MarioWiki:Proposals

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Decide if the Mario's Time Machine historical figures are characters and/or people
(for the purposes of the wiki and as it is used in this proposal, a "character" is someone fictional while a "person" is someone real)

This proposal, stemming from a discussion on Template talk:People, primarily centers around the numerous historical figures that appear in Mario's Time Machine. Note that this proposal currently does not cover the game's developers who inserted themselves into the game while directly using their names, faces, and voices, but that's a can of worms that I'll set aside for the moment. When it comes to the actual historical figures themselves, everyone from the game (who has an article) was a real, breathing person who impacted the course of history. They aren't just satirical or obviously fictionalized versions of the actual people: in the context of the game, Mario is traveling back in time and meeting the real people themselves. We also have a template,, that lists the real people that have contributed to the Mario franchise. With that in mind, should these historical figures be listed in this template? There are other ramifications as well, but this is the most obvious example of what will be changed.

To some extent, these characters are similar to some of the guest stars of The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!. Ernie Hudson, for example, is a real, living person (who happens to still be alive!), but at the same time, he's not literally himself in the show, but rather a fictionalized version of himself based on the role he played in the fictional film Ghostbusters. Even with more mundane examples like Nicole Eggert, there's still a quirk or an oddity about them that obviously only exists because they're characters. Due to this, they, along with several others like David Horowitz, Shabba-Doo, Jim Lange, and others, are currently being treated as both characters and people.

However, there's a notable difference: in the show, these real characters are being portrayed by the actual people, whereas the historical figures in Mario's Time Machine are, obviously, not portrayed by their real life counterparts. Ernie Hudson the character is played by Ernie Hudson the actor. Thus, merely being based on a real person isn't necessarily enough to be considered as an actual person. For example, Cher, while being a real person, is not played by the real, so she is only treated as a character. The historical figures are simply blobs of pixels played by a random voice actor, and not a real person portraying a live-action character directly based on themselves while also having the same name as themselves. However, at the same time, the historical figures are literally supposed to be the real people, and they are presented to the player as such (ignoring the odd joke or historical inaccuracy). Even if the literal real-life Marco Polo isn't playing himself in the game, is it still fair to describe the in-game Marco Polo as not being real?

There's perhaps also an argument to be made about including Cher and similar subjects in the People template or not including the guest stars at all, but for now, this is the way things are. In short, there are three options for dealing with this:

Option 1: They are characters.

This is currently how the characters are treated on the wiki. Essentially, this is the "do nothing" option. The historical figures will be treated as purely fictional characters, and no categories or templates will be updated.

Option 2: They are people.

They will be treated as though they are the real historical figures and not as fictional characters. This involves removing them from, placing them on , and adjusting the categories on their page so that they're treated as real people (for example, Category:Deceased People, would be applied to the vast majority of them).

Option 3: They are both.

Following the guest stars from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, this involves leaving them in their current templates and categories while also placing them on. This also involves making the same adjustments as in the second option, though without any potential removals.

(technically, there's a fourth option in which they're neither characters nor people, but that's silly and won't be taken into account)

After going through all of this, I personally think that the historical figures are too separated from their real life counterparts to be exclusively considered people, but consideration should also be given to the fact that they are, to some extent, their real life counterparts. Still, this is meant to be decided by the users of the wiki. With all of this information having been presented, what do you think?

Proposer: Deadline: September 8, 2017, 23:59 GMT

Option 1: They are characters

 * 1) Per proposal.
 * 2) This is my preferred option. People should only be added to the people template if they don't necessarily appear in any real Mario media; they just appear in promotional videos or videos, and they are real people who are associated with Nintendo in some way or another.

Option 3: They are characters and people

 * 1) Per proposal.

Comments
Articles that will be affected:
 * Albert Einstein
 * Anne Hathaway
 * Aristotle
 * Benjamin Franklin
 * Catherine Dickens
 * Charles Dickens
 * Cleopatra
 * Deborah Read
 * Duke of Alençon
 * Edmund Halley
 * Ferdinand Magellan
 * Francis Drake
 * Frederick Douglass
 * Galileo Galilei
 * Ho Ti
 * Isaac Newton
 * Joan of Arc
 * Johann Gutenberg
 * Juan Sebastian Del Cano
 * Julius Caesar
 * Kublai Khan
 * Leonardo da Vinci
 * Louis Pasteur
 * Ludwig van Beethoven
 * Mahatma Gandhi
 * Marco Polo
 * Mary Todd Lincoln
 * Michelangelo Buonarroti
 * Minamoto no Yoritomo
 * Pierre Paul Emile Roux
 * Plato
 * Queen Elizabeth I
 * Raphael Sanzio
 * Richard Burbage
 * Royal Society
 * Thomas Edison
 * Thomas Jefferson
 * Ts'ai Lun
 * William Shakespeare

Future articles that will be affected:
 * Abraham Lincoln
 * Booker T. Washington
 * Charles-Gaspard de la Rive
 * Constanze Mozart
 * George Washington Carver
 * Henry Ford
 * Joseph Haydn
 * Michael Faraday
 * Sarah Barnard
 * Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart