Discussion Administrivia / ZeroContextExample

I know this is probably thread necromancy, but I agree.

Since it's not a trope, Playing With is logically impossible.

Trope: Completely Missing The Point

Okay Kuruni, that statement is just dickish and not useful. OP, maybe you could start a wiki talk thread if you think we take the wrong attitude, but I don't know if this is likely to overturn anything as people seem to be set in stone. I will say though that chances are that both adding an example and explaining how it fits requires someone to know a work, which is probably not as likely to happen with two people, especially for least popular works.

"commenting out every single ZCE instead of using principles of "assume good faith" and "repair don't edit war" to leave some clue on the page's surface that those examples are present"

Well, yeah. It's the fault of the ZCE-inclined editors that their ZCEs are commented out. As tropers, it's their job to explain how an example follows a trope. Adding ZCEs create unnecesary work for everyone: for people who have to leave the page to understand how a trope is applied (something we don't want to) and for the editors (as it forces us to comment out the example or expand it, something the editor at fault should have done). No one should be obligated to exit a page or "read/watch the work" to understand how a trope applies.

And popularity doesn't mean quality.

No. Being a Corrupt Politician is about what that character does. Even if everybody know what Corrupt Politician is, "Alice is a Corrupt Politician" still doesn't tell why she counted as one.

Obviously named trope help, but you still have to explain why the character is example.

I agree. The standards on what is a Zero Context Example have become too pedantic. The idea that a trope description isn't specific enough if it's not a full paragraph makes no sense. When I first came to this wiki, I came across a fuckload of these supposed "Zero Context Examples" and had no trouble understanding anything.

Nope. There should be an explanation of what attributes this Cat Girl has, for example.

Thanks for the clarification; I really didn't know what ought to happen in that context.

Does she have cat ears? Tail? Feline behavior? Punny Name? Like to drink milk?

What about the character is cat-girl-like.

Yes.

Thanks :D

There is, or should be, more to appearance tropes than just a picture of a character. You need to explain how that aspect of the character's appearance ties in with their characterisation or whatever, because that's what the trope is.

Some tropes do lend themselves better to Zero Context Example, but even though we are all supposed to leave high school with knowledge of alliteration some folks may have gone a few or many years without thinking of alliteration. Also, we have teens and newer tropers who may see the ZCE's and think they are acceptable and saves them a bit of typing. You're educating by putting the explanation, and saving folks from a Wiki Walk.

It looks like Captain Obvious, but it doesn't take much to say something like:

• Alliterative Name: Scott Smith
• Alliterative Name: Scott's name
• Alliterative Name: Scott's first and second names begin with the same letter

And you know what? If this sort of thing really annoys you, when you see a Zero Context Example and you think "Well, the admin is going to axe that one" simply add the needed content. It's our job as Tropers to not only add things, but to improve.

Admins are busy, have lives off of TV Tropes and are volunteers, and they have a lot of site here to monitor. It's a lot easier for them to simply cut out ZCE's than look up the trope and write up an explanation.

I can imagine a case where Alliterative Name isn't a ZCE: Stan Lee used a lot of them, to remember the Loads And Loads Of Characters better.

In other cases, though...

It could be - if there are Loads And Loads Of Characters, and just one Alliterative Name the reader shouldn't have to review all the characters in their head for the one.

Given how often an alliterative name has some significance to the story, even if it's just a significant monogram, then note that down and explain any other context that can be added.

The entire "Wrong!" part of the description is subjective in the first place and comes across less as an educated statement and more "because I say so" and feels more like an enforced case of Viewers Are Morons.

Pages are being absolutely hacked apart into a wall of %s in recent months to the point some character pages are almost damn near empty. Working to append examples with context is one thing, black holing them entirely is pointless.

In fact, the main purpose of the constant renaming of tropes was supposed to be for the very purpose of letting their title better explain themselves.

It's wiki policy. I would not mind a rewrite of the initial section though.

Anyhoo, the reason why we catalogue trope examples at all is because they can give us insights on how the trope is used. But a trope name is never enough information for that purpose.

Done. In the future, please make edit requests in this thread.

(oops, meant to start new thread)

I agree. For example, what happens if there is an example like this on a work page:

• Action Girl: [character name].

What else can you add? "[character name] likes to fight"? That's the description of the trope. "[character name] killed 352 people throughout the work in swordfights"? That seems like an unnecessary detail.

Or even better, what about genre descriptions? Let's say the work is Steampunk, so you list it on the work page. What else do you need to explain? If you read the description of the work, you should probably have deduced the genre, else there is something wrong with the description, not the example.

^^ There's no such thing as "an example that doesn't need context". In both cases you mentioned the reader would have to leave page they're on to see those tropes play out. We don't want that. It's a distraction, there's no guarantee they'll actually do that, and the reader shouldn't have to leave the page they're reading to understand what you're saying.

^ Well, yes you would add detail like that. Every trope can be used a magnitude of different ways. We want to document those cases to show that. Also, when writing an example it's best to assume that the reader hasn't read the work or the trope you're listing, that way it's clear to everyone. Stuff like this is covering in our How To Write An Example page, please read it.

As far as Steampunk goes, it's largely defined by the technology in the work so give a brief overview of that.

There is always context. For example;

• Action Girl: Pauline demonstrates this when she is tied to the railroad tracks by Dick Dasterdly, a scenario typically ending in her being rescued by Dudley Doright. This time, however, she works her own way loose (dislocating her shoulder in the attempt), then hops up and kicks Dudley square in the family jewels.

