MarioWiki:Proposals

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r149/Deadringerforlove/dessert1.jpg 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
 * 1) Actions that users feel are appropriate to have community approval first can be added by anyone, but they must have a strong argument.
 * 2) Users then vote and discuss on the issue during that week. The "deadline" for the proposal is one week from posting at: (All times GMT)
 * 3) *Monday to Thursday: 23:00 (11pm)
 * 4) *Friday and Saturday: 2:00 (2 am) of the next day. A proposal posted on a Friday ends the following Saturday morning; a proposal posted on a Saturday ends the following Sunday morning.
 * 5) *Sunday: 21:00 (9pm)
 * 6) Every vote should have a reason accompanying it.
 * 7) 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. The voter 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.
 * 8) " # " should be added under the last vote of each support/oppose section to show another blank line.
 * 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) 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.
 * 12) No proposal can overturn the decision of a previous proposal that is less than 4 weeks (28 days) old.
 * 13) Proposals can only be rewritten or deleted by their proposer within the first three days of their creation. However, the proposer can request that their proposal be deleted by a Sysop at any time, provided they have a valid reason for it.
 * 14) 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 a Sysop, the proposer can ask for that help.
 * 15) There shouldn't be proposals about creating articles on a 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 creating a PipeProject.
 * 16) Proposals cannot be made about System Operator promotions and demotions. Sysops can only be promoted and demoted by the will of Bureaucrats.
 * 17) If the Sysops 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.
 * 18) No joke proposals. Proposals are serious wiki matters, and should be handled professionally. Joke proposals will be deleted on sight.

The times are in GMT, and are set so that the user is more likely to be online at those times (after work/school, weekend nights). If a proposal is added on Monday night at 11:59 PM GMT, the deadline is the next Monday night at 11:00 PM. If it is posted a minute later, the deadline is a week Tuesday, since midnight is considered to be part of the next day, as 00:00 AM.

Basic Proposal and Support/Oppose Format
This is an example how your proposal should 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]". - ===[insert a title for your Proposal here]=== [describe what you want this Proposal to be like, what changes you would suggest and what this is about]

Proposer: Deadline: [insert a deadline here, f.e. "5 January, 2010, 17:00". Rule 2 above explains how to determine a deadline]

====Support====

====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 anoother 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.

How To

 * 1) All active talk page proposals must be listed below in chronological order (new proposals go at the bottom). All pages effected 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, 4 and 5, as follows:
 * 3) Voting in talk page proposals will be open for two weeks, not one.
 * 4) Talk page proposals may closed by the proposer if both the support and the oppose sides each have fewer than five votes.
 * 5) After two weeks, a clear majority of three votes is required. Without the majority, the talk page proposal will be listed as "NO QUORUM".
 * 6) The talk page proposal must pertain to the article it is posted on.

List of Talk Page Proposals

 * Merge information pertaining to generic Blue and Yellow Toads into Toad (species) and Toad Brigade, leaving the separate Blue Toad and Yellow Toad pages for the specific Toad characters that appeared in New Super Mario Bros. Wii. Whether or not these pages will be named "" and "" or "" and "" is also being voted on. (Discuss) Passed
 * Merge Nintendo GameCube Microphone into Nintendo GameCube. (Discuss) Passed
 * Merge Banana Bunch into Banana. (Discuss) Passed
 * Merge Special Kit 1 and Special Kit 2 into Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis. (Discuss) Passed
 * Split SSX on Tour from Video game references. (Discuss) Passed
 * Merge Whip Shuri into Shuri. (Discuss) Passed
 * Merge Triple Bananas and Giant Banana into Banana. (Discuss) Passed
 * Split Mushroom (Super Mario RPG info) into Mushroom and (Discuss) Passed
 * Merge M into Graffiti. (Discuss) Deadline: 23 February 2010, 17:00
 * Merge Mushroom (SMRPG info), Bad Mushroom, Mid Mushroom, Max Mushroom onto one page. (Discuss) Deadline: 25 February 2010, 20:00
 * Merge Standard Bike M, Standard Bike L, and Standard Bike S into Bike. (Discuss) Deadline: 25 February 2010, 20:00
 * Merge Standard Kart S, Standard Kart M, and Standard Kart L into Kart. (Discuss) Deadline: 25 February 2010, 20:00
 * Merge Entei and similar pages, where characters appear as stage trophies into . (Discuss) Deadline: 4 March 2010, 23:00
 * Merge Turtle (Super Smash Bros.) into Trophy Descriptions (Super Smash Bros. Melee) (Discuss) Deadline: 6 March 2010, 2:00
 * Merge King Bulblin and Lord Bullbo into Bridge of Eldin (Discuss) Deadline: 6 March 2010, 2:00
 * Merge Special Kit 3 into Mario vs. Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis. (Discuss) Deadline: 7 March 2010, 2:00
 * Split Dark Koopa into Dark Koopa and . (Discuss) Deadline: 2 March 2010, 22:00

