MarioWiki:Proposals

List of Talk Page Proposals

 * Separate Wii U audio files from the ones on the GBA (Discuss) Passed
 * Split the Paper Mario boos from Big Boo into a separate article. (Discuss) Passed
 * Decide if Porcupuffers are Cheep Cheeps (Discuss) Deadline: June 16, 2015, 23:59 GMT
 * Seperate Payday Waystation into a separate article (Discuss) Deadline: June 18, 2015, 23:59 GMT
 * Merge Blurp (Yoshi's Story) with Cheep Cheep (Discuss) Deadline: June 21, 2015, 23:59 GMT
 * Merge Big Bertha with Boss Bass (Discuss) Deadline: June 24, 2015, 23:59 GMT
 * Merge Boss Bass with Cheep Chomp (Discuss) Deadline: June 24, 2015, 23:59 GMT
 * Merge Alph with Captain Olimar (Discuss) Deadline: June 24, 2015, 23:59 GMT

Writing Guidelines
None at the moment.

New features
None at the moment.

Removals
None at the moment.

Ban the term beta * and rename pages in the Beta namespace
There was a proposal suggesting to change the name of the "beta elements" page to something more accurate. Despite being close to succeeding, it was vetoed by the admins with the reason being that "it's not meant to be taken literally" and "it works".

Except. no. The suggestion was perfectly cogent, the rationale provided for the veto was bad and the proposal should never have been reversed. Here's why

1: It's a bad, innacurate term: "Beta" in programming language refers to a specific state of development, a prerelease build that's feature-complete and is being bugtested. It's not even a particularly representative term: the beta period happens near the end of development, long after ideas suggested in pre-production are shot down, games are overhauled, unique characters and objects are removed... etc, which is what the "beta" pages usually cover.

Some may argue that "language evolves" and that "beta as it is used here is not meant to be taken literally", but I don't think it's a strong arguments. Sites focused on the documentation of unused/prelease content such as Unseen 64 and TCRF have mocked the usage of "beta" as a catch-all term and lower-quality ressources that use it that way. Other fan wikis like SegaRetro also do not use "beta" as a generic term. Fact is, "beta" is nowhere near accepted in professional circles and that's what the wiki claims to be - a professional ressource. Furthermore, why would you use an inacurate and potentially misleading term when dozens of accurate, non-misleading alternatives exist?

2: It leads to muddy, vague writing. Whenever you see "beta" used on other pages, its catch-all nature muddies the information. "Dread Kong did not exist in the beta version of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat" - nevermind that referring to a singular "beta version" betrays a gross ignorance of how game development works, what's the "beta" in question? A preview in a magazine? A proto leaked on the internet? Something suggested in pre-production that was rejected and never programmed into the game? Banning the generic beta and forcing editors to be more specific (as opposed to the current wishy-washy stance that "we know it's bad, but we still use it because reasons I guess") will improve the quality of the information.

3: The "grandfather clause" is never a good excuse: Similar to this case, "sub-species" is a long-used term that was found to be innacurate and cause inconsistencies, and the current community concensus is that it should be replaced despite its longstanding nature. "It's what we've always used" is not a good refutation when the usage of a term is proven to lower the credibility and quality of the information, as is the case here.

As a replacement, I propose beta pages to be renamed List of prerelease and unused content. "Prelease" perfectly encansuplates the varieties of content that's not present in the final code, and it's wordier, yes, but not overly so. Generic mention of "beta" should not be robotically replaced with a generic "In prelease/unused content of [game]", but rather with a specific term ("magazine preview", "prototype", "unused"), with a piped link to the "List of..." pages.

( * : This of course doesn't apply to actual beta builds, but as none of the specific builds documented here are specifically said to be real betas, that precision is kinda irrelevant.)

Proposer: Deadline: June 15, 2015, 23:59 GMT

Move beta pages to "List of prerelease and unused content" and ban the generic "beta" in mainspace articles

