Wiki Development for Search Engine Popularity and Traffic

Piterpicher: Agree with much of this. I do have some ideas for what sort of works could become more mainstream with more care from our community, but these plans are going to have to wait for my next big break, especially since they'll likely have to involve the kind of crosswicking overhauls I am still not entirely sure about, as argued below.

War Jay 77: That thread is interesting, though it also seems so focused on the tropes that lack enough entries that I am not sure it fits for when I am trying to discuss the opposite eventuality.

Anyway, I'll just quickly clarify that when I suggested limiting tropes that are getting too long to only the "notable" examples, I should have likely used a different term, as I did not mean it in a way that contradicts There Is No Such Thing as Notability.

Instead, the point is that when a trope becomes substantially longer than usual, then it may be best that the trope examples themselves must be notable (i.e. interesting and/or unusual in some way) in order to qualify for inclusion there, regardless of whether the works the examples hail from are notable. If something unknown, or even otherwise generic uses that one trope in an interesting way, it belongs on there. If the example is little more than "trope happens" (whether because it really is that generic, or because the troper who originally wrote it did not include enough context), then it should not belong on the trope page once it reaches a certain size, regardless of where it's sourced from.

Otherwise, we could end up with tropes that have dozens upon dozens of examples that are barely different from each other, which could be demoralizing in its own way, even if a split is avoided. At least, I am concerned this could be a problem, as whenever I try to "reverse-crosswick" one of the more established tropes (going on its related section and then linking the examples that weren't yet mentioned on the page itself), it often dredges up quite a lot of examples that are not really ZCE, and work well enough within the context of the original work page, but would look generic and low-context on the main trope page itself. Others will likely disagree with me on this, though; like I said, I am not sure this subject would fit in the context of your thread.

- So, Justified, Subverted, or some other type of Playing With beyond Straight...

Well... Those could be their own tropes, I think? We just don't split them along those lines like we do with Lampshaded Double Entendre, because there aren't enough examples to make it worth it, I think?

... And just thinking it'd be funny to have Lampshaded Lampshaded Double Entendre...

Edited by Malady on Feb 21st 2020 at 3:37:16 AM

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Limiting the types of examples seen in these lists is going to be even more of a hassle, what with the subjectivity inherent and that having more useful information is better than weeding such things out.

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I still maintain crosswicking is a necessity to help new tropes and obscure works thrive. You bring up good points, but I feel the benefit outweighs any issues with the idea.

Besides, I think in 2.0 all crosswicking will be automatic, so its moot.

One thing I specifically want to touch on is the idea of splitting played-with versions into their own tropes, as I think its pointless- played with versions are still the same tropes, excepting some rare scenarios.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 21st 2020 at 7:23:45 AM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

At this rate, the Earth will have warmed by about 4 degrees Celsius before we get 2.0. So like next week or something.

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

You are thinking about this too much in terms of narrative. Think of the more instrumental tropes instead, like the various weapon tropes. On the work page itself, they invariably provide useful information about the work: when it comes to the trope itself, some examples are just less interesting than others. Magic Staff is one such trope that I alphabetised and reverse-crosswicked last year; you can clearly see the contrast between the more contextual examples and the single-line ones. If that trope ever grows large enough to run into a potential split, I would rather prefer curbing the latter from it.

I mean, auto-crosswicking in particular is an implementation nightmare, unfortunately. Unless it were to be only applied to the new examples, then you would in all likelihood immediately have dozens of pages running into the too-long limit and thus leading to server crashes. Even outside of that, training the database tool they are using to deal with (or just ignore) the tropes that are implicitly potholed without being made into an example, or those that are part of a sub-list with little context outside of it is a headache all of its own.

All in all, we would almost certainly need a lot of manual work on that front regardless of when 2.0 and that database functionality; if it arrives late (or "never", with only the less-ambitious features making it into the 2.0), then most/all of the crosswicking would have to be done manually, just as is the case now; if it arrives early, we would be almost bound to spend much time cleaning up all the pages where it goes astray.

A lot of popular musicians, whether English-speaking or otherwise, don't have pages. I know that music is popular, so maybe those could bring in people. Billie Eilish has 1,746 inbounds, BTS has 14,602 inbounds, Panic! at the Disco has 9,544 inbounds... So they're not extremely popular pages, but they're still doing fine.

It's hard to trope music, though. It's a reason why pages like Break-Up Song are so full of ZCE's. Summary.Music is full of redlinks because no one wants to make pages for musicans.

- Is linking to Musicians' YouTube pages, okay? So we have an easy source for content to cite?

Billie Ellish: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiGm_E4ZwYSHV3bcW1pnSeQ

Edited by Malady on Feb 22nd 2020 at 10:17:50 AM

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As long as the actual examples have context, I don't see why not?

I don't know, I recently discovered The Royal Guardsmen had a page cut for lacking tropes, and since I enjoy their songs I may try and rectify that later.

—- As for the point about Weapon Tropes being more interesting on work pages than the actual trope pages, I guess that may be true, but I personally find most Weapon Tropes to be just as problematic as appearance tropes for lacking an actual trope beyond "Character uses this weapon". So that's most likely why they're so uninteresting on the actual page- no example has any unique usage for it because the "trope" is so barely-existent to begin with. Seeing a list that just says "Bob likes to use knives" is boring. If we ever managed to retool the pages to make them more interesting, that'd help a lot with your issue of finding the trope-page list unhelpful.

Anyway, this is turning into a discussion about the merits of crosswicking/not crosswicking, which probably does deserve a better thread for it.

