Discussion: Alphabetical Vs. Chronological Order for Examples

Exactly, losing that word takes you from generally browsing, as if reading a magazine or book, to running your eye down a checklist. And as I say if I want checklists then there are plenty or work-related documents for that. This is leisure time reading, I want that slower browsing experience. Same as it being strict alphabetical order, there is a reason that people don't read dictionaries for fun. The mix keeps it interesting. This is all as a reader.

As an editor. I really don't want to be writing for leisure the same way I have to do at work. This is a break from that, this is for my brain to jump tracks, relax, and wind down. Also I really don't want to be combing through a page to make sure my entry is in precise alphabetical order. I certainly don't want to getting the inevitable bitchy memos, sorry PMs, that will entail because I end up missing one. Tedious stuff like that is done strictly for pay. I'm not a hardcore enough editor to do that stuff for fun.

edited 24th Aug '11 9:37:55 AM by CrypticMirror

I don't think the question should be of how many people are unfamiliar with the ctrl+f feature but of whether our editing should revolve around accomodating those people or simply telling them about the feature; after all, I don't think it'd be difficult to learn.

As for the Wii not having it, I would think that most people who have a Wii have a computer. Just use the computer to edit TV Tropes then. o.o

We're not talking about editors, we're talking about readers. We do NOT write for other editors alone.

Google Analytics has puked up some numbers for Fast Eddie:

300,000 history views per 4 million page views. Seven and half percent, or so.

It's safe to assume that a large majority of the people who come here don't look at the page histories.

edited 24th Aug '11 8:52:50 PM by Madrugada

The editors are a much, much smaller percentage of the readers.

This doesn't seem to be going anywhere. As long as we can agree that if someone wants to organize the examples list by alphabet their work will not be undone on purpose, and that putting the work name first in any case is good idea, we can move on.

I realize we have one person who thinks work name first is the death of all pleasure, but having a dissenter is almost a sure sign of a successful policy.

edited 24th Aug '11 9:15:31 PM by FastEddie

I say aye.

Aye.

I like having the work name very early in the example, but I also enjoy the variety of

• In <work1>, Joe uses this trope against Bill when he blah blah...
• <work2> In episode blah, yakity-schmackity...
• <Author> <series>
  • <Work 3a>: blah...
  • Subverted in <work 3b> by etc...
• Subverted in <work4> when...

It's simply more pleasant to read for me.

Other than that, I completely agree that if someone wants to alphabetize a page it shouldn't be deliberately undone, as long as it's also understood that if they don't mark it as being alphabetized (since How To Write An Example says "Add new examples at the bottom unless the page is marked as being sorted some other way"), there's no foul to be called on the editors who didn't know they were supposed to alphabetize examples or who do it wrong.

edited 24th Aug '11 10:00:09 PM by Madrugada

I agree. Variety is good. It follows the guideline of breezy language while maintaining some structure.

I don't really like the varied style, people can't seem to use it right. I view it as a library type organization: regardless of what's inside, I want to be able to find the example first.

Okay, I guess I gotta clarify my author point again.

I do not want to see them on every page. Only when the Author should be noted is where the Author - Bullets - Works should be done.

But anyway, I'm with Mad. I like organization, and I think a varied, but good to read style is the best way to do it. Making sure we can figure out what the work is is kind of nice.

I'm with Maddie: Mention the work as soon as possible, not under a pothole, but it doesn't have to literally be Work: Alice and Bob do this trope.

And aye on Eddie's suggestion. Didn't he say that like five pages ago, also in mod voice?

Haven't had time to read the whole thread, so I beg your indulgence if this has already been brought up, but it's an important point: alphabetical order will greatly reduce the chances of the same example being listed two or three times on a big page. Even someone who doesn't bother checking with ctrl+F will probably notice their example's already there if they have to find where it goes in the alphabetical list. (And if they don't bother to alphabetize, it'll at least stick out more obviously, and another editor will be more likely to notice and fix the duplicate entry.)

edited 24th Aug '11 11:06:33 PM by dangerwaffle

I've been under the impression that potholing the name of the work is verbotin.

^^ It's been brought up and talked about, yes.

I like this conclusion.

My thoughts:

I agree with Maddie that if I'm going to be perfectly honest, while I don't actively hate "Work: Example", I do prefer allowing variety in sentence phrasing.

I don't really see how mentioning an author is different from mentioning comedians and musicians and the like, if the trope happens to be part of their Signature Style. They're still valid examples of a trope being used.

And while I'm not averse to alphabetizing, I do think there's many much more useful things for people to be spending their time on.

edited 25th Aug '11 9:27:11 AM by Jeysie

Just to be clear, this would be a legit example block:

• Joss Whedon:
  • In Buffy The Vampire Slayer "Once More With Feeling", Dawn does thus and so ... in tights.
  • Dollhouse: Delta gets stuck on an escalator and starves to death.
  • Firefly: Zoe does something badass.

The whole thing — for alphabetizers — would be with the 'W's on the page. The first sub-bullet begins with 'In' but is sorted by 'Buffy.'

edited 25th Aug '11 9:40:31 AM by FastEddie

I can live with that.

I had qualms about the author-grouping thing, since sometimes there are multiple authors to a series (would you regroup Aliens under Ridley Scott, or under the Alien series? A redundant entry, perhaps? Friendship Is Magic should be under My Little Pony or under Lauren Faust? Especially since she's not writing from season 2 onwards?), among other difficulties I expect, but since on the other hand it will be educational to know who the author is, and only the least savvy netizens don't know about Ctrl+F, I'd say overall it's not a bad idea.

What would be cool would be to have an IMDB-type structure for authors and works, but then again for that there's just IMDB for movies, and otherwise Wikipedia...

Having just had to fix a whole bunch of alphabetization errors while adding a new trope to a bunch of works—and these were just the errors adjacent to the trope I was adding—I'd like to point out, again, that Tropers don't seem to be all that good at alphabetization in the first place! A little boggling, I realize, but they seem to be particularly confused by word boundaries and plurals and the like. (Does Human Resources come before or after Humans Are Morons? I've seen it both ways.)

... Good point. Do we spell-out a policy?

That's because there's multiple equally "correct" methods for alphabetizing things. Some ignore spaces, some don't, among other differences.

edited 25th Aug '11 3:07:57 PM by Jeysie

Maybe the rule should be: "alphabetiye as if it was an uninterrupted string of characters, ignore all characters that aren't letters"?

edited 25th Aug '11 3:11:17 PM by JesusSaves

Another hard-to-alphabetize example; this one an actual existing example from Human Outside, Alien Inside:

• Classic comic example: An alien woman in an old EC title did in her earthling husband on her wedding night after seeing his navel and realising he was a mammal. This entirely Caucasian-looking blonde-haired woman with nice, perky breasts was supposed to be from an egg-laying species who find the mammalian lifestyle disgusting.

Note that this describes how the trope is used in some detail, and it's at least as verifiable as, say, an example that says "Perry Rhodan: in one of the stories, X happens as follows..." (Perry Rhodan is a weekly series that's been running since 1961, so you'd need to read thousands of stories to verify any such vague claim.) I see absolutely no reason to delete the example, but I couldn't begin to suggest how to alphabetize it. I also didn't write the example, so I'm in no position to add the work or author name.