MarioWiki:Proposals

Writing guidelines
None at the moment.

New features
None at the moment.

Trim extraneous Game & Watch coverage
As it currently stands, we cover too much information on a lot of our Game & Watch pages. As the result of a proposal a couple years back, aside from the ones that are Mario-related, we only cover the games that appeared in the Game & Watch Gallery games with modern remakes that include Mario information. But those games that remain covered are covered in full, leaving us with a lot of information that's irrelevant to the scope of the wiki. If you need an example, just look at the page for Ball and see how much of the information here isn't related to Mario at all. Therefore, I propose that we cut these articles down and focus on their Mario-relevant appearances as minigames in the Game & Watch Gallery series, while still taking care to properly acknowledge and address their origins.

This will remove coverage of the original systems themselves, the classic versions of the games, ports, and other miscellaneous pieces of information, such as references to the original games in Smash. Basically, if it doesn't relate to the modern, Mario-relevant versions of the game, or isn't relevant to Mario in some other way (i.e. Ball's Mario-themed appearance in the SMB Game & Watch), it goes.

Affected articles:
 * Ball
 * Boxing
 * Chef
 * Egg (Game & Watch)
 * Fire (Game & Watch)
 * Helmet (Game & Watch)
 * Manhole (Game & Watch)
 * Octopus (Game & Watch)
 * Oil Panic
 * Parachute (Game & Watch)
 * Rain Shower
 * Turtle Bridge
 * Vermin

I've intentionally omitted Greenhouse from the scope of this proposal since it's the first appearance of Stanley the Bugman and has some relevance, but it can be re-assessed at a later time if preferred.

Proposer: Deadline: June 10, 2022, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Beep boop (per all).
 * 2) 011100000110010101110010 (per)
 * 3) Per all.
 * 4) Per all.
 * 5) As a Game & Watch main, I can support delivering a Number 9 Judge to this (Per all)

Comments
Do you think those article this information could be moved to NintendoWiki? 18:29, June 3, 2022 (EDT)


 * If this is to pass, I definitely think we should help move all our information to the NWiki. It could potentially be a lot of hard work and thoroughly researched information disappearing.
 * They seem to have pages already, but if there's any information that's missing over there, I don't see why not. -- 19:19, June 3, 2022 (EDT)

Could I see an example of what content would be cut after this proposal passes? The content on the pages don't seem to be excessively off-topic from Mario. 20:40, June 5, 2022 (EDT)
 * I went with Manhole as an example, which you can see here. All of the content that doesn't relate to the Mario-relevant version of the minigame in Game & Watch Gallery has been removed, with the exception of WarioWare which has been moved to trivia. You can also see which categories will be in use on the new page. Feedback is welcome of course as I'm not exactly an expert on Game & Watch. (As another example of this already being put into practice, see Flagman D-D.) -- 13:34, June 6, 2022 (EDT)
 * I see, and yeah, some information does seem excessive. I do think that a short coverage of the appearance of the game from the Game & Watch gallery pages should stay, since that's content from what's arguably a Mario game, or at least, like in Fortune Street or Mario & Sonic, it's more of a Mario game than Super Smash Bros. is, and Super Smash Bros. has entire articles with zero Mario content like "Home-Run Contest" 20:52, June 6, 2022 (EDT)

Discount resized enemies from Mario Kart Tour as "big" variants of the base enemy
The wiki currently regards upscaled enemies from Mario Kart Tour as distinct, "Big" derivatives of the template enemy, e.g. the large Piranha Plants from SNES Choco Island 2T, SNES Ghost House 1R etc. are taken to be "Big Piranha Plants". Admittedly, I was the one who made this distinction back when I set up the "course elements" table on the game's article, listing large-sized Piranha Plants separately from normal-sized counterparts; later on, an article for Big Sidestepper, an upscaled Sidestepper that only appears in Mario Kart Tour, was created and a corresponding entry was added to the aforementioned table.

One issue with the above is that, regardless of their size, Piranha Plants all share a "Piranha Plant" label on the in-game action display. The other enemies to appear with upscaled models, namely large Goombas and large Sidesteppers, are not labelled at all since they only appear in bonus challenges, where player actions are typically not displayed (except for Combo Attack, which to my recollection has yet to feature any instances of the latter two). Another issue stems from the fact that these enemies may not have been rescaled at a consistent size: for instance, RMX Choco Island 1R/T features an exceptionally humongous Piranha Plant (youtube.com) that visibly tops other already large-sized Piranha Plants appearing in other courses (youtube.com). If there isn't one specific "L" size these enemies comply with, is it warranted to have the larger enemies lumped together as the "Big" variant considering larger-but-still-intermediary-sized enemies, such as Hefty Goombas from New Super Mario Bros. Wii, are considered separate from their maximum-sized counterparts despite having a few shared names? In addition to everything said here, an enemy always behaves the same regardless of its model's size, as opposed to, say, Super Mario Maker big variants which, while not specifically labelled in-game as "big", may feature distinctive quirks from their normal counterparts.

In light of these points, I propose the following two courses of action as options:
 * 1) remove any listings of these rescaled enemies as distinct counterparts for Mario Kart Tour (i.e. remove their entries from the "Course elements" table, the MKT template, and the Mario Kart Tour enemies category), and restrict any mention of them appearing in different sizes to the base enemy's article (i.e. purge such information from the "Big [enemy]" articles);
 * 2) remove any listings of these rescaled enemies as distinct counterparts for Mario Kart Tour (i.e. remove their entries from the "Course elements" table, the MKT template, and the Mario Kart Tour enemies category), but retain/allow mentions of them appearing in different sizes on the "Big [enemy]" articles.

