MarioWiki:Proposals/Archive/38

Further separate appearance listing by medias
DELETED BY PROPOSER

In the early days of the wiki, appearance listing on character pages used to be separated by media (so all games were under a ==Game== header, all comics under a ==Comic== and so on) up until around 2008, where it was proposed to not separate things by media (the ensuing change mostly consisted of terrible attempts to link contradictory medias together), which was further stabilized into the purely date-based listing we have now. I was pretty apathetic about the change, but the quote above made me think.

The current system's well-intentioned, but I feel it's misguided and that separating things by media would lead to a more user-friendly browsing experience. Here's why:

1: It's a navigational mess. To take the Mario page for example, the main series platformers and the sports spinoff that most readers would expect to be "logically" close (due to similar styles and being, well, the same format) are separated by a wall of info about the more distant DIC cartoons and obscure OVAs. As a reader, I think it's irritating and a jarring shift.

Separating things by media would also have the effect of making the content navbar less bloated, thus making it easier to eyeball and click straight to a specific game/movie/cartoon. If I want to know about how many comics Mario has appeared in or that I want to read about a specific appearance but that I don't remember the name or publication date, it's much easier to find what I'm looking with a separated listing rather than having it lost somewhere in a huge list. It could also have the effect of making sections about obscure installments more noticeable than when they are sandwiched between the better-known and better-documented games.

2: One can peddle the "There's no official canon" line and that is true (and hence why I'm not proposing to give special treatment to Hotel Mario, When I Grow Up, the edutainement games or other oft-disliked installments of the franchise, because that'd be dumb) – but it misses the actual point: the media tie-ins are separate entries of the franchise. Events in the other medias usually happen in their own bubble and are not directly patterned after or "follow" the games. No characters that originated in the comics/cartoons/OVA reappears (with maybe the exception of the Koopa Bros. in a manga, but details are sketchy) appear or are even alluded to in the games. The characters/items that do appear frequently have clear differences in appearance, function, personality and sometimes names (some of that can be chalked up to early-franchise weirdness, but that only goes so far).

Even obscure, one-note games like Yoshi's Universal Gravitation and Wario: Master of Disguise have enough stylistic consistency and continuity cues that show they're meant to exist in the same "universe" as other games in their respective franchises, even if they're not referenced later. You can't say the same about the DIC cartoons vs the games.

Beside, there is a precedent for splitting other medias: The characters in the 1993 movie are considered to be "different" and indeed, most major elements from the film do have separate pages. If the movie is "too different" to count, then what about the Super Show with its locations that appear nowhere else in the franchise, celebrity guest stars, sizable number of characters that barely resemble their game counterpart… etc?. It takes a lot of mental gymnastic to exclude one but not the other.

Separating the medias isn't saying the comics/cartoons/ovas aren't "canon", "don't count" or something like that – it's simply acknowledging they're separate entries of the greater Mario franchise, which they quite clearly are, methinks.

…[/Martin Prince voice]

Proposer: Deadline: February 19, 2014, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Seem to be a good idea. Per proposal and all.
 * 2) Per Squidy
 * 1) Per Squidy

Oppose

 * 1) - The current form has worked for years and keeping everything on equal footing in the Histories is the strongest way to shut down thorny canon debates. The large pages will be cluttered no matter what we do, and adding a new intermediate level of headers will just add to the mess and force the games' headers to be Lv. 5 (i.e. nothing but bold text, which barely stands out and is next to useless). Having all the shows and comics and stuff back-to-back might be desirable in some ways, but on the other hand, you'd be lumping things which have even less to do with each other as they do with the games. In the end, is it really worth changing the entire wiki for? Haters are gonna hate no matter what we do, so I say don't fix what isn't broken.
 * 2) Per Walkazo.

