MarioWiki:Proposals

A proposal section works like a discussion page: comments are brought up and replied to using indents (colons, such as : or ::::) and all edits are signed using the code.

This page observes the No-Signature Policy.

How To Rules
 * 1) If users have an idea about improving the wiki or managing its community, but feel that they need community approval before acting upon that idea, they may make a proposal about it. They must have a strong argument supporting their idea and be willing to discuss it in detail with the other users, who will then vote about whether or not they think the idea should be used. Proposals should include links to all relevant pages and Writing Guideline proposals must include a link to the draft page.
 * 2) Proposals end at the end of the day (23:59) one week after voting starts, except for Writing Guidelines and Talk Page Proposals, which run for two weeks. (All times GMT.)
 * 3) *For example, if a proposal is added at any time on Monday, August 1, 2011, the voting starts immediately and the deadline is one week later on Monday, August 8, at 23:59 GMT.
 * 4) Every vote should have a reason accompanying it. Agreeing with or seconding a previously mentioned reason given by another user is accepted.
 * 5) Users who feel that certain votes were cast in bad faith or which truly have no merit can address the votes in the Comments section. Users can ask a voter to clarify their position, point out mistakes or flaws in their arguments, or call for the outright removal of the vote if it lacks sufficient reasoning. Users may not remove or alter the content of anyone else's votes. Voters can remove or rewrite their own vote at any time, but the final decision to remove another user's vote lies solely with the administrators.
 * 6) If a user makes a vote and is subsequently blocked for any amount of time, their vote is removed. However, if the block ends before the proposal ends, then the user in question holds the right to re-cast their vote. If a proposer is blocked, their vote is removed and "(banned)" is added next to their name in the "Proposer:" line of the proposal, which runs until its deadline as normal. If the proposal passes, it falls to the supporters of the idea to enact any changes in a timely manner.
 * 7) No proposal can overturn the decision of a previous proposal that is less than 4 weeks (28 days) old.
 * 8) Any proposal that has three votes or less at deadline will automatically be listed as "NO QUORUM." The original proposer then has the option to relist said proposal to generate more discussion.
 * 9) All proposals that end up in a tie will be extended for another week.
 * 10) If a proposal has more than ten votes, it can only pass or fail by a margin of three votes. If a proposal reaches the deadline and the total number of votes for each option differ by two or less votes, the deadline will be extended for another week.
 * 11) Proposals can only be extended up to three times. If a consensus has not been reached by the fourth deadline, the proposal fails and can only be re-proposed after four weeks, at the earliest.
 * 12) All proposals are archived. The original proposer must take action accordingly if the outcome of the proposal dictates it. If it requires the help of an administrator, the proposer can ask for that help.
 * 13) Proposals can only be rewritten or deleted by their proposer within the first three days of their creation. However, proposers can request that their proposal be deleted by an administrator at any time, provided they have a valid reason for it. Please note that cancelled proposals must also be archived.
 * 14) If the administrators deem a proposal unnecessary or potentially detrimental to the upkeep of the Super Mario Wiki, they have the right to remove it at any time.
 * 15) There should not be proposals about creating articles on an underrepresented or completely absent subject, unless there is major disagreement about whether the content should be included. To organize efforts about completing articles on missing subjects, try setting up a collaboration thread on the forums.
 * 16) Proposals cannot be made about promotions and demotions. Users can only be promoted and demoted by the will of the administration.
 * 17) No joke proposals. Proposals are serious wiki matters and should be handled professionally. Joke proposals will be deleted on sight.

Basic Proposal and Support/Oppose Format This is an example of what your proposal must look like, if you want it to be acknowledged. If you are inexperienced or unsure how to set up this format, simply copy the following and paste it into the fitting section. Then replace the [subject] - variables with information to customize your proposal, so it says what you wish. If you insert the information, be sure to replace the whole variable including the squared brackets, so "[insert info here]" becomes "This is the inserted information", not "[This is the inserted information]". Proposals presenting multiple alternative courses of action can have more than two voting options, but what each voting section is supporting must be clearly defined. - ===[insert a title for your Proposal here]=== [describe what issue this Proposal is about and what changes you think should be made to improve how the Wiki handles that issue]

Proposer: Deadline: [insert a deadline here, 7 days after the proposal was created, at 23:59 GMT. (14 days for Talk Page Proposals.)]

====Support====
 * 1) [make a statement indicating that you support your proposal]

====Oppose====

====Comments==== - Users will now be able to vote on your Proposal, until the set deadline is reached. Remember, you are a user as well, so you can vote on your own Proposal just like the others.

To support, or oppose, just insert " # at the bottom of the section of your choice. Just don't forget to add a valid reason for your vote behind that tag if you are voting on another user's Proposal. If you are voting on your own Proposal, you can just say "Per my Proposal".

Talk Page Proposals All proposals dealing with a single article or a specific group of articles are held on the talk page of one of the articles in question. Proposals dealing with massive amounts of splits, merges or deletions across the Wiki should still be held on this page.


 * For a list of all settled Talk Page Proposals, see here.

