TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Ask The Tropers

Go To

Have a question about how the TVTropes wiki works? No one knows this community better than the people in it, so ask away! Ask the Tropers is the page you come to when you have a question burning in your brain and the support pages didn't help. It's not for everything, though. For a list of all the resources for your questions, click here. You can also go to this Directory thread for ongoing cleanup projects.

Ask the Tropers:

Trope Related Question:

Make Private (For security bugs or stuff only for moderators)

shadowblack Since: Jun, 2010
2021-09-06 02:21:10

Deepnds on context. There Is No Such Thing as Notability applies to works, but there could be things that are notable under certain circumstances, at least in theory.

GnomeTitan Since: Aug, 2013
2021-09-06 04:25:15

There Is No Such Thing as Notability is a misunderstood concept. On this wiki (unlike many other wikis), it means that there is no requirement that a work must be "notable" for us to trope it. That's all.

It does not mean that the concept of notability doesn't exist, just that it doesn't apply to whether we can trope something or not.

It also doesn't mean that we can't mention that something is notable.

That said, the usage of the word "notable" often is word cruft. Perhaps most of the usage falls into that category - you could argue that if an example wasn't notable, you wouldn't be mentioning it.

It can also be gushing (calling a work notable because you like it and want to plug it).

But those things will have to be decided on a case-by-case basis. There's no site-wide ban on the word "notable" itself and we're not trying to deny that the concept exists.

Edited by GnomeTitan
StFan Since: Jan, 2001
2021-09-06 05:13:26

A common case I've seen of the word "notable" is when a work has frequent examples of a trope, and listing them all would require a lengthy and exhausting process, so instead one or two "notable" examples are mentioned, implying they are the most typical or outstanding occurrences but that plenty other can be found.

GnomeTitan Since: Aug, 2013
2021-09-06 06:29:37

One way of looking at it is that if "notable" is being used a synonym for "well-known" or "typical", it's probably OK, but all these words can be word cruft if used indiscriminately.

On the other hand, if "notable" is used to mean "something important enough to be worth noticing", implying that other things aren't, then we're in No Such Thing as Notability territory. The thing we don't want here is the idea that some works or creators or examples aren't "notable" enough to be troped.

Edited by GnomeTitan
Top