There's currently an ATT thread
about this page (and the Spider-Man one), if anyone would like to chime in.
A look at the edit history reveals that with the exception of one troper, most tropers here prefer the folders and find it convenient. I say we keep the folders.
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What "Edit history" are you referring to?
One troper made a unilateral decision to add the folders without consulting anyone. And when I removed them, one troper added them back—and didn't bother to give a reason why.
They're not a terrible idea, but they're unnecessary. They make the page's layout much more complicated than it needs to be, they make the page's layout incongruous (since no other examples of Common Knowledge are further divided into subcategories), and they make browsing unintuitive. Ideally, a newcomer to the site should be able to browse through any list of tropes, and should be able to easily add their own examples by matching them to the correct medium.
There's no reason to make other users jump through hoops by forcing them to come up with the proper sub-category for every example they add.
Fact is multiple editors used these folders and navigated it effectively. That's what the edit history reveals. it's not up to you to suddenly decide based on your judgment without consulting anyone here that it's not newcomer friendly.
Just because no one removed those folders doesn't mean that everyone agrees with the decision to add them. It's a bit odd that you take issue with me for not consulting anyone before removing them—since the other user didn't consult anyone before adding them in the first place.
It's also a bit odd that you take issue with me for not being "newcomer friendly". It's also not very "newcomer friendly" to give one example page a radically different format that doesn't match any other page on the site. That makes it much more difficult for new users to get used to the site's layout.
1) There's the No such thing as notability rule. The reasons the X-Men have so many pages, is that it's got a lot of volume of content and needs organization for easy navigation.
2) It's not true that other pages don't have similar things. There's the Spider-Man page which is also organized in pages, based again on volume of content. The original Common Knowledge sub-page for Comic Books was quite large and unwieldy and needed sub-pages and folders for organization. Both Spider-Man and X-Men were the biggest in that space. And it was unreadable and hard to navigate. Full disclosure: I made sub-folders for Spider-Man, and I guess another troper created one in X-Men after that.
3) The fact is that this complaint about being hard to read wasn't made by any other troper. In the absence of any complaints or any issues, the idea that you are making this claim for newcomers is hard to take seriously.
Separating Comic Book examples by series is one thing, since trope examples are already sorted by work. Separating them by sub-topic is another, and it requires interpreting each example to determine the central theme of each—which not every visitor to the site will interpret in the same way.
And once again: it was also incredibly presumptuous of you to decide that the current layout of those pages wasn't good enough, and needed fixing. A simple list format for examples is perfectly adequate. If they're all examples of the same trope from the same work, any visitor can easily browse them at their leisure. When you insist on separating them by sub-topic, it makes browsing and editing pages much less intuitive.
Those folders also raise major questions about overlapping entries; plenty of Adaptation-Induced Misconceptions pertain to individual characters, and plenty of misconceptions about individual characters have to do with their place in the wider Marvel Universe. So it just creates needless confusion when they fall into multiple sub-categories.
Why is it "presumptuous of me" to make folders? Again, part of my issue, is that a fellow troper is trying to act like a moderator, enforcing some unwritten style guide. There's no rule against making sub-folders for a page that's really long and big and with a lot of content.
There's nothing wrong with that. No editor and troper I've come across has ever had an issue with this once.
To give my two cents, I honestly don't see what could be confusing about a page with folders containing exactly what it says that they contain. It'd be confusing if they were mislabeled, maybe, but what's confusing about the way things are now?
I mean, at no point has anybody actually expressed the confusion you claim that it would cause. If you'll pardon my rude language, it's a tad silly to decide what other people find confusing on their behalf.
And with all due respect, has anyone on TV Tropes except you actually said that this kind of folders are bad, for any reason? (I was gonna add "or removed the folders," but that hasn't happened according to the history page.) Because if you have no concrete examples of someone who supports your view on the matter, then you're going by conjecture, since every other person I've seen in this debate are fine with the folders—I re-added them, Jack's clearly good with them too, and so is the person who created them in the first place, and then there's the mod who added them back—and to the best of my knowledge they don't go against the style guide either.
