Grouping examples by timeframe

I'm working on launching Chaste Separating Sword and I find myself wanting to separate the "classic" or "non-modern" examples from the "modern" ones. It's a mostly Forgotten Trope — or at least a very non-modern one — and so the "modern" examples don't merely feel like someone using a trope, but someone referencing the older examples.

This is a thought I've had before, when working with other non-modern tropes like Mal Mariée or Courtly Love. I asked about this once before, and then the verdict was "that's not how things are done (but maybe this idea is worth more discussion)".

I want to stress that I'm not suggesting this be the case for all pages, just for a subset of pages where people decide it's valuable.

The two basic ways this could be done:

1. Order examples chronologically rather than alphabetically.
   1. Pitfall: The date of origin for very old works is often hazy.
2. Create a separate category for the old works, and alphabetize like normal within that.
   1. Pitfall: This requires creating a sharp dividing line between what's "old" and what's "modern". (Pre-1700, per the Classic Literature page?)

Right now, old works are virtually always grouped under Literature because they survive in written form. However, often that wasn't their original medium. Often they're Narrative Poems, or legends, or folk stories that got written down. I think there is an argument to be made that they're of a meaningfully different medium than modern literature.

Edited by Eievie on Feb 26th 2024 at 10:28:55 AM

I mean, there are quite a number of "old works" that are classified under Mythology or Theatre; I'd argue most examples of the latter two categories are filed under the former, and conversely, modern-day narrative poems would still be filed under Literature.

I think I now understand why Fairy Tales get their own media categories sometimes.

Art Museum Curator and frequent helper of the Web Original deprecation project

FYI your link to the prior discussion doesn't go anywhere.

I agree that the media categories already do some "older work" lumping.

In addition, from a "how much can we expect the general troping population to follow these rules and keep everything in order" perspective, I like that alphabetization is "preferred-not-even-fully-required" because it doesn't put the onus on the editor to do more research than necessary. Sure, someone adding an originally written, well-researched example probably knows when the work was made. But someone who is just there to clean up a page, crosswick, TRS wick clean, or the like should not be required to look up the original work to do those things.

I don't think there's any point to this kind of Soft Split. There's usually not much point to them in general, frankly.

It's the origin.

A lot of fairy tales and folk tales didn't start out written, but spoken. They were just written down for historical keeping. But the truth is they came into development centuries before humanity even learned to write on material.

Art Museum Curator and frequent helper of the Web Original deprecation project

We can only trope works which we have in some kind of fixed form. We cannot trope an oral tale from the stone age, for example. Narrative Poems, Legends, and folktales are all "Literature" for our purposes.

I think it's obvious that chronological ordering would make more sense than alphabetical ordering. It's impossible to enforce or maintain on TV Tropes, though. We sort alphabetically because it's easiest to do and stick to.

A soft split between "old" and modern works seems more feasible. But overall soft splits are discouraged because experience teaches that tropers will misplace many examples (usually by putting new entries in the first category even if they don't belong there). Besides, tropers may eventually discover examples which don't fit cleanly into any of the predefined categories, or else fit into several categories at once. In conclusion, soft splits are not forbidden but they require extra work, and you may ask yourself whether it's worth it.

Edited by LordGro on Feb 24th 2024 at 12:17:32 PM

Let's just say and leave it at that.

Not really. Myth/ exists. As do Religion and Mythology folders.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Mythology is really a genre, not a medium. It's also not invariably ancient.

Let's just say and leave it at that.

My point is, we have means of troping these stories without them being literature.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Well, my point is that everything we know about mythology or folklore comes from some kind of source. It may be a written source or it may be a visual (e.g. paintings or sculpture), but there needs to be something.

I disagree with this. Old epics and folktales differ from modern literature in style and genre, not in medium. If there is a meaningful distinction of medium to be made, then it's the difference between works created for private reading (which is the case for most modern literature) and works created for public recital. The latter category covers ancient epics and folktales, but it also pop song lyrics and modern spoken word poetry. So it's not really an "old versus modern" thing.

Let's just say and leave it at that.

Maybe "medium" isn't the term.

But early and late examples are different from each other in some sense, and acknowledging that timeline expands our understanding of the trope. Is anyone disputing that?

Edited by Eievie on Feb 26th 2024 at 10:29:54 AM

Sure, but "expanding the understanding of a trope" is what the description and the Analysis/ namespace is for, not necessarily the examples list. If you would like to write Analysis.Chaste Separating Sword comparing older and newer examples that would be fair game.

I agree. You might include mention of more modern versions, such as the division pillow (turned up in Storm Chasers of all places) or the colonial New England practice of sticking a board between unrelated opposite-sex bedmates.

Does anyone foresee this causing problems or something? I'm just struggling to see what the issue is. It's not completely standardized with other pages, but pages already differ in lots of ways, so I'm not getting why that's an issue.

I already outlined how I think this will make editing more difficult in post 4.

It puts undue pressure on tropers for little gain. People should not have to know more than a work's title and media type to put an example on the page. Instead of sorting, for this trope, couldn't you just say in each example's writeup when it came out and readers will have a general idea of how it was used at different times?

Edited by Tabs on Mar 3rd 2024 at 10:56:09 AM