MarioWiki:Proposals

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Remove external links to Zelda Dungeon Wiki and/or Triforce Wiki
Early this year, a proposal was passed to add external links to Zelda Dungeon Wiki and Triforce Wiki by 10-0; the intent was to add two links to two independently hosted wikis as Zelda Wiki at the time was hosted on Fandom.

Fortunately for us, this is no longer the case. Zeldapedia is now independently hosted and doing well. I think while Zelda Dungeon Wiki and Triforce Wiki have served their purpose and are great resources for Zelda content, it would be embarassing (as a NIWA wiki) to continue using these wikis when it was originally intended to supplement a Fandom wiki that has since forked its content to become independently hosted once again.

Edit: After giving some thoughts, I've decided to allow users to either remove ZD Wiki or Triforce Wiki or remove them both.

Proposer: Deadline: October 27, 2022, 23:59 GMT Extended to November 4, 2022 23:59 GMT  Extended to November 11, 2022, 23:59 GMT Extended to November 18, 2022, 23:59 GMT

Remove both

 * 1) Per my reasons.
 * 2) Per proposal.
 * 3) Per proposal.
 * 4) Per proposal

Do nothing

 * 1) - Disregarding my personal ties to Triforce Wiki, I'd actually support (and even prefer) allowing more specifically approved outside-NIWA indy wikis of Nintendo subjects to be included, if only for variety's sake. (Also, I am very happy for ZeldaWiki!)
 * 2) Agreed. Disregarding the biases involved with Triforce Wiki's approach being modeled after this wiki's, I think it's more in our interest to keep the line drawn at non-NIWA wikis that cross into Mario franchise coverage. I might be misremembering, but wasn't there a time when the Sonic News Network links were in question due to the Sonic Retro wiki, but it was decided to keep both because while the former isn't independent, it's more mature as a wiki? For our purposes, the relevant content is mature enough. Cutting off options does a disservice to readers.
 * 3) Having both of these links assists readers; if they find that one wiki doesn't have enough information, they can go to the other. Again, I'm admitting my bias, but I think having no links would hurt more than help.
 * 4) Per all.
 * 5) - per Doc

Comments
Here's the thing, I'm more in favor of just removing Triforce Wiki. Zelda Dungeon Wiki, I feel, should still be kept for the reasons Doc has said. However, I'm more in favor of removing Triforce Wiki because the owner has had disturbing history on many NIWA wikis. Wikiboy10 (talk) 09:53, October 20, 2022 (EDT)
 * I tried my best to not mention it, but yeah the history of Triforce Wiki had been concerning for many. If people want to keep ZD Wiki and remove Triforce Wiki, I'd be happy to add it as an option. 10:03, October 20, 2022 (EDT)
 * I'm going to let Doc touch on this since I don't know as much - being that I had never been in Discord - but know the bottom line is that the founder is no longer actively involved and I disbelieve that one's personal actions taints a whole. LinkTheLefty (talk) 10:25, October 20, 2022 (EDT)
 * Um... TriForce Wiki was always my little pet project. RMV even said as much himself. Technically the domain is now hosted by grifkuba, I've banned RMV for his - quite frankly dangerous - behavior, and I am the de facto proprietor now - I've just been inactive due to being busy on this site. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 12:34, October 20, 2022 (EDT)

Disregarding the problematic history with Triforce Wiki (and thank god he's no longer involved), I have some issues with your argument @LinkTheLefty.
 * "I think it's more in our interest to keep the line drawn at non-NIWA wikis that cross into Mario franchise coverage. [...] Cutting off options does a disservice to readers."

I'm not sure if this is a great argument. We already have issues with Smash coverage here, and at the moment they aren't linking to any other Smash wiki than SmashWiki. I might be getting into slippery slope territory by saying this, but I don't want an instance where we decide that if we provide enough coverage to a franchise, we should link to every wiki that covers that franchise. Relatively speaking, I don't want this wiki to start linking to https://animalcrossing.fandom.com (which is unlikely, but still). I don't think Zeldapedia minds about linking to other Zelda wikis, but I don't want this to set a precedent that quite frankly should be avoided. 11:08, October 20, 2022 (EDT)
 * I was going to mention Smash before, but I thought that example was already implicitly inapplicable given the franchise's special scope in wiki coverage (for the time being or not), so I didn't bother. Your Fandom example isn't applicable either, per this proposal. Furthermore - and I'm aware this wasn't your intention when you made this but I want this to be clear - associating Triforce Wiki with one person/incident it has largely moved away from is REALLY unfair to Doc, who has been open about it being a pet project of hers and earned the title of current proprietor of the wiki, which is now hosted by Grifkuba among other NIWA wikis. That's all I really want to say about this matter. LinkTheLefty (talk) 11:54, October 20, 2022 (EDT)

