Needs Help: Blog Tropes

Note: This thread was proposed by The Mayor of Simpleton and originally covered Link Blog.

The problem: Link Blog has existed since 2007 (or potentially earlier) and has accumulated just 4 off-page wicks and 0 on-page examples in the process. The (somewhat vague) concept (a type of "blog that focuses primarily on cool links that the author has found, as opposed to original content such as essays", according to the description) seems potentially tropeworthy, but to be honest I wonder if, given our recent purge of non-tropeworthy web content, this is even worth documenting.

What should be done?: I suggest cutting the trope, and if this is worth documenting, sending it to the Trope Idea Salvage Yard. If not, we can just cut it and do nothing else.

What does everyone else think? Any other ideas or solutions?

Update: This thread's scope has been expanded to include the Blog Tropes Blogosphere, Celebrity Blog, Flog, and Power Law Blogs, to see whether to move those to Forum Speak or cut them, as well as deciding whether to move the last paragraph of Meat Puppet's description to Forum Speak since it describes something completely different from the rest of the description (the trope itself is about possession/mind control, rather than the online term of one person posting on behalf of another). Note that only that part of Meat Puppet's description is covered, particularly due to Type Labels Are Not Examples; we will not touch the parts related to possession/mind control.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Nov 5th 2022 at 6:58:40 AM

Paging ~The Mayor of Simpleton to the thread.

Anyway, I think we should cut it since websites often aren't tropable.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Nov 5th 2022 at 3:15:13 AM

Cut, I see zero tropeworthiness in this.

Edited by Amonimus on Nov 5th 2022 at 11:16:25 AM

Cut

I've seen some pretty ancient uses of "link blog". And I wouldn't be surprised if other Blog Tropes had this issue too.

I think we are dealing with the same issue as the pages that were later merged into Forum Speak - these "Internet term" concepts don't lend themselves well to examples or proper trope pages. I'd advocate a merge into Forum Speak, and an examination of the other Blog Tropes whether they have the same issues.

Merging with Forum Speak would work.

As for other Blog Tropes, I'd rather give them their own thread; it could possibly be a batch thread similarly to what converted the Fora index into the Forum Speak page.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Nov 5th 2022 at 4:43:27 AM

I'm not sure that examples of this are tropable.

Well, to go over the Blog Tropes list since Septimus was wondering about them:

• AstroTurf has a healthy amount of wicks, but it's also a term that isn't blog exclusive and has plenty of fictional examples, so it's probably fine.
• Blogosphere seems like it could be folded into Forum Speak. While it has nine wicks, the fact that it's definition-only means there isn't really a minimum amount of wicks for it.
• Celebrity Blog has only 13 wicks and doesn't strike me as tropable.
• Character Blog is a characterization trope with even more wicks than AstroTurf. It's specifically about fiction, so it's probably fine.
• Flog is in the same boat as Blogosphere in that it's a definition-only page with a low amount of wicks, and could probably be folded into Forum Speak.
• I don't know what Meat Puppet is doing on the list to begin with. Yes, "meatpuppeting" is an online term for getting others to post on behalf of you, but the Meat Puppet trope is about possession/mind control. It does mention the online term at the end, but it seems like we could transplant that paragraph to Forum Speak without any issues.
• Podcast is a type of work we have a namespace for and has a healthy amount of wicks. It's probably fine.
• Power Law Blogs is definition-only like some of the other listings, but it's so barebones that I'm not sure if there's even much to move to Forum Speak.
• Review Blog is just barely above the Not Thriving range, but a lot of entries violate Weblinks Are Not Examples. I think this should get its own thread if it gets taken to TRS since it might need a wick check due to its wick count being enough to count as thriving, but correct me if I'm wrong on the wick check part.
• UsefulNotes.Trigger isn't even a trope. It's a Useful Notes page. But even disregarding the UN aspect, I don't know what it's doing on this index because I'm not sure what the connection to blogging is.
• Web Serial Novel isn't exclusively a blogging thing, particularly because the namespace we use for these works is Literature/ and not Blog/.

OK, with that out of the way, any objections to expanding this thread's scope to include Blogosphere, Celebrity Blog, Flog, and Power Law Blogs to see whether to move those to Forum Speak or cut them, as well as deciding whether to move the last paragraph of Meat Puppet's description to Forum Speak since it describes something completely different from the rest of the description?

Edited by GastonRabbit on Nov 5th 2022 at 7:05:11 AM

to expanding this thread to cover other blog tropes, for the record.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Nov 5th 2022 at 9:20:07 AM

Well, ten of Review Blog's links are in the Blog/ namespace. It seems like a genre that's potentially tropable, but those work pages may need to be reviewed.

Meat Puppet should at minimum have a "not to be confused with / I Thought It Meant" note.

Edited by MorganWick on Nov 5th 2022 at 4:22:39 AM

I was actually thinking of putting "not to be confused with the Forum Speak term" if we move the section for that meaning of "meatpuppet" in Meat Puppet's description to Forum Speak.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Nov 5th 2022 at 12:58:27 PM

Support moving the netiquette definition of meatpuppet (Note: often closed-compound in this context) to Forum Speak.

I think that UsefulNotes.Trigger is being listed because Trigger Warnings doesn't exist. I concur it doesn't belong there. Meat Puppet just looks like typical "interpreting a trope just by its name" misuse.

I agree.

>Trigger Warnings doesn't exist

But Content Warnings does! Always thought those two concepts were just The Same, but More Specific, even outside TVT.

Aside aside (haha) — at first glance we're of approximately the same opinion on blog tropes as we were on forum tropes: most of these can't reasonably collect examples, and many aren't even all that pointful to have at all.

We can replace the link to UsefulNotes.Trigger with one to Main.Content Warnings.

It's been three days, hasn't it?

Edit: Timezones, darn it. Two more hours.

Edited by Yindee on Nov 10th 2022 at 12:07:16 PM

Could flog and astroturfing be merged? One is a vector for the other.

I think merging Flog with Forum Speak is enough. We could cross-reference Astroturfing in Flog's Forum Speak entry and mention Forum Speak in Astroturfing's description.

Edit: Accidentally said we were merging Astroturfing with Forum Speak. Had a brain fart; we're not doing that because Astroturfing is too healthy to get rid of it like that.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Nov 10th 2022 at 12:01:16 PM

I took care of the things that were already voted on. So this probably won't take long if we waive the Three-Day Rule.