How to handle genre pages

Should Space Opera and Super Robot Genre and other pages called Genres be page-type "trope" or "index"? Space Opera is at the point of getting onto the pre-Overdosed Tropes list. Tropes By Wick Count 1500 To 4000 and Super Robot Genre is catching up.

I feel the same question has been asked at least three times recently, so I'll bring this up.

Should we put a note on Genres page (and cross-reference it) that on trope pages context is recommended but optional, while on work pages these are indexes and shouldn't be listed?

We also need to decide why some Genres are indexes and some are tropes.

Edited by Amonimus on Feb 7th 2024 at 3:36:59 PM

I'll vote yes

It really does need clarification, and I'm inclined to agree that genres should be above the examples line, rather than used as an example.

I thought we'd established that genre pages act as indexes and go above the line, in descriptions. They don't require example context, but can have it if someone wants to.

What do we need to set forth in explicit language to make this clear?

Apparently there are some people confused about subgenres with respect to this policy. To be fair, there are a lot of subgenres and treating them all as categories can easily lead to index bloat. But I don't really see an alternative.

At a certain point, the distinction between a trope and a subgenre can be a bit murky, so each article in question needs to decide which it is and stick to it.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 7th 2024 at 2:55:07 PM

I'm wondering if it might help to make Genres a special type of index a la YMMV, Trivia, etc. that would pop a notification if it's misplaced.

That doesn't seem feasible, and it's not like genres can't be mentioned in example sections.

I'd rather have a separate category to make it clear that they aren't tropes. As in, page type wise.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 7th 2024 at 5:37:24 AM

I agree with giving genres their own page type

It acts as an index but also can clearly be mentioned in example context

Edited by AudioSpeaks2 on Feb 7th 2024 at 8:45:40 PM

You can absolutely mention indexes in example content. There's nothing unique about genres in that respect.

• The Mole: As is typical for Literature of the 1960s, there's a Soviet mole.

I just came up with that on the spot and it's clearly got other problems, such as lack of context, but it illustrates the point.

What you cannot do is use indexes (or genre pages) as examples.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 8th 2024 at 1:43:03 PM

In that case I'll go ahead and start scrubbing Yuri Genre from work pages where it's used as an example, because as the name implies, it is a genre.

What about Sub-Genre? The page is from before we had the TLP, so it doesn't have anything listed on it, it's merely a description. I think sub-genres should be listed there but idk about context. I'd say yes but I thought about bringing up here since it seemed relevant to the discussion at hand.

Probably the same as Sub-Trope, where the page merely defines the term and lists a few notable examples

Just going to post these over from the TRS Meta thread without responding as they both discuss this thread and it makes sense to keep it all in one place (pinging so they know I did this):

~Tropers/Samcurt

~Tropers/Amonimus

In the meantime, I'll be continuing to clean out Girls' Love, as the former name of and redirect to Yuri Genre.

Edited by Acebrock on Mar 16th 2024 at 11:32:47 AM

I originally raised this question on the TRS Meta thread, but seeing this thread is still alive, I would also ask here.

Specifically, unlike indexes, the definitions of genres are potentially in flux, especially regarding new trends. In this case, there might be a need for genre articles to be handled by a TRS thread. What would be the appropriate process for this, if now genres are (seems to be) going to be treated as indexes?

I think the question is "where does it make a difference if a genre is treated as a trope/index rather than index/trope?" For the purposes of subpages like laconic, I treat them as tropes and thus deny "index laconic" cut requests, but I figure there are other scenarios.

I lean that genres are more like tropes than they are indexes. They have history and different ways they are played out. They are treated like indexes because they have a lot of works and it'd be a hassle to contextualize why works fit a genre, but I'm starting to think it's some sort of grandfathered excuse. On the other hand, genres don't really require context and don't fit to be on work pages because they are also like work categories.

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 17th 2024 at 10:29:17 PM

I think they should be indexes, because I don't see reason for them to be on work pages. And besides I don't think being an index prevents a history section and or definition from being added to those pages

This is where I stand as well.

The advantage of being an index is that they are automatically crosswicked on the respective pages. If it doesn't have context to begin with, that's enough and there is really no need to put the genres in the trope list of work pages.

We don't have automatic crosswicking as a feature. If you mean the navbox at the bottom, it does add links, but not wicks.

Sorry, I meant "automatic crosslinking".