I think I'm going to wait a bit before weighing in with a vote. For now, I think it's best if we at least replace all links to the ZeldaWiki hosted by FANDOM with links to the new independent Zeldapedia, if that hasn't been done already. I'm also happy that they finally went independent again, like how they used to. It kinda stuck like a sore thumb to have this one NIWA wiki to be hosted by Gamepedia/FANDOM when all the other NIWA wikis are independent. On a side note though, I think it's funny that the new independent wiki is called "Zeldapedia", considering there was previously a Zeldapedia hosted by FANDOM before they were assimilated by ZeldaWiki on FANDOM. 11:05, October 22, 2022 (EDT)
 * Just to let you know, it's already replaced; the interwiki links now point to Zeldapedia instead of Zelda Wiki. 14:26, October 22, 2022 (EDT)

@Scrooge200 If one wiki doesn't have enough info compared to the other, there's nothing to stop anyone from fixing this. But if all wikis update themselves so that they share the same info, what's the point in linking to anything other than the associate wiki if there's no difference? That would be redundant. SmokedChili (talk) 11:35, November 13, 2022 (EST)
 * Except there are noticeable organizational, presentation, and policy differences between the wikis that by and large make them fundamentally incompatible with each other, not the least of which would be the alternate perspectives on Dark Horse coverage. (And, biased side note, there -is- justifiable cause for skeptical voices to exist, especially considering Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia made everyone here more aware of their practices of fandom plagiarism - Zelda Encyclopedia is frankly a bigger beast than the Mario equivalent that might just need something along the lines of a Google Doc to properly document the localization's sheer, uncredited wiki-tracing, and Zeldapedia and Triforce Wiki particularly take opposing, hardline stances on it, as Zelda Wiki had made clear. While I'm at it, I think it's fair to be open with the fact that the opposition isn't the only side with a bias.) . For this reason among others, you can have superficial similarities on a casual level, but editors could not be allowed to write much of the same material due to their fundamentally different philosophies. LinkTheLefty (talk) 13:02, November 13, 2022 (EST)
 * Like that would stop wikis from basing their content on the same sources and tiptoeing around the imcompatibilites; if the information a reader can recieve from all of them is the same despite the organization etc., all you'd have is equal presentations in different stules. That's exactly why it would be redundant. Also, the more I look into Zelda Encyclopedia issue the more convinced I get that it's from assuming Dark Horse can't be trusted just because of their work on Mario Encyclopedia, and that Doc threw a temper tantrum and inferred (read: took a wild guess) that the names ZE used are Zelda Wiki originals because of how many uncited ones matching with the book couldn't be a coincidence. By the same logic, it can't be a coincidence either that names on Zelda Wiki for, say, Twilight Princess stuff match with the Prima guide, so surely they must come from the Prima guide. ZE has its faults but I don't see plagiarism as one of them, and I rather trust the editor Patrick Thorpe's word about the translation process on this. SmokedChili (talk) 11:19, November 16, 2022 (EST)
 * I've read Zelda Wiki for a long time and own all of DH's Goddess Trilogy. I have also extensively played every main TLoZ game except the not-too-accessible Four Swords Adventures. I know fully well what I'm talking about, trust me. A lot of their information contradicts in-game naming. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 11:55, November 16, 2022 (EST)
 * Rest assured, I am aware of that video, SmokedChili. For one thing, it's not very convincing when you factor that the creator had to skirt the issue because their knowledge of localization was self-admittedly minimal. Second, in it, it's hard to take his word on it when the topic of wiki plagiarism wasn't even brought up in what's shown of the interview. It's known enough that Dark Horse had wiki plagiarism issues that by their next video game encyclopedia, Sonic Encyclo-speed-ia, they specially made sure to credit both Sonic wikis to minimize blowback. For reference, I own physical Japanese editions of Hyrule Historia, Hyrule Graphics, Hyrule Encyclopedia, and Master Works, and I've personally analysed the much simpler Hyrule Graphics and had to put Hyrule Encyclopedia on the backburner due to its scope (I'm eyeing basically the entire book for a comparison project except the archives section, which is approximately 2/3 of it). I could give tons of examples laying around in how categorization, names, and even wording were lifted to far greater degree than Mario Encyclopedia, but I don't want to veer too off-topic. So, no, I have to say that I severely doubt you have the "research" on your side. But as I said, that's not the least of it. How about their weird syntax rules, including how their "canon" policy overdoes it and hinders sensible navigation? How about how citations