MarioWiki:Proposals

List of Talk Page Proposals

 * Separate Wii U audio files from the ones on the GBA (Discuss) Passed
 * Separate the Nintendo eShop paragraph from the 3DS and Wii U pages (Discuss) Passed
 * Separate the Mario Bros. stage from the Smash Bros. stage of the same name (Discuss) Passed.
 * Split from Chomp. (Discuss) Deadline: May 11, 2015, 23:59 GMT
 * Move Fire Chomp Super Mario 64 DS info over to Kuromame page or Merge the articles. (Discuss) Deadline: May 1, 2015, 23:59 GMT Extended: May 8, 2015, 23:59 GMT Extended: May 15, 2015 (GMT)
 * Split the Paper Mario boos from Big Boo into a separate article. (Discuss) Deadline: May 16, 2015, 23:59 GMT
 * Merge Parabuzzy with Para-Beetle. (Discuss) Deadline: May 19, 2015, 23:59 GMT
 * Move Swooper to Swoop. (Discuss) Deadline: May 22, 2015, 23:59 GMT

Writing Guidelines
None at the moment.

Make Template:Questionable-source
I've noticed a lot of pages with names that are technically sourced, but use unreliable sources like the Super Mario Daijiten (see: Most Wario Land enemies/bosses). Since putting a citation and marking it with refneeded could look confusing, my solution is an easy-to-understand template at the top of the page, something like this.

Proposer: Deadline: May 11, 2015 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Per my reasons stated above.

Oppose

 * 1) - It would be better to just have something like Wikipedia's "better source" template to flag iffy refs: then it could be used for situations besides just the ones affecting article titles, like how the new  template can be used for too-vague print refs.

Comments
I have another idea for the template that says something to the effect of "Some of the sources cited on this page are unreliable, replace them with better ones if possible", would that be better? Binarystep (talk) 15:54, 4 May 2015 (EDT)
 * Like a -style notice template? That idea has a bit more merit, but I feel like it's better just sticking with the system flagging the specific problems: no need to advertise twice over that we suck at citing our sources for the most part. -
 * I suppose, but refneeded implies a lack of a source, while this is more "better source needed". Binarystep (talk) 16:36, 7 May 2015 (EDT)
 * Like I said in my vote, we should just make more templates like refneeded (rather than banner notice templates) for flagging both less-than-ideal sources and broken links, hence "refneeded system". -
 * Ah, alright then. Binarystep (talk) 16:55, 7 May 2015 (EDT)

Removals
None at the moment.

Changes
None at the moment.

Stop Using the "Super Mario Daijiten" as a Source
Let me preface this by saying that the "Super Mario Daijiten (Big Dictionary)" has proved to be correct on some other occasions in the past. However, even a broken clock is right twice a day.

So, what is this "Big Dictionary"? To put it simply, it is us, but in Japanese: it's a compilation of everything in the Mario series (and the Donkey Kong, Yoshi, and Wario series) with some information about them. Naturally, this includes all of those obscure enemies from the older platformers, like Scubi, Bībī, Sutāzu, and many more, though these names were either taken from or changed to ones from the Daijiten. One immediate problem is noticeable: Japanese names are hard to search for. Names taken from Japanese sources are (supposed to be) written out not with a translation, but with the romanization, avoiding the problem of subjective translations. This also includes any special characters with macrons above them, and this results in links being difficult to use with them, for the simple reason that a very large portion of readers wouldn't be able to type these letters, and the wiki isn't able to recognize substitute letters, so "Sutazu" would not work as a link or a search term for "Sutāzu", and it's a tedious process to get to the article of relevance. There's also the point of English and Japanese names looking rather messy side-by-side, though that's mostly personal preference. Of course, these points are completely ignored if they're the only official names that we can find, and therein lies the problem.

As mentioned above, the site is basically us with a different language, and that includes the fact that it is a fan site, subject to all of the follies that editors can employ. If it doesn't explicitly display that the name is from an official source, listed here, it cannot be used since it could easily just be a made-up name. Even if other similar sites share the name with the Daijiten, if they don't have an official source, it doesn't count: they could have easily taken the name from each other, validating the name by virtue of lazy editing. Even besides that, however, there's no reason for all of the names for a certain game to be correct if a few of them turn out to be correct. For example, I've picked up the Prima guide for Yoshi's Island DS, and it turns out that most of the enemies from that game (on this wiki, at least) take their names from this guide - emphasis on most. Scorchit, originally "Zeus Guy", and Toober Guy, originally "Tube Guy", went under different names between the guide and the wiki, but since some of the other names were backed up with "is good is from book", all of them were thought to come from the book. This is faulty logic and using such a broad generalization really can't be healthy for the wiki.

While I understand that some of the conjectural names weren't very descriptive (Dōryī, for example, was "Plant"), I'd rather have a million "Birds" and "Crabs" than a name that is not only hard to link to and search for, but a name that has a good chance of being just as conjectural as the other names. Even for a site that's had a good track record, I feel like allowing the site to be used for all names is just opening the floodgates for name-related debacles, and I'd rather avoid that. Note: this proposal, if it succeeds, would involve removing all names that are currently "sourced" with the Daijiten, as well as renaming articles with those names to English variants.

Proposer: Deadline: May 14, 2015, 23:59 GMT

Remove it

 * 1) Per my proposal.
 * 2) Per proposal. Even if the site was 100% correct all the time, it's still a fan site, not an official source, and we should only go by the latter.

Do not remove it

 * 1) - It would be a waste to wholesale dismiss the Daijitan as a resource and potentially move countless pages away from legitimate names to pure conjecture (and scrap dozens if not hundreds more  entries) just because it's been wrong a few times. We're no better than them when it comes to making periodic mistakes, rampant eschewing of citations, and the occasional rogue user just making stuff up: we might as well tell people to ignore us as a resource too. It would be better to simply be transparent by citing them whenever we use them and marking those citations as less-than-ideal with a "better source" template, the same as we would with Wikipedia references or any other iffy, yet better-than-nothing references. The anti-Japanese arguments are meaningless: we will always have Japanese and other non-English names to deal with, mixed in with the made-up English names (and/or in the foreignname templates). Redirects get around the macrons without any grief for searchers or editors who don't want to bother copy and paste a macron from somewhere else for the link, and policy actually says redirects should be created for that reason: any macron-bearing pagename without a redirect is an oversight.
 * 2) Changing my vote, per Walkazo. Removing names that are possibly correct and replacing them with names we made up is a horrible idea.

Comments
As passing this proposal would mark many of our articles as conjectural titles, one strategy we could employ is to see the references of each page on the Super Mario Daijiten (if there is one). That way, we can see still use the Daijiten to indirectly get official information, which we can in turn cite. Andymii (talk) 16:44, 10 May 2015 (EDT)
 * I made the assumption that, if the Daijiten used sources, we would have used them in the first place instead of citing the Daijiten. It's a fair point to make, though, but I'm not exactly fluent enough to navigate the site, and some online translation probably won't help. Would you happen to be able to go through the site?