TO-DO LIST
- Retool Kaiju Works and Vampire Fiction into more tightly defined genre pages through sandboxes (Sandbox.Vampire Fiction and Sandbox.Kaiju Works)
- Retool Mons Series into a more defined genre index, Mons Genre.
- Move contents on Superhero and Superhero Stories onto Superhero Genre, with "Superhero" being retooled as a Definition-Only page about the character archetype instead of the genre.
- Retool Mystery Fiction and Supernatural Fiction into proper supertropes.
- Retool Fighting Series and Sports Stories into genre tropes, or something more specific.
Indices Under Discussion
- All indices in "People and Demographics" (except Queer Media): Moves to Useful Notes or a merge with Media Diversity Tropes are options being taken into consideration. Discussion starts here
.
- Queer Media: Should it get streamlined into a proper genre page? Should Queer Romance be merged with it?
- Magical Girl Genre Index: There are concerns of redundancy with Magical Girl. Should it get merged into the latter?
- Mecha Show: Possibly getting retooled into a proper genre page or merged with Mecha Game, but it might be too redundant
with Real Robot Genre or Super Robot Genre.
- The options to cut Sea Stories, Space Stories and School Stories have been rejected in the lastest crowner
. However, some work may still need to be done in these pages. Fleshing them out and retooling them into supertropes for related genre tropes is a possible option
.
- The options to cut Christian Fiction and Military and Warfare Works have been contested
, with claims they are still worth keeping. Should they get narrowed and retooled into proper genre pages?
- The crowner has approved redirecting Video Game Stories... but there has been no agreement on which suitable page to redirect to. Candidates are Video Game Tropes, Video Game Culture and Fictional Video Game, with the possibility of retooling the index through TLP being also brought under discussion
.
- Books on Trope: A new Tropology/ namespace is being discussed for this page (as well as Sorting Algorithm of Tropes and other such pages) elsewhere. The index may get linked in the floatbox in Metafiction Demanded This Index for the time being.
- And last but not least Works by Subject as a whole: After clean-up is done, is it worth keeping the index around?
In case Works by Subject gets cut, each section may get merged
with different indices (e.g. "Stock Characters" with Stock Characters and/or Genres, "Settings" with Settings and "Themes" Queer Media with Genres, with the other sections being addressed in pending discussions).
Indices not discussed: Biker Media, Conspiracy Thriller, Criminal Procedural, Detective Drama, Gangster Fiction, Government Procedural, Law Procedural, Police Procedural and Spy Fiction. Either there's nothing to do with these indices, or they may need some further discussion.
- Samurai Stories: Determined to be redundant with Jidaigeki, Bushido Index, Samurai, Western Samurai, Everything's Better with Samurai, and Samurai Cowboy. Was cut.
- Shark Stories: Determined to be redundant with Threatening Shark. Was redirected to Sea Stories.
- Bovine Fiction, Bug Works, Canine Fiction, Elephantine Fiction, Equine Fiction and Feline Fiction: Cut.
- Dinosaur Media: Merged with Caveman Media with a new Settings index (under Works Set in Prehistory) being created.
- Alien Works, Angel Works, Deity Fiction, Demon Works, Dragon Works, Elf Works, Fairy Fiction, Genie Works, Ghost Fiction, Goblin Works, Leprechaun Fiction, Mermaid Media, Monster Media, Mummy Media, Mutant Media, Robot and A.I. Works, Toy Tales, Troll Tales, Unicorn Works, Werebeast Works, Werewolf Works, Youkai Works and Zombie Stories: Cut and redirected to relevant tropes and trope indices.
- Dolls: Moved to MediaNotes.Dolls.
- Clown Media, Ninja Fiction, Pirate Stories, Princess Stories, Psychic Stories, and Witch Works: Cut and redirected to relevant tropes and trope indices.
- CrimeAndPunishmentSeries.Detective Drama: Merged into Detective Drama.
- Spy Literature: Merged into SpyFiction.Literature.
- Ancient Rome: Moved to UsefulNotes.Ancient Rome.
- Mars Media: Redirected to UsefulNotes.Mars.
