MarioWiki:Proposals

Implement the ability to remove support votes in nominations for featured articles
After seeing that people can't remove support votes in featured article nominations...why is this necessary? If we can remove both support and oppose votes in unfeatured article nominations, then why can't we do the same for featured article nominations? After all, no matter what, all you're really voting for is whether the article should be granted featured status or if it should be unfeatured, so being only able to remove oppose votes in featured article nominations sounds inconsistent.

In the policy page, the rule will look like somewhat approaching this:

''Users may vote for the removal of a support/oppose vote if they feel it is invalid or not specific enough, but have to give reasons for their choice. Three users, including an administrator, are required for the removal of a support/oppose vote. This is how it should look like:''

==== Removal of support/oppose votes ==== Name of a specified user
 * 1) Reasons the support/oppose vote should be removed

''After the required amount of votes is met, users must wait 24 hours before removing the vote. Any vote that has per'd without providing any additional reason will also be removed.'' Proposer: Deadline: January 28, 2018, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) It doesn't hurt to be consistent on the wiki.
 * 2) After seeing your recent edit be reverted on the Super Mario Run Nomination page, I was just about to propose this myself. Implementing this would only enforce consistency and weed out any illegitimate votes. I'm not looking to single anyone out, but the two support votes on the current Super Mario Run nomination are not legitimate and should not be allowed to stay. This new system would be implemented to strictly remove any support votes that shouldn't be there. Why let them stay if we all agree that there has been cases as mentioned. Per Lcrossmk8 and my comments below.
 * 3) Because of what just happened, once this passes, any support votes that don't follow rules would get vaporized with the removal feature. Per all.
 * 4) Per all.
 * 5) If the nomination only has one support vote, then that vote carries weight. If that vote is being held up with faulty reasoning, then I see no reason to keep it there. Per all.
 * 6) There's really no reason not to do this. If the only support vote is clearly invalid then it should be able to be removed. We shouldn't have to wait out the process if the whole nomination is invalid.
 * 7) Per all.

Oppose

 * 1) &mdash; The reason that the wiki does not allow for the removal of support votes from Featured Article nominations is that such a process would not have a real impact on the progress of the nomination. The job of the support is not to outnumber the opposition by a particular margin; rather, it is to completely satisfy any legitimate concerns that the opposition might have. Even if one hundred people flooded in with illegitimate support reasons, one oppose vote would disallow the nomination from being passed. Because oppose votes hold much more weight than support votes and are difficult to remove if they are justified, it is pointless to design a process to remove illegitimate support votes. Additionally, the comparison of FA support votes to Unfeature support votes falls flat when one considers that they are inherently different; whereas the burden falls on the support to pass a Featured Article nomination, the burden falls on the opposition to fail an Unfeature nomination. This means that in the Unfeature process, support and oppose votes are more equal in importance and must both be backed by strong reasoning for the process to actually work.
 * 2) - Per SMB. Support votes are moot if there are any opposes anyway.
 * 3) Per SMB and Alex.
 * 4) Do we actually have to do this?  It seems useless.  Standard proposals do not work the same way as FA nominations.  Per SMB.
 * 5) Was originally going to support, but didn't know that a Feature nomination failed with any number of opposes, so per all.
 * 6) Per SMB.
 * 7) - Per SMB.
 * 8) Per SMB.
 * 9) Per SMB.
 * 10) Per SMB.
 * 11) Per all.

Comments
This doesn't hurt anyone either. If we can remove opposition we should have the same guidelines to remove supports. Good idea.

You need to create a draft for writing guidelines. 17:22, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * ^Before anyone else votes, the proposal should be drafted so we know what this new guideline would look like. 17:30, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * To clarify, you need to include a draft of what the rule will look like in the policy page. 17:51, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * May I suggest instead of saying "not specific enough" in your draft change in to something like "insufficient." I feel that word is used better to describe it.