So what I'm suggesting is this: How about you try to find somebody who agrees that the folders are best left deleted? Because if more than one person feels that way at least it's not just one solitary person's opinion, but if it's just one person, then for all intents and purposes it's like we've held a vote and the "folders" side has won four to one.
Edited by MichaelKatsuro
Oh, and, uh... Is it actually possible to post here when one is suspended? I realize I should have checked that first. If not, my request is clearly unreasonable.
Regardless. Let's wait for a day and see if anyone else wants to chip in before reverting things as before.
Also, I asked about this on ATT (link below), and so far we have two votes there for folders, two votes here for, and also obviously the one who created them originally, making a total of five in favor and one against. But yeah, waiting a day is a good idea, though I'd say two days is better.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/query.php?parent_id=79330&type=att
For what its worth Ill add my vote to add folders. Without them it all looks like a big lot of text without context.
Going by the three pro-folder people here, the original folder-creator and the seven additional yes-votes in the ATT thread (I didn't count Tuvok twice; don't worry), that's 11 votes for and 1 vote against so far.
Edited by MichaelKatsuro
I fixed it. Let's be honest—if in slightly less than one day we received a 11-1 ratio, that won't change too drastically if we wait more.
Edited by MichaelKatsuro
Alright, I think it needs to be said:
Every example under the "Wider Marvel Universe" folder is an extremely questionable example of Common Knowledge, and I think they all need to go. If anybody wants to change my mind about that, you're welcome to try.
The last time I removed those examples, they were added back without any reasons given. As I said before: the definition of Common Knowledge is "A widely held factual misconception about a work of pop culture"; by definition, examples of Common Knowledge are facts that are widely assumed to be true, but aren't. But almost every entry under the "Wider Marvel Universe" folder is just explaining how the "misconception" isn't really a misconception, and the X-Men really don't interact with other Marvel characters as much as other superheroes; with one or two exceptions, every entry is just explaining why they don't interact with other Marvel characters. Most of them also disregard proper Example Indentation; bulleted entries are supposed to be independent from each other, so no entry should ever start with "As mentioned below...", "It should be noted...", or "That being said..."
Bottom line: Common Knowledge is a trope about misconceptions. If an idea isn't a misconception, it doesn't belong on the page.
- As mentioned below, the X-Men series since The '70s easily supplanted the Fantastic Four as Marvel's most popular team and it had more spin-offs, solo titles, and events than others, while at the time the Avengers were a B-List dumping ground (a situation that was itself a reversal of the status-quo where originally the X-Men were C-List and the Avengers more viable, albeit still less well known than the Fantastic Four). So the idea that the X-Men don't cross into the wider Marvel Universe and is its own self-contained thing is precisely because nobody in the fans and among the editors were clamoring for wider integration until the movie shared universe came around and made it viable. To put simply: From the early-'80s up until around 2005, the X-Men side of the mythos was considered the backbone of the universe and to many, it was the superheroes that weren't mutants/X-Men that were considered on the outside (Spider-Man being the big exception for many years), not the other way around. If you need a quick reference, just take a look at the roster of the well-regarded 2000 Crossover fighter Marvel vs. Capcom 2note and you'll see exactly why this is misconceived and why the idea is from a perspective looking at it now through filtered glasses.
- Not helping is that this has been acknowledged by writers and in-universe with there even being a correlation between the two at times. Grant Morrison's iconic run of New X-Men (considered a Soft Reboot that changed the franchise forever) deliberately kept the non-mutant/X-Men side of the Marvel Universe as minimal as possible, because he wanted the story to feel distinct on its own. This seeped into the narrative itself, where most of the mutants were neutral to the Civil War because the rest of the MU did nothing to help when Genosha was destroyed (Emma Frost even asked Iron Man when he tried to enlist their aide: "Where were the Avengers when our children were dying?"). Indeed, the separation between the two has been real, and has been part of the narrative for a variety of factors, leading to these scenarios.
