Improving work and creator page descriptions

Since we have a thread for improving the descriptions for tropes, I thought I would make one for improving descriptions for works. This is also a good place for requesting creator page cleaning.

Here are some common problems with many work descriptions:

• Over-analytical Walls of Text: Many works that have a high Troper Critical Mass have egregiously long descriptions, and could use some trimming, possibly moving some of it to the Analysis page.
• Critical reception/audience reaction cruft: "Edit Tip #12: We are not interested in whether or not something is or was popular. Whether or not it was liked has nothing to do with tropes." In other words, work descriptions should not contain paragraphs nor any mention at all about how the work was received. Zap it.
• Editorialism: A similar issue to the above, some tropers have a tendency to try to sneak stealth reviews into works' descriptions. This is obvious deletion fodder - Kill It with Fire.
• Plagiarism: Copy-pasted text from another source, such as Wikipedia.

So just post any work or creator page descriptions that are in need of cleanup and we'll see what we can do.

edited 23rd Dec '15 8:06:12 PM by MyTimingIsOff

Atlas Shrugged has a bullet point list of works that have been inspired by or have mocked the book. This seems like info best left on the respective works' pages.

edited 25th Dec '11 5:07:28 PM by captainpat

^ Agreed. A works page is to discuss the work, not more-or-less unrelated (beyond influence) works covered elsewhere. The pages for the other works can discuss the influences on their creation.

edited 25th Dec '11 6:03:13 PM by Nohbody

In accordance with this, I deleted a whole bunch of "Stuff inspired by Conan" from the Conan The Barbarian page. Most of it went better under Barbarian Hero, anyway.

Thank you. I really dislike it when people add things like that to work pages.

Dingo Pictures. I know it's one of those crappy knockoff cartoon producers, but we probably should at least put some effort into creating a description besides that.

I have two of them, both I would write myself but I have not seen either of these films.

Firstly, there's Phenomenon which describes the entire film instead of a summary (the whole plot is given including spoilers).

Secondly, I stumbled across this page Wild Child which someone made, wrote one sentence for it, and left. I expanded it a bit, but I haven't seen it so I can't do much.

edited 23rd Jan '12 5:51:52 PM by agentjohnbishop

Courtesy link. You accidentally linked to the trope.

Thanks, I should have assumed we had a trope named that.

Why is Batman The Animated Series so long?

Aerosmith's description is kinda long, reads like a Wikipedia article, and violates Edit Tip #12.

That is way too long, could really use an analysis dump.

edited 24th Jan '12 9:58:54 PM by MyTimingIsOff

I think that this wiki offers too little in the way of guidance on how to write a 'decent description' for a work. For anything that isn't too recent and/or popular, YKTTW and the forums are full of people who either don't know enough or don't care enough.

How To Create A Works Page has this to say on writing a description:

I'd probably add "critical reception" to that list of things not to include.

^Yeah, do so. They often are just stealth reviews and really more Trivia.

Stuff like Oscar nominations should be okay though.

I'm sorry if I'm wrong, but am I right in thinking that the work summary for Sonic Riders needs to be trimmed down a bit? I mean, I'd do it myself in a heartbeat, but I would like a second opinion before I go along with it.

Yes. That could definitely use a trim down. The spoilers in particular need to be nuked, since our spoiler policy forbids putting spoilers above the example list.

I think we should limit us to an one-sentence plot summary there. I don't need to know all details of the plot - it's a work description, not a summary.

If a work description has a complete plot summary, you could dump it on the Synopsis subpage. That's what I've done to Fiddler On The Roof.

So...take out these three paragraphs and dump them into Synopsis.Sonic Riders?

Bruno has a weird self-demonstrating thing for a description.

Shining Wind needs a lot of Wiki Magic. Also, namespacing.

Same as above help is needed for The Secret Files Of The Spy Dogs.

Shining Wind moved. Anyway, I only played the first Shining Force game so I don't know how flesh that one out.

edited 4th Mar '12 2:44:32 AM by Oreochan