MarioWiki:Proposals/Archive/48

Is it "Coin" or "coin"?
Currently, the wiki has no set standard for the capitalization of the golden that Mario and co. collect in abundance across the franchise: is it "Coin", with a capital C, or "coin", with a lowercase c? This isn't entirely clear-cut: from the games that I've looked at, there are many that do not capitalize it, including most recently Mario Party 8, Sm4sh, and New Super Mario Bros. 2, but there are also other games that capitalize it, including New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Mario Party, and there's something odd and inconsistent about listing the Red Coin, the Purple Coin, the Blue Coin, the 20 Coin, the Key Coin, and many others as being derivatives of the coin. That lowercase "coin" seems out of place, doesn't it? Lowercasing it just because it's a generic noun doesn't hold either; the Mushroom is plainly and consistently capitalized in just about every circumstances. If you're going to say it's because the Mario Mushrooms obviously aren't like the real-life mushrooms, then I'd argue the same goes for the floating, golden, abundant Coins. There is a precedent for not capitalizing the names of subjects with, for example, treasure chest (despite there being at least one in-game source that capitalizes them, but that's an issue for another time), but it's a moot point if the subject isn't generic in the first place.

This may seem like a trivially minor issue, but at the same time, this is an issue that has yet to reach a decisive conclusion. I fail to see a reason why we shouldn't strive for consistency, especially since we've already had a proposal to decide on a set spelling for minigame (spoilers: we decided on minigame).

Proposer: Deadline: September 2, 2017, 23:59 GMT

Use "Coin"

 * 1) It's hardly as if no official sources have ever not capitalized it. Per proposal.
 * 2) Per Time Turner.
 * 3) Per proposal.
 * 4) - Originally voted to do nothing as I thought this was also talking about coins in a broader term, i.e. also including Red Coins and Blue Coins. But for referring to just the standard Yellow Coins, yes, "Coin" should be capitalized (at least in instances outside of quotes).
 * 5) Per Alex, and supporting for consistency (unless "coin" is used in generic terms; see this).
 * 6) per all

Use "coin"

 * 1) See comments.
 * 2) Alternate vote here, because the games themselves almost always refer to them in lowercase. Still, silly proposal.
 * 3) Unless it's referring to a specific type in most cases, coins (and for that matter, blocks and, in at least one instance, coin blocks) have consistently been generically lowercase in RPGs.

Do nothing

 * 1) I highly doubt that there is enough definitive official sources that specifically stick to one capitalization. I'd rather stick with this option until an official capitalization is given, and right now, there doesn't seem to be. (One example of this is that I found an all-lowercase "coin" in the Super Mario Galaxy 2 instruction booklet.)
 * 2) See comments.
 * 3) While this has bugged me minorly before, this proposal is honestly kind of silly.
 * 4) Per all.
 * 5) Per all.
 * 6) This seems to be something that changes depending on the game.
 * 7) Per all.
 * 8) Per Toadette the Achiever.

Comments
If anyone has any more in-game citations for "Coin" or "coin" from any games that haven't been mentioned, then I'm all-ears. 00:16, 26 August 2017 (EDT)

@Toadette: I don't see why we should be inconsistent solely because the games also happen to be inconsistent. 00:47, 26 August 2017 (EDT)
 * @Time Turner: Changed the content of my vote. 00:50, 26 August 2017 (EDT)
 * What kind of official capitalization do you want? Is it necessary for Nintendo to make a press release declaring whether it's lowercase or up case? Through the simple fact that the names are seen in plain text, we already have an abundance of official names. It's up to us to decide how we should use the information. 00:52, 26 August 2017 (EDT)

I say this is as official as you can get. Although, this could be on a game to game basis. 01:37, 26 August 2017 (EDT)

@Doc: Why? 02:54, 26 August 2017 (EDT)
 * Because it's an inanimate object that is super inconsistent as to how it's capitalized. Honestly, if you wanna go by policy, see how the latest game spells it. 01:58, 26 August 2017 (CT)
 * If we strictly followed every new game, the spelling might constantly change, and there are likely cases in which there's no adequate source for capitalization. Best to nip it in the bud, no? I also don't get your point with it being an inanimate object. 03:06, 26 August 2017 (EDT)

I don't get what's acceptable about setting a standard for "microgame" but not for "coin"? 17:14, 26 August 2017 (EDT)