@SMB: We do have a process to remove any kind of fan vote, support or oppose, so it's not an entirely novel concept. Also, I'd say that support votes can carry weight if they convince other users to support it regardless of any erroneous reasons, and the users then proceed to spend their time arguing with the opposers rather than anything productive. 19:04, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * @Time Turner: I overlooked that and modified my vote to reflect the policy change. Even still, the reasoning applies to any other sorts of illegitimate or poorly-supported support votes. Of course, support votes can carry a symbolic weight if they are well-constructed, but that does not change the fact that when it comes down to pure policy, an oppose vote has much more weight than a support vote. 19:14, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * I don't disagree that a single oppose vote does more than any number of support votes, but personally, it feels weird to allow poorly constructed votes to stay just because they're not strictly impacting the nomination. They could contain false or just plain bad information and reasoning, and you yourself brought up the potential symbolic weight of them. Even if they're worth a single drop of a near-full bucket, I don't want to disregard it, because that still means that it constitutes something. 19:20, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * Eh, it sounds like the burden falls on the opposition to fail both featured and unfeatured article nominations. And also, @SMB, the removal of support votes does have as much impact on the progress of the nomination as much as the removal of oppose votes, especially in most of the cases when you see only one reason being given by the first voter and everyone else giving it a "per all" secondary vote. It happens in both support and oppose votes. The burden falls on the supporters to support the nomination and the opposition to fail the nomination in any nomination. After all, what's the point of voting in the first place if there is no burden on your side? 19:22, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * Regardless of how many support votes there are, if there's even one oppose vote, then the feature nomination won't matter anyway. There's no need to have a "Removal of supports" because voting against the nomination does more than enough already. 19:47, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * @Time Turner: I also don't disagree that faulty support votes constitute something; rather, I believe the process already handles these situations adequately by virtue of giving a single opposition vote more weight than any amount of support votes. If the support offers weak arguments, then the opposition will simply have a strong counterargument. It is then up to the support to revise its standpoint or edit the article to eliminate these concerns. The process is designed to handle the very concern that the proposal attempts to combat.
 * @Lcrossmk8: The burden absolutely falls on the support in the case of Featured Articles. A single support vote will not make a technical difference as long as the FA nomination meets the five vote threshold; however, a single oppose vote will completely stall the nomination from being accepted. The opposition does not have to make any real attempt to improve the article for their viewpoint to be officially accepted, whereas the support must address the concerns of the opposition if they want the nomination to succeed. Of course, there is some sort of "burden" on both sides; however, the process heavily favors the opposition, which means the support must work harder to succeed in their goal. 19:57, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * And for some reason, oppose votes don't face the same burdens? If the opposition doesn't want the nomination to succeed, then it's up to them to give all legitimate reasons as to why the support is wrong and the nomination should not succeed. It's not that complicated for any nomination, both the support and the opposition must give legitimate reasons as to why their side is right. You can say that more support votes don't make a difference in the progress of the nomination, but I can turn that around and say the exact same thing for the oppose votes: more of them don't make a difference in the progress of the nomination. The opposition must have legitimate reasons to not support the nomination for featured articles, because there is absolutely no point to them voting at all if they don't give good enough reasons. After all, my point is this: why are you voting at all if you don't have any burden to support or fail the nomination? 20:17, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * Oppose cancels support. End of story. - 20:26, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * It's unnecessary to have the oppose votes cancel the illegitimate support votes. This is about consistency and balance. Support can cancel out oppose. 20:29, 14 January 2018 (EST)

Support does NOT cancel oppose. That's why we have "removal of support". - 20:32, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * Exactly my point. You just proved my point right there. That's what we should have. 20:36, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * Uh, no. I meant to say "removal of oppose".  You might call it a typo.  But a "removal of support" is pointless. - 20:56, 14 January 2018 (EST)

