Scope of laconics

If you were talking just about tropes, then see the second paragraph in the previous response: "I don't think that's necessary or rather, that's the entire point of putting them in the "Main" namespace. The namespace is telling you that this page should be the primary source of informaiton regarding a trope."

this too. We have had countless discussions in TRS threads about misuse centered on the fact that tropers aren't reading the entirety of the trope description and are merely relying on the name, the laconic, or just the first couple of sentences (and ignoring any nuance and conditionals later on in the description). Telling tropers to read more is moot since it's not something we can control.

Edited by amathieu13 on Dec 21st 2022 at 2:44:56 PM

I wasn't talking about rules in particular.

EDIT: Adding an arrow.

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Dec 21st 2022 at 11:41:52 AM

"Then Administrivia pages need to reenforce the idea better"? Unless you mean a different idea.

As in, make it clearer.

Regarding "proof of harm", we frequently get people who use a trope's laconic and are told that they are wrong. "Trope laconics are frequently inaccurate" has been a problem for longer than I have been here.

That's on trope laconics, mind you. Dunno about work, UN, JFF etc. laconics.

Can I please have an example? I just would like to see one please.

Random, you frequent the laconic thread. You must have seen this before.

The accuracy of laconics has been an issue for a long time: [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] That's both examples of bad laconics and of people noting their inaccuracy. You can find a lot more of either by putting "laconics""wrong" into the site search.

It's a frequent issue on the Is This An Example thread, where less experienced tropers rely on laconics instead of trope descriptions when writing examples.

And possibly many of the "Misuse:" TRS threads.

Edited by Amonimus on Dec 22nd 2022 at 12:37:22 PM

(x4) Most are just bringing up Laconics that need to be improved, like X Meets Y ones (e.g. the previous version of Laconic.Brimstone Angels) or Recycled In Space ones (like several older versions of Laconic.Candy Crush Saga).

I find it noteworthy that I semi-frequently visit TRS now. And it seems like names cause more misuse (EDIT: trope misuse in case that already wasn't clear) than Laconics, with Absolute Cleavage (now known as Navel-Deep Neckline) being the first that comes to mind.

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Dec 22nd 2022 at 2:50:13 AM

...Yes. And bad laconics need to be improved. Just because work laconics are very often horrible (the reason why I don't think they should have them), that doesn't mean trope laconics are to be blindly trusted. So, so often you'll hear someone saying "I thought this example counted because the laconic said it did".

Also, you yourself have on many occasions tried to improve trope laconics and gotten into minor conflicts with people over them. That's proof enough that trope laconics are easy to misuse, and if they're not caught in time, yeah, people believe them blindly.

Nobody reads descriptions. They just don't. Laconics are the first line of defense against misuse as a result, so when they're wrong, it's bad.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 22nd 2022 at 4:43:25 AM

I never said work laconics are to be trusted blindly, I was just bringing up two of them as examples of something else. EDIT: And those conflicts are more so due to people clearly not reading the full pages.

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Dec 22nd 2022 at 1:49:42 AM

All you've really done is proven there that the laconic namespace suffers chronic misuse and issues no matter what it's attached to.

Those weren't misused, they were just poorly done.

How would you define misuse, then?

In cases like this (EDIT: namely, the sense you're using it in), something incorrectly used.

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Dec 22nd 2022 at 2:31:57 AM

And these weren't "incorrectly used", they were just bad.

I'm pretty confident in saying that if a laconic can't do the basic task of providing a concise but clear summary of what the page is about, then it was incorrectly used. Fan Myopia, definition-obscuring humor, incorrect trope readings, politically charged entries, etc... All of it is what I'd consider "incorrect use" because it's not what the namespace is for.

Anyway, the point we were trying to make is that trope laconics have a serious reliability problem, this is an objective and provable fact, and it makes it hard to say that laconics are ever really useful or well-written... especially when they're for things far more complicated than your average trope.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 22nd 2022 at 5:00:35 AM

Many of work laconic either contain in-context jokes or are X Meets Y / Recycled In Space. This year we've tracked and rewitten a lot of them. I assume it's leftovers from site's early days when ZCE were not strictly considered and orientation was more on humor.

(x3) Exactly; for the record, I was bringing them up as examples of Laconics that did not boil down to someone misunderstanding what something is about, they were just poorly written.

Misusing the Laconic namespace would be more akin to using a "Laconic." page as a "Quotes." one.

Those were just examples of people bringing Laconics that needed to be improved.

You seem to be fixating on the phrase "misuse of laconics" and ignoring the actual point of discussion.

The point being argued from the convo's start is that laconics are often written in such a reductive fashion that they have misled tropers in the past to misuse tropes. That's what WarJay said[1]^note "tricking people into spreading misuse", that's what I said[2]^note  "I've done wick cleaning for tropes in which part of the source of the misuse seemed to be coming from misleading laconics", something that Amonimus[3] and wingedcat[4] mentioned when defending laconics^note  "I understand they sometimes miss details that are actually important for tropes, but I'm more inclined to blame individual tropers and not the concept." and "Laconics for tropes are obviously useful, they just need more attention to ensure they remain useful, without being misleading and/or filled with asides about minor details.", etc. This is what is meant by "harmful" because it has the effect of leading to trope misuse and Trope Decay.

Whether or not you think that's a big enough issue for us to get rid of the entire namespace / reduce its use is entirely up to you. There are clearly many who also agree that clean up and management are the better option. But that's what people have meant this entire time, so I'm not sure where this other interpretation of "misusing the laconic space for non-summaries" is coming from since I don't think anyone has brought that up and it doesn't change the fact that poorly written laconics have had an impact on trope useage and quality on the site several times before as Septimus Heap has provided clear examples of [5].

Improving and monitoring laconics is a possible solution to that issue, but it's one that requires manpower and long-term investment (to check the laconics of all current articles, to clean up those that need to be, and to help those for the tropes of the future of which there are many as the TLP churns out at least 5 new tropes a week, not even mentioning those written for creators and work pages which can be made at any troper's leisure): two things this site is in constant need of across the board. So I don't think it's all that great for us to speak lightly about "clean up" as if it's not a serious investment of time and effort.

Mitigating the issue as much as possible by removing the source is also a possible solution. We can only change individual troper behavior with direct interventions like bans and indirectly with access. Seeing as this issue is much wider than just a few individual tropers and has been for decades now, it's not crazy to look for a wider reaching option. How wide that should be is partially what this thread is meant to discuss.

Edited by amathieu13 on Dec 22nd 2022 at 5:54:13 AM

imho the existing laconic cleanup did and does good effort in fixing them and there are people dedicated to the cause. If the scope is limited to just tropes and works, it would also reduce things to check.

Edited by Amonimus on Dec 22nd 2022 at 1:54:18 PM

I only brought up this "misuse of Laconics" because WarJay brought it up and I can re-read previous posts myself.

It just seems odd to me to hyperfixate on that phrase and apply a new definition to it when War Jay has been pretty clear and consistent with what they've meant by that since their first post and given the context of the convo. But ok, I'll leave that one alone.

And I added the direct quotes along with the links in case you didn't want to read through the entire post, to allow you to find the part relevant to the point I was making easily

right. I have not participated in laconic clean up so I can't say anything about it, but limiting the number of laconics they'd have to look at by limiting what pages can even have laconics would certainly help with managing them.

Edited by amathieu13 on Dec 22nd 2022 at 6:02:47 AM