How should gendered redirects be used?

So, the use of gendered redirects have been under debate lately, so here's a thread to discuss them.

How to Write an Example states this about gendered redirects (bolded the relevant part for emphasis):

Personally, I think it's best to use the main trope names in trope list (redirects are primarily for search purposes now) and I don't care for gendered redirects so I am not sure when should be the appropriate time to use gendered redirects. I guess when the main trope title is already gendered but I still prefer "first come, first served".

Macron's notes

My thoughts honestly depend on what the redirect title is.

For instance, changing Nice Guy to Nice Girl doesn't really screw up the alphabetization. Most likely, it'll stay in the same place. So as a swap, it's harmless, albeit unnecessary.

But something like She Who Fights Monsters is far away from He Who Fights Monsters, so a swap in that case would seriously mess up the alphabetization.

So, I think that if the change would move the trope elsewhere, it's a no-go. But otherwise, it should be fine. And in-line wicks and the like should be fine regardless, though doing it first-come-first-served is also perfectly valid here.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

The solution to alphabetization problem is just paying attention and moving the example accordingly, the same as with TRS renames.

Personally, if the trope is basically a quote or a term or neutral (like He Who Fights Monsters, Let Him Choose or Arc Villain) redirects shouldn't be used in example lists, but short intentionally-gendered tropes without a Gender-Inverted Trope (Fat Bastard to Fat Bitch, Evil Uncle to Evil Aunt, Manchild to Womanchild) is acceptable. I know this is very grey area, we may have to review the whole Unisex Tropes index.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

No, the alphabetization problem is that after the example is moved, people who don't know it's using the redirect will add a duplicate example under the other name.

I can vouch for this. Too many pages used both Something Completely Different and And Now For Something Completely Different.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Yes, and plenty of YMMV pages, in my experience, had both Ho Yay and Les Yay, despite the latter being a redirect to the former. So the redirects can cause an alphabetization problem and duplication.

Like plural/singular redirects, they're very useful for inline wicking.

adding to what I've already said on the topic, if the example / pothole already existed, no need to change, first come first serve applies

if someone is starting a new example, I'm on the fence really. On the one hand, I get the inclination to change - many trope names are unnecessarily (in my opinion) gendered either due to a default assumption of male-ness reflecting the overall bias towards the predominance of men as heroes / protags in stories and/or a reference to a specific character (and the trope just uses the pronouns of that character). So I can see using different pronouns as trying to combat that to some extent.

That said, from a practical standpoint it's confusing. I know I've had to go back and edit examples I made because I thought the rename was the actual name for the trope and it created a red link because it wasn't an official redirect. And there are times when the gender is actually trying to communicate something about the nature of the trope a la Always Male / Always Female.

One possible solution is to just have the other gendered version as a formal redirect, but we'd have to do that for a LOT of tropes and that's a time sink and a half

I simply believe that, unless the alphabetization isn't affected (i.e. Nice Guy and Nice Girl), redirects should be generally more for ease of potholing when it's the "unusual" gender at play (i.e. "Bob's Fantasy-Forbidding Mother insisted he learn to knit instead of play baseball"). In potholes they don't hurt anything, it's just example lists that are the issue.

This does get a bit dumb when the trope is about gender though — see Spear Counterpart as a redirect to Distaff Counterpart. You can't really use the default Distaff Counterpart for a male character without confusing people.

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

One point that occurs to me, and which is related to alphabetisation, is that the use of an unexpected gendered trope-name might hinder users in searching for entries.

For example, someone wanting to see whether "He Who Fights Monsters" occurs in a given work might scroll down to the "H" section—and not find it if it has been filed under "She Who Fights Monsters". (Although in this case they would find it if they think to perform a search, as "she" happens to contain "he".)

This perhaps becomes less problematic the later in the trope-name the change appears, as it reduces the impact on alphabetisation and thus placement: "Nice Girl" and Nice Guy" are likely to appear near each other, and thus one may still be spotted when searching for the other.

My Games & Writing

Ideally we wouldn't have gendered trope names that apply to either and without Gender-Inverted Trope. But we can't really go and mass-rename them in reasonable time.

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

It makes a bit of nonsense to claim a male character is a Gender-Inverted Example of a Spear Counterpart. Setting aside names from quotes, my thinking is to avoid making a trope name gender-specific unless it is Always Gendered. Because identifying trope redirects is part of the learning curve, I have an unsubstantiated belief that gender counterpart examples are underrepresented on work pages.

If the trope is gendered, then we should explain why the spear/distaff version applies, which pretty much necessitates pointing out the gender flip in the example.

I'd rather just use the article name for trope lists and allow all redirects in-line. This isn't the same as work name redirects, which represent other names the work has been released under.

For the Nice Guy / Nice Girl "doesn't change alphabetization", that's up until we have Nice Gnu or something. Depending on the words, it's a very unlikely situation and as long as the gendered term is the second word or later, I admit that we can treat both the name and redirect as equivalent.

