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
Hey, you want to get cursed by Fast Eddie's ghost, knock yourself out.
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As crass as it may be bringing this up the day of his death (which is what prompted me to look at his page), the description for Music.Prince makes Buffy's page look positively concise.
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
Dread Sorcerer of Auchtermuchty
Westernanimation.Sendokai Champions needs the description altering, but I don't know about the show.
Keeper of The Celestial Flame
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The description of GeGeGe no Kitarō rips off Wikipedia (and admits it, to boot). Anyone mind if I rework it to remove the plagiarism?
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
It is also copyright infringement (Wikipedia text comes with several conditions we can't meet) so do it, yes.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
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Taken care of. (If someone more familiar with that manga/anime objects to what I replaced the copied text with, they can tweak it as they see fit.)
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
No longer a forum herald
You're going to see me bringing quite a few things like this to people's attention over the next few days.
I removed most of the description of Discworld.The Shepherds Crown, on account of it being a copy-paste from the Amazon blurb. Anyone want to take a jab at filling it back in with an original description, go for it.
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
World's Toughest Milkman
The Smurfs has major wall-of-text issues. The first paragraph is a lengthy analysis of the state of children's programming at the time. The next two paragraphs are a little better, since they begin to talk about the actual subject, but it isn't until the fourth paragraph that the show itself appears!
Personally, I'd cut the first paragraph, and maybe boil the next two down to a couple of sentences. And I suspect there's more fat that could be trimmed if someone really wanted to make an effort. But first, I thought I'd see what others think.
Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.
The first paragraph and the development history may be more suited for Analysis.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
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I'm thinking we may want to find a way to trim the description of Superfriends (or, alternately, split the page between the different sub-series). Thoughts on how to go about this?
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
I think the work page description for Star Trek V: The Final Frontier needs some editing, it's got 2 page quotes, a lot of potholes in the description, and talks too much about the film's production history and reception amongst the fanbase.
"In distress", my ass.
Took a chainsword to the ST5 description, cutting out the reception stuff and a lot of the Take That! snarking.
Unfortunately, though, for some reason the change won't save (hangs at "waiting for server" when I click the send button), so I'm putting it in Sandbox.Star Trek V for the moment.
edited 25th Feb '17 7:52:17 PM by Nohbody
All your safe space are belong to Trump
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I've transferred the description from the sandbox into the actual page.
On an unrelated note, I think the description for The Adventures of the American Rabbit needs a bit of compression as it's way too long and detailed.
The Unknown
A Short-Term Project related to Fire Emblem has led me to do heavy rewrites for the page description over the last couple of weeks.note I think the writing has been improved by my efforts but may have also become bloated as a result, so some secondary opinions would be nice.
edited 4th Mar '17 1:48:53 PM by Karxrida
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
Zzzzzzzzzz
Karxrida: ![[awesome]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/minis/award_star_gold_3.png "[awesome]"){kind=small}
The Unknown
Thanks. 
I'm technically not done, but it's good to know I'm not overdoing it with the length.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
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Fanfic.Tintin And Alph Art Yves Rodier gives us a case of "Holy plot summary, Batman!" That needs to be cut with prejudice or moved to Recap/, people's choice.
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
The Unknown
Wrong thread.
edited 2nd Apr '17 4:23:37 PM by Karxrida
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
The Unknown
Invader Zim has a bunch of borderline-YMMV stuff and some gushing in the description.
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
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Music.Peter Sarstedt was up for discussion in the copy-paste thread. The original page author removed the copy-pasted content from Wikipedia - and replaced it with a giant mess of broken English with irrelevant information on top of that. Anyone know enough about him to take a hack at cleaning up after the "fix"?
The Unknown
Just rewrote the description for VideoGame.Kirby Air Ride pretty much from the ground up. Second opinions on the outcome and potential grammar critiques (I probably put a run-on sentence in there) would be appreciated.
If you don't want to dig through the edit history, here's the original description for reference.
edited 15th Apr '17 11:07:39 PM by Karxrida
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
No longer a forum herald
Looks good to me.
On a similar note, I did an overhaul of the description of WebAnimation.Tales Of Alethrion. part of an ongoing attempt to bring the page up to date (because the old version didn't account for the newer shorts).
Feedback appreciated.
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)
I'm not 100% sure if this is exactly the right place for this, but seemed a better fit than Ask The Tropers. If I'm wrong, just give me a point in the right direction and I'll be on my way.
I was hoping for some advice or a point in the right direction in dealing with a couple work pages that need some work done.
The first is Literature.Rai Kirah . It's a work without any description whatsoever, only a list of when the books of the trilogy were released. I PM'd the one who made the page but the only response to anything was a post in the discussion page (which, I admit, I was slow responding to) wondering about ZCE's I'd uncommented. It's been two weeks since my reply, where I mentioned the lack of description, and nothing. I'm not familiar with the work so I'm not sure I could do a description that could properly explain it without cribbing more than I maybe should off a wikipedia or store site.
The second work of Manga.The Voynich Hotel. Its description and tropes read like a brochure for the titular hotel. That's bad enough, but there's nothing like that in the series that I can see after having read to nearly the end, so they can't even use Self-Demonstrating as an excuse. Is this better suited to a short term project thread to help repair or is here all right? Not sure if I alone can get that fixed in a timely manner.
Thanks in advance.
I think Tom and Huck could stand to be compressed a bit as it kinda covers too much of the plot.
Doesn't mean it isn't the right thing to do. If reading the full work description requires me to scroll down on a PC, that's a very good sign it's too long.
(Next time you want to make a site policy-based joke like that, you might want to make sure that the "joke" isn't actually a legitimate concern.)
edited 13th Apr '16 6:06:02 PM by TotemicHero
Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)