MarioWiki:Proposals

Remove non-Mario characters from the trophies, Assist Trophy, stickers, and Spirit pages
The Mario Wiki's Super Smash Bros. coverage always has been, and likely always will be, one of the most consistently controversial aspects of the wiki. In my opinion, instead of trying to solve any of these coverage issues with one large, sweeping proposal, it would be better to handle individual topics in smaller-scale proposals. This is one of them.

Basically, the longest page on this wiki as of this proposal is List of trophies in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U - something about a game which isn't even part of the Mario franchise. That's pretty insane. We have several lists, such as the Spirit page, the Assist Trophy page, the Sticker page, and the lists of trophies in _ game, which give coverage to each and every single collectable that is a part of their respective groups, even if they have absolutely nothing to do with the franchise. We don't need this. It unnecessarily bloats the pages with information not related to the wiki itself, and would make it harder for readers to access the information actually pertinent to the franchise and in turn, the wiki. No one would go to the Mario Wiki to find out what Ghirahim's spirit does. If they did, they would just go to a Smash Wiki. Basically, this non-Mario related list content just makes these pages filled to the brim with non-pertinent info that would just make a page harder to load for those who want to find actual Mario related info on a Mario Wiki, and not info about a million other gaming franchises. In short, what I propose is the following:

That any list information that isn't pertinent to the Mario or related franchises would be removed. This will affect the following pages, under this proposal:


 * Assist Trophy
 * Any of the "List of trophies in _" Super Smash Bros. game (will not affect Trophy (Super Smash Bros. series).
 * List of Smash Run enemies
 * Spirit (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate).
 * Sticker (Super Smash Bros. Brawl).
 * List of Mii Fighter Outfits
 * List of Mii Headgear
 * Subspace Army

This will not affect:


 * The Pokémon page. The page is entirely filled with non-Mario information. Wether or not this page should be deleted is a discussion for a different proposal.
 * The intro of any of these pages. The spirit page, for example, will still inform the reader about what a spirit is.
 * The fighter pages. Even if the trophy/list pages have non-Mario content removed, any spirit or trophy info on any fighter's page will still remain. Wether or not we should even have pages on fighters which never appeared in the Mario franchise is for another proposal.
 * The Super Smash Bros. game pages, which will remain mostly unaffected. Any changes that should be made to these is again, a subject for another another proposal.

Additional notes:


 * Some redirects, such as Bonkers, may have to be deleted if they become useless after this proposal is enforced, if it passes.
 * This will not remove any list info directly pertinent to the franchise (such as any Mario, Wario, Yoshi, or DK trophies).
 * I have included the option to support the removal all non-Mario thing on these lists except for fighter trophies, spirits, etc for those who would rather that outcome.
 * Coverage will be slightly modified to reflect any changes with how we handle this content.
 * This will be enforced simply by removing any parts of the list that aren't pertinent to the franchise. For example, the info about Akira's Assist will be removed from the Assist Trophy page, though the info on say, Waluigi's, or Klaptrap's Assist, will remain.
 * Some of the pages affected by the proposal are featured articles. Wether or not they will still be worthy of their featured status is something to be considered after the proposal is enforced.

Edited notes:


 * I have added an option for voters who support removing non-pertinent items, except for items which already have individual pages. Under this option, stuff for Blinky (the Pac-Man ghosts), Knuckles, and the fighters would be kept, as they already have their own individual pages for other reasons (being a playable MK character, being in Mario & Sonic, and being a fighter). The above option would still be for those who want to keep the fighter items, but not the non-fighter items.
 * I have added the Mii gear pages, due to forgetting them at first.
 * Added info about the Subspace Army.

Proposer: Deadline: March 14, 2021, 23:59 GMT

Support (including the removal of non-Mario fighter spirits, trophies, etc)

 * 1) Per proposal.
 * 2) - per proposal
 * 3) Per proposal; there really is no need for unnecessary info if it's irrelevant to Mario.
 * 4) - per proposal

Support (excluding the removal of non-Mario fighter spirits, trophies, etc)

 * 1) - If it has a page, is fair game, is how I see it.
 * 2) Strong support. We went out of our way to limit coverage of the Super Smash Bros. franchise itself, which has more in common with the Mario franchise than any other singular franchises represented in it. In that case, why pray tell do we have so much irrelevant coverage on Zelda, Star Fox, Kirby and many others? However, as Glowsquid stated above, any extra-Mario subject that has a page here for one reason or another should still be allowed additional info like trophy and spirit information.
 * 3) I'm additionally fine with this being the case, though the above option is preferred in my opinion.
 * 4) I'm more than happy for the articles to be downsized in my opinion, considering how large the List of trophies in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U article is, with not much information on Mario and more-so on other franchises.
 * 5) Trophies and spirits from other franchises that aren't Mario aren't information relevant to MarioWiki.
 * 6) I feel that cutting down on lists like these that are not necessary directly connected to the Mario franchise is necessary, as there is no need for lists such as these being some of the longest articles on the site. However, I feel that this option is the best option, as I do not think it is necessary to remove information covering subjects that are still currently covered on their own articles.
 * 7) I think loading times and the amount of scrolling are other problems with these pages, this is a good way to sort that out.