Rules
 * 1) All active talk page proposals must be listed below in chronological order (new proposals go at the bottom). All pages affected must be mentioned in the brief description, with the talk page housing the discussion linked to directly via "". If the proposal involved a page that is not yet made, use to communicate its title. The Deadline must also be included in the entry. Linking to pages not directly involved in the talk page proposal is not recommended, as it clutters the list with unnecessary links. Place  under the heading.
 * 2) All rules for talk page proposals are the same as mainspace proposals (see the "How To" section above), with the exceptions made by Rules 3 and 4 as follows:
 * 3) Voting in talk page proposals will be open for two weeks, not one. (All times GMT.)
 * 4) *For example, if a proposal is added at any time on Monday, August 1, 2011, it ends two weeks later on Monday, August 15, 2011, at 23:59 GMT.
 * 5) Talk page proposals may be closed by the proposer at any time if both the support and the oppose sides each have fewer than five votes.
 * 6) The talk page proposal must pertain to the article it is posted on.

List of Talk Page Proposals

 * Duplicate all games from the articles List of Mario games by date, List of Donkey Kong games, and List of Wario games and still keep their original articles but all will be duplicated into the article Games (Discuss) Deadline: June 28, 2012, 23:59 GMT
 * Merge Gulpits' Rocks to Gulpit (Discuss) Deadline: July 2, 2012, 23:59 GMT

Writing Guidelines
None at the moment.

Removals
None at the moment.

Require Support Reasoning for FA Nomination
This is an issue that's sort of been bugging me lately. I've been worried about this kind of vote on supports, especially after I noticed supports on the Thwomp page, which could use plenty of work, absolutely skyrocketed after Supremo put in a comment saying "FINALLY FINISHED!". Ok, so he says it's finished. Was the article finished? Long story short, no. I'm well open to the idea that the supporters didn't read the comment and gave a support through their own reasoning, but that trend worried me. I'd been thinking about this particular idea for a while, but what pushed me over the edge was a particular vote on the Toad nomination page by Fire Burnin'. What was nice was that he gave me a lil support reason that I took a look at on the history of the page. Direct quote of his reasoning:"Toad is so awesome!"

Was the reasoning deleted? Yes, yes it was. Was a meaningless vote deleted in tow? Nope. The fact that a vote for a character and not for content went under the radar in a fashion like that is, well, kind of ridiculous(If anyone out there feels offense, please don't. It's not anything personal, I'm just annoyed...) Anyways, if this proposal were to pass, then support reasons would be required, like support reasons on any random proposal you might see looking through the archives. That way, undeserved featured article supports could be easily filtered out and deleted. Said deletion of vote would require reasoning for it in the edit summary. If the deletion caused a major disagreement, then it would be discussed and decided upon in the comments.

Proposer: Deadline: June 25, 2012, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) I support my proposal.
 * 2) At first I was thinking no because I was thinking: "What reasons should be given besides someone's personal preference on a article whether they like it or not?" But then I remember: the quality of an article. I like this proposal now because it can possibly filter out any bad-quality articles and force the community to work on making better quality on the said article.
 * 3) There are times where I actually want to write a support vote but I can't because of the old rules. Support votes are something that we should already have on the wiki.
 * 4) Per Zero777.

Oppose

 * 1) Sorry but this idea is fairly useless it wont stop fan votes from happening it will just increase the amount of people saying Per all, it's also redundant because as Son of Suns always said it doesn't matter how many fan votes an FA has it will never pass unless if there is just one opposition vote. This makes it impossible for a bad article to be featured because the only way to remove an opposition vote is to have 3 users (including one admin) vote in favor of removing said vote. Also I have a problem with the way votes are to be removed because I don't think regular users should be allowed to remove votes nor and they certainly shouldn't be allowed to remove them with something as simple as "fan vote." Also per the following proposals, , ,  and
 * 2) Per Raven Effect. Our opinions on why we do not require a reason for support in FA nominations are still strong. I still do not see the need to require support again. Opposition, on the other hand, can list reasons on what the article needs improvement and therefore is constructive compared to support.
 * 3) Per Raven Effect.
 * 4) Per Raven Effect.

Comments
I'd rather have a lot of "Per all"s then fan votes slipping through. As for your argument against removal of votes, I suppose you're right. What I'd suggest is that we have a "REmoval of Supports" section which acted like the Removal of Opposes section. As for the three people part, I think a couple of exceptions would be acceptable, considering the sheer amount of fan votes we've seen on former nominations(Lookin' at you, Koopa Troopa.)
 * The problem is that it wont help I mean think about it you're basically talking about having people saying per all instead of nothing which doesn't take out fan votes nor does it make the process go faster.
 * And the opposes say "Per all" all the time, but no one complains that it doesn't help anything. Like I said, I'd rather at least have a chance at taking out fan votes than just have all blanks.

This is not the first time the issue of fan votes on FA nominations has been debated here (though I can't give a precise link atm), and each times, it was rejected for pretty much the reasons Raven Effect gave. Though really, I wouldn't mind simply scrapping the "support" header in FA nominations and just let the nominator and anyone else who support the nomination duke it out in the comments, as support votes have absolutely no weight in the current system and rarely provide any commentary of value. --Glowsquid 22:23, 19 June 2012 (EDT)
 * Interesting thought. I'm hoping that it wouldn't work like the page nominations on Wikipedia though, I've seen those and they're a bit too unorganized for my taste...

How are articles featured, exactly? If I recall, an Article is Featured when the nomination page has no oppose votes and a certain number of support votes; is this correct?

Miscellaneous
None at the moment.