Example guidelines for Title Tropes

I'm bringing this discussion from this Trope Talk thread about the Tropeworthiness and Narrative Significance of Some Title Tropes.

In that thread, we reached the conclusion that some Title Tropes only have as relevant context the work's title itself. For example, Excited Show Title is just a way to format a trope. And Character Title only tells you the work is named after one of the work's characters. Everything else you can add is really just word cruft. As a consequence, you have example lists that look like zero-context examples. They are not, however, as you don't need anything else to understand why this trope applies to this work.

You can find what title tropes have this problem in the second folder of this sandbox: Sandbox.Title Tropes.

So, it was pointed out that this is a matter of wiki policies (aka, our example context guidelines), and not about trope-worthiness. The question is whether we should make the aforementioned Title Tropes an exception to the current rules. Or, more generally, how these tropes should be handled.

Edited by Asterlix on Feb 22nd 2023 at 11:22:55 AM

IDK. As I just said on the other thread, I've always thought that a lot of these "tropes" should really just be indices, since the information is relevant but not technically tropeworthy. Coming up with "example writing guidelines" is hard since there's no one-size-fits-all policy we can enact if the tropes themselves lack consistent meaning.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 22nd 2023 at 11:29:05 AM

Yes, I know. Hence, this thread. Both of us agree on the relevant context part, but let's hear other tropers' opinions about this topic in regards, specifically, to example-handling and not trope-worthiness. I think separating both discussions it's for the better.

Well, example-handing and context issues go hand-in-hand, which is the problem. You can't really have metrics for one if there's no way to handle the other. But I'll see what others think.

Oh, this is finally a thread, great!

Making un-tropeworthy Title Tropes example-less indexes is a good idea, IMO.

If anyone wants to see the type of "zero-context" examples we're talking about for anyone not keeping up with the other thread, check out my Excited Wick Title wick check. Long Title Wick Check, meanwhile, has interesting findings and might be salvaged as a trope because it's seeing a high "this trend is being parodied/exaggerated for laughs now" examples.