@all opposers: I think you're all looking too deeply into this. Yes we understand that oppose votes carries a lot of weight against support votes, understandably. But you're all acknowledging that in some cases, there are support votes that really shouldn't be there. I think this new system will force any vote, regardless of support or oppose, to have legitimate reason. You're all acknowledging that there is a problem sometimes with faulty support votes, so why let that continue? Force the voters to put thought and dedication into their votes, instead of illegitimate ones that, frankly (and bluntly) stick out like a sore-thumb.
 * Well, fan votes can be deleted on sight anyway. - 20:33, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * @Lcrossmk8: The burden of proof is on the support side to demonstrate why an article should be featured. The reason for this is quality control: by design, it is harder to feature an article and easier to prevent its being featured. That is why opposition is tasked with providing legitimate reasons for opposing. You cannot say that more oppose votes don't make a difference, because that's simply wrong: more opposition votes do make a difference in the progress of the nomination, provided there are a variety of concerns with the article. No matter how many reasons there are to support an article being featured, just one point against it can derail the nomination; two or more reasons to oppose absolutely creates more roadblocks to the nomination passing. Also, it is not unnecessary to have an oppose vote "cancel" illegitimate support votes (which is not the term I would use... "counteract" would be better in this case), it is literally what the system is designed to do. Support absolutely cannot cancel out opposition, because the system is skewed toward the opposition for quality-control reasons.
 * @DKPetey99: There is no "problem" with faulty votes. As I said above, the system is already designed to deal with the circumstance. The voters will be forced to put thought and dedication into their votes when they get met by a well-supported opposition vote. 20:38, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * Well I feel this proposed system furthers that principle for the better.
 * @SMB, and the burden of proof is on the oppose side to demonstrate why an article should not be featured. In theory, you might be right about more oppose votes making a difference, but in reality, all I see is the first oppose voter giving the reasons for why the article should not be featured and everyone after him or her just saying "per all", and once the issues get fixed, why should the oppose votes be there anymore? All it really shows is how inherently weak the oppose side can really be at times. And plus, why just keep the support votes there if they are not legitimate? It's the same with oppose votes--if they are not legitimate, then get rid of them. If you look at it, there's a clear reason why I designed the system to be exactly like the system used to get rid of bad oppose votes. 20:46, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * Nobody is arguing with removing opposition votes if the initial concerns have been remedied. Just because a concern has been fixed does not mean it was "inherently weak," it means that the support actually rose to the occasion and improved the article. The main responsibility of the opposition is to critique and suggest improvement, whereas the main responsibility of the support is to act on these suggestions to ensure article quality. In the end, it does not matter why the supporters want the article to be featured; the implied idea behind supporting is that they believe it meets the requirements set out for featuring and that they will take action to ensure it gets featured. It absolutely does matter, however, why the opposition votes the way they do; their job is to critique the article and control the quality of the FA process. That is why their vote is given much more weight and power, and why they are more accountable for their votes; on the other hand, that is why the support is not held as accountable for their vote, but must produce results if there are legitimate concerns with the nomination. 21:18, 14 January 2018 (EST)
 * And with the implementation of this feature, does this mean that the power of the oppose votes will be diminished? Not really, all it does is ensure that the support votes are making sure that they are sure in what they want and that they are being entirely legitimate in their reasons for wanting the article to be featured--it does matter why they want the article to be featured, because what they say will reflect off of the quality of writing on the wiki as much as the oppose voters' criticism will. In other words, we are holding these support voters more accountable for their actions. That is exactly what we need to see here on this wiki, and plus, we cannot give the constructive criticism of the oppose voters more power and weight than the positivity and idealism of the support voters. Both positive feedback and negative feedback are of equal importance, and with the ability to remove support votes, we are basically saying that we will hold the support voters to the same standard we hold the oppose voters to. Also, this is going to hold the entire wiki to a higher standard, because if people want more articles to gain featured status, then they are going to have to work harder to make the articles and the content more high-quality and well-written. If we want to be the world's best database and research center on the Mario franchise ever found, then we're going to need to keep pushing ourselves to make better articles and more high-quality content. 21:49, 14 January 2018 (EST)

