MarioWiki:Proposals

Italics formatting of boat names, fictional products, and others
A disagreement between and me has started in Talk:The Princess Peach, a talk page concerning a ship (not the princess herself!) in Paper Mario: The Origami King. I and others advocated italicizing the name of the ship as it is consistent with MLA standards.

LinkTheLefty, however, argued these points:
 * The suggestion to italicize ship names contradicts with Naming: "Italics are used in main and gallery namespace page titles in the same way that they are used in text."
 * The in-game name for the ship is not italicized, and we shouldn't be italicizing names that Nintendo doesn't italicize to "fix" their formatting.
 * The Manual of Style makes no mention of italicizing boat names.
 * MLA may not be a relevant standard to follow as it is not explicitly stated to be followed in our wiki. Additionally, style guides such as AP Stylebook or U.S. Navy Style Guide does not italicize ship names.

I hope I have accurately summed up LinkTheLefty's points. If I have misrepresented their comments or left out any important points being made, please let me know.

I, however, disagreed, arguing the following points:
 * I do not see a contradiction. "Text" in the cited sentence refers to the content of an article, not in-game text as I assume that's being argued. The sentence in the naming guidelines refers to the wiki's requirement to italicize the titles of the subject to be consistent with the game text. For example, Mario Party 4's article needs to include to italicize the article header per policy.
 * The text in a video game medium is different from in an encyclopedia and thus is not subject to formatting standards that we have. Additionally, video game medium tend to not italicize in-game names. I cite non-italicized game names from the tips from Super Smash Bros.. There is also mention of Super Luigi series. Finally, we already italicize implicit names in the big list in List of implied entertainment which are likely not italicized in the in-game text.
 * If our Manual of Style already takes elements from MLA (which is does by advocating italicizing "games, series, movies, television programs, albums (music) and publications (print: comics, books and magazines) [...]") but does not explicitly state adhering to MLA), then we should be expanding what needs to be italicized to include ship names and other applicable titles, even if they are fictional, in accordance to MLA (Wikipedia italicizes fictional titles too, see ; I assume it's reasonable to use Wikipedia as an example).
 * If MLA is not relevant, then we should be following styling standards from other wikis. Wikipedia is a major wiki and it italicizes ship names, so I believe it makes sense to try to follow Wikipedia in that regard. I do concede that there are some Wikipedia guidelines not strictly followed in our wiki (such as minor grammar and spelling errors in [sic quotations needing to be silently corrected] while we include [sic] even for minor grammar errors).

My proposal is to amend our Manual of Style to add italicizing titles not already mentioned in our Manual of Style, but outlined in the MLA guidelines. We should have it be policy to italicize ship names, play names, artwork, web publications, and anything else not already mentioned in our Manual of Style. If MLA is not relevant, then we should be at least following a bit of what Wikipedia does, as we're an internet wiki that is designed similarly to Wikipedia. We also must include names of fictional elements such as fictional books, fictional games, and so on. I believe this is simply just a policy update to keep up with increasing standards with this wiki over time.

Even if this proposal is rejected, there has to be some clarification of what should not be italicized, and if it is rejected, I'm going to try to get a discussion running on what we can agree should not be italicized.

Proposer: Deadline: December 26, 2020, 23:59 GMT

Change the guidelines

 * 1) I think it's reasonable to italicize ship names and I do think policy should be updated to reflect any other applicable titles that need to be italicized and are not explicitly mentioned in our Manual of Style.
 * 2) I think it's reasonable enough.
 * 3) I was the one who decided to italicize ship names. I think it's formal writing and it should have been done earlier, honestly.

Do not change

 * 1) Per myself in The Princess Peach talk page and summarized points. All I'd add is that it's not just the text within video games that hasn't been italicizing ship names, but also Nintendo Power and related guides as far as I'm aware. Additionally, I'm still not sure why MLA style in particular should be adopted when even certain other styles disagree and have other ideas. Personally, I think a fan wiki can easily afford to adopt and discard the conventions that work best for it in its own Manual of Style, and as-is is closer to our goal of being as official as possible.
 * 2) - Having ship names in the mix would probably be confusing considering we've only been italicizing media names and nothing else. "The Princess Peach" is not a media. I think the point of italicizing titles is to make it clear on what's media and what's not (though I see the Super Luigi series is an outlier here, given it is not a real piece of media).
 * 3) - Although this is something the Kingdom Hearts Wiki does (for the ships in the Pirates of the Carribean worlds), doing it here would be a bit too much.

Comments
Alex95: According to guidelines, this won't lead to italicizing shop names and locations as they're not normally italicized. See Wikipedia as a bit of a guide to see how things will get italicized (note that ship names are indeed one of the few things not in the big list of long works that are italicized). There seems to be a reasoning behind the italicization of ship names (here). Whether a work is fictional or not seems irrelevant, as, again, I cite List of implied entertainment.

