All The Tropes Wiki Project, Part XVIII

[robkelk]

Hmmmmm...

As near as I can tell, this page is a manually-maintained copy of this autogenerated page.

Is there any reason to keep both?

The Index Index allows us to keep things collated manually, the latter page simply keeps track of all categories, but lacks the drill-down features or manual editing of the other. The former makes doing jobs for cleanup easier because we can narrow them down via the subcategorization, while the latter just lists all categories no matter what without the built-in drill-down of the manual page.

The latter is also generated by the software without any human input, which means it would exist without any categories at all. A truly accurate count of all categories that are relevant to our site mission can only be reliably checked through the manual page, the autogenerated one includes categories that are for maintenance, or generated by certain extensions that may not exist once they are removed.

In that case, we had better start using subcategories.

Already do. See the arrows next to categories in the Index Index? If it's blue, it means that category has subcategories. In fact, our trope/work pages do this by default. Unlike TV Tropes, MediaWiki was designed for allowing fine grained drill-down to narrow things to a specific range of items based on category tags since day one.

Allow me to re-phrase, then.

We should stop dumping everything into Index Index as a matter of course and actually use the subcategories we have. Individual Tropes should go under "Trope", not under "Index Index". Individual Works should go under "Work", not under "Index Index". (Or, better yet, works should go under their medium instead of Work, but baby steps to begin with.) Individual Useful Notes should go under ":Useful Notes", not under "Index Index". And so on. Leave Index Index for the top-level stuff and leverage what we have available to us that's built into MediaWiki.

Set up and use an actual category tree, instead of the kudzu that we have at the moment.

EDIT: Line so, as a bare-bones initial setup:

