MarioWiki:Proposals

Writing guidelines
None at the moment.

Make new templates for frequent reminders
Apparently, some have been using the copy-paste reminders/warnings I have on my sandbox since I first started writing them down in April 2019. I wrote them down for a quick thing to pull from, but they're being used frequently enough that, hey, maybe I should put them somewhere useful.

The reminders mainly revolve around basic mistakes we keep having to remind people about, such as first-person writing or italics. When giving such reminders, we usually just type out a message. Let's turn these messages into templates. The wording will be moved to a new template page as-is, unless something about the wording needs changed. Doesn't need the code box that's around it all, as that's only there to easily copy-paste the text and keep the coding intact. A template doesn't need to do that. The signature coding should be excluded as well. Three of these reminders are meant for staff-only business, since staff are the only ones that can check IPs.

Templates added will be, in the order on the sandbox:

Should this pass, I will format the coding I have to be able to be actually used as a functioning template.

Proposer: Deadline: December 29, 2021, 23:59 GMT

Make new templates

 * 1) - Per
 * 2) Sounds good to me.
 * 3) Per proposal.
 * 4) Sure, per all.
 * 5) Per Proposal! 🥶
 * 6) Absoloutely.
 * 7) Per all.
 * 8) Per all.

Comments
Wait, how would the "use specific ones" one work if it wins? Would we use the most-voted one? The top two? The top three? The top half? All the ones that make it above a certain score? All but the least voted? Would it go into a run-off vote? I'm kinda confused. Somethingone (talk) 14:10, December 22, 2021 (EST)
 * I'm an idiot who thought that would work lol
 * I guess the criteria for which should be excluded would be completely arbitrary, so now it's all-or-nothing. 14:15, December 22, 2021 (EST)

Removals
None at the moment.

Changes
None at the moment.

Decide if obscure media filenames from Nintendo's websites qualify as sources for subject names
In my efforts to cover Nintendo's diverse promotional online material on the wiki, I've come across a number of images whose filenames provide unique spellings of a subject's name, or even new names altogether. I am aware this wiki, by and large, has allowed the citing of internal filenames as sources for the names of certain subjects, such as Uckykong and the Super Mario Galaxy planets, but I find the aforementioned website filenames to be of a different nature: in-game filenames originate from a game's developers, who have arguably much higher authority over how a subject is called than the person who mistypes the filenames in a press kit, officially endued as they may be. Furthermore, these website filenames can be rather poorly formatted. Take this image from Play Nintendo, for example; the subject it depicts, the Ice Hockey minigame from Mario Party Superstars, is mispelled as "Ive Hockey" in the picture's filename. An official mispelling for sure, but a mispelling nevertheless, and I have my doubts on how well it would reflect on the wiki to acknowledge Ive Hockey as an alternate name for that minigame on its article, given the "source".

I believe we should draw a hard line on whether we can acknowledge any and all of these website filenames, or none at all. I've listed several subjects concerned by this proposal:
 * Metal Mario -- referred to as "Gem Mario" in a Play Nintendo filename
 * Professor Elvin Gadd -- referred to as "Professor Edgar" in a Play Nintendo filename. The file itself is hosted on cloudfront, but is embedded as a thumbnail for Professor E. Gadd's Research Journal in the search suggestions on Play Nintendo, so it's official media.
 * Mario Party: The Top 100 -- abbreviated as "MPTOH" (Mario Party Top One Hundred) in a Play Nintendo filename
 * Bumper Balloon Cars -- referred to as "Balloon Cars" in a Play Nintendo filename
 * Hot Rope Jump -- referred to as "Hot Jump Rope" in a Play Nintendo filename
 * Rocky Road (minigame) -- mispelled as "Rockey Road" in a Play Nintendo filename
 * Cat Goomba -- referred to as "Munster" (possibly a mispelling of "monster") in a Nintendo Kids Club filename
 * Crazee Dayzee -- referred to as "Blume" (German for "flower") in a Nintendo Kids Club filename
 * Shy Guy -- referred to as "Ghost" in a Nintendo Kids Club filename
 * Flutter -- Japanese name ("Hanachan") was mispelled as "Hanachyan" in a filename on the official Mario Party: Island Tour website.
 * Gooigi -- written as "Guigi" in a filename on the official Luigi's Mansion website.

