The 'Shroom:Issue XCVIII/Pipe Plaza

Pipe Plaza {| border="1px solid black"

Director’s Notes
Welcome one, welcome all, to the only place in the paper that’s 100% facts. So when I say we have quality sections for you, I mean it. And we have quality sections for you this month, although was unable to send in Community Report due to schoolwork, but hopefully it will be back in June.

If you wish to join Pipe Plaza, look over here, pick a section you think you could do, so long as someone doesn’t already write for it, and PM me here.

We have three great sections for you to join: UPdate, which details the goings on of the comics and other aspects over on Userpedia; Forum Update, which details what is going on over on the forum; and Projects Seeking Contributions, which details new threads in the Wiki Collaborations board on the forum as well as any updates to existing projects, as well as bringing attention to articles on the wiki with a on it.

Section of the Month
Thank you to all of those who voted last month. We received seven votes, and you three of your chose ’s Anniversary Announcements to be the Section of the Month for April 2015. Two of you chose ’s Monthly Report, whilst another two chose ’s New Articles. Again, thanks for all of you who voted, and we hope you vote again.

Monthly Report ()
Greetings 'Shroom readers, and welcome to the Monthly Report. Today, I'll show you this month's statistics, as well as last month's. Then I'll compare them. I'll also change the background of the tables depending on the season.

Credit goes to, , and for the table coding (I based this off of Stooben's coding, which was later modified by SMB, and Paper Yoshi when they wrote in this section.).

*All times EST.

Featured ()
Welcome to Featured ‘Shroom readers! Below you will find everything you could possibly want to know about what’s going on with our Featured Articles.

Featured Articles
No new articles have been featured in the past month.

Re-Featured Articles
No new articles have become re-featured.

FA Nominations
There is one ongoing Featured Article Nomination.
 * Donkey Kong 64 was nominated on April 20th.

Failed FA Nominations
Two new articles have failed the featuring process.
 * Mario Kart 8 failed on 28th April 2015.
 * Princess Zelda failed on 3rd May 2015 after being inactive for a month.

Unfeatured Articles
One new article has been unfeatured in the past month.
 * Kirby was unfeatured on April 22nd.

Unfeaturing Nominations
There is one ongoing Unfeature nomination.
 * Mario Superstar Baseball was nominated on May 4th.

Failed Unfeaturing Nominations
No new articles have failed the unfeaturing process in the past month.

Thanks for reading see you next month, for more Featured Articles news.

Tip of the Month ()
Sometimes images are uploaded at a massive size, too big to be used properly in an article. So, if you want to scale it down (or up, in some cases), you can add a pixel size to the end of your code, like so:. Remove all the spaces, and there you go. You can experiment with how big or small you want the image, but remember: Small image= clearer but harder to see, big image=easier to see but blurrier.

New Articles ()
Welcome to this month's issue of New Articles, The 'Shroom's dedicated section to (you guessed it) new articles on the wiki. Despite a drop in numbers from last month (likely due to the dying/dead minigame article craze), good progress was made this month. I am happy to announce that y'all handled both the releases of Mario Party 10 and the Animal Crossing-themed DLC pack for Mario Kart 8 (I highly recommend the latter; be cautious about the former). Hopefully we see similar results with Puzzle & Dragons: Super Mario Bros. Edition. This month, I would like to do a few new things. One of these things is calling out users who have devoted a good amount of time making articles over the last few months. This month I have two users who stand out in particular. The first is Stonehill for his large contribution toward the creation of articles for each of Mario Party 10's many minigames. Second, I would like to give a shout-out to Toa 95 for his work in giving many of the Special Moves featured throughout the Super Smash Bros. series their own articles on the wiki. To all of you, I hope you continue to work hard on the wiki and make it better than it already is (SPOILERS: it's pretty good right now, but not perfect). In addition to what I mentioned above this month also gave us quite a few articles for Mario & Wario, Paper Mario, and its sequel Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (the latter of which happens to be my favorite Mario game and one of my favorite games of all time). There are also quite a few other games this month, so be sure to glance at the list below.

