MarioWiki:Proposals

Writing guidelines
None at the moment.

New features
None at the moment.

Removals
None at the moment.

Decide what to do with StreetPass Mii Plaza
Merge request has been sitting on this page for a while, so let's resolve it once and for all. StreetPass Mii Plaza features plenty of Mario-related content, so it should be considered a guest appearance. However, it covers too much information unrelated to Mario, so I additionally propose to trim the features section, Find Mii, and DLC to only cover Mario content.

Proposer: Deadline: January 28, 2023, 23:59 GMT

Trim and classify as a guest appearance

 * 1)  I'll go work on my Smash proposals
 * 2)  Fine by me
 * 3) This makes perfect sense to do. Per proposal.
 * 4) Per proposal.
 * 5) Per proposal.

Merge certain non-Mario fighters from the Super Smash Bros. series into game-specific lists and trim away detailed special move information for all non-Mario fighters
Here's a simple premise: the Super Mario Wiki is not the Smash Wiki. The wiki has no business giving undue focus to every single element that has been part of the Smash Bros. series. In spite of the efforts to curtail this practice, the elephant in the room is still cosily seated.

I'll first reiterate my feelings on non-Mario concepts featured in this series: in my view, Mario Wiki's mission is indeed to provide information on anything the Mario cast interacts with, and the various Super Smash Bros. concepts, therefore, deserve by all means the privilege to be covered in some way, shape, or form. The problem is that these concepts are currently presented in excessive detail, much of which is specific to these concepts and perhaps as far-removed from Mario as one can get. I believe the two courses of action proposed here go hand in hand towards offering a much more streamlined coverage for the subjects that lack enough notability within the bona fide Mario franchise.

Following the standard of the List of Super Smash Bros. series items and List of Super Smash Bros. series bosses, my initial plan was to propose merging fighters who have had no significant presence within the Mario franchise into one list housing all their current Smash-related information, in addition to, perhaps, any other relevant information from other Mario-related media where they had cameos and mentions. Realising that the resulting page would be excessively long and more than likely violate the article size policy tenfold, I came up with a compromise that aims to achieve a similar effect:
 * 1) Trim away detailed, textual information on special moves for all non-Mario fighters. Special moves are intrinsic to a character, employing their own abilities and/or weapons. Giving each move a separate heading within a fighter's article just isn't proportional to the extent they manifest a relationship with Mario elements; they can be neatly summarised in prose, as fighter articles already do. In removing this information, a sizable amount of space will be saved, allowing for more compact fighter lists. Images relevant to the special moves will be kept and repurposed as part of the next course of action:
 * 2) Make a list of fighters for every Super Smash Bros. game (where for 3DS and for Wii U fighters share the same page) containing the relevant sections of each of the non-Mario, non-franchise-significance fighter, complete with a gallery of relevant images for each section. For instance, this means that we take the Super Smash Bros. Ultimate sections of Ness, Simon Belmont, and other fighters who fulfill the aforementioned criteria and throw them in a "List of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fighters" list, with each section having a gallery that comprises any relevant image that would go unused as a result of the redistribution of information. A visual example of how this would work can be seen at the end of the proposal.

A few notes:
 * if a character has had a significant appearance within the Mario franchise proper, such as having a playable role in Mario Kart--and this includes actual Mario characters--their page will remain intact. They will still have an entry on the relevant fighter lists, but nothing else beyond their representative artwork and a "main" tag with a link to their respective article. Cameos such as Super Mario Maker costumes, Yoshi's Woolly World designs, WarioWare microgame appearances, non-speaking roles, and mentions do not constitute a significant appearance--and neither do appearances in media where Mario characters are guests, such as Captain N, nor appearances in non-Mario media that is syndicated/distributed with Mario media, such as The Legend of Zelda cartoon and the Mario/Kirby OVA.
 * in cases where information on a fighter is split between lists, their current article is turned into a disambig page for their list entries (e.g., for Ness, it'll be "For information on Ness in the Super Smash Bros. series, see: ; etc.") For fighters who have only appeared in one Smash game, their current article is turned into a simple redirect to their respective section.
 * current profile sections won't be moved to these fighter lists to keep their size reasonable. Trophies, stickers, and spirits of each fighter are already covered on their parent pages.
 * Subspace Emissary info and classic mode routes from Ultimate will be among the ported information, even for non-Mario fighters. Reason being, these often involve Mario characters as opponents or otherwise.

