MarioWiki:Proposals

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Citing the Super Mario Encyclopedia
To quote the wonderful Super Mario Wiki Twitter, "Dark Horse's English translation of the Super Mario Bros. encyclopedia is out today!.. And it turns out it liberally borrows from the wiki, consistency and accuracy be damned." The link contains quite a few examples and images, but in short, hordes of names are taken from either this wiki or the Mario Wikia verbatim, even if it contradicts the original Japanese encyclopedia, isn't originally from English, or was completely conjectural in the first place. This is different from the oft-cited dubiousness of other guides, which are mostly fine with occasional errors that can easily be set aside. Frankly, if we were to blindly and wholly cite every name in this book, we'd be citing ourselves, and that just seems disastrous for credibility. It's also doubtful, if not outright improbable, that these names were specifically chosen by the authors because they sincerely believed that each and every one of them were perfectly acceptable names in English, especially when they're Japanese transliterations that don't even match the Japanese book. The fact that this book is official is worth considering, but it doesn't mean that it should automatically be accepted without at least taking into account the quality issues that were previously mentioned.

With that said, there are certain names that seem to not originate from the wiki, such as "Sentry Garage" for Jump Garage, and with a lack of an English source, using that seems okay. On the one hand, it'd be like we're picking and choosing what's valid and what isn't, but on the other hand, it's plainly obvious which names were directly borrowed from the wiki, and therefore which names can be easily ignored. Think of it as salvaging whatever parts we can from a trainwreck. EDIT: However, Vent's point about these names potentially stemming from the wiki is also valid, and it's definitely worth considering.

Whether the guide is completely barred from being cited or is only allowed to be partially cited, let me make one thing abundantly clear: we shouldn't allow citogenesis to creep onto our wiki.

Proposer: Deadline: October 30, 2018, 23:59 GMT

Only allow part of the book to be cited

 * 1) - I'm for siting names the book uses for something we don't already have an official source for. If we've found an official source already (such as the Keronpa Ball), then we ignore the name the book uses.
 * 2) - Like Alex95 said above, I'm for citing names of enemies in the book itself which have no other official English sources, like Chibi Wanwan ("Chibi Chomp"), King Bill (Banzai Bill) ("Banzai Bull's-Eye"), but for everything else, it shouldn't be used.
 * 3) Per Alex95.
 * 4) If it weren't so obvious that the names were directly copied from the wiki by Dark Horse (who clearly made no effort to understand how this wiki works), I'd vote for the above option. If it gave us no new names for conjectural subjects, then I'd obviously vote below. But I see no way we can pass up this chance for the King Bill issue (among others) to be cleared up. This was meant to be a translation. Dark Horse gave us English names for some things and totally failed on others. So we take the English names and leave the foreign ones as is. The book was approved by Nintendo, not made by them, making it lower tier in terms of.... well, canon, even though Mario doesn't have one of those. Therefore, I think we can a bit more nitpicky about what names we take and which ones we don't.   Am I making any sense?
 * 5) Per all. Also, if it was part of the naming page, I say the best bet would be current number 4 with margin of new 4 to new 5, as oppose of new 2 or 3 like if it wasn't this way.
 * 6) Per all. After all, some names in the book (i.e, Targeting Ted Launch Pad), to my knowledge, are entirely new and not copy-and-pasted from the wiki.
 * 7) Gonna vote here too, it was my original choice before I changed my mind. Per BubbleRevolution and LTL, they sum up my thoughts for this side nicely.
 * 8) Per all, especially LinktheLefty.
 * 9) per all
 * 10) Per BubbleRevolution, Mr. L, and LinkTheLefty. I feel if an enemy otherwise doesn't have an official English name, it's probably best to use whichever one it's given in the book, since otherwise, I don't know if we'll ever get names that are "more official."
 * 11) It's still official material, even if our wiki is the original source for a few of the names.  But the ones that didn't originate from the wiki are perfectly okay to cite.  Not to mention the King Bill madness that drove me crazy ever since I joined...so per all.
 * 12) Per all
 * 13) It's officially licensed material, we'd easily side with this had copyright on our very own site not been an issue.
 * 14) As flimsy as the English translation ended up, this reminds me of the time that Prima directly reused material for their unofficial/unauthorized Yoshi's Story guide in their officially-licensed Nintendo 64 Game Secrets guide, and we cite officialized English names through the latter such as "Shy Guys on Pogo Sticks" that would otherwise never be available. Ignoring it completely would have been counterproductive, and I feel the same about Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia. Either way, Nintendo approved the final product, and you can bet there are going to be very few (if any) opportunities of these old conjectural and foreign names ever getting cleared up, so we have to work with what we've got.