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In the case of banning all gendered redirects from trope lists, I'm in favour.
In the case of restricting/promoting the use of gendered redirects in trope lists to situations where the gendered term is not the first word, I'll abstain.
In the case of restricting/promoting the use of gendered redirects in trope lists to character pages only, I'll abstain.
In the case of promoting unrestricted use of gendered redirects in trope lists, I'm opposed.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

The middle two of four of those "votes" is something I haven't considered and would be a good way to summarize the exceptions brought up (non-first word basis) so far if we want to make exceptions (for example, there's no need to use gendered redirects in work example lists, but may be suitable in character folder). If we want to crowner later, we could use these four for reference.

Edited by Amonimus on May 3rd 2022 at 1:04:04 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

To almost-but-not-quite copy crazysamaritan's topics:

Weak yes to "just don't list them".

Yes to "only list them when the first word ^note or alternately "first X characters" where X is some medium-ish number like, idk, 8? is entirely unchanged". That distinction is important. There's a character in Rune Factory 5 who would be accurately described as a Little Big Sister. The gendered word in that redirect is the last one, but it redirects to Big Little Brother, which still messes with the alphabetization.

Undecided on "only on character sheets". Not 100% on what would be the purpose of doing it like this. The above case wouldn't have been helped by this policy.

Weak no on "just do whatever".

Edited by wingedcatgirl on May 5th 2022 at 7:39:29 AM

Trouble Cube continues to be a general-purpose forum for those who desire such a thing.

To copy from Samaritan, but changing things to show my own opinions:

In the case of banning all gendered redirects from trope lists, I'm in favour.

In the case of restricting the use of gendered redirects in trope lists to situations where the gendered term is not the first word, I'm opposed.

In the case of restricting the use of gendered redirects in trope lists to character pages only, I'm opposed.

In the case of promoting unrestricted use of gendered redirects in trope lists, I'm opposed.

Edited by MichaelKatsuro on May 3rd 2022 at 3:19:28 AM

Regardless of how one feels about gendered redirects (and me participating here), I feel these are noteworthy:

• Gendered redirects can still ultimately be listed on main pages.
• Because I've seen this already happen, some people have edited trope names instead of using the gendered redirect that matches up with the character's gender. For instance, someone did that with He Knows Too Much in Carnelian's folder in Arknights Casters A To M, though I fixed that a while ago. (I would leave a link to the edit. However, at least for me, the link doesn't directly take you to it. Therefore, please go to edit history and scroll down to see it. I also recommend using Ctrl+F while doing so.) Additionally, gendered redirects can be used to prevent this.

EDIT: For my personal opinion on this, I personally think it's fine to keep the use of gendered redirects the same. Also, if the alphabetization is "messed up", you just use Ctrl+F. Aside from former names, tropers should be familiar with other titles for a trope

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Jun 25th 2022 at 12:23:37 PM

It's a bit of a side note, but the ATT that started this discussion also concerned some cases of weird gendered language, such as "vampiress", being added to pages. This side of the issue seems to have slipped off the radar. Do we have consensus to revert?

We'd always agreed that those were bad, yeah.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Unless the original work used such language, which I'm pretty sure it didn't.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

If you're discussing the page I think you're talking about, that was already reverted.

In case we want to crowner this, does this cover everything discussed?

• Gendered redirects shouldn't be used in example lists regardless of context, main wikiwords only. If other options are upvoted with this one, they'll be exceptions. If downvoted, the "don't change the wording without a discussion" principle should apply.
• Allow gendered redirects if the gendered word isn't the first word of the trope, so swapping wikiwords wouldn't significantly affect alphabetization.
• Allow gendered redirects on Characters/ pages where applicable.
• Allow gendered redirects if they use words canonical to the work.

Edited by Amonimus on May 5th 2022 at 8:26:15 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

The second option should probably be reworded to "doesn't usually affect alphabetization", since words other than the first can sometimes slightly change the alphabetical order.

Also, we should probably clarify if this crowner affects TV Tropes in other languages. Since this decision was made in English, I'd assume it would only affect TV Tropes in English.

That and, occasionally and even if the redirect involves the first word being changed, it's still possible that it still wouldn't mess up the alphabetization. This is especially the case if the character in question doesn't have many Tropes applying to them, though.

I think the options look fine for the most part if we're going to end up crowner if this. Sorry, I let this thread fall to the wayside.

Macron's notes

I guess it's time to bump up this thread again? This topic is back in ATT and it was recommended to come back here for the general discussion.

It seems this has been settled before, but are we getting to a point where we need to put this (whatever we decide/decided) in writing?

CSP Cleanup Thread | All that I ask for ... is diamonds and dance floors

We were going to make a crowner I think.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Again, that was talking about redirects in general and not just gendered ones. And it was talking about when an entry mentions something like one of the redirects without linking it.

Because some people care about this, unless a gender-neutral redirect is needed for some reason (e.g. the character has an Ambiguous Gender or No Biological Sex), I honestly don't care if the main name is gender-neutral or not.

EDIT: Actually, referring to a singular parent as "Parents" is grammatically incorrect. Therefore, "performatively waffling over language" is needed to be grammatically correct.

Edited by RandomTroper123 on Sep 7th 2022 at 5:12:46 AM