With all that said, affected pages include:

The following pages will remain unaffected:
 * Banjo - playable in Diddy Kong Racing
 * Fox McCloud - reasonably significant appearance in the Club Nintendo comic "Super Mario: Mario im Wunderland"
 * Inkling - playable in Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
 * Isabelle - playable in Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
 * Kirby - major appearances in Club Nintendo comics
 * Link - playable in Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
 * Mega Man - major appearance in the Club Nintendo comic "Super Mario: Die Verwandlung"
 * Mii - (playable) appearances in many Mario titles
 * Pac-Man - playable in the Mario Kart Arcade GP crossover series
 * R.O.B. - playable in Mario Kart DS
 * Sonic - playable in the Mario & Sonic crossover series
 * Villager - playable in Mario Kart 8 and Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

I put together a sample layout that would inspire the appearance of these new fighter list pages; particularities, such as image size and whether or not fighters with intra-Wiki "main article" tags need an image to begin with, are negotiable.

 Page title: List of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate fighters

This is a list of fighters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

'''Mario



'''Link



'''Ness



Ness appears as an unlockable playable fighter in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. While his moveset is mostly unchanged from the previous Super Smash Bros. titles, he has received various new tweaks to his moves. Ness now emits PSI when pummeling opponents and while using his neutral aerial. His up aerial, rather than headbutting, has him waving his hands in the air. In addition, for his PK Fire and PSI Magnet moves, graphics are taken from EarthBound. He and Lucas have a new victory theme, which is an arrangement of the last two of the Eight Melodies from EarthBound Beginnings.

Several of Ness's attacks receive names: his forward smash is called Batter Up!, his up smash is called Around the World, his down smash is called Walk the Dog, his forward throw is called PK Throw, and his back throw is called Reverse PK Throw.


 * Classic Mode route


 * Gallery

Proposer: Deadline: January 30, 2023, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) According to calculations that came to me in a dream, this proposal has an 86.489% chance of failure.
 * 2) Per proposal and the discussion on Discord. Smash Bros. is a crossover, sure, but Mario content is now very minor compared to the games' first installment, and the problem will only continue to get worse and worse with each coming game and their DLC. Edit: also per Somethingone's rant below, dear God, this was one hell of a read.
 * 3) I'm looking at these pages for Smash characters, and... this is just a less comprehensive version of what's on the Smash wiki. I really don't see the need for these. Perhaps they could be just trimmed, but... well, that'll happen anyway with this whole list thing.
 * 4) Yeah. I gauged interest for this on the forums, and we aren't trying to be SmashWiki here. SmashWiki exists for a reason, you know?
 * 5) This is the only NIWA wiki hogging Smash content like this, it makes no sense. Most of it is irrelevant to Mario and Super Smash Wiki has a purpose.
 * 6) I've never been fond of our Smash coverage here, and nothing's stopping us from changing our policy after this proposal rather than before.
 * 7) If us worrying about not treating Smash as a crossover was a valid reason to stop all our trimming of the coverage of it, we have passed all the points where we could stop everything and have a reasonable policy whilst keeping that fact in mind. We could have stopped when we first changed its status from "crossover" to "special case", but we didn't. We could have stopped when we merged the items into a list page, but we didn't. We could have stopped anytime between those two critical points and had a (mostly) reasonable Smash policy, but we didn't. Now, we're at a point where simply doing nothing creates a coverage confuddlement of picking and choosing things based on arbitrary metrics, and I can't help but find the arguments against this proposal a wee bit misguided. No, this proposal is not going to remove any information regarding Smash by merging things into a list. That didn't happen when we merged the items, or the bosses, or the Subspace Emmisary stages. At worst, we trim a bunch of sentences to better summarize them with a space limit in mind, splitting the lists up if they get too big. But that is just standard practice on this wiki when we deal with a lot of text, unless this wiki somehow decides to never trim pages ever again? But regardless, how is it possible that after years of debate on this topic there is still so much drama over trimming information about non-Mario characters' Smash appearances, yet nobody batted an eye when we suddenly stopped covering Smash information in full on Mario's own article without any prior discussion? And no, doing this proposed merge would not be inconsistent with the way we cover the stickers, trophies, spirits, etc. We don't have individual pages describing every single one of those in extraneous detail or, even worse, with just the description of each trophy on each page. We keep all of those in list pages instead, just like we now do with the items and the bosses. If anything, it's even more inconsistent leaving our policy as it is now, as like I mentioned it's arbitrary cherry picking what we do and don't want to have full coverage. No, doing this merge will not impact our search results (don't even try bringing that faulty argument up) as we would still have redirect pages on this wiki, under the names people search up to which they click and are brought to the list pages. I've tried it before, and that is what happens, not "nobody clicks on those pages anymore". No, Smash is absolutely not in any way comparable to any other crossover Mario has been in. Why is it not in any way comparable to any other crossover Mario has been in? It's not just because it's a multi way crossover from 50+ different game series, it's because Nintendo has largely treated Smash as its own unique series with its own unique things to it instead of just a multi way crossover. Master Hand, Crazy Hand, Tabuu, Galeem, Dharkom, Battlefield/the other non-series-specific stages, the Home Run Contest and Target Practice, everything in Subspace Emmisary, etc. None of these things are from any specific series, they are all Smash-original. How much crossover-original, interactible, non-generic content do other crossovers like M&S, Fortune Steeet, Mario & Rabbids, etc. have? Very little. And most importantly, No, the amount of Mario content in Smash is NOT in any way significantly more than any other series's content in Smash, and Mario does not have special Smash treatment in any way. Nintendo never marketed it as a Mario game, never treated it as such, never showed a clear preference towards Mario in the Smash games themselves, and if it ever seems like it did, please remember just how big the greater Mario franchise is as a whole. The only time that Mario could have maybe almost kind-of sort-of had a bigger promise was in the first Smash installment, but that's it. Heck, was Smash ever listed on any Mario-series guidebooks (I.e., on ESMB or something else)? I don't know, but I honestly doubt so. TL, DR; If we wanted Smash as a full crossover, we wouldn't have given it special status back then. If we don't want inconsistency by making the fighters into a list page, we wouldn't have merged every* other aspect into a list page. And if we are worried about a loss of information from this proposal, it's most likely just a worry as condensing information & linking to SmashWiki does not do that to such a significant degree. Strong support, I just want this nonsense to end.
 * 8) Per all.
 * 9) Per all, pretty please.
 * 10) Per all.
 * 11) I originally wanted to back out of this one, but when it started I was sort of leaning towards support and following Somethingone's vote reasoning I've decided to put a support vote here too. As lomg as we don't lose too much information, then I'm ok with this.
 * 12) This isn't where I would have started, but per my horrible monster of a comment on a past discussion,
 * 13) Per all.
 * 14) Per proposal. The Smash Bros. series, which doesn't have much of original content of its own, has the foundational basis on which content from the other series, Mario included, is built.

