TV Tropes 2.0: Database level redesign (Not in active development yet)

I think the best solution is to demand a "work name" for each example anyway and simply let the system have a broad leeway in accepting inputs for "work name".

Since related works will be connected to each other in a hierarchical system, there won't be a need for a "general" section for multiple-media works. If your example spans the Dune franchise, connect it to Franchise.Dune. The reader will be able to format the page to either read it with other Franchise examples, or collate all the Dune examples together, with Franchise.Dune examples appearing above the examples specific to Literature.Dune, Film.Dune, Literature.Dune Messiah, etc.

I was about to ask "What if I wanted to see all examples of a trope within the entire franchise?", but then I realized that — assuming my understanding of how 2.0 will work — I could just click on the franchise's main page and go to the trope's entry in it.

... But then that assumes that the system can compile the examples from separate mediums and create a single entry in the franchise page that is actually readable.

Edited by MarqFJA on Aug 26th 2018 at 10:53:23 PM

If I wasn't clear, that's what I meant by, "collate all the Dune examples together." On a trope's page, it will be possible to view all of a franchise's examples of that trope together, sorted within the franchise by work and medium. Assuming my understanding of 2.0 is accurate, that should be a fairly straightforward and common option for viewing a page.

That made me think... Probably every page (including tropes, single-medium franchises, and multi-medium franchises) will sort works by the medium and then alphabetically.

But then I realized; we probably want work pages to sort the sub-works by year, won't we? Harry Potter, for example, should have the examples displayed by Year, rather than whichever book is alphabetically first.

That means when we create work pages, we will need to include the year of publication, and that made me think of television episodes, which means we will want exact dates whenever possible. So date of publication (air date meaning "broadcast publication") will be part of the element, correct?

Yes, date of publication will be part of the metadata of every work article (and sub-article, like episode recaps). Of course, this can get a bit hairy if the publication order doesn't match the episode order, like with Firefly, or every episode in a season is released at the same time, like Netflix does. I have in mind that the relationships structure that we use to join pages together will allow manual sequencing.

Logically they'll work like our current index articles, to wit:

• Literature.Lord of the Rings
  1. The Fellowship of the Ring
  2. The Two Towers
  3. Return of the King

You specify the sequence and nesting structure and then any article displaying examples from the work will obey this structure. Sub-series can also be managed in this manner.

• Series name
  1. Season 1
     1. S1-E1
     2. S1-E2
  2. Season 2
     1. S2-E1
     2. S2-E2

The example renderer will have access to this relationship structure. We'll probably want to set some sort of default threshold below which the examples for any particular series get condensed down to a single row instead of expanded, and over which they'll be collapsed by default.

So, for a single example, it might look like this, with everything before the colon automatically generated.

• Series A S3-E10 "The Title": Alice and Bob do stuff.

A small number of examples from a single series would generate something like this:

• Series A
  • S2-E6 "An Episode": George and Carlos have a ball.
  • S4-E1 "Another Episode": Sue and Harry go to lunch.

A large number of examples would generate a nested structure that the user could click to expand. For bonus points, clicking on "Series A" could take you to the main article and clicking on the episode title could take you directly there.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 29th 2018 at 3:46:42 PM

The italics of Series A and the "quotes" around the episode titles also automatically generated, I expect. Would it be possible to specify the emphasis a work title receives at page creation (editable afterward, possibly in a way similar to the custom title system), and then have that automatically applied to all of its wicks, other than potholes?

I.e. Series A is a work. Its title is italicized at the top of its page, in lists of its examples on trope pages, and whenever it is linked to in body text.

"Short Story B" is a short work. Its title has quotes around it in all of those places (maybe excepting the top of its own page).

Yes, I expect we'd be able to specify the emphasis on the title of any given work.

I might have mentioned this before, but I can't remember and don't feel like trawling through this thread to double-check.

Would the new site allow for tagging entire examples as spoilers and making them disappear from a work page if "Show Spoilers" is off instead of having the whited-out text? This would be important for inherent spoiler tropes like Kill Em All and The Hero Dies that are self-fulfilling.

Also, this would supplement the current spoiler tagging system, not replace it, so we can still have some normal examples with the occasional whited-out text that don't need to be hidden entirely.

Admittedly there are some issues with this system (mainly how it interacts with page editing), but I think it's something to consider.

Edited by Karxrida on Sep 2nd 2018 at 10:38:07 AM

Well, editing an article that you don't want to see spoilers on is one of those mental diseases we can't cure, so the only hope is to beat it out of people with billy clubs. However, yes, we do have something like that in mind, where you can set a "spoilers free" view of an article with all tagged examples hidden.

Since you will be able to edit individual examples instead of whole pages, spoiling yourself by opening the text editor should be mostly a thing of the past.