New Features
''None at the moment.

Non-Mario Appearances in Infoboxes
In infoboxes (the boxes that appear in the top right corner of many articles) e.g. for characters there is information about the first and latest appearances of the characters. While this is fine in my opinion, I propose to get rid of any information about appearances of the characters in question outside of the Marioverse (for lack of a better term; with "Marioverse" I mean all sources and appearances our wiki covers). For example, look at Bomberman (character). He first appeared in a non-Mario game and it's mentioned in the infobox. This kind of information is completely irrelevant to our wiki and just clutters up the infobox. It can be mentioned in an introductory sentence to the article, though, but there's no need to put it in the infobox. It's even worse with the "latest appearance"; there's really no need to keep track of each new appearance of a character outside the Marioverse.

Thus, I propose to only put relevant Mario information (including Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Super Smash Bros. and so on) in the infoboxes and get rid of sources that are irrelevant to the MarioWiki. This applies to every kind of infobox, not only those for characters.

Proposer: Deadline: February 22, 2010, 23:00

Support

 * Per the reasons given above.
 * 1) - Per Time Q again, I mean this wiki is the Super Mario Wiki not the Metroid Wiki, Zelda Wiki, Pokémon Wiki...
 * 2) Per Time Q.
 * 3) – Per all.
 * 4) Per Time Q, especially because of the latest appearance. Why would we have to keep track of the latest Bomberman game, for example?
 * 5) - Of course. Per all above me.
 * 6) Well, this is the Super Mario not one of those Zelda Wikis, or Metroid Wikis.
 * 7) We can link them to the wikipedia article or to the article in their wikis or wikias.
 * 8) - Per all.
 * 9) - Per Time Q and Grandy.
 * 10) - Per all.
 * 11) - I've seen those things around the wiki, they provide no useful knowledge as people who want to read about Mario will not be truly eager to read about Link's first Zelda appearance. I doubt Zelda fans (wishing to read about Zelda characters) will come to the Mario wiki as much as I doubt Mario fans (wishing to read about Mario characters) will go to a Zelda wiki. With the recent establishment of the NIWA, users will be much more at leisure to just find another wiki on the nintendo game that they want to read about and be happy and contribute to that wiki. I would even go as far as to suggest that if they want to have a wiki about zelda and mario, they use wikia or wikkii to create it.

Oppose

 * 1) I am Zero! It's not like we give information of every game that charactered appeared, so it won't hurt just to leave it as: Mario characters: first appearence and latest appearence and if they appeared on a 3rd-party game then put that in also as a latest appearence with the name of the game in paraentheses. Third party characters: first actual appearence, then Mario game appearence; latest appearence, then latest Mario game appearence or vice versa. Zero signing out.

