MarioWiki:Proposals/Archive/61

Make changes on Yoshi franchise articles
I want to support some changes on the Yoshi franchise articles. The article about the series of Yoshi platformers could be too excessive and could be deleted and merged into the article about the Yoshi's Island series to classify Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3, Balloon Trip, Yoshi Touch & Go, Yoshi's Island DS, and Yoshi's New Island as direct installments in the Yoshi's Island series and Yoshi's Story, Yoshi Demo, the Purple Yoshi tech demo, Yoshi Topsy-Turvy, Yoshi's Woolly World, Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World, and Yoshi's Crafted World as indirect games of the Yoshi's Island series. For example, Yoshi's Story's working title was Yoshi's Island 64, and the early logo looks similar to the SNES game Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island logo, implying that Yoshi's Story was originally planned as a sequel to said game and would have been a direct title in the Yoshi's Island series. Another example says that third-party company Game Informer calls Yoshi's Woolly World an indirect title in the Yoshi's Island series, stating that the game is "the best Yoshi's Island since the original Super Nintendo title". In addition to this change, the page about the Yoshi puzzle games could be moved to "Yoshi (series)". For example, Tetris Attack could be a spin-off of the Yoshi series of puzzle games.

Proposer: Deadline: January 7, 2023, 23:59 GMT Extended to January 14, 2023, 23:59 GMT Extended to January 21, 2023, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Per proposal

Oppose

 * 1) I think a better idea would be to just merge the Yoshi platform series article with the main Yoshi series article since the 'platform series' is so vaguely defined. Also, moving the puzzle series to 'Yoshi (series)' is a bad idea because that's easily confused with 'Yoshi (franchise)', and I'm not sure why you brought up GameInformer since they aren't an official source.
 * 2) Per Hewer and the comments.
 * 3) Per all.
 * 4) Per all.

Comments
This proposal really needs more options; primarily to be able to support one or the other rather than only all at once. 20:43, December 31, 2022 (EST)
 * I also doubt the proposal format is appropriate for this. 21:30, December 31, 2022 (EST)

You should probably have a project page to show how this would look if passed. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 21:13, January 11, 2023 (EST)

Create Mario Kart course redirects with game prefixes for recurring track names
In case the title wasn't clear, I'm referring to making redirects like, , and. My argument for doing this is simple: I think it would be both useful and in line with our redirect policy.

For my first point: Series convention has people referring to these tracks this way even outside of official contexts, and people aren't going to take the time to think about whether a certain course came back before typing it into the search box. Heck, even I, whose editing hangout spots include not one but two lists of which courses appear in which games, find myself sooner typing "DS Bowser's Castle" into the search bar than "Bowser Castle (Mario Kart DS)", if only because one is shorter.

I do not believe these would be in violation of our redirect policy, as these names are neither silly (being an extension of series convention) nor ambiguous (there's only one course "Wii Mario Circuit" could be referring to). These are really the only criteria they need to meet, as the policy is otherwise very encouraging of redirects.

Now, my initial proposal was to do this for all unprefixed courses with recurring names, not counting MK8 or spinoffs since we don't know for sure what their prefixes would be. This results in this list:



It seems a bit excessive to me, but I realized while writing this that I may want to include an option to do this for every course (aside from MK8 and spinoffs), so I'm also including that as an option.

'DOUBLE EDIT: I've changed the second option to be what the edited-in third option was, since I didn't realize I was leaving Tour out when I first made it. I am sorry if this causes confusion.'

Proposer: Deadline: January 27, 2023, 23:59 GMT

Create the redirects listed above

 * 1) Per proposal.
 * 2) Second choice.

Create these redirects for every course (aside from MK8, Arcade GP, and Home Circuit)

 * 1) My listed reasons can apply, albeit more mildly, to all these courses; and as the redirect policy says, redirects don't cost anything.
 * 2) Per proposal, I'm surprised this wasn't already the case (also it's kind of already done with the non-city Tour courses here, here, and here, I would suggest extending this to Tour courses as well but since it's inevitable that they'll all be in the Booster Course Pass I guess that would just end up pointless in the long run ).
 * 3) While the idea of these technically not being official names still come to mind, I'm no doubt supportive of this, mainly cause I'm definitely one of those people who refers to pretty much every track with their system prefix beforehand, official or not. On another note, this could also just make it easier when these tracks inevitably do return, as the article contents can just be moved over to these redirects.
 * 4) Per Tails777
 * 5) per proposal however as i mentioned in my comment, this would be my secondary option if another choice including Tour courses is added.
 * 6) Per all.
 * 7) Per all.
 * 8) It makes sense, those redirects will eventually become the actual page names anyway (except maybe for the case of Mario Kart Tour whose non-city courses aren't consistently given the Tour prefix)
 * 9) Per all.
 * 10) Per all.
 * 11) Surprised it wasn't done before. Per all.

