Is No New Stock Phrases too strict?

Hi, drafter of No Wrong Answers Except That One. Look, I understand why there is a need for the rule. This isn't Seinfeld, not every witticism is deserving of its own place in popular culture. However, the application of the No New Stock Phrases rule seems to discourage the creativity in getting people to title the tropes. Sure, you've noticed this tropable idea appear multiple times in works, sure, you can describe what happens, the variations, comparable and contrasting tropes, but the title is the first thing that sells the trope. And if it comes down to a name that maybe sounds close to a stock phrase, and an overly generic phrase, the choice is basically made up for you, and all that effort that you put in is basically wasted on that grabber. I can think of multiple examples of tropes that I have launched where I've had to sacrifice the more creative name in favor of something that toes the No New Stock Phrases rule. And the instances where I have been able to flex some creativity, I haven't exactly been pleased with the result. Yes, we don't need to designate a trope by a quote all the time, but sometimes we need that leeway to be able to grab the attention of people. Imagine Mourning a Dead Robot as Alas Poor Robot. Which catches your attention more? Anyway, my point is that yes, we don't need to tropify every stock phrase, but I think we need to cut people some slack and give them some flexibility in naming their tropes without fear of running afoul of the No New Stock Phrases rule.

Alas Poor Robot wouldn't be a better title, not because it's a stock phrase, but because it's vague and doesn't immediately convey the "dead" part. That's why Alas, Poor Scrappy is misused for any case of people feeling bad for a Scrappy even if they didn't die.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Noted, but you get the idea right? The more creative the title, the more likely people will associate it with the trope.

Yeah, there's cases where the dry titles are the best ones, but there's some circumstances where a phrase-like title would be just as good if not for the rule. I do think we need to separate "dialogue / stock phrase trope" from "normal trope with a phrase-like title", especially when it only sounds like a phrase because it has things like grammar and sentence structure.

I can understand that they might be harder to use in sentences however, but in a lot of cases I find potholes are cleaner anyway unless the trope name is a noun like Abusive Parents.

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Clear, Concise, Witty exists for a reason. Clarity is the most important aspect of a trope title: does it describe the trope? If not, people will misuse it. This is certain.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Here's the thing, Clear Concise Witty only works if people have the creative freedom to title their tropes, and if No New Stock Phrases is going to be as strict as the introductory phase of a low FODMAP diet, you're going to have a bad time. Yes, NWAETO is a long title for a trope, but it's the best option in outlining the premise of the trope without a. violating No New Stock Phrases or b. pigeonholing the trope to just examples of... no wrong answers except that one.

An issue is that the majority of rules on the site are intended to be guidelines, not unbreakable pillars. Something like People Sit on Chairs should be a direction for the conversation, not the end of it. No New Stock Phrases comes across as quite definitive. "We have X rule, you must change it" contributes to a toxic environment in TLP.

Do you not know that in the service one must always choose the lesser of two weevils!

Yeah, I kinda feel like Clear, Concise, Witty works best if every other rule is just a guideline; the argument here is essentially that sometimes obeying No New Stock Phrases may lead to disobeying CCW.

Yeah, basically. There's plenty of cases where a title that technically counts as a stock phrase by the rule's logic is the only title that makes sense. Say, for example, What Year Is It? makes a lot more sense than anything else would, as does Two Words: I Can't Count. NWAETO is longer, but it also covers what the trope is actually about better than the other options do. The trope is a dialogue trope, but about a very specific sort of joke / reaction rather than something like "Not So Different" Remark, which is way more open ended about what the remark can be, allowing the broader title to be more useful.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 14th 2022 at 4:53:58 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Honestly, I'm indifferent on the policy since I'm not familiar with every stock phrase in existence (even ones from works I know), and I understand that it was necessary back then to stop the rampant misuse of them. That said, I do think that "No Wrong Answers Except This One" should be made an exception to this rule since a): it's Exactly What It Says on the Tin and surmises the concept of the trope far better than any alternatives, and b): it isn't really a stock phrase in the same vein as those that lead to the implementation of the rule in the first place.

As for the matter of whether we should lift the NNSP rules entirely or not (or at least overhaul them), we should be really careful. We don't want to open up a Pandora's Box situation of re-introducing the same problem that lead to NNSP becoming a thing.

NNSP should be about the phrases more than the titles. Other title protocol, like CCW, would prevent tropes with bad dialogue titles, but a good dialogue title can exist if the trope isn't just a phrase people say a lot and has actual meaning.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

No New Stock Phrases already is more about trope (mis)use than it is about the title. The enumerated reasons for the rule explain, in detail, why a dialogue-title tends to attract only examples of when the title is said, even when they aren't examples of the trope itself.

Two Words: I Can't Count was suggested precisely because (while it is itself an example) it isn't a match for the dialogue that would be used in a work. It still emphasizes the "two word" formulation over other, valid, formulations. I believe that extra attention was paid to making sure that the page quote didn't use the "two words" formulation to help demonstrate the broader application.

