MarioWiki talk:Manual of Style

My goal was to make it more effective than two previous help pages, new pages and expanding articles, combined. Have I done just that with this, is it the same, or have I made it worse? 03:42, 2 March 2007 (EST)

Its good. even if I know almost everything, its a good definition, and a great tutorial. Like It?

Yeah, me too. Info about what kind of articles can be made, choosing an effective page to create, etc. Still, very good page. P.S. Do we really have an average of 500 edits a day? 500 a week would make more sense. 20:57, 2 March 2007 (EST)

I've only done 1000 edits in 4 weeks. 500 a week makes more sense.

I suggest both of you check Recent changes at 500 edits and see on any given day whether another day is shown or not. (Today's a great example) 21:34, 4 March 2007 (EST)


 * And sorry to burst your bubble, Max, but you don't have 1000 contributions. You have just over 900. Pretty close, though. -- 21:39, 4 March 2007 (EST)

About You
I see where the "don't use you, even in commands" policy is coming from, but I think it is a bit misguided. I believe "you" is acceptable, even in fairly formal writing, when providing instructions on how to do something. For example:

BAD USE OF YOU: In Super Mario Bros., you must defeat Bowser and rescue the Princess. BAD USE OF YOU: In most Mario Kart games, your cart only has one character on it, but in Mario Kart Double Dash!! you get to control two characters. ACCEPTABLE USE OF YOU: To defeat Bowser, jump on his axe.

When giving a long series of instructions, continuously writing "the player" and similar terms becomes unacceptable due to repetition.

"The player must jump up several platforms, and then he or she must activate the Launch Star. The player must then free the Luma, which turns into a Pull Star. He or she must use the Pull Star to..."

as opposed to

"Jump up several platforms and activate the Launch Star. Free the Luma, which turns into a Pull Star, and use the Pull Star to..."

Comments? 14:45, 28 November 2007 (EST)
 * A replacement of "you" does not have to be "the player", it can also be "Mario", "Luigi", or whoever is the playable character. - 14:57, 28 November 2007 (EST)
 * Yes, and that is more acceptable than "the player" in many cases, but my main point is that "you" and commands are acceptable in instructions even in fairly formal writing. 15:07, 28 November 2007 (EST)

"Appearance" Section
Recently, there have been some questions regarding the "Appearance" section on the Peach (item) page. Should it be removed, kept as is, changed? If people want another example, I did up the MC Ballyhoo article in the same way. We need to think about how this will effect long and short articles, so... have a peek. 20:00, 25 January 2008 (EST)
 * What I've also talked about is the use of the "Main Article" template, which is a bit out of place where it is currently.

"The history section makes use of the 'Main Article' template, which is definitely wrong here. 'Main Article' would only be correct if the linked article would be 'Peaches in Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat'"
 * The "Main Article" template should only be used to link to articles which go more in-depth on the same topic. For example, not everything about Trophies is explained in the Super Smash Bros. Melee article, so a link to Trophy as the main article on the subject is given. But the Main Article about MC Ballyhoo's history isn't Mario Party 8, there actually isn't such an article. We should be careful with the template. - 05:47, 26 January 2008 (EST)
 * Did you fix that or should I go do that? My logic behind its use was that people might want to know more about his role in that game, but if you'd rather hold off because each game includes roles of a lot of characters, that's fine.  13:18, 26 January 2008 (EST)
 * The link to the game should be somewhere in the text, that's enough for our needs. But certainly the mention of the games shouldn't come last. - 13:26, 26 January 2008 (EST)
 * It did come first. I always put the main article template before the text.  Now the mention comes after a couple sentenses, but it works I guess.  Are you talking about the same thing I am?  I think you might be talking about the "Appearance" section, so I'll just assume that... considering that's what I started the discussion as anyway. :D  The peach (item) article may seem like it's just a repeat of the history section, but you'll notice it's in chronological order and all of the games were mentioned in said section.  Basically, you have the history of the subject according to continuity, then you have the real world history of the item.  In other words, if we did this for Mario, we'd be mentioning Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island at the end of my appearances section and Donkey Kong (game) would be first.  Does that make sense?  You can't see how a subject has evolved from the "history" section because those are chronological according to the games, whereas the "apperance" section is chronological to real time.  I think it's a very useful and valid thing to have...  Anyway, I remember that you said your problems with it were that it was just a repeat and that the box art was un-needed?  You also wanted consistency (the section being on all pages or none), so how about this: you and me can work on a subject who's conitinuity is wacked out, say "Yoshi (species)", and then you can take a look and see if the appearance section isn't useful to you.  Sound good?  As for the box art, I feel it visually enhances the history, because we're talking about the real world here and not in-universe stuff.  As usual, feel free to ask me to clarify anything.   13:35, 26 January 2008 (EST)


