Rhetorical Analysis of a Digital Writing Environment

Preston Badgley     

12 February 2016

ENC 4416

Professor Dan Martin

Rhetorical Analysis:

How TV Tropes Effectively Caters to its Userbase

"A story's ending may come as a surprise to the reader, suspense may have the reader on the edge of the seat, and conflict may lead to unbearable excitement. It is the job of the writer to create these effects..." (Bulman Abstract)

Introduction

TV Tropes is a wiki style website entirely dedicated to the categorization and classification of tropes in popular culture. Merriam Webster defines tropes as "figures of speech" (Merriam-Webster). However to the creative writer a trope is more than that, tropes "are more about conveying a concept to the audience without needing to spell out all of the details (TV Tropes)". In other words, tropes are devices or writing conventions that exist in a person's mind due to some sort of pre existing knowledge implanted by previously consumed media or as set by society or a community. Examples of tropes would include the action of outrunning a fireball in a movie, elemental weapons in an RPG, the concept of star crossed lovers in a novel, or how the villain always seems to give long winded monologues that give the protagonist just enough time to think of an escape plan. This is where the problem lies, as while these concepts undoubtedly exist, their inherent abstract nature may make it hard to categorize them. As such, a community is required for the categorization and cataloging of tropes. This is where the website TV Tropes comes in, as it serves as a hub for all those interested in the concept of tropes and their usage. As stated before, TV Tropes is a wiki style website. This means that it is easy to contribute to the site. However TVTropes manages to keep such a abstract concept straightforward, goes to great lengths developer side to streamline the end user experience, and provides a way for users to be active continued contributors to the website in some way or form.

Landing Page

The first thing that catches the eye when first accessing TVTropes is a large picture of a cracked television test card in the center of the screen with a text box that reads "The All Devouring Pop Culture Wiki", along with a centered block of text titles "Welcome to TVTropes". The intro blurb has the previously stated quote from the introduction, but then goes on to read "The wiki is called "TVTropes" because TV is where we started. Over the course of a few years, our scope has crept out to include other media. Tropes transcend television. They reflect life. Since a lot of art, especially the popular arts, does its best to reflect life, tropes are likely to show up everywhere". It is from here, that a new user to the site can get a very good idea on both what this site has to offer as well as what applications one may do with the knowledge obtained by the site. Moving on the next most noticeable thing on the landing page is the TVTropes' logo. The logo is somewhat minimalistic, in where the lowercase letters 'tv' are off centered with the 't' having a lampshade [lampshade hanging] on it. The logo is in an outlined box, with the text " Learn about the Lampshade Hanging in TVTropes' Logo". The logo itself serves a ternary purpose, it demonstrates the casualness of the website via a visual gag, provides an opportunity for a novice to learn about the logo, and simultaneously provides a sample of the structure of the website (which will be expanded on later). The ladder two examples also provide an opportunity of mentorship, which contributes to a successful participatory culture which is an essential for a successful digital culture (Rheingold 113). The landing page also provides various links with somewhat quirky names such as SugarWiki (which takes you to a page with links to upbeat and 'cheerful' trope article links), DarthWiki (which in contrast takes you to a page with 'darker' and 'edgier' trope articles), a button at the top of the page that will take you to a random trope article,  and various other tabs of this nature.  All of these features are located on the homepage, and as such are the first things that users both new and old will see. Regardless of the fact that the website is still a wiki, it immediately manages to distinguish itself from others through the use of a non standard format for wikis. First impressions, while possible to change, are very hard to change without active participation from the subject (Mann et al. 845). The homepage of TVTropes sets the precedent, gives an introduction to what the main idea of the website is, as well as some exploratory tools for new users to get started. However, it should be noted that the website recently received a new update and used to have an introduction that also accurately represented the non-formal borderline sarcastic vernacular used on the site and by its various articles.

