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)

WarJay77 (Troper Knight)
2020-04-20 15:53:56

Those are pretty bad, yeah. They're rarely helpful and not that funny either, so they don't even work as a gag. At the thread we often change those to something more informative.

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
GastonRabbit MOD (General of TV Troops)
2020-04-20 16:01:12

I think they're bad, since they're useless to someone who isn't familiar with the work being referenced, so it fails the Clear part of Clear, Concise, Witty (though I don't think they're particularly witty, either).

I feel like this stuff is better suited to X Meets Y instead of Laconics.

Edited by GastonRabbit You can't just say "perchance".
GrigorII Since: Aug, 2011
2020-04-20 18:39:50

I think it would be fine if we limit to references to works that everyone and his mother knows, even if not following the work. Things like Superman, Batman, Star Wars, James Bond, Terminator, etc.

For example, if a laconic of Moon Knight described him as "Batman, but white and in Marvel Comics" I wouldn't have a problem with it, because everybody knows Batman (just an example, the current laconic is not that one). "Zero Hour" and "Airplane" are simply not at that level.

Ultimate Secret Wars
WarJay77 (Troper Knight)
2020-04-20 19:02:51

^ We can't even assume that people know who Batman is. I mean, most people do, but that's Fan Myopia to say everyone knows.

Working on: Author Appeal | Sandbox | Troper Wall
Unicorndance Since: Jul, 2015
2020-04-20 19:20:59

^Case in point, I'd heard the name Terminator heaps of times but didn't really know what it was until the end of last year.

For every low there is a high.
Serac (Troper Knight)
2020-04-20 19:22:50

I proposed here that we should just ban this style of laconic page. I got a few people to agree, but not enough to make it an official policy. So yeah, I support any attempt to fix this kind of laconic page.

As for the pages themselves, I would say something like "Disaster Movie (parody) about a Shell-Shocked Veteran who is forced to land a plane after the crew all suffer food poisoning." The two trope pages outright admit that Airplane! copied the plot of Zero Hour! wholesale, so I wonder if it would be appropriate to have similar laconic entries.

GastonRabbit MOD (General of TV Troops)
2020-04-20 20:48:43

Neglected to mention this earlier, but at least one mod (Fighteer) once said that Laconics are primarily for trope pages, and are deprecated (or at least discouraged) for work pages. I completely forgot which thread this was in (except that it was on the Long-Term Projects forum); he did say that cutting them wasn't urgent, but I still feel that it's worth mentioning.

If it matters, this was two or three years ago, so it's possible that work page Laconics are no longer deprecated (I don't frequent Wiki Talk, but that's probably where such discussion would take place).

Edited by GastonRabbit You can't just say "perchance".
Top