Too much clarity, too little conciseness and wit

Methinks that "lenght" and "roll-off-the-tongue" are both criteria to consider with a name (and in second thinking, Woodland Community means exactly the same as Stock Woodland Creatures Community, since it was brought up as an example).

Another example of a confusing name is Lampshade Hanging. I honestly still get confused as to what this means.

I do understand that reading the description itself is supposed to explain the trope/page. Problem is that, I noticed some descriptions do not have a good topic sentence to help get started on that reading. And users may get dissuaded when all they see is a lengthy description for a trope they don't have a clue on, without a sense of direction. Having a descriptive title helps introduce the term.

So, having some kind of a dual title system also helps on the clarity side. This is a good case for it. Using a Boss Subtitle-like title as Discar said (good analogy there), or some other system, you can summarize what Lampshade Hanging is supposed to mean.

Simply put, nearly everything with a name is used as a shorthand for a more complicated description. "Horseless Carriage" eventually got shortened to "Car." If we felt comfortable enough we could give definitive names to anything, but the truth is we don't represent anyone of significant enough prestige to name a trope that will enter common vernacular like MacGuffin. So for the most part we have to be at least a little descriptive with our names.

Bah. We don't need personality prestige to alter the vocabulary of the world. We have readers. Many, many, many readers. That is more than enough.

What Fast Eddie said. We have several tropes that have already become the standard vocabulary when talking about fiction. Xanatos Gambit is probably the biggest one.

Ideally, we want all tropes that don't already have a pre-existing name (and before you ask, Lampshade Hanging and MacGuffin are indeed pre-existing names) to follow in the example of Xanatos Gambit. If that happens, we've succeeded in our job here.

Unfortunately, there's no magic formula that makes that happen. All we can do is play around with being memetic, being clear, being concise, being witty, being punny, and so on, and hope we find the right balance. It's going to vary from trope to trope.

edited 6th Aug '12 1:06:28 PM by TotemicHero

I'd say that Expy is a bigger example. It's gotten huge offsite. (Thank goodness we did not rename this when it first came to the TRS.)

edited 6th Aug '12 1:14:22 PM by ccoa

woah, I thought Expy was a going term we adopted.

Relevant link to this discussion is We Are Not Alone.

If it has an existing name, it should be the name here as well or at least mentioned as one.

edited 6th Aug '12 4:47:44 PM by abstractematics

Well, it looks like the vast majority of those are names we use, and the few that don't, most of their names look like they are either close enough or wouldn't work for us anyway.

Ultimately, that's probably something to bring up in TRS for whatever individual cases are a major problem.

Yeah, not only does the other wiki use our names, they get used in places that really matter. Actual conversations on forums, in magazine articles, and on and on. The inbound links page shows the 30,000 or so times our terms get used every single day.

I was referring mostly to completely made-up terms rather than descriptive names, even Expy is somewhat descriptive because it sounds like a shorthand for Exporting something (in this case specific character qualities into another character).

We get lucky with some more obtuse names but on the whole we get more problems with "The Zotz" (now Unwanted Gift Plot) fading into obscurity instead of Batman Gambit or Xanatos Gambit, which are misused but catchy and memorable.

I would say the problem is that finding a name that fits that isn't too obscure or too dry. It can be difficult to come up with a good name. Even more so if a trope is getting a rename and the catchy name has failed in some regard.

Wow, The Daisuke. That was a low point in our naming history. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.

Yes, there's a lot of Daisukes, if I'm remembering correctly.