Trope Epitaph concern and suggestion

(Sorry if this is the wrong forum, I wasn't 100% sure where this belonged).

Trope Epitaph is a series of JFF pages that give humourous sendoffs to tropes that no longer exist. Generally, an epitaph appears as follows:

• Here lies [Trope Name] - Humorous description of how it died.^note Brief explanation of why the page was actually cut.

At some point a few years ago, tropes with titles in other languages had the "Here lies" part swapped out for the language equivalent. Then it applied to tropes that had one non-English word, then tropes in English related to other countries, then tropes that use borrow words that the layman probably wouldn't know aren't English. Point being, it's lost the charm by being overused.

That's not my main concern. My main concern is that in many cases it's rendered the epitaphs much harder to read, edit, and organize. For example:

• Eia 'o Eenie Meenie Miny Moai e moe nei — Caught a Rapa Nui by the toe. They didn't holler so they never let go.^note Giant stone chairs. Now a disambiguation page.

That's currently on the page, and it's a little hard to parse where the "here lies" and the trope name start and end. It's not impossible, but it unnecessarily takes an extra second. Multiply that by dozens of epitaphs that share the problem, and it becomes annoying to read the page.

Here's some other examples:

• Zde spočívá Zmelik — Fought for his life but lost to a dark horse.^note Named after Czechoslovak decathlete Robert Změlík, but was renamed for being really opaque.

• Edo vrisketai Zeno's Race — Its health decayed exponentially.^note The connection to Zeno's theory was lost on a lot of people, and even those who understood it didn't link it to plot pacing.

• Bishōnen ga koko ni nemuru — This Pretty Boy just wasn't pretty enough.^note Was made into a definition-only Fan Speak term and merged with Pretty Boy, which only allows in-universe examples.

• Zdes' lezhit Lzherusskie — The Husky Russkie was revealed to have faked his Russian nationality when his accent slipped.^note Translates to "Fake Russian" in Russian, but since this website is mostly English-speaking, the name ended up being unclear to most tropers.

Additionally, I think they sometimes have poor grammar since I see them getting minor wording edits every now and then (I don't know for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are mistakes that are hard to catch unless you speak the language), and it adds a roadblock to adding your own epitaphs.

I would like to standardize all of these entries to just say "Here lies [Trope Name]". I think the "joke" is not that funny, especially not when it's so overused on the pages, and it causes too many problems.

I think you're making a big deal out of a non-issue. I think this is just a you problem.

Yeah, I honestly don't see a point in standardizing a joke page.

I do wonder if the chairs snowcloning thing should be accompied by something more descriptive, but I don't see the language theming as any level of problematic, really. If anything, I feel like it's able to hint more towards what the trope was about than a regular jokey epitaph.

'Cause it makes it harder to read. I dunno. I'd like to hear a reason to keep them, that's not just "why not".

Edited by MurlocAggroB on Mar 2nd 2024 at 9:49:18 AM

Because they're funny? It's a joke page, and I think allowing creativity fits in with the purpose of a joke page. Having variance and some oddballs in there is fun and keeps things fresh.

Maybe if we put the trope name in bold, it would make it easier to tell what it is.

I also think that the true obtuse thing is when the explanation is just "X Chairs", without actually saying what the trope definition was.

Yeah, that's what I meant by chairs snowcloning not always being descriptive lol. It's a little annoying

Part of the problem is that it's not fresh. So many use the gag that it's formulaic. When you're sacrificing clarity, I don't think it's worth it.

Edited by MurlocAggroB on Mar 2nd 2024 at 11:34:45 AM

Thing is, I don't think a joke page has to put clarity in the forefront. I think it's okay for the wiki to have some areas where humor takes the reigns. We already explain everything in notes, and the examples you gave don't seem that hard to get to me. I can figure out from basic context clues what it's saying; I really think you're making a mountain out of a molehill.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 2nd 2024 at 12:38:32 PM

JFF pages are not trope pages and don't have the same standards. They are kept if they serve some purpose and some like them. They are very subjective. We don't, like, remove YMMV because someone disagrees a work has issues.

