MarioWiki:Proposals

 http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/9/9/17/f_propcopym_9045f2d.png A proposal section works like a discussion page: comments are brought up and replied to using indents (colons, such as : or ::::) and all edits are signed using the code. Signing with the signature code (~) is not allowed due to technical issues.

How To
 * 1) Actions that users feel are appropriate to have community approval first can be added by anyone, but they must have a strong argument.
 * 2) Users then vote and discuss on the issue during that week. The "deadline" for the proposal is one week from posting at:
 * 3) Monday to Thursday: 17:00 (5pm)
 * 4) Friday and Saturday: 20:00 (8pm)
 * 5) Sunday: 15:00 (3pm)
 * 6) Every vote should have a reason accompanying it.
 * 7) At any time a vote may be rejected if at least three active users believe the vote truly has no merit or was cast in bad faith. However, there must be strong reasons supporting the invalidation.
 * 8) " # " should be added under the last vote of each support/oppose section to show another blank line.
 * 9) Any proposal that has three votes or less at deadline will automatically be listed as "NO QUORUM." The original proposer then has the option to relist said proposal to generate more discussion.
 * 10) All proposals are archived. The original proposer must take action accordingly if the outcome of the proposal dictates it. If it requires the help of a sysop, the proposer can ask for that help.
 * 11) There are two topics that cannot be decided on through a proposal: the first is sysop promotions and demotions, which are decided by Bureaucrats. Secondly, no proposals calling for the creation of Banjo, Conker or Sonic series articles are allowed (several proposals supporting them have failed in recent history).

The times are in EDT, and are set so that the user is more likely to be online at those times (after work/school, weekend nights). If a proposal is added on Saturday night at 11:59 PM EDT, the deadline is the next Saturday night at 8:00 PM. If it is a minute later, the deadline is a day plus 15 hours (Sunday), as opposed to a day minus 4 hours.

CURRENTLY: , 28 2024 (EDT)

New Features
''None at the moment.

Removals
''None at the moment.

PM: Minor Items
I've been looking at the Paper Mario series articles lately and found that due to the massive amount of recovery and side-quest items there are a LOT of tiny stublets related to these items. I think that all these pages should be merged and all the links go to their spot in that page. To merge or not to merge?

Proposer: Deadline: October 29, 2008, 17:00

Merge

 * 1) To merge, its horrible to have to look on thousands of stubs

No Merge

 * 1) - While it is true that there are many stubs, the more major subjects still deserve articles.  For example, Yakkey is a character, Peach Doll has since appeared in multiple sources, Sneaky Parasol plays a very major role in the story... etc. etc. etc.  This proposal isn't even fleshed out enough to define which Paper Mario special items we'd be merging.
 * 2) - Stumpers, stop stealing my words! You always make excellent points, as you do here.
 * 3) - Per Stumpers.
 * 4) Per Stumpers
 * 5) - Per Stumpers.

Comments
You're going to be a little more specific on which items you want to merge. I believe you're referring to those in categories such as Category:Paper Mario Special Items correct? I think you may need to make your proposal more specific... what would be the name of the new article, would we have one for each game, etc.
 * And if you'd like, I can make an example of what it would look like, if you were to be more specific.

Would you be merging Yakkey?
 * Thanks, Dom. :D


 * This proposal needs to be more specific. While it is annoying to load up about a hundred three lined pages, there are some that are important and need to stay. Some articles should should definite by merged, while some need to stay separate. 20:14, 25 October 2008 (EDT)

Rating Companies
The rating companies doesn't really have have a effect on any video games left alone Mario games.The only time we need to keep it in as it's own article if it's a item,place,game,Characters,Enemy,kart,block.The rating companies doesn't fit any of them.The only effect it has is which people play the game and the front of the box =P.So I think we should merge it.

Proposer: Deadline: October 29, 2008, 17:00

Merge

 * 1) Per myself above
 * 2) -- They're pretty pointless here.
 * 3) -- Per Booster.

Don't Merge

 * 1) - Merges should occur when (1) We are trying to decrease our emphasis on a subject, ie Super Smash Bros. and/or (2) When an article has been expanded completely and it is still short.  Neither of these conditions are true.  This Wiki is just as much about the real history of the Mario series as it is the in-universe content, and as I noted below, two of the articles are definitely not stubs and the others have yet to be expanded completely.
 * 2) - Per Stumpers. Also, the rating companies are what deem Mario and all related games 'kid-friendly', so they do have an actual effect on the Mario series, despite the fact that they make no in-game appearances.
 * 3) Per Stumpers. (BTW would the page look messy?)