Comments
I dunno if the Super Mario-Kun is part of this: what the manga is about is that it adapts events straight out of the game and puts its own twist to it, unlike most other forms of media where they just do their own thing. But otherwise, yeah, I see where you're going with this.
 * The Super Mario-Kun is probably part of it because it also follows a slightly different story that no other games gave a nod to, and the characters are given distinct personalities never seen in the games. You'll probably never catch Mario cross-dressing or molding a Star to the shape of a revolver, do you? Nevertheless, Super Mario-Kun's character designs are usually spot-on with their video game counterparts, even getting the details correct (while adapting its own style)

So, Glowsquid, what will you propose to do? Split Mario's article into separate articles by media? I'll very much like the idea (I also agree that the History's organization seems sporadic and jarring, especially to readers... and plus, Mario's article gets trimmed even more! YES! Same goes for Luigi, Toad, Bowser, Wario, Boo, etc.), but I also like to see the formatting layouts because that means we can also go into detail about episodes and certain comic volumes and issues without cluttering up the page.

A serious flaw from this proposal is the smaller articles. Minor Mario characters such as Tryclyde, Tweeter, Panser, Wanda, Jō, and much more also make appearances in non-game media, yet their articles are smaller than the main ones that really need this solution. Even one-timers such as Lavalava Island and Golden Diva make a non-game appearance from Super Mario-Kun. Even further, we've seen some extraordinary appearances such as Bluster Kong, who made an appearance in Super Mario-Kun, although he originated in a TV show. What may happen from this proposal is separating information from already-small articles into even smaller articles. There isn't anything in your proposal to address that, so...

I brought up the Movie thing to show that the current system is inconsistent rather than to say "That? We should do that for everything". The idea is that currently, all medias are under one header, like this;

--History-- ---Main Platformers--- ---Super Mario Land--- ---DIC Cartoons--- ---Obscure OVAs--- ---Educational Games---

With the proposal, the page sections would be formated like this: -History- --Games-- ---Main Platformers--- ---Super Mario Land--- ---Educational Games--- --Animation-- ---DIC Cartoons--- ---Obscure OVAs--- I'm not saying the DIC, Valiant... etc portrayals of Mario should get separate pages, though for what it's worth, Steve wants the detailled episode-by-episode summaries to be on separate pages (like this), so for major characters, the main page could have a general description of their portrayal and general storyline, with the individual episode summaries being linked via. The idea could be extended to other long-running medias like Super Mario-kun and the Valiant comics. And of course secondary characters shouldn't be split, that'd be dumb. --Glowsquid (talk) 07:07, 6 February 2014 (EST)
 * Huh, I had the wrong idea, then. It must've been that "separate" word that gotten to me.
 * Where would spinoffs go? Right after educational games or after Super Mario Land? Because spinoffs at least show continuity (many characters' current appearances are derived from Mario Party 4) and some get referenced even in the mainstream games (Mario Kart).
 * No, spinoffs are games so they'd stay right where they are: Glowsquid just listed them (represented by "educational games" for lulz or something) coming after the main platformers because that's usually ow the History sections work out. At least, I think that's what he's done. Anyway, there's a major flaw in the proposed reorganization, and that is that we'd be getting into Lv. 5 headers if we need one more subheader step in Histories (since the major headers are Lv. 2, not 1) and Lv. 5 headers are next to useless: they're nothing more than bolded text, the same size as the body text - they don't stand out at all, and are best avoided. Plus having too many nested layers starts to look sloppy, especially when one of the intermediate steps (i.e. the media type) is used very little. Also, unlike current History setups that can skip the series intermediate step for single-game appearances to keep down the clutter and superfluous organization, it'd be harder to do that with something that appears in one TV series or one comic (i.e. most things), since unlike the current mixed-usage series/standalone intermediate level, it seems the proposal if for the Lv. 3 header to become media-only.


