Blanket opposition to trope renames on TV Tropes

glennmagusharvey

As in, that "rename conservativism" that just flatly refuses to rename stuff, except in the case of really bad names.  Its justifications are generally based on inertia.

But just because people have been doing something badly doesn't mean it ought to continue since everyone's already used to it.

All Nines

>People who

>People who

>People who

glennmagusharvey

Fine!  I'll edit the thread title!

All Nines

I just thought I'd point that out before someone who actually cares gets annoyed by it.

RedEyedAbyss

Buh, buh, buh, Nakama is deeply meaningful in a way the inferior English language is unable to convey!

Crimson

Y-you're just trying to turn the site into what YOU think it should be! YMMV YMMV!

/actualargument

glennmagusharvey

Also, just because it's not currently being misused doesn't mean that it's a good working title that we have no reason to reject.  A misleading title's bad wicks could have been cleaned up.  There could also be various people who were smart enough not to write mis-citations of a trope because they checked the trope first, and found that it meant something other than what they thought it meant.

Such opposition to renames really does NOT serve the purpose of getting the best names for tropes.

Bastion

Mm.

MillerCross

Meh, most of the times, the original names weren't exactly hahaha hilarious.

Lampshaded double entendre is fucking retarded, though.

LouieW

Maybe my experience with TRS is unrepresentative or something, but I have yet to encounter much of this kind of opposition there and when I have seen it, it tends to be ineffective as rename supporters are more numerous than objectors (i.e. even Nakama was renamed eventually). 

These days, I think that more or less any trope can be renamed if there is support for it (this does not mean it should or does get renamed), possibly independent of the reasons for that rename. I would look to how one is not supposed to use why and how other names were changed as precedent as evidence of that. I feel like that not looking to precedent is somewhat problematic, but I do agree that lack of misuse is not necessarily evidence that a name is good.

AnneBeeche

People are, unfortunately, resistant to change.

CommandoDude

This thread reminds me of that strip Vorpy drew about TRS renaming TheMario.

glennmagusharvey

@LouieW: Well I'm in a rename/split/redefine/revise debate right now, and I'm recalling the rename battles I fought in early 2009 over a number of tropes, the now-infamous "nakama" included.

One specific example I remember from back then is the troper Black Humor, who is a really cool guy otherwise but would very frequently oppose my (and others') rename proposals, generally on the grounds that if the old name isn't completely broke, it ought to be kept.  I got really fed up with this because in multiple cases (I can't remember which by now, sorry) I felt this was causing crappy names to be kept for the sake of institutional inertia--merely because people were already using it.

I still feel that we should be aiming for the best name, not for just a workable name and be done with it.

Elbeem

To be fair to some, a lot of the recent attitudes in TRS were directly related to how the guidelines were set up, that pretty clearly spelled out that "If it ain't broke (according to inbounds, wicks, misuse stats)..."  was the primary consideration. Those guidelines were set by Fast Eddie, so many people accepted that as an admin approved rename philosophy.

It's only been recently that Eddie has reversed his position on that, and it will probably take a while for the TRS culture to catch up to the new way of doing things.

Of course, some people are the type to simply oppose any changes whatsoever, which I agree is a bad reason to vote "no".

glennmagusharvey

> To be fair to some, a lot of the recent attitudes in TRS were directly
related to how the guidelines were set up, that pretty clearly spelled
out that "If it ain't broke (according to inbounds, wicks, misuse
stats)..."  was the primary consideration. Those guidelines were set by
Fast Eddie, so many people accepted that as an admin approved rename
philosophy.

Oh, I see.

What has he changed to now, then?  Is there an official policy page on this?

I haven't really been looking at official policy but rather I've just been trying hard to work within whatever framework exists to get better trope names enacted.

Elbeem

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EverythingYouWantedToKnowAboutChangingNames These are the current guidelines, which were actually developed by consensus on a Wiki Talk thread if I remember correctly. I do think that they do a better job of allowing for flexibility than what we had previously.

glennmagusharvey

Oh, I see.

