Misused: People Sit On Chairs

"Is it just me or does that sound like a gender debate? Y'know, men go grocery shopping to hunt down whatever ingredients/foods they are specifically looking for and get back home quick. Women go grocery shopping to hang out and be social, and maybe pick up a few foods along the way."

I think that would be covered under Mars and Venus Gender Contrast.

This thread should really be moved to Wiki Talk. I don't think anyone's even talking about changing the page at this point, and it isn't a trope anyway. I also don't think it needs repair.

edited 27th Feb '12 3:47:41 PM by Martello

People Sit On Chairs attracts misuse as Too Common To Trope. That's why it's in TRS after all

Another analogy: In The Jetsons, the family car played the exact same narrative role as every other family in every family sitcom ever. It gets the family from point A to point B. But because it is a Flying Car, it is a trope, whereas the family Ford sedan or (in historical fiction) the family wagon, apparently isn't a trope.

I suppose you could say that the Flying Car is important because it establishes that things are in The Future. But establishing the setting is being ordinary, normal, contemporary and not far from the daily lives of the average reader, so they can relate to as a plausible story they might happen in Real Life to someone just like them can also be just as important to the narrative, depending on the genre.

Also, portraying speculative fiction things as real life analogs is also a purpose.

@Septimus Heap: With such mean emphasis for a post, this is why I no longer wanted to add suggestions in the TRS threads. They backfire too strongly, so next time I won't even bother. =/

People Sit On Chairs was made to address one very specific problem which was fairly widespread when the page was made. It's not broken just because it doesn't address a similar, but different problem.

Again: Something is not Chairs just because it's common. It's Chairs because it has no storytelling significance.

If you think we need a page for Too Common To Trope as another message, fine. I'll even support it, if it's written well. But stuffing it into Chairs defeats the purpose of People Sit On Chairs.

@SDNL, Septimus was actually replying to pawsplay above you, he just got ninja'd and must not have noticed so he kept the single . Not really sure how you took his use of bold to be "mean," I guess I'd recommend not being quite so sensitive, as well as saying that we appreciate your input as much as anyone's, and you're very welcome to stick around and continue contributing.

If the name is swapped with the redirect Too Meaningless To Trope it will still be misused as Too Common To Trope.

edited 27th Feb '12 10:12:14 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Too Common To Trope is not even a wiki problem in my mind. We have Seen It A Million Times for a reason, and other tropes like The Hero/The Protagonist are in virtually EVERY story ever written. We may not get every example ever made for such a trope but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have a page on it.

The issue with People Sit On Chairs is that it should be confined specifically to forums and YKTTW, it's a policy regarding the creation of tropes and really have no place elsewhere. Why should we bother talking about trope creation in the main pages?

EDIT: A page on Too Common To Trope and how it is a wiki fallacy might help as a shorthand to ward off bad use of People Sit On Chairs, but that's going a little deep in making a policy page to clarify a policy page.

edited 28th Feb '12 12:36:35 AM by KJMackley

You can't misuse Too Meaningless To Trope as 'Toocommon To Trope' without blatanly ignoring the trope name. Current misuse is because tropers think the name implies 'common=meaningless'.

So, Let Me Get This Straight..., you can't misuse Too Meaningless To Trope as Too Common To Trope, eventhough you apparently can think common = meaningless?

^You can point out "It's Meaningless, not common, what it means!"

Too Common To Trope isn't a problem, the problem is that many people believe that People Sit On Chairs means Too Common To Trope. There is no such thing as Too Common To Trope, so we are creating Too Common For Examples for the actual effect it can have.

Too Common To Trope isn't a problem. The problem is that people think things are too common to trope. It's why we're missing so many supertropes. No Such Thing As Too Common To Trope is more along the lines of what we actually need. There is, I admit, Too Common For Examples, and there's a lot of higher level supertropes that fit there, but too common is not a reason to shoot down a trope especially as it's primarily used by people to kill supertropes.

^I've commented in the YKTTW to propose No Such Thing As Too Common To Trope as an alt-title or redirect suggestion for Too Common For Examples, as well as pointed out how Too Common For Examples is related to Missing Supertrope Syndrome.