I urge all users to look into the history of the Featured Articles system, specifically historic proposals and decisions that are similar in nature to the current one:
 * Reformat Featured Articles...again! – Introduced the Featured Articles system to the Super Mario Wiki after several failed attempts. Notably did not specify that supporters provide a reason for supporting, just that objectors provide their reasons.
 * FA Support – Failed due to not meeting quorum. Interestingly, the designer of the FA system,, directly stated that "it doesn't make sense to have to provide a reason to support, cause all your reasons are already listed on the FA page."
 * Fanvotes – Failed due to tie. Again, Son of Suns argues that "a support vote does not mean the article will become an FA - it is simply a pledge" to work on the article.
 * Featured Article Voting Modification – Passed; allowed for users to remove both support and oppose votes through the removal process.
 * Repeal "Featured Article Voting Modification" – Passed; partially repealed the previous proposal, specifically the provision to allow for the removal of support votes. It is noteworthy that, the sponsor of the previous proposal, supported this repeal and stated that he regretted including the provision in question.
 * Change FA removal of votes rules – Passed; allowed for administrators to remove fan votes (although it is worth mentioning that support reasons themselves were not required).
 * Change FA rules part 1 – Rejected; would have re-enabled the process for users to remove fan votes.
 * Allow Support Votes to be Removed on Nomination Pages? – Rejected; essentially the same idea as the above proposal. It was deemed unnecessary due to the previous proposal by allowing for Sysops to remove fan votes.
 * Support Votes – Official community compromise reached to replace Tucayo's rule. Only the nominator was allowed to post an official support reason; otherwise, all other votes could remain but be stripped of any comments following the vote. This did not apply to oppose votes or any functions of the Unfeatured process.
 * Require FA Support Reason – Rejected; attempted to overturn prior decision and force users to post support reasons.
 * Require Support Reasoning for FA Nomination – Rejected; essentially the same proposal as the one listed directly above.
 * Automatically Removing Fan Votes from FA Nominations – Passed; reintroduced the removal of all fan votes and expedited the process, requiring automatic removal. However, when it was implemented, support votes for FA nominations were specifically excluded.
 * Officially repeal the "no support reason" Featured Article nomination rule – Passed; overturned the "Support Votes" community decision to end the practice of arbitrarily removing support reasons.

This proposal isn't anything new; on the contrary, I think it fails to account for over a decade of intense debate on the very topic and numerous community discussions and decisions to try and resolve the issue. Not only has this idea been implemented before, but those that were once the strongest proponents gradually became the strongest opponents of the measure. If you check through the proposals I have linked to, you might notice that I actually supported this idea many years ago; however, I have since come to realize that I was wrong. Son of Suns (creator of the FA process), and all other objectors to this idea were absolutely correct: it is not a good idea to demand a "legitimate" reason of the supporters of FA nominations as their vote is an implicit acknowledgement that they believe the article meets the requirements to be featured. 00:55, 15 January 2018 (EST)
 * Well, I think it's time we implement it again. We cannot give the oppose voters more credit than they already deserve, and plus, why do we have the ability to remove support votes in unfeatured article nominations? Again, it is inconsistent, and plus, if the burden falls on the oppose to fail the unfeatured nomination and on the support to pass the unfeatured nomination, then why are we removing both support and oppose votes for unfeatured nominations and only oppose votes for featured nominations? In reality, we should either be removing only support votes for unfeatured nominations and only oppose votes for featured nominations, OR we should be removing both support and oppose votes for both nominations. Again, the burden should fall on both sides to progress the nomination in their favor. Also, having the ability to remove support votes in featured article nominations will make any vote, support or oppose, have legitimate reason. With this ability, no one will be able to exploit featured article nominations for any illegitimate reasons, and the nominations will have to be more rigid and strong to succeed. I'm starting to think that this is more than just a debate about whether we should implement the ability to remove support votes in featured article nominations---this is a debate about the general writing standards we have for the wiki and ourselves, and I'm starting to think that with the small amount of featured articles on the wiki, it might be time to raise the standards and push everyone to work harder to make the articles more high-quality and better. 16:36, 15 January 2018 (EST)
 * It's not that oppose votes are given "more credit than they already deserve," it's simply that the support and opposition have inherently different roles in the process. The opposition critiques the article based on the standards required for featuring and the support acts to resolve these concerns; the former requires a solid reasoning and the latter requires pure action. I will not address this again, as I have done so exhaustively in my vote, subsequent comments and resources linked above. Please do not distract the debate by pivoting to "general writing standards" or implying that those who oppose your proposal are voting against higher standards for the wiki, because your proposal actually does nothing to modify any writing standards on the wiki and deals purely with a voting mechanism of the Featuring process. That being said, I would like to request that proposal be recategorized under "Changes" and that the deadline be moved forward by a week. 23:52, 15 January 2018 (EST)
 * I don't see it that way. I don't see the inherent difference in the process of featured and unfeatured article nominations, because it's that simple--if you don't have any motivation or burden to vote for your side, then you shouldn't be voting at all. And no, I'm not implying that the people who oppose my proposal are voting against higher standards on the wiki, because I know that the users all have different ideas on what higher writing standards means--heck, I am not even calling out anybody in general. What I am saying is that we are consistently giving negative feedback some more "value" than positive feedback, and that we are holding the support voters to a higher standard because we are forcing them to think twice about if any article really deserves to be featured with the ability to remove support votes. We simply are holding the featured article nominations to the same standards we hold the unfeatured article nominations to, and we need consistency and balance to do this. Featured article nominations deal with writing standards because what the support voters say will matter in the long run. Positive feeback and negative feedback must be treated equally. 00:18, 16 January 2018 (EST)
 * Lcross, we only allow removal of support on unfeaturing nominations for a reason. When featuring, any oppose vote will kill off any supports, as a legit oppose says that the article violates FA standards.  When unfeaturing, however, it is the supporters that are critiquing the article, but an oppose will still kill off all supports.  I honestly don't know why that's the case when unfeaturing with an oppose, but if you want to change that rule, you'll have to make a separate proposal.  Ultimately, there is no point in eliminating weightless votes.  And please, move this proposal to "changes" and make the deadline a week earlier. - 01:10, 16 January 2018 (EST)
 * This proposal is the right spot, according to this guideline. And if a vote is "weightless", why would it matter if it is removed then?
 * I'm opposing because we already have a "removal of support" system that goes by the name of "oppose". Why implement a system we already have? - 03:03, 16 January 2018 (EST)