I rather like these new guidelines.  Thanks for pointing me to them.

Elbeem

No problem. It used to be in the top most pinned thread in TRS, but is now in the FAQ subforum for some reason.

Schitzo

Well fuck me. I thought "If you know what I mean" was self explanatory >:l

glennmagusharvey

Wait what?

MillerCross

If you know what I mean was renamed into "Lampshaded double entendre".

glennmagusharvey

What was the reasoning?

I can see a valid reasoning for a rename; I'm just wondering whether that was it.

MillerCross

Lots of misuse because people potholed to it not when lampshading a double entendre but when they were using a double entendre.

Of course, this implies that potholes are not lampshades, which is a lie.

Naas_Human

Lots of misuse because people potholed to it not when lampshading a double entendre but when they were using a double entendre.

Of course, this implies that potholes are not lampshades, which is a lie.

There's something seriously wrong when the pothole is describing the pothole itself, methinks. It's already not all too good when the pothole is describing the actual text (like all those annoying This Is Sparta potholes), so I I can see that a pothole describing the pothole itself is a problem.

MillerCross

I don't see how potholing to "Lampshaded Double Entendre" fixes that. If anything, it exarcebates it. 

ClockworkUniverse

^But people won't do it with the new name, because it doesn't work as a verbal tic.

MillerCross

Potholes are not there just for the editor's pleasure. They're there both to create wiki-interconnection and to help readability by linking to the relevant concepts being referenced.

And it's not like you can always do what most people do in work pages, where you list the tropes and that'll be it. At some point, you're going to have to pothole to a trope in an article. 

Bastion

Besides sounding terrible, the problem I have with "Lampshaded Double Entendre" is that "If You Know What I Mean" is something that anyone would recognize and understand. Even "Nudge Nudge" is not that hard to figure out. "Lampshaded" is a term of art that's far less intelligible. Granted, it doesn't take long to pick up, but it still makes the wiki a touch more inaccessible.

As for why he did that...presumably it's his opposition to not only stock phrases, but to any title that sounds remotely as if someone is saying it. (Thread's really just another one of those "Eddies gonna Ed" moments, including complaining about how everyone else is getting off-topic and talking about stock phrases in...a thread with "Stock Phrases" in the title.)

gentlemanorcus

Off topic, but someone should make a macro with "Eddie Gonna Ed" on it.

On topic, I don't really like Lampshaded Double Entendre. It seems "If You Know What I Mean" would be way more understandable to people than a title containing a term which is pretty limited to a lot of people (I sure didn't know what lampshading was before TVTropes). I don't really know any of the technical stuff, just based on name recognition alone.

Naas_Human

And it's not like you can always do what most people do in work pages,
where you list the tropes and that'll be it. At some point, you're going
to have to pothole to a trope in an article.

Potholing when it's about the character being described isn't bad. But not all too good if it isn't relevant. Like potholing Obi Wan to The Obi Wan when the text is talking about him in The Phantom Menace, since he doesn't have that role yet.

Besides sounding terrible, the problem I have with "Lampshaded Double
Entendre" is that "If You Know What I Mean" is something that anyone
would recognize and understand.(...
)As for why he did that...presumably it's his opposition to not only stock phrases, but to any title that sounds remotely as if someone is saying it.

The problem with using a stock phrase for the title was that people were using it as alt text jokes. It was supposed to be about the phrase itself, and/or synonymous phrases, not for double entendres in general. Honestly the sense of humor some of these tropers seem to have is totally lost on me.

MillerCross

The problem with using a stock phrase for the title was that people were using it as alt text jokes. It was supposed to be about the phrase itself, and/or synonymous phrases, not for double entendres in general. Honestly the sense of humor some of these tropers seem to have is totally lost on me.

Then it should just be a matter of changing the title to something clearer (Which should be a priority).