Mal's name being short for "The Malevolent One" is really meaningless information. His name being short for that does not come up in the story itself since it's only a brief cameo near the end of Mike's run, so it doesn't mean anything and just needlessly clutters up the page.
As for the Split Personality example, the vague wording did in fact imply that he had more than his canon ones, since it was so vague and unhelpful it could have been referring to anything.
Honestly, if you actually read the story you claim to know so much about you might actually have a leg to stand on in this argument, but honestly, as it stands you're just looking for reasons to nitpick other people's edits for not being exactly how you'd have done them.
That is blatant hyperbole at the very least. It's not at all unusual for the word "several" to mean "four or five", so your assertion—which you didn't even try to support—that it implied Mike had more alters than in canon is factually inaccurate. And if someone thought he had six or ten or more alters, so what? How would that impair their understanding of the example or the trope?
A couple of months ago, you argued your "vagueness is always bad" and "names are always better than descriptions" stances in Ask The Tropers when we took our earlier PM discussion there. The consensus was against you, as is wiki policy.
That said, I won't fight to keep the Split Personality example because, as I noted above, it appears to merely duplicate a trope in the parent work.
Even if that were true—and you offered no evidence that it is—how would it differ from what you are doing? You changed the informal "named Mal" to the stuffier and wordier "by the name of Mal" because ... why, exactly? Your edit reduced conciseness without improving clarity, and so violated the Clear, Concise, Witty rule. And to what end?
Now you're just being a dick. You know or should know that I never claimed to know any more about the work than what you yourself told me or I was able to figure out from its tropes page.
Although I don't know as much about the work as you, my advantage is that I understand this site's policies and best practices better than you appear to. Throughout our discussions, I have cited policy articles many times to support my points. Have you been able to do so even once? (If you have, I don't remember it.)
Your last paragraph illustrates why I wanted this discussion to be public instead of private. I suspected—correctly, as it turned out—that you would resort to personal attacks. If we were having this discussion on a Forum thread, your post would probably have been thumped on that basis.
Edited by Gideoncrawle Bigotry in the name of inclusion is still bigotry.
ADDENDUM: The note deleted from the Rage Breaking Point example requires only one additional word to make it relevant, i.e. that "Mal" is canonically short for "The Malevolent One".
Bigotry in the name of inclusion is still bigotry.
Concerning edits of 10 June 2018 by N8han11:
1) Why is it not relevant that the name "Mal" is short for "The Malevolent One"? Especially for a trope like Rage Breaking Point? The name "Mal", by itself—or any other character name, for that matter—means nothing to readers who aren't familiar with the work or its parent, and assuming familiarity with the work violates the "Simplify for Non-fans" rule. And why on Earth was the text "named Mal" changed to "by the name of Mal"? This is less concise while giving no additional information, and so violates Clear Concise Witty.
The derivation of "Mal" was placed in a Note because it's information that people familiar with Total Drama Season 5 already know, but is informative to people who aren't.
2) The Split Personality example did not, in fact, imply that Mike has more personalities than he does in canon, because (a) the word "several" can mean anything more than "two or three"; and (b) Mike's canonical alters do, in fact, cover a wide range of personality types. Granted, the example did merely duplicate a trope in the parent work.
Edited by Gideoncrawle Bigotry in the name of inclusion is still bigotry. Hide / Show Replies