Oppose

 * 1) Absoutely no. We have had many proposals to restrictSmash Bros. information that failed and this would be one of the most serious. The game is a crossover, so we have to cover all the relevant information that a crossover game must have. At least with other instances, those were just gameplay mechanics or related to non-playable characters. This is merely giving the game a guest appearance role, which would go against what we stood on the games for years. This proposal also fails to mention the Subspace Emissary which has many of the characters interact (and this is why I felt merging Master Hand and other story-related bosses wasn't a good decision). I'd only really accept this if the game was considered a guest appearance but we have consistently referred to it as a crossover. I feel that these pages could be important if people want to know which characters have crossovered with the franchise at one point.
 * 2) Our stance on trimming Smash coverage has, in almost every instance, been to condense information, not cut it. This would not only completely reverse that stance, but start top down at what is pretty much the most important aspect of the series - a change like this, if it were to go through, should really start bottom up. Axing this much information on fighters, when we couldn't even get a consensus on merging the stages just a few months ago and elements of the series like trophies, stickers, and spirits are still covered in full, is a weird way to go about it and definitely too much, too fast. Aside from that, I don't think splitting this into one page per game would be the best way to do this. There's a lot of overlap between fighters, and realistically, how different is Captain Falcon across the series that we need to split that information over five pages? (Also, I'd say Samus would be worth keeping around too since she had a physical appearance in SMRPG.)
 * 3) Per all. Though I have been in favor of condensing and limiting some of the Smash Bros., but like my position on having articles for stages, I feel that fighters are important enough to have their own articles, especially when the games are considered crossover appearances. I am also not in favor of completely cutting content unless it refers to very minor aspects of the series.
 * 4) - Yeah, no. Per every individual point raised above.
 * 5) If we're gonna start violently trimming Super Smash Bros. content, I think starting at the prominent, notable and major playable characters with various crossover cameos instead of starting at trophies, Lylat Cruise convos, spirits, challenges, you name it........is horrible. Terrible prioritizing. I actually think if we're gonna reinvent the wheel and start from scratch, the playable characters and stages should be the most important things to keep.
 * 6) After thinking about for a little bit, I have to agree with the opposition here. Trimming down coverage on things like items and bosses is one thing, but these are the characters that are the most vital part about the game. This wiki covers all Mario-related crossovers. It is why we have articles for Sonic characters because they appear in the Mario & Sonic games and make up half of the cast, we can't just go around trimming content for the sake of them not being Mario characters. Ultimately, like the users above, I find this to be unnecessary.
 * 7) The main reason I'm opposing this is because I think it's inconsistent with how we handle other crossover games. While it's true that, say, Mario & Sonic has a much greater proportion of Mario content than Smash does, that doesn't change the fact that there is still a significant amount of Mario content in Smash, and the Sonic characters in Mario & Sonic that we give their own articles don't have much more to do with the Mario series than all the Smash characters, the only real difference between them being that one crossover has significantly fewer franchises involved in it than the other. If we decide to make a change like this then I think we should first revise the coverage policy as a whole, because it doesn't seem logical to me to merge the Smash cast into Lists of Super Smash Bros. fighters without also having List of Sonic the Hedgehog characters in Mario & Sonic, List of Dragon Quest characters in Fortune Street, etc. Also, merging fighters when every stage is still split even after a somewhat recent failed merge proposal for them is kind of ridiculous.
 * 8) Per all. I've thought about the comparison to Sonic series characters in the Mario & Sonic series as well; even if Mario & Sonic is a much smaller crossover compared to Smash, both are still crossovers. If we cut/trim/lower information on Smash fighters, we'd have to do the same for characters like Tails or Shadow or Vector cause even if Mario & Sonic is just two franchises, those characters have about as much relevance to the Mario series as characters like Ness, Wii Fit Trainer or the Duck Hunt Dog do.
 * 9) Per all.