Oppose

 * 1) Traditionally our reduction in Smash Bros. coverage has always been to reduce the prominence of information, rather than outright remove it. I don't really feel comfortable going farther. I also worry that any other option we go for will look inconsistent and arbitrary to our readers, whether it's within our Smash coverage itself or with other crossovers. I'm especially opposed to Assist Trophies being tossed into this proposal since they have a much more significant impact on gameplay. Not listing every single collectible in the game is one thing, having an Assist Trophy page where we don't even acknowledge the majority of them is confusing and not very helpful, especially if we're going to be keeping the Pokemon page around at least for now. At that point we're starting to gut our coverage of the gameplay of the series itself, and I only see us being a few more proposals away from deleting the rest of the fighters entirely. (And actually I do find myself using the Spirit page here for all of them in general, I find it more helpful that they're on one page which afaik SmashWiki doesn't have)
 * 2) Per WT and my general opposition to removing Smash content.

Comments
@Waluigi Time We shouldn't not do something because another wiki is lacking. In addition, I do see any reason to stop at removing info if there's no reason for the info to be on this wiki in the first place, and it's not like we haven't removed swaths of non-pertinent info in the past (like with how we previously had a ton of Banjo content). 17:19, February 28, 2021 (EST)
 * I'm not saying that's why we shouldn't remove it, just addressing the comment you made. I agree in theory - the Banjo and Conker content was way out of scope and didn't need to be here, and we don't need to keep unrelated content just because some people may find it helpful. Smash however is too intertwined with the Mario series for me to be comfortable with throwing large parts of our coverage out completely. -- 17:33, February 28, 2021 (EST)
 * How is Smash intertwined? While yes, there's a lot of content themed around the franchise, it's not like the actual Mario franchise takes inspiration from Smash itself, or vice versa. 17:37, February 28, 2021 (EST)
 * There's enough Mario content in the series for me to consider it a proper crossover (i.e. Mario & Sonic or Fortune Street) worthy of covering. It's not like Banjo and Conker where they happened to appear in Diddy Kong Racing as advertisement and never touched the Mario franchise again (until Banjo in Smash obviously). -- 17:39, February 28, 2021 (EST)

While I prefer the second option over outright removing everything, since there's no reason not to keep information on subjects we cover, after all, I can't see it working out too well... Crossover characters can gain relevance to the Mario franchise at any time, either through becoming a fighter or other means, and if we give them articles then we'd also have to dig up all of the Smash info we used to have for that character and restore it, and possibly end up missing some along the way. Additionally, this option only makes exceptions for non-Mario fighters. What about characters like Knuckles? He's not a fighter but still has a page. -- 17:53, February 28, 2021 (EST)
 * I'm only giving exceptions to fighters due to having a larger importance. Knuckles doesn't have a page because he's in Smash - he has a page due to Mario & Sonic. Anyways, we shouldn't keep unneeded info because of the mere possibility of a character becoming more relevant - that's like saying we should keep the humans page in case a reason to have it independent of categories latter pops up. If, in the future, a removed spirit becomes a fighter, then we can re-add it then, but's it's no reason to keep massive quantities of non-pertinent info. 18:22, February 28, 2021 (EST)
 * That seems almost arbitrary, to be honest. Some non-Mario characters we cover get to have their information kept, but others don't? It's pretty bizarre that Knuckles would still have his trophy/spirit/sticker information on his own page (I assume it would stay), but the pages covering those items as a whole including lists would make no mention of them. I don't see how this is comparable to the human page at all, either. The human page is being proposed for deletion because there's currently no useful information to cover there. It's not any extra effort to start a new article with information that we never had before. This on the other hand would be information that currently is useful and if the option passes, could and would be brought back at any time. -- 18:30, February 28, 2021 (EST)


 * How would the resulting list be organised? "Mario spirits", "Non-Mario fighter spirits" and "Spirits of subjects that appear in other Mario media"? I feel like if they were otherwise merged without sections, the list would look kind of... random: A list of Mario subjects with a number of non-Mario subjects mixed in, which might lead some readers to wonder why some are listed and some aren't.


