Category talk:Heroes

Does Professer E gadd count as a hero?
 * I'm not entirely sure, especially when concerned with the purposes of this category, but this category has some really odd characters in it. Alph, Jonathan Jones, Nastasia, T.T., Ōsama... The intro sentence implies that this category is for listing protagonists (as in, the leading/main characters), but in practice, it seems to be a hodgepodge of people who have done something vaguely good at some point or have been playable at any point. Before we start adding other people to this category, there really needs to be some sort of retooling done here.
 * OK, let's make some clarements...


 * Alph IS an hero. In Pikmin 3, it saves Britanny, then Charlie, and althogheter Louis and at teh end Olimar after the ship crashed. Saving 4 people doesn't counts as hero?
 * Jonathan Jones ISN'T an hero. What does he did? Retrieve the fifth Star Piece, and forcet Mario to fight to get it. Right, it helped him to stop some villains, but I don't think this classify him as hero. This means the Factory's Toad is an hero for rushing in somehow and offering items.
 * Nastasia? Not at all! She was on Count Bleck's side. At the end, she was just enourmously worried from what she did. I would like to remember she generated Mr. L, a semi-villain.
 * T.T. just supported the player, challenges him in a Staff Records-esque fashion and is needed to beat Wizpig. He helps none.
 * Osama is an hero just because he survived from the 8 bits? W-? Supporting, just like the SMB3 Kings.
 * E. Gadd is NOT an hero, or may he be? He gives Luigi the Poltergust, that, even if vital, is similar to the iconic character "It's danerous to go alone" from Zelda. Then he oversees Luigi. Nothing very important, but it may be. Depends if Zeldawiki trats the iconic character as hero.
 * In the context of the Mario series, though, Alph hasn't done much. It seems kinda weird to me that we'd cover Mario-related information for a character but categorize them through things outside of what we cover.
 * We should just categorize them based on their roles on the relevant media. Link would be considered a hero, but only because of his role in the Subspace Emissary in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and his major roles in some Club Nintendo comics. Kirby would be a hero for the same reason as Link, mostly. Alph does not qualify as a hero within the scope of this wiki. E. Gadd isn't really a hero; he's more of a mentor/supporting character. 15:25, 13 September 2014 (EDT)
 * All right, we've decided what we want to exclude, but perhaps a more concrete definition for a "hero" could come in handy. Right now, I'm honestly not certain how exactly I'd want to limit/phrase it.
 * A "hero" is a major, generally playable, protagonist from any series that is covered by the scope of our Wiki. You can basically build a framework around that. It's basically characters you control as in the games. In other media, it's the main person/people that drive the storyline. 15:51, 13 September 2014 (EDT)

And HOW is nabbing a hero? He may be playable in New Super Luigi U' but he steals stuff! Should I remove him?
 * @Reversinator @Mario Alph is hero then? As I said before, Pikmin storyline features him as the first playable character (also the fastest?). Saves Brittany, then Charlie. I don't know the whole facts, but I'm sure he was the only one never lost (the other got lost at least once more). Then they save Olimar from Formidable Oak (no, not the prof), AND their planet from hunger (best ending). So Alph, Brittany and Charlie (ABC, anyone?) are all heroes, but sadly Alph is the only one to ever appear as a character in Mario series. Olimar is not an hero though. He saved his friend Louis once, but in Pikmin 1/2 he simply massive crashed and had to repair the starship. @Joseph Nabbit, though mainly a pretty annoying enemy, is playable in NSLU as a Mario replacement, which pretty much classify him as an hero if 4 players clears Peach's Castle. He is also pretty useful to give 1-UPs to HIMSELF.
 * All of that is absolutely irrelevant. As we had clearly stated, we are only covering what's directly relevant to the Mario series. If a third-party character has traits in other games that are not seen here, we are not going to cover them. We only cover what they've done here. Olimar was part of the Subspace Emissary campaign, and gets his hero title from that. Alph hasn't done anything of the sort, and is thus not a hero.
 * As I stated, I don't own Brawl, so I don't know anything about it. Also, I'm an human.
 * You never stated (in this discussion, at least) that you don't own Brawl. Also, what in the world does your species have anything to do with this discussion? I know you're human. If you weren't, there'd be some serious ramifications.

