Aren't they all? New Crowner 10/17/11: Incredibly Lame Pun

^^Storytelling conventions still occur outside of stories, and we do catalog such instances in both Real Life sections (at least, when such examples don't rely heavily on subjectivity and/or serve as Flame Bait) and even in Troper Tales for first-hand Real Life accounts from users.

Indeed anyone can make a pun anywhere and get a bad reaction to it. If anything is wrong with potholing Incredibly Lame Pun anywhere, it's the idea that the pothole is an attempt at forcing people to react badly to it (perhaps as a form of Self-Deprecating Humor, perhaps not), regardless of whether a reader may initially think the pun is clever or not.

edited 4th Nov '10 11:15:47 AM by SeanMurrayI

Don't we already have A Worldwide Punomenon that they should be potholing to instead?

What about Punderwhelmed as a title for the reaction trope In-Universe? Just a thought. An insanely hypocritical thought, but oh well...

This is the post I was coming into this thread to make.

Though the title isn't very catchy and is kind of hard to spell — I wonder if renaming A Worldwide Punomenon might not be the way to go.

edited 4th Nov '10 11:23:11 AM by Micah

Make another thread for that, since this is for a different trope.

It has Pun as a redirect.

I went with: Tropers already embraced it as the generic pothole for puns. Keep using it this way.

Really, why do we need to fight the uphill battle against this? Wouldn't it be so much more practical to just modify the trope such that it remains a generic pothole for puns, and create a separate trope for whatever Incredibly Lame Pun was supposed to be about?

That's exactly how we got into this mess. Really.

I think that the banner is worth a try, but it'll be difficult to offset the widespread use of Incredibly Lame Pun as a pothole. Maybe leave the banner up for two or three months and see how many links shift to A Worldwide Punomenon. If Pun hasn't gained any momentum by then, it's probably a lost cause.

Edit: And I agree that A Worldwide Punomenon could use a rename. It's not as catchy as Incredibly Lame Pun and I managed to mess the Wiki Word up even while referencing the page in a separate tab.

edited 4th Nov '10 4:08:05 PM by Rhatahema

Not quite. We created Incredibly Lame Pun to be a redirect target, it worked, and then, somewhere along the line, Incredibly Lame Pun became a trope. I'm not completely clear on when or how that happened, but unless I'm very mistaken about the timeline, we created a redirect-target page for puns, it worked, and then we tried to stuff the genie back in the bottle by turning the target page into a full-fledged trope, which failed and left us in the situation we are now. The simplest solution seems to be to let Incredibly Lame Pun serve the purpose we created it for in the first place, since people seem to like using it that way.

Hm. Totally rehashing stuff that's already been said, but another two cents: yeah, the "incredibly lame" part of the name is probably why it's so popular, it is a SELF-DEPRECATING HUMOR flag. In my experience, good puns (where the multiple meanings are all actually meaningful) get potholed to A Worldwide Punomenon instead of Incredibly Lame Pun.

Laconic: No, not all puns are incredibly lame. It ain't broke, don't fix it.

What makes this page such a "mess"? It sounds like y'all are trying to fix something that wasn't a problem in the first place.

Even if this was a problem, none of the proposed renames would fix it. At all.

edited 4th Nov '10 5:36:13 PM by Angrbor

"That's exactly how we got into this mess. Really." - SSOT

Going by the more commonly used notion of a trope is "exactly how we got into this mess" now?

The page is fine. The wicks are what's out of whack.

Renames would fix that problem by allowing the wicks to point to a page that actually means what people seem to think this one does.

edited 4th Nov '10 5:39:20 PM by Shale

Besides, even self-depreciating potholes to this page are basically saying "This pun was so bad that even I groaned while making it". It fits the trope (even though the page itself is limited to fictional examples), and since it's a pothole, it's not tacked onto the end of a sentence like So Yeah or I Am Not Making This Up.

^ I was talking about the wicks. Not one person has explained why potholes to this trope can only be for fictional examples, especially since it has a Troper Tales page.

edited 4th Nov '10 5:50:03 PM by Angrbor

It's not that it can only be for fictional examples, it's that going by the description most of the potholes aren't examples (or at least, they're only examples because they're potholed, which is annoyingly circular).

I still think self-depreciating examples count, but alright. If this goes through, are we going to purge every misused pothole, or just the ones in Main and YMMV?

edited 5th Nov '10 3:31:57 AM by Angrbor

I was thinking that instead of seeking out and fixing a whole bunch of potholes all over the wiki, it may be more practical to just adjust Incredibly Lame Pun to the way tropers are used to using it instead...

Could we turn it into a useful notes page on puns? That way if you see it potholed and don't get the pun (for example, because you're ESL), you could get some information about what puns are and how they work so you might realize what was going on.

Then move the current trope there to That Pun Was Lame or something

I think we need to remove the inappropriate wicks, with a note on the trope page explaining the policy on this. The way it's being potholed is distracting ("Hey, a pothole, I wonder where it goes?") and adds nothing ("Oh, just to Incredibly Lame Pun. I already knew it was a pun, thanks"). Policing all of the many, many wicks is going to be a big job, but that's what Wiki Magic is for. I think it can work as long as we make it clear that potholing like that is a no-no.

But do we really need to fix all the links to ILP, when tropers are so used to using it that way?

We nuked So Yeah and I Am Not Making This Up despite massive amounts of troper use, so I don't see the difference here. I Am Not Making This Up even had a legit use (which was moved to "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer). Maybe we should do the same thing here? Permanent redlink Incredibly Lame Pun and move the trope to Terrible Pun, Incredibly Bad Pun, or something similar.

Note that the Premanent Red Link Club page says that I Am Not Making This Up was "on over 2500 pages at its peak". Incredibly Lame Pun is currently on 5700 pages. I'm sure TV Tropes has grown somewhat since I Am Not Making This Up was nuked, but clearly it's a problem on the same scale — if less noticable because it's potholed rather than used in a sentence.

edited 10th Nov '10 8:01:14 AM by NativeJovian

I thought the purpose of Incredibly Lame Pun was for Pot Holes? Doesn't that change the situation a bit?

If it was, then it's a bad idea and should be changed. Whatever it was originally intended for, now it's just used as "look, I made a pun and want to call attention to it" (or worse, people just feel obligated to pothole every pun with it). Like I said earlier, this is distracting and adds nothing, and I wish to Kill It with Fire.

When you pothole or wick a page on another page you are saying "This linked page is relevant". Making a pothole that isn't relevant is a bad editing practice.

Read the page that those potholes link to. It is for a specific situation in which a character makes a pun and then either he himself or another character comments on how bad it was.