MarioWiki:Proposals

Writing guidelines
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New features
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Remove the eleventh featured article/list standard
"11. [An article must] be of reasonable length and not marked as a stub."

This is the eleventh and final standard that must be followed for featured articles and featured lists, as described on Featured articles, and it is completely unnecessary. For starters, it is too vague to be of any practical use, and it would be difficult to use our current featured articles for comparison since they have wildly different sizes. Mt. Teapot, Mystic Forest, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, and Mario Sports Superstars clearly all have different lengths, and yet they're all featured articles. If we tried to be strict and set a minimum character count or word count, then we're only going to promote articles that have been stretched and padded out solely to meet the minimum count. Needless to say, that is bad. With that in mind, why should we look at the length of an article to judge its quality? There are plenty of articles that are long, but they haven't been featured because they're missing information or their writing isn't good or their images are blurry or they have an improvement tag or for a myriad of other reasons based directly on the article's content, all of which are already covered by the other featured article standards. An article's length has next to nothing to do with its content and quality, so why should it be used to judge articles that, and I quote, "represent the best the Super Mario Wiki has to offer"?

Finally, there's already a proposal that discusses lowering the size requirement for featured articles (which was also my original idea apparently although I genuinely don't remember it), and it passed. Since the proposal was four years ago, it's hard to see how much of it is still in effect today, but my proposal clearly hasn't come from nowhere, and this is to say nothing of the recent forum post and the replies therein that inspired me to make this proposal. Simply put, the eleventh standard is too vague to be useful and is redundant with the other standards, and that is why I want it to be removed.

Proposer: Deadline: June 11, 2017, 23:59 GMT Extended to June 18, 2017, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Per my proposal.
 * 2) - Per proposal.
 * 3) Sure. Per all.
 * 4) This rule really has no purpose. Featured articles are about quality, not length. If a stub is a good article, it should still be featured. There is absolutely no reason why this rule should not be removed. Additionally, if there is a proposal that passed for this 4 years ago, then this proposal doesn't need to be here. Remove the rule, end of story.
 * 5) Per proposal.
 * 6) To keep this being discussed further, I am going to balance the votes to be 6-6 (as of Sunday, June 11th, 06:21 GMT). I am only going to support if the rule will be "[An article must] not be marked as a stub" because reasonable length is arbitrary and subjective. Stub means missing information, not short article, so a featured article needs to mostly be complete, if not fully complete.
 * 7) Per all

Oppose

 * 1) The purpose of the Featured Articles system is to be applied to the best articles on the wiki. There are many articles that are very well-written and that meet all the requirements, but shouldn't be featured because they are very short and therefore cannot be the best articles on the wiki. I think an article needs to be long enough to be featured, but there should not be a specific number of bytes because articles vary due to images, tables, etc. and reasonable length can vary between different types of articles. I support 's page. I agree that the rule should be changed but not removed.
 * 2) Strong oppose: This entire proposal has its foundation on a logical fallacy. Honestly, I think removing featured article size requirements altogether would be disastrous for Featured Articles in MarioWiki. It's far better to revise the guideline that outright remove it all together. This is really a sledgehammer situation to a problem that can easily be solved through compromise. Also, per my comments below.
 * 3) Per Baby Luigi. Her point has motivated me enough to change my vote. Change it, but don't outright remove it. Even if an article was featured as a stub, the very little information on it would be contradictory to the purpose of featured articles.
 * 4) Changing my vote. Per Baby Luigi. The rule should be changed, not removed. (I was a bit confused when I supported. :P)
 * 5) Per Baby Luigi. I have changed my mind, as I agree that it is better to change the rule than remove it completely.
 * 6) Per Baby Luigi.
 * 7) – In what circumstances could a stub qualify as a featured article? Per all.

