MarioWiki:Proposals

List of talk page proposals

 * Make an article for Giant Bowser of Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (discuss) Deadline: November 3, 2016, 23:59 (GMT)
 * Merge Bouncy Mushroom with Mushroom Trampoline. (Discuss) Deadline: November 11, 2016, 23:59 GMT

Writing guidelines
None at the moment.

New features
None at the moment.

Removals
None at the moment.

Prohibit the use of, , and  other than for legibility reasons
I just got done de-ing the various Mario Party series templates (e.g. ), because the character names were picked out in "relevant" colours (e.g., Mario in red). Not only was this inconsistent with basically every other series template, but a lot of the uses were at best borderline illegible, with colours like yellow, gold and limegreen against light yellow. This isn't the only example of colours like those being used across MarioWiki, and it's always random and frequently hard-to-read. Not to mention that picking out a in red breaks one of the most basic wiki precepts, since "redlinks" are empty/uncreated pages.

So I'm suggesting that it's just stopped. The only valid use of these templates should be where the default text colour would be hard (or impossible) to read against a background - e.g., the SMM3DS link in the footer of against the dark red, the external links in the right column of List of official Super Mario Maker courses against the SMB sky blue (since it was decided that would be the best colour to put the costume sprites against on Costume Mario) or a couple of the rows in the table on Crystal Stars. No "...while limegreen jumps higher..." stuff any more.

EDIT: This will not apply to or  pages (including non-mainspace talk).

EDIT2: Okay, I think some further clarification is needed - I'm not suggesting removing all coloured text or backgrounds from the wiki as certain users seem to think. What I *am* saying is that links or text should not be coloured using these templates in Skittles-like fashion. It looks unprofessional, removes a degree of Wiki functionality, is frequently near-illegible and could cause further legibility problems if a "dark mode" is ever created (as is occasionally requested), whereupon the legibility problem would flip for those users such that dark colours specified in ordinary text with these templates would be illegible to them. They're a blunt instrument that isn't particularly well-suited to anything except colouring text in tables, navboxes and infoboxes - and in the latter cases, the colours should probably be specified with CSS site-wide rather than template-by-template (in the same way they already are to some extent for navigation templates), and in the former case they should be primarily specified alongside the table background (and if there's no background specified, that's bad for the same reason it's bad in text).

Proposer: Deadline: November 1, 2016 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Per me.

Oppose

 * 1) This proposal, as it is worded, will apply to more than just template and mainspace articles, but also to userpages, signatures, and not just arbitrary uses, but also to lists where coloring is used to signify categories of some kind, for example.  This proposal is simply way too broad in application by word of suggestion, that I cannot support it.
 * 2) {A Toad says, “Hey! Mario ! Hurry! Hurry!” Mario jumps into the castle then says Luigi out loud. Luigi walks into the castle finishing getting ready. A Toad says, “It’s a meeting! Big meeting! You’ve gotta hurry, please! Everyone’s wating, Mario! In the conference hall ! …Oh. Luigi came too. Super...."} Bowser's Inside Story with commentary from me. If games do this, why does this wiki don't do this? Makes no sense to me. Oppose.
 * 3) Per Yoshi the SSM.
 * 4) Coloring should not be used in navigation templates or sentences like the proposal's example about Luigi jumping. However, it should be used in situations like the two examples Megadardery put below. This proposal is too general for me to support for the reasons in  the first two sentences.
 * 5) Per all.
 * 6) I like some of the ideas here, such as banning color-link text in character sections in the Mario Party templates (which you already took care of before you started this proposal), but I don't think proposals are the best idea to handle misuse of colored text. It's better if we go along by case-by-case basis. I'd like to point out that yes, we always strive to be legible in the first place, so saying we can't use colored text except for legibility reasons is a bit redundant with already what we want to do and thus that part doesn't really need to be proposed. I'd also like to per Bazooka Mario's comment as well.
 * 7) Per Luigi 64DD and Baby Luigi. 3D Player 2010 misses the point and I've argued against Yoshi the Space Station Manager's position on color text, that the colors serve purely a gameplay purpose (which is highlighting / emphasis for the player) that doesn't translate well to the wiki (make it look garish and distracting). If emphasis for the readers' curiosities is so important, then just make them regular links, which can also be piped for clarification (e.g. It ate that fat man!). I also believe legibility is already something we do. The policy on navigation templates already assumes the navigation templates use plain blue links so there's that. I do support removing the color links on Mario Party navigational templates, Mario Kart character galleries, adjusting color links in 3D World's character gallery to make them black, and removing color links on Mario Party character galleries (while restructuring their table to be color-coded so we keep how the games color-code their characters, but not on minigame list articles or on quotes where colors serve a meaningful purpose like Fawful's battle quotes rather than simply highlighting important information.
 * 8) I'll give a per all.