 * In other words, current is this:
 * --History-- ---Super Mario series--- Super Mario Bros. Super Mario 64 ---Super Mario DIC cartoons--- The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3 ---Super Mario Land--- ---Super Mario-kun--- ---Super Mario Amada---


 * And proposed is this:
 * --History-- ---Games--- Super Mario series -Super Mario Bros.- -Super Mario 64- Super Mario Land ---Animation--- Super Mario DIC cartoons -The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!- -The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3- Super Mario Amada ---Print--- Super Mario-kun


 * So in reality, this is adding more navigational clutter, not less. Plus, it's inviting canon discussion even if you try and say it's not. Even here, within a day of the proposal going up, there's speculation about the Super Mario-kun story in relation to games and confusion about separating spinoff games: not good. It's a slippery slope, especially when you consider how some game series portray the Mario world just as disparately as some of of the alternate media portrayals. And on that note, the comparisons between the Mario series and Sonic or Transformers are poor fits, and poorer still as arguments here. If you want to talk about keeping unrelated branches of the franchise separate, as you'd keep those different cartoons (and one film series) separate, you'd have to blast the entire History apart, not just the alternate media; but this proposal (purportedly) isn't about timelines, it's about media types, so you see my problem with the quote's apples and oranges approach to trash talkin' our wiki. -

Create a Page for the Toadette Species
DELETED BY PROPOSER

It's been shown within games such as Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story and Super Mario Galaxy that there are multiple female toads. These should be appropriately called Toadettes. (Kind of like Smurfs and Smurfettes. It's a stupid comparison, I know...) Therefore, I propose that, since there is a page for the Toad species, there should likewise be one for the Toadette species.

Now, some may argue that there isn't enough information for that, but I do think that there will be plenty of facts to make sure that this article is not a stub.

However, I'm also open to the idea, should the community not want to create an entire page, that we add additional information under the Toad (species) segment about the female toad species, of which there is none. There's also the possibility to add this under Toadette. Either one works for me.

Proposer: Deadline: February 13, 2014, 23:59 GMT

Create a New Page for the Toadette Species

 * 1) Per proposal

Don't create anything

 * 1) A different gendered entity doesn't make the character a different species from the male character. It doesn't make sense. It's better if both male and female Toads are represented under a Toad species. We don't separate women and men from each other, we represent them in a Human article. The same should be said with Toads. The term is unofficial anyway, as the only times Toadette was used was as a name for a character. All other Toad characters are just referred to as "Toads".
 * 2) A female Toad has been never called a "Toadette". Also, the human, Koopa Troopa, and Yoshi (species) don't have their own section for a female counterpart. Plus, the only difference between a female Toad and a male Toad is their hairstyle. That may deserve a mention, but it needs hardly its own section.
 * 3) Per Baby Luigi, this is grasping at straws in a very confusing way.
 * 4) Toadette isn't a species, she's a character and the female Toads are just Toads. Per Baby Luigi.
 * 5) Yuck! Toadette is a charcater, and she's not a species. Toads are LIKE human, because they both have gender. Just like Baby Luigi said, you shouldn't separate man and woman. Per all.
 * 6) Per all. Those female Toads only really appear in the RPG series (and the intro to Mario Galaxy I think) and I don't recall them even being called Toadettes.
 * No, absolutely no. As Mario's said, the only difference is the hairstyle. And as Tails777 said: they appeared only in more or less 2 or 3 games. One as NPCs and the others as cameos
 * 1) No way. How can a gender be considered another species?
 * 2) Really!? Toadette doesn't have any species members, there's no reason to do this.

Comments
@Baby Luigi: True, but the female counterparts aren't even mentioned under the Toad species. There's no pictures, and basically just gives the idea that all the Toads are male, with only one female among them. This should at least be given clarification.
 * Well, there aren't many female Toad characters in the Mario series to begin with, so....
 * I don't know, I just saw that the female toads weren't getting any mentions on any pages, so I thought I would bring this up. but... this was a dumb idea from the start, wasn't it? :/
 * Well, the page describes Toads as a whole species. The only pronouns used are "they", "their" and the like. The reasons female Toads aren't brought up because they're sparse in the Mario series. Actually, excluding from the television show, movie, RPGs, Mario Party, and Toadette, female Toads are nonexistent.
 * Alright then. Since it's obvious what the decision is, and I'd rather not see tons of 'opposed' piling up, do you think I should just delete this entirely?
 * Can't now, just let it run its course. No one will really think that much less of you for it.
 * Very well, thank you. I still feel like a total idiot now, though.
 * Actually, as per Rule 14, the proposal can be withdrawn or rewritten within the first 3 days of its creation. Seeing as it was created yesterday it can be withdrawn, just make sure to archive it here and here.
 * Hot dang, I forgot about that rule. Looks like I might need to study a bit. Thanks for the save, 876.

