Topic on Forum:Wiki Talk

Taking a look at the analysis pages, I'm not wondering why they've been ignored so much. I agree that analysis is very important and desirable, but the aim is missing.

I don't even know what an analysis page is supposed to be like:

• A longer version of the trope description?
• A shorter version of the Wikipedia article with less NPOV?
• A school-style essay?

If I want to write more detailed analyses like "Marxist Themes and Allegory in the Circus Arc of the Black Butler Manga" or "Jungian Archetypes in the Second Season of the Black Butler Anime", I suppose I could put them on the analysis page, where they would in all likelihood be preserved for ages, like flies in amber, in a very non-wiki way.

So, I'm not sure what to do. I think some sort of more structured approach would be desirable. Editing normal tropes has a low barrier for entry, as anyone can see add a missing trope or correct a wrong trope. The way the wiki consists of small, disparate pieces makes this possible. Maybe there could be a template or something, with fill-ins like Central Theme, but I don't know how that could work.

I just wanted to raise this issue for conversation.

Huh, well, right now I think anything there would be nicer than an empty page.

There are really forms of analysis page going on here, trope analysis and work analysis. Tropes are a form of analysis themselves, so any trope analysis subpage is really asking for more cowbell. I think in general that does mean a longer version of the trope description, with maybe some wikipedia-type writing thrown in for flavor. But these should be cover the trope in question's use globally, with only a few references to a specific work.

Trope analysis pages should also get down to why a particular trope is used in stories -- how it interacts with story building and human nature. I guess, to look at the trope from both Watsonian and Doylist perspectives.

Work analysis pages are intended for in-depth analyses of a work as a whole. The idea being that the work is much more than the sum of its parts, and that a detailed discussions of the themes of the work can take place here in prose rather than bullet point format. Again, Watsonian and Doylist perspectives would be useful here.

School type essays would probably be appropriate for work analyses, but they doesn't have to be that long. Sometimes, you just want to talk a bit about the themes, or the context in which the work was made. Sometimes, it might be good to discuss a few important tropes in the work, and how they interact together.

Oh, and long essays are editable by everyone, but it's weird how people avoid editing them. It might be reverse-bikeshedding -- so easy to add a bullet point, but hard to revise complex logic.

You can take these recommendations as "policy for now", meaning I'm not really sure what to do with Analysis, and I encourage more discussion.

I've been thinking about this matter. We can have a General analysis heading if someone wants to write an essay about the entire subject, but I think there should be some sort of guide to point out that we can also have more specific general essays like General: Second Season of the Anime or Character Interactions. Not every analysis has to tackle the entire subject, which might be vast, with reboots and spinoffs and Loads and Loads of Characters in addition to just having a lot of total pages/minutes.

Then we get to the ATT-specific matter: the tropes. We can have even more specific essays about the interplay of specific tropes in a given work (or in general, on a trope's analysis page). For example, we could have something titled Princess Classic + Blue and Orange Morality to discuss what makes a hypothetical show so unusual.

Or. as a longer real example, you could write an analysis about why Highschool of the Dead is all about male wish-fulfillment rather than genuine horror under a title that would be something like Zombie Apocalypse + Ms. Fanservice + World of Buxom + Gun Porn, with maybe some additional tropes to further bring out the theme. The list doesn't have to contain every trope mentioned in the essay, just the main ones. For example, you could mention that the previous example is a Hotter and Sexier version of the general zombie theme as well as being a borderline Cosy Catastrophe without putting those in the title.