When To Rename A Trope

I'm not sure what other evidence there could be but if someone finds some I see no reason to exclude it.

But, serious question, if a trope has a decent wick count, and little to no misuse, what would cause it to need renaming, and why?

The child is father to the man —Oedipus

"Very popular within some fandom, no healthy traffic coming from anywhere else even though the trope applies equally"; "contradicts actual use of the term outside TV Tropes which is many orders of magnitude more significant"; "Very popular with our editors, no one else cares, though you'd expect them to"; "reinventing the wheel, this has 500 Google results and the actual term for it used by society at large has 3,000,000"...

You need to provide proof if you want to make a claim like this, of course. And for most of them getting the proof is difficult. But, yes, these kinds of issues can and do exist.

edited 12th Feb '12 8:48:02 PM by TripleElation

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

• "Very popular within some fandom ..." I'm not sure this indicates a bad name in isolation. EDIT Unless what you mean is something like X-Pac Heat.
• "Contradicts actual use ..." Fair enough.
• "Very popular with our editors ..." So what? Why does this need a change? I ask not on the assumption that there is not answer but I don't know what it is.
• "reinventing the wheel ..." Better dealt with but a redirect; I've made a couple in that vein.

edited 12th Feb '12 8:56:02 PM by HersheleOstropoler

The child is father to the man —Oedipus

I mean something like if we named The Power of Love after a Harry Potter reference, and 90% of the inbounds would be from Harry Potter fansites even though it's a trope that shows up everywhere.

Because the wiki is for the readers, not the editors. Eddie himself has acknowledged this in the past, referring to a situation with lots of wicks and weak inbounds as a possible "massive circle-jerk in progress".

I guess we just disagree about that. Allow me a hypothetical, if you would: suppose by some accident we'd ended up with some 80s-sitcom reference as the title to the Leitmotif article?..

edited 12th Feb '12 9:12:35 PM by TripleElation

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

So "reinventing the wheel" is covered by our current "pre-existing term" policy?

Fight smart, not fair.

I think most of the reinventing the wheel ones can be dealt with by a redirect. As long as we're not talking an overly obscure sitcom reference, I think that's part of the wiki's charm; I don't see the benefit of changing a name that's performing well because there's another term for it as well, the way I see why a name that means something else to the rest of the world should be changed no matter how well it's doing.

I don't think Bothering by the Book*

is a worse or more problematic name than Rulebook Slowdown or Work To Rule.

The child is father to the man —Oedipus

As a person with disabilities (having CHARGE Syndrome to be exact and considered blind/deaf by the doctors), I find two pages entitled "Nightmare Retardant" and "Fetish Retardant" offensive hence it has the "r" word that discriminates against those with disabilities and special needs. I brought that up under the discussion page but I haven't got a response. I was curious if it could be changed to "Nightmare Fail" or something to that extent? I'll be more than happy to personally change those as well as other pages that uses examples of those.

I am afraid that given precedent on wiki policy this isn't going to happen.

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

Ghost, that isn't going to happen. Because 'retardant' means "A substance which retards or inhibits the spread or growth of something, as in 'fire retardant' or 'mold retardant'", using 'retard' as a verb, meaning "to slow or halt." It has nothing to do with the use of 'retard' or 'retarded' as an insult.

edited 15th Dec '12 1:29:29 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

What Maddy and Septimus said. In fact, it's the insulting use of "retard(ed)" that is misusing the word, so it goes against logic to ban usage of said word simply because of it being misused by slang.

edited 15th Dec '12 1:30:28 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

"Retardant" is the opposite of "Fuel". A retardant is something that slows something down. Chemical flame retardants are used to fight forest fires, for example.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

^^ That's not misuse, it's just insensitive: that meaning is derived from "mental retardation", but is considered insulting. (Like "oriental" to refer to a person is not incorrect, but it's impolite, to put it mildly.) But yeah, dictionary.com: "retard: verb (used with object) 1. to make slow; delay the development or progress of (an action, process, etc.); hinder or impede." I think taking exception to the word being used properly is offensive :)

edited 10th Jan '13 9:59:19 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.

(Moving this to Wiki Talk as it is a little outdated for FAQ)

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

I'd like to mention String Theory. The name of this trope is a reappropriation of a term that has nothing to do with the trope, but from a wick check it seems to be used correctly. However, string theory sounds like a potentially viable Useful Notes topic, if it shouldn't be covered by UsefulNotes.Quantum Physics. A TRS thread of mine to rename the trope to Conspiracy Wall was declined for insufficient evidence.

I'm back!

What’s wrong with a trope sharing the same name as a UN?

I forgot to mention that it receives more pageviews than some of the related tropes, despite having fewer wicks; I'll specifically mention the supertropes. That might be a sign that readers, though not editors, are being misled by the title, and/or that the title is inhibiting use. It would be nice to have objective evidence, however.

• String Theory has 348 wicks and 18688 pageviews.
• Conspiracy Theorist has 2355 wicks and 6420 pageviews.
• Room Full of Crazy has 1175 wicks and 13010 pageviews.

I'm back!

The issue of renaming a trope when there's technically no problems with it (i.e., the userbase isn't being confused) but it could still be better is interesting to me. On the one hand, I can understand the mentality of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", especially when there's a long process to make a change, but on the other hand, I've never held with tradition or age being king when clear improvements could be made. It's hard for me to watch something outdated or poorly named get rejected for consideration just because it works fine as-is, but I understand the work flow of making changes on this site and how aggravating a wave of changes that are aesthetic improvements, but demonstrably unnecessary, would be.

If it ain't broke, then it isn't as important as the many pages that are broken and need to be fixed.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.