 * It's capitalized in the tutorial of Mario Party 2, but not capitalized in the tutorial of Mario Party 3. It's inconsistent between such close games. A better choice would be to capitalize it depending on the game, and have the higher case be more dominant otherwise (because it is a main item), but I feel this is such a minor unnoticeable issue, yet the "do nothing" option does not convince me. -- 06:30, 27 August 2017 (EDT)

Include the date a proposal was withdrawn within the proposal (when applicable)
When it comes to the proposal archives, in which we write down the date each proposal ended, it's standard to use the date a proposal was canceled by its proposer or withdrawn for whatever other reason, rather than the proposed deadline (as documented here). This makes sense: it wouldn't be accurate to say that a proposal had concluded a week later than it actually did, and the point of the archives is that we're documenting each proposal exactly as they played out (which is why we make note of proposals that themselves failed but whose proposed changes later passed, and vice-versa). With that in mind, why do we only make note of this in the broad archives and not within the proposals itself? Sure, it's possible to find the date it was canceled by going through the page's history, in the same way it's also possible to find the original proposer through the history page, but we still make note of it within the proposal itself. Leaving only the proposed deadline by itself is also rather misleading and non-informative, considering that any users reading through the proposal wouldn't be able to obviously tell when it actually closed. Even with the proposal outcome saying it was canceled, that doesn't help people find out when it was canceled. We should strive for accuracy, especially when all we'd need to do is make note of one more date.

The changes I have in mind would only be applicable to proposals that were canceled before their deadline, obviously. First of all, the Deadline section would be renamed to Proposed Deadline, with no changes to the date. Secondly, a section called Date Withdrawn would be placed underneath the Deadline, documenting exactly when the proposal was canceled. Ideally, this would include the time in GMT to match the Deadline, but for simplicity's sake, this proposal will only ask that the day needs to be documented and not the time. The details may be subject to change through future discussions, but the main change is clear: within the proposals, document when they were canceled.

Proposer: Deadline: September 9, 2017, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Per proposal.
 * 2) - Per proposal.
 * 3) Per proposal.
 * 4) Per proposal.
 * 5) Per proposal.
 * 6) Per proposal.
 * 7) Per proposal.
 * 8) Per all.
 * 9) Per proposal, especially considering a few recent talk page proposals ended up getting cancelled way earlier than the original deadline.
 * 10) Per all.
 * 11) Per all.

Comments
Should this apply to all cancelled proposals regardless, or all proposals cancelled after September 9? 13:46, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * The plan is to make this retroactive. If the goal is to be accurate, it wouldn't do us much good to ignore ten years of proposals. 13:47, 3 September 2017 (EDT)

On that note, my plan also involves editing the proposal archives, which I can't actually do since they're protected. Should this proposal pass, the pages' protection restrictions can be temporarily lifted so that I can make the necessary changes, or an admin can make the edits themselves, whichever works best. 15:23, 3 September 2017 (EDT)

Remove letter-number labeling from Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon mission article titles
Currently, our articles for the missions from Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon include the letter-number labels in their titles (e.g. A-1: Poltergust 5000, A-2: Gear Up, B-1: A Job for a Plumber). Why? We don't do this for New Super Mario Bros. U, Super Mario 3D World, Paper Mario: Sticker Star, or any other game with world-level labeling where the levels also have proper names. I don't see a single reason for this one game to be the sole exception to this. It's just a blatant, glaring inconsistency.

Proposer: Deadline: September 10, 2017, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Per proposal.
 * 2) It's no more a part of their names than W1-1 is for Warm Fuzzy Plains. I don't see the difference between this and this. Per proposal.
 * 3) Per all.
 * 4) - Per all.
 * 5) Per all.
 * 6) Per all
 * 7) The opposing argument (no offense) seems unconvincing, and Sticker Star is a perfect example. Per all.

Oppose

 * 1) It's the official naming scheme. Just create/keep redirects for the prefix-less version.
 * 2) The stage titles in Super Mario Sunshine had various colors too, and no one's making a big stink about that. The colors don't matter.