NNSP is essentially a dialogue-specific formulation of People Sit on Chairs, designed as an obstacle to prevent trope misuse because too many editors read a title and assume that they know what the trope is. While "Dr. Dolittle's Better Brother Speaks Simlish" is more creative a title, Speaks Fluent Animal is more clear.

(Shifting to the "name" phrasing)
The best way to prevent editors from mistaking a specific phrase for a trope is to forbid those phrases from being names in the first place. The best way to help editors learn a trope is to have a specific and intuitive meaning from the name of the trope. Shorter names are easier to learn than longer names. If the above can be satisfied and the name still sounds like something a character might say in a work, you should be okay.

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Is NWAETO about the phrase "Except That One", or is it a more specific type of Verbal Backspace?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Seems to be about the latter, which is why I think it works. It's about the format, much like Two Words: I Can't Count. But people assume all dialogue titles are banned due to the rule, missing the stock phrase point.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Yeah, that's the thing. It's about the verbal backspace. It's a dialogue joke, just like Two Words: I Can't Count is.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Regarding the "Swords to Plowshares draft. I do feel like this stalled because of the percieved strictness of this policy, and the arguments on whether idioms count as stock phrases or not. It's even on the other wiki.

"Tactical Becomes Practical" would have been an alternative to this draft, but since my worries was that it was based on this show from the 2000s, and potentially someone would make a work page of it, but hasn't had a trope page of that show yet.

Nevertheless, the draft was stalled and left for adoption until it was grabbed recently. I feel like another title, "Weapons To Tools", as suggested by one troper, is a boring title, that though while it's clear and concise, it loses the wit of it.

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"Swords to Plowshares" is not something you would expect to come up as a specific line of dialog. However, it is a common phrase when employed as a metaphor — for example, you might expect it to show up as an achievement in a game or something. So the question is not whether it violates the "no new stock phrases" rule, but whether it is subject to misinterpretation because our definition is not the same as the common one.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Perhaps that.

I don't know if there are other potential tropes such as "Swords to Plowshares" that have been lingering for a decade or more just because of this policy.

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For what it's worth, a few months ago TRS renamed a trope with a dialogue-like name by replacing just one word (Instant Birth: Just Add Water! became Instant Birth: Just Add Labor!).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 22nd 2022 at 9:19:29 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

IDK why the "labor" makes it any more or less dialogue-y than "water" does.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Yeah, I'm not sure if that one's a good example. Feels like it put "witty" above "clear, concise"

Nobody is ever going to say the phrase "Instant birth, just add water" in dialog. Again, if that's the standard people are applying: the title can't form a coherent English phrase, then it is far too strict. The problem I have with the title is that it doesn't really tell you what the trope is from a glance. What, do you pour water on someone and it causes them to have a baby? Do babies come in powder form and get reconstituted?

Edited by Fighteer on Jan 22nd 2022 at 5:21:31 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

The fact that the "water" part of the name makes it non-indicative is why TRS changed it. The new name wasn't something I came up with; it was one of multiple crowner options.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 23rd 2022 at 2:27:03 PM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

Well, the problem with Instant Birth: Just Add Water! and its new name isn't whether it is commonly used in a sentence.

The problem is that it can't be used grammatically in a sentence.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

There were name suggestions that came up that could be used in a sentence (and probably would have been better), but due to the crowner overhaul, the crowner that's currently hooked is the one that decided to rename instead of the one that decided which name to use, so I don't recall what other options there were other than Implausibly Quick Birth.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 23rd 2022 at 4:45:28 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.

The "grammatically in a sentence" issue bothers me. These are proper nouns, these are trope names. Like the name of a restaurant or a website, they can be used in ways that the same word — but as a regular noun — could not normally.

For example, look at the restaurant "T.G.I.Fridays" or the website "Twitter." The restaurant's name is "thank God it's Fridays," so when you say "Let's go to T.G.I.Fridays," that sentence is grammatical even though it wouldn't make any sense if you didn't know the restaurant's name was what it is. Same with Twitter, which normally means "a light silly laugh" but you could still say "He said that on Twitter." This is gibberish if you don't know that Twitter is a website.

There are other weirdly named tropes such as Balance, Power, Skill, Gimmick or Sealed Evil in a Teddy Bear and these don't really "sound right" when used in a sentence but it's still grammatical. But ultimately that doesn't really seem to be the issue, does it? The stock phrase issue concerns the attraction of problems, like troper verbal tics or shoehorned examples. There's something about the trope name that attracts this specific type of misuse.

I'm not particularly sure what exactly makes a trope name have this attraction of problems, but I would think part of the issue is that the trope name is too easy to use in a sentence — quite the opposite of this "sounds weird" / grammaticality issue. I would think predicates tend to — though not always — attract these problems. Some don't seem to be problematic, such as Sealed Evil in a Can / Teddy Bear / etc. or Every Scar Has a Story. But others most certainly do contribute to misuse or non-use such as We Have Been Researching Phlebotinum For Years (which was overly long besides and made into Expositing the Masquerade).

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