To-do list:

Consensus was to create two new namespaces for pages currently located in Useful Notes, a Platform/ namespace for media platforms (game consoles, operating systems, etc., like Nintendo Game Cube, Microsoft Windows, and Steam) and a MediaNotes/ namespace for pages containing background information on media, like How Video Game Specs Work or ANSI Standard Broadcast TV Schedule. Thus, the following will need to be done:

• Go through the Useful Notes index and see which pages should be moved from UsefulNotes/ to either Platform/ or MediaNotes/.

Original post:

Useful Notes, from what I understand, is meant to be specifically about informing readers about complicated subjects that show up a lot in the media, to help them understand how to properly portray it. These subjects range from historical events to real-life locations and cultures. There's some subjectivity about what's "useful" here, but it's a pretty specific namespace otherwise.

However, we also have a class of pages that really don't fit this mold. However, they're in UN because there's no better namespace for them. These are the "media history" pages, such as the pages on various game consoles. They're not work pages because these things aren't tropeworthy, they're not creator pages because they're individual works, tools, or concepts; and they're not trivia because why would they be? They're in Useful Notes because they're informative pages on things related to media, but you'd be hard pressed to say that reading UsefulNotes.Nintendo Game Cube would help you write a book. These pages serve a function that's definitely relevant to the website, but they just don't fit the intended use of Useful Notes.

The reason I'm bringing this up now is because the TRS thread for RetroGaming wants to make it UsefulNotes, which... I did vote for because at the moment there ain't no rule saying it doesn't go there, but I did make it clear that my true stance is a lot different. I didn't want to derail the discussion though, because Retro Gaming would just be another drop in the ocean, not the problem in and of itself.

This reminds me of the state of the Franchise/ namespace before Derivative Works/ was created pretty recently. The namespace was being used for things it shouldn't be used for simply because we lacked anything more suitable. So one possible solution would just be to create a new namespace for these pages, such as Media History/ or something, to preserve them as their own category.

The other solution is to just expand the definition of "Useful Notes" to include pages like these. I'm not sure I agree with this because in my opinion this would just validate some of the serious decay issues the namespace has (seriously, there are a lot of superfluous pages), but it would also be the easiest thing to do and would allow us to maintain the current status quo.

And of course, you may disagree with me that there's even a problem here at all. I'm just calling it as I see it based on my understanding of the namespace guidelines, especially as UN misuse and bloat has been called out elsewhere in the past.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 23rd 2024 at 1:25:29 PM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Maybe something like Media Notes/? UN becoming a lesser of other wikis has been a thorn for many years and while we have the UN cleanup it's barely active. The issues has been brought up between mods and publicly on the site.

I know that some subjects like countries have anywhere between 15-20 pages about the same subject and we had to lock almost 40 Russian and Ukraine related UN pages because of the war.. so there's definitely an issue.

Edited by MacronNotes on Feb 26th 2023 at 7:24:42 AM

Macron's notes

I always assumed that useful notes was intended as a resource both for the person creating media and the person consuming it. Obviously a useful notes page on the Nintendo Entertainment System isn't all that useful for someone creating media, as very few people are making NES games anymore, but it is useful for the person playing Super Mario Bros who wonders about the relatively small number of enemies on screen at any one time.

I don't actually object to splitting that kind of page off into a "Media History" section or something. There's definitely something to the argument that the Useful Notes page for the X Box serves a decidedly different purpose than the ones for say, the Russian Revolution, or Baseball. I'm just explaining how I thought they fit into the purpose of Useful Notes.

Bigotry will NEVER be welcome on TV Tropes.

I'd be down with splitting between Useful Notes and a new Media History namespace, since there is some potential merit in knowing stuff like how the technical restrictions/intentions/considerations of a game console or media format affect works.

Be kind.

I'm on board with a Media History namespace myself.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

I've actually thought about making a Wiki Talk for the video game console pages specifically because I do believe they have a place on the wiki (they act as indexes, for one), but they probably shouldn't be Useful Notes. Maybe move them to the Video Game namespace, I guess?

Also, I do think the consoles are tropeable to some extent if only for their advertising campaigns.

