MarioWiki:Proposals

List of Talk Page Proposals

 * Delete Player. (Discuss) Deadline: July 20, 2013, 23:59 GMT.
 * Move Venus Fire Trap to Fire Piranha (Discuss) Deadline: July 29, 2013, 23:59 GMT

Document "Regional Differences" in game pages, and create a policy page for them

 * Draft: User:Walkazo/Essays

This project is pretty self-explanatory. Basically, the idea of this project is to document changes made to a game during localization, re-releases, ports, etc. These changes can include anything from different placement of coins or items to drastic gameplay changes or even characters being added in later versions of a game, such as Metal Mario being added for the North American version of the game Mario Golf, for example. As explained on the draft for the policy page and the example following it, we would create sections for "Regional differences" in the pages of games that have them, and further organize them into subcategories that include "Gameplay changes", "Level design changes", "Graphical changes", and "Textual changes". Of course, if there are changes made to other aspects of the game in question, such as changes in the soundtrack of the game, additional sections can be created to properly document them.

Proposer: and Deadline: July 29, 2013, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) &mdash; Per proposal, natch.
 * 2) Sounds good, per proposal.
 * 3) - I really like this idea. Per proposal.
 * 4) Nice one. Per all
 * 5) - Per our proposal.
 * 6) Per all.
 * 7) per all, hurp. You don't know how long I've been waiting for this.
 * 8) Per all
 * 9) Per proposal.
 * 10) Per all.

Comments
Without going full plagiarism, maybe we could use this -

New features
None at the moment.

Removals
None at the moment.

Inconsistencies with Template Names
The vast majority of our navigational templates (templates that serve as an index of sorts for a certain subject) for games follow a specific format for its title: the beginning is always "Template:", and what subsequently follows is an abbreviation of the game's title. This is what's used for almost all of our game's templates (Template:MK7, Template:YI, Template:SMG, and others). However, this is only used for almost all of our game's templates. There are several titles out there that use the full version of their game's title for their template's title (Template:WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!, Template:Super Mario Bros. 3, Template:Mario Superstar Baseball, and others), which, from my point of view, is a fair bit inconsistent. This is something that I would like to change.

Another point I'd like to bring up is subcategories of nav. templates: when a certain aspect of a game becomes too large to fit into a standard template (such as levels or minigames), it often gets put into its own template. The names of these often follow the same rules with "Template:(game name) [aspect]", such as Template:NSLU Levels and Template:WarioWare: D.I.Y. Microgames, but there are some that are non-indicative of what game it covers, such as Template:Baseballpowerups and Template:Battlecourses, and others that don't even mention what aspect it covers, such as Template:Doubledash, Template:Galaxy, and Template:Gadd, which I find both inconsistent and just odd. This is something else that I would like to change.

So, I want to propose a simple standard for the names of these templates. For starters, all game-centric navigation templates would have use an abbreviation of the game's name, so Template:Mario Pinball Land would become Template:MPL, Template:Mario Super Sluggers would become Template:MSS, and so on. For templates that cover larger aspects of a game, they would use both the abbrevation and the aspect that they're covering, so Template:WarioWare: Smooth Moves Microgames would become Template:WWSM Microgames, Template:Galaxy2 would become Template:SMG2 Levels, Template:Mario Party 1 would become Template:MP Minigames, and so on. For games that share an abbreviation, such as Yoshi's Story and Yoshi's Safari, they can't both have Template:YS, so as an alternative, the first few words of the title would be abbreviated, while the final word would remain in its full form. Thus, we would have Template:YStory, Template:YSafari, and so on. Just about every template can conform to these rules, and the biggest problem here would probably be changing all the links, but in the grand scheme of things, that's really not that big of a deal.

I understand that this may not be the biggest issue on the wiki, but nevertheless, this is still an issue, and it's something that I think should be dealt with, for the sake of consistency.

Proposer: Deadline: July 22, 2013, 23:59 GMT

Make the changes

 * 1) I support my proposal.
 * 2) I support Time Turner's proposal too.
 * 3) It might take a lot of time, but eventually it should be done.
 * 4) Per all. Having a standard to distinguish templates such as Template:MP9 and Template:Mario Party 9 is a great idea, though I also agree with Walkazo. Ambiguity should be the reason these templates are being adjusted, not for the sake of consistency.
 * 5) I was actually planning to put forward something like this a while back, but apparently I've been ninja'd. Per all.
 * 6) – Per Time Turner.

Comments
Rather than random truncation, names that share the same abbreviation should just be written out in full. Similarly, any other cases where abbreviations or shorthand would create ambiguity should be avoided (i.e. "tem:MP1 Minigames" is better than "tem:MP Minigames", since the latter could refer to the series), and while the emphasis is on making template names short, making them clear is still number one priority. There should also be explicit allowances for "species"-type templates getting whatever names work (speaking of which, the two galaxy templates have always struck me more as species templates than level templates to account of how specialized their designs are - just a thought). I also think you're underselling the amount of work updating all the links is gonna be, and while having a guide definitely names sense, it shouldn't be something that should be enforced to the letter especially not retroactively and when dealing with tricky cases like shared abbreviations or cases where more than one abbreviation is understandable. Heck, part of me even wants to argue that the current mix isn't dysfunctional and readers won't see any difference anyway, and so our efforts might be better spent elsewhere, while old titles simply get grandfathered through... -
 * I've spent most of my time here systematically going through links and changing them. Doing stuff like that doesn't even faze me. In any case, you do raise a fair point (though I'm not sure I'd classify Galaxy as a species template), but... I want something to be done. Even if we don't have a rigid format for all the template names, I still want something to be done about all those ones with awkward names (MFb, Gadd, and the like). Maybe I'm just being overly OCD...
 * I enjoy that sorta maintenance work too, actually (just cruising along, not having to think - nice and peaceful), it's just that replacing templates en masse will take a lot of time that could potentially be used for other maintenance work, like updating categories or fixing headers. And I also agree that something should be done, with a nice section on naming rules/recommendations getting added to Navigation Templates as a reference for making new templates or fixing the oddball ones that should be replaced. (As for the Galaxy templates, if they were regular game templates, they'd technically have to be red, but I like their current design and colours (and I'm sure others do too), and calling them a species template lets them stay that way without technically breaking from policy.) -
 * We could see if Porple could make a bot to do it, because if you go by the comments in this TPP Porple can make a bot to delete all those links, it might be possible for him to make a bot to change the template names.
 * Operating under the assumption that it's even possible for a bot to rename templates according to the standards outlined in this proposal should it pass, I think that creating a bot that does that would take more time than just changing the template names ourselves.

Miscellaneous
None at the moment.