As I mentioned above, I want to try a few new things this month. That's why I am asking you now if you want to see some changes or additions to New Articles. I already have a few ideas myself, but I want to get a little more open. To contact me, either PM me on the forums (I'm right here |here) or leave me your suggestion on my talk page. The former will likely yield a quicker response, but I will make sure to check both areas for what you might have to say. With that, my statement this month is through. As usual, the list of articles is below:

Anniversary Announcements ()
You have reached your destination. The place where you learn all about Awards-related activities in the past month.

To start off with the biggest change, the token system has received the addition of a new expiration policy. To directly quote :

Anyone with tokens 2 or more years old with a sum greater than the highest priced prize is subject to our new expiration policy For example, if this year's current highest priced prize is 200 tokens, that would mean that this would apply to anyone with tokens from 2013 or older with a sum greater than 200. Someone has 500 tokens total, with 50 earned in 2015 and 100 earned in 2014, with 350 tokens earned from before. As the 350 is higher than the highest prize of 200 it would be subject to this. Out of 350, 200 of them are set aside as that's the highest prize amount, and the remaining 150 would receive a 50% deduction --> 75, leaving the person with 275 old tokens total, and a net of 425.
 * The excess tokens above the threshold will receive a 50% cut.
 * This will take place after the prize distribution (ex. at the end of 2016, rather than at the beginning, tokens earned in 2014 and older will be subject).
 * This will not include any new tokens earned in the total, each group of which will be kept track of here.

This policy is to encourage the spending of tokens as opposed to just keeping and leaving them, and to help prevent the token economy from breaking and inflating. Also keep in mind that you are able to donate as many tokens as you like to anyone you want. If you swim in them and don't want much stuff, give them away to someone who is the opposite of that!

Next, the Awards Committee and The 'Shroom Staff have agreed a firm collaboration in advertising tournaments and the dossiers for 'Shroom and Userpedia Awards. This will both be by mentions in this section, as well as dedicated special sections. The September issue will once again be Awards-themed. Also, next month, when the polls open, The 'Shroom will once more host the Userpedia and 'Shroom Awards dossiers, which contain detailed information about the nominees in respective awards. This will be to allow informed votes, even if the voters aren't familiar with the nominees.

As for tournaments, there are currently eleven tournaments in the making.

There are more tournaments and events being planned, so if you are interested, please check out the Mario Awards IX board on our forums.

For the last years, these tournaments have been awarding tokens to the players based on their participation and successes. These tokens can then be exchanged for prizes donated by the community, after the events. If you are interested in donating such prizes, please contact Hypnotoad or Smasher on the boards. Recommended items include Steam games and trading cards, Nintendo eShop cards, iTunes cards or any other type of gift card that can be exchanged online (be aware of region locks on some items, always mention the usable regions). The list of last year's prizes can be found here. Any donation will be highly appreciated!

Then there were our lovely get-togethers and the discussed awards. In meeting no.7 the 'Shroom Awards where reviewed. Former S1 and S3 were merged into S1: Favorite Directing Staff, and S3 and S4 were merged into S3: Favorite Core Staff. That proves how double-edged S3 was. S7: Favorite Guest Writer and S9: Favorite Event were removed. A complete list of awards and nominations can be found right here.

In meeting no. 8, the last things about the 'Shroom Awards have been finalized. Discussions about relations with The 'Shroom also occurred, details above. Also discussed was the token system, details also above.

The ninth meeting was all about checking all the awards once more. This time we covered all of the Mario Awards.

The tenth meeting continued with the rest of the Awards. This also was the last ordinary meeting. After the Electronics Entertainment Expo (E3) in June there will be another meeting to discuss any announcements by Nintendo.

And that brings us to the end of yet another successful edition of Awards Announcements. Once again, be sure to check out the tournaments, keep an eye out for updates on the boards and spend those tokens. See you all next month.

All information above is correct as of May 13.
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