 * 1) Simply because something works does not make it professional or the most efficient. The simple term beta used on the wiki goes against basic definition and term of the word that is beta.
 * 2) "Beta" probably could be validated if it was actual developer terminology that refers to a specific point of development or build, but since Nintendo doesn't and won't do that publicly, I am completely okay with Beta banning for those reasons. Per proposal.
 * 3) I am okay with this. Beta is a bad term and I think that term may be better. It's a little long, but I like it. Per Glowsquid.
 * 4) Okay, I'll let it out: I felt cheated when I saw that veto and I agree that it should've never happened, and it should not happen again. This poorly-handled veto deserves all the criticism it gets for using administrative powers to shut down legit debate. Anyhow, nonstaff user's opinions aside, by keeping the term "beta" as "a-okay", we're contradicting our own policy, the Good writing's frequently misused terms. This policy will cause confusion for newer users by saying it's not okay to use "beta" while in the same time, using that term in the same way. Now, I'm feeling confident to lambast the staff team's reasoning and decision, hear me out. This is the reasoning: "'Beta' was never meant to be taken literally as the specific beta version, but as a convenient umbrella term synonymous with 'pre-release'. It works perfectly well as-is; there is no need to change the name." This reasoning has several problems. "It's never meant to be taken literally" is dodging the basic argument, that "the terminology has never been a problem in the first place" when that there was an entire proposal about it that garnered massive support (only to be shut down by a handful of people) about the usage of that term. It doesn't matter if we "intended" the term to be "taken literally"; this term certainly confuses, misleads, and misinforms our readers, just as how "subspecies", apparently, is never meant to be taken literally in this wiki. The usage of "beta" as a convenient umbrella term is the entire problem with that forsaken word. We have a much better umbrella term "pre-release and unused elements" that is not only far superior, but does not flirt with the line into pedantry. *breathes* Okay, pardon my bitter tone, I'm still a bit miffed over that, but I support this proposal as much as the subspecies eradication proposal. They're both about precise and accurate word usage and so the reasoning behind the two should be reasonably similar.
 * 5) Glowsquid's reasoning makes sense and the proposed change sounds agreeable.
 * 6) There's a fine line of difference between being "pedantic" and being "outright wrong" when it comes to terminology, and this clearly falls in the latter case by the reasoning Glowsquid provided. Per Glowsquid and Mario, they've already stated what I was going to say.
 * 7) I supported this the last time, I'm supporting it this time. Per all.
 * 8) Per all. This needs to be in the guidelines/rules if we want to make the "beta" pages accurate.
 * 9) Per all. There's not really anything I need to add here. I will, however, help move the pages when this undoubtfully comes to pass.
 * 10) Per all. It's a lot of renaming pages we'll have to be doing, though.
 * 1) Per all. It's a lot of renaming pages we'll have to be doing, though.

Comments
@Mario - I agree with practically everything that has been said on the matter so far, and there's not much for me to add besides the fact that using the term as loosely as Mario Wiki does is definitely looked down upon in certain circles (and indeed, there is still quite a lot of rogue instances of "beta" that require cleaning up regardless of this); however, while I don't feel your sentiments are wrong, it's worth acknowledging that it was a bureaucrat who decided to initiate this second proposal. I believe that counts for something! LinkTheLefty (talk) 00:30, 8 June 2015 (EDT)
 * That's true. :) However, I feel like if I attempted a redux like, it might get vetoed. Oh well, I guess you can't win by doing nothing. 15:51, 8 June 2015 (EDT)

@Glowsquid, you should probably correct your support header, "prelease" to "prerelease" 15:17, 8 June 2015 (EDT)
 * It makes for a terrible pun though. http://forum.mariowiki.com/Smileys/default/dk.gif 15:30, 8 June 2015 (EDT)

Use explanation text to explain pronouns and whatnot in quotes
Let's take a look, for example, in this section of the List of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door quotes. I see that, since Princess Peach is referenced many times, there are many "you"s linking to her article, and this is just to indicate that she is the one being referenced. But it doesn't seem right to use links for this purpose, because for what I know they are supposed to support navigation. Plus, since regular articles usually use only one link to some subject (on the first mention), it would be nice to do the same with quotes.

So, I propose that, whenever a subject must be identified in a quote (except on the first mention), we use This kind of explanation to identify it.

So, this quote from Super Paper Mario:
 * "If he thinks you are the hero, you probably are. I think..."

Would become:
 * "If he thinks you are the hero, you probably are. I think..."

Proposer: Deadline: June 16, 2015, at 23:59 GMT.

Support

 * 1) Per my proposal.

