MarioWiki:Proposals

 http://img33.picoodle.com/img/img33/9/9/17/f_propcopym_9045f2d.png 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. Signing with the signature code (~) is not allowed due to technical issues.

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:
 * 3) Monday to Thursday: 17:00 (5pm)
 * 4) Friday and Saturday: 20:00 (8pm)
 * 5) Sunday: 15:00 (3pm)
 * 6) Every vote should have a reason accompanying it.
 * 7) At any time a vote may be rejected if at least three active users believe the vote truly has no merit or was cast in bad faith. However, there must be strong reasons supporting the invalidation.
 * 8) " # " should be added under the last vote of each support/oppose section to show another blank line.
 * 9) 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.
 * 10) 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.
 * 11) Proposals can not be made about System Operator promotions and demotions. Sysops can only be promoted and demoted by the will of Bureaucrats.
 * 12) 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.

The times are in EDT, 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 Saturday night at 11:59 PM EDT, the deadline is the next Saturday night at 8:00 PM. If it is a minute later, the deadline is a day plus 15 hours (Sunday), as opposed to a day minus 4 hours.

CURRENTLY: , 27 2024 (EST)

Template Reorganization Guide
I think we need a guide called "MarioWiki:Navigation Templates" in order to fully understand the actual purpose of navigation templates. Many of our nav templates are useless, huge, or otherwise poorly designed, (be it clunky, having colors that are rather blinding, etcetera). (I've made quite a few of those, back in my n00by days. :P) So, please bare with me as I try to tackle all I think should be changed with nav templates. (I'm pulling some of this from Talk:Dragon Wario for further reference.)

I feel navigation templates are a vital part of this wiki. Not only are they important aesthetically, but they also help people navigate from one page to another easily. The problem is, not all of them are really organized well, and make navigation hard, rather than easy. I feel the following rules should be set in stone:

1) All navigation templates should be collapsible completely. This means all the way down to one row. Then, said templates should be reorganized in an easy to navigate manner, be it by alphabetizing it's contents, or by grouping them together and alphabetizing them. (That's my favorite way to do it, as you can see with many of my later templates.) By doing so, navigation templates take up exactly the same amount of space, but can be enlarged with the click of a button to find exactly what you're looking for. Though this can slow down some computers considerably, a way around that is to conceal navigation templates on articles with many of them. (Ex: Mario, Bowser, Princess Peach) I have tested that with putting the showhide feature on a page in order conceal many navigation templates, they bog down browsers hardly at all. 2) All navigation templates should refer only to any one of the following:
 * Game-specific templates — when making a template based on one game, you should break it down into four main sections: Locations, Items, Enemies, and Bosses. Other sections can be added if necessary. (Examples are, , and .)
 * Series-specific templates — this should mainly be used to target an entire series of games with one common feature. This one feature would be broken down into its appearance within each game in the series. (Examples are, , and .)
 * Species-specific templates — this should only be used with enemies with a large amount of species, as well as a reasonable amount of characters based on said species. (Examples are, , and , and even .)
 * Item/Object-specific templates — this should only be used in order to group items or objects of similarity into one template. This would also refer to terms and such found throughout games. (Examples are and, as well as  and .)
 * Character-specific templates — this would refer to a series of characters that have a solid link proven between them. (An example is .)

Having said all that, I feel that this policy would enforce a regulation between all navigation templates, making thinks perfectly synonymous. I will require the help of others to help put this policy fully in place, as it is a huge load. (And I may become inactive soon, but I'm not 100% sure. So please don't think that I've purposely left the place because I didn't want to tackle the burden!)

Proposer: Deadline: February 9, 2009, 17:00

Support

 * 1) - Per my reasons above.
 * 2) - Ok I see, Per Stooben.
 * 3) - Per Stooben. This is long overdue.
 * 4) - Perfect - can't wait to see how it turns out!
 * 5) - See my comment...
 * 6) - Per Stooben's long, informative and very accurate explanation (as usual).
 * 7) *yawns* Per Stooby
 * 8) - Aye. Per Stoobs.
 * 9) Per all! -Canama

Comments
How is "" a species? It seems if we allow something like that, we open up the doors to templates like Undead and Fish and anything else related to a type of creature, as opposed to an officially named species. --
 * My bad. I forgot to add the last section of the proposal when editing that comment I made on Talk:Dragon Wario. It's fixed now.


