MarioWiki:Proposals

Establish a guideline for citing archived web pages
I've made a previous proposal about this in the past, but it was unnecessarily complicated. To put this as simply as possible, many online web pages are very likely to be taken down at some point, and many already have; a user may come across an online source which is no longer on the live web, and only exists on an online, the largest of which is the Wayback Machine.

To establish consistency when citing pages from these web archives, a guideline should be listed on Citations, below the template for citing live websites. This is what I believe is the best style to follow for such citations: cite the original, unmodified link to a page as usual, then include a statement in parentheses that lists the page as being archived, with a link to where the web archive hosts the page, a timestamp, and finally, the web archive which was sourced. Below is a template of such a citation (the link to the archived page would be accessed by the word "Archived"):

"Author Name (January 1, 2000). . Publisher. Retrieved January 1, 2023. ( June 1, 2022, 00:00:01 UTC via Web Archive.)"

As an example, the list of rumors and urban legends about Mario already uses this style for the majority of its web page citations. Here is an example from that page:

"Nintendo (1985). Super Mario Bros. Instruction Booklet. Retrieved July 8, 2021. (Archived March 9, 2021, 10:01:59 UTC via Wayback Machine.)"

A note should also be added to MarioWiki:Citations that the precise timestamp for a page from the Wayback Machine, the most common web archive source, can be found by examining the date in the URL; for the above example, 20210309100159 can be read as 2021-03-09 10:01:59, and should be formatted as March 9, 2021, 10:01:59 UTC.

To clarify the proposal, this should not be considered a strict rule that must be followed, nor a necessity for every citation of a web page, but simply as a guideline to follow in case a page has already been taken down, or if a link to an archived version of a page is being added to a citation.

Proposer: Deadline: June 1, 2023, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Per proposal.
 * 2) Per proposal.
 * 3) Per everyone, as users might think they’re going into an active link when really they are led into a 404’d link
 * 4) Per all. Preservation is extremely important, and it'd seriously help if we pointed to archives when applicable.
 * 5) This is a great way to combat link rot and I strongly encourage more regular usage of archived pages regardless.
 * 6) Per all.
 * 7) Yes, please.
 * 8) Per all.
 * 9) Per all.
 * 10) per all
 * 11) let’s git archivin’ now
 * 12) Per all.

Comments
I am sick of these “active” links that are really dead or 404 links. This proposal acknowledges said statement of mine. 17:53, May 18, 2023 (EDT)

@ThePowerPlayer Did you give this a 2-week deadline? 'Cause that's for talk page proposals only, normal proposals get one week and so this proposal should end today. SmokedChili (talk) 07:51, May 24, 2023 (EDT)
 * You're very wrong. To quote rule 3, "except for writing guidelines and talk page proposals, which run for two weeks". Spectrogram (talk) 07:59, May 24, 2023 (EDT)
 * Right, that exception escaped my notice. SmokedChili (talk) 08:41, May 24, 2023 (EDT)

Something worth noting: In the case of Flipnote Hatena stuff specifically, the Internet Archive will not do, as they're blacklisted from the Wayback Machine. Instead, however, someone made an external archive of Flipnote Hatena flipnotes called the Sudomemo archive. We've used it before on the Yoichi Kotabe article for his Mario 25th Anniversary flipnote, and nobody seems to object to that one; thusly, should we include something about "if trying to link an old Flipnote Studio flipnote, you may also use the Sudomemo archive"? 13:57, May 25, 2023 (EDT)

Establish a standard for long course listings in articles for characters/enemies/items/etc.
"Truck Moving cargo trucks appear on GCN Mushroom Bridge. Stationary cargo trucks appear on the road in GCN Mushroom Bridge R, GCN Mushroom Bridge R/T, New York Minute T, New York Minute 4T, and Bangkok Rush; they also appear on the sidelines in Tokyo Blur 3, Tokyo Blur 4, New York Minute 3, New York Minute B, Los Angeles Laps, Los Angeles Laps 3, Bangkok Rush, and Bangkok Rush 2, as well as in these courses' R, T, and R/T variants where applicable."

The number of courses listed in this paragraph was getting so wild that I had to condense it with the "as well as in these courses' variants" statement. Problem is, this sacrifices specificity. The proposal aims to introduce a guideline whereby lists of this ilk are more digestibly integrated in prose writing. To this end, I propose two options, each based on a format already used on some articles; the preferred format will be applied when the amount of courses listed is 7 or higher.

Option 1: Bullet-point lists

The subject's general description for a particular game is followed by a bulleted list of courses in said game, like so: Slippa

Slippas appear in fifteen levels:


 * Jungle Jaunt
 * Freezing Fun
 * Simian Swing
 * Deck Trek
 * Tire Trail
 * Riggin' Rumble
 * Tricky Temple
 * Snake Charmer's Challenge
 * Mountain Mayhem
 * Spiky Tire Trail
 * Kong Krazy
 * Construction Site Fight
 * Fast Barrel Blast
 * Skyscraper Caper
 * Oil Drum Slum

If a subject displays different traits across one game, such as having different colours or behaviours, and these traits are described on one article as opposed to being split between articles (e.g. Bandits/Coin Bandits in Yoshi's Island), each course in the list is followed in brackets by whatever variations of this enemy appear in the course. In other words, if a subject has traits X, Y, and Z across levels A, B, C, D etc. in a game, then the level list has the following form:
 * Level A (X variation)
 * Level B (Y variation)
 * Level C (X variation, Z variation)
 * Level D (X variation, Y variation) and so on, and so forth.

Option 2: Courses show up in-line when hovering/tapping a certain phrase

When the seventh course is reached in a list, the courses listed from that point on are being integrated in a piece of hoverable text.

Maw-Ray

They are found in Piranha Plant Cove, Piranha Plant Cove 2, Piranha Plant Cove 3, GCN Daisy Cruiser,.

Notice that the phrase "and some of their variants" has a dashed underline. Putting your cursor over it (on desktop) or tapping it (on mobile) reveals these course variants.

If the number of courses slated to be included in hoverable text is too small (e.g. the seventh course is the only one left to mention), previous courses in the list can be integrated in the hoverable text at the editor's discretion.

~

Note: Neither guideline will apply where a subject's course appearances are described individually, like in the Skewer article.

Proposer: Deadline: June 8, 2023, 23:59 GMT

Option 1

 * 1) Not the biggest fan of using hover text for large swaths of important information,  I do agree with reformatting the big sentences though, and I am voting for this potion since it's
 * 2) mobile users won't be able to use the second one.

Comments
I do not see the point in standardizing it, really Spectrogram (talk) 14:09, May 25, 2023 (EDT)

New features
None at the moment.

Removals
None at the moment.

Changes
None at the moment.

Miscellaneous
None at the moment.