Comments
I don't think it'll work out right. Does this include Kirby, Ike, Meta Knight, and others for the first appearance thing being irrelevant.
 * None of those characters you mentioned has those infoboxes I'm talking about. But if they had them, we'd put a SSB game as their first appearance rather than a Kirby or Fire Emblem game. Those original appearances can be mentioned in the article itself (for example: "Ike is a character who first appeared in the game Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance...").
 * Oh, okay, that sounds better.
 * But would that not be equally irrelevant? --
 * I think it is interesting to know where a character originated from. It's the same as with introductory sentences such as "Link is the protagonist of The Legend of Zelda series". Even though we don't cover The Legend of Zelda series: it's simply good information to introduce a character. However, there's no reason to clutter up the infobox with this piece of information. And this is especially true for "latest appearances". Why should MarioWiki readers care when and where Link last appeared outside of the Marioverse?
 * I'm with you on the "latest appearance" thing(in fact, I think that thing should disappear altogether, but) I don't think that the first appearance really "clutters up" the infobox. Perhaps a better way to do it would be to mention what series the character originates from, rather than first appearance.(for non-Mario characters, that is) --

@Reversinator: Well yes, the reason we don't cover the information is because it's completely irrelevant here. We can still link to the Wikipedia article about the original appearance outside the Marioverse in the introductory sentence. No need to clutter up the infobox with it.

@Zero777: Since you just per'd Reversinator, please read my comment above. No relevant information will be lost if this proposal passes.

@King Bean: See above. Seriously, what is your reason for opposing?

Question: Are Banjo and Conker games also to be excluded from the infobox? --
 * I'd say no, since we do cover those games (even though there are only articles about the series).

@Time Q: Alright, sorry for the delay. I really don't see how it's cluttering up the infobox. There's my big reply.
 * Okay, this is a matter of opinion. Yet I don't think your vote is valid. The only reason you gave is that with the information in the infobox, we can link to those appearances. But we could do exactly the same if we removed that kind of info (from the infobox). In no way do I propose to get rid of the links, so your reasoning doesn't really fit to what I'm proposing.

Another Proposal on removing the FI
We voted to keep the FI via this old proposal -. The FI is like idle and most of the pictures that are there are kind of bad (pixelly, logo everywhere, too small, etc.). and Per the reasons of the old proposal.

An alternative is to reuse old pictures like the Featured Articles, as said in the old proposal.

Proposer: Deadline: February 25, 2010, 23:00

Remove the FI

 * 1) Per proposal.
 * Per my reasoning on the old proposal. I don't think the main problem is running out of images. I think the main problem is that the concept of FIs is rubbish. Unlike articles, images are not our work. Also see my comment below.
 * 1) -- Per all.
 * 2) - Per Time Q.

Keep as it is

 * 1) - There are still a lot of images that deserves to be featured. We haven't ran out of them yet.
 * 2) If you keep a sharp eye out for images, you eventually find a nice one. And of course SMG2 doesn't have any artwork yet, it doesn't even have a release date yet! I think we'll have enough images for quite a while, though.
 * 3) There's no release date of SMG2, and you're expecting artwork from that game to just fall from the sky? Per all.
 * 4) As I said before, the wiki still has plenty of images worthy of being featured. Images might not be our work but they give a break from all the writing on the main page, If we get rid of them there wont be any thing but writing on the main page.
 * 5) - Per all.
 * 6) They're still Mario stuff, even if it wasn't our own work. Besides, Featured Images give color and touch to the main page. Come on, think of main page with just two images and the rest are text. Plus, not everyone would look at the 'Shroom anyway.
 * 7) How many times is this proposal gonna come up? Per all. And what do you mean it's been a week and no pics of SMG2? >_>' And like everyone said, who's gonna want to read a main page full of text. The pitures give it personality and color instead of reading text after text.
 * 8) - As I said in the last proposal of this, and the fact that your impatient and too literal to realize that SMG2 won't be out in a week, so give it time and enjoy the great images we have around the wiki.
 * 9) I am Zero! Per all. Zero signing out.
 * 10) Per King Bean.
 * 11) If the last proposal failed, why make another one? Besides, the FIs give a nice, colorful touch to the page. I hate looking at text all day. And Mario technically isn't our work either.
 * 12) - The FI adds an artistic touch to the wiki. We can't have everyone thinking that we are a boring place that nobody wants to be at. We need to do two things to keep the wiki a happy place for some users. 1. Have images as well as articles. 2. Keep The 'Shroom running. This may as well be a proposal to remove the 'shroom as the 'shroom does not include any factual information or help the wiki knowledge in any way. The 'Shroom is simply a community project that many users like and have fun with, as are FIs - while they are very disorganized and very illogical in some places, users still like them and they should stay to make users like the wiki.

