entry or lower-level sub-entry, like any folder structure in your PC already offers.

Random article button is fine for interesting novel stumble-upons, but for a user to enjoy long-term browsing for systemic broader trends in interrelated tropes, a pyramid scheme of related articles clearly linked at the top just below the entry's header would be more ideal. You wouldn't replace the folders in your PC with a random button would you?

I think we already have something like this with the browse tropes function?

Even if the user goes out of their way to go to the Browse tab, then select a specific Genre (genres should be treated as tropes in themselves), you get

R a N d U m B o R g A n I z A t I o N where you can at most go alphabetical, or chronological in order.

This is not an authoritative organization structure, this is barebones early 2006 arrangement of content.

This should be a large grid of same-size square or small rectangular thumbnails that lets you see several dozen entries on a standard screen at once. This should be an authoritative hierarchy of sub-genres, that descend into further sub-genres, that descend into further sub-genres, tropes, minor tropes, and so-on.

Moderators should have been spending the past decades carefully picking and arranging this hierarchy so that users had a very clear map to follow navigating this browsing experience. Instead we have outdated arrangement styles and choices that prevent basic coherent exploration. Randomized, alphabetical, or chronological, is sub-par compared to a curated pyramid structure from broadest entries to most niche specific entries.

Respectfully, it's incredibly rare for anything to go deeper than a third level. Subtropes of a subtrope are pretty exceptional, and anything beyond that is probably too specific. If we had all the time in the world, I could maybe see a restructuring, but I just don't see this having a good effort-to-impact ratio.

But would what you're suggesting ever be a genuine use-case for TVT?

Because I don't think that's what anyone wants to use it for. TVT is for stumbleupons, I don't think people use the browse section enough to justify overhauling it to look way worse and perform, possibly (almost certainly not) better.

Also, as far as I can tell, this is your first post anywhere on the forums and you've never edited, so in sincerity, how can you hope make these calls on what is a good decision and what is a waste of effort without having been involved at all, or looking into anything here?

Also, how is what is currently being done failing? Do you have metrics, or do you just think the layout is bad because you don't really like it?

Edited by Florien on Jun 9th 2023 at 8:02:26 AM

Here is an example pyramid structure of how things could be linked for the trope. I demonstrate in layers (lowest number = highest-level broadest entry). Layer 0 in this case is a hypothetical master trope all other tropes on this website in theory would connect to, similar to how on Wikipedia ~95% of their entries connect to the Philosophy entry due to how broad it is.

Layer 0: Multi-Meta Trope: Tropes that discuss or reference discussing or referencing tropes.

Layer 1: Meta Trope: Tropes that discuss or reference other tropes.

Layer 2: Technology Trope: Trope of having technology present.

Layer 3: Internet Trope: Trope of having the Internet be involved with the technology.

Layer 4: Internet Memes Trope: Trope of involving Internet memes.

Layer 5: Internet Slang Trope: Trope of communicating in Internet Slang such as WTF, ecks dee, On God.

Layer 6: Internet Snowclone Trope: Trope of using phrasal templates online to communicate varied meanings and memes.

Layer 7: When X / X When: Trope of having someone convey their reaction, such as through a meme, using "when x" or "x when" with x conveying or implying how strongly or in what way someone, a group, or something(s) would or did react under a specified circumstance.

In this case, Layer 7 would be the "bottom" most specific trope, though we could go farther down of course. Layer 0 meanwhile is the master trope.

On the user end, you'd see at the hypothetical "When X / X When" entry a link below its title that says "Internet Snowclone Trope" and clicking it would bring you 1 layer higher. Then under the Internet Snowclone Trope entry, a link below it would clearly be shown that says "Internet Slang Trope" bringing you up yet another layer. If the end user kept going, they'd eventually reach the "master trope" all other tropes are sub-tropes of -in this case that trope is hypothesized to be the multi-meta trope of engaging in the self-referential behavior of talking about talking about tropes, for instance like I am doing right now.

Disagree. The character page I linked above is a fourth-level page.

Girls und Panzer -> Characters -> Oorai Academy -> Anglerfish Team

This problem is inherent to any series with a large cast. If the main character has enough tropes to qualify for their own page, it's even worse.

Fairy Tail -> Characters -> Fairy Tail Guild -> Strongest Team -> Natsu Dragneel

Edited by WarriorsGate on Jun 9th 2023 at 8:23:09 AM

You can add text backlinks at the top of the page if you think they need backlinks, for the record.

No one's going to stop you, there's no policy against it.

I'm well aware of that. It's just really annoying.

Those "trope layers" seem... extremely arbitrary, tropes have no such hierarchy, and there is no such "master trope" that all connect back to. Unless you mean Super-Trope and Sub-Trope, which have a much different hierarchy scheme (which is that every example of a subtrope also fits the supertrope, but the subtrope is more specific and thus gets used when it can).

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 9th 2023 at 11:34:10 AM

Here is the most ideal possible solution interface-wise to arranging/rearranging entries:

Admins, mods, and users, should have the ability to visually drag and drop entries, as if they are files, into a visual hierarchy of folders, with each folder being a trope in itself that contains all the other tropes.

Changes at certain higher layers would be saved as suggestions, that are sent to the mod+admin team for review. The topmost master tropes could be locked to highest-level mods/admins for approval.

There may be less code-intensive ways of achieving this without resorting to a visual drag-and-drop interface, but this is definitely the most ideal reasonably possible solution.

I will add this as number 6.

Edited by JoyradProcyfer on Jun 9th 2023 at 8:38:55 AM

This is a lot of effort for something that people don't actually want? You seem to be the only one advocating for this. I don't see being a design change that will be well received.

The admins can't do anything to extensive to the code and the moderators aren't in charge of site design. We already have one active programmer working on a lot of things the site actually needs so I don't see this being worth the code if it's even feasible.

I don't think you understand how the site's editing hierarchy or how page movement approval works.

Because currently mods don't have very many accepted unilateral decision making capabilities, and admins are almost entirely uninvolved in the site's day to day business.

Maybe come back to this when you've had a bit of experience working with the site before you propose such broad changes without understanding of how things currently work.

You're also not really answering anyone's critiques or questions. You're suggesting a pretty random "hierarchy" and a navigational system that won't work for what this site does.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 9th 2023 at 11:45:14 AM