Comments
@Wikiboy10, err, there's a specific statement right there in the proposal that Subspace Emissary info will be kept. 12:44, January 23, 2023 (EST)

@Waluigi Time: Where do we draw a line between condensation and removal of information? What about the former bonuses pages: that information was outright removed due to being irrelevant and having equivalent coverage on the Smash Wiki. The amount of detail given to each character's special move set is similarly completely out of line with this website's scope and is being better handled on the other wiki. 13:01, January 23, 2023 (EST)
 * It seems to me that anything we have cut has always been the nitty-gritty minor elements of the series. Besides fighters, we still cover all the available information on the stages, items (including Assist Trophies and Pokemon), bosses, side modes, and the collectibles I mentioned, even for what's been merged to list pages. Setting aside my own opinions on Smash coverage, I just don't think starting by gutting the most important element of the series is a good idea when all of that is still on the table. There's a reason why the successful Smash coverage proposals have been done gradually, and why the ones that have tried to do too much at once failed. -- 13:20, January 23, 2023 (EST)
 * And wouldn't the in-depth explanations that this wiki currently provides for each character's moveset be well beyond reasonable? Smash Bros. items, Assist Trophies, and assist Pokemon aren't nearly comparable to fighters in gameplay role; there's only so much you can write about these, and their current coverage already lays down the gist for each. Recurring side modes like Break the Targets and Home Run should be broken up and merged with their relevant game articles (keep in mind that subjects like Mob Smash and Classic Mode are currently handled in this way, and that works well enough), and the collectible lists continue to have hosts of irrelevant information the likes of which this wiki should get rid of, albeit I agree the way this was attempted was not the best. In contrast to the unsuccessful proposals you mentioned, the present one pursues a very clear goal: merge fighters into game-related pages and, in the process of assuring these pages are within acceptable parameters, trim the useless and deprecated information that takes the form of detailed movesets. The alternative approach would have been to make this proposal a two-parter, where one establishes whether said information should be trimmed, and the other finally advocates merging the fighters provided the first one passes, but I think the proposal in its current form serves to accelerate the process whilst providing two simple options. With all that said, I do operate under the assumption that, given the two-part proposal situation, there would have been a sizeable overlap between the people who would support one and the people who would support the other, as would be the case with the opposition. 16:14, January 23, 2023 (EST)
 * I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on what's "reasonable" to cover then, since we have totally opposed stances here and I doubt any more back and forth would change that. -- 17:00, January 23, 2023 (EST)

@Paper Jorge: As far as the wiki is concerned, fighters and stages are just another aspect of the game, regardless of how you or anyone else perceives them. Fighters may be the game's main draw, but that essentially only plays into player preference and sympathy, and this is their only claim to coverage priority on this wiki; there otherwise exists zero ingrained, objective priority to cover one group of Smash subjects better than another. (Name one besides "characters are playable and I relate to them more than to an inanimate object".) The proposals that aimed to restrict information on stages, trophies and the whole shebang had too many options, and Smash coverage is already contentious as it is, so it's not difficult to see why these proposals had users pulling in different directions, yet those subjects should definitely be revisited especially if this proposal, by a miracle, succeeds. 08:54, January 24, 2023 (EST)

