MarioWiki:Proposals

List of Talk Page Proposals

 * Delete Poop (Discuss) Deadline : March 9, 2014 23:59 GMT

Writing Guidelines
None at the moment.

New features
None at the moment.

Removals
None at the moment.

Change the identificator for the multiple Mario Kart courses
It is well known that there has been multiple incarnations of the same track throughout the Mario Kart series, these are the well known Mario Circuit, Bowser's Castle and Rainbow Road. Long ago those pages were splitted into the several pages in order to accomodate the different incarnations in the series, reducing the main article's lenght drastically but doing the navigation a lot more efficient (though I got to admit that ruined my plans to nominate Rainbow Road to be a FA). The only issue here is the identificator used for each page: all use the abbreviation of the origin console, i.e. Mario Circuit (GCN), Bowser's Castle (N64), Rainbow Road (SNES) (the only exception is Wii, but still applies). While this was surely done to match how retro courses are indentificated in the retro cups, these indentificators are technically breaking the fourth rule especified on the naming guideline, therefore, the identificators are useless the way they are. Having the console name is ambiguous too due to multiple incarnations of the same track appearing in a same game, thanks to retro cups again. This proposal aims to change the identificators for all those courses, and what a better way than doing it by using the name of the Mario Kart game. This means:


 * Mario Circuit (GCN) → Mario Circuit (Mario Kart: Double Dash!!)
 * Bowser's Castle (N64) → Bowser's Castle (Mario Kart 64)
 * Rainbow Road (SNES) → Rainbow Road (Super Mario Kart)

It looks neatier and more professional. Of course, tracks with numbers or an alternate name should not be affected by this. I also suggest that a breif description is added into every main page for the courses, especially the Mario Circuit one, which has a whole large section covering the numbered tracks on Super Mario Kart, but then follows with a bad-looking listing compiling the rest of the tracks, with no mention of how they are or look, not even an image is in there.

Proposer: Deadline: March 14, 2014, 23:59 GMT

Change the identificator

 * 1) - What I recommend to users is to choose this proposal.

Do nothing

 * 1) - Per Porplemontage in the comments. I also sorta think that it looks better to have nice, succinct abbreviations; like back in the day when the long, windy game names were initialized too, only here it's also rooted in the official Retro titles so it's not just an aesthetics thing anymore.
 * 2) Per Walkazo.
 * 3) Per Walkazo.

Comments
I'm pretty sure it doesn't deserve a proposal. As per the Naming Policy Part #2. You could just move it without a proposal. didn't see the b part :/

The rule you cite discourages abbreviating game names as article identifiers, and that's not what's happening with the retro courses. The identifiers used are simply the identifiers provided by Nintendo in the form of console abbreviations (as outlined in rule 2(b) in the link above). When the topic of an article appears in multiple games, the identifier tries to bridge the gap instead of just covering the first appearance. If I'm playing Mario Kart 7 and I want to find out more about this "SNES Rainbow Road" track, I'll search "SNES Rainbow Road" and when "Rainbow Road (SNES)" comes up, that makes sense. "Rainbow Road (Super Mario Kart)" is perfect for the case of Super Mario Kart, but it's less-intuitive when referring to it as a retro course. At least (SNES) applies to both cases and it doesn't require any prior knowledge to match a retro course in a game with its identifier in the article title. -- 05:54, 28 February 2014 (EST)

Species Templates for Real-World Animals
Currently, we have several articles on real-world animals, such as Bee and Pig. These articles have their own host of problems that will be dealt with in due time, but for now, I want to discuss Template:Pigs and Template:Bee. Is is because there happen to be a lot of them? Well, if that's the case, then how come dinosuars, rodents, dogs, or cats don't have templates, even though they have about the same number of them? Is it because they're more notable than the others? Regardless of the fact that notability tends to be subjective, from my point of view, neither pigs nor bees have ever been especially prominent in games.

Maybe we just haven't gotten around to creating templates for the other people yet? While creating templates for dogs, cats, rats, et al. would be consistent from a certain point of view, I don't think it's a good idea to start creating navigation templates for these real-world animals. Let me use dogs as an example: the category for dogs lists a whole bunch of things that visually resemble canines, like Fox McCloud, Arfur, Broggy, and much more. As you may have remarked, these three characters are so vastly separate from each other in pretty much every way imaginable. Creating a navigation template for them is like implying that they all have a direct connection to each other, which I just find silly. Plus, think about it from a reader's standpoint: who would read Manager Joe's article, get to the end, and think, "Man, I sure wish that I could go read about Wolf O'Donnell or Poochy with a convenient template"; from where I'm standing, I don't see that happening.

In the interest of keeping all options free, I'll leave three options: deleting the two navigation templates that we currently have (the most convenient choice), creating navigation templates for the other animals (could allow for convenience), or doing nothing (true neutrality).

Proposer: Deadline: February 28, 2014, 23:59 GMT

Delete Templates

 * 1) Per myself.
 * 2) Per proposal.
 * 3) i agree.
 * 4) Per proposal.
 * 5) There's no need to have a template for only two things that fall under one category and then ignore the rest. Per proposal.
 * 6) Meh, they're pretty useless. Better to have categories.
 * 7) Per all
 * 8) Per all.
 * 9) We can have a template, or a category, but both is pretty redundant. Plus categories are more suited for this type of thing anyway. So delete the templates.

Comments
Navigation Templates already says these sorts of templates are bad:

"if a group of species only has a few members, a template might be excessive, especially if it is only a minor assortment of species and characters. Conversely, very loose (and often large) groupings such as Fish or Undead should be saved for categories, not templates, as the need for such templates is far less than for specific species groupings like or [or ], and creating too many overlapping templates can clutter up pages."

So you don't need a proposal to delete them, really. -
 * Still, if the templates were created in the first place, there was at least someone who thought it was a good idea/it was necessary to create them. I assumed that there would be others with the same opinion

Couldn't we actually create a template for all animals and have subsections for different species?
 * Templates are supposed to have specific focuses: having all the animals lumped together would be uselessly broad. Better to just use categories. -
 * I just went through the calculations (adding the number of pages in each category for animals), and if I'm not mistaken, such a template would have close to 1500 entries. To compare, Template:LMDM has around 260 entries, Template:PMTTYD has around 330, Template:Super Mario RPG has around 450, and Template:SPM, which I believe is the largest navigation template ever, has around 510. This template would be astronomical when comparing it to templates about games. It's gonna completely dwarf any other species template that we have. Basically, way too impractical.

Also, are people allowed to just make new options in someone else's proposal?
 * "Proposals can only be rewritten or deleted by their proposer within the first three days of their creation." I'm pretty sure that counts options as well.
 * Yeah, no, random folks can't mess with others' proposals. I removed Mario7's additions. -