The 'Shroom:Issue LXVII/Retro Feature

Retro Feature by

    First article: Fake TV, Issue XXIII Last article: Random Image of the Month, Issue LXII  Sections Written: Main/Staff: 20 Fake News: 97 Music & Art: 12 Pipe Plaza: 15 TOTAL: 144 Positions held: Fake News Director, Editor-in-Chief, Statistics Manager

HI, readers! I'm your reptilian Statistics Manager, Tucayo, and welcome to another installment of Retro Feature. This time, I'll be changing things up and bringing you a slightly less-retro contributor. He actually last wrote for us some months ago, but his work dates back to 2009, when we was a major force in helping us overcome what has been our worse writers' drought.

Let's take a quick look back at what 2008 was like for the Super Mario Wiki and its community. 2008 was a hard time for the wiki, and it was reflected in the other aspects of the community, such as The 'Shroom, where we were really struggling due to the lack of writers and the decreasing quality of the newsletter. But the sub-team that suffered the most was Fake News, without a doubt. The original Sub-Team disappeared for almost half a year, being absent from issues XIX-XXII. , who directed the last issue before that period, left his job as FN Director. After Stoob left, (the subject of last month’s Retro Feature) was brought to try and release the next 3 editions of the Fake News, but due to the lack of writers, those editions were never released. After 3Dejong, Stoob returned once again for the last issue of 's term, but no Fake News were published. Many of our readers were disappointed by this fact, but one particular reader, , went on to create his own Fake News, called the "Real" Fake News. He hosted them on his userpage and delivered them to various user talks (the modern day equivalent of a newspaper boy). After some issues of the "Real" Fake News, Ralphfan contacted Stooben (who had recently been elected Director) and myself to solicit the long-gone job of Editor-in-Chief. Since the EiC job no longer existed, he applied for the Fake News team, which made a modest return in Issue XXIII. But the section that took the spotlight was Ralphfan's incredibly detailed Fake TV section, where he developed a full soccer tournament among the characters of the Marioverse. Ralphfan quickly stepped it up, and wrote 7 sections for next month's Fake News (he was the only writer), including one of the first events The 'Shroom had, which was a Match Game. Over the course of his first 5 issues, Ralphfan got past the 30 sections mark (the fastest writer to do so), and so made it to Fake News Director in just his 4th issue as a writer.

And here is where I am supposed to tell you about all the sections the user in review wrote, but I won’t do it this time, because, over the course of 23 issues, Ralphfan basically wrote every Fake News section, bringing his Fake News sections total to 97, which for a long time was the record for most Sub-Team sections. But not only did he contribute to the Fake News, he also has a good number of Main, Music & Art and Pipe Plaza articles, his most recent one being Random Image of the Month in May 2012. He also co-wrote with me what has to be one of my favorite sections ever, if I’m allowed to say so, the 2010 FIFA World Cup Recap. As you can see, Ralphfan was a hard working fella, and he proved that by creating the Writer History spreadsheet and managing it for over a year. He also held the Editor in Chief position for one month, after resigned and before  was elected.

But his hard work wasn't the only thing that characterized Ralphfan. A major incident in chat during August 2009 put Ralphfan on the bad side of many chat users. This incident led to the de-affiliation of #mariowiki as the official Super Mario Wiki chat. Moving to the forum, Ralphfan was banned in 2010 for trolling, which led him to not be able to direct the Fake News for Issue XXXVII, leaving that job to He was warned by the Core Staff, but that wasn't the last time Ralphfan would get into trouble. After 's retirement from the Super Mario Wiki in 2009, Ralphfan became the Mario Awards Director. He led the 2010 ceremony, which ended in the infamous coup d’etat where Ralphfan took over the Mario Awards accounts and its chatroom. Despite the takeover, Ralphfan's position as Awards Director wasn't questioned and he directed the 2011 ceremony, which went on swiftly, but the same thing can't be said about the preparation for the 2012 ceremony. Ralphfan started as director once again, but his attitude quickly changed into a directorial one, overruling majority votes, ruling by his own law and trying to steer voting in his favor. This led Ralphfan to being fired from the Awards Committee and the 'Shroom Core Staff, where he had worked for nearly 3 years. He stayed as a writer for a couple of months but soon-after resigned.

During his time in The 'Shroom, he won a Golden Luigi, a Golden Toad and placed third on the Favorite Writer and Favorite Veteran Writer awards on 2010 and 2011, respectively.

He has written so many sections that it was hard to pick one, so I’ll be showing you the Ultimate Character Tournament he introduced in September 2009. This was a massive event that got over 56,000 votes and ran through August 2010. 222 characters from all over the Nintendo series entered, but only one came out triumphant. Who was it? Take a look at how the event developed and how the voting went:

{| border="1px solid black"

=Welcome= Welcome to the 1st annual Ultimate Character Tournament! I'm Ralphfan, and I'll be your host. What is the tournament? It's a series of polls in a bracket to determine the best character from the Mario, Sonic, Kirby, DK, Zelda, Banjo, and Conker games! Right now, we're in the sixth round, and you can vote in the polls listed below. Meetings were held in #mwUCT, which can be accessed, on Userpedia, Darkmyst, Mibbit, mIRC, PJIRC, Chatzilla, or etc. We are also on the forum !

 Click here to see the bracket

=Meetings=

Meeting 1
 SUMMARY 

SMB and I covered the Banjo and Conker series with help from MG1 and SLNO.

Agenda
We determined a schedule:
 * 9/16: Conker and Banjo
 * 9/23: Zelda and DK
 * 9/30: Sonic and Kirby
 * 10/7 - ?: Mario

Mario might take a long time.

