Self Demonstrating Folder Titles

Should the folder jokes just be cut then?

What's so wrong about insults? Those titles are pretty unfunny, though.

Yeah, probably. The idea is good, but the execution fails.

edited 5th Mar '16 3:05:08 PM by war877

Cut them.

Sounds good. Cut.

I don't know if it's been discussed yet, but the folder titles for Long Title are waaaay too long, right? Especially Music:

someone got carried away I see

I'm not a fan of Long Title's folder titles, but I feel like it came up in this thread previously and the vote was to keep them? I could be wrong. For the record, my vote is to cut them.

Edit: I just reviewed the thread. They came up early on, first page, and there was no vote, they just got mentioned, briefly discussed, and forgotten without an actual consensus/vote.

If it comes to a vote, mine is to cut 'em.

edited 19th Apr '16 3:24:12 PM by SolipSchism

I'm not opposed to Long Title having some long titles, I just think they should be dramatically shortened. The "Theatre" folder is fine. There shouldn't be anything longer than that.

Last I read long title, I don't remember them being quite that long. Some jokes work by going way overboard. I do not think this is one of them.

Edit: On second thought, music is the only one way too long.

edited 19th Apr '16 5:42:42 PM by war877

Let's cut that particular gag down to a reasonable size. Or kill it, if people can't exercise taste and restraint.

Film: cut everything after the semicolon.

Music: cut everything starting with which in the past were delivered.

I vote to keep them. I'm really disappointed that other folder titles were deleted, so I think these should stay. I have no idea why so many people want to suck the fun out of this Wiki.

Not everyone defines "fun" as "not just beating a dead horse, but beating the dried up greasy stain that used to be a dead horse".

The joke here is that they are way too long. Although I read them, reading them is not the important part.

Anyway, the reason I recommend those two cuts is that the titles still need to be on point. And a history lesson in media distribution technology is not on point.

I think the Insistent Terminology page has gone a bit overboard with self-demonstrating folder titles.

Yeah, that's a bit over the top. Also goes back and forth which term is preferred, which means it's less clear.

The SDFTs on Acronym and Abbreviation Overload are problematic. The first one in particular, I have no idea what it means, because there's only one example that... doesn't give a clear indication of what it's from. Is it an advertisement for HP sauce? What is HP sauce?

On top of that, none of them are actually acronyms except for L.A.T.V. (Live-Action TeleVision). The rest of them don't actually stand for anything (or at least, anything meaningful that's clear from context), they're just shortened forms of the folder titles that sound vaguely like the titles they represent.

They are all phonetic mnemonics. Not the same as an acronym.

I suggest putting the real title in brackets. As they take a bit of time to work out.

edited 3rd Nov '16 5:24:17 PM by war877

Should this thread be moved to one of the Projects forums, as 1) it's moved to mostly maintenance at this point, 2) I don't see any future policy discussions on the subject happening, and 3) it's still active, unlike most threads created to maintain things?

Doesn't really help that Acronym and Abbreviation Overload uses non-standard abbreviations for stuff, no. For instance, Real Life is commonly abbreviated to just RL (or IRL if appropriate, which might be more iconic, especially with less context), and Video Games is just written VG most of the time if the context is clear enough. Then you have stuff like Ads and TV, which are so common most people barely even notice them.

Writing it like the page quote would work well enough, though. What it stands for in parenthesis.

Also, using periods between each letter isn't very standard for the trope.

edited 3rd Nov '16 8:32:43 PM by AnotherDuck

Made an attempt to fix it, but the Real Life folder should be checked for shoehorns; it's the largest folder.

Bringing this up again, as Insistent Terminology was recently brought up in Ask The Tropers once more as being potentially problematic.

edited 20th Feb '17 1:28:00 AM by nrjxll

Definitely needs cleanup.

What about tropes that have a mixture of Self-Demonstrating and non-Selfdemonstrating content in ways other than folder titles? Some trope pages have the description start out as self-demonstrating, then end up non-self demonstrating, have a Stinger that is self-demonstrating, etc. …But He Sounds Handsome is such an example.

I think this is good- it's generally funny, and is often clearer than an entirely Self-Demonstrating page. Plus, some tropes are easier to understand if demonstrated. But if self-demonstrating folder titles are bad, than this is also bad.

While I haven't been around as long as some other people here, I spend a lot of time on the left side of the forums, and I have never seen serious issues of misuse or clarity. with this type of page.