Indexes/Indices and Where They Go On The Wiki

During my cleanup for Acceptable Targets, I asked in an ATT if it was allowed to link indices in Useful Notes/, Analysis/, and Playing With.

Amonimus said this

Meanwhile, Zuxtron said this

GastonRabbit then told me that there was uncertainty regarding where indices can be linked to. What Goes Where on the Wiki doesn't even mention "index" anywhere, the closest we have is the index entry on Not a Trope.

Gaston told me to make a wiki thread. Gonna page all three of them to this discussion.

Paging ~Amonimus ~GastonRabbit ~Zuxtron

I'll say it again. If an example on a Playing With page says something like:

• Justified: Bob does this trope because he thinks the victim is an Acceptable Target.

This makes it look like Acceptable Target is a real trope and not just an index.

I've been wondering about this myself. Yuri Genre is an index, but is listed on many, many work pages. I intentionally don't list it on work pages, because of a lack of clarity.

Yeah, indexes are not supposed to be used as though they're tropes (the exception is obviously supertropes that contain indexes).

It was previously mentioned that index wicks are fine in trope descriptions, and while I'm not sure where that was decided or where it's stated, I suppose that's fine.

As for where not to link to them, in addition to what was said about not linking to them on Playing With pages, when it comes to links on parts of the wiki other than trope descriptions, I don't think they should be linked to anywhere else on the wiki except when the text the wick is in is referring to the page's status as an index (such as on maintenance-related Administrivia pages), since I feel that other types of wicks would end up giving the impression that the pages are tropes. This would mean it wouldn't generally be acceptable (if at all) to link to them on Useful Notes pages.

Edit: Also, I just remembered (and confirmed by checking the history) that the text about indexes on Administrivia.Not A Trope was added by me in March of this year after discussion in the Outdated Administrivia Pages thread (Amonimus pointed out its absence and wingedcatgirl was the one who actually wrote the text) because that page also neglected to mention indexes, similarly to how Administrivia.What Goes Where On The Wiki still doesn't mention them.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 10th 2023 at 6:45:02 AM

Guess I was ahead of the curb when I mentioned it in the "Not A Trope" notifier

Yuri Genre has the "Trope" page type. Genres are considered a special type of trope, which usually shouldn't be listed in the actual trope list but simply mentioned in the description. However, they're still tropes, so it's okay to link to link to them in order to provide more context to another example.

I got the idea just now of handling the consensus-building process in this thread (once it's time for that) like the threads regarding gendered redirects and Laconic subpages, by voting on where index wicks can and can't be listed via a multiple-choice crowner that evaluates the various parts of the wiki separately from each other, because that voting format has been shown to work in the past and I feel it would be appropriate here.

We'd still need to decide what to include on such a crowner; I'm just mentioning the idea for how to handle this after we've hashed this out, instead of saying we should do that as soon as possible (because I think it can wait). I'm just spitballing for how to handle the voting part after we've decided what to vote on, so I assure everyone I'm not suggesting we jump to that part as soon as possible; I do think we should take our time with this discussion.

Edit: Perhaps we could look at what What Goes Where on the Wiki says where wicks for other types pages can or can't go and decide whether any of those rules would work for indexes as well (going by the individual rules, not copying the entirety of the rules for a different type of page).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 10th 2023 at 9:59:43 AM

Some indexes double as tropes. Others don't. That's the issue, sometimes linking is appropriate.

Could you give examples of such indices that double as tropes?

Yuri Genre and Schoolgirl Series to use two examples

Impeded Communication and Poor Communication Kills are two more.

That's why I specified that supertropes and similar are different from normal "indexes".

The ones you both mentioned are under the “Trope” Page Type. So yeah, it’s fine to link those.

Just for the record, Disambiguation pages are specifically shouldn't be linked anywhere. Indexes aren't disambiguation with a description, so I don't think the same logic should apply.

Indexes are fine to be linked if the text specifically addresses the wick as an index (a list containing multiple tropes and not a concept that is covered by multiple tropes). It just can't be used as a trope.

Genres have been quite a bother recently and they may need a distinct classification from indexes because a list of works doesn't work quite the same as a list of tropes.

It's also difficult to distinguish an index and a trope that "does indexing" because it's only visible in the pagetype and anyone can change it.

amathieu13 actually wished for a feature like this but it was declined.

Missed some of this discussion because I was asleep, but I suggested making this thread because of the lack of a clear policy regarding linking to indexes that aren't tropes. There was no uncertainty about tropes whose pages double as indexes (whose pages would be set to trope with indexing turned on, if the page type is set up correctly) since they can be linked to the same way as any other trope; this thread is because of uncertainty surrounding indexes that aren't tropes (which would simply have their page type set to index if it's set correctly).

To expand upon what was mentioned in the opening post, the specific index that started this discussion was Acceptable Targets, which was stripped of its trope status by TRS and converted into an index that doesn't double as a trope, since the dewicking project for its TRS thread ran into problems deciding which wicks to remove and which ones to keep.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 11th 2023 at 6:40:09 AM

Edited by AudioSpeaks2 on Aug 12th 2023 at 12:16:11 AM

Bump 1

I just don't really know what to add. This feels very cut and dry to me. Indexes that have no trope component should not be used as tropes. Tropes that include indexes are not the same thing and can be ignored as part of this discussion.

So what about Useful Notes pages?

I don't see why they would be on UN pages unless it's to direct people to a page they might be looking for.

I've seen it used sometimes in paragraphs

From UsefulNotes.Feminism

...Keep in mind, Acceptable Targets was only recently made an index. So yeah, there's some leftovers. Those should be removed.

I might hook a multiple-choice crowner soon to decide where wicks can and can't go, using existing entries on What Goes Where on the Wiki as a base.

I was thinking these could be our choices:

• Allow linking in trope descriptions. (Not mutually exclusive with allowing references to indexes as indexes.)
• Allow linking when the index is referred to as an index (including, but not limited to, when referencing what's listed on an index). (Not mutually exclusive with allowing links in trope descriptions.)
• Don't allow linking except on indexes, such as ones that list sub-indexes and/or other types of related indexes (including trope pages that do indexing). (Mutually exclusive with all other options.)

Do these options sound fine, and should any options be added or removed? The first option was previously mentioned as acceptable, but this would solidify whether it is or isn't. In addition, after the crowner is done, What Goes Where on the Wiki will have an entry for indexes made based on what we decide the criteria are (with the potential criteria being subject to change based on feedback to the draft in this post).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 13th 2023 at 12:41:07 PM