Comments
So, to confirm, articles of any size would be able to become featured as long as they meet the other ten requirements, right? -- 21:46, 3 June 2017 (EDT)
 * I'll agree with Steve on this point. 22:00, 3 June 2017 (EDT)
 * From experience writing essays in high school and college, word count and character count is in no way an indication of quality because I could ramble on about something instead of writing something that actually says something accurate and straight forward. As the saying goes, less is more. I mean I really stretched to meet minimum requirements. For a real life example, most politicians don't even read bills before they vote on them because they are ridiculously long! As of right now, I am neutral and not voting. -- 23:13, 4 June 2017 (EDT)
 * Our featured articles guidelines already discourage padding to meet out minimum requirements. Again, if an article was padded out only to give the false impression that it is sophisticated it easily fails. My argument is that writing should definitely be focused on quality, but the quantity of the quality is also something that should be taken into account when it comes to designating articles as the "best" in MarioWiki. 23:22, 4 June 2017 (EDT)
 * In general, I find the whole system biased trying to showcase articles because we the contributors are biased liking Mario games. I don't really consider MarioWiki literature but rather a database of knowledge. Featured articles do nothing to enhance the database. -- 23:28, 4 June 2017 (EDT)
 * To me, I see Featured Articles as an example of how an article should ideally look in MarioWiki, so we have a goal to work towards to when we improve articles and our writing overall. Setting a clear, visual goal helps me and other editors look out at what other articles do that work and what doesn't work. The concept of Featured Articles is how I got inspired to write Mario Party: Star Rush and Mario Sports Superstars anyway. 23:36, 4 June 2017 (EDT)
 * Keep in mind that some articles become unfeatured because something went wrong when trying to follow writing guidelines. I'm not sure how an article can get into such a disheveled state but couldn't it be argued that someone could take wrongful inspiration if the upkeep of featured articles is not kept? -- 00:24, 5 June 2017 (EDT)
 * Some articles are unfeatured mostly because of outdated writing styles that editors have overlooked. Like, in 2015, I've unfeatured Mario Kart 64 because that article looks totally barren today back when it was originally featured, standing up to articles such as Mario Kart 8 or Mario Kart Double Dash. I'm not saying all featured articles are a caliber of quality, but a decent amount of them are and they're enough inspiration to work at my hardest. 00:34, 5 June 2017 (EDT)

@YoshiFlutterJump: The proposal linked to is referring to decreasing the the size an article needs to be to become an Featured Article, not about removing the rule, so this proposal still is necessary in order to remove the rule. Also, stubs cannot become featured articles, as a featured article cannot be tagged with any sort of improvement tags, which includes. -- 14:35, 4 June 2017 (EDT)

@Supermariofan67: Why can't a short article be the best? If it follows all of the other standards to a T, I frankly don't see why the content should be outright ignored. What about its length says anything about the article itself? 16:27, 4 June 2017 (EDT)

I'll try to rebuke several things brought up in this proposal.

If that were the case, the Featured Article nomination would easily fail because it doesn't pass the "well-written" rule that is put up there easily for that reason, and therefore, would not be fit as a Featured Article. This is a strawman of imposing a minimum size guideline, and obviously, we're not going to feature articles that are flowery or padded out just for the sake of meeting just one rule out of the rest of rules that are there to keep things in check. It's like badly formatting images just so the article can meet the image requirement. A minimum size requirement rule assumes that the article is already well-written and covers everything about the subject. My idea is to make it, y'know, a guideline. Have say 2,000 words give or take 100 or 50 or whatever.
 * If we tried to be strict and set a minimum character count or word count, then we're only going to promote articles that have been stretched and padded out solely to meet the minimum count.

I'd argue that length is an element of quality for an article to be featured on MarioWiki, just like how something should be well-written or something should have high quality images to be considered to be featured. We feature articles because they provide meaningful, detailed content, they represent the best MarioWiki has to offer. The best means that all factors have to be taken into account, and for this, we're not looking at just its length as you're implying. Many articles have barriers to prevent them from passing to be featured on the main page, even if they're written the best they could. If they lack images because they're too obscure to be found, they can't be featured. Shorter articles have their length as their barrier of entry, and this barrier prevents us from calling any article the "best" on MarioWiki. There's plenty of fish in the sea for MarioWiki, and having a minimum size limit rule picks out only the best and biggest fish, which is supposed to be the Featured Article's original purpose. There's a huge reason that most Featured Articles are long and detailed, it's because they provide content in both size and quality, and there's a reason shorter articles like Culex are in the vast minority. And finally, this argument fails because it's a false dichotomy. This is not a binary problem, an article can be BOTH large and have quality content, it's what separates the longer FAs from the very, very short ones, and what I think is a huge quality difference between the two.
 * With that in mind, why should we look at the length of an article to judge its quality?