- It should be noted that this even has precedence in the earliest issues of Marvel, albeit for completely opposite reasons. At the time, the X-Men were about as C-list as you could get for Marvel titles; it didn't have any of the epic stories the series is known for, the analogy for the Civil Rights Movement wasn't there, nor was it a diverse Multinational Team which the comics would set the standard for, it mainly had the team (consisting of five white New Yorkers) dealing with D-list bad guys when they weren't Magneto (how many people seriously know of The Vanisher or Sauron?), with Magneto himself being your typical over-the-top villain with no real depth or values, and the general perception by everyone was that the X-Men was nothing more than a dime-store version of the Fantastic Four. For that reason, the X-Men hardly ever crossed over to the wider universe mainly because they were just so low on the totem pole, and it was in their best interests to keep them away from the higher-selling and more marketable properties. In fact, it got so bad that in 1970, the entire series was cancelled for five real-world years because they just weren't profitable enough to be worth keeping around. It wasn't until 1975's Giant-Sized X-Men and Chris Claremont's subsequent run did this actually change to where the X-Men were the hot A-list property that stood as the backbone of Marvel for over two decades, and if anything, actually invited more crossover.
- That being said, two of the original members of the Brotherhood of Mutants (Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver) and one of the original X-Men (Beast) were members of The Avengers, which given its dumping ground status had very High Turnover Rate qualifying this achievement (since basically they let everyone in at that point). In the case of Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, they were originally mutant villains turned superheroes, and the idea of them being Magneto's children didn't come in until after Chris Claremont where Magneto became a Tragic Villain with real virtues, because nobody would wish Kirby-Lee Magneto as a father to their worst enemy. For most of their history, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch had more history and ties to the non-mutant side of the universe than they did within it.
- Notably, Quicksilver has also been very heavily involved with the X-Men's antithesis: The Inhumans. This is mainly through his Interspecies Romance with Crystal, which produced the first mutant/inhuman hybrid in Marvel in the form of their daughter Luna. Also, Scarlet Witch has long been romantically involved with The Vision, and that fact as shaped Marvel as we know in more ways than one such as leading to the reincarnated sons Wiccan and Speed of the Young Avengers.
- There have been several crossovers between the X-Men and other Marvel superheroes, which tends to be neglected because again owing to the great divergence in popularity and sales, these stories tend to be remembered as X-Men stories first, and have lasting consequences in the X-Men continuity rather than elsewhere. Mutant Massacre, for example, was officially a crossover event between the X-Men, X-Factor, the New Mutants, and Thor, and even saw tie-ins with Daredevil and Power Pack, but it had more lasting consequences in the X-Men continuity. Similarly, other stories considered "X-Overs" (the Fan Nickname for the Bat Family Crossover between them) did in fact feature tie-ins to the wider universe, it's just seldom remembered as the X-Men were the stars. Two notable examples are Fall of the Mutants, which reached Captain America, Daredevil, Power Pack, Hulk, and the Fantastic Four, while Inferno was a line-wide story that featured Spider-Man, the Avengers, Cloak and Dagger, Daredevil, Power Pack, the Fantastic Four, and Damage Control fighting off demons — it's just that the X-Men and related teams were the stars while everyone else were second-stringers in terms of marketing and narrative note
- X-Men event titles such as Age of Apocalypse were likewise a Marvel-wide event albeit it had more story consequences within the X-Men than elsewhere. A notable example of this in action is Onslaught, which was a company-wide Crisis Crossover that had major ramifications across the wide Marvel Universe (for example, the non-mutant Thunderbolts were formed directly in the wake of it), yet is mainly remembered as an X-Men story first and foremost in no small part because it had heavy themes of anti-mutant sentiment, and that outside of Spider-Man, the X-related characters made up most of the survivors (until they came back, anyways) and it was told primarily from the X-Men perspective with collected editions marketing it as an X-Men story. Even further, the famous House of M storyline was officially a crossover with the X-Men, New X-Men, Excalibur, Avengers, Fantastic Four, and even the Thunderbolts having parts in it, but because this story mainly affected the X-Men and mutants through the Depopulation Bomb known as M-Day, along with many other changes to the X-Men status quo, this is often forgotten or ignored, instead treated as an X story, especially since the impact outside the X-Men side was either minimal or non-obvious.