Comments
Regardless of the side implications that this proposal may include, it seems that it is just a shot in the foot. Although I might agree on that some applications of the colors are terrible, others are pleasant, because the characters were depicted with these colors in-game. There is absolutely no need to outright ban them.-- 18:21, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * And yet, in your "pleasant" example, "Princess Daisy" is only barely legible. I very much doubt a light-orange/yellow on white is in the game. - Reboot (talk) 18:35, 25 October 2016 (EDT)


 * To be honest, I think the colors on Mario Kart 64 are fine, because they are used to present information categories that, in my opinion, could not be presented any better than the way it is now. 18:31, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * Like the vast majority of examples. With a background colour, or with text. Which wouldn't invoke red/green colourblindness problems. (I have, however, clarified above regarding User & Talk pages, since it wasn't my intent to change anything regarding those). - Reboot (talk) 18:35, 25 October 2016 (EDT)

@Yoshi the Space Station Manager: So, what about the redlink problem? And are you planning to go through the whole wiki and colour every "Mario" red? - Reboot (talk) 18:40, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * No, I am not going to change every instance of Mario to red. The redlink problem you're talking about; Maintenance has a place to find redlinks. There is also a problem with your plan. I was looking at a userbox colored black. If it didn't have white words, one would have to highlight it to read it. Probably very limited that there is black places (more than just userboxes), but I want you to be aware of this. 18:49, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * And the vast majority of users will never look at Special:Wantedpages. But they will read articles, and if they see a red link, if they're at all familiar with Wikipedia, MarioWiki, etc they'll realise it's a "dead" link and possibly be tempted to fill it out if they're familiar with the topic. The more links that don't follow the standard colour coding, the less chance that has of happening. It actively harms the wiki. - Reboot (talk) 19:27, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * I find it interesting that you don't like red links, yet you have red links all over the place. A simple fix would be to create a userpage for your red links that you have. Any reason why you haven't created a userpage? 20:28, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * I don't see the need for one. My userspace isn't in the encyclopaedic portion of MW, and I'd rather not waste the site's bandwidth & CPU with a bunch of userboxes that serve no purpose. - Reboot (talk) 20:31, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * I doesn't have to be very long. Look at Steve's. 20:34, 25 October 2016 (EDT)


 * @YTSSM: Reboot clarified above that he didn't intend this proposal to cascade onto userspace pages, so userboxes aren't an issue to be concerned about here. – YoshiKong (talk) 18:54, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * @YoshiKong: I said after that more than just userboxes. 19:04, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * ...do you know what "for legibility reasons" means? If you don't, you should withdraw your vote. - Reboot (talk) 19:27, 25 October 2016 (EDT)


 * @Reboot: There is another problem which new users will have. New users don't know how to color code yet, so they will be putting down blue links instead of black links. As a matter of fact, I learned how to color code when I wrote my oppose vote. 19:20, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * And they SHOULD be putting down blue links! That is, as they say, not a bug but a feature. - Reboot (talk) 19:27, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * Let me quote you: "the external links in the right column of List of official Super Mario Maker courses against the SMB sky blue (since it was decided that would be the best colour to put the costume sprites against on Costume Mario)". You intend to make them a different color. That would mean that you want all links to be the same. At least, that is what is implied. The most obvious choice of color would be black since it is the default color of regular text. 19:33, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * Actually, that relates (1) to external links, since the external link colour is very nearly the same colour as the background there, so the redlink thing doesn't apply and (2) easily falls under "for legibility reasons" in the same way that text on a black background should not be black. - Reboot (talk) 19:59, 25 October 2016 (EDT)

The Mario Party 3 example looks mostly fine to me, and frankly, Princess Daisy was only made a little harder to read. But if there is a color coding that makes it incredibly hard to read, it should be removed. I disapprove of YSSM's idea because, while it may be good for in game text, it's not good for Mario Wiki's encyclopedic appearance. Lastly, I think color coding should be removed from navigation templates and generally from paragraphs in articles, but situations like the MP3 example are fine. -- 18:58, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * @Luigi 64DD: I did not suggest that we should change the coding one bit. Here for clarification for others too. 19:04, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * @YSSM I think you misunderstood me. I'm not talking about coding. I'm talking about this: "In Luigi's Mansion, Mario 's Cap is one of the five items that Mario lost, and Luigi must bring it to Madame Clairvoya to receive information regarding Mario 's whereabouts." That example is from Mario's Cap article. I added colors to it to demonstrate. If that is what you are saying, then I disagree with it. -- 19:10, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * @Luigi 64DD: Like I said, I don't plan on changing every instance of Mario to red. For starters, that will be ridicules. Secondly, that is not what I suggested (as you can see Mario and Luigi not having color all the time in the passage). 19:15, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * Then what are you suggesting? Having coloring for quotes that had coloring in the games? -- 19:18, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * To keep color coding how it is. Not to go around every article and change every color code to black. Direct quotes don't have to be color coded as the text in game. 19:21, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * There are very few at the moment. Partly because most of them have been killed over time. Hence why stamping it out entirely is an option. - Reboot (talk) 19:27, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * @YSSM Oh...The quote you put is misleading, because coloring is not used in sentences on this wiki. The quote made me think you were suggesting doing that. That's also why Reboot thought you wanted to change every instance of Mario to red before you clarified. -- 19:31, 25 October 2016 (EDT)

Bottom line is: I can't support this since the implied statements. And now that I started using color coding, I don't think that a hard time reading may be a bad idea. Except in cases where it is impossible. Do that (and not near impossible), and I might accept. Also, don't have any implied statements. 19:39, 25 October 2016 (EDT) Actually, I don't think it should happen because I like it how some things are colored. I not going to support something that will get rid of it even at a small level. It will lead to many things. 19:47, 25 October 2016 (EDT)

Concerning EDIT2: Seeing as the examples that I do not think the color should be removed in use the templates, I am not changing my vote.-- 20:08, 25 October 2016 (EDT)

While I do agree that anyone who ever coded in css yellow text against the white wiki background should be shot, I also believe that parts of this proposal isn't needed and writing a proposal to end the trend of specific cases here and there isn't wieldly, especially when all the formatting you suggested should already be inline with the common rules of color theory and design and it's simply because people who edit this wiki either didn't caught up with color design, were ignorant of it, or just didn't care about it. Your "legibility" reasons, it's incredibly broad and vague. Define what it means. Does it mean a certain degree of readability, or does it mean passing the contrast test? To me, deep gold on yellow isn't that illegible, and it's easily fixable to by using an even deeper orange or a darker yellow, something that is compromisable. I don't think the colors should be used in navtemplates (like entries such as "Mario" and whatever), but I do believe they should be kept on the Mario Party character gallery pages, as well as the color formatting used in the Mario Kart 8 article. I'd also argue for some cases of using red-text: in Mario's case, where red text is most commonly used, of course people would know Mario's page is already created, and while people on mobile suffer from this as they can't hover over the link, if you hover over a dead link, it links to something different than a real link, which is how I even learned red links are dead in the first place.

ie I think this is a complex problem that a proposal itself isn't the best tool for deciding on an entirely black or white basis. I feel like more discussion should have been made before you jumped to making a proposal abolishing this and that color links which have their uses, especially when used to highlight differences between such and such so people can more easily identify what is what. 21:35, 25 October 2016 (EDT)

I don't support the blanket thrust this proposal has (mainly because it may have unforeseen effects), but I'm for limiting color use a bit. I don't think there's really a need to give those links a different color, but this proposal's provisions can cover aspects not intended (would List of Mario Party 5 minigames be affected?). Anyhow, copying game text detail-by-detail which includes the colors such as in Yoshi the Space Station Manager's example or in areas like Speak Up bonus panels text doesn't translate well at all since they're two very different media. The game needs to highlight such text for purely gameplay reasons, to highlight important information for the player. For an example, check this revision in WiKirby. This text is colored exactly how it appears in game, but this is garish in the wiki and greatly hinders legibility. On the other hand, it might be helpful to color some quotes by, say, Fawful to fully understand the context. Some words he says are either red or green. For example, "You have readiness for red" If these words don't have a random color (such as THIS always being red), then it would make sense to give those words a color. Finally, I don't find color text too harmful on the eyes, though gold-yellow and light gray contrast very poorly with white. While Mario Party and Super Mario 3D World somewhat has some reason for its colors, since those colors are assigned and used, there is little reason we should give color links to characters in Mario Kart games. However, those color links aren't even necessary or even good in the 3D World example I gave because the contrast is very poor and we already have color codes in the form of background color. I think in the end, we'll have to decide a case-by-case rather than impose a blanket removal. In the end, I do support removing some color links and probably just replacing them with something more appropriate like a table with color-coded pastel backgrounds when possible. That means rearranging the character lists in the Mario Party articles (the one provided can be easily changed into a colorful table while we nix the color links or at least adjust them to make them legible in the color table), removing the character-specific color links in the navigation template, removing most color links in flavor text, and keeping the color links that do serve a purpose (such as in List of Mario Party 5 minigames and potentially in Fawful quotes and other quotes that use colors for context reasons) intact. 21:44, 25 October 2016 (EDT)
 * I'd also say that sometimes you need to use color links in the case of tables but again, it's supposed to be part of the "legibility" part of the proposal which is so broadly and vaguely defined that I feel like it was slapped in as a side-note merely to address comments that may bring it up as a legit criticism of this proposal rather than specify what will be done about them. Which all turns around to my case-by-case argument again. 22:03, 25 October 2016 (EDT)

Miscellaneous
None at the moment.