Comments
@Alex95: No they aren't. The letter-number labels are colored differently than the mission title, and the results screens omit the labels entirely. 16:44, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * It doesn't matter, because the game DOES list them like what you just said, by letter-number. In other words, the game DOES list the missions as A-1: Poltergust 5000, A-2: Gear Up, and so on and so forth. I don't get the point to this proposal. 16:47, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * Actually, that would matter. SM3DW has the world-level number, but it's not part of the title. I'll double check what the game does myself and come to a decision later. 16:49, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * Also, as shown in the video Time Turner linked to, levels in Sticker Star are listed similarly, and the colon doesn't appear to be in the name at all. -- 16:51, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * We are NOT talking about some YouTube videos, as much as I think Emile is one of the best, if not the best, YouTube LPers around. We're talking about what the GAMES say. And as far as I'm concerned, the very labeling you want removed is how Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon labels its missions, so you basically want to remove part of the official name of something, which goes completely against policy. 17:11, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * The videos are literally showcasing the games through footage directly captured from the games. How are we not talking about the games? 17:15, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * You're talking about how the videos themselves are named, not the game levels. If you look closely, you'll see that the levels are named as they should be (A-1: ...., A-2: ...., etc). 17:19, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * No, I am talking about what the videos themselves depict, especially considering I included timestamps. 17:20, 3 September 2017 (EDT)

It doesn't matter anyway. The levels aren't named Poltergust 5000 or Gear Up or etc, they're named A-1: Poltergust 5000, A-2: Gear Up, etc. It's their official name, and we always use the complete, official name of something. Your proposal is gonna go against that. 17:23, 3 September 2017 (EDT)

@7feetunder: Okay, so I played a level. The identifier is just that, an identifier. It also does show at the results screen. They aren't part of the title, but it would be helpful to have these identifiers should something else with the same name show up, like Poltergust 5000 or Sticky Situation. Though the same could be said about adding the identifiers to the other mentioned games... 17:23, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * Exactly what Alex said. Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon uses identifiers, but for the other games, the world-level number isn't part of the title. 17:26, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * We don't include identifiers to future-proof. Barb isn't "Barb (character)" just because another Barb might show up, and I could provide many more examples if requested. If it's a unique name, people will know what we're talking about. 17:28, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * OK, I looked again. When I said the results screen omits the label, I was looking at a boss mission, which are all labeled with a skull and no letter on the level select screen and nothing on the results screen. Apparently, the regular missions do include the labels. But the colors are still different, the colon is still not there, and again, it's just a W1-1-style identifier and not a part of the proper title. 17:37, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * I totally contradicted myself when I said it's just an identifier. That's the very thing you're trying to clarify isn't part of the actual title. However, since the game uses the identifier in every instance of the mission name, it appears to be both. 17:41, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * If the identifier is meant to be taken as part of the title proper, then why are the labels and names colored differently in every instance they appear together (IIRC)? 17:47, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * I don't know, aesthetics, man. Visual appeal. 17:52, 3 September 2017 (EDT)

I ultimately got tired of relying on videos and just whipped out my copy of the game, and here's what I confirmed: @Doc: By that same token, Road to the Big Windmill isn't called "Episode 1: Road to the Big Windmill". 18:21, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * I couldn't find any instances of the mission names occuring independently from the labeling, but they were always colored differently.
 * The boss and bonus missions are not labeled. On the selection screen, they have no letter-number labels, but skull and ghost icons respectively (just the icons, not A-Ghost, B-Ghost, etc.). On the results screen and touch screen (tap the little notebook paper icon in the bottom right corner), there's nothing, just the name of the mission. So our labeling of those isn't even accurate to the game. You could argue that that's a cause to remove the labels from those alone, and leave the regular missions as is, but the obvious inconsistency created by this, combined with the above point, really leads me to believe that the labels are not meant to be taken as part of the title and are just meant as identifiers. 18:28, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * OK. Those are on different lines though, ie "Episode 1" is placed above "Road to the Big Windmill",although many of the names seem to have come from the SMS guide. If it calls them with "Episode #" parsed in, they should probably be moved to those. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 18:44, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * The only ones that come from a guide are the "hidden" missions (like the red coin missions for the secret sub-levels), the Delfino Airstrip missions, and Corona Mountain's only mission, which aren't named nor labeled as episodes in-game. And if you wanna talk about placement, let's go back to Sticker Star. In that first video Time Turner linked, you can see that W1-1 is to the left of Warm Fuzzy Plains, just like the labeling in Dark Moon. The Toad at the very beginning of the area clearly refers to it without the label, so it isn't part of the actual name. The size and font of the W1-1 label is different, but I don't see how that's any different from the colors being different in Dark Moon. 19:05, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * "To the left" is extremely different in comparison to "over". Also sorry, I can't watch the video because I'm at home and have dismal bandwidth here. Sorry. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 19:18, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * Which is why I specifically brought up Sticker Star. Both that game and Dark Moon put the label to the left of the name, and not over it like Sunshine. Yet we don't label Sticker Star levels, and for good reason. 19:37, 3 September 2017 (EDT)
 * And what might that be?Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 23:05, 7 September 2017 (EDT)
 * I already explained that. Sticker Star's in-game dialogue omits the world-level identifiers whenever the area names are mentioned. They're not a part of the name, so there's no reason to treat them as such, especially when we don't have an ounce of precedent for it. 00:41, 9 September 2017 (EDT)

