At the risk of running afoul of Tropers Law (although this is actually a reverse invocation), when was the last time anyone suggested publishing Wikipedia as a book? Aside from the fact that it's getting causality backwards: Wikipedia is an evolution of encyclopedias into an online collaboratory format, technically it'd be near impossible. We're nowhere near as big but the same issues apply.
- How many truckloads of books would you need?
- How would you attempt to keep them current?
- How do you duplicate the searching and indexing functions? (Answer: you can't)
edited 1st Mar '11 2:15:10 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"You mean a trade paperback or novel format? That's at least plausible. I was imagining something like an actual hardcover encyclopedia format, in multiple volumes. And then, like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, imagining how many trucks you'd need to cart its abridged edition around in.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"There's one you can put on the back cover:
Tv Tropes Will Enhance Your Life.
And possibly Tv Tropes Will Ruin Your Life.
edited 1st Mar '11 2:41:44 PM by Arctimon
If technology caught up to us, we could just have a Hitchhiker's Guide rip-off called The Tv Tropes Guide to Everything.
Though we can't use a towel. We could just substitute a nightstick or something.
edited 1st Mar '11 6:19:48 PM by Arctimon
If we had 300 items, it would probably have 200 tropes, 50 or so YMMV items, 25 Trivia items, 10 Just for Fun items, 10 Sugar Wiki items, and 10 Darth Wiki items. There would be a Wild Mass Guessing page, a It Just Bugs Me! page, a Laconic page, a Quotes page, and page about something that I cant think of.
We don't need to include examples. That is what the site is for. The book would be a way to explore the tropes without getting sidetracked by the examples. Oh you could put a few lines in for people to list their own, and then later check against the website. But it would be a fun thing while travelling.
There are a lot of people
who publish books that are just copies of Wikipedia. And, yes, you can order print copies
.
There's even one company that publishes books that are just copies of Wikipedia content, and, because of the license, Wikipedia can do nothing about it. I can't remember the name, but I know it was a big deal. Heck, Wikibooks may be a direct response to that, as people thought Wiki Media should be getting money for Wikipedia content, rather than some group that sells small books for $50-$100 a pop.
I wonder if the printing place Wikipedia uses would also work with us.
Everyone Has An Important Job To DoA dictionary is the best bet, although there's always the chance of Trope Decay.
I wouldn't mind a Book of Tropes that had the Laconic and the Main page. The examples get into HST When you try adding examples onto it though, since most pages have around 1000 examples. You could possibly skip the Works pages too, and just stick with the tropes.
Alpha Parum est esse aliquid.I can see it as:
Describing trope, blah blah blah. Probably remove page image image.
Possibly one example from The Alice and Bob Show. (And/or the Trope Namer, if the trope has one.)
Assuming we could squeeze each trope into a single page each (the longer tropes might need two pages) we should be able to fit 300 tropes into a 300 page paperback.
edited 24th Mar '11 1:50:23 PM by Unknownlight

I would pay big money if someone had the guts and no life to compile ALL the tropes and write a book, of course this would be impossible but woundn't it be awesome?