Needs Help: Film.Roundhay Garden Scene

The Roundhay Garden Scene is a bit problematic as a works page. The description makes it sound as if it was intended as a short film, but the tropes mention that this was really just a test recording. The page also switches between claiming this was the oldest preserved piece of film to claiming this was the first film ever made.

Another problem is that most tropes are generic and shoehorned in to pad out the trope count. One troper on the conversation page admits that they are adding tropes as a joke.

This work should either be a Useful Notes page if other works reference it, or cut entirely, and left to Wikipedia.

edited 15th Jun '18 12:25:02 PM by Redmess

As the page itself notes, this is a two-second-long clip of someone testing their camera that's only claim to fame is being really, really old. I'd argue for a cut.

edited 15th Jun '18 2:01:58 PM by Dirtyblue929

Well, its claim to fame is that it is the oldest surviving clip, to be exact. I agree that this page might as well be cut, and the handful of mentions referring to it might as well be redirected to Wikipedia.

People get really weird about troping unintentional works like this. I think it speaks to a misunderstanding of our notability policy. We don't need an article for everything ever committed to paper or film: we want things that intentionally employ tropes. This doesn't.

Cut. It's mainly test footage and the article admits that it's too short to contain many tropes and, as previously mentioned, one editor admits to shoehorning tropes as a joke to make up for the lack of legitimate examples (the last of which is a far bigger problem on Literature.The Ugly Barnacle, which may merit a thread of its own, if only because it's better suited to Just for Fun if left as-is).

Edit: There seems to be a problem with padding out the example list with things that aren't even tropes (Just for Fun, Useful Notes, etc.) in addition to misusing tropes.

Edit: Apparently, the page for The Ugly Barnacle is the way it is now because a cleanup edit was reverted under the impression that the one who did it (crazysamaritan in this case) didn't have permission to do so, except Septimus totally did give permission on Ask the Tropers.^{The ATT post in question} "Ya, to me it seems like the page would need a serious cleanup.

The problem that I see here is that the page is on the one hand about a legit work (policy does not care about how long it is) but also used for idle speculation (we do have a couple other mainspace pages which are about made up but they are rare). Hence the proposal to clean out the stuff that isn't supported by the text."

edited 16th Jun '18 6:41:00 AM by GastonRabbit

I agree with your point about The Ugly Barnacle.

edited 16th Jun '18 11:27:51 AM by costanton11

Cut the work page, but mention the film on some page about early films.

If you think The Ugly Barnacle deserves its own thread, go ahead and start it.

edited 16th Jun '18 1:22:03 PM by Lymantria

[delete this post]

edited 16th Jun '18 1:22:55 PM by Lymantria

There was already a thread. As I mentioned, I later looked into it and there was already cleanup done and it was reverted under the assumption that the cleanup didn't receive permission (even though it did), so a TRS thread probably isn't necessary if the issue simply a matter of existing cleanup being undone.

edited 16th Jun '18 2:52:26 PM by GastonRabbit

The only consensus I've seen so far (that's on-topic, anyway *cough*) is to cut the article. I'm going to bump this for some more opinions and then initiate a crowner.

Yeah, sorry for going off-topic. I brought up The Ugly Barnacle because this page turned out to be another page that has tropes that were shoehorned as a joke, with that aspect of the former page being discussed on ATT not that long ago.

edited 20th Jun '18 5:07:10 PM by GastonRabbit

Make Useful Notes. Film history is pretty useful and consistent with the stated purpose of understanding media better, and this seems fairly important for film history.

If you must cut the page, at least fold some of the content in with UsefulNotes.The Pre Hollywood Era.

edited 21st Jun '18 7:52:13 AM by naturalironist

So the options are:

• Cut
• Make it Useful Notes
• Move into UsefulNotes.The Pre Hollywood Era

I'm still not entirely convinced of its value as film history. Its main claim to fame seems to be that it is the oldest surviving film footage. It was just a few seconds of test recording.

It reminds me a bit of how any and all scraps of text from ancient cultures are treated as significant simply because its the only thing surviving. Maybe we should see it in that context?

Moving it to UsefulNotes.The Pre Hollywood Era doesn't sound like a bad idea if we keep it in some form.

edited 21st Jun '18 2:21:53 AM by GastonRabbit

Could this and The Ugly Barnacle be moved to Just for Fun pages? Backstroke Of The West and Pokemon Vietnamese Crystal don't "intentionally" employ tropes either, as the "tropes" are simply results of a Translation Train Wreck.

I think we should probably move it to Useful Notes (whether as its own page or part of the pre-Hollywood page). Ugly Barnacle should go to Just for Fun.

True, as this is a serious part of film history.

The Ugly Barnacle is not on topic for this thread. I did make such a proposal years ago and was told by the then-admin to not do it as it'd be a) pointless and b) we have no rule against unmarked literary farce.

Definitely keep the page. Maybe make it Useful Notes?

Would inserting it into Film History be acceptable too?

Yeah.

Sounds good.

Literature.The Ugly Barnacle and similar pages like Daring Do aren't too bad, since they are indexed under Just for Fun, and I'm pretty sure they shouldn't be listed on serious trope pages as if they were real.

Edited by Lymantria on Jul 27th 2018 at 4:32:47 AM

But that's the thing, they ARE listed on trope pages as if its a serious thing.

That I didn't know. Give an example. I can't find the thread in question, but I'm pretty sure ~Madrugada once said with mod hat on (to be best of my memory):

"On trope pages, it (The Ugly Barnacle) should not be listed as using any tropes unless it actually does. The Just for Fun pages are for goofing around, and shouldn't be slopping over into the "real" wiki."