- Crossover Works: Merged with Crossover.
- Ballet: The index marker was moved up to only cover the trope section.
- Works Set in Prehistory, MediaNotes.The French Revolution In Fiction, MediaNotes.The Napoleonic Era In Fiction, Works Set in World War I, Works Set in World War II and WorksSetInWorldWarII.The Holocaust In Media: Moved to Historical Fiction subpages.
- Child Care and Babysitting Stories, Cooking Stories, Immortality Works, Music Stories, Time Travel Tales and Transformation Fiction: Cut and redirected to appropriate tropes and indices.
The index Works by Subject was ostensibly created in order to house existing indices of works with significant commonalities in subject matter and themes. These indices were previously listed on Genres; however, the argument was made that many, such as Queer Media and Asian-American Media, did not actually meet the definition of a Genre.
Since then, as discussed in this Wiki Talk thread
, a number of indexes went through the Trope Launch Pad whose definitions can largely be boiled down to "work prominently includes 'x' eponymous thing in it", which has a couple of problems:
- It contributes to Index Bloat on the wiki, i.e. overly long blocks of indices that could potentially cause the page's indexing to break altogether.
- There is concern that many of these indices are essentially an end run around the Trope Repair Shop's ongoing cleanup of tropes on what was formerly Everything's Better With Indexes (now Garnishing the Story).
Largely prompted by a Troper Critical Mass on the since-discarded TLP for Ursine Fiction
, the thread previously voted to impose a moratorium on new Works About "X" Indexes. We have previously removed Samurai Stories and Shark Storiesnote as redundant to existing tropes, and there is a lot of agreement to do the same to the entire "Animal Fiction" category; however, we have since agreed to create a thread to deal with the entirety of Works by Subject in one swoop.
Options proposed in Wiki Talk:
- Cull redundant or otherwise unnecessary Works by Subject indexes, cutting or merging them into other indexes (as we did with Samurai Stories and Shark Stories)
- Merge Works by Subject into Genres (not mutually exclusive with cleanup of unnecessary indices).
Edited by JustaUsername on Oct 18th 2025 at 7:52:12 PM
Same as it ever was
We'll get there. I do consider it overly broad so as to be useless, but that's a topic for another day.
Any idea with the Main.Robot And AI Works? I am not sure if we should keep the works that involves cyborgs or not since they aren't really robots but organics with cybernetics. I wouldn't mind if we keep them or not though.
Also, page got too big with links so I suggest to separate the big ones into indexes
Hello there! I am just a guy who likes robots and A.I. in fiction! Robot Supremacy.So part of the reason why I listed out
all of the potential merge/redirect targets is because even if people want to spin out new trope/genre pages from these pages, barring maybe Mons Series (which some have argued for keeping as a genre page, but again, see my question
about what purpose that page would fulfill that Mons currently doesn't), most of these pages wouldn't be kept simply because the name is non-indicative of the new idea(s), e.g. if a Zombie Horror page is created, it would likely be named that and not the much broader Zombie Stories that it's being spun out of, meaning the current Zombie Stories page would still need to be cut or merged anyways.
Also, if concrete ideas aren't proposed for us to vote on (saying Vampire Fiction "can be reworked" doesn't say how or into what exactly, for example) and/or sponsors to draft the new pages, I feel like all new page suggestions should either be taken to the Trope Launch Pad to be properly drafted and the scope figured out or yarded.
Edited by amathieu13 on Nov 2nd 2024 at 11:52:31 AM
Mons Series I think has the strongest case to be kept, but that should probably still be accomplished by converting Mons into a genre index. Merge Mons into the page, with its implementation descriptions.
Edited by StarSword on Nov 2nd 2024 at 4:19:13 AM
Trust me, I'm an engineer!A series can have Mons in it without being a Mons Series. For instance Magic Knight Rayearth and the DS version of Chrono Trigger do feature Mons but aren't a part of the Mons Series genre.
Edited by ninjamitsuki2 on Nov 2nd 2024 at 9:51:53 AM
Call me "Heruru Meruru". http://blue-star-above-me.tumblr.com/Some of the works listed on Robot and A.I. Works merely say that some supporting characters are robots. Make of that what you will. No wonder it’s now so long.