@Pink, methinks you mean "should not" in this context.

Move substantial "Official profiles and statistics" sections to a separate page
PASSED 22-1

Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Toad, Bowser, Yoshi, Donkey Kong. One thing in common is that their pages are incredibly huge, and loading them may be a chore for the computer. My proposal is to move some information, specifically large "Official profiles and statistics" sections, from these pages to another page, much as how "Gallery" and "Quotes" have their own page. While this may not be a surefire way to get these pages loading a bajillion times quicker, every little bit helps so we can get potential editors rather than having their browsers crash from the immense size.

Baby Luigi and I then decided that we should move the "Official profiles and statistics" section to its own page. Now, just as with galleries and list of quotes, not EVERY article will be affected by it; only articles that have a substantial amount of information (decided by a case-by-case basis) will have the information moved.

Reasonably reducing the strain these pages do on browsers should be a plus for all of us editors here.

Update: In addition, profiles and statistics from RPG games, such as Paper Mario, Mario & Luigi and Super Mario RPG will be moved into these pages as well.

Proposer: Deadline: February 9, 2014, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) It's a pain in the ass to visit these articles I mentioned. Every little bit of trimming will be highly appreciated, so moving this information to another article will be nice.
 * 2) In 2006, all the page were short like a daisy. Now, it a garbage dump today. We should move the profiles to another page. Reader could get tired of reading long articles. I said we go back to 2006. Per all.
 * 3) - YES! I've wanted to see this happen for years, but was always too lazy to to do more than mention it every now and then. As well as shortening the length of the page as a whole, it'll also halve the amount of entries in the Table of Contents for these big pages, making navigation easier (plus, then there won't be so many headers sharing names and potentially complicating section-linking). The articles will also look better without the messy lists dragging along after the prose content.
 * 4) I strongly support this. Per Mario and Walkazo.
 * 5) Yes, just yes. Maybe this can also help towards featuring these kinds of articles (maybe). Per all.
 * 6) Per all.
 * 7) Great idea for improving organization, per all.
 * 8) Per Mario and Pinkie
 * 9) Per all. I think that the "big" pages need to be cleaned up a lot.
 * 10) Per Pinkie Pie
 * 11) This should at least lessen the constipation devices go through when they try loading one of these pages. Per Mario and Walkazo.
 * 12) Per all
 * 13) It hurts trying to read the Mario page.
 * 14) Per all.
 * 15) Per all
 * 16) Per all, it is making the page Bowser on the top of the Long Pages list. It makes the page more organized.
 * 17) Definite per all.
 * 18) Per all.
 * 19) Per all.
 * 20) Great Idea. Pages such Daisy were shorter in some time ago, but now ittakes some minutes to load completely. Also, pages such Peach and Mario doesn't load completely the images, they are very very very large pages. Per all.
 * 21) I agree with you even though my computer and the current browser I am using loaded these pages fine. The data of the actual article would not be a problem, but the advertisements contribute the most to agony when I used my old tablet to load REGULAR pages, mainly on this wiki and Bulbapedia. But I believe that we should do more, and establish what a character article ought to be which is an extensive coverage on the general character, which I believe (in the context of the characters you mentioned) ought to include:
 * A)an introduction (which reveal too much information during the status quo;
 * B)physical appearance and typical outfits;
 * C)back-stories, occupations, personality;
 * D)frequent character roles, recurring abilities, catchphrases, running gags,etc;
 * E)relationships with other characters;
 * F)a list of game appearances (not a list with a paragraph per appearance) with links to main articles of them for information, portrayals outside of Nintendo;
 * G)controversy, trivia, notes, names in other languages, name origins;
 * H)"See also", related topics;
 * I)sources, references, citations;
 * J)external links, extra templates.
 * That way, we can place stuff like some of the "History" sections and even more of your section of issue as "Main Articles" which will allow even more information and coverage on those topics! I support, per Iggy Koopa Jr. and myself.
 * 1) – Per everybody, especially Mario and Walkazo.

Oppose

 * 1) - I have no problem loading these pages. And the profiles and statistics are shorter than the history. I don't think removing a small section would help your loading times.

Comments
I think it would be a good idea to also say that all the official profiles and stats should go on the not-subpages - i.e. instead of having some of the RPG infoboxes in the History sections, etc. That way, everything would be in one place, and it would also make the History sections more uniform and less crowded (as they can get when they have multiple boxes in close proximity). One question, tho: what would the new pages be named? "List of profiles and statistics of X" would be consistent with other "subpages", and doesn't see, too wordy after the "official" bit's removed. But I dunno, maybe there's a better choice? -
 * I added some more provisions, thanks to your suggestions. Also, I think the "profiles and statistics" part can be shortened to just one word, but I'm not exactly sure what single word can replace that lengthy phrase. Maybe "List of data of this guy person" or simply "List of profiles of this guy person".
 * SeanWheeler, if we don't move the stat to another page, the reader might rage quit on this wiki. 12:01, 2 February 2014 (EST)
 * That's extreme; the worst I'd do is refuse to click on those specific pages at all.
 * I like "List of {character} profiles and statistics". -
 * Sounds good. -

SeanWheeler, just compare the loading time of Waluigi to Bowser. There is a noticeable difference. In every computer I've used, Bowser takes a painfully longer time to load. Also, you should be more considerate about those with weaker computers than yours. Just because YOU don't have a problem doesn't mean EVERYONE won't. I've also mentioned explicitly that the action will not make the page load a million times faster, but trimming reasonably will improve loading times nevertheless.
 * I think the reason why he said it's fine, is because he has a high-performance PC that load pages faster. Check other computers with low-performance SeanWheeler, the pages take almost 1 minute to load. 18:38, 4 February 2014 (EST)
 * I'm using a computer with an i7 processor and the Mario page still makes my browser hang for 10 seconds. You need a REALLY high-performance PC that doesn't make a difference. SeanWheeler's reasoning is weak: "I don't have problems and it won't reduce loading time drastically, so I will oppose."
 * SeanWheeler might have a REALLY high-performance PC. Also, I'm with Mario: SeanWheeler's oppose is weak. 15:52, 5 February 2014 (EST)
 * It's a quad-core CPU with 1.7 gH I believe. It's not gaming-quality (doesn't run Dolphin Emulator GCN games such as Mario Party at full speed), but it's still decent.
 * Loading a page shouldn't take a $10,000 premium-performance shiny spankin' new computer for goodness sake.

Also, even though the long page load faster, scrolling down is a pain to look at. 16:22, 5 February 2014 (EST)
 * SeanWheeler, just because you said that is fine, it not fine. First, scrolling woud be REALLY hard, second, there is too much lag, and third, the profiles and stats are useless. Maybe we need to make a proposal on removing opposes.
 * One: that'd be extremely unnecessary for these types of proposals, and simply explaining the logical flaws is fine, which two: you seem to have done multiple times already. I'm fairly sure both Sean and anyone else reading gets what you think of their oppose without it having to be repeatedly stated.

@Guye, not that I disagree, but I think you should try to keep your opposes a bit shorter. You can elaborate in the comments like you did with the other one.

I aldo think that the role tables (playable or NPC table) should be in another page too. And nicknames tables in Mario and Luigi should be removed. There is no proof for them.
 * There is: afaik, the nicknames are all directly from games or the shows; if they were unofficial, they wouldn't be up there. As for the charts, a subpage for them would be a bit much, and it's not like on section with a table of links is going to drag down load times or clutter up the TOC. -
 * I already made a template on Profiles and Stats; go on the wiki's sandbox to see it
 * Last I checked, this was only about characters, not games. -