In either scenario, the Big Sidestepper article gets deleted, since Big Sidesteppers have yet to actually appear in a game where they are acknowledged as such or behave differently.

Proposer: Deadline: June 9, 2022, 23:59 GMT

Option 2

 * 1) I prefer this option myself. Despite the game's stance, a large enemy should have a passing mention where size is of interest.
 * 2) Per proposal. Even if both sized Piranha Plants appear, it’s worth mentioning as much at least.
 * 3) Per proposal.

Comments
This may be an issue for the Mario Kart series in general as several guides don't use the "big" distinction. What about cases like Mega Rabbit from Super Mario 3D World, which is referred to as just a "Rabbit" in Bowser's Fury missions (main article is currently mistaken)? LinkTheLefty (talk) 11:00, June 4, 2022 (EDT)
 * I feel like that's just be a case of "If one design of an enemy is officially called larger and big designs of that enemy are used in later games, leave it on the big page", similar to how the Big Amps from MP5 are just called amps and are only slightly bigger than normal amps, but they're still on the Big Amp page. Somethingone (talk) 11:19, June 4, 2022 (EDT)

@LinkTheLefty: Enemies in the Mario Kart series typically appear as larger than normal, but in the absence of other sizes within the same game they are taken to be the standard size, hence probably why those guides don't use said "big" distinction for them. Other than Mario Kart Tour, there are only two games I know of to feature enemies at different scales: Mario Kart: Double Dash has big Pokeys appearing as obstacles alongside regular Pokeys, while Mario Kart Wii features an individual big Pokey and a larger-than-normal Thwomp. I don't know if the Double Dash big Pokeys are brought any official distinction from the ordinary ones (if you have access to relevant material, please provide information on this), but the giant Pokey in Wii was specifically billed as such and is a boss which requires a different approach to battle, while the Thwomp was, according to the Super Mario Wiki, once called a "giant Thwomp" on the game's European website. (Though, as if hearkening back to the website's blunder years, efforts to source and archive this information have been bush league, and Wayback Machine proves unhelpful here as it more often than not excludes European Nintendo links.) In Mario Kart Tour, not only are enemies of different sizes described as if they are all the same size, but they act completely identically and grant the same number of points when taken out (something important that I forgot to mention in the proposal). Indeed their size differences merit being covered in some form on the "Big [enemy]" articles, but what I'm advocating is removing any listings that distinguish big enemies from Mario Kart Tour in this way. Regarding the rabbit sitch, is the Mega Rabbit article mistaken in the sense that regular rabbits do apear in Bowser's Fury, or that internal data/a perfunctory look may suggest they aren't the same thing as Mega Rabbits from the main campaign? 13:03, June 4, 2022 (EDT)

Decide how to cover Mario Kart Tour bonus challenges on course articles
The layout of each bonus challenge in Mario Kart Tour (e.g. Ring Race) depends on the course in which it is set. It tracks, therefore, that these challenges should be covered in detail on their relevant course articles in addition to their parent article. If you wish to see how a course article would look with coverage of its bonus challenges, scroll down to the "Mario Kart Tour" section in the "History" section here.

However, bonus challenges have been observed to appear multiple times across the game's tours, sometimes with changed objectives, which prompts wiki users to regularly update their list entries. Simply copying and pasting these entries onto another article would make it more difficult for users to be aware of which needs to be updated where. On the other hand, adding a way to transclude entire entries (allow information entered on a page to be automatically transferred to another) would spaghettify the original code and potentially deter users from updating it with new information. For instance, this is how the code for an average bonus challenge entry currently looks:


 * MKT Tour1 YoshiCupChallenge.png
 * New York Minute
 * MKT Icon Yoshi.png Yoshi
 * MKT Icon PipeFrameLimeGreen.png Pipe Frame
 * MKT Icon SuperGliderLimeGreen.png Super Glider
 * 5
 * 8
 * 12
 * New York Tour
 * 12
 * New York Tour

(source: Do Jump Boosts article)

and this is how it would look with a transclusion mechanism in place:

A bit ugly, innit? On average, this would only save a small number of bytes on the target article--less than 100, really. Picture, now, an entire table with the same code plastered repeatedly. I believe the wiki should account for editor friendliness too, especially when the returns of optimisation are disappointing.

I am not sure how to proceed here. I am unwilling to go ahead with either option unless I have a clear-cut vision of each one's net advantages. I will thus be resorting to the community's choice.

Proposer: Deadline: June 9, 2022, 23:59 GMT

Comments
Mario Kart Tour's tables tend to be pretty sloppy overall (no offense but this ranked cup table is rather monstrous though other tables don't fare much better) though I'm not really understanding this proposal. Probably repetitive content? Maybe the table format just isn't suitable for this sort of thing? 10:55, June 9, 2022 (EDT)
 * The tables' designs aren't what the proposal is about (though, if you have suggestions for their improvement--here for instance--by all means state them somewhere appropriate). The proposal is to decide on an optimal way the already existent table sections on bonus challenge pages can be reused on relevant course articles. Both the copy-pasting and the transcluding methods come with their disadvantages, so I was hoping we would decide on the one option with less. I could simply go through with an option I see fit, but if it later proves to be less optimal or editor-friendly than the other (e.g. the bulky transclusion code would discourage editors who typically update these bonus challenge pages) I'd have to re-edit tens of pages. Why not pre-empt that with wiki consensus? 11:17, June 9, 2022 (EDT)