Join the Five-Man Band cleanup project!These should probably be limited to settings that have something to say about artificial personhood.
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupSince I want to keep all the links added, I suggest we add supportive too in the description of the page and then make indexes for each medias that is too large for one page.
That way we keep the all links and solve the too-big problem.
Hello there! I am just a guy who likes robots and A.I. in fiction! Robot Supremacy.A few posts here makes me think casual readers really want "works featuring X" lists, when the stress of the thread I take is that these should be semi-genres.
TroperWall / WikiMagic CleanupI almost feel like the Works by Subject indexes could help for people who want to read about fictional depictions of the things in question and the history of the ideas, but we do still have the relevant tropes. If Robot and A.I. Works and Alien Works do get cut, there’ll still be the Robot Roll Call and Alien Tropes, after all.
Join the Five-Man Band cleanup project!The difference is that those are lists of tropes and not lists of works, which is what people have voiced to be looking for. For trope pages, Artificial Intelligence could probably substitute Robot and A.I. Works, but I'm not sure what would be "this character is an alien".
The problem is that we've decided we can't have simple "works featuring X" lists unless X has some clear historical/theme significance that's common between works.
TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup![]()
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Yeah, I feel like we're relitigating the conversation that was had extensively, over the course of two years, in the other thread. If you didn't take part in that convo and haven't given it a read before (no judgment, just trying to make sure everyone's on the same page), extremely recommend doing so now because we've been over these points before (on this point specifically, here
and here
).
Oh no, my comment was directed to the "casual readers" you brought up in your post. I was agreeing with your assessment and adding on
Edited by amathieu13 on Nov 3rd 2024 at 1:42:05 AM
Thanks for the links for reference, but I'm not defending the indexes if that was the impression.
I stickied the OP the other night because that question keeps recurring. The decision's basically been made.
Getting back to the fictional beings section, I've been trying to prepare the next crowner for the last couple of days. I know we talked about:
- possibly reworking instead of redirecting Mons Series
- replacing Kaiju Works with a "monster movies" or "creature feature" genre page.
- replacing Vampire Fiction with more tightly-defined subgenre pages such as Vampire Romance.
- move Dolls to Media Notes.
Were any others exceptions to the "redirect to corresponding Our Monsters Are Different and be done with it" proposal?
Good catch, thanks.
Edited by StarSword on Nov 3rd 2024 at 9:59:57 AM
Trust me, I'm an engineer!Moving Dolls to MediaNotes.Dolls (and likely retaining the examples, as other Media Notes pages have examples)
ETA: Should it be Media Notes or Useful Notes? It's not exactly a media, more of a topic being explained.
Edited by Nethilia on Nov 3rd 2024 at 7:07:39 AM
I focus on obscure 1990s or graphic Middle Grade Literature novels and dolls. (She or zie, not they.)In favor of keeping LGBT Representation in Media because despite what some people are saying, not everything there can be subsumed into Queer Media. Sometimes people (yes, including queer people) want to consume media with queer people that's not primarily about them being queer. And lists of that are pretty hard to find, you'd probably have to look for each medium individually.
Likewise in favor of keeping the racial and ethnic minority indices, though maybe Arab-Americans in Media and Asian-American Media can be broadened to cover works by and about those diasporas in general, not just in the US.
The representation pages are not the current topic of discussion (though they will be eventually). Again, there's a lot of indices to get through so to avoid a disjointed and confusing convo, we're currently going by subtopic, and the current subtopic is non human characters
In general, I'm opposed to removing many of these on personal preference for website ease of use. On the editor side, it's much easier to index a list of titles without having to add [/index][index] boxes around any bullet point that has a redlink but other links on the same line (whether author, parent work, or trope). On the reader side, reading an index to find a work with certain topics is much faster and easier to use than a trope page, which are often out of order and full of Word Cruft.
Crown Description:
Several indexes contained within the Works By Subject index have been identified as having issues, with a key one being their lack of purpose as indexes. This crowner will determine what to do with several of the items on this index. Discussion starting here
