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Currently Could Say It, But..., but the same issue arises on.... well, every other page I visit that has the damn things.
I serve at the pleasure of President Pritchart.On a personal level, I loathe them as well.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I'd say it's more of a case-by-case basis. There are pages whose subjects and viability for self-demonstration allows them. In others they do seem forced.
Also, you'll need a better reason than "I don't like them" to suggest a wiki-wide ban of them.
135 -> 180 -> 273 -> 191 -> 188 -> 230 -> 300 -> 311Fine. They're hard to read, utterly unnecessary, too complicated for their own good, not fun, and violate Clear Concise And Witty on about ten different levels that I can think of offhand.
Happy now?
And no, I haven't found a single page with them where the same problems don't arise. They seem to have a sliding scale from "annoying" to "so fucking annoying I want to shoot them".
I serve at the pleasure of President Pritchart.I don't use compact folders so I never saw that before and I actually sort of like creative folder names, but I think the compact folders issue is a pretty good reason to get rid of them.
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I agree with OP. It's not simply a matter of "not liking them", it's the fact that they're harder to parse and they don't really add any value. Ordinarily you can just scan for the "Live-Action TV" folder or the "Film—Live-Action" folder, but folder names like "I want to tell you that this is the Fan Works folder, but I can't, so I won't" and "Non-animated episodic series produced for television networks (Live Action TV)" are unintuitive, unnecessary, funny for about 76 femtoseconds, and mildly frustrating. The downsides outweigh any advantage to having them.
Forced or not, if you're going to have a Self-Demonstrating Article, have a Self-Demonstrating Article, but it should be kept out of the functional parts of the article, such as navigation.
Uh... that's still a matter of not liking them. I don't find them very obtrusive, even when working with a small screen. And Fast Eddie's let self-demonstrating on the grounds that we're not a super-formal wiki.
Fine, why should the fact that you like them mean the rest of us have to be constantly annoyed? Bit selfish, don't you think?
It's not about 'not liking them' (though I don't); it's about the fact that they make the wiki less fun, harder to use, and serve absolutely no purpose other than amusing a few select people while pissing off everybody else. Solip Schism has the right of it.
I serve at the pleasure of President Pritchart.We let Self-Demonstrating have its own namespace because, well, it's obtrusive and annoying as hell. This seems to be just the same as potholed trope names, which messes with alphabetizing and makes things tougher to read.
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.Sorry, three people.
Move them to Self-Demonstrating, then? Or start a vote in Trope Repair Shop?
Personally, I consider ctrl+f my savior and friend when it comes to finding folder.
Edited by MauiWowie^ I'm not positive, but I don't believe all of them actually include the standard name of the folder, so CTRL+F might not always work. Besides which, it's still extra effort that wouldn't be necessary if the folders were standardized.
^^^^^ I fail to see how "harder to parse", "don't really add any value", "unintuitive", "funny for about 76 femtoseconds", and "mildly frustrating" are useless complaints that equate to "not liking them".
Whether or not you agree with the complaints, they are valid and warrant some consideration. (In other words, "harder to parse" is not a personal aesthetic, it's a fact that they take longer to read.) If they add no real value other than a split-second's worth of amusement before they become old and trite, and they make the lists harder to parse, why bother with them?
I'll say again: They add no significant value to anything, and have several notable drawbacks that outweigh whatever positive effect their presence gives any given page.
[sits down, shuts up, and lets SolipSchism do the talking]
I serve at the pleasure of President Pritchart.^^^^ Larkmarn also makes a good point about Pot Holed trope names, it's a similar problem.
^ No need for that, your opinion is as valid as anyone else's. As long as we don't start a Flame War there should be no problem.
^^^ That seems a fine compromise. I could personally give two craps about the formatting of what goes in the nonstandard namespaces, since I know they're not subject to the same guidelines and rules as the Main namespace. It's one thing for the Main namespace to be breezy and casual and silly and tongue-in-cheek, it's quite another for it to be difficult and obnoxious. Although after peeking at the forum, I think this kind of initiative would be more appropriate in Short Term or Long Term Projects. It will probably take some time to hunt them all down.
Does everyone have the same sense of humor? Does something that one guy finds unamusing suddenly become unamusing for the rest of a wiki used by thousands of other people that routinely relies on community feedback? Is a sentence that much harder and longer to parse than a word or two? Is Ctrl+f or Command+f or a similar command not working?
Edited by MauiWowie^^ I can pretty much copy and paste the entire "Joke Fulfillment Links" paragraph of the page on Sinkhole, and change a few words, to explain exactly why the "humor" aspect is not helpful:
"Please consider that for tropers or readers who have been frequenting the wiki for even a few days, there is nothing remotely original or new about [changing the display names of otherwise standardized navigational tools for the sake of being Self-Demonstrating]. It has been done to death. It has become repetitive and predictable, and repetitiveness and predictability kill humour."