Add categories for images of characters
Currently, if one wants to find all the images of a certain character on the wiki, there is no easy way to do so. While galleries might just have all images of a character, it must be remembered that certain images have specific purposes, such as, or. Including all these images without context would likely make the galleries bloated. A simple solution at the moment might be creating categories of images of characters to be added to the images themselves, of the format. With proper maintenance, doing so would allow, in the longer term, to see all images of a character on the wiki, allowing easier maintenance as well as retrieval of images that might have a second purpose on the wiki beyond the original one they were uploaded for, all this without creating bloat on the galleries.

Proposer: Deadline: September 18, 2017, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Per proposal
 * 2) I also think so. Yes, it can take a long time to finish, but finding certain character images is a hard work right now, even with the search page. It'd be split into sub-categories, to make it easier.

Oppose

 * 1) Per Alex95 and Wildgoospeeder's comments.
 * 2) I think the benefits of this proposal are far outweighed by the unnecessary processes and the horrendous organization we have to undertake. First of all, the only images that ultimately benefit from this proposal are screenshots. Nearly everything else related to their character are already found in the gallery, making the category on the bottom mostly redundant with their placement on galleries. Second, this proposal runs on the assumption that there are only one or two characters max per screenshot, and the proposed changes to the screenshots already sounds like more complication on top of an already messy proposal. Because that's what the proposal is aiming to do, and doing so will provide a gigantic, ugly mess of categories on the bottom area of the picture, which makes browsing images by their game even harder to do. And finally, what are the qualifications for characters receiving a category page? Are we going to give one-shot NPCs their own image category? The proposal doesn't say which characters "deserve" their own category, with maybe the proposed number of character images being "5", which I think is an arbitrary number for various reasons.
 * 3) This kind of system would only work properly if our images had a rigorous and consistent naming system - otherwise, it'll just be an odd mash-up of random images, with no coherent order to any of it. Per everyone else.
 * 4) Per Alex and Wildgoosespeeder in the comments. I am also not sure how many characters would receive a category.
 * 5) - Per me and Wildgoosespeeder below.
 * 6) Per Baby Luigi and Time Turner.
 * 7) Per all.
 * 8) Per all.
 * 9) Per all, especially Baby Luigi.

Comments
How would group images be handled? And would this include literally every image of the character - artwork, sprites, screenshots, et al.? 16:50, 11 September 2017 (EDT)
 * For the categories to have a purpose, they should include all images of the characters. Subcategories such as sprites, artwork or scans can be implemented later if this is beneficial and if enough images can be had in them. Group images are an interesting point, I see other wikis that indeed include all characters in an image, and since multiple categories per page are a thing here too, listing all characters might indeed be the best way. Anyway, as you can easy imagine, implementing this kind of templates is not something that can be done all at once, so as first step we can categorize images having one character to immediately see the time needed to properly implement the categories, the feasiblity and the benefits - if there are any -, after this "pilot phase", group images can be dealt with.--Mister Wu (talk) 21:07, 11 September 2017 (EDT)
 * Fair enough. As follow-up questions, how many images should a character have before an category is created for them, and will this eventually be expanded to include enemies, locations, items, and others? Even if these won't be applied for the "pilot phase", I'd still say that they're worth considering for the future. 22:06, 11 September 2017 (EDT)
 * Since we are talking about specific characters, a special case, we must consider whether grouping makes sense: the main pages already group some characters together through categories, but it must be seen if this simplifies any work - if a reader or a maintainer wants to know the exact number of images of a specific character, the category page should show it, it might be even useful to know whether some characters only have a single low quality image while they should have more than that. Expanding to other classes, such as enemies or items, can be considered if we indeed obtain good results with the characters, my idea at the moment is still focusing on something we want to know the covearge of or we want to see the images of, but if you want to extend even beyond that we can consider at that point setting a limit, possibly like the one of the current standards for image categories - should be five images.--Mister Wu (talk) 23:41, 11 September 2017 (EDT)
 * So would any character with five images get a category, or would it only be major characters? I don't feel it would make sense for minor characters such as Coach to receive a category. -- 20:07, 12 September 2017 (EDT)
 * From a long term point of view, knowing that a character has not so many images might be an intenresting information, especially if said character should have many more, if this were to pass I don't think we should start with minor characters, though, we could either go with the major characters  minus the species and the Toad variants, if we want to follow the Nintendo criterion of major characters, or the Mario series characters who have a gallery on this wiki and are featured in the Super Mario series main games if we want to see whether such categorization makes sense or not.--Mister Wu (talk) 20:58, 12 September 2017 (EDT)