The proposal Time Turner linked to looks really flimsy to my eyes today, I really wouldn't cite it for serious reasons. Also, in my thread, most responses were against the Good Articles idea, and no one has bothered even refuting my comments on how quantity can be linked to quality if you think about it. I'd also per Glowsquid's comment in that thread, "It's like, if you think there's a minimum length needed for front page exposure, that's fine, and it's a principle nearly every print media operates on, but "featuring" content will always be exclusionary in nature." Removing a minimum word limit is not how print media operates on and we shouldn't ignore why they have a minimum word count, aside from using false dichotomy arguments that quality and quantity have to be separate qualities of an article. 16:59, 4 June 2017 (EDT)
 * I've messaged Steve so that he can participate directly in this discussion. 20:18, 4 June 2017 (EDT)

I think the "stub" part could be removed, as that seems to also fall under Rule 5. "There are plenty of articles that are long, but they haven't been featured because they're missing information or their writing isn't good or their images are blurry or they have an improvement tag or for a myriad of other reasons based directly on the article's content, all of which are already covered by the other featured article standards." In this case, then they should remain unfeatured. Not because of the length, but because they should be tagged for improvement or the images need to be replaced, etc. I agree padding should be removed when noticed, but if they have other problems, then length isn't the issue. I do think articles should have length to them, for example, nothing like Water Bomb and has headers that describe what the subject is, infoboxes if needed, images, etc. However, length should probably be of the lowest priority when it comes to article content, but still be considered. If there isn't anything more to add, then there's nothing more to add. Not sure how I'm voting on this, but just putting in what I think. 22:42, 4 June 2017 (EDT)
 * Really, the issue of prioritizing length all depends on the article itself. When it comes to being detailed about media, a longer length should just come naturally as a result of being comprehensive and detailed. I do agree that good writing and formatting should be stressed over length, but length cannot be ignored outright either, which is what this proposal is proposing to ignore, as people here think quality and quantity are two mutually exclusive aspects of a Featured Article when they're not at all. 23:02, 4 June 2017 (EDT)

I am going to bring up the Bible. I know not every one believes it, but it is one of the largest books and it is considered one of the bests. So, this does show quality and quantity to be near equal. But, let me show you two different things. The first is the incomplete Bible. This Bible is a little less than the Bible, but you wouldn't know that unless you compared them. This incomplete Bible drops in quality, too. The second is child Bible. This may sound like an incomplete Bible, but the difference is it is meant for children. It has the quality of the Bible it comes from without the quantity. The only time quality and quantity aren't related. Now to translate this to articles. There will be long articles with good quality, and long articles with no good quality. If we bring in short articles of good quality, they won't make much difference. And, by the way, there would be an indirect length standard. Why? We would not want a whole article or a lot of it on the front page, which would only happen if it is just an intro. 22:42, 4 June 2017 (EDT)
 * I really don't understand your point. Can you (or someone) clarify, please? 23:24, 4 June 2017 (EDT)
 * I think he's saying that it doesn't matter the length as long as the quality is good? 23:26, 4 June 2017 (EDT)
 * I have already argued that length does play a factor in terms of designating what is considered the best. Assuming that your article is well-written and not artificially long, a long length should be considered a positive quality, not a negative one, as typically, long length naturally comes from the article being comprehensive and detailed, which is what we're aiming for with featuring articles on the main page. Also, I think the Bible analogy isn't correct: there's a myriad of reasons children's Bibles would be simplified and abridged, and this doesn't relate to how we feature articles here. 23:31, 4 June 2017 (EDT)
 * Yes, Alex95. Also, the incomplete Bibles also use padding by not removing the number of the verse that was removed altogether. And children's Bible is the closest thing to small articles that relates to the Bible. Sorry if the relation between isn't perfect. 23:38, 4 June 2017 (EDT)
 * I see that whole analogy more analogous to regular Wikipedia and Simple Wikipedia than smaller articles and bigger articles here, where Simple Wikipedia is like the children's Bible where content has to be abridged and simplified for a different audience, that's why I think your analogy doesn't work. 23:43, 4 June 2017 (EDT)
 * That may be true, but before now, I never heard of Simple Wikipedia. Also, it is the closest thing of small being a good quality. And by the way, when I say children's Bible, I also include lessons for any age group and messages, which are shorter than reading the entire Bible through, though I may not refer to them directly. 23:53, 4 June 2017 (EDT)
 * I mean, I understand your point. I definitely agree that quality should be emphasized over quantity and that longer doesn't necessarily mean better. Padding is a sign of terrible writing. However, this is a standard every single MarioWiki article wants to have; in terms of featuring it in the main page, size of the article definitely should be taken into account, as it's a different standard than the typical fare of how an article should look in MarioWiki. 00:03, 5 June 2017 (EDT)
 * I think I got an idea. Go find 6 articles (requirements below) and make a comment of which articles they are. Don't ask why, just do it. I will explain after you do that. For me, I am going to bed. Oh, and the deadline is June 7 at noon according to the time the Wiki uses. You comment on what you got at that time if you can't find all. Ps. Rules below refer to feature article rules. 00:20, 5 June 2017 (EDT)


