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I made a thread for the podcasts here
but it didn't get any attention.
Anyways, I don't see the utility of these pages. They aren't recapping anything besides the topics that were discussed in the episode. There's no summary for these episodes or tropes
Macron's notesOK, since it seems like both mods and non-mods agree that these pages are a problem (and I noticed the recap list has a "work in progress" label, which is never a good sign for aw ork page), I'm in the process of cutting them. I'll leave the list of recaps on the main page until they've all been cut.
I got a rock for Halloween.On the Rocks appears to be a game review series and may be of questionable tropability. On the Tropes is in effect Books on Trope, so maybe its description part can be left or sandboxed until that discussion
decides what to do with it.
^I cut the recaps for On the Rocks, but I left the rest of the page. There weren't as many as with On the Tropes, so it was easier. I'm currently taking a break from cutting the On the Tropes recaps, but I fully intend to get it if another mod doesn't beat me to it.
Cutting Podcast.On The Rocks and Podcast.On The Tropes entirely is out of the question because they're listed on the Home Page.
Edited by GastonRabbit I got a rock for Halloween.I wish I had been around to explain what was going on when this was being discussed.
First of all, hi, I'm the madman who created all those pages. I promise that it made sense to me at the time...
The standard format for a On the Tropes episode is they introduce a trope the episode is about, talk about the trope for a bit, then all give their favorite 5 examples of the trope and then sometimes have a game at the end. If it's a work instead of a trope, it's a similar format, except they give their favorite 5 tropes from that work.
Since it was the a promoted podcast for the site, and they were talking a lot about not just tropes genrally, but specifically the tropes as defined and names on the wiki, that it would be great to have recap pages for the episodes so there was an easy way to link to the tropes and works they were discussing. Initially I just included the things from the top 5. They would go around and all give their #5 pick, and then their #4 pick, etc, so formatting it as a table felt like the easiest way to follow along with that.
Where I probably strayed into madness though was when they would mention other tropes and works in their discussion, but I thought people listening might appriciate being able to see and link to them on the site, especially if it was lesser known or harder to find. I had to do some detective work to track fown movies they talked about that were super interesting the discussion they had about it, but the title was hard to make out on the recording.
Well, my original intent was to make a list of things they mentioned prominently, but when you're trying to take notes, its hard to know if something is going to be prominently discussed or not when it first came up and it ended up being easier to just make it comprehensive and note everything they mentioned, even in passing. That resulted in a VERY long list though. At first I had it as just a bullet list, but it ended up being so long, I thought formatting that as a table also would make it easier to read.
I kept my notes in a spreadsheet, that actually had a complicated processing page that would take my notes and turn it into the wiki formatting needed to create an entire recap page.
I wasn't aware that it cause problems with reading on mobile, or that it messed up fixing redlinks (I thought when a redlink was removed it was replaced with the text wthout the link, so I'm not sure why it would leave empty cells in the table, but it may have been to do with the syntax for the table formatting.)
It was a work in progress because as well as keeping up with all the new episodes, I was working my way backwards to finish the old archive of episodes from before I started doing recaps as well.
Then 2020 hit and COVID resulted in some changes to my life that made it harder for me to keep up. It also hit the hosts of the show, because their output got more sporadic and now is on indefinite hiatus it seems.
Given that all the pages have been deleted, the easiest thing would be to just let it lie. However, I still have the massive spreadsheet of notes, and it wouldn't take too much work to change the formatting and recreate the pages in some more agreeable format. Based on the discussion, potential improvements would be:
1 - More context. Anyone who has already listened to the show can follow what the sections are, but seeing the pages through the eyes of people who haven't listened to the show, it's obvious that the recap pages were confusing and obscure and did nothing to encourage anyone to listen to the show. I think just a little bit more explanation in each of the sections would go a long way to makeing it easier to understand.
2 - Formatting. I still feel like the Mentioned list ends up being crazy long as just a bullet list, but if that's preferred, then it would be easy enough to redesign it that way. Similarly the top 5 lists could be reformatted into one numbers list per host rather than a table.
3 - Get rid of Mentions list. Its arguable way too detailed, and the top 5's are the meat of the episodes. That would cut the size of the recaps down so much that they could potentially all just be done on a single page rather than one page per episode.
4 - Get rid of the detailed recaps altogether, just have a list of the episodes and a brief description where needed (wouldn't be much point in saying "Ep 203 - Hate Sink, where the hosts discuss the trope 'Hate Sink'", but not all titles are as self explanatory.)
It seems a shame for so much work to go to waste, and I think if the show were still ongoing, I might campaign for it more. But I think if there is any opposition to any kind of recap for what is now a defunct podcast, then best to just let the whole mad project die a death.
@ GastonRabbit, sorry for all the work I created for you having to go through and cut all those pages. You mentioned in your last post you were taking a break, but as best I can tell the job is done now, otherwise I would have offered to help clean up the mess.
If anyone has any suggestion on how we might include recap information again in a way that would actually ne useful or desirable, let me know. Thanks!
Edited by JonnyDSo... Podcast.On The Tropes is just 1000% a stub and regardless on your thoughts on Books on Trope or whether works that discuss tropes are valid for having a page (as I know some people and mods don't think they are), as-is the page is not an acceptable work page period.
It being linked on the Home Page doesn't make me more forgiving, but considerably less. We have enough problems with peoples' responses to poor work or trope pages with "well, I saw it elsewhere" and this would exacerbate the issue.
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.This thread is from the end of October, so it doesn't need to stay open. And one person disagreeing with a Word of Mod statement isn't sufficient. Start a Short-Term Projects thread if you want to improve these pages.
Edited by GastonRabbit I got a rock for Halloween.

The recap pages for On the Tropes are... weird. They consist of giant tables of what I assume are top-5 style lists of characters fitting a paticular trope that are presumably discussed in that episode. Beneath that table, there is also another giant table (not a trope list) listing what I guess are every other trope and work mentioned in the episode? I have no idea why, and I say 'I guess' and 'I assume' because there is absolutely no context provided on the pages themselves. Example: On The Tropes Ep 203 Hate Sink
Anyone know what's going on with them?
Edited by Orbiting