Keyblade Master: There has to be a reason Kingdom Hearts Wiki does this? Why can't MarioWiki do it? 18:42, December 12, 2020 (EST)
 * Different Wikis don't have to have the same rules as each other. They even allow strategy writing while we don't.
 * I understand there's a precedent for italicizing ship names. I just think we should keep it to media titles, for this wiki, so people don't think The Princess Peach is a book title or something. 18:47, December 12, 2020 (EST)
 * I'm fairly certain context clues help out identifying what the title is rather than glancing at a name, as it can be argued that you could also mistake Super Luigi series as a video game series and not a fictional book series. 18:50, December 12, 2020 (EST)
 * Fair enough. It's a personal preference, then. 18:51, December 12, 2020 (EST)
 * (ec) Keyblade Master: This is true that our policies and styling should not mirror wikis just because other wikis do it, but I'm asking for why this needs to be different in MarioWiki than in other wikis? We do have certain formatting consistencies across wikis, including italicizing game names and bolding the first instance of an article name in the body text, and my reasoning for this is that there's a sort of implicit formatting professional standard that emphasizes readability and consistency.
 * (ec) Italics will not introduce confusion. Chances are, many readers already know names for ships are already in italics as it's widely practiced (even if not always consistent) in other wikis, and even if MarioWiki is their first exposure to an italicized ship name, they can easily take inferences from context clues what the Princess Peach refers to and learn that ship names are in italics. Furthermore, italics already encompass many different kinds of works and is always reliant on context; Donkey Kong Country: Rescue on Crocodile Isle is referring to a book but can easily be interpreted as a title for a video game without any context or prior knowledge of the media. 18:58, December 12, 2020 (EST)
 * I'm not sure how Kingdom Hearts handles things (preliminary glancing suggests that series also doesn't italicize ships but there are so many different games and versions it may not be consistent), but I don't think it was sufficiently answered why the wiki must adopt this aspect of MLA style specifically when Nintendo themselves demonstrably do not. Other styles are just as valid if not moreso for the general purposes of a wiki. LinkTheLefty (talk) 05:22, December 13, 2020 (EST)
 * Nintendo is inconsistent with italicizing game titles: they don't do it for in-game text either, especially in Smash Bros. bios for characters where game titles are left unitalicized. I don't think they're the ideal model to look to when it comes to formatting things in an encyclopedic fashion because they serve a different medium: it's unnecessary for them to italicize things for in-game purposes. 14:53, December 13, 2020 (EST)

New features
None at the moment.

Removals
None at the moment.

Reorganization of Mario Kart sponsor lists
Okay, this has been a long time coming. Yes, I know this is something that BBQ Turtle has been working on for quite some time now, and I still do appreciate her desire to fill a previously unfilled gap in our coverage, but this isn't about removing any coverage. It'll be about reorganizing our coverage.

See, as of right now, one-time Mario Kart sponsors are listed in "", whereas recurring sponsors are listed in List of recurring sponsors in the Mario Kart series. While there's nothing inherently wrong with this form of organization, it still has one major problem: there could end up being so many recurring sponsors that the latter list couldn't possibly fit them all without becoming bloated and tricky to navigate efficiently. Fortunately, I have a simple solution in mind: I propose that all of the sponsors listed as recurring sponsors be moved back to the respective list articles of the games they debut in, and said lists be renamed to "". That way, no list is any more exhaustive than it absolutely needs to be.

Proposer: Deadline: December 13, 2020, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Per.
 * 2) Per proposal.
 * 3) Per proposal.
 * 4) This seems like the best way to go about it. The page is already getting very long as-is, not to mention it's theoretically possible for every single sponsor in the series to eventually end up on this page.
 * 5) Per proposal- when the decision was made to organise the pages like that, the Mario Kart 8 sponsors weren't getting reused left right and centre to make most of them recurring ones, and the actual recurring ones were relatively few and far between, so switching to a system like this seems like a good plan.
 * 6) Was about to propose that the sponsor lists should be named "List of Mario Kart 8 sponsors" to be consistent with the other listicles (like List of Mario Kart 8 media) but I suppose with this change, the wording would be inconsistent with the recurring one.
 * 7) With Mario Kart Tour reusing so many sponssors from Mario Kart 8, it only makes sense to have all the sponsors grouped by game where they originated.
 * 8) - Per all.
 * 9) Per all.
 * 10) Per all.
 * 11) Per all. I would also like later game mentions because they are still in that game, but it isn’t necessary.

Comments
Something else I forgot to mention: Should this proposal pass, the recurring sponsors list will be retooled into a disambiguation-esque page entitled "". 13:18, December 6, 2020 (EST)

Miscellaneous
None at the moment.