To-do list:
- Consensus was to retool The Team into an exampleless supertrope for the broad act of grouping characters together to accomplish something. Rewrite the description if necessary, and move examples that fit a subtrope (listed on The Index Team) accordingly. Cleanup is being tracked at Sandbox.The Team Wick Cleanup.
Original post:
Note: This thread was proposed by Vandagyre; OP and wick check taken from Sandbox.The Team Wick Check.The Team is a trope about a group of people with varying roles who are working towards a specific goal. The description of this trope has a heavy emphasis on the roles people have within teams, and it shows in the examples; most of the on-page ones are written in the supertrope-subtrope style, which is bad indenting. Many examples, both on-and-off page, often fail to explain enough about the team's composition, roles, or purpose.
If this sounds familiar, it's because Five-Man Band was sent to TRS
for the exact same reasons. In fact, it's possible that some of The Team's issues are related to that thread. Officially Five-Man Band is being cleaned up by getting examples rewritten into single-bullet examples, but the wick check shows that some of them are being moved to The Team without any formatting changes.
50 wicks were checked to see if the style of formatting has any correlation with whether the example has enough context. Context in this case is an example describing the names and roles of people in a group. Note was also made of any wicks that were changed wholesale from Five-Man Band. Due to the multiple analyses performed, the wick check results are in the following folder:
Main wick check
- 8 wicks (16%) were formatted in the supertrope-subtrope style and were Zero-Context Examples,
- 8 wicks (16%) were formatted in the supertrope-subtrope style and had enough context.
- 12 wicks (24%) were formatted as a single bullet and were ZCEs.
- 3 wicks (6%) were formatted as a single bullet and had enough context.
- 17 wicks (34%) were inline wicks where The Team is used as part of a sentence or is potholed.
- 2 wicks (4%) had multiple usage categories on the same page.
Additionally, 8 wicks, or 16%, were swapped out from Five-Man Band without any changes.
By formatting, condensed
- 16 wicks (32%) used supertrope-subtrope formatting.
- 15 wicks (30) used single-bullet formatting.
- 17 wicks (34%) were inline wicks.
- 2 wicks (4%) had multiple usage categories on the same page.
By context composition
Inline and mixed-use wicks have been excluded from this tally, which is out of 31 wicks. Percentages do not add up to 100% due to rounding.- 13 wicks (34%) had enough context.
- 20 wicks (65%) were ZCEs. Of these:
- 8 ZCE wicks (40%) used supertrope-subtrope formatting.
- 12 ZCE wicks (60%) used single-bullet formatting.
Mixed-use composition
The mixed-use wicks consist of 8 examples of The Team total.- 3 (37.5%) examples used supertrope-subtrope formatting and were ZCEs.
- 2 (25%) examples used single-bullet formatting and were ZCEs.
- 3 (37.5%) examples were inline wicks.
Contrary to my expectations beforehand, the wick check suggests that four out of five examples written in single-bullet form lack sufficient context, as opposed to the 50/50 chance that an example in supertrope-subtrope formatting is a ZCE. While this means the supertrope-subtrope formatting isn't as bad for the trope as initially thought, it's still improper formatting. Additionally, usage of the trope is fairly evenly split between single-bullet (30%), supertrope-subtrope (32%), and inline (34%) wicks, the last of which tend to come up whenever the concept of a team someone's on is mentioned.
The biggest issue that came up is the disproportionate amount of ZCEs. Two-thirds of the solo example list wicks lacked sufficient context, whether it was because examples just had a character name and a listed role with no elaboration, never actually mentioned a team was involved, or was just "a team exists". I think there are two factors at play behind the ZCE problem:
- The description's fixation on roles in the team and the on-page examples' supertrope-subtrope formatting makes people think a subtrope and a character name are sufficient context.
- People not reading said description combined with the excessive number of potholes to any mention of "the team" results in them missing that describing what people do for the team is also important.
As a side note, 8 of the 50 wicks were originally Five-Man Band wicks that received no changes from their original form when the wick was swapped. This corroborates concerns that have been raised about wick cleaning in general not being done properly; discussion about this aspect of the wick check that's unrelated to the trope can be taken to the "On improper TRS cleanup" thread.
As for potential fixes, I think rewriting the description to focus less on specific archetypes and more on either overall team composition or the goals a team has would go a long way to encouraging single-bullet formatting and proper context, while making it more distinct from its subtropes. Rewriting the on-page examples to use single-bullet formatting would also help reduce poorly-formated examples. Alternately, in the event that we just can't make it work, we could redirect this trope about teams in general to The Index Team, an index about various types of teams.
What do you all think?
Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 13th 2024 at 4:50:26 AM
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
Actually, the problem was that five person teams were very common. What was outdated was the specific role format (if it ever existed at all) and the gender ratio (which Eddie sort of just arbitrarily made up). Five-Man Band has a ton of modern examples to this day. For years, most of them were either kept off or shoehorned in, and that made a lot of people very frustrated. Anyway, nobody said it was the standard, just that it's common and has a lot of usage that makes it a good number for a team to be.
Anyway, arguing about FMB is very much off topic and I really don't think we should worry about it for this effort. That ship has already sailed. If you want to discuss it, try Trope Talk or the cleanup thread.
