Talk:Cleft

Wait. Clefts are not brown in TTYD. Why is the image colored brown?
 * I think it's a Cleft from the original Paper Mario.
 * I thought of that, though they look a bit different.

Apparently, the image used to be their correct appearance from the game, but was replaced with the current image with the reason "Most look likely other clefts". No source for the current image is given and I don't know where it came from, since it does not look like the Clefts in the original Paper Mario but it doesn't look like the ones from Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door either, even if it were a different colour (the spike on its forehead is too short and positioned differently and the eyes are different as well). Perhaps it should just be reverted to the grey one.--vellidragon 19:34, 6 February 2010 (EST)
 * I've looked through the history, and it always had the brown one for TTYD.
 * Sure you don't mean Moon Cleft? That's what the one that was up looked like to me since it had the same color as one.
 * Actually just checked, that was the moon cleft, wonder what it was doing on the cleft page.
 * The image labels itself as "A cleft". Somebody that's never seen a Cleft in-game found the image, used it and nobody minded.
 * Well I fixed it up with the right image, hope you don't mind? ^^
 * Sorry for the confusion, I wasn't talking about the article, I was talking about the image itself (Image:A_cleft.PNG). Look in the upload history; it was originally an in-game sprite of a grey Cleft from TTYD before someone decided to replace it for some reason 2 1/2 years later. With revert, I meant restore the old version of the picture, sorry.--vellidragon 20:16, 6 February 2010 (EST)
 * Well alright, anywho, another question quickly resolved.

Health Glitch
I just saw someone play TTYD, and something weird happened: A Cleft got flipped upside-down and died, but was revived with a Life Shroom. However, it's sprite stayed upside-down but kept acting as if it was the right way round. Can someone explain this?

Classification, Implementation, and Translation
OK, so, a lot of new information has come up that has thrown how we handle this for a major loop. To wit:
 * The internal data for TTYD considers Moon Clefts the normal Clefts while the "Boggly" Clefts are a variant, explaining the color. The same situation goes for Pale Piranha and "Killer" Piranha. Likely what happened is that in development, Boggly Woods didn't have the "Monochrome" theme, with that being a last-minute thing warranting switching graphics around haphazardly. The pale Cleft and Piranha were likely intended as the Moon and Pit ones, particularly given the latter follows the "dark color" thing Pit enemies tend to have. As for Dark Puff, Ruff Puff was originally a late-game enemy, so having a weaker version earlier made more sense, ie the same situation with Dull and Dry Bones.
 * In Japan, the SPM "Moon Cleft" is explicitly just the normal Cleft. This makes much more sense since it's in a rocky mountain area and not on the Moon, or even Planet Blobule. NGL, this name confused me initially as I hadn't played TTYD my first SPM playthrough. But I digress. This isn't a late-game super-enemy, it's a mid-game normal enemy, and while admittedly later in the respective game than the "normal" ones in PM and TTYD, it's still not a near-end enemy, and looks like the original Cleft. "Moon Cleft" was simply an error, and it's even implied they're normal Clefts by Dark Clefts.

Now, we can go about this in a variety of ways:
 * We can merge the SPM "Moon" Cleft here and keep the name "Cleft;"
 * We can merge the SPM "Moon" Cleft here and have two "Moon Cleft" pages with identifiers;
 * We can merge all Moon Cleft here and split the Boggly Woods type, which would be consistent with graphics data but not implementation.

I wouldn't recommend the third way or doing nothing, personally. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 23:00, March 15, 2020 (EDT)
 * I think the merges would just be even more confusing. Having played TTYD before SPM, I thought Moon Cleft was just the same enemy brought back. Yeah, it's name didn't match with the location, but that didn't really matter. What the internal data and Japanese name say isn't really relevant when the Moon Cleft both matches in color and name with a previous installment in English. Calling a Moon Cleft as "Cleft" would just be inaccurate and confusing, as that's not what the English game calls it. 23:08, March 15, 2020 (EDT)
 * Again, it matches in color and name to the original Cleft in the first game, so your point contradicts itself. The coloration going to a different enemy in TTYD was a one-time fling the same as Killer Piranha, as mentioned. It's far more confusing to call the Gap of Crag ones "Moon Clefts" because it makes no sense. I was racking my brain when I first saw that trying to figure out where the "moon" part came from, when it turns out the translation department had a consistency fart. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 00:31, March 16, 2020 (EDT)
 * What I meant is the Moon Cleft in SPM matches the name and color of the Moon Cleft in TTYD. It doesn't matter if where it is doesn't makes sense with its name, it is what it is, and trying to call it anything but would be confusing to the English material. 01:08, March 16, 2020 (EDT)
 * Expect since the Japanese name is original terminology, it falls on translators for not catching up with SPM "Moon" Cleft being just a Cleft while getting it with Piranha Plant at the same time. SmokedChili (talk) 04:49, March 16, 2020 (EDT)
 * True though that may be, it's not necessarily our duty to try to "fix" that mistake with these merges - we can certainly inform readers, sure, but as an encyclopedia, trying to have the articles reflect what they "should" have been called instead of what they ultimately were called strikes me as a flawed approach. -- 06:49, March 16, 2020 (EDT)
 * I'd argue that the wiki's allowed to correct errors and inconsistencies in official material without overstepping its bounds as an encyclopedia. If we didn't do that, we'd have separate pages for Spike/Mace Penguin, Boo Balloon/Blue Boo, Cheep Cheep/Flopsy Fish/Goby, Koopa Leaf/Turtley Leaf, etc etc etc. I'm not a fan of keeping things split/merged solely because the localization team got confused about something, especially not in a situation as clear-cut (imo) as this. Ultimately, the only reason to consider SPM's Moon Clefts the same as TTYD's is the English name. All other evidence points toward them being regular Clefts. 07:18, March 16, 2020 (EDT)
 * Before this becomes another name game, I want to point out that Doc is right that the location being important to the enemy. As Moon Cleft's tattle description in The Thousand-Year Door states: "It's your basic Cleft living on the moon." (Goombella) / "A Cleft living on the moon." (Log). Yes, it does reappear in the Pit of 100 Trials, but that's because it's more of a bonus challenge where all sorts of enemies throughout the game reappear. As far as the main game progression is concerned, these Clefts are named as such for a reason, which begs some sort of reorganization. LinkTheLefty (talk) 07:33, March 16, 2020 (EDT)
 * Both quite correct, the Pit of 100 Trials context clue is pretty important here. -- 07:46, March 16, 2020 (EDT)
 * As if simply informing viewers over fixing the issue wouldn't be just as flawed, or even more so. SPM Clefts are ultimately plain Clefts in Japan just as they are - or what the translators thought should be - Moon Clefts in English. SmokedChili (talk) 08:02, March 16, 2020 (EDT)