Do not allow the book to be cited

 * 1) Per proposal.
 * 2) Citogenesis is kinda not cool and stuff.
 * 3) The book should not be cited at all, since it contains unofficial names. But since it is an official book, the book should have its own page, with mentions that some names in it are unofficial names taken from this and other wikis, so it doesn't count as a source. We don't know if the unique names in it are from other unofficial places, so we can't risk having fake information on the wiki. We could make redirects for those fake names (with the reason being that it's in an official book), but since they're mostly fan names, those names shouldn't appear on normal pages. That's just my opinion though. Please don't make this an official source...
 * 4) I had a feeling this would happen. Dark Horse has somehow managed to get worse from Arts & Artifacts.
 * 5) Per all. Many of these names were clearly taken from this wiki, since they use names that were marked as conjectural on here, such as "Soarin' Stu" and "Mandibug Stack", and are incredibly inconsistent.
 * 6) Per Glowsquid and Metalex123, this would not be a good precedent and would generate confusion.
 * 7) Per Anton, Glowsquid, and Metalex123.
 * 8) If you ask me, the fact that citing parts of this book is basically the same as citing ourselves ruins its credibility as a whole.
 * 9) Per all.
 * 10) Per all.
 * 11) Metalex made a solid point. And honestly, this is making me question official terms to begin with...
 * 12) I unironically like the idea of the wiki making things canon, but that's a bad idea for non-English names and I'd rather have it all or nothing. So nothing it is. Per all.
 * 13) Per all. Especially Metalex makes the perfect point.
 * 14) Per Glowsquid and Metalex, plus the thing I pointed out in the Discord about even the supposed original names such as 'Sentry Garage' may still be based on mangled information they found on this Wiki. Citing them could be seen as something of an endorsement and I don't believe such sloppy work deserves to be endorsed.
 * 15) I don't strongly support either position, just leaning on playing extra cautious. I just want to see how this pans out in the end. Maybe they will clean up their act, Dark Horse. But I feel this is a huge policy decision, especially now that the book is circulated in the Mario fandom. How are we going to proceed in responding to potential editors who don't realize that the names from Dark Horse aren't to be used for the wiki? Do we use a template? Do we add a refnote at the source? Do we write policy and put that in a template (e.g., containing text that says why it's not a good source) that becomes the automatic response?
 * 16) Hopefully you all still allow very inactive users to vote. I'm going with this option for two reasons. 1) The names are sloppy at best, and unethical plagiarism at worst. It's clear to everyone who has voted for any option thus far that outright using the encyclopedia as a source would be unacceptable, and I agree with that. Similarly, see Metalex123's response. 2) I don't know how we decide what should be cited from the book. Where do we draw the line? What is reasonable to take? Do we take some of the Japanese names, but not all? It's messy, and to me, it feels like an attempt to pick and choose what's official and what's not official. I don't think that should be up to us, and (while this is a slippery slope argument) I can imagine it causing canon and consistency problems in the future.
 * 17) Also, this especially applies if other official or officially licensed material outright contradicts the Super Mario Encyclopedia - it may be officially licensed, but does (potentially) involve the fanmade cooperation of this wiki and has no authority on things that other sources have already given - in fact, that should apply for things that other sources *don't* give as well. It's like, in analogy, how the official English dub of Pokémon has no authority over events in the original dialogue more than any fandub would as it, in many cases, makes crap up and sometimes even outright mistranslates things (such as mistranslating move names and having the characters call out the wrong move), as any fandub could do - just like fansubs and fandubs, the people who work on Pokémon's English dub are referring to source material and have no authority on what the source material unarguably says. But to get off that tangent before I ramble on any further: the same goes for whether the names found in the encyclopedia are sourced from Nintendo or are made up by the third party licensee. If they don't get it from Nintendo, the name can be treated with only the same amount authority as a fanmade name. Likewise, if the first party source does start putting a fan name into official usage (this happened for Shiny Pokémon), then yes it can be used.
 * 18) Per all.
 * 19) They give the names from the wiki, and i realize it isn't Nintendo of America who translated this.
 * 20) The initially known issues don't even begin to scratch the surface. There are countless mistakes that add up to give the impression that the English translation simply ceased over a year ago after steadfast overreliance on the wiki, providing a particular time capsule of factually incorrect and outdated information throughout the book. The wiki itself is a constant work-in-progress, and to say that an officially licensed product looking up to it is unprofessional would be an understatement. While there are outliers, any potential benefit the book might have had is seriously outweighed by the actual damage, and so it doesn't feel right to use it as a source unless a revised edition ever comes to fruition that fixes all of these problems.
 * 21) Per all. I'm so glad the conjectural Super Mario Land 2 enemy names I made up as a kid got replaced, yikes.