Index Index
+ Work
| + Advertising
| + Anime
| + Comic Books
| + Fan Works
| + Folklore
| + Film
| + Literature
| | + Magazines
| + Live-Action TV
| + Manga
| + Myths and Legends
| + Music
| | + Alternative Rock‎
| | + Ballads
| | + Heavy Metal‎
| | + New Wave‎
| | + Opera‎
| | + Punk Rock‎
| + New Media
| | + Podcasts
| + Newspaper Comics
| + Oral Tradition
| + Pinball
| + Professional Wrestling
| + Puppet Shows
| + Radio
| + Recorded and Stand Up Comedy
| + Religion
| + Tabletop Games
| + Theatre
| + Video Games
| | + 4X‎
| | + Action Adventure‎
| | + Action Game‎
| | + Adventure Game‎
| | + Beat'Em Up‎
| | + Edutainment Game
| | + Fighting‎
| | + First-Person Shooter‎
| | + Hack and Slash
| | + Mecha Game‎
| | + Miscellaneous Games‎
| | + Party Game‎
| | + Platform Game
| | + Point and Click Game‎
| | + Puzzle Game‎
| | + Puzzle Platformer‎
| | + Racing Game‎
| | + Rail Shooter
| | + Real Time Strategy
| | + Rhythm Game‎
| | + Roguelike
| | + Roleplay
| | | + Forum Roleplays‎
| | | + Journal Roleplay‎
| | | + Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game‎
| | | | + Cancelled Online Games‎
| | | + Strategy RPG‎
| | + Romance Game‎
| | + Shoot'Em Up
| | + Simulation Game
| | + Sports Game
| | + Strategy Game
| | | + Strategy RPG‎
| | + Survival Horror
| | + Third-Person Shooter
| | + Tower Defense‎
| | + Turn Based Tactics
| | + Turn-Based Strategy‎
| | + Visual Novels
| + Web Animation
| + Web Comics
| + Web Original
| + Western Animation
+ Trope
| + Abuse Tropes
| + Accidental Trope
| + Action Adventure Tropes
| + Advertising Tropes
| + Afterlife Tropes
| + Alternate History Tropes‎
| + Animal Tropes‎
| + Applied Phlebotinum‎
| + Artistic License‎
| + Authority Tropes‎
| + Bargain Tropes‎
| + Betrayal Tropes‎
| + Biology Tropes
| + British Media Tropes
| + Camera Tricks‎
| + Censorship Tropes‎
| + Characterization Tropes‎
| + Characters‎
| + Chekhov's Pun‎
| + Circus Index
| + Cleanliness Tropes‎
| + Combat Tropes‎
| + Comedy Tropes
| + Creator Speak
| + Crime and Punishment Tropes‎
| + Criticism Tropes‎
| + Death Tropes
| + Derivative Works‎
| + Dialogue‎
| + Did Not Do the Research
| + Distraction Tropes‎
| + Drama Tropes‎
| + Dueling Tropes‎
| + Elements of Nature‎
| + Emotion Tropes‎
| + Fame and Reputation Tropes
| + Family Tropes‎
| + Fandom‎
| + Fate and Prophecy Tropes
| + Food Tropes‎
| + Friendship Tropes
| + Furniture Tropes‎
| + Game Tropes‎
| + Genre Tropes‎
| + Genres
| + Geometry Tropes
| + Horror Tropes‎
| + Index Failure
| + Index in The Sky‎
| + Information Desk‎
| + Intelligence Tropes
| + Just for Fun‎
| + Language Tropes‎
| + Laws and Formulas‎
| + Lit Class Tropes‎
| + Literary Tropes‎
| + Locomotion Superindex‎
| + Logic Tropes‎
| + Love Tropes‎
| + Loyalty Tropes‎
| + Made of Index‎
| + Madness Tropes
| + Memory Tropes
| + Meta Concepts‎
| + Military and Warfare Tropes
| + Money Tropes‎
| + Morality Tropes‎
| + More Like a Footnote Than Anything Else‎
| + Motifs
| + Music and Sound Tropes‎
| + Narrative Devices‎
| + National Stereotyping Tropes‎
| + Networks‎
| + News Tropes
| + Number Tropes‎
| + Occupation Tropes‎
| + The Oldest Ones in the Book‎
| + Omnipresent Tropes‎
| + Paratext‎
| + Philosophy Tropes‎
| + Plots‎
| + Politics Tropes
| + Power
| + Psychology Tropes‎
| + Rape Tropes‎
| + Reality TV Tropes
| + Religion Tropes‎
| + Revenge Tropes‎
| + Rituals and Ceremonies‎
| + Royalty and Nobility Tropes‎
| + Scenes‎
| + School Tropes‎
| + The Secret Index‎
| + Sequential Art‎
| + Series Tropes‎
| + Settings‎
| + Shapes and Symbols Tropes
| + Show Business‎
| + Sociology Tropes‎
| + Spectacle‎
| + Speculative Fiction Tropes
| + Spoilered Rotten
| + Sports Story Tropes‎
| + Stupidity Tropes‎
| + Sturgeon's Tropes‎
| + Superhero Tropes‎
| + There Are No Indexes‎
| + This Index Does Not Exist
| + This Index Happened Offscreen
| + This Index Is in The Way‎
| + This Is Your Index On Drugs‎
| + This Might Be an Index‎
| + Time Tropes‎
| + Tiny Tropes‎
| + Trope Tropes‎
| + Tropes About Taboos
| + Tropes by Medium
| + Tropes in Space
| + Truth and Lies
| + Universal Tropes‎
| + Useful Notes‎
| + Vacation Tropes
| + Vehicle Tropes‎
| + Weather and Environment‎
+ Useful Notes
+ Just for Fun

I'm sure I've missed something obvious here.

Individual pages shouldn't be showing up until level three in the tree at the earliest.

And we could tweak this tree, too. Maybe put Comic Books, Newspaper Comics, and Web Comics all under a new "Sequential Art" supercategory? (EDIT: And rename our current category "Sequential Art" to "Sequential Art Tropes".) Put Web Animation, Western Animation, Eastern European Animation, and Anime under a new "Animation" supercategory?

EDIT: And while we're at it, clean up the level immediately under "Trope". Since when was Useful Notes a trope?