 * 1) an article you feel meets rule #11 and the rest of the rules
 * 2) an article you feel meets rule #11 and breaks at least one of the other rules
 * 3) an article you feel falls short of rule #11 (but not too short), but meets the rest of the rules
 * 4) an article you feel falls short of rule #11 (but not too short), and breaks at least one of the other rules
 * 5) an article you feel is very short, but meets the rest of the rules
 * 6) an article you feel is very short, and breaks at least one of the other rules.
 * King K. Rool, Goomba, King Boo, Mario Kart DS, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Hammer Bro. Mario Strikers Charged, Baby Peach, Baby Luigi, Baby Mario, Super Smash Bros., Dixie Kong, Petey Piranha, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, List of Collectibles from Mario Party DS, Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, Sticker (Super Smash Bros. Brawl), WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!, Super Mario 64 DS, Mario Super Sluggers, Diddy Kong Racing, Assist Trophy, Paper Mario, Wario Land II, Donkey Kong (Game Boy), Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, List of Bonuses in Super Smash Bros. Melee, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble!, Chain Chomp, List of Tayce T. Recipes, Donkey Kong Country, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Toadette, Mario Sports Mix, Mario Superstar Baseball, Coin Rush, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Mario Party DS, Mario Kart 7, Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Duel Mode, Ashley and Red, WarioWare: Smooth Moves, Pauline, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, Mario Tennis Open, Mona, Blooper, Iggy Koopa, Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, Dr. Mario, List of Zess T. recipes, Donkey Kong 64, WarioWare: Twisted!, WarioWare: Touched!, Mario Kart 8, Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash, Mario (franchise), Wiggler, Mario Party: Star Rush, Equipment, Donkey Kong (franchise), Super Mario 3D World, Koopa Paratroopa, Mario Sports Superstars, Donkey Kong Barrel Blast, Banzai Bill
 * Lakitu, Kamek, Dry Bones, Mama Mario, Mt. Teapot, Nintendo DS, Wii, Rice Beach, Bramble Scramble, Yoshi's Island DS, Mystic Forest, Mario Party 9
 * Ganondorf, Badge (this article was featured for completely different reasons than it looks today), Miracle Book, Rosalina's Storybook
 * Dimentio, Kolorado, Doopliss, Smithy
 * Baby Daisy, Geno, Kiddy Kong, Culex, Vivian, Koopa Bros.

15:34, 5 June 2017 (EDT)
 * Wow. very good list. *looks at the articles. Notices that they are featured articles.* You know that you can also include non-feature articles as well. Seems kinda bias too, but then I said feel. 15:47, 5 June 2017 (EDT)
 * Well if articles aren't featured yet, they probably don't meet all of the rules yet. It's easier to select what is already featured than analyze some articles. 16:05, 5 June 2017 (EDT)
 * I can totally agree with that. 16:11, 5 June 2017 (EDT)
 * Ok, fine. I wonder how many people agree with this list. 16:23, 5 June 2017 (EDT)
 * Look, after compiling this list I've realized this: we have 97 Featured Articles. If 3, 4, 5 were to be excluded due to their questionable length and this is going to be excluding the shorter listicles like Miracle Book and Rosalina's Storybook, only like, 12 articles out of 97 would be unfeatured due to the rule. That's only a paltry 12% of all Featured Articles. If we cut it down to just 4 and 5, it'd just be 10 articles. There's a reason articles like those are in the minority. 16:55, 5 June 2017 (EDT)