 * "Knuckles would still have his trophy/spirit/sticker information on his own page (I assume it would stay)" About that... Just to clarify, if option 2 passes, does this just apply to the lists, and not their individual pages? In other words, would articles on non-Mario, non-fighter subjects that have spirit, trophy etc. information (e.g. Moogle) retain those sections? I think they should at least be kept on their own pages in a similar approach to the Captain N info for Simon Belmont, in that "They have a page, they appear in this thing we also cover; we should mention it." 05:31, March 1, 2021 (EST)

Would this proposal impact the Subspace Army article? It is not specifically listed, but I feel the "Basic troops" section of the article is a similar situation to the List of Smash Run enemies article. -- 19:56, February 28, 2021 (EST)
 * It wouldn't, as like with the Pokemon article, it is entirely about a non-Mario subject that would end up deleting the page if all non-Mario content was removed, and it is thus out of this proposal's reach. 23:02, February 28, 2021 (EST)
 * There are Mario enemies in the Subspace Army, though, similar to the Smash Run enemies. 05:31, March 1, 2021 (EST)
 * My mistake. I have rectified that. 09:10, March 1, 2021 (EST)

I'm pretty indifferent on the proposal. I don't have a problem with the way we handle Smash content now (except for the absurdly long list pages of trophies and spirits). So I'll just help with whatever outcome happens, should pages need deleted. What I *do* see a problem with, though, is how this effects our other crossover content. With what is said on Coverage, every element in a crossover game gets full coverage as if it's relevant to the Mario series. Be it Mario & Sonic, Fortune Street, and even elements that cross over with Mario such as Link in Mario Kart 8. I realize the page states that Smash is decided on a more particular basis, but it is still a crossover game, so removing all Mario content when other crossover games do not will look very out of place, imo. 00:24, March 1, 2021 (EST)
 * The content being removed here isn't Mario content, though. Any spirits, assists, etc that are actually directly related to the franchise will be kept, but stuff like Bonkers on the Smash Run enemies page will be purged. Bonkers in Smash Run isn't Mario related, and thus removing him from the page isn't removing Mario content as much as it is removing Smash content.

In addition, this doesn't really affect other crossover content. As you stated, that page notes that Smash content is treated differently. It wouldn't look weird to treat this differently from Fortune Street and Mario & Sonic: those two are crossovers much more exclusively focused on the two franchises represented, compared to Smash which not only covers dozens of different franchises to different degrees but is altogether its own thing, with a good amount of original content and characters. You could very much classify Smash as its own franchise independent of any individual ip represented, compared to Fortune Street which is very much only a Dragon Quest and a Mario game, not part of an independent franchise, if that makes any sense. If anything what looks out of place is the sheer amount of content we have with other franchises which have absolutely nothing to do with Mario, though I understand that's a different topic for a different proposal. 09:10, March 1, 2021 (EST)

In the case of Trophies, Stickers and Spirits, I can agree to that. Mii Fighter costumes, maybe too. But I feel Subspace/Smash Run enemies could remain, as they have a more involved role in their respective modes. That’s just my opinion on this topic.

Right, I'm not quite sure where to vote here yet, but I wanted to ask some questions about some of the unusual cases that I don't think have been covered in the proposal as it stands (If I've misread the proposal and it is included, or I just haven't understood it right, please let me know): I might still be missing some stuff, but I'd at least like to know what the plans are for stuff like this, as if this isn't thought out there's going to be a big mess to clean up if it comes to execution time, and I don't think we want to have to set up another load of proposals just to sort through the case by case ones. BBQ Turtle (talk) 16:29, March 1, 2021 (EST)
 * So, just to clarify what's happening to the stuff for characters that aren't fighters but have pages for other reasons, like the Sonic or Pac-Man characters? I've seen it's been discussed already but I don't quite understand what the current position is.
 * What happens to stuff that isn't a fighter but already has a page, like the various items or Skyloft?
 * When you say about keeping the fighters' spirits/trophies, what exactly do you mean by that? Is that only keeping the ones specifically tied to Smash, or does that include anything that features them, such as the goodness knows how many Link's got? And how would that work with ones that got trophies in earlier instalments and became fighters later, like King Dedede or Little Mac? What about spirits for Min Min, she's a funny case as she's got two? And what would happen for fighters who have multiple costume spirits, like the Heroes, Corrins and Inklings?
 * Would stickers that feature non-Mario characters but specifically affect them (i.e. the ones that can only be used on certain characters) be kept or removed?
 * What about vice versa, are the non-Mario related conditions going to be removed as well?
 * What about spirits where the battles feature Mario characters representing non-Mario characters, what happens to those? And the vice versa of that one too.
 * Is there a full plan for what's going to happen to the Assist Trophy page? I was just taking a look at it to check my facts, and if we just chuck all of the non-Mario characters it's going to leave a really big mess behind, so some thoughts on a future structure might be nice.
 * Has some thought been given to what's going to happen to somewhat-related characters that don't have a page, such as the Arcade Bunny or Nikki from Swapnote? I think R.O.B.'s stuff might also fall into this category, so are there any thoughts what's happening there?