Articles: Tropes

The articles themselves contain the trope title, a description, and a generalized example of the trope. It should be noted that they do not necessarily always appear in that order. The vernacular used in the articles is somewhat different from the vernacular of a typical wiki. All articles are written on a very informal fashion, with heavy usage of other tropes used in context. It is not rare to find an article with a minimum of 5 article links with proper usage of the linked article. While the hyper linked articles are aliased in a way that makes the tropes usage very obvious, it may be somewhat overwhelming to a newcomer. I personally find this weird as the homepage is seemingly quite friendly to new users. The articles are also not afraid to hold an intellectual tone, even sometimes becoming philosophical in nature. For example, in the article page for 'Rule of Three', "Sometimes called trebling, the Rule of Three is a pattern used in stories and jokes, where part of the story is told three times, with minor variations. The first two instances build tension, and the third releases it by incorporating a twist... The Rule of Three may be a subtrope of a more general psychological phenomenon, as threes are well-noted in all forms of culture. Films, books and plays come in trilogies. They have a Three Act Structure, a Beginning, Middle and End. Counts of three elements are used widely in rhetoric, writing and myth: "Ready, aim, fire", "Veni, Vidi, Vici", "Lights, camera, action", "Reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic," "rhetoric, writing and myth". Just try and think about how many times you've heard the phrase "On the count of three... (TVTropes, 'The Rule of Three')". The excerpt demonstrates all of the previously discussed points. This is the style in which the articles on the site are in. To which I bring up the previous point, this website is in fact a wiki. In other words, all articles are a culmination of various contributor's work into a single cohesive article. Which makes the use of this encouraged vernacular even more unique, as anyone is permitted to edit any article. The use of what is called 'spoiler text', or the use of a removable censor bar, is also used. This is implemented due to the fact that topes are writing mechanisms, and the presence of a trope (or more commonly the stated reason for a tropes existence) may denote an important plot point for a narrative. From this we can assume that the general user base has some sort of respect for the community and what TVTropes wants to be.

Articles: Media

Tropes, by definition, can only exist with the context of some sort of narrative. Which is more often than not in the form of some sort of media. Hence, for the ease of the user and to keep a more sensical database, TVTropes also has a wide variety of media based articles ranging from internet topics to oral traditions and everything in between. The current article structure contains a title with the medium type (i.e. television, folktale, theatre, etc), the title of the media, a short description, and a list of known tropes that the media contains. Each article also contains a shortcut menu towards the top of the page that contains links to the more commonly used categories of tropes. This streamlines the media type articles, for if all of the tropes contained in a series was listed in on a single page without the use of any organization or file architecture (especially with some of the longer running pieces of media such as The Simpsons or Harry Potter), the article may be too large. As Rach puts it, "Too much content makes things harder to find (8)". This ring true for multiple reasons, for example it would prove to be intimidating to new users, too much information pain for avid users to retrieve information from, and problematic for editors and contributors to improve. As with the trope articles, spoiler text and the use of hyperlinks are also used for the same reasons. The media based articles purpose is to help pull the website together. Even though the website's purpose is to catalog tropes and their definitions, tropes by definition only exist in narrative. The logical progression of this would be the inclusion of the various media that tropes exist in, hence the creation and use of these media based articles. Moreover, the presence of these articles helps the overall experience of the end user.

Forums

TVTropes also has easy access to various forums. These forums provide standard support styled thread topics such as trope revision or trope questions, and also provide social styled topics such as threads involving the NFL, LGBT issues, and regional politics. Immediately, this website distinguishes itself from other sites by covering such a large array of topics. The forum setup is very similar to how a traditional forum is setup. There is a central 'hub' page that contains links to many different topics and there are threads within each topic for various issues or conversations for users to take part in. Elaborating on the 'support' styled threads, the support styled threads have a main focus on helping new users become acclimated to the site, competent users are free to ask questions about the usage of tropes, and avid users may edit or add content. These support forums encourage both new and old users to come together and interact with each other, which is imperative for the continuation of a social media website (Rheingold 206). Moreover, these support forums also offer an easy method of information seeking, which according to researchers is an important success factor in the perseverance of a social media site (Guo et al. 758). As mentioned before, there are also general topic threads as well. These threads don't necessarily have a centralized purpose, as that categorization belongs to the earlier explained support focused threads. No, these threads fall more under the category of 'all that is not centralized', with the previously mentioned thread topics serving as proof that these threads may have very little or nothing in common. While some may be able to argue that this may detract from the website, the wide variety of topics covered in these forums may actually heavily contribute to the retention of users. The wide variety provides a higher chance that the user will find something that he or she is familiar with, and familiarity is an important factor in encouraging active and continued participation in a network (Taha et al. 7). These forums provide a helpful place to newcomers, an civil place for discussion for older members, a place for the experienced members to share their knowledge, and a place for the casual user to hang out or discuss non-trope related issues. It successfully provides a level of user participation that the main site cannot provide on its own, but more importantly does it in a way that makes sense and does it effectively/

Conclusion

The website TVTropes is a smaller website, but despite its size still manages to demonstrate all of the hallmarks of a successful digital writing environment. It is very user friendly, provides a method of successfully conveying ideas while keeping opinions separate, goes to great lengths to improve the user end experience, and provides a way for participants to be both active and consistent in their participation. TVTropes goes to great lengths to ensure that anyone interested in the subject of tropes has the ability to learn more about them, and that the random passerby will stick around for at least a little while to explore the novelty that is this site. It should be noted that the website was updated in the process of the writing of this paper to a debatably better format. While the paper does reflect the changes, this paper does not necessarily reflect the changes made after the writing of this paper.

References

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