SUMMARY:
The old Oral Tradition was a medium and several genres merged into one page, and Mythology and Myth And Legend redirected to it. We agreed to split this page.
Oral Tradition has been redefined as a medium in which a work is not written or otherwise recorded in any way. We're now writing new pages for the genres.
(By definition it is basically impossible to trope an unrecorded work, so I assume that nothing troped or used as an example on this wiki can actually be Oral Tradition.)
Still To Do:
- 1. New genre pages still to be created (With page type Trope or Trope+Index and Literature Genres index.):
- A. Heroic Literature is in YKTTW
- B. Myth is in YKTTW
- C. Folklore is a disambiguation page and the new version is at the sandbox stage
- D. Other genre pages such as Wisdom Literature, Folktale, Folk Ballad, and Folk Legend have been proposed.
- A. Heroic Literature is in YKTTW
- 2. All of these pages need to be indexed.
- 3. Wicks need to be sorted out.
- A. Oral Tradition, Mythology, Folklore, and the sandbox wicks are not fixed.
- B. Myth And Legend, Legend, and Myth wicks are Done (for now).
- C. Lots of folders and AC's are labeled Mythology, Folklore, Oral Tradition, whatever, but don't generate wicks. Somehow they need a "wick" cleaning.
- 4. Fairy Tales may need to be modified to clarify its relation with Folklore, but that probably requires a separate TRS thread.
- 5. Mythology Tropes is in YKTTW right now.
The existing Mythology Tropes page is a duplicate of the works list now at Mythology.
THE ORIGINAL OPis here
1. Acts like/implies all Oral Tradition is really really old. States outright every Oral Tradition trope is from The Oldest Ones in the Book. But this is a medium, not a time period, and of course is still used today. Jokes and rumors, for example, are often circulated this way. Certainly there is no cause to assume that all oral works were composed before writing was ever invented, before 3500 BCE. That's just ridiculous.
2. Makes statements that all Older Than Dirt works have their origin in this medium... which isn't really right. Sure many things that have been written down were, or might have been, circulated in an oral form first. But
- A. Written works, even Older Than Dirt ones, could have been composed first in writing.
- B. Unless they're doing an in-depth textual or archaeological analysis, tropers should not assume one way or the other.
3. The list that follows the description isn't a list of material composed in this medium. It's a list of Mythology and Folklore pages. But those pages include works that were composed originally in written form, with no oral precourser (for example, ancient Greek and Roman plays were composed for Theatre, which is a different medium).
4. Lastly, two of the three sub-types of tropes are red links.
In short, this is a medium, not a genre. I want to rewrite the description into something more reasonable, and move the content to a separate Mythology and Folklore genre page.
edited 12th Jun '13 8:27:58 AM by ArcadesSabboth
EDIT: Thanks to everybody who helped! The Oral Tradition YKTTW is launched and I don't even think I screwed it up.
Since the Myth sandbox isn't ready, what should we YKTTW next?
Lord Gro, what do you think still needs to be done on Heroic Legend to launch it?
edited 14th Mar '13 12:52:35 PM by ArcadesSabboth
Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.I'm pretty sure every genre page on the wiki is typed as trope. (Or trope+index.) I may be overlooking some that are just index, but if there are any like that, I haven't spotted them.
(That last sentence brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.) :)
Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.Well, I launched Mythology. In my opinion, Myth And Legend should redirect to Mythology rather than Oral Tradition.
Myth is next. Here is the link to the YKTTW draft.
edited 29th Mar '13 10:20:01 AM by ArcadesSabboth
Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.I am going to start working on this again.
Currently Myth has a "Already Have?" tag with the suggestion that it is too similar to Mythology. I have already expressed my disagreement, so I would like to have more opinions and dialogue about it. Nobody has commented on the YKTTW in a while.
Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.Ask The Tropers, or since we are discussing it here, holler.
Or just ignore the tag.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanI have two questions:
1. When does the clock run out? All I can see is when it was set.
2. When/if the YKTT Ws are ever finished, can I holler to have a locked TRS thread re-opened? I am extremely concerned that it will be locked before it is finished.
Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.How's "the YKTT Ws were finally launched so I can finish this" for a reason?
Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.Kill It with Fire was locked before it was finished. They haven't done all the YKTTW launches as far as I know, let alone wicks.
Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.Hmmm...what is to do here, besides launching the YKTTWs?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanAye, wickwork again. I may help when it comes to this, but I can't really assist with the YKTTWs.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanMonth bump: So what needs to be done to get these YKTTWs taken care of? There was a proposal to change the Heroic Literature not to be so medium-specific, using the title Heroic Legend instead.
I agree with using Heroic Legend.
Also, I haven't seen any activity by Arcades Sabboth since June and the YKTTWs have been dead in the water, too - what's up with that?
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanArcades Sabboth told me in PM she'll be coming back to TV Tropes less frequently, so it's not sure if she will return to this TRS any time soon.
I think the problem with this TRS from the beginning was that it has been trying to do too many things in one go. Oral Tradition was essentially a big lumberroom index for a lot of different things that had no other place. It was kinda inevitable that the thread has been going extremely slow.
The Heroic Literature / Heroic Legend / whatever complex is in YKTTW, so we don't have to bother about it in this TRS. I plan to rewrite the draft, but I'd rather sideline it until this TRS is closed. What still needs to be done is making Folklore fit for YKTTW. The rest isn't really the business of this TRS, I think.
Edit: Peripherally related: I'd be glad for feedback to my Riddle
YKTTW, or else hats for launching.
edited 20th Aug '13 2:37:18 PM by LordGro
Bumping this. I am not seeing lots of progress here - many YKTTW seem to have stalled.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman... I think we can close this thread. It has achieved its most important objective, a new Oral Tradition page that is much better defined and no longer a lumber-room for homeless pages.
We also have a new Mythology index page, and drafts for Folklore
, Myth
and Heroic Legend
. I think the rest is work for YKTTW. Having all the different YKTTW drafts and a TRS that oversees all these projects is redundant and confusing rather than helpful.
Does anybody disagree?
Crown Description:
Should we split Oral Tradition? Proposal to split this page into the medium Oral Tradition (for works transmitted orally), and the genre Myth, Legend, and Folklore, based on the draft at Sandbox.Myth Legend And Folklore.

I looked at your Myth draft and I like what you wrote, but you left out a lot from my draft that I consider important:
I'd like to combine the two drafts to retain these parts from my draft, and tweak your wording a bit.
edited 10th Feb '13 12:58:22 PM by ArcadesSabboth
Oppression anywhere is a threat to democracy everywhere.