Edited by Karxrida on Feb 26th 2023 at 6:31:23 AM

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

See, that implies that they can be troped, and they can't be.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Wait, I'm a bit slow, but why would Retro Gaming not fit a UN page? What if I wanted to make one or have the characters make on In-Universe, but I know nothing about it, and wanna read more on it here? And I'd want to read about what makes a game "retro" and how such game works, etc., but not about its history. So wouldn't it be in UN namespace?

I don't really think it's necessary to create a new namespace, but I wouldn't be opposed to it if that's what this thread decides. If we create a new namespace, I like Media History.

I mean, in that specific case you could use it, but that's not the primary purpose of these pages. They're simply not written with writing advice in mind.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Expand. I've considered UN a "background reference sheet and appearances of the concept in media" that is helpful to link to instead of linking to Wikipedia (for example, The Golden Age of Piracy would be saying how it came to be, who were the important figures and why is it a popular Setting, so for priate work pages it'd have everything relevant), so limiting it to helping with writing is a bit odd.

Also I guess we could also bring up how "useful" the Useful Notes are, because we have pages detailing entire histories of countries or technical details on weapons, and they've became "useless other wiki re-dumps".

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

This is somewhat tangential to the scope of this thread, and definitely tangential to this wiki, but I think Useful Notes' devolution into "Wikipedia lite" may have something to do with an unmet desire out there for a comprehensive wiki with a more informal, (at least somewhat) opinionated tone. We aren't the only wiki to fall victim to this, but this wiki itself has gotten more formal over the years so it's an increasingly odd fit.

In theory, pages about game consoles could be useful for a writer looking to portray something set in the period when that console was active, or a retro gamer using the console's games in the present day, but they're kind of excessively detailed for that (what purpose does listing the console's specifications serve?) and that's not really why we have the pages.

I'm uneasy about the creation of a MediaHistory/ namespace because it feels like it would amount to giving in to mission creep. I'd feel better about it if it had a name more befitting the other namespaces we have that gave it a more defined place in our mission - maybe MediaNotes/ - but I could see people looking in the namespace and wondering why these pages aren't in UN. These pages are in a bit of a fuzzy area: just related enough to our mission that we could justify putting them in another namespace, but also tangential enough to it and close enough to the other UN pages that giving them their own namespace would feel arbitrary. UN has effectively become "pages about things in real life that aren't works or creators thereof" and it's easier to see the game console pages fitting there if you see it that way.

(I also think the point made earlier about UN being useful to consumers of media as much as producers is worth taking into consideration. We probably have way more non-writers reading the wiki than writers; heck, we might have more non-writers editing the wiki than writers reading it. As much as we say publicly and to ourselves that the wiki's "mission" is to be a resource for writers, there are probably very few editors who set out to be useful to writers as opposed to simply categorizing things they see in media, which helps explain the existence of the various non-trope trope-like pages. For the most part this doesn't matter, but I think it does come into play here.)

That said, after thinking about some of the pages under consideration I could see the creation of something like a Background/ or Meta/ namespace for stuff like How Video Game Specs Work or ANSI Standard Broadcast TV Schedule. (In particular, a number of pages indexed on the former seem to pertain as much to current games as historical ones.) But while stuff like game consoles and operating systems could go there, I do think there are some other things we can do with them:

• Split the list of games onto their own index page.
• Put them in Creator/, following the precedent of TV networks.
• Create a namespace like Platform/ for them.
• Create a namespace for both game platforms and TV networks, plus anything else in a comparable place.

On the topic of Retro Gaming, if Furry Fandom is a Useful Note I don't quite see why Retro Gaming can't be. Heck, I could even see a case for making it YMMV, albeit definition-only, as something involving how fandom interacts with media.

I think making a Media Notes category (or whatever we call it, but I think Media Notes works better than Media History since not everything is historical) for media-related pages that don't neatly fit into the Useful Notes category sounds good.

To be honest, maybe some pages that were moved to Definition-Only Pages (like Speedrun or Video Editing Terminology) could be moved there, but I'm not 100% sure and I'm too tired to think of whether to put anything other than Retro Gaming there.

Edit: I think I prefer Morgan's suggestions instead, and I think a lot of Useful Notes pages should be Main/ Fan Speak pages instead of Useful Notes (Baka and Pettanko ought to be in Main/ like other Anime Fanspeak, yet that didn't happen to them when it happened to other old anime fanspeak pages like Kuudere and Dandere, and the Anime Fanspeak page itself also ought to be in Main/ like the main Fan Speak page)

Edit: Oh, and I'm not going to even entertain the idea of expanding the scope of Useful Notes. We don't need to make its decay into Wikipedia-lite official and have it become even more of a dumping ground.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 27th 2023 at 5:45:14 AM

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

I’ll mention that franchise actors have even less use than the rest of the pages mentioned here. If things are potentially getting culled, those are worth being looked at.

