MarioWiki:Proposals

A proposal section works like a discussion page: comments are brought up and replied to using indents (colons, such as : or ::::) and all edits are signed using the code.

This page observes the No-Signature Policy.

How To Rules
 * 1) If users have an idea about improving the wiki or managing its community, but feel that they need community approval before acting upon that idea, they may make a proposal about it. They must have a strong argument supporting their idea and be willing to discuss it in detail with the other users, who will then vote about whether or not they think the idea should be used. Proposals should include links to all relevant pages and Writing Guideline proposals must include a link to the draft page.
 * 2) Anyone can comment on proposals whether logged-in or not, but only registered users can create or vote on proposals.
 * 3) Proposals end at the end of the day (23:59) one week after voting starts, except for Writing Guidelines and Talk Page Proposals, which run for two weeks. (All times GMT.)
 * 4) *For example, if a proposal is added at any time on Monday, August 1, 2011, the voting starts immediately and the deadline is one week later on Monday, August 8, at 23:59 GMT.
 * 5) Every vote should have a reason accompanying it. Agreeing with or seconding a previously mentioned reason given by another user is accepted.
 * 6) Users who feel that certain votes were cast in bad faith or which truly have no merit can address the votes in the Comments section. Users can ask a voter to clarify their position, point out mistakes or flaws in their arguments, or call for the outright removal of the vote if it lacks sufficient reasoning. Users may not remove or alter the content of anyone else's votes. Voters can remove or rewrite their own vote at any time, but the final decision to remove another user's vote lies solely with the administrators.
 * 7) If a user makes a vote and is subsequently blocked for any amount of time, their vote is removed. However, if the block ends before the proposal ends, then the user in question holds the right to re-cast their vote. If a proposer is blocked, their vote is removed and "(banned)" is added next to their name in the "Proposer:" line of the proposal, which runs until its deadline as normal. If the proposal passes, it falls to the supporters of the idea to enact any changes in a timely manner.
 * 8) No proposal can overturn the decision of a previous proposal that is less than 4 weeks (28 days) old.
 * 9) Any proposal that has three votes or less at deadline will automatically be listed as "NO QUORUM." The original proposer then has the option to relist said proposal to generate more discussion.
 * 10) All proposals that end up in a tie will be extended for another week. Proposals with more than two options must also be extended another week if any single option does not have a majority support: i.e. more than half of all votes cast must be for a single option, rather than one option simply having more votes than the other options.
 * 11) If a proposal has more than ten votes, it can only pass or fail by a margin of three votes. In other words, one option must have 50% + 3 of all votes cast. This means that if a basic two-option proposal reaches the deadline and the total number of votes for each option differ by two or less votes, the deadline will be extended for another week. Proposals with more than two options require more precise counting of votes to determine if an extension is necessary.
 * 12) Proposals can only be extended up to three times. If a consensus has not been reached by the fourth deadline, the proposal fails and can only be re-proposed after four weeks, at the earliest.
 * 13) All proposals are archived. The original proposer must take action accordingly if the outcome of the proposal dictates it. If it requires the help of an administrator, the proposer can ask for that help.
 * 14) If the administrators deem a proposal unnecessary or potentially detrimental to the upkeep of the Super Mario Wiki, they have the right to remove it at any time.
 * 15) Proposals can only be rewritten or deleted by their proposer within the first three days of their creation. However, proposers can request that their proposal be deleted by an administrator at any time, provided they have a valid reason for it. Please note that cancelled proposals must also be archived.
 * 16) There should not be proposals about creating articles on an underrepresented or completely absent subject, unless there is major disagreement about whether the content should be included. To organize efforts about completing articles on missing subjects, try setting up a collaboration thread on the forums.
 * 17) Proposals cannot be made about promotions and demotions. Users can only be promoted and demoted by the will of the administration.
 * 18) No joke proposals. Proposals are serious wiki matters and should be handled professionally. Joke proposals will be deleted on sight.

Basic Proposal and Support/Oppose Format This is an example of what your proposal must look like, if you want it to be acknowledged. If you are inexperienced or unsure how to set up this format, simply copy the following and paste it into the fitting section. Then replace the [subject] - variables with information to customize your proposal, so it says what you wish. If you insert the information, be sure to replace the whole variable including the squared brackets, so "[insert info here]" becomes "This is the inserted information", not "[This is the inserted information]". Proposals presenting multiple alternative courses of action can have more than two voting options, but what each voting section is supporting must be clearly defined. - ===[insert a title for your proposal here]=== [describe what issue this proposal is about and what changes you think should be made to improve how the wiki handles that issue]

Proposer: Deadline: [insert a deadline here, 7 days after the proposal was created, at 23:59 GMT. (14 days for Writing Guidelines and Talk Page Proposals)

====Support====
 * 1) [make a statement indicating that you support your proposal]

====Oppose====

====Comments==== - Users will now be able to vote on your proposal, until the set deadline is reached. Remember, you are a user as well, so you can vote on your own proposal just like the others.

To support, or oppose, just insert " # at the bottom of the section of your choice. Just don't forget to add a valid reason for your vote behind that tag if you are voting on another user's proposal. If you are voting on your own proposal, you can just say "Per my proposal".

Talk Page Proposals All proposals dealing with a single article or a specific group of articles are held on the talk page of one of the articles in question. Proposals dealing with massive amounts of splits, merges or deletions across the Wiki should still be held on this page.


 * For a list of all settled Talk Page Proposals, see here.