Here's the gist on why I agree with Super Mario Bros. on why the opposition carries more weight and is generally of more importance than a support vote in a Featured Article nomination and why the same cannot be said about an Unfeature nomination. It's far easier to describe an article's flaws than it is to talk about what it does to meet the guidelines; an analogy it's easier to describe what causes a computer to stop working than it is to describe how your computer works fine. The same sorts of praise have always been given to when an article is nominated to be featured: it follows these established guidelines, it is well-written, it is well-formatted, etc. It's the same reasons across any nomination. Hell, many times, the nomination also lists problems that it doesn't have to justify its appearance as featured: no red links, no bad writing, and all of that stuff. When an article does have problems, it's arisen from specific problems the article may have. You can go deeply in-depth into reasons Super Baby Luigi Armageddon can't be featured, because it talks about the plot too colorfully and flowerly, there's no images in X section or the images are captured in a terrible quality, there is a lack of this standard that this article doesn't have, and you can list specific sentences and link these sentences to specific guidelines that outlines. Opposition votes is also akin to proofreading an article: you don't know there are problems within your own work or nomination until another person with a different perspective takes a look at it and says what needs to be improved.

A reason I even instated support reasons back is because there's absolutely no reason to get rid of them in the first place, and praise for the article is most certainly something that should be given to deserving editors when they actually work hard on the article to get it featured on the main page because most of the time, the person who nominated an article to be featured worked on it to a degree in the first place (that doesn't happen all the time and I'm not ignoring it, but it still means that someone somewhere saw it and liked it and wanted to thank editors for their work). Support votes aren't entirely pointless either, but I don't like how some people here would like to throw the support reasons or votes under the rug because they're not "important" or that they're "meaningless" when they actually are meaningful in their own way, just not as much as oppose votes nor as constructive. Positive feedback is a good thing, people.

For an Unfeature nomination, I say that the process of the removal of support votes should be removed there instead of removing support votes in a Feature nomination, because oppose votes there act pretty much like Featured nominations, with some key differences of course that SMB already addressed that I can't really describe well outside of "well the oppose votes are trying to keep a nomination that was already passed so they have to prove themselves and..." well blah that reasoning sounds very flimsy and massive amounts of ad hoc to me myself. 17:16, 16 January 2018 (EST)

New features
None at the moment.

Removals
None at the moment.

Changes
None at the moment.

Miscellaneous
None at the moment.