To distract from that specific debate, what about tropes in general? Obviously they must attract people to our site, too- as the Inbound Watch thread shows, a lot of Tropes keep popping up. If we can find more tropes that show up in works people enjoy or stuff that people are interested in in general...that can also give us a boost. Of course the TLP has been working hard lately and is producing a lot, so I might try and keep an eye on some of the newer tropes and see what sort of inbounds they get.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 22nd 2020 at 2:49:37 PM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Tropes and indexes could also be a source of inbounds, but it's typically in the single digits. I feel like the most popular tropes are going to be related to recent issues, like LGBT, autism, disabilities, and bullying, as well as some mainstays like attractive things, games, and films. Thoughts on some recently launched drafts (as in, this year) I think are notable:

• Late Coming Out has already brought us 1 inbound, but I assume tropes related to LGBT are always going to bring some attention.
• I would have thought that Colorblind Mode would bring more than 2, considering that we care more about disabled people nowadays.
• Temporal Suicide has 3 in 3 days. Suicide, another popular and controversial topic.
• Sexy Dimorphism brought 4 in a little over a week. Of course, it's because of furries and horny teens, but the examples are legit.
• Thin-Skinned Bully has 5 in a little over 10 days, but since people are taking a stand against bullying and cyberbullying nowadays, it's kinda justifiable.
• Creators on the Autism Spectrum only brought 9 in over a month. I would have expected quite a bit more, seeing as autism awareness/acceptance is also today's thing.
• Non-Human Non-Binary received 29 inbounds in less than 2 weeks. Again, LGBT and non-binary are thing these days.
• Video Games of the 2020s has 30, and Films of the 2020s has 166, launched on New Year. These are our most populated namespaces, so I can see why these indexes would be popular.

In terms of international music, I've created the Grupa Operacyjna article today. Which Polish musician should I go after next, I have no idea, maybe I'll return to making pages about games.

Edited by Piterpicher on Feb 23rd 2020 at 1:33:24 PM

Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)

So one thing I've noticed is that the pages I've made that have gotten the most inbounds, work-page wise, are the ones I've made for ARGs and horror webseries- in other words, the ones I've made after seeing Night Mind cover them. I should get back into doing pages like this; the works are usually pretty obscure, so if I don't make the pages, who else will?

But yeah, these pages are for Echo Rose, Dad, Camdrome, The 15 Experience, My Dad's Tapes and The Human Pet, with my other pages not getting near as many inbounds as these puppies do; the closest is Pikasprey at 308 inbounds.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Don't think I have forgotten about this thread, I have just made the article on Religious Idle. I have also been working on article for those Evolution mobile games (like Cow Evolution), but it may take a little while before I'm able to finalise it. I'll keep working on other stuff when I have the time.

As for works that got popular... there was an inbound bomb made by me once or twice. I think the Big Bill Hell's page was probably the most important one, even if I made it when I was younger and much dumber. I am also kinda responsible for Super Smash Bros. getting split, and that was a great decision in terms of inbounds.

Edited by Piterpicher on Feb 27th 2020 at 7:31:20 PM

Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)

It's been brought up in the English Localization thread that some changes might not bring in inbounds. For example, Katekyō Hitman Reborn! is more used than the official English title Reborn. Is there a way to deal with this? Would keeping the Japanese titles as redirect by an option?

Edited by Pichu-kun on Feb 28th 2020 at 8:25:37 AM

Isn't it part of the policy to keep the other language name as a redirect, or...? I just assumed that would naturally be part of it.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I can't recall where it is, but I think it is existing policy that translations/transliterations are to be made/kept as redirects.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Yes, original language redirects is site policy.

Knowledge is Power, Guard it Well

I've noticed that the non-English title often gets cut when the page changes wicks.

I don't think redirects usually show up on Google results, and usually the redirect is only kept for the main work page, not subpages.

Keet cleanup

I searched for My Hero Academia (random example) using its Japanese name and still got our page in the results.

Edited by Karxrida on Feb 28th 2020 at 10:49:50 AM

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

Google isn't where we count inbounds from anyway...at least, I think that's how it works, according to what the related pages say.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I searched "Reborn manga" and was still able to find our article in 1-2 pages. The inbounds aren't counted from search engines. Most people find this site through direct links from what I observed on the website and outside of it. Over time, if them page is moved to Reborn! (2004) most the inbounds will eventually siphon to the main page once people notice the change and start to link directly to the page. This has happened to all pages I moved as part of localization cleanup over the years.

So, I don't see the issue. This would make more sense if we were going to cut Manga.Katekyo Hitman Reborn but that isnt what is going to happen and would probably go against policy.

Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 28th 2020 at 3:32:43 PM

Macron's notes

In any case though, cutting the Japanese titles is bad practice and those people should stop.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I was able to find the page If You Know What I Mean through Google.

Contains 20% less fat than the leading value brand!

I'm still working on this one. I've made the page on Mike Shadow: I Paid for It!, a childhood favorite game of many. It also has several good videos that I'm recording directly from the game, even though for some reason the videos seem to be rather compressed (the in-game resolution I record it from is 780x450, works on my computer but after upload the vids are 240p or so. By the way, I can't expand the game window without it not showing the animations that are crucial to the vids, for some reason. Good old Adobe Flash, eh?)

And hey, our search rankings seem stabilised lately, so something must be going well.

Edited by Piterpicher on Mar 8th 2020 at 12:08:17 PM

Currently mostly inactive. An incremental game I tested: https://galaxy.click/play/176 (Gods of Incremental)

Well, we were at ~2100 for the US, but now we're ~2200...

But, in the UK, we're higher than before... 618 instead of 750... I wonder what happened...

...

Also, traffic locations for more than 50% of our traffic, according to Alexa...:

• United States accounts for 39.7%
• United Kingdom accounts for 13.1%
• Brazil accounts for 5.4%

Edited by Malady on Mar 8th 2020 at 4:13:28 AM

Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576