Comments
I would say "Create redirects for all unprefixed courses from MK7 or before", however I believe that Mario Kart Tour courses should be included in this list, so the page would redirect to Singapore Speedway's article. For now, i will vote the option i mentioned earlier, but if you create an extra option to include Tour courses, then i'd vote that one 19:28, January 21, 2023 (EST)
 * Like I said in my vote, the issue there is that they'll all inevitably come to the Booster Course Pass and be moved to those names anyway, so it would probably just end up being unnecessary extra work. 19:33, January 21, 2023 (EST)
 * that just means some courses will have prefix redirects, while some won't for up to 11 months, this, to me, is an "all or none" situation, if you're gonna do some, you might as well do them all. besides, creating a redirect, then transferring contents of another article to it isnt that much work, there's been more intense stuff done to their articles before. 19:41, January 21, 2023 (EST)
 * Admins can move pages over redirects, so one can just ask an admin to rename the pages when necessary. 15:12, January 26, 2023 (EST)

Ahemtoday, you can still change the second option to include tour courses, the rules state you can append proposals within the first three days of it being written. Im sure if the people voting for it care enough about the other games having the redirects, they'd agree to Tour courses too 12:02, January 22, 2023 (EST)

I'd rather have the prefixes removed from the course names that are unique (and keep them for those that have different iterations such as (character) Circuit or Rainbow Road courses, obviously) then make prefix redirects. I honestly dislike how Tour courses that got added to BCP have the prefix, but those that has yet to be added did not. — Stache (talk) 23:00, January 23, 2023 (EST)

Decide what to do with StreetPass Mii Plaza
Merge request has been sitting on this page for a while, so let's resolve it once and for all. StreetPass Mii Plaza features plenty of Mario-related content, so it should be considered a guest appearance. However, it covers too much information unrelated to Mario, so I additionally propose to trim the features section, Find Mii, and DLC to only cover Mario content.

Proposer: Deadline: January 28, 2023, 23:59 GMT

Trim and classify as a guest appearance

 * 1)  I'll go work on my Smash proposals
 * 2)  Fine by me
 * 3) This makes perfect sense to do. Per proposal.
 * 4) Per proposal.
 * 5) Per proposal.

Merge certain non-Mario fighters from the Super Smash Bros. series into game-specific lists and trim away detailed special move information for all non-Mario fighters
Here's a simple premise: the Super Mario Wiki is not the Smash Wiki. The wiki has no business giving undue focus to every single element that has been part of the Smash Bros. series. In spite of the efforts to curtail this practice, the elephant in the room is still cosily seated.

I'll first reiterate my feelings on non-Mario concepts featured in this series: in my view, Mario Wiki's mission is indeed to provide information on anything the Mario cast interacts with, and the various Super Smash Bros. concepts, therefore, deserve by all means the privilege to be covered in some way, shape, or form. The problem is that these concepts are currently presented in excessive detail, much of which is specific to these concepts and perhaps as far-removed from Mario as one can get. I believe the two courses of action proposed here go hand in hand towards offering a much more streamlined coverage for the subjects that lack enough notability within the bona fide Mario franchise.

