So... properly sorting tropes?

I just realized that How To Alphabetize Things exists, however some tropes and work pages have entries sorted out with mentioned articles being counted in alphabetizing and sorting is done word by word instead of letter by letter.

I'll start on the entries I watch to see if they follow or not. Maybe some help?

Wwesome, I've been fucking up the pages I work on for months lik a fucking idoit.

I try to sort out pages whenever I see it. Especially when they've put everything beginning with 'The' in the same place. We need to get the message out that the page exists and about how we put in things in alphabetical order. We'll just need to publicize to people who are unsure of the rules what they actually are.

Don't feel bad, I was sorting it wrong before stumbling upon that page too. Letter-by-letter wasn't intuitive for me.

Now that you know, you can just make an effort to sort it correctly in the future. :)

Yeah, maybe we need some immediate important stuff to appear upon editing, like "ignore articles" and such.

could we add an edit tip about it?

That sounds like a good idea.

One of my pet peeves is when the categorizes are alphabetized correctly. For example, I fixed Capital City. Video Games and Tabletop Games were on top, while Anime and Manga (but not Manga and Anime) were second-to-last.

edited 26th May '11 6:10:58 PM by chihuahua0

I think that kind of thing is usually an artifact of a category that wasn't previously on the page, but when someone added it with a new example they didn't think to add it in alphabetical order. That seems to be responsible for most of the pages where folders are in completely nonsensical orders, at any rate.

Aren't the categories in alphabetical order by default?

Does "do it even for foreign words" have consensus, or even precedent anywhere outside of TV Tropes? It strikes me as a needless conceit. How many entries do we have that start with "la", anyway?

La Résistance. Which seems to get sorted under "L" about 99.9% of the time.

I knew about that one. I was wondering whether there's any justification for not sorting it under L, given that tropes starting with "La" clogging up alphabetized lists isn't really an issue.

This looks like someone decided to dictate policy (sorry, "guidelines") by press conference. IMO pages that go "do this, don't do that" should be watched more closely to prevent renegade guideline-mongering. Tips Worksheet, I'm looking at you. You're clearly not a worksheet any more.

edited 30th May '11 2:11:54 AM by TripleElation

In my experience, no (or at least, not necessarily.) Most pages start off small, with only a couple hand fulls of examples. So a page on launch may have the Anime & Manga, Film, and Live Action TV categories and nothing else.

When people add new examples that necessitate new categories, the hope is that they will add the categories in alphabetical order (such as putting Literature between Film and Live Action TV in this example.) However, some editors just add the new categories to the bottom of the page.

I see this a lot because part of my editing routine is to folderize pages. Sorting the folders in the proper order is a part of that, and I have to do it almost each time I sit down to work on folderizing.

edited 30th May '11 4:37:28 AM by Meeble

It's not an issue of worrying about La Résistance and the like clogging up the L category. Definite and indefinite articles are not used for alphabetizing. It's not that one person on this wiki has decided this, filing this way is a standard.

For example, books filed under the Library of Congress system ignore foreign language articles. In the library I worked in, the journal Die Makromolekulare Chemie is filed under M, not D.

Ah. Well, every day you learn something new. Thanks.

edited 2nd Jun '11 10:32:11 AM by TripleElation