You'll have better luck getting any response by posting on Ask the Tropers.
The title is wrong. I want to talk "why" not "how"! The correct title is: "Why things are alphabetized?"
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This is not the place to discuss wiki policy. Go to Ask the Tropers or to the forums.
Where is the ask the tropers section as well as our forum? Sorry i just reply to you for a long time.
Edited by KittenGuy57
Ask the Tropers can be found here
, while the forums can be found here.
I have no idea about this page because it is intended for step by step on alphabeticalizing stuff inside this website. the problem is I wanna have a question about "Why things are alphabetized?"
He/Him
Should Roman Numerals like IV count as 4 and therefore go before any works beginning with letters?
Art Museum Curator and frequent helper of the Web Original deprecation project Hide / Show Replies
Good question. They probably should be treated as numbers if you list a work series with such numerals, as otherwise it would look clunky.
This page is about how. And i want to talk about why not how. My question. Why things should be alphabetical? Hey this is wrong stuff. I supposedly this why alphabetical. But not to guide to how alphabetize. Please noted that tvtropes is alphabetical things in a first place. You know.
Should Avengers The Kang Dynasty be placed before Avengers Secret Wars?
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No, after. A "The" article is ignored if it's placed at the beginning of the title. A "the" inside the title is a normal part of the alphabetization.
And that includes cases with "the" as the first word in a subtitle / after a colon?
So Amityville: The Aardvark Horror comes after Amityville: Zebras at Dawn?
That feels like a clarification worth adding to the Administrivia guidance.
Edited by Mrph1
It comes before (T before Z). Although when listing entries in a franchise inside a sub-bullet, chronological order tends to take over alphabetical order.
As the for current Administrivia page, it does clearly says "beginning of the title".
Sorry, poor example. Should have picked a subtitle starting with B, not Z.
Should Ōsama Game be alphabetized as Osama Game or Ousama Game, as should it go before or after osu!?
Edited by bubby3 Hide / Show Replies
As mentioned on the page, it's the custom-wikiworded title that ought to be taken in account, in this case "Osama".
And this shows why romanization of Japanese would need an uniformization effort.
Is it necessary/permissible to alphabetize lists of works on a trope page (e.g. reorganizing all of the works in the "Live Action TV" folder of the trope "Family of Choice" so that they are in alphabetical order by title)? Apologies if this has been answered somewhere; I'm new to the editing game, and I just want to make sure that I'm not doing something wrong.
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It is not just permissible, it is expected, although not very much enforced.
It's also a good opportunity to correct bad indentation, remove duplicates and group titles of the same franchise.
It is best to frame a folder that has been alphabetized with commented-out warnings that it has been done, so that editors adding examples in the future know to put it on the right place and not just at the end.
This page is missing instructions on how we should alphabetize people's names.
Edited by SingingRain
What about abbreviations? For example, Mr. Exposition should go before or after Moment Killer?
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As pointed on the article (entry 5), the alphabetization is done with how the trope or title appears on screen, not how it's pronounced. Thus Mr. Exposition goes after Moment Killer, even if when reading it you tend to say "Mister Exposition".
When alphabetizing, should the namespaces be ignored or not? For example, should Trivia.Math go under "M" or "T"?
Twitter/Instagram: anzasquiddles. Deviantart: anzahanifathallah. Hide / Show Replies
Thanks.
Twitter/Instagram: anzasquiddles. Deviantart: anzahanifathallah.
I think we should add to this page (near the first sentence in fact) that alphabetization should also apply by work title on trope pages, using the same existing guidelines that we have for tropes on work pages/indexes.
I now go by Graf von Tirol. Hide / Show Replies
I believe that will need forum discussion.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Rule 3 (shorter words first) seems to contradict Rule 2 (ignore spaces) in regards to tropes starting with the word "I". The "I" in I Need a Freaking Drink is a shorter word than the "Indy" in Indy Ploy, so I Need a Freaking Drink should be earlier in the list according to rule 3. Rule 2 says Indy Ploy should come first.