these merges make me wanna do the splits Yeah, I don't really agree with any of these merges. They all seem unnecessary when the English name and color both confirm that yes this is a Moon Cleft between games. 11:07, March 16, 2020 (EDT)
 * Except the color is just the normal Cleft palette. The only thing that specifically makes them Moon Clefts is the English name. 16:58, March 16, 2020 (EDT)
 * So? That is what we go off of. Its name is odd in SPM, sure, but it'd look even more out of place if we started calling it by the wrong name. 17:24, March 16, 2020 (EDT)
 * That argument could be used to justify splitting every single erroneous or inconsistent English name in the series. 17:41, March 16, 2020 (EDT)

Merge Super Paper Mario Moon Cleft content here
The above discussion has been sitting there for two years awaiting a solution, so let's finally do something. You can read Doc's opening comment above for a summary of the situation, but the basic issue here is that the enemy in SPM called "Moon Cleft" in the English version is actually a normal Cleft, but the translators were huffing Cherbil gas and called it a "Moon Cleft" despite the fact that it has nothing to do with the moon, space, or anything cosmic whatsoever. The mistake rose from the actual Moon Clefts in TTYD using the original Cleft palette, while the normal Clefts were given a grayscale palette to fit with the theme of Boggly Woods. Apparently they forgot the original game existed during the translation process. Way to do your homework, guys.

A couple things have changed since the above discussion - namely the Pale Piranha and Chestnut King merges. The Pale Piranha merge is especially important here, since the relationship between Pale Piranhas (normal Piranha Plants, as indicated by the Japanese name and pre-release English build) and the Pit of 100 Trials Piranha Plants (or "Killer Pakkun") is virtually identical to that of the Clefts and Moon Clefts. Both changed to a grayscale palette for Boggly Woods while the normal coloration went to a late-game "variant" with a different name, and their internal data suggests that it was originally meant to be the other way around. Regardless, we treat these original palette variants as just that - variants, while the grayscale Boggly Woods "normals" are considered the original species, despite the English TTYD localization attempting to reverse that in the Piranha Plants' case.

Which brings us back to SPM. Everything but the English name suggests that these are normal Clefts - their in-game descriptions, the lack of any relation to the moon, them appearing in a rocky desert mountain setting just like in the original PM, and the fact that the Flopside Pit variant is called "Dark Cleft" and not "Dark Moon Cleft" (not to mention that Bald Clefts are also in the game). The rename makes zero sense for anyone who hasn't played TTYD, and even for people who have, it's still a total eye-roller.

Merging Moon Cleft entirely and splitting the Boggly Woods variant would be inconsistent with how we're handling Pale Piranha and Killer Pakkun, so without re-splitting and merging them respectively, that's out. Making the SPM Moon Cleft a completely separate article would be making a new entity out of a mistranslation, something we decided not to do when we merged Chestnut King with Goomboss (and this would be worse since we know it's a normal Cleft, unlike the Chestnut King where it's ambiguous). Doing nothing would be like moving King Boo's SM64DS content to the Big Boo article, moving pre-SM3DW Galoomba content to the Goomba article, or any of the nine jillion other splits and merges we could do if we based everything purely on English names. Therefore, the only logical thing to do here is merge the SPM Moon Cleft content here and treat it as a normal Cleft like it is in the language-of-origin.

Proposer: Deadline: August 3, 2022, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Per proposal.
 * 2) - A mistake is a mistake. [[File:PaperMario Items Mistake.png]] This is a mistake.
 * 3) Per proposal.
 * 4) Per proposal, for consistency with how we handle other likely translation mistakes.

Comments
Not sure which to vote for as of now, but if this proposal passes I still think the translation inconsistancy should at least be mentioned on the Moon Cleft page, preferably in a Super Paper Mario section with a "main article" template. 15:56, July 20, 2022 (EDT)
 * An about template at the top of the page will take care of that. 16:57, July 20, 2022 (EDT)