@Wildgoosespeeder: That's what the opposing side is arguing. 08:52, 11 June 2017 (EDT)
 * I am aware. The vote is neither for nor against but because of the two-choice voting, strategic voting took place to maximize discussion, because of how split people are. My best advice for is to ask permission from sysops to cancel the proposal and continue discussion (with ) over on MarioWiki talk:Featured articles or something. -- 14:17, 11 June 2017 (EDT)
 * Your vote already complicates things, since this proposal would be extended regardless of your vote, considering the proposal has more than 10 votes and thus, needs a margin of three votes from one side to pass in the first place. 14:57, 11 June 2017 (EDT)
 * Again, aware. Instead of needing two more votes, brought it back to needing three. That's not the point. The point was to keep the discussion going for as long as possible. This is quite a controversial change, and the current proposal isn't sufficient for both sides. Needs to go back to the drawing board. -- 15:29, 11 June 2017 (EDT)

I will not vote so as to keep discussion flowing for another week or so, but I don't think outright removing the rule is a good idea. Length isn't a factor in quality of an article, but we shouldn't just throw around the Featured Article status to any Kart article just because it's well written. I don't like the idea of a set in stone "it must be this long or absolutely no feature", but not having a length rule will just oversaturate the Featured Article list with well written but tiny articles about Paper Mario NPCs and Mario Party items. How will that make us look? Really, I think the best thing to do when it comes to article length is use your common sense. If it doesn't look too short to you, go ahead and nominate it. The worst that can happen is it's not featured. Yeah, this rule ends up excluding some well written articles. Oh well. If your goal when writing articles is only to get them featured, then you're wasting your time. Magikrazy (talk) 14:06, 11 June 2017 (EDT)
 * In my opinion, having well-written articles should already be the default goal of all articles in MarioWiki in the first place. We should already try writing articles to the best of our abilities, that's why we tag pages with improvement templates. Featured Articles is another standard above the standard we try to aim for with regular articles in MarioWiki and in this case, length should definitely matter for that higher standard. 14:54, 11 June 2017 (EDT)

People throw around feel-good statements like "Length shouldn't a factor as long as the article is well-written", and to be honest, I think it's kind of, for a lack of a better word, deluded. If you're going to focus all eyeballs on a specific page for a week of time, length *absolutely* does matter. The Featured Article spot is basicallly marketing for the wiki. It exist to retain new readers and fidelize existing ones. People who nominate articles may have a different agenda for doing so (likely vindicating their efforts on writing a page or to publicize their favourite character), but even there's an underlying goal of having an article exposed to as many people as possible because someones want to. You impress people by having up-to-date information on the latest games, with fancy and creative ways of presenting statistics lsited or unlisted, or having an exhaustive and accurate description of every media a 20-years old character has appeared in. You don't impress people with three-paragraph articles about Paper Mario NPCs.

Ultimately I agree with Baby Luigi's statement that articles being well written (... and accurate) should be the baseline expectation, not something to throw a shiny sticker at. A page like Goombob is fine. Indeed it may be "better" that a bloated article that looks superficially "big" and "impressive" at a first skimming, but reveals itself to have clumsy writting and poorly-organized information. But a page like that isn't what you use to show you're the definitive Mario fansite out there. --Glowsquid (talk) 19:31, 11 June 2017 (EDT)
 * To a degree, length matters (such as making sure statements are detailed enough), but there does come a point where there are too many words and you lose your audience's attentiveness (TMI), which is often why we split articles. Strive for quality over quantity. I think word count falls on a bell curve to determine effectiveness of the article's ability to convey information. The right amount of words varies from article to article. -- 20:14, 11 June 2017 (EDT)
 * "but there does come a point where there are too many words and you lose your audience's attentiveness (TMI), which is often why we split articles." This is blatantly, hilariously wrong and I have no idea how you came to reason this is the reason articles are split. --Glowsquid (talk) 20:33, 11 June 2017 (EDT)

Also it seems my commen went over your head because I never implied articles should artificially be padded or that being more lengthy is innherently "better". The opposite even. My point is that a page specifically linked to the front page for its quality should be both "big" and good. --Glowsquid (talk) 20:46, 11 June 2017 (EDT)

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