Is No New Stock Phrases too strict?

Again, the policy is being taken much too strictly if it is interpreted as "no trope title that sounds like it could function in the normal flow of a sentence is allowed". That is absolutely wrong.

A stock phrase is a piece of dialog that is found frequently throughout media. "Why don't you just shoot him?" is a perfect example. We renamed it to Stating the Simple Solution not because the latter is less likely to be used in a sentence but because the former name was constantly mistaken for the specific phrase being uttered and not for its actual meaning.

Take a hypothetical trope named "Got 'em". It violates NNSP because it is non-indicative. Someone seeing it would have no way of knowing what it actually means without going to the article, and it would accumulate every example of someone uttering that phrase in media.

This is the test. Any other test is wrong.

You have a point. The most common pothole magnets nowadays are just really common (and commonly misused) tropes, not necessarily stock phrases. This "tropes are inherently proper nouns" thing is also why I disagree with the bias against punctuation in trope titles — while it's still case by case and usually not necessarily, I don't agree with the whole "it makes it harder to read" thing because a trope being used in a sentence usually has invisible quotation marks around it, as you're talking about the trope as a noun clause.

Ideally, every trope would be titled in such a way that it could be used as a proper noun without awkward sentence structure, but we're a long way from that point and it's probably an unattainable goal.

Edited by Fighteer on Jan 23rd 2022 at 3:10:14 PM

It would definitely run afoul of Clear, Concise, Witty in a lot of places. Often the most clear title isn't always one that fits perfectly in a sentence.

While I understand the intention, it seems like trope titles that can 'neatly' be used in a sentence are more likely to be pothole magnets (regardless of how dialogue-y they are). I think there's no perfect solution here.

I think it's clear that giving tropes good titles is a complex balance of many factors - CCW, NNSP, sentence-structure-neatness, etc. I suppose the discussion lies in the order of priority (with an oversly-strict rule somewhat forcing itself higher up).

The policy isn't being "taken too strictly"; the grammar issue is one of the main reasons it exists in the first place!

^Also, the grammar issue does encourage potholing as a way to wedge it into sentences. It's quite the opposite effect from the one you expect.

IDK. Using Not So Different as an example, that one was a massive shoehorn magnet in part because it was so easy to just say "Alice and Bob are Not So Different" even if it's completely irrelevant or, in most cases, misuse of the trope. The more easy it is to fit a trope into a sentence, the easier it is to use that trope for eeeevvvvviiiillll... Or, I guess, generic trope misuse. The change to "Not So Different" Remark is not only less generic, but the added word makes it much harder to shoehorn into sentences on a dime.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 23rd 2022 at 4:58:04 AM

Agreed. Sometimes trying to add more usage to a trope is just not needed.

Necro-ing this because tbh the back and forth between different mods on this policy in the Overprotective Dad TRS thread genuinely confused me on the state of this policy. Has it been loosened at all or are we still interpreting this as "any dialogue sounding title is not allowed"?

It might be worth mentioning this discussion in the thread, since we did have some agreement that the rule is too strict and dialogue-esque titles shouldn't actually be blanket banned...

So, regarding this thread about Stock Phrases, after seeing Swords to Plowshares getting launched after a decade of being stalled by this policy, and I'm trying to adopt this TLP draft, whose activities got stalled, what's the clear verdict on the No New Stock Phrases reform? And should its restrictions be loosened a bit?

Bumping this.

I notice that "Not How I'm Dying" Declaration is on the Stock Phrases page despite being only a month old. So, should it be cut because it's a stock phrase that slipped through the cracks? Or should it be removed from the Stock Phrases page because it isn't a stock phrase at all?

Edited by FSharp on May 4th 2024 at 2:08:43 PM

It's not one, yeah. Dialogue tropes are not the same as stock phrases.

Remove; it's not a Stock Phrase.

It’s gone. As said above, clearly not a stock phrase - if it counted, despite merely having a descriptive title, then essentially all dialogue tropes would.

Edited by Lymantria on May 5th 2024 at 9:05:49 AM

Looking back at this, who was claiming that Swords to Plowshares is a stock phrase? That strikes me as a misinterpretation. It's more of a Stock Metaphor or Stock Meme, and as such this policy in particular wouldn't be applicable. I doubt that a lot of works have dialogue containing the phrase "swords to plowshares", at least not without directly referencing the metaphor. "So yeah, like, I was turning my swords into plowshares the other day..."

As we've said before, the reason NNSP exists is that a trope whose title is a phrase of dialogue is frequently misused by confusing the phrase for the trope. It's really that simple. We don't need to get all weird about it.

Edited by Fighteer on May 6th 2024 at 9:09:17 AM

The archived discussion says it was shimaspawn who brought it up first.

It may be worth looking through Stock Phrases to see if there's anything that doesn't fit (maybe as own Project). For example, I'm unsure if Crazy Enough to Work can be used as a standalone sentence.

I reread this topic. The same point I made in that last post was made (by me) several times prior.

I do not believe the wording of the policy is ambiguous. I believe that people in TLP are (willfully?) misinterpreting it.

Edited by Fighteer on May 6th 2024 at 11:02:40 AM

It's not ambiguous so much as extremely restrictive. As written it means anything that sounds like speech is out regardless of what the trope actually is. Arguments start on the TLP all the time over this because people are actually more likely to misinterpret it as less strict than it is as written.

It's not, though. It's being interpreted too restrictively. There's a difference. You can quote me on that, I promise.

Edited by Fighteer on May 6th 2024 at 1:53:34 PM

If it's being very regularly misinterpreted, then it needs clear clarification. It doesn't necessarily matter how you interpret it, it's how most tropers interpret it, especially relatively new users.

I mean, Naming a Trope literally lists "no lines of dialogue" above "clear" and "concise".

Right. I genuinely don't know how I could be misunderstanding it when the page literally spells out what is and isn't allowed. I'm just going off of what's written, so if I'm wrong...

No New Stock Phrases links to Stock Phrases, which is defined as:

That's a lot more specific than "anything that sounds like speech".

Edited by Twiddler on May 6th 2024 at 7:15:06 AM