- Recent years have had more crossovers despite the idea that Marvel is trying to stiff the X-Men over the Inhumans. "The Hand" (a key part of the Daredevil mythos) have a pretty long association with both Wolverine and Psylocke. note Lastly, the X-Men have had many, many adventures alongside Spider-Man, notably sympathizing with him because of their shared status as Heroes With Bad Publicity who were both distant and remote from the superhero continuity, for the Watsonian reason that they were both emblems of the underdog and the outsider and for the Doylist fact that their titles sold better and were more widely read and known than Captain America and Thor, leave alone Iron Man. They spent so much time in fact, that much of the public even thought that Spidey was a mutant himself for a while.
- Iceman in particular has consistently been a good friend of Spidey since the early days and is considered an ally even independently of the X-Men, mainly because both were junior superheroes. Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends famously had Iceman as the co-star, and made a Power Trio with eventual Canon Immigrant Firestar. Also, Firestar deserves mention, mainly because she's a mutant and has historically been far more involved with Spider-Man's corner and the non-mutant side after being canonized, and didn't join the X-Men until decades later in the 2010s.
- This isn't even getting into other Crisis Crossover-type stories, where they (or at least characters among them) often hold a major role, or things connected to the mythos such as the Savage Land or the Shi'ar Imperium, which routinely get visited by other characters. For what it's worth, there have been more crossovers between the X-Men and the wider Marvel continuity in recent yearsnote with more inter-continuity story consequences than before. In the wake of the Avengers vs. X-Men event, the two teams started acting in unison, launching the Uncanny Avengers title. Additionally, Jonathan Hickman's landmark Avengers run saw fan-favorites Sunspot and Cannonball joining the Avengers, alongside Wolverine having already been a member. Speaking of which, Wolverine, the most popular X-Man, has rubbed shoulders with basically every character in the universe having a unique dynamic with a bunch of them, chiefly Captain America (being soldiers who fought side-by-side during World War II) and Spider-Man (being Vitriolic Best Buds with Pete).
If anybody wants to change my mind about that, you're welcome to try.
You are not a moderator and should stop typing like one. It's not up to us to convince you. It's up to you to convince fellow tropers.
IF there are issues with indentation, they can be fixed easily enough. Shortened and so on. But if there are misconceptions and they need correction, that's what Common Knowledge is for and how it's been pracised and enforced so far.
Heptagon, we are discussing this in ATT here. Feel free to join us.
Edit:Okay, link doesn't want to work, just check ATT.
Edited by WarJay77 Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Read what I said.
They're not misconceptions; nearly every entry is essentially just saying "It's not really untrue...but let me explain why it's not really untrue!"
If an idea isn't a misconception, it doesn't belong on the page. And if an entry isn't explaining a misconception, it doesn't belong on the page.
You're right, it's not other people's job to convince me. But when I cite perfectly reasonable objections to entries that are both factually questionable and horribly off-topic, you have no business responding if you can't be bothered to come up with a reasonable rebuttal.
Edited by TheMightyHeptagon
Weasel Words, examples using the word "recent"... Those examples just look bad in general.
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Any issue with language and grammar can be fixed and amended.
One thing is that Common Knowledge is a YMMV trope. It's not meant to represent a total majority but a general sentiment.
I know for a fact that many people see the X-Men as an offshoot apart from the regular Marvel Universe and not as connected and that's often used as a putdown to relative unimportance and lack of status. This is mentioned in any number of message boards on the internet, and fan conversations in real life and so on. So the misconceptions they address exist, i.e. that the X-Men are minor figures in the Marvel Universe's grand scheme of things.
The trope examples above address that. That it goes into tangents and other stuff might be an issue for some, and that can be fixed and corrected. But there absolutely is a need for those misconceptions to be spelled out and addressed.
I recently started a discussion here
over whether folders were still necessary on the Common Knowledge sub-page for Spider-Man, since that page was significantly pared down due to misuse. As you can probably tell, this page has been heavily pared down and consolidated as well.
I see that there was a discussion earlier about whether to keep or remove the folders, but that was when there were a lot more entries. Does anyone think they're still necessary in the page's present state?
As of this writing, there are only two folders left; one has 11 entries under it, and the other has 6.
Edited by friscokid182