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Ah, I wasn't aware this was already considered bad style. Perhaps this site should try to make that clearer.
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
Thread Hop ahoy!
I personally prefer Alphabetical order because I found it far easier to find examples I'm looking for.
I'm not sure which takes more effort: Using ctrl+F key to find an example or using History feature to find new examples.
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
Just as a quick note here: I think you all would be shocked how many otherwise fairly computer literate people have never heard of "Ctrl-F".
Not mentioning all the non-computer literate who definitely haven't.
Anything in this topic that uses Ctrl-F as a solution to a problem honestly must be disregarded, for the simple reason that there are many, many people who somehow have never heard of it.
edited 22nd Aug '11 9:43:04 AM by Unknownlight
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
Ah, yes I only learned that function about a month or two ago.
It suddenly occurs to me that, along those lines, can we expect all computer literate readers to know to check the page history?
edited 22nd Aug '11 9:31:33 AM by AmyJade
Avatars may be subject to change without notice.
Cutmaster-san
Except we're not talking about serving the editors—we're talking about serving the readers.
I'm bad, and that's good. I will never be good, and that's not bad. There's no one I'd rather be than me.
No longer a forum herald
As I indicated earlier, I'm wary of assuming anything regarding readers without proof, including being familiar with stuff like ctrl-f or our edit history.
With that said, I would point out it seems likely that more people would be familiar with ctrl-f than our edit history, simply due to the fact that ctrl-f isn't specific to our wiki. Not that this means that ctrl-f is well known in general, of course.
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
World's Toughest Milkman
I have to say that when the idea was first proposed, I thought it sounded great, but after reading a bit of the thread, I began to have doubts, and after thinking a bit more, I began to have serious doubts. It sounds great on paper! I just don't think it's workable or even all that desirable. Yes, it has obvious but small advantages, but it also has a bunch of (also small) disadvantages. And it would require a mind-boggling amount of work, especially considering all the existing examples that weren't written with alphabetization in mind (and a large part of this thread has been devoted to discussing the serious ramifications of that problem).
It's a great theory, and part of me still wishes it were possible, but I have to firmly oppose the idea at this point.
(I'd also like to point out that people appear to be surprisingly bad at alphabetization. I've cleaned up probably a dozen mis-alphabetized examples from work pages in the last week, and it's not even something I particularly look for.)
Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.
the thing about telling readers to use control-f or the "find" option is that it assumes that readers will only visit a page for a specific series. It does nothing for those that just like browsing a page for general reading and entertainment. We're not really an encyclopaedia or reference work, we're a fun site with fun stuff to read about all sorts of things. That's what readers are coming for, to browse, kill time, etc. By alphabetising tropes page we're making it harder for those readers to spot new stuff.
edited 22nd Aug '11 5:32:11 PM by CrypticMirror
Face Time
Again, us Editors have access to a Watchlist function that will notify us to any changes made to pages we watch. Readers will not necessarily care for that. We don't know what the average reader does these days when perusing the Wiki. Do they frequently visit pages? Do they check Edit History?
Plus, Control+F is a hotkey function that you'd know about if you paid attention to what the "Edit" menu of your browser said the hotkey command for "View" is. How many people do you wanna guess know that?
Really, we don't need to be so concerned for how we order stuff if the average reader won't give a crap about that.
edited 22nd Aug '11 4:57:58 PM by RocketDude
"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel
Here's the thing: This isn't such a big deal that we have to put a ton of effort into doing it across all pages and it'll be a big nightmare et cetera. Just, for example, make alphabetical order the preferred style and say in the headlines:
"Hey all, we're trying to move toward putting example lists in alphabetical order. If you could half-ass a job of putting a media folder into something the looks like alphabetical order when you add an example that'd be great!"
And then just let things sit a year with periodic reminders and see what happens. People learn by example, after all.
Let's see if we can agreement on this much: If someone is in the mood to order the examples that someone shouldn't come along behind them an undo their work in favor randomness?
edited 22nd Aug '11 5:23:22 PM by FastEddie
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
I can get behind that. I don't understand why one would go through the effort of alphabetizing a page when it's not a sitewide guideline and other editors aren't going to follow it, but as long as the change is accurate and coherent (i.e., doesn't have the same problems as page that prompted this thread), and as long as the wiki doesn't have a quick revert button, it seems childish to put forth twice as much effort to put it back.
that'll be why all the fanfic recs are in the correct format, and no one is creating brand new fanfic recs page using the old format? Because that is exactly the policy we've been following with them, and it is having marginal effect.
As long as no one gets upset/banned when the next editor wanders along and just whacks their edit onto the bottom. 'Cause otherwise I can see a lot of complaining on Ask The Tropers.
edited 22nd Aug '11 5:30:44 PM by CrypticMirror
Zzzzzzzzzz
^ I'm in the same place as Cryptic Mirror. If someone wants to alphabetize a page and then curate the hell out of it to keep it that way, fine. They should put a note at the top saying that the examples are alphabetical by work name. That fits with our current guidelines which say "Add to the bottom, unless the page notes that it's arranged some other way. In that case do it that way.
But I'm curious, could you find out how many of our page views are of the history pages? That would give us a little bit more information about what those casual readers and non-editors that we can't talk to are doing.
edited 22nd Aug '11 5:58:38 PM by Madrugada
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Request seconded. I'm really glad you thought of that.
Does anyone mind if I try changing ActionGirl.Animated Films to "Work title: Description" and in alphabetical order, just so we can see what it looks like? It's a short page, it shouldn't take long to finish.
I'll keep a copy of the page as it looks now so that we can change back if we want to.
edited 22nd Aug '11 6:53:57 PM by Unknownlight
I'll start collecting that data.
eta: FYI: In the first minute of data collection, there were 756 hits on article_history.
edited 22nd Aug '11 6:53:48 PM by FastEddie
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
Zzzzzzzzzz
Out of how many hits total?
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Two mods and no response. Obviously no one minds. Anyway, here.
Hmm, it does look more professional, at least.
edited 22nd Aug '11 7:13:28 PM by Unknownlight
^^The first full day of data collection will give the ratio. We don't count page views ourselves because of the processing overhead required. The pageviews come from Google Analytics and are usually available in the late afternoon of the following day.
Goal: Clear, Concise and Witty
Zzzzzzzzzz
Ah, ok.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
I'm think that people are more familiar with with the function of History button than ctrl+F key. I think it is, but since I don't have any statistics to back that up so I can't say much.
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
Not mentioning the name of the work in plain text somewhere in the example is considered bad style for precisely this reason (see the Tips Worksheet).
Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to