It is not a running gag. It was mildly clever the first time anyone ever did it, and never again afterward. It is not funny anymore. It is certainly not helpful. It's like changing Facebook's language settings to "Pirate". Sure, it's amusing for a little while, but then it just makes it harder to figure out what each button actually does. (Except, maybe, for a few people who are just easily amused.)
^^^ Also, re: your question about it being harder to parse: Yes. I wouldn't have said it otherwise.
Your brain becomes accustomed to patterns and you learn to think in a kind of shorthand that allows you to do minor subtasks without thinking. When I look at a new works page I've never seen before, I barely have to think about the folder buttons because they've become second nature, and I can home in on exactly the one I need because they're all the same.
With long, unwieldy, or really any nonstandard naming scheme, it forces me to think consciously about the finer details of what I'm doing, which are normally on "autopilot", and slows me down.
That may seem like a minor concern, and true enough, removing them is not going to save any starving children. But I was under the impression that computer users don't typically defend features/functions that make tasks take more time/effort with no added value, even if it's just a small amount of extra time/effort.
One more time, say it with me kids: It's pointless, serves no purpose, and has negative traits that (I have yet to see anyone actually contest this) outweigh any positive value.
And since you insist on phrasing your counterpoints as questions, here's a question for you:
Should a problematic feature or function, even one that is only mildly problematic, be retained just because it has some humor value? Incidentally, literally no one but you has yet championed their humor value.
I have seen a few that work (Gratuitous Japanese, for example, has the folder titles in Japanese with the English right there with them), but they are by far the exception rather than the rule.
Writing a post-post apocalypse LitRPG on RR. Also fanfic stuff.Two more cents: I don't like them either. "Some people do" isn't a good argument. Some people liked Troper Tales.
I think if Self-Demonstrating articles are off the Main namespace, Self-Demonstrating folder names should be too.
Becky: Who are you? The Mysterious Stranger: An angel. Huck: What's your name? The Mysterious Stranger: Satan.Personally, I find them hilarious. And they're in the same order as all the other example folders on the site are too, so it's not that hard to figure out what folder it is. And they usually have the folder name in there anyway.
If anything, I'd say the only problem with Could Say It, But... is that it's not in the Self Demonstrating namespace and should be moved. And have a normal entry made for it.
^^ I agree.
Edited by Fighteer "It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I agree that the folders on Gratuitous Japanese work really well, for the simple reason that you don't have to read the characters - you just shift your eyes to the right a little bit. The additional text isn't interfering with your ability to find the folder name at all. But that's the only page I can think of where it works.
I serve at the pleasure of President Pritchart.I'd just like to chime in for the "I don't like them" side. I don't think I've ever read a self-demonstrating anything on this site that I didn't feel beat the joke into the ground, and certainly folder names are particularly bad about that because there's going to be like a dozen of them every time.
Though ObsidianFire does have a point that when they're in the same order as normal folders (which is usually the case), it really shouldn't be that confusing.
^^The folders on Tyop on the Cover aren't too bad either, but anything more than that is probably too much.
I'm still failing to see how taking a few more seconds to read something is inherently negative, or how it's problematic. It's a few more words, a very simple sentence, at best, and it's not like it's some sort of esoteric, underground book that requires you to have attained a doctorate in literary criticism to decipher.
This wiki isn't a hardcore technical site, either, and not everyone reads wikis that same way you do. Taking a second to read something hasn't killed anyone. (Then again, I usually have folders open by default, anyway, it isn't going to kill me if I read something that's not in my preferred genre.)
If it's deeply, truly killing you inside that you don't want to read a sentence, ask Trope Repair Shop.
Edited by MauiWowieI think the unusual folder names need to be addressed. One times out of ten they're funny and add value to the article. The rest, they're shoehorned, tedious and not funny.
If current guidelines are providing a loophole and can't be parsed to cover it, then there needs to be a guideline about it.
I do not support getting rid of odd folder names completely. I do support using them sensibly.
Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry PratchettHow about someone opening a thread in Wiki Talk for further discussion? I've had some further thoughts (like putting regular title first, than funny title), and I think this really is something that should be thoroughly explored, particularly since it will probably wind up in a cleanup thread at some point.
Edited by Candi Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry Pratchett

Okay. This might just be me being a grouch so please don't jump down my throat, but... self-demonstrating folder titles. Do they have to be a thing? Because if you're looking for one particular folder, it can get really annoying to actually have to read them instead of just skimming until you find the one you want.