 * What does that mean though? Element-specific templates?  "Elements" (be it Earth, Wind, or Oxygen) have never played a strong role in the Mario series.  What does Element mean anyways?  Would a "Metal" template be appropriate for all Creatures and Characters made of the Element Metal?  That part of the proposal seems the most flawed and will just replicate the poor templates we already have.  Element templates appear to be "useless" (not related to any official concept unlike the other templates), "huge" (can be filled basically indefinitely - is Mario a fire character cause he can shoot fireballs? - there is no way to establish a clear boundary between what is and what is not "related to fire) and "otherwise hideous." --
 * Okay, the "hideous" part was kinda harsh, so I reworded that. About the element-specific templates: from what I read in my dictionary, "elements" refers to earth (being of rock and/or metal), water and fire. "Air", or any of its variants, were never mentioned as being an element; neither was anything else. Ice is the same as water, only frozen. However, I looked up the aforementioned terms on Wikipedia and some of its cited sources, and it didn't mention any of them as being an "element". Merriam-Webster has failed me again. Only because the term "element" can refer to "any object that is used in the creation of something", as I read on one of Wikipedia's citations, I am removing that part of the proposal. The definition I have of "element" is poor, and I apologize for trying to implement it into the wiki. I do, however, feel that the other template categories I mentioned are specific and have a strong enough definition to stay in place. =)


 * I believe the concept of "Elements" came from the Greeks and the Chinese (independently). The Greeks said everything was made of four elements (Water, Fire, Earth, Air/Wind).  Indeed, I believe it took time for all four categories to actually be developed.  The Chinese had a similar system, except Metal was its own independent category.  Currently, we have over a hundred elements such as Oxygen, Iron, Gold, Uranium, etc.  They are the elements that make up eveything.  But anyways...I think the rest of the templates are pretty specific and strong...expect maybe Dragons (although maybe that just needs to be trimmed down to characters and creatures that have actually been called dragons, as opposed to creatures that kinda look like a dragon...a lot of those creatures actually look like seahorses).  But yeah, the other templates seem a lot stronger. --
 * I remember the concept of "elements" being brought up in my Greek History class, but it was extremely vague. In all honesty, I wouldn't be surprised if the Greeks and the Chinese introduced the concept to at least part of the world; then, the Romans probably stole the concept, as they seemed to be so notable for doing so. (:P) Right, back on-topic. I feel that some entries in the Dragon template should be dropped, ironically. While I feel the template is useful, it has some questionable entries, (like Blargg and Pinwheel). Other than that, I'm glad you agree that the other templates seem strong!

I still say (and  and, for that matter) have worth as navigational tools. They prevent articles from being template-less (and neglected as a result), and they are actually less speculative than one would think (i.e. Bowser's pretty draconian, but he's been left off, whereas the Super Mario Land seahorse-like enemies are there because of their leader, Dragonzamasu). Moving on to my next (unrelated) point, what about templates dealing with specific levels in a game, like and ? They're too large to incorporate into the game templates, but too usefull as navigation tools to scrap. The Galaxy template also has to do with another possible category: Location-specific templates, like. Some of these areas might be able to be incorporated into the games from wence they came, but they are also quite usefull on their own (smaller templates can be easier on the eyes). I love template work, so I'd be more than happy to help out with this whole thing. -
 * I kinda have to agree with what you said about the Dragon/Bird/Fish templates. They are quite useful, and they at least fall under the "Species-specific" category. (Though, I still fell needs a little bit of trimming, and maybe  and  could be organized a tad better.) On to point two: Level-specific templates fall right under game-related templates. Usually, levels, (or locations with some game templates), are implemented into the game templates to begin with; but if it makes the overall game template too large, then they should be made into their own template. However, the same wouldn't really apply to Characters, Enemies, or Items from a specific game, as they should always be compiled into the game's main template. Ehh...I'm not real fond of having location templates. It's too hard to say "have location-specific, but still game-specific templates". We've had templates for "Beaches", "Subterranean Locations", and other things, and they really prove pointless. If a template as small as  is standing on its own, it should be implemented into the main SMS template and done away with. Like ; the locations are small enough to fit into that template without being too large.

What about implementing something like Wikipedia's Tnavbar in templates? Also, the Chinese elements are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. However, the names are mostly superficial. They aren't really related to those things.