Comments
First of all: Super Mario Galaxy 2 has not been released yet. I don't know what you're talking about. Second: You can't just propose to "reuse old pictures", you should at least propose rules of when to do so. For example, if an image has less than 10 positive votes at the end of a week, reuse an old picture. Third: one of the reasons for opposing my old proposal was that the Main Page wouldn't be balanced anymore without the FIs. Look at our current Main Page. Since talk page proposals were added to it, it's not balanced anymore at all. Now if we remove the FIs and move the talk page proposals to the right, we could balance it out again.

About the "not our work" thing for the images. I would think of something like this to be going on the shroom', but what if we had some thing like FIs where we could have fan made Mario images made by us users? And the one with the most votes gets on the main page? Maybe? I'm not sure if this is a stupid idea or not so...
 * I wouldn't recommend that. We only have official content on the wiki, no fanon articles etc., so we shouldn't encourage users to make images themselves. But of course we could have all that in the 'Shroom. Just like the FIs ;)

Everyone, I checked on a bunch of websites and it says that it comes out on February 11th, 2010.

You seriously think that it came out last week? Wow.
 * Where did you hear that nonsense? It's supposed to come out around summer time...
 * I checked a bunch a websites, and they all said "TBA 2010". And I look at the official ones. Gamefaqs, IGN, Gamespot, you know, what you should rely on.
 * Same at the Nintendo website. Nintendo is the most official and exact one (obviously).

Okay... But we still have to get rid of the FI.


 * No, we don't all text on the main page and what someone (I forgot who...) brought up on the first removal of FI was a very good point. What will we replace it with because we can't have a huge are of whitespace on the front page.
 * There's a picture of Mario in the upper left corner and all the ads have pictures.
 * That Mario picture is not enough. And ads... I hate those things. They do not count as images in the main page since they are annoying and distracting. Besides, I use Firefox with Noscript and AdBlocker, which means I won't see those ads.
 * I forgot. There is also the picture from the Featured Articles every article.

24-Hour Delay Before Voting on Proposals
I propose to introduce a 24-hour delay for each proposal after it is made before users can vote on it.

Currently, as soon as a proposal is put on this page, users are allowed to vote on it. This is a problem for the following reason: Sometimes, proposals are made that seem very worthy to support, and within few hours, many votes are added. This is bad for people who are not online during that time but who would like to discuss points of the proposal they don't agree with. When they come online after a few hours and already find dozens of votes, they have no change to argue against them, and some of the voters might not even visit the Proposals page anymore after they have voted. Also, during the 24-hour period the proposal can be discussed and, if needed, edited, before any overhasty votes are made.

If this proposal passes, the following changes will be made:
 * Additionally to the "proposer" and "deadline" lines, there will be a line "Voting start" which will be 24 hours after the proposal is made.
 * The voting start time can be exactly 24 hours after the creation of the proposal, however in order to not make things too complicated, proposers can also round one hour up or down (e.g. if the proposal is created at 17:14, one may put 17:00, and if it's created at 17:33, one may put 18:00).
 * The deadline will be one week after the voting start rather than after the creation of the proposal. The usual deadline rules apply (e.g. if voting time starts on a Monday at 18:00, the deadline will be next Monday at 23:00).

This proposal would not abolish the possibility for the proposer to support their own proposal right away.

Proposer: Deadline: February 22, 2010, 23:00

Support

 * Per the reasons given above.
 * 1) - Per Time Q, this is really necessary.
 * 2) This sounds pretty good, so users can discuss it before voting right away.
 * 3) - Per TimeQ. Many proposals get modified in that time-span, making it so that old votes may be inaccurate.
 * 4) - Per proposal
 * 5) – Per all!
 * 6) That's what exactly happened to the Second "Remove FI" Proposal above.
 * 7) If people vote right away, well the proposal could be edited the votes could be disproven and become useless.
 * 8) - Per TimeQ.
 * 9) - Per Time Q.
 * 10) yeah, per all
 * 11) Per Time Q.
 * 12) - Per Time Q.
 * 13) - as most voters do not have their own arguments, but just "per" somebody else, this will allow for a more controversial discussion of the subject in question.