 * The problem with adding boxart to the end is that it makes the page load slower and it is also not necessary. It becomes a little redundant that we'd have to add a boxart in addition to a link to the game's page. Also, about the continuity vs. release date chronology debate, we have already thought of that. Go by Chronology, which we even accepted in a proposal. 20:15, 26 January 2008 (EST)
 * Thanks for telling me about that page. I must have been gone during that proposal.  Regardless, there is something important that's been left out.  We're here both to show the in-universe history (see Mario's SMB section) and the real world, factual history (see Super Mario Bros.).  So, IMO you'd want to have a section that shows the hard facts about the subject in the real world.  How was it really introduced (Mario was first seen walking to the right, not dropping from the sky), how it's developed (Is that thing about it becoming Peach's symbol still in the article?  I can't remember), etc.  Ok, so that's for the historian.  But most people here are fans of the overall storyline, so the main emphasis should be on the in-universe stuff, right?  That's where the history section on the Peach (item) article fits in.  It shows what's happened in chronological order, taking into account which references would not have impacted the main universe (for example, Mario in SMG would not attribute his birth to a peach and Peach will not have the ability to produce peaches because a trophy did so.)  Now, let's imagine that Peach, in the next RPG, has an attack where she creates peaches in order to restore her party's health.  Wouldn't it be cool to show that this ability was first introduced in Brawl, then first incorporated into the storyline later?  I would think so.  Do you maybe kinda sorta get where I'm coming from?  As for the box arts, if it's making your computer run slowly we should remove them, as I've stated earlier on some other page, so no need to argue that point.  20:54, 26 January 2008 (EST)


 * I know you don't like the idea of canonicity, but you'll have to accept it if you are to work on this wiki. For example, even if a peach was featured for the first time in a magazine, it would still go under a section called Appearances in Other Media. As for your example about Peach, find another example on the wiki and tell us about it because your example is only hypothetical so there is no point of worrying about it now. 21:06, 26 January 2008 (EST)
 * This isn't about canonicity at all, though. I'm talking about historical developement vs. storyline.  We're covering a work of fiction, so we should include both, right?  02:21, 27 January 2008 (EST)
 * Oops. Forgot to give you a real example: Peach first used an umbrella to descend slowly in Melee, only to have this ability (slow descent) mirrored in Super Princess Peach (floatbrella) and in Super Paper Mario.  But, in our articles, Super Princess Peach is listed way before Melee and there are no notes of release dates within the Peach article.  So, let's say we made an appearance section for Peach: the reader could simply go down to it to see how the character of Peach has developed, and he or she would see that Melee was the first game to have her use an umbrealla to float.  ...or you could have the reader read through the entire article to find each mention of Peach's developing use of a parasol, go to the Melee, Super Princess Peach, and Super Paper Mario articles, look at the release dates, determine which of the release dates on each article was the earliest, bring all of that together and then realize that Melee was the very first game to feature this.  Depending on how savvy the reader is about this ability, you're looking at a good 10-20 minutes at least.  But, take someone like you or me who knows all about the series, and it's about 10 minutes at the most.  02:37, 27 January 2008 (EST)