MarioWiki:Not an archive
The Super Mario Wiki prides itself on being a comprehensive encyclopedia of the Super Mario franchise and its partner properties, covering its games, characters, gameplay mechanics, and tie-in media as much as is deemed pertinent by coverage guidelines. What it is not, however, is a media archive.
At various times, the wiki has had issues with its users treating it as a media dump, uploading complete media (soundtrack CDs, scans of out-of-print books, etc.) and screenshots and materials from the games far in excess of what is required to illustrate the subject. This is not encouraged. While the wiki is comprehensive in the uploading of assets such as game artwork, it is generally understood that uploading the artwork has an educational purpose in illustrating the evolution of the series branding and art over time, and that furthermore said artwork exists for marketing purposes and thus is inherently meant to be disseminated. Extending this to any and all media both dilutes our focus and exposes the wiki to potential legal claims from the copyright owners of the media whose contents are being duplicated.
As a website hosted in the United States of America, the Super Mario Wiki is bound by American law, and thus follows the American legal doctrine of fair use, meaning the idea that third parties can make use of a (limited) amount of copyrighted material without seeking authorization from the right holders if it's meant to be in an educational, non-profit, or transformative capacity. Generally the question one should ask before uploading media is: Does it serve a purpose? Does an image depict a distinct design for a character or the effect of an item or trap? Does it illustrate something said in the text of an article? Or is the thought process merely that something is in the game, so it should be on the wiki?
Examples of generally excessive and frivolous uploads include, but are not limited to:
- Every single discrete asset in a given game, such as every texture, HUD graphic, particle effect, or typeface.
- In-game models in every possible angle, lighting, and effect.
- Complete duplication of content, such as scanning every page of a comic book.
- Every single sound clip and sound effect in a given game.
- Promotional pictures of tangentially-related topics (such as game consoles and actors) in resolution and quantity far beyond what is necessary to illustrate the subject.
- Images taken in close proximity to each other, such as snapshotting every frame in a cutscene, whether or not they illustrate something distinct.
Before you upload something, ask yourself if a wiki is even the best format for what you are trying to convey. Just because we do not presently require a threshold of "notability" in our coverage policy does not mean that it is helpful (nor feasible) to document quite literally every last possible thing one could theoretically say or show about a given subject. If you are unsure if the wiki is the best fit, there are plenty of other websites out there you can contribute to, such as The Spriter's Resource or the Internet Archive, that have far better infrastructure for them than an encyclopedic effort like ours ever could.