Comments
How exactly would we regulate this? –
 * By taking off votes that users put up before the 24-hour period is up. It would be quite simple. My only question is this: would we allow comments during the 24-hour period? Being unable to comment would be counterproductive. OOps, missed a line in the proposal.

Change Rules in Featured Images page
If anybody had ever voted on the Featured Images page, he/she could see that some images have fan votes on them (e.g. luigi+ball=epic fail). One problem with fan votes is that they make our wiki biased and unprofessional. Second, we vote on images for quality, not if a character is in it. Third, unlike Featured Articles, fan votes really do make a difference in the Featured Images page since the support votes are subtracted by oppose votes. Also, some users are giving out bad or even no reasons why they oppose an image (e.g I don't like this picture).

I propose that we should change the rules in the Featured Image nomination. If this proposal passes, everyone will need to give a valid reason to support/oppose an image. If a person fails to give a valid reason for a vote, then a sysop can delete the vote. A user can report to a sysop if he/she finds a vote with an invalid reason.

This is my first proposal. If I make any mistakes, please correct it.

Proposer: Deadline: February 28, 2010 21:00

Support

 * 1) If this proposal passes, then our nominated images won't get torn to pieces by fan votes or invalid votes. Like I said, fan votes or invalid reason actually DO harm to the featured images unlike the featured articles.
 * 2) Some votes are just really stupid, and you can't do anything about it, especially when the voter doesn't reply to you in the comments section or anything. I really think this would be good so... per proposal.

Oppose

 * How I dislike that "fan vote" discussion >.> Anyways, what we're talking about here is images. Whether you like an image or not is a totally subjective thing. There ARE no possible "valid" reasons if you just like an image. You can't force people to "reason" their personal taste, that's absurd. Really, if "fan votes" are such a problem to you, don't give reasons at all, like almost all users did when we started the FIs.
 * 1) Instead of doing that, we should do the same as the new rules of Featured Articles. We should have this set of rules that determine when the quality of a picture is great enough so we can put it on the main page. We should also reuse old pictures like the FA. Or an alternative is to get rid of the FI altogether, getting a lot of stress off the Sysops backs.
 * 2) - Per most Time Q said and per some things KS3 said.
 * 3) -- Per the "it's all opinion" argument that I've made in the past multiple times. I am sometimes compelled to support a nomination with the reason "This is awful!".
 * 4) Per Time Q, the featured images supports/opposes depend of the thought of each person, you cannot say them to change of opinion.
 * 5) - Per all, the FI page, while it has some major problems with people putting oppose reasons in the support section, is all a matter of opinion. Somebody may think that the fact that (i.e.) an image has a logo in the corner is minor meanwhile others may think that it is a big problem. It depends on what you see is a problem. Sure some of the people have to change their frame of mind so that they actually put a support vote in the support section...but either way - people's opinions vary.

Comments
Time Q: Yeah, I hate this fan vote discussion too. If this proposal passes, then we should never talk of this again. Anyway, a lot of great quality images are opposed because of these fan votes, and there was a proposal on deleting the FI, and one of the reasons was because of too many fan votes.
 * Uhm, no, I made the proposal, and that was not one of my reasons. Anyway: be reasonable. As I said above, it's absurd to force users to reason their personal taste.
 * And neither did the person named Red Shell 68066vr.
 * But some pictures look obvious such as that water picture and some other horrid pictures.
 * So what? Opposers can put a reason for those pictures. But users should not be forced to put reasons on every picture.
 * I just don't want a bad picture that ends up getting featured (Bowser Stirkers, anyone? There was a Luigi Strikers, but that got put down).
 * As you can see, a lot users like that Bowser picture. But that's not the point. How would this proposal prevent bad pictures getting featured?
 * There was a single picture of a Yoshi eating a cookie. A lot of users supported it at first, but then, I (and others) came in and opposed. If we didn't oppose, then that would end up getting featured.

If you don't like a picture and you can't find a decent reason for it, just don't vote. You are not forced to vote on an image.

Miscellaneous
None at the moment.