How would editing or adding multiple examples work? Would they all need to be done individually?

In general, yes. I have some sort of bulk editing interface in mind but am not sure how to construct it. The first thing that comes to mind that might work is to use an input form like the current edit screen, where you enter raw markup and then tell the database to parse it as if it were converting from the current format to the new one.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 5th 2018 at 8:58:28 AM

How will the new database tackle cross article linking like with cross wicks?

This is one of the most crucial elements of the proposed 2.0 design. Examples will be relational data joining a trope article with a work article. Each example will have one or more description components. If there is only one description, it will display on both the trope and work articles. Users can also specify independent work- and trope-facing descriptions.

Examples will display with automatic formatting and indentation when rendered on an article.

Here's an illustration.

1. On VideoGame.Final Fantasy VII, a user clicks "add a trope example".
2. They are asked for the trope, and enter (or pick) Absurdly Long Stairway.
3. They are shown any existing examples of that trope for that work to make sure it's not a duplicate. Let's assume for now that it is not.
4. They enter a description of the example: During the raid on the Shinra HQ, the "subtle" approach is to climb up the skyscraper's stairs. 59 floors of them, in fact.
5. They click Save.
6. When they look at the Final Fantasy VII article, that example will be shown on the main view (since it's an objective trope) in the proper alphabetical order and indented as a single bullet if there is only one example and as sub-bullets if there is more than one example for that trope. The trope title will be shown first, then a colon and the description provided by the user.
7. When they look at the Absurdly Long Stairway article, the example will show in the Video Games section, since the wiki knows that FFVII is in that medium due to the indexing tags. It will appear in alphabetical order by work title within that section, will list the work link first, then a colon, and then the same description as on the work article.
8. If the user wants a different description to appear on the trope article, they can edit the example and click "Change the description displayed on the trope article" (or something like that). Then they can enter the following: During the raid on the Shinra HQ, you can either fight your way through the guards, or climb your way up 59 flights of stairs. Barrett whines and complains the whole way up, while Tifa tells him to "stop acting like a retard and climb!" At the end of the stairway, Barrett says he never wants to see any stairs again for the rest of his life.
9. This will make the trope and work articles display different text. Worth noting is that seeing both descriptions together should encourage users to expand whichever one is shorter by copying the other.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 12th 2018 at 7:16:27 AM

If 2.0 were a movie, what stage would it be in? Early development? It seems so.

Edited by Lymantria on Nov 18th 2018 at 10:29:42 AM

It's at the stage where the writer is sitting in their home office with a half-finished script and a stack of outlines that they've hastily written. There are producers interested in the idea and some of them think they might come up with some funding if the writer ever gets around to making something that can be shown off. Fans have gotten wind and contributed a lot of comments about the tidbits the writer has made public, but remain highly non-committal.

Meanwhile, the production company has a large queue of work for stuff that's already greenlit before they can even think about starting on this new one, and it may be impossible with their budget and capabilities anyway.

Edited by Fighteer on Nov 21st 2018 at 12:42:40 PM

Let's not forget many fans crowdfunding the writer on little more than hopes and dreams.

What will happen to the introductions on some YMMV pages? An example would be the opening sentence on YMMV.Family Guy.

How long has 2.0 been in the works for?

You mean concept-wise or development-wise? The concept has been around since, well, check the date on the thread. Zero development has occurred to date.

I think it might be even older than that (2015). It was mentioned in the 2014 Kickstarter, and there was a thread from 2012-2013 that discussed concepts that would become 2.0. Talk about Pre-Development Hell.

Edit: Or maybe just Development Hell, since production of a movie is like software development, I dunno.

Edited by Lymantria on Apr 14th 2019 at 1:06:00 PM

So, what happened to all that money from the Kickstarter, then? I hope we haven't just been lining the pockets of the higherups.

Not exactly. The Kickstarter money has been spent on site development, exactly as promised. Nobody is getting rich off of our donations. That said...

• Rebuilding and modernizing the TV Tropes code base and styles has been a more elaborate project than initially anticipated (we can thank Eddie for that to some extent; he was only ever concerned with what worked in the moment than what made for good coding practices), consumed more resources than anticipated, and is still ongoing.
• TV Tropes is now part of an organization (Proper Media) that includes several websites and the staff allocate their time across multiple projects. Before you panic, there is a dedicated development team for us, and we've been promised more resources to come.
• The developers are prioritizing getting the site working as intended for all users and improving the user experience now as opposed to going for a vision that may or may not come to pass in the future.

I don't think you'll find any explicit promise in the Kickstarter campaign that TV Tropes 2.0 would definitely, absolutely happen. It's a vision, and it would be really cool to have, but it is better to have an proven system that works than a completely experimental system that doesn't, even if the former doesn't do everything we want it to.