Edited by WarJay77 on May 8th 2023 at 2:57:17 PM
Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I agree that this in-depth discussion regarding Five-Man Band is off-topic in a thread about The Team, so let's focus on the trope this thread was made for.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
![[tup]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thumbs_up_emote.png "[thumb up]"){kind=small}
To redirect to The Index Team. I don't think redirecting it to Five-Man Band is a good idea. As it is The Team looks so vague and broad that it overlaps with every kind of team trope, not just FMV, so the index feels more appropriate.
Edited by BlackMage43 on May 8th 2023 at 12:37:19 PM
The Team also currently covers non-five-member-teams so I disagree with a redirect to Five-Man Band.
I favor exampleless supertrope (I think the broad act of grouping characters together to accomplish something is a trope), but ultimately won't fight if redirect to The Index Team is what happens.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I neglected to mention that I'm against redirecting to Five-Man Band. I'd still prefer redirecting to The Index Team, but I won't complain if we turn it into an exampleless supertrope instead.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
And it is a Trope in Aggregate for that reason.
If you want to read why FMB ended up the way it did, by all means. But without anything concrete showing these two are dupes (and with the restriction on FMB to 5, you'd be hard-pressed to do so), then I don't think there's much weight behind a suggestion to redirect/merge into it, especially since doing so would change its definition and it was voted down when we put it to a crowner in the FMB thread.
I'm still personally in favor of redirecting to The Index Team.
Edited by amathieu13 on May 9th 2023 at 6:36:30 AM
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I already said this is the wrong thread for Five-Man Band-related discussion, especially because making changes to that trope in this thread isn't on the table and never was. Start a Trope Talk thread if you think discussion regarding that trope is necessary instead of derailing this thread.
Edited by GastonRabbit on May 9th 2023 at 3:43:36 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Hooked a crowner for whether to turn this into an exampleless supertrope or redirect to The Index Team.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Just want to make sure I'm understanding things correctly since with the way the crowner is shaping, this is likely to be the outcome. Exampleless supertropes can still be used as tropes off the page, right? We'd just be removing the on page examples? Or is it something that can't be linked to?
Edited by amathieu13 on May 10th 2023 at 7:22:57 AM
(she/her)
Yes, they can still be used as tropes in work example lists if the examples aren't covered by existing subtropes.
I think we'd just be commenting out zces and removing misuse during cleanup if that crowner option wins.
Edited by MacronNotes on May 10th 2023 at 7:28:07 AM
Macron's notes
She / Her
Threw in a for retooling.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Calling in favor of retooling into an exampleless supertrope for the broad act of grouping characters together to accomplish something. Get a sandbox ready.
In the meantime, I'll remove the on-page examples and add this to No On-Page Examples.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
Has anyone worked on a sandbox for the description? The last edit made directly to the page was when I removed on-page examples as part of the addition to the No On-Page Examples index, so I wasn't sure if any progress has been made on the description.
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
I've pasted the description to Sandbox.The Team.
TRS Wick Cleaning
What are the rules for editing a sandbox page? I'd like to make a minor change, mentioning Caper Crew for teams of criminals. Can I just do it or do I need someone's permission first?
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
No, you don't need permission.
(she/her)
I removed the fifth paragraph on Sandbox.The Team because it specified the roles. Other than that, the sandbox looks fine to me as I can't think of adding/changing/removing anything else.
Macron's notes
I'm up for redirect.
The Five Man band page does say this though: If they have been there from the start or close to it, then it's a six person team and should be listed under The Team. Maybe this sentence/redirect should be altered or removed entirely since it is a clear redirect to The Team trope which will become The Index Team now, meaning this sentence on the FMB trope will be irrelevant.
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
We already decided against redirecting. Voting has been over for a while.
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
Bump. I think the sandbox should be swapped in if it hasn't been already.
Late edit: I see that it actually has. Does this mean we can start clearing wicks?
Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 4th 2024 at 8:47:47 AM
Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
I've decided to adopt this as my next project. I'll make a namespace sandbox if we don't already have one.
Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
I ran through a few namespaces. My question is, how deep do I have to go? I don't know if any of the potholes will be problematic, so does it make sense to only do traditional work pages with trope lists?
Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
I think that makes sense. Since we didn't make this definition-only, I think we're mainly concerned with moving off-page examples to subtropes if possible, and leaving other team-related examples.
Edit: Rewrote this post because I forgot we just added this to No On-Page Examples instead of making it definition-only; I think I might have confused it with a different thread.
Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 11th 2024 at 11:07:23 AM
Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Crown Description:
The Team is a trope about a group of people with varying roles who are working towards a specific goal. The description of this trope has a heavy emphasis on the roles people have within teams, and it shows in the examples; most of the on-page ones are written in the supertrope-subtrope style, which is bad indenting. Many examples, both on-and-off page, often fail to explain enough about the team's composition, roles, or purpose. What should be done with The Team?
I thought one of the problems with Five-Man Band was that it's a very old and outdated trope, and that the misuse came up because of that? I see everyone saying that five members of a band/heroic team is always the standard, but in my experience, I've rarely, if ever seen that. I certainly don't see FBM being used all that much anymore, in contrast to how The Team is used currently.
Trust no one.