Example Sectionectomy and "No Examples, Please"

I just spent the last week delving into the wiki's distant past. Apparently, Example Sectionectomy and Flame Bait are part of why we created YMMV in the first place, as a way to remove "examples" (read: natter and complaining). The original version of Flame Bait allowed on-page examples and disallowed wicks. Example Sectionectomy had an early thread establish the opposite; on-page examples aren't allowed and wicks are allowed. But then, years passed and we started to say "no examples anywhere", but we were apparently uncertain which page that applied to. The first time I saw this issue was four years ago, and we still don't have a clear policy. Other tropers have said they'd throw a sandbox together, and I think that's a good idea. Sandbox.Example Sectionectomy is here, proposing an index of policies that each perform a different role in organizing example prohibition, with some overlap from What Goes Where on the Wiki.

Since the debate on if Example Sectionectomy meant "no examples on-page" or "no examples anywhere" has been going on for nearly a decade, I used the following rule of thumb to determine categories; less than 100 wicks is "no examples anywhere", otherwise the sectionectomy meant "no on-page examples". This includes the pages listed on Sandbox.Exampleless Pages. If a Flame Bait page had on-page examples, I left it there, otherwise I moved it to "no examples anywhere". The Useful Notes pages I removed for being otherwise identical to "Definition-Only" (never listed as an example, only rarely do we list appearances in fiction). Exception made for Constructive Criticism (limited to IUEO and NOPE). I generally made excuses for pages on the Wiki Tropes index, not being sure if they're even really tropes instead of Administrivia (I had a similar problem with sliding scale tropes, which sometimes act like tropes and sometimes act like Just for Fun). The Omnipresent Tropes are all added to Administrivia.No Straight Examples Please based on "what does each page allow?"

What does the wiki think? Is this Sandbox is a good square one to organize example-less pages? Was there a category I forgot or should have split?

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Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Edited by crazysamaritan on Mar 21st 2019 at 9:11:19 AM

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I want to say that I like this idea a lot. The current system is pretty confusing and it's hard for a newcomer to know whether examples are allowed or not.

I support consolidating these rules to make them understandable and consistent.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 22nd 2019 at 11:29:04 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I like this idea. My current working assumption is that all No Examples Please tropes that aren't Flame Bait are still allowed on work trope lists, but it would be good to clarify.

Do we have a sense of which tropes would be No On Page Examples vs. Definition Only Please?

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

I also like this idea. However, I think the rhetoric ought to be parallel between entries in the index. Like, consistently stating where these things can go followed by where they cannot go, followed by what they are. At the moment, there's little organization, which needs to be fixed. So something like...:

• No Real Life Examples, Please!: These tropes may be linked anywhere on the wiki so long as they do not concern Real Life events. They therefore do not go on a trope's Real Life subpage and they don't go on a Useful Notes page related to the event. [...]
• In-Universe Examples Only: These tropes may be linked to on trope pages and on work's pages. They do not go on a work's YMMV/ subpage. This status is limited to Audience Reactions that appear within a given work. [...]
• [...]
• Flame Bait: These "tropes" may be linked to on indexes. They simply do not go on work's pages or trope pages. If the Flame Bait item is also a Definition-Only Page, then examples may be listed on that Flame Bait's own page.

There's a bit of a weird interweaving of explanations here, which will only serve to confuse people. In the explanation of Flame Bait, you cite "Definition-Only," but you don't actually explain that until after Flame Bait. I mean, I for one can't tell if you're saying that Flame Bait can be listed on Definition-Only Pages or that Flame Bait that is also Definition-Only can list examples on its own page. Obviously you're not saying that you're allowed to list Flame Bait on a trope page unless it only defines a term because then you'd be saying Flame Bait can be listed on trope pages, which doesn't make sense to my knowledge because we don't allow Flame Bait to be listed pretty much anywhere because of the ROCEJ.