Comments
Why don't people bother using links and proper grammar in their proposals anymore? Anyway, to save everyone else the hassle of tracking down the articles themselves, I'm assuming "Rating Companies" refers to Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), Pan-European Game Information (PEGI), Computer Entertainment Rating Organization (CERO), and Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC). -


 * I don't get it... some of those are pretty good, and only PEGI and CERO are currently stubs. What's being lost because the articles are separate?
 * I don't see a point in targeting only one group of companies either. (Not that I'm dismissing the validity of your proposal.)
 * Did you know that I created the OFLC article!? Pretty impressive, huh? I hope Stumpers was referring to my article when he said 'pretty good'! BTW, I've noticed everything minor seems to be getting merged these days - isn't there a point of having individual articles?
 * I was referring to that, actually. :) Yes, there is a point to individual articles: it increases the emphasis on the subject and allows us to completely expand on the topic more easily.  It's like when Wikipedia splits... say banana into "banana" and "history of banana".  They do that because they feel the subject is so important that it deserves more than one article.  Merging means that the subject is so unimportant that it doesn't even deserve one whole article.  It's all about the amount of info we can say on the subject without overstepping the boundaries of what we cover.

Sightings: Change to References?
The Sightings pages are currently listings of outside references to the Super Mario series. For example, Movie Sightings includes information about Super Mario Bros. 3 in The Wizard and Game Sightings includes information about the Mario statue in Animal Crossing. Now, the term "sighting" has many meanings, including, from Dictionary.com, "1. The ability to see. 2. The act or fact of seeing: hoping for a sight of land; caught sight of a rare bird." among other, less prominent meanings. As you can see, sightings refers to one person viewing something in reality, not something in fiction. Someone could make a "sighting" of Charles Martinet, but could not make a "sighting" of Mario. For our purposes, the term "references" is much more appropriate. Therefore, I propose that we rename the Sightings pages in this matter. At the same time, I'd like to make the titles more professional (Game --> Video game, Movie --> Film). Note that because of the new naming, we will be merging comics, books, and magazines into one article, because they all are print/literature sightings.

Proposer: Deadline: October 27, 2008, 17:00

Support

 * 1) - My reasons are detailed above.
 * 2) - Per Stumpers.
 * 3) - Per Stumpers.
 * 4) Per Stumpers.
 * 5) - Per Stumpers.
 * 6) - Per all.
 * 7) - Per All.
 * 8) - Per Stumpers.
 * 9) - Per Stumpers.  Really, this seems like an obvious one.
 * 10) - Per All, and or Stumpy.
 * 11) - Per Stumpers. Srsly.
 * 12) - Per All. I have a dictionary at home and you are right!

Comments
The full title change would be as follows:
 * 1) Advertisement Sightings --> Promotional references
 * 2) Animation Sightings --> Animation references
 * 3) Book Sightings --> Print references
 * 4) Comic Sightings --> Print references
 * 5) Game Sightings --> Video game references
 * 6) Magazine Sightings --> Print references
 * 7) Movie Sightings --> Film references
 * 8) Musical Sightings --> Music references
 * 9) Television Sightings --> Television references
 * 10) Theater Sightings --> Theatrical references
 * 11) Website Sightings --> Internet references

Please debate these. Any debated changes will only be altered to reflect the sightings --> references change (ie Game Sightings would become Game references if people debate changing it to Video game references).
 * Good changes. :) Though, I'd like to suggest merging Comic sightings into Literary references, since they both are a form of literature. "Theater references" could be changed to "Theatrical references"; And "Online references" could be changed to "Internet references" perhaps?
 * I like. I don't know if there is even material that would apply to this, but I had a sudden thought that a subsection to 'Internet References' could be 'Memes'.
 * Noted and changed... GhostJam, make sure you're also cool with the changes I'm going to make (it's still early enough to do that... so now we have a three-way merge (Stooben, you're absolutely right, and magazines are technically literature as well, so I've merged the three into "print references." Sound good?
 * Agreed; print references sounds great.