I’ll point to UsefulNotes.Pinocchio Actors as a particularly ridiculous case. That’s not even a franchise. And it seems like many such pages are made by the same troper, Dinogal 95.

Edit: not fair to assign that much blame to a single user.

Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Feb 27th 2023 at 7:47:50 AM

SoundCloud

There was a TRS a few years ago about cutting them. Can’t get the link as I am on mobile but IIRC there was no consensus in the crowner.

TBH I’m in favor of a rerun through TRS or another cleanup — I agree that these aren’t necessary.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

I noticed that, and I think the bloat has worsened enough since then to justify a rerun. The example I gave was just one of many made since the initial TRS.

SoundCloud

I can support splitting off these UN pages as long as the new namespace itself has a defined scope that isn't "anything that doesn't belong in UN but that we still want to keep" — that would just be moving the problem elsewhere. A new namespace specifically for the video game console pages and other specific forms of media (I like Morgan's suggested Platform/, or possibly Media/) could work, and would be directly relevant enough to our mission (ie. troping the works on said platform) to justify itself. Lumping in nonspecific fandom stuff like Speedrunning and Retro Gaming would dilute that.

clearly things are going well.

I asked on the TRS meta thread if I could do a re-run. We'll see what response I get.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

I think a lot of the problem comes down to the name "Useful Notes". Unless you specifically know otherwise, those words put up the impression "anything worth noting on this website that doesn't fit anywhere else." As a result, it becomes a catch-all. To give some examples of pages I find worthwhile that don't fit "how this works in real life versus media" but still have a place here:

• Dice (Important for tabletop games, though it is helpful for anyone planning to make one of those)
• Chess (Besides Chess Motifs being a thing, listing the rules for a game in public domain is worth having)
• Mii (Probably belongs in the Video Game namespace to begin with)
• Some sports pages (Even disregarding sports in media, I maintain that the rules and branding (e.g. team mascots) are tropable, the same way you'd trope game shows, tabletop games, or abstract video games.)

If we want to curb namespace bloat, it might be best to not only reassign the worthwhile-yet-misplaced pages, but also move the pages matching original intent to a namespace with a better-defined name.

I feel like UsefulNotes.Chess can just be moved to Analysis.Chess, which would then be treated as a subpage of TabletopGame.Chess since Analysis pages are allowed for work pages.

And UsefulNotes.Mii was originally located at VideoGame.Mii. I'm not sure if the move was discussed beforehand. Previously, UsefulNotes.Game And Watch and VideoGame.Game And Watch were one page with the latter namespace, but that page got the exact same treatment as the Mii page before a second page was created in the VideoGame/ namespace to cover the games while leaving the Useful Notes page to cover the hardware (which would be moved to the Platform/ namespace if it's made; yeah, it's technically more than one platform due to each game having its own device, but still).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 28th 2023 at 3:00:11 AM

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

Hey! That's a nice way to move all the console names. Analysis! That would be a terrific way to justify even putting the specs of the console!

...I said something dumb didnt I?

Discord: Waido X 255#1372 If you cant contact me on TV Tropes do it here.

Chess isn't a console, and I mentioned that game systems would go in the Platform/ namespace Morgan suggested if we make that namespace (I specifically mentioned moving UsefulNotes.Game And Watch).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 28th 2023 at 4:03:34 AM

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

Oh thanks for the kind correction. You are so nice. I am glad we are keeping the consoles pages because I really like them!

Discord: Waido X 255#1372 If you cant contact me on TV Tropes do it here.

I'm not sure if the Analysis page is the right space for chess rules either. Isn't that space usually for analyzing how/why tropes are used, be it in a particular work or across the board?

Ironically an useful pages for Chess COULD BE a genuine Useful Notes... even at least in a jokey "See how to play the game so you wont look like Code Geass infamous moment where it seems the characters dont even know how to play the game"

Ok if you drop that joke I still think that it could be useful for writers.

Discord: Waido X 255#1372 If you cant contact me on TV Tropes do it here.