"It's for fun" and "all the fun was for the person being clever writing an entry" aren't mutually exclusive. I agree that putting the trope in bold would at least do something—sort of a tie to Examples Are Not Recent, because some of those haven't been around for a long time and if you're going to make the page gratuitously multilingual, it would help for 'work out what the trope is in this pile of foreign words'.

It'd also help for entries with multiple tropes even when it's in English? After all, this is basically 'the page of things once formatted as links', might as well make them stand out somehow.

Edited by RainehDaze on Mar 3rd 2024 at 2:21:42 PM

I'm okay with doing that. That sounds like a good compromise.

I have no issues with that.

Looking through, I can't find a way to idealize writing explanations that don't begin with "X chairs". Some of these defunct tropes had a original intended definition but later became Chairs from misuse, which does add a bit of context. For the tropes that were Chairs all along and not tropeworthy, the explanation becomes "X chairs". I've been linking to the TRS post for each killed trope in my edit reasons. I think either having an edit reason linking to the corresponding TRS posts that killed them would be better.

Even better, I think linking to the respective TRS threads in the epitaph explanation would add a bit more context.

Edited by Jalpo99 on Mar 3rd 2024 at 12:05:33 PM

As for more detailed explanations...a little more formal for JFF. TBH, I kinda feel that if Renamed Tropes has a adminitrivia page than cut or disambiguated tropes should have one in addition to the JFF epitaph page but eh I am not married to the idea.

Edited by MacronNotes on Mar 3rd 2024 at 10:15:01 AM

An Administrivia page for cut tropes would, theoretically, contain all sorts of malformed tropes and bad launches that no more than one or two people wanted in the state they launched in to begin with. Though I don't know if such pages get epitaphs as it is...

They don't. I wouldn't consider bad launches to be "cut tropes" to begin with, given that they're never up long enough to count.

Having an Administrivia page for examples of cut/disambiguated tropes would be both a bad idea and redundant. The most infamous of cut pages that the community have decided as never coming back are listed in the Permanent Red Link Club. The explanation for disambiguated links and a further list are described in the Ambiguity Index.

Nobody has brought this up yet, but I noticed some of the entires listed on this JFF project are tropes that were made Definition-Only instead of being cut, which means the trope and its definition still exist. We also have a page listing these at Definition-Only Pages. Should being Definition-only be counted as no longer existing, or in this technicality a shell of its former self, or not?

EDIT: Looking ahead, the reason Trope Epitaph has a ruling forbiding making epitaphs for Flame Bait entires in the page source is likely because several Flame Bait tropes are declared Definition-Only as well as flame bait to forbid tropers from starting flame wars by merely mentioning them. This includes most Mary Sue Tropes, Idiot Plot, Internet Backdraft, and Snark Bait. This could be discussed.

Edited by Jalpo99 on Mar 6th 2024 at 5:14:00 AM

^I don't see how it's redundant when the PRLC wouldn't have every trope cut by TRS and the Ambiguity Index doesn't explain why certain tropes were disambiguated and what they were originally for.

In any case to me it makes more sense to have the trope epitaph strictly about jokes and move the explanations to their own page.

Edited by MacronNotes on Mar 6th 2024 at 6:35:13 AM

I kinda forgot about this thread, but am I good to go ahead and bold the trope names?

I started the process in a sandbox so I can implement all the bolding at once without having to bold them all in one go. I finished the Disambiguated/Indexified folder if anyone wants to give feedback or help.

I'm fine with the creation of an Administrivia page for the explanations only. These could be on a page titled Administrivia.Removed Tropes, which would provide the explanation of why a certain trope got cut/split/merged/disambiguated/indexified. Renamed tropes already have their own explanation page, so it would be good to have an administrivia page explaining a trope's fate beyond being renamed. If we allow adding detailed explanations of why a trope got declared Definition-only, it could also provide a place for explaining the reasons behind certain Flame Bait tropes being declared definition-only. To avoid flame wars, the Flame Bait section should be moderated often, or placed in a separate locked page to prevent it.

Looks fine so far. This will help identifying the source trope for the multilingual epitaphs. As long as they aren't linked, they should be useful.