are needlessly overwritten and oddly selective on what counts as a "name" ("Odolwa's Insect Minions" being can easy example that anyone using Internet Archive can debunk, with "insect minions" originally being an obvious descriptor for both his moths and scarab beetles, and in fact another official English guide uses an individual term much more appropriate and closer to the Japanese text, which in no way refers to Odolwa unlike what the wiki with its misplaced defense of Encyclopedia would have you believe)? Etc. I could go on. Again, I've been admitting that I have my biases, but it doesn't come from a position of ignorance. Bottom line, all three wikis have different tastes in mind from the top-down and a random editor wouldn't be able to enact the bottom-up changes needed to make them nearly identical. That's partly why a third option came into existence in the first place. LinkTheLefty (talk) 13:17, November 16, 2022 (EST)
 * I wasn't talking about no video, I meant this article where Thorpe discusses his work. Practically rushing the job between translation outsourcing, fact-checking and consulting with Nintendo, and he acknowledges how obsessive fans can get. With the way you're trying to find plagiarism, sounds like there's the risk of the work losing its credibility with the impression of going in with complete oversensitivity, nitpicking the smallest bits, perceiving connections and wild guessing how they support the argument. Doesn't help my opinion of this that you assumed I was talking about some video earlier. As for the wiki styles, is it really such a big deal that a subject covered in one wiki has a different presentation and style on another if the overall info, from subject's appearance to statistics, is the part that a editor can edit to and the reader can find the same? Which leaves the policies, and who says those couldn't change or be circumvented? Like Triforce Wiki's Encyclopedia ban with which they revise the history of Zelda timeline? SmokedChili (talk) 15:36, November 17, 2022 (EST)
 * How odd to act like I didn't have any experience with the Mario Encyclopedia article. I'm well aware that oversensitivity can give an amateurish perception, which is precisely why I made certain early on to reel things back whenever I saw that there was some room for doubt. Anyway, it doesn't really matter in the slightest what I imagined you were referencing, because he says a lot of the same things and he still isn't asked the question we're looking for. Now if I was paid to "nitpick" 2/3 of the book, that could sure give me a decent incentive to shift priorities and rush it through, but I have to go at my own pace, so the regional change aspect remains under-scrutinized for now. Need I remind you that Zelda Encyclopedia has its own bibliography section, and despite substantial regional changes (I suppose you'll ignore the blatant "Odolwa's Insect Minions" example), that page is a direct translation of the Japanese text, providing no reason why the English version was changed so much. I really don't know what else you expect me to say in that regard beyond that without having to leap wildly off-topic here. And yes, I know that some might prefer stylistic choices of other wikis, but you're making the mistaken assumption that wiki policies and admin attitudes could have little to no affect what the core info even is. In short? Yes, yes, yes and yes, they very clearly do have an effect. It's not as easy as you're making it out to be for editors, especially outsiders, to convince each inner circle that they ought to do things the way their rivals are doing. I'm honestly a bit surprised on your naivety on this one. LinkTheLefty (talk) 17:55, November 17, 2022 (EST)

Okay, I think I should finally give some thoughts with how many people have addressed this problem and after hearing what others have to say. I think there are indeed some merits to keeping some wikis around as external links even if another wiki (Zelda Wiki) exists in the interwiki link. I think what really stemmed this proposal was in fact my discomfort in regards to association, even if they've been removed permanently. I'm sorry if I meant harm for Doc and the others.

If we consider if "the relevant content is mature enough" to qualify a wiki being on the external links section, then the two other Zelda wikis we link up to (Zelda Dungeon Wiki and Triforce Wiki) are considered mature to have their place. The lack of engagement until very recently probably is also a clear sign that there are better priorities necessary than addressing these links. At the very least, we should establish a guideline for future external link-related proposals so that they're not...contentious with how they are being dealt.

In other words, my proposal is going to be cancelled. I do hope that the MarioWiki community continues to support independent wikis and NIWA in general and try not to cater too much on Fandom. The Zelda Wiki fork definitely helped momentum in that regard. 22:05, November 14, 2022 (EST)
 * Proposals can only be canceled by the proposer within the first three days. This will have to run its course. -- 12:38, November 15, 2022 (EST)

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