Following the standard of the List of Super Smash Bros. series items and List of Super Smash Bros. series bosses, my initial plan was to propose merging fighters who have had no significant presence within the Mario franchise into one list housing all their current Smash-related information, in addition to, perhaps, any other relevant information from other Mario-related media where they had cameos and mentions. Realising that the resulting page would be excessively long and more than likely violate the article size policy tenfold, I came up with a compromise that aims to achieve a similar effect:
 * 1) Trim away detailed, textual information on special moves for all non-Mario fighters. Special moves are intrinsic to a character, employing their own abilities and/or weapons. Giving each move a separate heading within a fighter's article just isn't proportional to the extent they manifest a relationship with Mario elements; they can be neatly summarised in prose, as fighter articles already do. In removing this information, a sizable amount of space will be saved, allowing for more compact fighter lists. Images relevant to the special moves will be kept and repurposed as part of the next course of action:
 * 2) Make a list of fighters for every Super Smash Bros. game (where for 3DS and for Wii U fighters share the same page) containing the relevant sections of each of the non-Mario, non-franchise-significance fighter, complete with a gallery of relevant images for each section. For instance, this means that we take the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate sections of Ness, Simon Belmont, and other fighters who fulfill the aforementioned criteria and throw them in a "List of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fighters" list, with each section having a gallery that comprises any relevant image that would go unused as a result of the redistribution of information. A visual example of how this would work can be seen at the end of the proposal.

A few notes:
 * if a character has had a significant appearance within the Mario franchise proper, such as having a playable role in Mario Kart--and this includes actual Mario characters--their page will remain intact. They will still have an entry on the relevant fighter lists, but nothing else beyond their representative artwork and a "main" tag with a link to their respective article. Cameos such as Super Mario Maker costumes, Yoshi's Woolly World designs, WarioWare microgame appearances, non-speaking roles, and mentions do not constitute a significant appearance--and neither do appearances in media where Mario characters are guests, such as Captain N, nor appearances in non-Mario media that is syndicated/distributed with Mario media, such as The Legend of Zelda cartoon and the Mario/Kirby OVA.
 * in cases where information on a fighter is split between lists, their current article is turned into a disambig page for their list entries (e.g., for Ness, it'll be "For information on Ness in the Super Smash Bros. series, see: ; etc.") For fighters who have only appeared in one Smash game, their current article is turned into a simple redirect to their respective section.
 * current profile sections won't be moved to these fighter lists to keep their size reasonable. Trophies, stickers, and spirits of each fighter are already covered on their parent pages.
 * Subspace Emissary info and classic mode routes from Ultimate will be among the ported information, even for non-Mario fighters. Reason being, these often involve Mario characters as opponents or otherwise.

With all that said, affected pages include:

The following pages will remain unaffected:
 * Banjo - playable in Diddy Kong Racing
 * Fox McCloud - reasonably significant appearance in the Club Nintendo comic "Super Mario: Mario im Wunderland"
 * Inkling - playable in Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
 * Isabelle - playable in Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
 * Kirby - major appearances in Club Nintendo comics
 * Link - playable in Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
 * Mega Man - major appearance in the Club Nintendo comic "Super Mario: Die Verwandlung"
 * Mii - (playable) appearances in many Mario titles
 * Pac-Man - playable in the Mario Kart Arcade GP crossover series
 * R.O.B. - playable in Mario Kart DS
 * Sonic - playable in the Mario & Sonic crossover series
 * Villager - playable in Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

I put together a sample layout that would inspire the appearance of these new fighter list pages; particularities, such as image size and whether or not fighters with intra-Wiki "main article" tags need an image to begin with, are negotiable.

 Page title: List of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fighters

This is a list of fighters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

'''Mario



'''Link



'''Ness



Ness appears as an unlockable playable fighter in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. While his moveset is mostly unchanged from the previous Super Smash Bros. titles, he has received various new tweaks to his moves. Ness now emits PSI when pummeling opponents and while using his neutral aerial. His up aerial, rather than headbutting, has him waving his hands in the air. In addition, for his PK Fire and PSI Magnet moves, graphics are taken from EarthBound. He and Lucas have a new victory theme, which is an arrangement of the last two of the Eight Melodies from EarthBound Beginnings.

Several of Ness's attacks receive names: his forward smash is called Batter Up!, his up smash is called Around the World, his down smash is called Walk the Dog, his forward throw is called PK Throw, and his back throw is called Reverse PK Throw.


 * Classic Mode route


 * Gallery

appender between double square brackets). Also, the articles themselves are somehow, poorly written (Dr. Eggman has one large paragraph for London Olympic Games, and one-liners for every other game he has appeared in).

I propose that the Sonic character articles should be reduced to a list featuring a brief description of each character, like "List of fighters debuting in [insert Smash title here]", or mention them with the  appender.

Proposer: Deadline: May 7, 2023, 15:05 EDT Date withdrawn: April 30, 2023

Support

 * 1) Per my reasons.

