"Works About X" indexes

Hey, can a mod please see who added the most recent bombs on the draft? It's getting extremely excessive even though people are telling people to stop bombing it.

That's a separate tech issue that probably needs a thread of its own.

We've discussed it multiple times before. I'm just asking if the mods can talk to the people who are dogpiling this one.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 1st 2022 at 6:26:58 AM

I messaged the troper who added the most recent bomb.

I do think some of the existing animal indexes are meaningful distinctions, but I think a more general "Works About Animals" index is needed.

for cleaning out the "Animal & Stock Character indexes". Also in favor of "No New Animal and Stock Character Indexes" rule.

Edited by callmeamuffin on Feb 2nd 2022 at 9:35:07 PM

Again: what is the objective here? "Works about animals" could conceivably cover everything from Cat in the Hat to nature documentaries. And we're trying to target the broader question here of whether any "Works about X" indexes are needed.

This.

Edited by StarSword on Feb 2nd 2022 at 3:57:27 PM

I would be in favor of enacting a no new Works About X policy now while we discuss what the scope should be of any potential merged index and/or what to do with existing indexes.

Agree and Agree. I still think the point that these articles are better served by genre pages hasn't been considered enough.

Like, having both Ghost Story (genre page) and Ghost Fiction (index) feels very redundant to me.

Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 2nd 2022 at 4:04:23 AM

Frick, those two articles are ridiculously similar.

When I got used to the TLP, I never saw much value with the "Works about X" pages, even before others felt the same. I had thrown a bomb to quite a few drafts (which eventually were launched) as I believed there wasn't much worthy.

I don't see much that could be redeemed from these "Works about X" pages. The breadth of these indexes is difficult to identify, and even if they are cleansed, determining whether a work qualifies would be challenging, and we would be left with just a tiny number of works that do. There are certainly some genre pages and concepts which could work, like "Horse Freedom Symbolism", which a couple of Equine Fiction works fall under.

My idea is to cut, redirect, and/or disambiguate the more meaningless indexes, and create new tropes based on some of these indexes that others brought up.

Edited by callmeamuffin on Feb 3rd 2022 at 9:20:50 PM

There's probably some indexes that can be reworked into something more specific (the aforementioned horse example being the best example), and then more general indexes could be cut. But that'd be a large project requiring TRS probably.

These Works about X indexes are basically resurrections of the Everything Is Better With X tropes except as an index rather than a trope, which is marginally better.

Haven't been involved with this discussion much, but to a rule prohibiting these kinds of indexes. I agree that they are too numerous and too poorly-defined.

Looking through the examples of Ghost Story, it looks like there is very little overlap with Ghost Fiction. Ghost Story's examples are almost all about in-universe stories being told between characters.

Nature Documentary has its own page, so examples of that would go there, since it is more specific.

As does Xenofiction.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 3rd 2022 at 5:18:44 AM

Xenofiction is a trope; it includes xenofictional segments in largely non-xenofictional works. Also it includes non-animals, such as aliens and robots.

Xenofictional Literature is an index, but again, includes non-animals.

Although I suppose it could function as a subpage anyway if it were soft-split.

Edited by Twiddler on Feb 3rd 2022 at 2:33:43 AM

I wanted to point to the literature index, but I typed it wrong somehow so I just used the trope instead. Either way, it's more useful than an index of random animal works; people who are interested in that specific genre have more resources than the narrow indexes allow for, without necessarily being stuck to animals.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 3rd 2022 at 5:41:07 AM

I'd like to bring up The Other Wiki has indexes for "works about certain creatures/animals". A lot more than what TV tropes has.

Also, if we have indexs for gathering tropes on animals I (even though tropes come first) don't see any harm in gathering works that feature those things too.

Edited by PikaRobo on Feb 5th 2022 at 11:52:38 AM

Honestly, the fact that Wikipedia has it makes me more inclined to say that we don't.

^^That's because the Other Wiki is a giant encyclopedia about literally everything. What it has really doesn't have any bearing on what we have here considering our much more narrow focus.

This is a site about tropes. Having indices that catalog tropes that are connected in some way makes sense as it allows a person to find a trope and other tropes similar to it in a related way. The works indices often do not follow that same logic and often include works that bring up the thing the index is about tangentially, e.g. a rabbit index and a work being listed in it in which "the main character has a pet rabbit he cares about a lot"

Edited by amathieu13 on Feb 5th 2022 at 12:22:58 PM

Right; the other wiki has no bearing on how we organize our wiki.

...Plus their indexing system isn't as garbage as ours is, so they don't get the same horrible bloat we do.

, are primarily the reasons I'm opposed to these indexes. In fact, didn't we used to have We Are Not Wikipedia as a stock wiki message page?

If a work is about animals, that often affects the story in some way, even without going into Xenofiction territory. Take Finding Nemo, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Over the Hedge, Madagascar, Chicken Run, Rio, Ice Age, Once Upon a Forest, The Secret of NIMH, Open Season... all these stories hinge on the fact that their characters are animals. Their very premises depend on it.

But in the same vein, other works make the animal part irrelevant, such as certain kids shows and movies (aside from the rare Furry Reminder).

Sing would be more or less the same movie if they were all humans. So would Arthur, Mickey Mouse cartoons, and The Berenstain Bears.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 6th 2022 at 7:18:54 AM