Rules
 * 1) All active talk page proposals must be listed below in chronological order (new proposals go at the bottom). All pages affected must be mentioned in the brief description, with the talk page housing the discussion linked to directly via "". If the proposal involved a page that is not yet made, use to communicate its title. The Deadline must also be included in the entry. Linking to pages not directly involved in the talk page proposal is not recommended, as it clutters the list with unnecessary links. Place  under the section's header, and once the proposal is over, replace the template with.
 * 2) All rules for talk page proposals are the same as mainspace proposals (see the "How To" section above), with the exceptions made by Rules 3 and 4 as follows:
 * 3) Voting in talk page proposals will be open for two weeks, not one. (All times GMT.)
 * 4) *For example, if a proposal is added at any time on Monday, August 1, 2011, it ends two weeks later on Monday, August 15, 2011, at 23:59 GMT.
 * 5) Talk page proposals may be closed by the proposer at any time if both the support and the oppose sides each have fewer than five votes.
 * 6) The talk page proposal must pertain to the article it is posted on.

List of Talk Page Proposals

 * Merge the recolored ScareScraper boss ghosts into their respective articles. (Discuss) Deadline: April 27, 2013 23:59 GMT
 * Split Fire Snake and Bound Fire (Discuss) Deadline: April 30, 2013 23:59 GMT
 * Delete Super Star. (Discuss) Deadline: May 1, 2013 23:59 GMT
 * Create separate articles for the Adventure Mode enemies (Discuss) Deadline: May 2, 2013 23:59 GMT
 * Rename Big Red Balloon to (Discuss) Deadline: May 2, 2013 23:59 GMT

Writing Guidelines
None at the moment.

New Features
''None at the moment.

Removals
None at the moment.

Allow Featuring/Unfeaturing Article Nominations to pass by majority
I'm pretty sure there has been several near-successful featuring or unfeaturing article nominations over the years that are unanimous, but right at the last moment, someone opposes it, and because of just one user, the entire thing fails. I wanted to change that by adding a rule that featuring/unfeaturing articles nominations must pass by 50% of the votes plus one. (i.e. 5 to 2, 7 to 3, etc.) It will be a better system and also show that more articles are in really good quality or that more articles need a dusting.

Proposer: Deadline: April 28, 2013 at 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Per proposal.
 * 2) Per Goomba.

Oppose

 * No, if we allow this then we are basically allowing fan votes to decide. I've seen archives of Mario for being featured and it was tonnes of supports because everyone likes him. If we allow this then it means some articles like Nintendo 3DS can be featured and at its current state we can't allow that due to a rewrite template and bad images. And also lots of people could support the unfeaturing of an article and then someone could come along and fix it up, but not be able to remove all the supports and a so a perfectly good article gets unfeatured.
 * 1) No articles should only be fa's when they are perfect and everybody agrees to that if an article has votes against it it means that the article is flawed and the flaws should be fixes (or that the votes are outdated in which case ask an admin) allowing articles to be fa'd when they have valid oppose votes on them will only lead to bad articles being featured because they are major characters.
 * 2) Per all.
 * 3) I would like to add to Marshal Dan Troop's vote (which I per with) that should an article's flaw is incorrect is fixed, we can always vote to remove it (and chances are, the oppose vote will get removed in time). So I think the current system is as fine as it is.
 * 4) Per all.
 * 5) &mdash; Per all, especially Marshal Dan Troop and Baby Luigi.
 * 6) Per Super Mario Bros.
 * 7) Per King Pikante.
 * 8) - Per all.
 * 9) Per all.
 * 10) Per all.
 * 11) Per all.
 * 12) Per all.
 * 13) - Per Marshal Dan Troop.

Comments
@Yoshi876 Fan votes are automatically removed now, so that isn't a problem anymore. 04:58, 21 April 2013 (EDT)
 * But reasons for supporting when featuring an article aren't allowed, so one person could say 'I think the Mario article is good because it has detail and images' and the all the fans would vote and it'd be impossible to see if they were fan votes because they can't leave a comment saying 'I love Mario'.
 * Yeah, I think that it's still a problem: there are still fan votes. 08:01, 21 April 2013 (EDT)
 * It's not much of a problem when one valid oppose vote just tips the side of the FA nomination.

Promotion/Demotion templates
I think that we should have templates to alert a user that they have been promoted/demoted; it provides a quick reference on their talk page when they were changed. (Note that this is not changing the criteria for promotion in any way) The templates would look something like this:

Proposer: Deadline: Monday, April 29, 2013 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Per proposal.
 * 2) You should be alerted when you get promoted,

Oppose

 * 1) This is something that is absolutely unnecessary.
 * 2) this is completely pointless we have a user rights log for this.
 * 3) Per all.
 * 4) - Per all.
 * 5) Superflous and tacky-looking.
 * 6) A normal message on your talk page such as "Greeting (user). Due to the quality and frequency of your contributions, the Mariowiki staff has agreed to promote you to Autopatrolled status. Note that this does not carry any additional powers or responsibilities, and that it mostly serves to make patrolling edits easier on our end." is fine enough.
 * 7) It would be annoying and unnecessary, as per Marshal Dan Troop's comment.
 * 8) Per GreenDisaster and Marshal Dan Troop.
 * 9) Promotion/demotion notices take place on the forums nowadays. And if anyone wants to say a congrats on the user's talk page, they can do it without a tacky template.
 * 10) Per all.
 * 11) Per all.
 * 12) Per all.
 * 13) - Per all, especially YoshiKong.
 * 14) - Per all. Our current way of doing things is fine.

Comments
Even though I supported, I know this will fail.


 * You are alerted when you are promoted in fact before you get promoted an admin asks you if you want the job then they send you a message like this one
 * By "tacky", do people mean how the draft templates look? And also, they have such templates on Userpedia here and here, and they seem to be working fine.


 * I don't like the second one's design especially. The animated GIF is not the best type of image we need for a template.

Miscellaneous
None at the moment.