Entrants
14 Conker and 7 Banjo characters were accepted, and 4 more from Conker are on the bubble:
 * Jolly Roger
 * Gobi
 * Cheato
 * Roysten

Meeting 2
 SUMMARY  We covered. SMB missed a lot because of dinner, Tucky was there for most of the meeting, SLNO was logged on but inactive, Castle Toad was there towards the end, and MG1 was there throughout. We didn't have time for DK, plus I pinged towards the end.

Agenda
New schedule:
 * 9/16: Conker and Banjo
 * 9/23: Zelda
 * 9/30: DK
 * 10/7: Sonic
 * 10/14: Kirby
 * 10/21 - ?: Mario

Entrants
We added 18 Zelda characters, and two others are on the bubble:
 * Agahnim
 * Evil Wizard

Meeting 3
 SUMMARY  We covered DK. SMB was there for the last half-hour because of dinner, but MG1 was able to cover, and Tucky was able to drop by.

Agenda

 * 9/16: Conker and Banjo
 * 9/23: Zelda
 * 9/30: DK
 * 10/7: Sonic
 * 10/14: Kirby
 * 10/21 - ?: Mario

Entrants
We added 18 more, and put 6 on the bubble:
 * Bjorn
 * Kiddy Kong
 * Swanky Kong
 * Kalypso
 * Kutlass

Meeting 4
 SUMMARY  We covered Sonic. SMB helped out, as did MG1, Turboo, Noahp89, and Tehchomps. Tucayo was probably watching the Yankees-Twins game.

Agenda

 * 9/16: Conker and Banjo
 * 9/23: Zelda
 * 9/30: DK
 * 10/7: Sonic
 * 10/14: Kirby
 * 10/21 - ?: Mario

Entrants
We added another 17, and put one on the bubble:
 * Super Sonic

Meeting 5
 SUMMARY  We covered Kirby. SMB was my only assistant, but he did a great job!

Agenda

 * 9/16: Conker and Banjo
 * 9/23: Zelda
 * 9/30: DK
 * 10/7: Sonic
 * 10/14: Kirby
 * 10/21 - ?: Mario

Entrants
We added 11 characters and 0 maybes.

Meeting 6
 SUMMARY  We began Super Mario and got about halfway through because we ran long. We got through every game from Jumpman to SMRPG. We're going in chronological order by when the games were released. MG1 was there for most of the meeting; Tehchomps was very active as well; Packy was there for a good chunk of time; SMB, SLNO, and Yoshario also pitched in. Hopefully, we'll finish Mario next week, but I have the feeling it will go into November 4th's meeting.

Agenda

 * 9/16: Conker and Banjo
 * 9/23: Zelda
 * 9/30: DK
 * 10/7: Sonic
 * 10/14: Kirby
 * 10/21 - 11/4?: Mario

We hope to finish next week, but it'll probably run through the start of the November 4th meeting.

Entrants
We added 46 more characters and 0 maybes.

Meeting 7
 SUMMARY  We finished the Mario series. SMB was there, but busy, SLNO was there for a while, and Tucayo dropped by for a while, and Tehchomps was there for a bit.

Agenda

 * 9/16: Conker and Banjo
 * 9/23: Zelda
 * 9/30: DK
 * 10/7: Sonic
 * 10/14: Kirby
 * 10/21 - 10/28: Mario
 * 11/4 - ?: Brawl, Seeding, and Bracket

Entrants
We added another 63 characters for a total of 109 from the Mario series and 194 total.

Meeting 8
 SUMMARY  We did final touch-ups, covered SSB, and began seeding, but we didn't get much done, due to the World Series and people not really wanting to pay attention. However, I was able to work with a few users during the week, so we were able to make progress nonetheless. For seeding, we have 222 characters. To narrow it down to 128, we will need to eliminate 94 of them. Therefore, 34 of the entrants are being given first-round byes and will advance directly to the second round. The next 94 will be matched up against the bottom 94.

Agenda
Continue seeding and fill out bracket.

Entrants
We added 28 characters, for a final? (unintentional) count of 222. I was going for something between 128 and 256, so it worked out well.

Meeting 9
We worked on the second tier of seeding. SLNO was there for a bit; Tucky and MG1 were the major contributors. We didn't add any new characters, but MG1 suggested the SMG bosses; you can now vote whether to include them or not.

Meeting 10
MG1, SMB, and SLNO helped nearly round out the second tier of seeding in a short meeting. It looks like the SMG bosses are going to pass; the poll will close at the start of the next meeting.

Meeting 11
MG1, SMB, Noah, and Tucky finished out the seeding groups. Since the Galaxy bosses pass, we finished with 231 characters. We're going to organize them into a bracket and set up dates beginning next week.

Meeting 12
MG1, SMB, Tucky, SLNO, and Noah helped organize the bracket. Because of the number of characters, 25 characters get byes, or free passes, to the second round. They have been placed throughout the bracket. We plan to open the first round of the tournament on January 6th or 13th.

=Info= The characters The bracket

=Dates= Here are the dates: That event was a blast; I hope you enjoyed seeing how it developed. Next month I’ll be bringing you the work of former Director, ! So be sure to read us next month. BYE!
 * Round 1: 1/7-1/27
 * Round 2: 1/28-2/24
 * Round 3: 2/25-3/24
 * Round 4: 3/25-4/28
 * Round 5: 4/29-5/26
 * Round 6: 5/27-6/29
 * Round 7: 7/4-7/29
 * Round 8: 7/30-8/28
 * }