I don't get it. What's wrong with the galleries? Yeah, some might be rather large to look through, but categorizing an image based on character would be pretty much the same thing as sticking it in a gallery. Seems redundant to me. Additionally, categories are alphabetized, and some images may not be named based on their relevance. Galleries, however, are sorted based on the type of image, from artwork to sprites to screenshots. Sure, categories show 200 images at a time, which makes loading times easier, but galleries are sorted in a way that makes navigation easier. 13:16, 12 September 2017 (EDT)
 * I'm with on this one. I think our organization of images is a little lackluster, but the current proposal doesn't have any real benefits. We are clumping unlike images into the same image category. This will take a long time to implement, but why not organize each image category found in Category:Images by game into say like Category:Super Mario World Sprites, Category:Super Mario World Artwork, etc., to be in Category:Super Mario World Images? The reason I have not proposed this because of the sheer intensity of the project handling 300+ categories and dealing with ~80,000 images. The hiarchy I'm suggesting:
 * Category:Images by game
 * Category:Super Mario World Images
 * Category:Super Mario World Sprites
 * Category:Super Mario World Artwork
 * Category:Super Mario World Screenshots
 * Category:Super Mario Bros. Images
 * Category:Super Mario Bros. Sprites
 * Category:Super Mario Bros. Artwork
 * Category:Super Mario Bros. Screenshots
 * I don't see this being implemented any time soon. Also, there could be unforeseen conditions that could come up. -- 13:47, 12 September 2017 (EDT)
 * @ I fear you might be missing a point. Putting all images of a character in a gallery leads to bad layouts and to problems which were very well presented by, when I myself was invited to avoid this in the case of Iggy's sprites from Paper Mario: Color Splash; since the reasons are actually valid I started avoiding putting in the galleries images that are alraedy referenced in main pages due to their main purpose, and I've been mostly doing this since then to avoid cluttering galleries with images from a single source. In no way can a gallery replace a systematic retrieval system of images of a character, which is what PidgiWiki or, if we want to stay in NIWA, Bulbapedia have, both actually using a method similar to what I'm suggesting. My point is, even though in the games this might be of secondary importance, the Mario franchise as a whole is inevitably character driven, being named after a character, but currently finding all images of a character isn't simple, and galleries have unavoidable restrictions that cannot solve this - either you sacrifice layout for coverage, or you sacrifice coverage to have a cleaner layout, the latter being important not to give the idea to the new users that you can upload whatever you like in the gallery.
 * @ I won't deny the amount of work needed, still I think an issue is definitely there, and if fans are coming for images of the characters, we give them little resources to find them, same for maintainers, actually. I more than welcome better proposals for improving the situation, since of course the system I'm proposing is tested and actually implemented, but nonetheless very simple and requires much manual work to implement here.--Mister Wu (talk) 19:53, 12 September 2017 (EDT)

I'm on the fence, personally... I don't think it'd be a horrible idea, it'd just take a LOT of weeding out specifics to make it work, and gallery might be used more frequently.  ~Camwood777  (talk)  17:37, 15 September 2017 (EDT)

Also, putting ALL characters will never end, I think only in major characters, minor characters should be out of this category. 13:42, 16 September 2017 (EDT)