Oppose

 * 1) The Mario and Sonic games are fully within our coverage and the Sonic characters should definitely still have articles covering their appearances in those games.
 * 2) per Swallow.
 * 3) Although I've mentioned this idea before, after thinking about it more I've decided against it because I don't see a reason to exclude the Mario & Sonic games from full coverage. This shouldn't happen unless we decide to make a big change to the coverage policy, which would probably require us to cut down on other crossover content as well, for example the Dragon Quest characters who we cover because of Fortune Street. Articles being poorly written is a bad reason to delete them, it just means we should rewrite them to not be poorly written. Also, making a list page for them and externally linking them are two very different solutions, so you probably shouldn't be lumping them into the same support option.

Comments
I think this proposal should be vetoed; i now understand Hewer's points.
 * This proposal is new enough that you can remove it yourself as long as you add it to the archive. 05:52, April 30, 2023 (EDT)

Discourage drive-by templating part 2
Building off of this proposal, I propose taking this one step further with some more templates that are often used. Suggestions to merge, split, and rename articles are frequently made using the relevant templates, but many times that's the end of it and no talk page discussion is ever started. The reasons for the suggested change are left behind in a quickly buried edit summary, or not elaborated on at all. That makes it a lot harder for users to know why the change was suggested in the first place, and to discuss whether to do it.

If this passes, then these templates must be accompanied by either an active discussion or proposal. The discussion/proposal doesn't need to be on the talk page of the article where the template is used, but it does need to exist somewhere, and the template needs to link to the appropriate page. I'm hesitant to define what counts as an active discussion here, because I think it's fair to have some level of discretion there - personally, I would say that if there hasn't been any engagement whatsoever in the past 365 days, the discussion isn't active anymore (please be aware that this is not set in stone). This is to prevent having these templates left behind while attached to discussions that are years old - like proposals, if you suggest a change it's up to you (or the other supporters) to see that through and keep it active until a consensus is reached.

Articles where the proposed changes are enforced by a proposal but not enacted yet are exempt, as a decision has already been made. However, the proposal field of these templates should be used to link to the relevant proposal.

The following templates will be affected:
 * Template:Merge to
 * Template:Merge from
 * Template:Split
 * Template:Move

Proposer: Deadline: May 4, 2023, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) yeah
 * 2) Per proposal.
 * 3) Per proposal.
 * 4) Per...
 * 5) "Yeah" indeed. (To be honest, I thought this was something the previous proposal did...)
 * 6) Explaining why you suggest a split/merge/move in the edit summary is horrible for wiki maintenance. The reasoning is often very hard to find (if it even exists), and the templates end up linking to a red link talk page. If you can't be bothered to actually start a discussion on the changes you want to see made, then you shouldn't be allowed to use these templates in the first place.
 * 7) Per proposal.
 * 8) Yeah, fully on board with this. I've seen this template many times and it often doesn't have any sort of discussion tying to it.
 * 9) Per all, I've seen so many instances of this with no discussion to be found anywhere.
 * 10) This is exactly what I had brought up on the previous proposal.
 * 11) - Please? (because a "per proposal" doesn't drive home the urgency.)
 * 12) Pretty please. Way too many instances of articles having these specific tags but never linking to talk pages, or any other way to give out what the reason for it's inclusion is. I especially hate it when the reason is hidden away in edit summaries, like, edit summaries are only ment for telling what you did on a page, it is NOT for explaining complex topics that better warrant an entire discussion on a talk page.
 * 13) Per all. The there are a lot of pages that have had those templates up for a very long time yet nothing had been done about it.
 * 14) All per
 * 15) I thought this had been decided after the previous proposal already. I actually have already been removing some of these if there was no discussion at all or hadn't been active for a while.
 * 16) per all
 * 17) Glad we are adding clarity to our templates now.
 * 18) Sure, I guess we could add reasoning to those templates.
 * 19) – Per all
 * 20) Per all.
 * 21) Per all.

Oppose

 * 1) This adds too much control to the wiki and kinda dictates it. Mind you, the previous proposal was made to fix users adding templates for no reason. Plus, other wikis don't act like this. And if that argument sounds weak, it was used for merging various Smash articles. The history section exists for you to go look for it. And if you don't agree with the template, you just delete it. I apologize if this support was a bit too informal; I just need to get my points out there. I know for a fact that this proposal will succeed.