Edited by WaterBlap on Mar 23rd 2019 at 10:02:41 AM

Look at all that shiny stuff ain't they pretty

~naturalironist: Yes, Sandbox.Example Sectionectomy includes sandboxes for the new Administrivia pages. Each index is in a separate folder. They aren't exactly final; I went through a lot of pages to see when they had/lacked examples/wicks. I expect some shuffling before they're officially launched, although reception seems pretty positive so far.

~Water Blap: This is why additional eyes are needed. Here's a reworking based on your critique:

Edited by crazysamaritan on Mar 24th 2019 at 12:15:54 PM

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Another category worth mentioning is Fanspeak, which is a type of Definition Only Page. In particular, Anime Fan Speak lists anime-specific tropes where we retained the page but examples go to a different, duplicate trope (this true for many, but not all pages on that index).

I've never been clear on where the line falls between supertropes and indexes. And why do some supertropes allow examples, while others don't?

"It's just a show; I should really just relax"

I guess when the Super-Trope is too broad or common, as with Consistency, there will be no examples.

On another note, should No Recent Examples, Please! be added to the index?

For reference: Sandbox.Keep Real Life Examples

Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!

@Fan Speak: It (fanspeak) is no longer an index or banner category. It used to be, and even four years ago it was still "used too loosely to make for a good class of belong-there entries."

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@"where the line falls between supertropes and indexes": Same boat. Here's a rule of thumb; if it takes more than three paragraphs to describe the index, it's a trope as well. Shouldn't give any false positives (indexes that aren't tropes), but it will give many false negatives (fails to identify a trope as a trope). Secondary rule of thumb; if it's a term used in professional writing critiques, it's a trope.

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@"No Recent Examples, Please!": I'm inclined to say "no" to being part of the index, but if you write a couple of sentences about how it's related, maybe it does belong on the page (directing people to the policy page, without indexing).

Edited by crazysamaritan on Mar 27th 2019 at 11:38:39 AM

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I added reasons to some of the entries in the proposed indexes within the sandbox.

Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!

Can you find the threads where those decisions were made?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I actually lifted them from the current Example Sectionectomy page.

Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!

I had removed those comments because I couldn't verify them.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I'm actually interesting in having one page for "no Played With examples" and "no Straight examples" for ease of organization, since I imagine there will be plenty of overlap.

Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!

I would prefer combining "No straight examples" and "no playing with examples" as well. I'm not sure about overlap, but there's at least some debate on how to handle the "no playing with examples" rule (see the TLP for details).

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I think Favorite Trope and Pet-Peeve Trope should be allowed on Creator pages, and list tropes the creator has said they like or hate.

Keet cleanup

I've brought this up whenever this gets discussed, but I have never understood the rationale behind a "No On Page Examples" policy existing. If a trope is too contentious to allow examples on its page, it's hard to see why that wouldn't also apply to examples added on work pages, unless the work doesn't attract a lot of attention in the first place - and "sneaking things through" doesn't really seem like something we should encourage.

Edited by nrjxll on Apr 23rd 2019 at 10:17:14 AM

Here is an old ATT thread where tropers gave their responses to this.

• ~Septimus Heap said:
  • Because the examples on the trope can attract issues that the examples in the wicks don't. It's an aggregate effect. Also, it's easier to cut just on-page examples than both wicks and on-page examples.
• ~Discar said:
  • We already have an index for "No examples, anywhere." It's Flame Bait. I really don't see the need to make No Examples Please serve the same purpose. I've found that having no examples on the trope page but having examples on the work page works fine; work pages are curated more, so the natter and complaining is removed, the examples kept clean.
• ~Revolution Stone said:
  • I agree that works pages are different. Generally, unless the trope is actually starting Flame War or Edit War on the works page itself, I think even a trope with no examples should be allowed to stay on works pages (and even in some cases artist or creator pages, NRLEP examples should even be allowed if the trope is highly important to them as an artist/has deeply influenced their works/is something that is relatively widely known and documented).

