Topic on Forum:Trope Talk

This may be a controversial opinion, but I think it's worth discussing.

"Jossed" comes from a time when TV Tropes was a Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan site, and not everybody will get the reference. TV Tropes has done away with other trope names that were obscure references, and I believe this one should be no exception. Not everybody has seen Buffy, and it's really presumptuous of TV Tropes to assume otherwise. They don't want to change it because it's site tradition, but All the Tropes is not TV Tropes.

The name is confusing for other reasons too. Joss Whedon is known for a lot more than denying fan theories. The article itself even acknowledges that Whedon is known for character deaths and shocking plot twists.

I suggest a more intuitive name. We have "Word of God," so I suggest "God Says Otherwise" to contrast that one.

While I understand your point, the problem exists that "Jossed" is incredibly pervasive -- and not just as a simple link. It is used in dozens of places as a transitive verb ("this has been jossed", "X jossed Y") , so if we replace it outright, we need either another transitive verb, or an immediate mass effort to track down and rewrite every instance of it that gets its grammar broken by the change, or both.

I think that regardless of what the actual trope ends up being, "jossed" or "Jossed" as a verb in text could be simply translated as "obsoleted", possibly with a pothole to the actual trope if we're dealing with a link.

I think the whole thing should be doable with regular expressions. if it's a simple link with a * in front of it, change it into a link to the new trope the usual way. Otherwise change the text to "obsoleted", preserving whether the word was a link and capitalizing if it's the beginning of a sentence. "Jossed" shouldn't be a substring in anything, but we need to take the context into account anyway, so surprise finds of characters called Jossedia or something shouldn't be a problem if we do it right. It can get a little bit complex with all the cases that need to be taken into account but shouldn't be particularly difficult.

I would write some examples of how to do that, but I can't find how you turned off formatting on this wiki again...

Or maybe Jossed could be Authorially Obsoleted. I'm not sure how great a name that is, but it works as a verb and should be simple to replace.

Since I spoke out in favor of renaming The Dragon, I'd say that we *don't* need to rename this one, for similar reasons: there's a difference between "actively misleading" and just "not always understood". If you don't know what it means, "The Dragon" sounds like something it's not; "Jossed" just doesn't sound like anything.

Maybe once we get more people using the site we could take a poll.

I agree that Jossed is not remotely on the same level as The Dragon. Jossed is not exactly a good name, but I can tolerate it on the wiki, especially given the lack of a good alternative. (Now that I think of it, Authorially Obsoleted is not a good name at all. The "Obsoleted" part is fine, but the whole is just way too long and awkward.)

It's not limited to Buffy fandom, though not omnipresent either. In the end, if there's no comparable (as either widespread or clear and convenient) term, there's nowhere to rename it.

Creator's Dismissal? I know it sounds rather ambiguous, needs to be better.

Is it actually used?

What do you mean?

What do you mean "What do you mean"? Is it a term that's actually used anywhere? Or do you propose to change an actually used (if obscure) term with an ambiguous construct that curently isn't even obscure, but doesn't have lifesigns of its own at all? I tried to search for it and click random links, it wasn't used like this in either.

I said 'needs to be better'!