That's completely right. I see many templates rediculously long, just because they contain the same elements as category pages have (an example: Subterranean locations ) this really horrible template should be removed because it contains all the links as a category page must need. If that's the case, we are making "shortcuts" from going to category pages and ignore the order for all pages. In accordance to Stoob; for overlong templates, I recently installed the Collapsible function for navigation boxes using javascript. Thus, there is now a simpler way to hide the content of those navigation boxes, as well as preventing some glitches that appeared when used the show/hide function. I'm on a personal project under the name of "Template pipeproject" where I usually check all templates present, making some edits and fixings on them.

This is slightly less important, but: Should there be strict regulations on the colours of templates, such as them having to relate to the subject of the template? (Obviously, some subjects would not relate to any particular colour) A while ago I changed the Subterranean Locations template colour from an unfitting blue to a logical brown. Oh, and also: With that template, I Moved it from "Template:Sub" to "Template:Subterranean Locations" because calling it "Sub" looked lazy to me. So should there also be rules that Templates have full titles rather than abbreviations... or is that insignificant? It probably is, knowing my theories...

To respond to Walkazo, Dragon, Fish, and Bird articles would never be template-less, as they will always be in game-specific templates. But perhaps like Dragon, Fish and Bird need some trimming. For example, Craw is in the Bird template, although I don't know if they are explicitly called birds. They are bird-like, but they may not be recognized as birds in-game. --

CC: I appreciate your support. And I forgot to mention that you found a new way to collapse templates with ease; it makes the task a lot less difficult for us all! 2257: Implementing that onto the wiki may not be a bad idea at all. We'll have to see if it's completely necessary first, but nonetheless it may help. Interesting! I learn something knew every day! Dom: Good points! Generally, template colors should complement each other, as well as the subject they deal with. However, because it'd be too difficult for one to actually decide which colors would be entirely deemed as "subject-specific", I'm afraid that we would just have to edit the templates as we see fit. We can, however, make sure that all templates have good colors that complement each other, rather than a blinding fusion of colors. As for making a rule for specific templates...that would also be pretty hard to determine what's an appropriate abbreviation and what's not. Personally, I feel that the only templates that should have abbreviations are game- and series-specific templates, and those would only use the game's most common abbreviation. (Like Super Mario Bros. 3's is "SMB3", but Yoshi's Safari and Yoshi's Story both share "YS" for their common abbreviation.) --

Create Good Articles
Hmmm... how to start? Oh, yes. I'm sure many of you have seen articles that are very good, but not good enough to become a FA (like Luigi's Mansion or Koopa Troopa), so I propose we create a new category called "Good Articles", this will give an acknowdlegement (long word) to this articles. In order to become a FA, an article needs to fulfill all of this, so a Good Article will only need to fulfill most of them. Who's with me?

Proposer: Deadline: February 10th 2009, 17:00

Create

 * 1) - Per... ME!
 * 2) - Well I guess it would work ok, I see. Per Tucayo.

DONT create

 * 1) - Instead of arguing about what is a "Good Article," we should focus on getting articles to FA status (which itself is a long process - now imagine if we were having debates about if certain articles are Good, not bad but also not FA level).  Also, there are no details for how this system would actually work.
 * 2) - Per Son of Suns. If users actually worked on improving articles and making them FA's, it would probably be way better.

Commentaries
In all honesty, this sounds like a pretty good idea. However, before I vote, I'd like to ask a question. Exactly which standards would an article need to meet in order to become a "Good Article"?


 * 1,2,4,6,7 and 11

They have this on wookieepedia.

Okay, thanks Tucayo!

On Wookiepedia, they have a Good Articles system - but that is only for articles that basically meet all FA requirements except for achieving a certain level of content. Here, that would be the 4,000 characters rule. By Wookiepedia standards, an article that filled all FA criteria except rule 11 would be a Good Article. The criteria Tucayo provided left out rules like must be sourced with all appearances and cannot have an improvement template on the page. So these "good articles" may end up being not very "good" at all. --


 * Well, it sounds better like that
 * Might I suggest making "Good Articles" fit the same profile as a FA, with the exception of rules 6, 7, and 9? And change the 4,000 character rule to 2,500 characters?

Removals
''None at the moment.

Splits & Merges
None at the moment.

Changes
Nothing at the moment.

Miscellaneous
None at the moment.