From taking the liberty to refer to an established character as "Professor Edgar", to bum writing mishaps like "Rockey Road", I think it's clear now that these filenames are a horse of a different colour. This is why I am calling upon other editors to help assess their quality as sources. I myself am leaning towards using them, purely because they are official, but I sense others may have objections given the things I've stated above.

Proposer: Deadline: December 28, 2021, 23:59 GMT

Acknowledge these names/misspellings in articles and use them as redirects

 * 1) First choice.
 * 2) Assuming that 'acknowledge in articles' means put them as trivia points (like we already do on Gooigi), per proposal.

Only use these names/misspellings as redirects

 * 1) Second choice.
 * 2) Might as well document them somewhere, but I think treating obvious mistakes like these as actual, official names on par with any other source would make us look ridiculous. The same could be said for Prima's countless gaffes, but at least those were in published material that are more likely to be seen by the general public. These are just filenames that would only be seen when digging through obscure Play Nintendo games. See also my thoughts on Talk:Gooigi.
 * 3) Second choice.

Do not cite these filenames at all

 * 1) Nobody is going to see these, and they're blatant mistakes. We know that Cat Goomba isn't named "Munster", and nobody's going to call it that. Creating a redirect from "Ive Hockey" to "Ice Hockey" because some obscure filename did it seems excessive. This is reminding me of Ahehehauhe.
 * 2) Per Scrooge.
 * 3) Per all.
 * 4) Most users won't search for these filenames anyways, so per all.
 * 5) Per Scrooge.
 * 6) Per Scrooge.
 * 7) Personally I believe the names in other languages are more fit for a redirect material than these but yeah, no one will search these characters by their filename in all honesty, you'd really have to go out of your way to dig these up to find them to begin with.
 * 8) Per all.
 * 9) – Per all, most of these are just too obscure to be informative or of any help.
 * 10) See my comment.

Comments
@Scrooge200: Well, not many people are going to encounter these filenames, that's for sure, but I believe their sheer obscurity in and of itself shouldn't be used as a point against documenting them. "Ahuehuehuea" originated from a place of dubious status which we have discounted as a source, whereas the filenames at hand are unequivocally official. 20:00, December 21, 2021 (EST)
 * They're official, but they're still clearly mistakes. Noting that an obscure website like Nintendo Kids Club once misspelled an enemy's name seems excessive. 21:18, December 21, 2021 (EST)
 * At what point do we deem a source of information “too obscure” to be cited, though? I don’t think we ought to if it has any semblance of an authority. We also have precedent of documenting typos and mistakes, as is the case of the Piranha Plant article, which has a name misspelling documented in its very lead paragraph; doesn’t that qualify as “excessive” as well? 05:21, December 22, 2021 (EST)
 * That same sentence states that it's from "early manuals", which people would come across more often that these filenames. 05:36, December 22, 2021 (EST)
 * It’s still “clearly a mistake” and, going by what was said above, it would decidedly be “excessive” to document. 05:41, December 22, 2021 (EST)
 * This happened twice in official manuals for two important games (SMB and SMB3), so I could chalk it up to being an alternate spelling back in those days (like "Starman" instead of "Super Star"). Plus, it's a plausible typo that I can see someone who might not know the proper name accidentally typing in. "Hanachyan" or "Munster" are much more obscure, and I've never seen them actually used before. 15:52, December 22, 2021 (EST)
 * I still don't see how a source's obscurity, or perception thereof, should factor into a case against using that source. If the "source" is just an individual exercising their creative muscles or making a typo then, sure, that's reason enough not to use it, as is brought up by the proposal and Glowsquid (although such situations may need to be judged on a case-by-case basis since published guides and magazines are rife with such material, and the wiki is already making note of some of these situations in spite of the arguments brought up here); however, how "obscure" or "inaccessible" a source is really shouldn't jeopardise its validity so long as it's official. 13:26, December 23, 2021 (EST)

Also, I thought it'd be worth bringing up "Morty Wrench", which has also been discussed here. 23:42, December 21, 2021 (EST)

I feel about these the same way I feel about citing closed captions on streaming services as sources for official names. The public-facing material on these websites may be official, but that shouldn't extend to arbitrary judgement calls and typos by the people putting those websites together. --Glowsquid (talk) 11:38, December 22, 2021 (EST)