Unlike crossovers where Mario franchise makes up a very large portion of the game, such as Sonic or Fortune Street, Smash should be covered as a guest appearance. There is no reason why a series with countless franchises put together should be covered in full. Mario elements deserve pages, I don't understand why we should bother with the rest. Spectrogram (talk) 14:06, January 24, 2023 (EST)
 * Not sure if treating Smash as a guest appearance is optimal, but I agree on maintaining a differentiation between it and other crossover situations. Hewer, respectfully, did you even read the coverage policy before bringing it up? It says right there that Smash Bros. is an exceptional type of crossover, as it's marketed as "many franchises coming together" rather than "Mario and then something else". Thus, quote, "pages for the [Smash] series are decided on a more particular basis", different from the treatment of other crossover titles. Your vote, and Killer Moth's for that matter, are based on wrong premises. 14:20, January 24, 2023 (EST)
 * You misunderstood my point (though it is my fault for not explaining it better). "should be covered as a guest appearance" does not imply "should be classified as a guest appearance". Smash Bros. as a crossover should only have in-depth (key word is in-depth, lists are a perfectly fine compromise) coverage of Mario elements and the rest is unneeded. I know coverage policy well, thanks. Spectrogram (talk) 14:28, January 24, 2023 (EST)
 * I was addressing Hewer with the part of my message that concerned the policy, not you. 14:44, January 24, 2023 (EST)
 * I apologize for being an idiot. Spectrogram (talk) 15:11, January 24, 2023 (EST)
 * Ok, sorry for having worded my vote badly, but what I was trying to say is that if we're doing things like this to our Smash coverage I think we should first revise the coverage policy as a whole because I don't think it's consistent to give subjects only related to Mario via Smash less importance on the wiki than subjects only related to Mario via other crossovers. For example, Sticks the Badger and Incineroar really have the same amount of relevance to Mario as each other, both being characters we only cover because they were playable in crossovers with a lot of Mario content, and I don't think the proportion of Mario content in each crossover is a good reason to treat these otherwise virtually identical cases differently to each other. Yes, there are a lot more other franchises in Smash than in those smaller crossovers, but there is still a very large amount of Mario content in Smash probably comparable to the amount in those other crossovers even if the proportion may be very different. I'm aware the coverage policy says Smash is something of a special case but I personally don't think that exception should be taken to this much of an extreme in trying to have our cake and eat it too. I've reworded parts of my vote to hopefully be more clear. 18:11, January 24, 2023 (EST)
 * You excuse yourself for having worded your vote badly, then proceed to restate the very same wrong premise you went with originally. The policy already makes a distinction between Smash and crossovers like Mario & Sonic, and that's because, again, Smash isn't billed as "Mario + other franchises", which would give it the privileges of a Mario game proper, it's "this, and this, and this franchise all coming together (and Mario just happens to be there)", something that hasn't actually been tried in any other Nintendo propriety. [Late Edit: And as Somethingone states, Smash Bros. is more of a franchise of its own, it isn’t claimed by any one franchise represented in it; heck, the first game wasn’t even originally conceived with an all-star Nintendo cast.] No, the argument that Mario is disproportionally represented doesn't hold water, that's yet another metric powered by subjectivity and is easily dispelled by the aforementioned fact. Besides, whether the changes proposed here should extend to coverage of the other crossover games is up for another discussion, not this one, because it would entail an overhaul of policies that currently operate separate from each other. The fact that the opposition knowingly ignores this just reeks of bad faith. 15:08, January 26, 2023 (EST)
 * The part of my vote I worded badly is when I originally said that the proposal was inconsistent with the coverage policy, when what I'm really trying to say is that I don't think the exception Smash has should be taken this far (i.e. I think the coverage policy should be changed if this were to pass). I'm aware this proposal isn't technically against the policy, but again I reiterate that the Sonic characters in Mario & Sonic or Dragon Quest characters in Fortune Street have about the same relevance to Mario as the crossover characters in Smash, all of them being characters we only cover because they were in games with lots of Mario stuff in them and that are otherwise just as irrelevant to the series as each other. I never said that Mario is 'disproportionally represented' in Smash (in fact I specifically argued against the proportion being prioritised in importance over the amount), I'm just saying that there's a lot of Mario stuff in Smash even though it isn't a Mario game itself in a similar fashion to, say, Fortune Street. I'm aware I'm discussing potentially overhauling policies, that's because I think it's necessary to have that discussion first before deciding to make a change like this due to the large inconsistency it would cause in our crossover coverage. Basically, I don't think we should be merging the Smash fighters into lists without also doing the same for other crossover characters. I'm also not quite sure how exactly my argument is a 'wrong premise' or 'reeks of bad faith'. 08:47, January 27, 2023 (EST)
 * On the one hand, you claim that Mario's disproportionate representation is not your argument, but then you make a case for Mario being prominent enough in Smash that the other fighters represented within deserve an equal type of coverage. These two stances are contradictory. I apologise if this response seems austere, or if I'm simply too obtuse, but I'm genuinely perplexed as to what you're trying to get at. 14:29, January 27, 2023 (EST)
 * I'm saying that because Mario plays a big part in Smash (not necessarily a bigger part than all the other series, but still undeniably a big part), the other crossover characters and series in Smash are no more Mario-relevant than those in smaller crossover games. I don't think Mario's representation in Smash is disproportionate and I recognise that it's considered equal in importance to the other series in Smash, but ultimately I don't think that changes my argument much. Similarly, even though games like Mario & Sonic have a much greater proportion of Mario representation than Smash, I'd say my argument stands because that doesn't make the crossover characters they feature any more relevant to Mario. 15:27, January 27, 2023 (EST)