You claim she is an action girl. Show some evidence.

• No comment on "Natch," but if the list is too long, we can always put it in a folder.
• Two edits don't constitute an edit war. It's the third edit you need to watch out for. I'm not a big fan of that note, though.
• {{Zero Context Example}}s produces Zero Context Examples. That's probably what you're looking for.

From what I've seen, the curly braces don't work in the edit reason box. I might be wrong, though. Regardless, someone made a redirect for the plural form a few months ago.

Curly braces do work in the edit reason box, but they're trickier than wiki words so people are more liable to mess them up accidentally.

Some tropes lend themselves better to zero content than others. Some really, really need an explanation. For instance Alliterative Name isn't too bad. However some tropes like Metroidvania, which was posted to the Antichamber page and removed make almost no sense to people who haven't read the trope.

If a person sees a trope, identifies it and can take the time to post it to TV Tropes, they can certainly put that thought in their head into a few words - or say why they are putting in a ZCM in the edit reason.

Yes, some folks aren't good at that, but we also have tropers who are rushing to be the first to "tag" a page with the trope before anyone else does and are posting Zero Context Examples not because they can't, but because they are in a "race".

For what reason ever should weapons be treated as characters?

That's as bad as having a photo of a character and then just listing Significant Green-Eyed Redhead with no justification. Try explaining how it earned its name.

To answer Lord Gro; Universal Person is referring to the character pages for the Roosterteeth web animation RWBY.

All the significant characters have decidedly strange, mix and match, personalized, named, weapons. I felt that it was neater and more appropriate to list the tropes relating directly to those weapons in a separate section under the characters wielding them. The main character's weapon - Crescent Rose - has over twenty tropes relating specifically to itself and not it's wielder, as such it is a lot like a character in of itself. Keeping the two sections separate but together is both appropriate to the work and well organized. They are extensions to the characters which reflect their personalities. Tropes such as Small Girl Big Gun remain with the character whereas Ace Custom, Blade On A Stick or Theme Naming are listed under the weapon.

There is the question's context but whether it helps the discussion is another matter.

I do this too. I'll set up the redirect.

Coolness.

The trope isn't just the physical appearance, though. Something like Alliterative Name has to be an alliterative name with meaning or it's not an example. Bob Haircut needs expansion like "she cut her hair like this to rebel" or "it shows that she's still living in the twenties".

Even if the character just happens to have a bob haircut? There are a lot of physical tropes that can't help but be Zero Context Examples because no explanation for them is given in-universe.

If the character just happens to have a bob haircut, with no reason like her or the writers wanting to express something, it's not an example of a trope and should be removed.

Then the majority of the characters in the Anime section of Bob Haircut should be purged. And what about something like Pointy Ears, the laconic for which is simply that they have pointy ears.

Because not everyone knows every show in existence and not everyone is sure how exactly the trope applies?

Are the missing details relevant to where or how a particular trope appears or functions in the work? If so, then yes.

You wouldn't normally leave a link to Rule Of Cautious Editing Judgement in a page description unless there was a reason to remind editors to be cautious when editing a page. And if there is a reason, you should convey that very reason to readers.

Reminding editors to be cautious when editing a given page without explaining what exactly they need to be cautious about doing isn't very helpful to anybody.

This page is warning against X Just X. Cutting would do more harm than good.

But we have a bunch of other pages that do that like Not Self Explanatory.

Then we'll combine them or we'll work on the titles or something. But what this page is not is a page that we do not want on this wiki or a page that we would not take down without discussion and the appropriate action to a cut being declined is not putting it back on. Just think about it and you might discover why that is not going to work.

Also Not Self Explanatory describes a different sort of information. Is there linkage between them? Yeah, there's also a discussion above this, why don't you try using that.

If you shouldn't pothole to it why does it exist?

The page is supposed to tell tropers that they should avoid using, not only X Just X, but anything in that form — the X could be replaced with any trope or work, and it's equally bad potholed or not. And at least this one can't be openly abused like Please Elaborate was — it can only be potholed...

Cut request denied because we need somewhere to explain why we hate this.

Could we give it a new name that doesn't lend to potholing? No Example Is Self Explanatory? You have to admit that the bluelink is contributing to the problem.

That's what Not Self Explanatory is for, though.

We seem to have these recurring meta-meme problems where generic phrases (I Am Not Making This Up, Take That!, So Yeah, X Just X, maybe Incredibly Lame Pun) are being shoehorned into Pot Holes because some people think it's funny, even though for all practical purposes it's a lazy in-joke.

I think having an explanation somewhere to explain "why we hate this" is a good idea if we want to put a stop to this cycle, but localizing it to X Just X will only work until that meme is completely eradicated. Then it will come up again with another innocuous phrase and once more we will get angry shouts of "the wiki is RUINEDFOREVER"!

So, new idea- I just wrote up a page called Potholing Policy, with a section for X Just X and whatever other tropes we want to put down there. What if X Just X redirected to that, or for that matter, we can link that page to anything else to assist in curbing these memes. How about it?

In light of the fact that So Yeah was cut, and this page literally consists of nothing but instructions to the effect of DON'T POTHOLE THIS, yeah, let's send it to the Cut List.

The article already pretty much says that any way but directly.

Eh, adding a direct discouragement can't hurt.