So here's the issue I have with the Assist Trophy page in general being trimmed, a bit more fleshed out after having thought about it for a while. Short of failing entirely, this proposal will remove certain characters from the Assist Trophy page entirely. Now here's the issue: We have a page for an item that can be used by Mario franchise characters that no longer fully explains what the item does. You could argue the item's sole function is "spawns a character" and stop at that, but that only opens up more questions. What characters? What do they do? I see no benefit to ignoring Assist Trophy characters for the sake of "not Mario". I also feel the same way about the Pokemon, though I think it could be beneficial to heavily trim that page and just merge it to Poke Ball. -- 16:50, March 1, 2021 (EST)

New features
None at the moment.

Removals
None at the moment.

Changes
None at the moment.

Split the tour appearances of every Mario Kart Tour course
Mario Kart Tour course pages currently house information related to the individual tour appearances of their respective courses such as their order of appearance in cups and their case-by-case highlighted drivers, karts and gliders. With the large number of tours that have been released and will continue to release, these pages end up having an excessive amount of highly-reccurent or similar information that may increase load times and make them uncomfortable to scroll through. To solve this issue, I propose that we split said tour appearances into separate pages related to every course. These new pages can be named something like "List of SNES Mario Circuit 1 tour appearances in Mario Kart Tour", with the console of origin mentioned beside the title as in-game, though if there are objections against this particular preference I'm adding a separate option to have the console mentioned in brackets and only for courses that share a name such as Rainbow Road (SNES) and Rainbow Road (3DS).

Proposer: Deadline: March 5, 2021, 23:59 GMT

Support (format course titles with console prefixes like in the game)

 * 1) I prefer this option as it seems more consistent.
 * 2) Per proposal.
 * 3) Per proposal.
 * 4) Per proposal.
 * 5) Per proposal.
 * 6) I agree with the split of the lists and I think that using the full names showed by the game is preferable.
 * 7) Per proposal.

Support (include console names in brackets and only for courses that share a name)

 * 1) - If it needs to happen, I'd rather the title be consistent with our naming scheme.

Comments
While I do support doing this to courses with many tour appearances, I do think that there should be a certain amount of tours that a course would have to be in to split. This is because splitting the page when the course has only appeared in one or two courses is silly: doing it only after it appeared in four or more tours would make more sense. 19:27, February 25, 2021 (EST)
 * I think two appearances can constitute the minimum for a page. Silly as it may seem, a list with only two entries is still a list, and these pages are expected to grow steadily over time. 19:37, February 25, 2021 (EST)

I feel like we'd run into the same problem, but on a different page. Using the Mario Circuit 1 example, there are fourteen charts with many images on them. I realize the point of this is to move the load times (which don't seem that bad) off the main Mario Circuit 1 page, but I don't feel like there's enough content to really justify doing so. Not like how Gallery:Mario was split, which is just... really large no matter what you do with it.

Regardless, if it does get to that point, we already have a policy page that agrees with you. 00:30, February 26, 2021 (EST)
 * The article size guideline specifies that pages with more than 100kb of code should “almost certainly be divided”, and going by Special:LongPages, there are already quite a few course pages that exceed that size, including but not limited to Yoshi Circuit, Waluigi Pinball (DS) and Shy Guy Bazaar. It’s evident these articles are largely occupied by charts, so naturally these should be split off before anything else; the resulting pages exceeding 100kb themselves at some point is not relevant since the article size guideline doesn’t apply to lists. This proposal aims for a consistent treatment between all course pages, so if the three aforementioned pages are to be split, the other MKT-relevant course pages should follow suit. 01:00, February 26, 2021 (EST)

I'd get rid of the "show" collapsibility, too. We don't do that for tables and it just forces users to click on an extra link, especially unnecessary on a page dedicated to tour appearances. Unless this was already in mind. 06:36, February 26, 2021 (EST)
 * I find the collapsibility option to be useful at the moment as it increases the readability of an article, but I do agree it should be removed if the charts are split to different pages since they would then form about 2/3 of the content in each page and would thus require an expanded focus. 09:48, February 26, 2021 (EST)