According to rule 2, you get trope lists looking like this:
- I Am Spartacus
- Indy Ploy
- I Need a Freaking Drink
- Intelligence Equals Isolation
- I Want My Beloved to Be Happy
...does that look right to anyone? What about "Badass Longcoat" coming before "Bad Writing" because W is after A?
Edited by johnnye Hide / Show Replies
I have to agree. I Need a Freaking Drink should come before Indy Ploy.
Why was this decided on, anyway? Is there an archived discussion?
Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.
"...does that look right to anyone?"
I must be weird, because it looks right to me.
What mostly bugs me is that the rules do indeed contradict each other. If that ever gets resolved, I'll be happy to follow whichever rule comes out on top, but my personal preference is to go with rule 2.
Edit: Whoops, didn't notice the date on your posts. Looks like rule 3 is different now anyway. Sorry! >.>
Edited by 24.150.102.157
Confused about the treatment of "all" as an article in All Jews Are Ashkenazi. In The Gilded Age index, All Jews Are Ashkenazi comes after An Immigrant's Tale, as if "all" were an article. Why? Is this a mistake? If not, shouldn't it be mentioned in the rules somewhere to treat "all" as an article?
Edit: Nevermind. I think the page has been edited since I first posted this, with BOTH tropes now at the beginning. I'll just fix it myself.
Edited by 24.150.102.157
Lord of the Blue Star
I understand to ignore the articles, so would To Be Lawful or Good fall under the B-section, or L-section? I just would like some clarification.
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I think "To" doesn't count as an article. Whether a verb is an infinitive in a title is more significant that any article, so it would go to "T".
What about numbers? Does 0% Approval Rating go at the beginning of the list, under "0", or at the end, under "Z"?
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I'd say at the beginning. Numbers are always alphabatized before letters, I believe, and to the average reader, it's 0, not Z.
Waiting on a TRS slot? Finishing off one of these cleaning efforts will usually open one up.
[whoops. didn't mean to post it twice. ignore this one.]
Edited by PaulA
What's the rule for when a name at the beginning of a trope name is replaced with that of an appropriate in-work character? For example, Game.Sam And Max Freelance Police used to have Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique listed as "Flint Paper Interrogation Technique" (Flint Paper being the character who specialized in it in-game), and it was listed under the F's. I tried to move it to the J's because otherwise someone looking for that trope on the page would have loads of difficulty finding it. Someone moved it back to the F's, I moved it back to the J's with an explanation, and somehow it ended up listed in the J's as "Flint Paper Interrogation Technique" with Jack Bauer's name struck out preceding it.
I just saw a similar situation on the Back To The Future page, and I wanted to clarify things before I edit.
Edited by SonicLover Hide / Show Replies
The practice of potholing tropes in work pages should be avioded.
It makes it harder to find the trope you want.
Just change it back to the original name.
Edited by DrStarky Put me in motion, drink the potion, use the lotion, drain the ocean, cause commotion, fake devotion, entertain a notion, be Nova Scotian
I don't know, Dr Starky, there's a similar thing throughout the site and I think it adds to the character of certain pages. For instance, My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic has several tropes potholed using the in-show convention of replacing "nobody" with "nopony," etc. At any rate, it's a common enough practice that we need some sort of convention to account for it. It would be nice to have an official line on that.
Edited by BooleanEarth "In the land of the insecure, the one-balled man is king." - Haven
Clarity comes before wit. It's not even that witty to begin with in my opinion.
Put me in motion, drink the potion, use the lotion, drain the ocean, cause commotion, fake devotion, entertain a notion, be Nova Scotian
I think that rule #2 should be changed so that spaces come before letters. The rule is currently based on how the database organizes things, and rule #4 says that doesn't matter compared to how titles look in the list.
For instance, the following list:
Would probably look better organized this way:
- I Need a Freaking Drink
- I Reject Your Reality
- I Was Never Here
- Internal Reveal
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