*I will say one criticism to the proposer though; if you are going to merge the fighters, then you reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally should have done the same with the stages as well, as they have the same treatment as fighters but a lower degree of importance. I still support this proposal, but if it passes it means that this wiki will be treated inanimate, generic floors with a 3D background as more important than the characters you play as, which I guess is kind of a thing this wiki has as a whole for any game. 17:21, January 26, 2023 (EST)
 * A similar proposal will be made to account for the stages, provided this one passes. Playable characters don’t have any perceived importance over stages; both of these groups are gameplay features added consciously and with a clear goal. Obviously, in game design, you have to establish a hierarchy between the player and the elements in their environment, but that has no bearing on the fashion these subjects are documented on a wiki at all. 21:14, January 26, 2023 (EST)

I would like to point out that opposition is right that spirits, trophies and stickers should be trimmed. Spectrogram (talk) 01:34, January 27, 2023 (EST)

There are many arguments here, so let me explain my stance on this. We have crossover games, guest appearance games, and cameo games. The crossover games are stuff where the whole point is that these franchises are interacting with each other. For example, Mario & Sonic are about the Mario and Sonic characters competing at the Olympics. That's a crossover. Mario characters team up with the Rabbids. Another crossover. Calling those guest appearances would severely downplay how much of a significant role these other characters have. Guest appearances are when Mario elements have a prominent role in the game's story or have one of them as a playable character. The NBA game is an excellent example since that game does not advertise itself as a crossover. Also, while Nintendo Land does try to reference various Nintendo franchises, the games are primarily self-contained and don't crossover with each other. Link's Awakening only gets the article because Wart plays a minor role in the game's plot. The same case for the Starfy article for Wario. Cameo games are when games where that are more subtle or are just minor gags, if anything. The Zelda series occasionally likes to reuse enemies such as Chain Chomps and Lakitus, but those are more like fun nods than serious significant crossovers. The reason for Link's Awakening was because of Wart, who has retroactively become part of the franchise. LEGO City Undercover has tons of Mario-related cameos in the game, but many are just gags. The closest thing to the characters are the Mario enemies.

Super Smash Bros. is very tricky because it's hard to fit into any of those categories. Not a cameo game because the Mario characters play a significant role in it. Calling it a guest appearance would also be wrong because the games are treated as crossover games with Nintendo characters fighting. Starting with Ultimate, it's become a general crossover game, not just Nintendo. Calling it a crossover is thorny because, while Nintendo treats them as crossovers, there are all on the same level. Ultimately (no pun intended), you'd have to reach a compromise. Not a cameo game, more than just a guest appearance, kind of a crossover. So here's the thing. It's a crossover franchise, but barely. It meets just the bare minimum for such a qualifier. If there is just barely enough to qualify, that's good enough for me.

