Discussion: Alphabetical Vs. Chronological Order for Examples

How To Alphabetize Things:

• Ignore articles at the beginnings of titles. That is, the words "a", "an", and "the". This includes the corresponding words in non-English Languages: La Résistance and Der Rozencavalier should both be alphabetized under "R".
• Ignore spaces and punctuation.
• Shorter words alphabetize before longer words.
• Treat special characters as though they were the corresponding ordinary character. ("Pokémon" is the same as "Pokemon")

edited 25th Aug '11 3:17:12 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

This. And then there's issues like the level of author. Would you file The Incredibles under Brad Bird works, or Pixar works, or Disney works? There just seems to be too much potential ambiguity for something like that to work.

At least alphabetizing examples makes a little more sense.

... come to think of it, perhaps sorting by series might make more sense than sorting by medium, given series that span several media. (Like Star Wars, Batman, etc...)

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

Yes.

If you file it under Brad Bird, you're saying "Brad Bird's uses of this trope are worth directly comparing with each other (because they're especially common, or he does something idiosyncratic, or something)." Similarly if you file it under Pixar or Disney. Though filing it under Disney would be weird — Pixar films are different enough from non-Pixar Disney films that there isn't likely to be the kind of stylistic similarity in trope usage that would make that header useful.

If there's no commonality you want to highlight, just file it as The Incredibles.

132 is the rudest number.

Works should only be listed as subpoints of a creator entry if there was such consistency in that creator's use of the trope as to make it likely that most of his works would be listed anyway.

Twist Ending:

• O Henry used this to such an extent that it's sometimes called an "O. Henry Ending".
  • In "The Gift of the Magi" both main characters sell the thing they treasure most in order to buy the other a gift — to go with the thing the other one treasures most.
  • "The Ransom Of Red Chief ends with the kidnappers paying the father of the boy they kidnapped to take the kid off their hands.
  • In "A Lickpenny Lover", Maisie jilts her extremely rich boyfriend when he talks of taking her to Venice, and anywhere else in the world she wants to go because she thinks he''s talking about Coney Island.
  • In "Transients In Arcadia", neither of the main characters is who they claim to be.

edited 26th Aug '11 11:31:38 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

That's nice in theory, but if we're talking about existing pages, it doesn't help to say, "it should be added this way" when talking about an example that's been there for years. It's a little too late for such advice. :)

If the example I mentioned in post 250 can go under "EC Comics", then I'm a lot less concerned about the whole thing. But it's still my experience that examples which are vague about where they come from tend to be really good at presenting the trope, which I suspect has at least two reasons:

1) nobody is going to be entry pimping "some old SF novel by Heinlein or maybe Simak", or "some sitcom back in the eighties with three guys who all work in a restaurant". You never see an X Just X example like that! :)

2) People tend to go into greater detail about how the work illustrates the trope if they can't even name the work, as a justification for even having the entry there in the first place. They know it's flawed, so they make up for it with...well, quality, in my experience.

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

If someone is going to be alphabetizing the page, it really doesn't matter how long the example has been there. If there are six different examples from the same author, there's no reason to not group them since they're being moved around anyway.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

So if anyone is to alphabetize a page, s/he's good to go, except keeping the works from same creator together is a neccessity, right?

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

As long as those works are under the same folder(like Literature), yes.

Quest 64 thread

I doubt that ANYONE would be stupid enough to forget THAT...

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

As far as I understand grouping different workes of one creator together is a possibility but no rule. So you are allowed to have different works of one author sorted by their name and not beeing grouped.

I think it differs wether the author or his works are more prominent and how consistent the genre of the works is.

So lets say we are talking about Stephen King, his name and his whole body of work is more prominent than his single books and his books have all a similar tone and topics, grouping them is no problem.

Steven Spielberg on the other hand is maybe not a good creator to group several works.Jaws, ET The Extra Terrestrial Schindlers List shouldn't be grouped together.

I wouldn't group films by director; that's just asking for trouble. Franchise, maybe — all the Lord of the Rings or Star Wars films should be grouped together. We need to consider how most ordinary people would search.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

It depends on the body of works in question. e.g. grouping the works of Alfred Hitchcock can make sense depending on the trope in question.

Overall I think grouping works of one creator should always be done carefully, especially when the single works are popular enough that people will most likely search for them specifically without thinking of the creator first.

edited 31st Aug '11 7:32:08 AM by Osmium

^ As a general rule, it would probably be best to put comments in the source code making note of when a work is listed elsewhere.

For example, if somebody grouped a bunch of Hitchcock examples together, then in the "E" section there would be the comment "%% Edward Scissorhands is already listed as an example under 'Burton'" or something like that.

It wouldn't really help people who are searching the page to read the example, but it should prevent a duplicate example from being added because two people had different ideas about where an example should go.

edited 31st Aug '11 7:16:27 PM by muninn

Now Bloggier than ever before!

And any Star Wars works not part of the films should be under the Star Wars Expanded Universe cluster.

Fight smart, not fair.

d Roy: You'd be surprised what people do on this wiki.

Either way, it should generally be mentioned. "It should be obvious" really can't apply to every single human being, after all.

And I think I'll go back to lurking, since my job is done at the moment.

Quest 64 thread

A-ha-ha, you came out of your lurkage just to snark at me, how kind of you.

Jokes aside, should we have a crowner for this? Just wondering.

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

Fast Eddie already laid it down in mod voice—twice, no less: Do it if you want, and no one will revert it, but don't get mad if they don't follow the pattern.

I really don't think a crowner is appropriate after that, but a mod should probably come in and give their thoughts.

Fast Eddie already said it. Why do you need to hear it again from someone with less authority?

edited 2nd Sep '11 8:04:14 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I don't see a need for a crowner. It's pretty straightforward — alphabetizing trope example lists is fine within categories, and the author-work hierarchy is acceptable as long as it makes it easy for a reader or editor to find existing examples.

Edit: Ninjaed!

edited 2nd Sep '11 8:04:45 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Glaah. A thread about how to order examples goes on for hundreds of posts because Fast Eddie had to open his big mouth. And he ultimately didn't say anything actually needed to change. This is why I hate wading into Wiki Talk. There's always a thread like this.

And what you just contributed was so useful.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

and That we all agreed nothing needs to change is already good enough, yes? So, we lock?

An action is not virtuous merely because it is unpleasant to do.

I think this thread has come to its conclusion.

The final decision, for anyone who missed it:

• If you want to alphabetize the examples by work name, go ahead, but if you don't then take on curating the page to keep it alphabetized, don't get bent out of shape if new examples are added out of order.
• Don't be a dick and deliberately unalphabetize a page someone has alphabetized.
• Clumping works by the same creator is ok, but you don't have to.

Locking.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.