Also, if this goes through, we will be capitalizing the 'r' in References for these titles, yes? I don't guess it matters, just my personally obsession with symmetry. -- 13:47, 20 October 2008 (EDT)
 * Hmm... maybe, maybe not. Capitalization should really only be used when you have a proper noun... so it's kind of like, whose obsession do we go with?  Yours with symmetry or mine with proper capitalization?  It could really go to either side.  Since we're trying to make it more professional, I think lower case is the way to go.
 * Aye, capitalizing the "r" doesn't make much sense. Just look at Wikipedia. Symmetry is one of my biggest pet peeves (as seen in many templates and pages I edit :P), but the lowercase "r" seems the best way.
 * Since they're the page titles, wouldn't the "R"s be capitalized? With the exception of newspapers, I've found that titles are generally capitalized with only minor words (i.e. "and", "the", etc.) left lower-case. Sub-titles can be left with only the first word capitalized, but not major headers, as far as I know. Plus, it looks better. -

(seems interested in this situation) So... basically we are going to move the hundreds of sightings to actual articles? Is it like moving this entry, that Wario cameo appearance in the game The Legend of Stafy 3. That guy helps Stafy in this area, :P Here's the pic. Another question, how will the references section of the article look like? Obviously we have several images of sightings in the wiki database. What are we supposed to do to manage the images there? With the gallery perhaps? I may be a crat, say sound smart, but I also ask questions like other normal users. :3
 * When merged into "__ Sightings", I'm assuming they will look like the Implied lists – neatly organized.
 * RAP: We're just moving the sightings articles and merging a few of them. I don't plan on touching the character articles in this regard... I hope you're not saying that there's some crazy syntax thing going on with the sightings articles that I don't know about! :O
 * Crazy syntax is awesome. :o
 * Awesome crazy syntax is a crazy syntax.
 * Eh, never mind. I think I got confused all of sudden while reading this Maybe I will read more slowly... I might... Yes, I will support the article move for a more professional name feel. XP Then again, those sigh--I mean references actually need cleanup. I did game references and promotional references. ;3 ...And talked myself into making a crazy syntax table for mainly to restructure those pages. XP

PhailureMonster: thanks for confirming that a print dictionary agrees. Those are usually considered to be more reliable!

Article Organization Standard
For quite some time now, we have given guidelines as to article formatting, but we have not set a single standard. This has caused many problems for the Wiki, including the conflicts over the formatting of the Mario and Daisy articles. Our previous formatting ideas came from the idea that certain sources were of a higher canon than others and thus should be separated from lower canon sources in the articles. This was detailed in Canonicity prior to its recent rewrite which removed that speculation. Unfortunately, that means that our primary article organization is based off of fanon. For example, our section on video game appearances is called “Biography,” implying that none of the sports spin-offs and alternate media sources “happened” in a character's life. Whether we believe this to be true or not, it is not the Wiki's place to make such speculation.

This presents us with a unique opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: if we establish a standard for article organization that is not based on speculation, the speculation will be removed from our articles AND the argument as to how articles should be organized will be settled.

I propose that we give each individual source a section of its own. Then, each section would be placed within its respective medium. We would have a separate section for video games, television shows, comics, the movie, etc. Furthermore, each of these sections would have subsections for each series. The central Mario platforming series would have a section, as would Mario Kart, Paper Mario, etc. For titles that do not fall into a series, they would be placed in a section called "Individual Titles" or some equivalent. Each of these sections and sub-sections will be organized by release date. So, for Mario, you would first have the video game section, which starts with the Donkey Kong series, then moves to the Mario series, and so on and so forth. However, when the events of a title has explicitly occurred prior to those released earlier in its section, such as Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island in the Mario section, it can be listed earlier. Another example would be Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, which can be listed just after Super Mario Land.

For those who are confused, I am willing to make a mock-up of this concept. For those who still want to see the video game sources lined up in the way they currently are, please remember that Chronology was designed just for you.

Why does this idea benefit the Wiki?
 * 1) Removes speculation: Organizing by media and series is an objective concept that Nintendo often uses itself. Compare this to our current method: trying to organize events in the order that WE believe them to have happened, something that Nintendo has never done.
 * 2) Creates a standard: now that MarioWiki:Canonicity has been rewritten, we need a new standard. I also want us to have a standard that we all agree on, not one that a sysop back from the early days of the Wiki created before we had the proposals page.
 * 3) Frees us from having to connect storylines. If each appearance has a different section, we do not need to speculate and claim that "After doing this, the character did that," or worry about balancing the inconsistencies such as those between Yoshi's Island, The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! and the Nintendo Comics System.
 * 4) Allows for expansion of alternate media appearances, such as those from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! It is very difficult to write about the entire series in a paragraph of a subsection in the alternate media sections as our current organization has us doing.

Proposer: (with input from Cobold, Blitzwing, Ghost Jam, and Rooben Stooben among others.) Deadline: November 3rd, 17:00

Support

 * 1) - My reasons are detailed above.
 * 2) - I think that the current way the articles are structured is rather random and not really official. The change is necessary.
 * 3) - Per Stumpers, all the way. This should finally help get articles in order – the way they should always be.
 * 4) - Per Stumpers.