The pages serve as a helpful tool for people to know what non-Mario character has a role in the franchise. Remember that Amiibo support for the Smash figures is a thing in multiple Mario games. Sure, it's just minor stuff (I'm not for giving Hello Kitty an article) but historically interesting to document. Also, to Somethingone, the Smash games are indeed mentioned in Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia. Wikiboy10 (talk) 13:37, January 27, 2023 (EST)
 * I'm not convinced this wiki should cover all of these characters in full. This is why we attempt to merge them, not outright delete them. I'm yet to see a good arguement why this specific NIWA wiki should cover it all. Spectrogram (talk) 13:58, January 27, 2023 (EST)
 * First off, please try to stick more to the proposal's topic. Coverage policy for crossovers in general is not what's addressed here. This is an advisory for everyone here. Secondly, with the last paragraph, you're seemingly losing track of the proposal itself. The proposal doesn't put any non-Mario Smash info at risk of being completely eviscerated from the wiki, it just argues containing the info differently while trimming and condensing it at specific points--something that's already been done with items and bosses. 14:29, January 27, 2023 (EST)

I'd like to ask the supporters a question specifically regarding the organizational method proposed here, which is to merge the fighters into separate lists by game. What this means is that, with the exception of Ultimate newcomers, the information on them will be split up and scattered across anywhere from 2-5 pages, depending on the character. The Ultimate list would not go into detail repeating details that are unchanged from Sm4sh, or any other comparable situation - the example provided actually shows this with Ness, merely saying that he is "mostly unchanged from the previous Super Smash Bros. titles" while providing no help to the reader to actually find that information. Keep in mind that on a surface level, Ness has pretty much remained unchanged since Melee, besides getting a Final Smash in Brawl, and still has a lot of elements retained from the original 64 game. So if you want to find out what Ness is like in Ultimate, the page for that game is actually pretty useless, and you instead have to track down that information split across three other pages (Sm4sh muddying the waters by being an extra page that's not very useful here), trying to piece together which information still applies, instead of simply being able to scroll.

Is this actually a setup you would find ideal and helpful for readers, or are at least some of you just caught up in the idea of less Smash content? Whether you think the fighters deserve any coverage isn't important here, as this proposal does not remove that coverage. It's still going to be here, so it should be organized as best as we can. Even if I were supportive of trimming Smash, I don't think I could support this. I would sooner support keeping all the information on each character in one place, whether that's accomplished through "List of fighters introduced in X" pages for each game (a subtle change, but one that would improve this a lot), or just all fighters being merged to one page for the entire series.

Also, @Koopa con Carne, are you open to pulling Samus out of this, at least for now? Aside from her physical appearance in SMRPG (which I'd argue is worth a page by itself), she's made multiple appearances or at least been referenced in several Mario and Mario-adjacent pieces of media, and I think she has enough history with the franchise to at least not immediately be tossed into this as a package deal. Nevermind it's too late to edit the proposal -- 13:58, January 27, 2023 (EST)
 * Wouldn't it be too late to edit the proposal? Also, I like the idea of creating lists of characters based on the game they were introduced in. Spectrogram (talk) 14:06, January 27, 2023 (EST)
 * This issue is addressed in the proposal; "in cases where information on a fighter is split between lists, their current article is turned into a disambig page for their list entries (e.g., for Ness, it'll be "For information on Ness in the Super Smash Bros. series, see: List of Super Smash Bros. fighters § Ness; List of Super Smash Bros. Melee fighters § Ness etc.") For fighters who have only appeared in one Smash game, their current article is turned into a simple redirect to their respective section.". If that's not enough, we can easily put a "see also" hyperlink above each section of a fighter that appeared in multiple Smash games that links back to their disambiguation page, where readers can then go to their information in other Smash games.
 * Also for the record, I am not "caught up in the idea of less Smash content", I am caught up in how inconsistent and inertic this wiki is with how it treats Smash coverage. Had the original "merge items and bosses into lists" proposals failed, I would have been fine if a proposal came out to expand our view on Smash coverage. But those passed, and so we should be consistent in that decision by applying it to all aspects of the series instead of picking and choosing which aspects we deem "more notable" than others. 14:38, January 27, 2023 (EST)
 * I don't really see the disambiguation page as a solution here, nor do I think adding see also would help much. The issue is, again, that information on one subject will be scattered across as many as five pages, which is especially bad when you're talking about Smash fighters, as each game builds upon the previous installments with them, and the pages even say this. Simply having links doesn't tell readers where to actually find anything specific that they're looking for, it just reduces the time it takes to find it. It's a band-aid fix that makes an inconvenient situation for readers slightly less inconvenient - but why should we be doing that at all when there are other ways to cover it that are much more convenient and don't send readers on a wild goose chase across multiple pages just because a page that they thought was about a specific game tells them very little about what is actually in that game? (Also, if we want to talk consistency, how is splitting up the fighters across multiple pages like this consistent with any other Smash lists so far?) -- 14:48, January 27, 2023 (EST)
 * @Waluigi Time, I'm fond of your idea to organise fighters by debut Smash game, and support it wholeheartedly. I reckon this would involve considerably smaller and more digestible lists than what's proposed here, in addition to having better organisation. As it's already been said, though, it's too late to edit the proposal. Unless it's possible to change the course of action by having enough of the current supporters plead for it here in the comments, a follow-up proposal should take care of it--all provided this one passes, of course. As for Samus' appearances in the Mario franchise, most of them are squarely cameos (with Samus Doll already having a page of its own), and the one in SMRPG also seems like a cameo appearance more than anything, but it's probably best if there's a separate discussion on this. @Somethingone, what WT suggested would be more efficient than disambig pages, as you'd keep the continuity of information on each character on one page. 15:05, January 27, 2023 (EST)
 * Named NPCs policy Spectrogram (talk) 15:18, January 27, 2023 (EST)
 * I can agree to organizing the lists by debut game instead of splitting the info itself across multiple pages, that I can whole-heartedly agree on. I must have misread Waluigi Time's comment. 15:21, January 27, 2023 (EST)
 * I don't think much can be done about it now, so the proposal would have to run its course and then depending on the outcome, either a new proposal or counterproposal would be made. I don't think this would be viable for an admin cancellation at this point, but I could be wrong. (I suppose if this were to pass, the responsibility of enacting the changes would fall to you, so you could just put it off until enough time passed to be able to do the new proposal.) -- 15:20, January 27, 2023 (EST)
 * Let it be known that I still support the principle of merging non-Mario Smash subjects by appropriate criteria, and that I do not wish to cancel or nullify this proposal. 15:25, January 27, 2023 (EST)
 * On the other hand, if this proposal passes, four weeks isn't a long time, and overall this proposal is perfectly fine. Spectrogram (talk) 15:28, January 27, 2023 (EST)