Oppose

 * 1) I really don't see the issue of using links to link to character articles? Adding links to character name certainly doesn't create any problems whatsoever, and what you're doing is basically stripping away the link function, since these two function essentially the same: hovering over a name to show a character's name. I'm not exactly against this, but I see this as a pointless change so I'm just going for the do-nothing option, which is essentially this vote.
 * 2) - The span stuff is a huge pain to use, where as links are easy and do no harm. The wiki's studded with blue overall (or whatever colours you have your skins set to: not our fault if they links are garish), and cases like the example where "you" gets liked twice shouldn't happen anyway since the first link establishes who it is. Other times, context can tell us who's the subject matter, or perhaps the identity might not matter, just the soundbite itself for the sake of the speakers' character, so even links wouldn't be necessary. Other times, parenthetical context can be provided to explain the quotes, again without links. Overall, it's really not as bad as the proposal makes it out to be.
 * 3) That would make sense, but the problem is that the links are showing what characters they mean. In the game, it doesn't show the characters names, but since this is the Mario Wiki, it has more information on everything. I would say, "per all".
 * 4) People would like to know what characters the quote is referring to. Per all.
 * 5) I wouldn't support outright banning the span stuff, but there's no point in using it when it's a pain to implement it (I use it for furigana inputting). I understand how this alternative is attractive rather than redundant links, but I'd stick with the simpler brackets.
 * 6) It's literally almost the same thing, except with more wikicode. I don't really see the point of this.
 * 7) While I sort of disagree with the other people and believe this can be a great timesaver, it unfortunately can also be very confusing. Assuming you did not know to hover over the text (which is probably going to be most people), then, well... it just doesn't work anymore, does it?

Comments
Perhaps we can compromise by replacing all first instances (in general) with links and then making repeated instances with the explanation text fields? 21:48, 8 June 2015 (EDT)
 * Even so...what does that do that links can't? 21:50, 8 June 2015 (EDT)
 * Isn't that accomplishing the same thing with less convenience? It just seems like an unnecessary step to me. What's the downside/negative aspect of having the links in the first place?
 * @Baby Luigi: it's less of an eyesore than techno-color links all over the place (and maybe mobile users don't have to worry about accidentally touching them or something). We don't link every text in the gallery pages for that same reason, so maybe we can use those fields instead. However, as Time Turner said, it's another piece of wiki code to memorize and incorporate. 21:53, 8 June 2015 (EDT)
 * Techno color links? You mean two colors, blue and black? That's not an eye sore at all. Perhaps we can limit the linking to once per pronoun referral but that's about it. It's not that much of an eyestrain unless this wiki uses the yellow color to link things. I don't know how mobile users work though. 21:56, 8 June 2015 (EDT)
 * That's exactly what I mean. And what I mean by techno-color links, look at the example in the proposal: two links to Mario's page is a bit ludicrous. If those links are meant to give clarification, then we shouldn't have to solely rely on them; stuff like explanation text wrap exists. 22:04, 8 June 2015 (EDT)
 * I still don't see the problem in that? You're making this a bigger deal than it really is. It's still only two colors, blue and black, and it links just as much as any other article on the wiki does. 22:06, 8 June 2015 (EDT)
 * I was exaggerating myself here in terms of "gaudy links", but yeah, it was hard to tell. Sorry for that. 00:54, 9 June 2015 (EDT)

There isn't really a major problem with using links, but I think it is worth to point out that the article rules say "In general, only the first occurrence of a subject in an article should be linked to, with all subsequent occurrences in the body text written as plain text only, to avoid redundancy and clutter.". If excessive linking on article pages is recognized as clutter, then logically it should also be considered clutter on quote pages. Forbidding it in one place and making it standard protocol in another is inconsistent, and the proposal is correct in attempting to address this. - 02:51, 13 June 2015 (EDT)
 * The rule also says "Duplicate links appearing in lists, [...] are also allowed regardless of the length of a page.", so "list of quotes" are already exempt. - 12:24, 13 June 2015 (EDT)
 * Yeah, it's mostly about common sense, though, since manual of style is a guideline anyway. If the linking looks excessive on lists, feel free to remove them. 12:54, 13 June 2015 (EDT)
 * The point I was trying to make is: The fact that the rules themselves acknowledge links like these as clutter lends validity to complaints about the same clutter being allowed in lists. Claims of "this is not a problem" do not hold water because the rules definitely recognize it as a problem in other parts of the wiki already. It is more accurate to say "this is kind of a problem, but we really haven't found an efficient alternative yet". This is what I think this proposal is trying to do: Find an alternative. Whether it is efficient enough is up to everyone's personal judgment, but the core thought behind it is perfectly valid. - 03:13, 14 June 2015 (EDT)

Miscellaneous
None at the moment.