• Frequency And Meaning (alt: Too Common To Trope) (administrative , predefined message trope)
  • Here at TV Tropes, we don't believe anything is Too Common To Trope, and barely believe something may be Too Rare To Trope. Characters such as Protagonists, Narrators and Antagonists can be found everywhere. Conversely, even if a pattern is only visible in Ugandan literature in the 1970s, the meaning in the pattern makes it a trope. Often, the more common a trope is, the more likely there are subtropes. Making the most common tropes supertropes. The less common tropes tend to be subtropes, which need to relate to their parent trope. It is important to identify parent tropes, because otherwise we end up with Missing Supertrope Syndrome. Sometimes, a supertrope is so common, it may need No Examples To Trope.
• Too Meaningless To Trope
  • Not everything that happens in a story has a purpose. For example, that chair to the right isn't doing anything. It could be given a purpose, but without a purpose, it is not a trope. The difference between a trope and "happens in fiction", is the difference between an Aesop and a Throwaway Line. One is to convey a message, and the other is simply included. Spanish language appearing in a Mexican book is meaningless. Spanish words appearing in another language's book may be many tropes, but most commonly Gratuitous English.
• Omnipresent Trope
  • Tropes that show up everywhere are called omnipresent. Which has a rather literal meaning of "in all places". Often overlaps with No Examples To Trope. This indexes tropes that appear in nearly all works.
• No Examples To Trope
  • Certain tropes have too much frequency. Although important to note and reference, adding examples or listing them in works are unnecessary. These tropes may be used in a Wiki Link to reference them, but they should not be listed as one of the tropes in a work.

edited 28th Feb '12 11:53:51 AM by crazysamaritan

Too Rare To Trope actually has many of the same issues that chairs does. Just inverted. Instead of being too common to have meaning, it argues something is too rare to have meaning.

Chairs is not "too common to have meaning." Chairs is simply "Has no meaning".

Too Rare To Trope is "There may be meaning, but there's no pattern of use."

I just said that. what is your point ?

You didn't say that, you said "too common to have meaning". And that is not true.

People Sit On Chairs could just as easily be Wood Elves Live In The Woods. Common-ness has very little to do with it. A chair is not a chair if no one could at least conceptually choose to sit on it. It's not People Brush Their Teeth, or English Has Vowels, it's something in which the existence of the thing implies the action described. Trope comes from tropos meaning movement or twisting. In People Sit On Chairs, it's the sitting that is insignificant, not the fact that it's a chair. I'm pretty sure there are tropes about hitting people with chairs.

The repair shop might need repairing, there should be a note stating in bounds are not our problem, we are not responsible for off site activity.

Inbounds are our problem according to the admins, so you would be dead wrong about that. Inbounds are what keep the wiki alive. They are one of the most important things on the wiki, even more so than wicks. You would do well to keep that in mind.

edited 28th Feb '12 5:14:07 PM by shimaspawn

Getting involved here is like work. Breathing Oxygen, Not A Trope, People Sitting On Chairs, No Plot Significance, Not Tropeable, Too Meaningless To Trope. If there is a name problem it's that all the redirects were moved from the top to the bottom.

Misuse by itself, is more for the special efforts forum. If a page is correct then it is not the page's fault if people do not bother to read it. People on You Know The Thing Where aren't making mistakes, they know exactly what they are doing when they link to the page, a rename is not going to change that. They are saying this is not worth making a page for. They may be strawmaning but that is inevitable, no matter what you call it.

So now, this page, put up for the sole purpose of telling people how to use the wiki, is being possibly misused by people not using the wiki. Why is that the concern of the trope repair shop? If this was on the Wiki, we'd go to the special efforts forum and get some volunteers to hang around the designated spot and say "stop that" or whatever. This is happening off site, do you expect people to get accounts on other websites and say "cut that out or I'll call a mod"? As said, No Plot Significance, people know what they are doing when they link. Changing the name isn't going to change the use. The in bounds getting it wrong are not our concern because they are out of our hands.

Where are you getting that the inbounds are getting it wrong? We have no way of knowing whether the inbound links are 100% correct, 100% wrong, or somewhere in between, (although I'd put my money on "somewhere in between"). Inbounds are the number of times that someone has entered the wiki through that page, from a link to that page on another site elsewhere on the net. We can't see what the link that sent them here said.

The number of inbounds is vitally important — we need inbound traffic from other sites yo function as a wiki. How many inbounds a page has is dependent on a lot of different things, but whether the name "works" or not is one of them.

Links within the wiki are "wicks" and they can be checked to see whether they're using the term correctly or not. Doing that is, oddly enough, called "doing a wick check".

edited 28th Feb '12 6:04:24 PM by Madrugada