Does Playing With render the Laconic Wiki redundant?

Spun off from Ask The Tropers.

Laconic Wiki

Playing With Wiki

OK, here's the question: Is the existence of the former justified when the latter accomplishes its purpose and more? Laconic Wiki provides a basic definition of the trope, and this is used to help the reader understand it.

Playing With also provides the basic trope, except it includes examples of the trope in play as well. As such, Playing With preforms the same task Laconic Wiki is meant for, but more efficiently.

Let's take The Boo Radley, for example.

The Laconic version says: "He seems evil at first, but is a nice guy once you get to know him."

The Playng With version gives us:"Basic Trope: Everyone thinks he's evil...but he's not."

This is the same thing, but the page also lists examples of the trope in play, straight, exaggerated, subverted, etc. This makes it easier to understand a trope if you use the Playing With then the Laconic.

Doesn't this render Laconic Wiki redundant, or am missing something?

edited 3rd Feb '11 9:55:55 PM by SpellBlade

No, the Laconic wiki is not redundant. The Laconic wiki is the wiki for those of us who only want one sentence. The playing with wiki tends to be more confusing for someone who doesn't have a clear grasp of the trope in the first place.

Laconic shows how the trope in it's entirely is played straight, except in a compact simplified version.

Playing With shows how many different ways the trope can be used and non-specific examples relative to it.

You still get that from playing with.

Well, not necessarily, because I'm pretty sure Laconic Wiki entries are far more common than Playing With entries, because Playing With is a lot more work. For another thing, there are Laconic Wiki entries for works, such as Twenty Four, but you can't have a Playing With for a work page.

No, you don't. What you get from Playing With is a long complicated, confusing mess of how you can spin the trope in different ways.

@ 5:

Hmm. That's a good point, but there's still a lot of overlap.

@ 6: You can literally copy-paste the content from the Laconic to the "Basic Trope" part under playing with, like I've shown in the OP. Playing With has the added advantage of showing the reader how the trope is used, and if the examples aren't helpful, you still have the basic definition provided.

And those extras are confusing and worse than useless if you only need a quick summary. Or you're just trying to write a quick summary. Never mind that a lot of tropes are very hard to play with.

If you need a quick summary, you can read what's listed under basic trope and hit back immediately. No reading of extras required. The existence of extras don't hurt anything at worst, and they help the reader understand the trope at best.

Also, if you would provide an example of a trope that's too difficult to create a Playing With, but has a Laconic, that would help a lot.

Edit: To clarify, I'm not trying to get the namespace deleted or anything, I just didn't see the point of having two largely overlapping ones.

edited 3rd Feb '11 10:21:59 PM by SpellBlade

Vorpy:

Laconic shows how the trope in it's entirely is played straight, except in a compact simplified version.

Playing With shows how the trope in it's entirely is played straight, except in a compact simplified version, among other things.

For the average tropes, 99% of the tropes that have Laconic pages. Making a playing with page is hard and requires the troper not to just fully understand the trope, but to understand all the other ways of playing with a trope. Never mind that most of the Playing With pages are horribly inaccurate because most tropers don't seem to be able to tell what a subversion actually is let alone how it could zigzag. There's a reason Playing With pages are so much rarer than laconic ones.

I see your point. There's a difference between how something works in theory then how it does in practice.

Unfortunately. This is a very real fact of the world.

Well, thanks for helping.

If there's nothing else to discuss, I suppose this thread can be locked now that I've gotten an answer.

edited 3rd Feb '11 11:08:45 PM by SpellBlade

I mean non-specific examples via Aerith and Bob examples, rather than Robin Hood and James Leon examples.

Laconic Wiki also provides some good ones for works pages.

Also, some Laconic pages for tropes are self-demostrating, which they can't be on a Playing With page.

...So, it's not redundant.

We were also at one point discussing having the Laconic Wiki serve as a place to get tooltips for articles. I don't want all the playing with stuff in my tooltip.

Also, Laconic Wiki has a minimum standard of explaining the full trope as succinctly as possible. Playing With Wiki has a standard of just mentioning the basic trope briefly in order to set up the other entries. The summary of the trope in each has two different jobs and two different standards of explanation.

Also, if you would provide an example of a trope that's too difficult to create a Playing With, but has a Laconic, that would help a lot.

Try to deconstruct My Horse Is a Motorbike. Try to invert Con Man. Try to exaggerate Beyond the Impossible. Try to justify Happy Birthday to You!.