MarioWiki:Proposals

Writing guidelines
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New features
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Removals
None at the moment.

Fix how we handle infobox relations on generic species
No, not "change" or "decide", fix.

The way we currently list relations between real-world species and specific enemies based on real-world species is an issue I've had on the back of my mind for a bit now. To better understand what my problem with it is, let's quickly take a look at what the four relevant syntaxes are for:

So with this in mind, we should ideally be using "variants" for the specific species that are based on a real-world species, but that is not what we do; we instead list the specific species as merely "comparable" to the broader generic species, despite the specific species being a type of said generic species.

Take a look at Bee, for instance, and you'll see this in action. Things like Bzzap!, Stingby, Honeybee, Super Bee, Buzzer, Bumbler(which is just called "bee" in japan), Big Bee, etc. are all listed as "comparable" to the generic bee article. Strangely, the one Yoshi's Story Bumblebee is the only variety of bee to be listed as "variant" instead of comparable, and heck it might even be the only specific species to be listed as a variant of a generic species on the infoboxes. I don't know why that specific bee enemy has priority over literally any other variety of bee, as there's like three other varieties simply called "bee" in English (and one which shares the Japanese name of the YS bumblebee), and all of those are listed as "comparable". And it's not just bees that have this trait about them; Butterfly, Crow, Clam, Frog, Jellyfish, etc. all do this as well, listing the specific species as just "comparable". Note how those last 3 examples also list their generically-named Yoshi's Story counterparts as "comparable", so I have literally no idea why that specific Yoshi's Story bumblebee has special status with its real-world counterpart compared to any other enemy.

The thing is, this kind of organization as stated before is unhelpful in the context of real-world enemies; a Crowber is definitely a crow and was even called simply a "Crow" at one point, but we list it as "comparable" in the Crow page's infobox. Comparable means "similar but unrelated", making it seem like it's not actually a crow when it is. Heck, this is even contradictory to how the individual pages handle it; they all have the real-world species they're based on mentioned in the intros and placed as categories on the bottom, so the individual pages are saying "Yes it is an x" while the real-world species' infoboxes are saying "It's similar to x but isn't an x". This may be a small issue, but it's a ridiculous one when it's so contradictory to what is said otherwise.

And with that, I see 4 possible ways to go from here;

1. List the specific species as variants on the R.W.S. page. This is the most accurate way of depicting the relation between R.W.S. and the specific species based on it, because...I just said why a lot of times, didn't I?

2. List the specific species as relatives on the R.W.S. page. You could say that using "variant" between R.W.S. and specific species is confusing compared to how we use it for specific species to other specific species, since Nintendo probably wasn't thinking of the R.W.S. as a specific parent and instead as just an R.W.S. to base the enemies on. This method will account for that while still stating the relationships correctly.

3. Use an about on the top of the R.W.S. page. Let's be honest, these parameters were designed with unique species in mind. Mixing R.W.S. up with unique enemy species is what caused this confusing happenstance to happen, and with this method, we'd be making things a whole lot simpler. Take the Clown page for instance; instead of listing every clown in the greater Mario franchise as "comparable" to the Wario World enemy, we have an about on the top saying to check Category:Clowns for clowns across the Mario franchises. This method will do that for all the R.W.S., simplifying things and also helping us clean up whatever happened with Dragon (which is a specific Yoshi's Story species and not exactly meant to be representative of all dragons, but the comparable conundrum is also there somehow.).

EDIT: Doc suggested to repurpose the subject_origin parameter to link to the R.W.S. On the individual species pages, and since options 1 & 2 would counter this I'm adding it to option 3.

EDIT 2: Also adding another option just for the subject_origin itself.

4. Do nothing. We all collectively agree that it is fine as it is now and leave the infobox saying that all the specific species are "similar to x-real-world-species but aren't actually an x-R.-W.-S." except for that one YS Bumblebee which has a special status for...no reason at all.

So, with that all said and done, let's answer this question; How do we list specific species on the infoboxes of R.W.S. pages?

Proposer: Deadline: July 24, 2022, 23:59 GMT Extended to July 31, 2022, 23:59 GMT

List specific species as relatives of R.W.S.

 * 1) Second choice, per proposal.

Repurpose subject_origin for the specific species pages, use an about template for the R.W.S. Pages

 * 1) Preferred choice.
 * 2) Per proposal.
 * 3) Per proposal.

Just repurpose the subject_origin for the species pages

 * 1) Agreed about the repurposing of subject_origin, even its name suggest such an use would be appropriate, and it would be the link to the category page we need, without adding another use of the "about" template that can get cluttered good luck with Yoshi tho
 * 2) Per Mister Wu.
 * 3) Per Mister Wu.
 * 4) A while back, I wanted to do something similar, and this seems closest to that idea. I think the "about" option would be suboptimal since, unlike the infobox, the categories don't distinguish between species and characters or groups.

Comments
There is actually a "subject_origin" parameter last I checked that is the remnants of the old "species_origin" parameter, and as it is now, it is barely used. Course, it may be removed now, but seems like a good compromise. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 14:12, July 17, 2022 (EDT)
 * Is the subject_origin used on the individual species pages or the real world species page? 14:16, July 17, 2022 (EDT)
 * I think it's only used on one or two pages in total right now. Can be used to link to the "real world" ones from the fictional types. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 14:33, July 17, 2022 (EDT)
 * That seems like a good idea! 14:38, July 17, 2022 (EDT)
 * I still think the subject_origin field should get its own voting option, you can safely edit proposals at their beginning so don't worry about adding other options, in this case I think this repurposing has a lot of merits.--Mister Wu (talk) 20:06, July 17, 2022 (EDT)
 * done, you mean an option to just enact the subject_origin and nothing else, right? 06:58, July 18, 2022 (EDT)
 * Yes, thanks for adding it.--Mister Wu (talk) 17:32, July 21, 2022 (EDT)
 * Not sure if this is beyond the scope now, but presuming the "just repurpose subject_origin for species pages" option, could we maybe add a new equivalent parameter to replace the "comparable" portion of real-world species articles? LinkTheLefty (talk) 10:02, July 31, 2022 (EDT)
 * That's definitely possible, it's just be adding a new parameter to the infobox and clarifying it's to be used instead of comparable for R.W.S., right? 10:46, July 31, 2022 (EDT)

Miscellaneous
None at the moment.