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I'm not persuaded by "it's easier", and Flame Bait doesn't serve the same purpose as "no examples anywhere", because several of those pages still have on-page examples. I'm still surprised at the claim that certain tropes caused flame wars on the trope page, but don't cause problems on the work pages. Examples should be appearing in both places, so such wars should spill back and forth normally, which means there's no reason to expect work pages to be immune to edit wars due to contentious tropes.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Just because something "should" happen in theory does not mean it actually happens in practice. Statistically speaking, 10 examples of a problem trope are more likely to cause at least 1 edit war than just one example.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

But does it actually cause less edit wars in total, or are they simply spread out more across the different links?

This is a pretty old issue, but I'm going to try to explain my opinion.

As another troper put it (no, I can't remember who it was), any contentious example goes through a short life cycle: The example is written. Someone disagrees with it, and either takes it to discussion (correct response) or edit-wars over it (incorrect response). Either way, this attracts more attention, the example is rewritten to something everyone can agree on, and the page is healthier for it.

The problem is that on trope pages, there are far fewer people paying attention who will be familiar with the work and the specific example, so this cycle can take months or longer. On a work page, there are far more tropers on hand who know the exact example, so the cycle goes far faster, often just a few days.

So it's not "sneaking things through" like nrjxll said; actually the opposite. It's that work pages are healthier and have more people willing to work on any immediate issues.

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Anyway, I like the proposed index, except for Flame Bait. Partly because I disagree with having examples only on the trope page (as I outlined above), but also because of the name. Flame Bait is currently being used as "Nope, don't put it anywhere unless it is a directly invoked example. Having it on a trope page will cause flame wars, having it on a work page will cause flame wars, don't put it anywhere." It's a pretty small list, but it's working pretty well as it is.

I feel like "no on page examples" would flow better to the common wiki audience if it were something like "examples on work pages only" or maybe "no examples on this page".

Though, to bring it somewhat back to the current discussion about why it exists at all, I should note that last I checked planning for the TV Tropes 2.0 project included the notion of having individual objects linked to a trope and a work and used to populate both pages, with it even being a somewhat popular proposal to force people to add examples from the trope page, or at least after reading the trope description, to avoid Square Peg Round Trope situations. That seems like it might alleviate some problems with these pages (possibly even obviating some rationales for example sectionectomies entirely) while introducing new ones. Of course code would presumably still be present to allow certain pages to fall under any of these categories if need be, and in any case all of that is presumably in the unknown future regardless of what's decided here, but it's still food for thought.

I think the idea with Flame Bait pages that allow examples is that they're used almost as Just for Fun but linking them elsewhere "canonizes" the examples and leads to people taking them too seriously (namely the Character Alignment pages), as a License To Whine or for Complaining About Shows You Don't Like (Character Derailment, anything in Darth Wiki), or where linking to them on YMMV pages means inviting the fan base (or conversely Hatedom) to flood the page to spark exactly the kind of flame wars we're trying to avoid (anything about fan bases themselves as they're venues/breeding grounds for Fan Haters and/or Complaining About People Not Liking the Show).

Edited by MorganWick on Apr 24th 2019 at 4:09:47 AM

I don't understand why you think the index description doesn't agree with this summary. The only proposals I've made to the page are "sub-index to Example Sectionectomy" and "some tropes overlap with Definition-Only Pages".

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That was a big reason for why I'm proposing separate indexes, rather than just rewriting the one page. Based on code for Triva, YMMV, and Flame Bait, I'd imagine it would be easier to link the rules to a single index.

Edited by crazysamaritan on Apr 24th 2019 at 3:23:32 PM

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

In our current system, separate indexes helps the software tell which articles are supposed to be given the special inline tags designating them as Trivia, YMMV, or Flame Bait.

In the 2.0 concept, these indexes will be used to populate the database tags that perform a similar purpose. For example, if an article is on the YMMV index, it'll get a "subjective trope" tag automatically.

Example Sectionectomy, No Real Life Examples, Please!, and similar articles could function in the same way.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 24th 2019 at 3:26:55 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"