Comments
@Wikiboy10: The goal of this proposal is the same as the last one, getting rid of vague templates. A request for a rewrite or more images that doesn't actually specify what's wrong with the page is only a little more useless than a suggestion to merge a page with no reasoning - at least the suggested course of action is there, but the reasons why aren't, making it harder than necessary to come to a decision. This is meant to make maintenance easier for our userbase in the long run, and I don't see how requiring users to state their reasons for a suggested change is any more "controlling" than requiring users to specify why they're putting a rewrite template on a page.

The actions of other wikis have no bearing on how we do things, and never should, period. Every community is different and things that work for their organization, maintenance, and policies may not work for another wiki and vice-versa. We can certainly look to other wikis to see what ideas might be worth adapting and what's failed in the past, but it shouldn't be the basis of our decisions. Even using Smash as an example, there's several much more solid arguments to be made for reducing or cutting that content. A proposal that rested solely on "we should cut non-Mario Smash content because Bulbapedia doesn't cover non-Pokemon Smash content", for example, would've flopped horribly. I find it concerning how often "other NIWA wikis don't do this" or "SmashWiki exists" has been brought up in the recent Smash proposals, because apparently this attitude is now spreading to other issues and has been given the appearance of legitimacy, when historically it's been one of the flimsiest arguments used here for good reason.

The issue isn't just the reasoning being left in summaries, but that's a big enough problem already and it's been brought up by supporters why this is a bad idea. Also keep in mind that these templates sometimes stay up for years at a time, and especially on high-traffic pages, those summaries can be buried quick. Providing reasons for suggested changes to articles is simply not what page history is meant for, and drops the responsibility on someone else to start a discussion. However, many times users don't leave an edit summary at all. It didn't take long for me to find an example of this - Big Bungee Piranha. There's no discussion on the talk page, or on Bungee Bud's talk page either. The discuss button is a red link, in fact. Neither page's edit history has any reasoning for the suggestion. At the bare minimum, there's not even any edit summary that would suggest the template was added, making tracking down the original user who added it to contact them directly needlessly difficult. Maybe there's a discussion about this somewhere, but if there is, I'd have no idea where to look. What's the point of leaving this template up? In some cases, it may be fairly easy for someone else to fill in the blanks, others might be more difficult and rely on obscure material, but it really should be up to the person who suggests the change to follow through and explain why we should do it.

Finally, deleting merge/split/rename templates just because you disagree with the suggestion is a very bad idea that will most likely lead to edit warring. It's the exact opposite of what should be done, discussion until a consensus is reached.

Apologies for the long comment, but I felt the need to address these points. -- 15:05, April 28, 2023 (EDT)

"Plus, other wikis don't act like this. And if that argument sounds weak, it was used for merging various Smash articles." If you're referring to a couple misguided support votes in those proposals, maybe. But none of the proposals out of those that actually succeeded were built on that principle, so I suggest you not spread misinformation. As others including WT above have said time and again, there is no inherent, indisputable benefit in modelling this wiki after others. 15:40, April 28, 2023 (EDT)
 * I will admit, I barely started my own wiki and I am currently trying to get rid of spambots at the moment. I feel you guys are more experienced and nuanced on this stuff than I am. I have a hard time adapting to major changes and I tend to see maintenance templates as a rather important thing on wikis; they save a lot of behinds. When I read this proposal, I felt the idea could be difficult to implement and would require tons of back and forth. I haven't seen a wiki that does tells people to make propsoals for labeling a template, I love to see it; it might help me think about the issue here.I apologize for the misinformed information; I misremembered reading something from Glowsquid in regards to NIWA wikis doing X. I reread it again and it was completely different than what I remembered. It was this qoute, "But the "we shouldn't base ourselves on other wikis" goes both ways; just as the fact NIWA wikis don't cover Smash Bros anywhere as rigolously as we do is not an argument in itself for scaling back our coverage, the feeling that the main Smash Bros ressource is lacking in some respects is not an argument to keep it either." You guys win. Wikiboy10 (talk) 17:17, April 28, 2023 (EDT)
 * Oh, to clarify, a proposal wouldn't be necessary to place one of these templates. There just needs to be somewhere on a talk page where the reasons are provided to discuss the change (which may or may not be a TPP). -- 17:24, April 28, 2023 (EDT)