I have thought about this proposal a lot, and I will say that I think that I would be more willing to consider supporting if it was organized the way that Waluigi Time suggested above. While merging character articles goes further than I personally prefer, I do understand the reasoning, but I would like it to be done in a way that is actually convenient for readers. I think one main thing that doesn't really sit right with me about the proposal is the fact that merging characters is being considered before smaller things like trophy, sticker, and spirit lists, as well as some other things such as bonus stages and challenges (Snag the Trophies!, Race to the Finish! (minigame)). -- 18:18, January 27, 2023 (EST)
 * I'm sorry if it seems like I'm annoyingly repeating myself, but--to address the latter part of your comment as well as some other comments made in the meantime--I never had any regard for any preconceived "priority" these fighters have over other elements, hence why I took the liberty to "jump" straight to fighters. They're simply just another set of things with attributable gameplay roles. I am still waiting for someone to explain in what manner does this priority operate, other than the fact that these fighters are playable (which doesn't change anything, Dixie Kong has the same tier of coverage as Pebble despite one being playable and another being a borderline joke item) and are more relatable than an object (subjective criterion). 18:35, January 27, 2023 (EST)

"yet nobody batted an eye when we suddenly stopped covering Smash information in full on Mario's own article without any prior discussion?"
Just to clarify, the information I cut wasn't because it was Smash Bros. coverage creep. I was in the process of cutting down excessive plot details in the Mario page (which is huge and we need to split off the history section at some point, sooner the better imo, which I did bring up) and I did exactly that to this section. I redirected to SmashWiki's page because it seemed like the best place for readers to see Mario's role in the Subspce Emissary. Sure, I could redirect it to a section in Brawl's main page or a related article on MarioWiki if not that, but then you'll have a lot of information iirelevant to the character's role in the plot, so I settled on SmashWiki's page. 18:33, January 27, 2023 (EST)

Merge "Yoshi (platform series)" and "Yoshi (puzzle series)" into "Yoshi (franchise)"
My last proposal has been declined, so Hewer is right—a better idea will be to just merge both the "Yoshi (platform series)" and "Yoshi (puzzle series)" articles with the main "Yoshi (franchise)" article since the former is quite unclearly defined and movinf the latter to "Yoshi (series)" is a bad idea because that's easily confused with "Yoshi (franchise)".

Proposer: Deadline: February 2, 2023, 23:59 GMT

Merge

 * 1) Per proposal
 * 2) I wasn't originally thinking about merging the puzzle series too (my argument quoted in the proposal was a reason not to move it as was proposed before and not an argument for merging it), but now that I think about it, it does make sense to merge both of these because they aren't clearly defined and for the most part seem to just be standalone games that happen to share a genre, whereas we usually only split series with games that have an official or clearly indicated connection beyond that.

Miscellaneous
None at the moment.