Do something about this category
This category sucks. Its name sets itself up as the counterpart to Category:Villains (in which "villain" has been tentatively defined as someone who opposes the main characters with clearly evil intentions), but the intro sentence describes the category as being used for any protagonist. No, "hero" is not synonymous with "protagonist" in any context, and I don't know why we still use it, especially since it's not intuitive in the slightest. This has also led to every playable character in Super Smash Bros. Brawl being listed as a Hero (presumably due to their role in the Subspace Emissary) despite the majority of them not taking a leading role at any point, and all of the partners in the Paper Mario series being listed as Heroes despite them playing second fiddle to Mario, and every playable character in the Mario & Sonic series because someone clearly thought that Category:Playable Characters didn't exist. This is a confusing and poorly implemented mess. Let's try to clean it up, shall we?

Option 1: Strictly define "hero" to be a protagonist with obviously good intentions. If this is supposed to be the counterpoint to the villains category, why not go the whole way and define it through similar terms? This option involves setting a definition for "hero" as a protagonist who can be considered obviously good - while it doesn't perfectly line up with proper definitions of the term, it's practical and perfectly applicable for the wiki's purposes. A lot of the category would also be cleaned up, as the term "protagonist" would be rigorously applied (no, "protagonist" does not refer to any major character; it refers to the central character): for example, none of the partners would remain in the category. Of course, there are very few protagonists in the first place, but at least they'd have a well-defined home.

There can also be options for simply defining a "hero" as any protagonist at all (which is a misnomer and would have a lot of overlap with the playable characters) or simply defining a "hero" as anyone with obviously good intentions (which would result in a lot of overlap with the allies). The two aspects in conjunction allow the category to carve out a niche for itself, but separately, I don't think that the category would be effective. However, this may change with future discussion.

Option 2: Define "hero" to be any major characters with obviously good intentions. This opens the gates ever so slightly more: instead of limiting the category exclusively to protagonists, any notable character who helps out for obviously good reasons would be included as well. This is more in line with the proper definition of a "hero", and it also allows the category to be filled out more thoroughly. In this case, the partners would remain, due to their required nature and constant (though perhaps inconsistent) involvement in the gameplay and story. The flipside of broadening the definition, however, is that there may be some overlap with Category:Allies, and that category's a mess as well. To counter this, a compromise could be made that clearly set notable characters as heroes and more minor characters as allies - though this isn't strictly relevant to this proposal. If we're keeping the category, I'd prefer this option for its wider reach.

Option 3: Delete the category Instead of having to deal with the subjective nature of "heroes" or notability and any potential edge cases, we just scrap the category entirely and don't put up anything in its place; to be honest, this is my preferred option. As stated above, we already have a category that deals with playable characters, and having a category that doesn't deal with something that we can exactly and easily recognize (e.g. "this is an obstacle", "this character has this job", "this is a vehicle in this game", etc.) just seems a bit arbitrary and not something we should deal with. It's certainly a lot simpler than having to argue about just how heroic or major a character actually is.

Option 4: Do nothing. Nothing is changed. None of the contradictions are resolved, none of the definitions are refined, and everything remains a mess. Or perhaps you just don't like the other options, in which case I'm willing to make changes or add new options as needed. For the moment, though, I think that these options are reasonable; it's up to you how you want to clean this category up.

Proposer: Deadline: October 12, 2017, 23:59 GMT

Option 1 (strictly define)

 * 1) How about everyone explicitly referred to as a hero, like the four heroes of Super Paper Mario? Of course, that would include Bowser, but...

Option 2 (more broadly define)

 * 1) Per proposal.
 * 2) Char89Charizard (talk) I have to agree. Protagonists aren't always heroes. I mean Wario and Bowser are protagonists in certain games but they're not considered heroes.
 * 3) Characters other than the protagonist can be considered "heroes", too. Per proposal.

Option 3 (delete)

 * 1) Per proposal.
 * 2) I always thought the term was a bit too loaded for my tastes. I also like Time Turner's reasoning here, as this category overlaps with Allies and Characters. Stemming from that, I think something should be done with "Category:Villains" too, which I feel has similar problems to this article considering overlap with "Boss" and "Enemies".
 * 3) Per Baby Luigi.
 * 4) Per Baby Luigi.
 * 5) Per all.
 * 6) Per all.
 * 7) Per all, and I definitely agree something should be done with Category:Villains as well.
 * 8) There are characters in here which have been both heroes and villains, and then everything else that follows seems to be a bit vague, per all.