Comments
Yes, they do, hence my fury when the SML2 page was leaked. But Rudy the Clown is still on that name. It's licensed by Nintendo, though, so perhaps it's this trope at play. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 17:54, 23 October 2018 (EDT)
 * Maybe we should reconsider Rudy the Clown. Regardless, when the authors of the book are supposed to be translating from a source that already provides a slew of official names, smushing together all of the fan names and other junk reeks more of laziness or complacentness rather than a dedicated effort to ascend the fanon. 17:59, 23 October 2018 (EDT)
 * What about the individual Three Little Pighead names? Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 18:01, 23 October 2018 (EDT)
 * Hence the middle option (although since those names are transliterated Japanese unlike Sentry Garage, I'm curious to know if those are from the Japanese guide). 18:03, 23 October 2018 (EDT)
 * Same situation exists with the Furiko obstacle. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 18:05, 23 October 2018 (EDT)

The Super Mario Wiki is neither owned by nor affiliated with Nintendo or the creators of the Mario franchise in any way. I'm mad at Dark Horse right now. Anyway... This is extremely unlikely, but the idea just popped into my head of an entire template being created that somehow informs the reader that the name was officially adopted despite the subject never having an official English name prior to the wiki naming it. (I'm sure that can be worded better.) But that's nothing more than a brainstorm. 18:12, 23 October 2018 (EDT)
 * Per what I said to Doc and within the proposal, it feels unlikely that the writers are genuinely making an attempt to officially adopt these name, especially since this is supposed to be a translation. 18:15, 23 October 2018 (EDT)

If the partial citation option wins, we should clarify the placement of the book among acceptable sources for naming. I suggest either specifying that it gets lowest priority in officially licensed media, or giving it a special sixth place underneath development names. That way, it handles conjectural and foreign names as needed, but we still clearly use older or alternate names in the event of contradictions. LinkTheLefty (talk) 18:36, 23 October 2018 (EDT)
 * Could you give an example of when this would come into effect? 18:46, 23 October 2018 (EDT)
 * It seems like we have some articles that are already in effect when the Super Mario Land 2 page was shown off, like Be. LinkTheLefty (talk) 18:50, 23 October 2018 (EDT)
 * Those are just transliterations of the Japanese names that the wiki was already using, though. Especially since they obfuscate its origins and removes the macrons and other accents for pronunciation, I wouldn't be comfortable citing the book for those enemies. 18:54, 23 October 2018 (EDT)
 * Perhaps, but apparently other cases in separate sections like Red Skull Boxes are now identified as Targeting Ted Launch Pads, which I'm fairly certain is a brand new name (correct me if it's from elsewhere). I don't have my hands on a copy yet, so I can't point out other examples right now. LinkTheLefty (talk) 19:01, 23 October 2018 (EDT)
 * Page 211: "They [Torpedo Teds] swim straight forward through the water. Some are propelled from Launch Pads." It's a bit of a generic name, but I'd accept "Launch Pad". 19:10, 23 October 2018 (EDT)
 * It occurred to me that the possible reason the Super Mario Land 2 names are so literal might actually be for consistency with the original Super Mario Land names. As for Dark Horse taking names online, that is unfortunate but people should be aware that Prima has been caught doing the same so it is not a new phenomenon. I have a copy of the Japanese version, so in advance of the English release, I've also mentioned most of the affected articles here. Even with discrepancies and such (which I imagine should be largely eliminated by forgoing the full citation option), you could see that a fair amount of the wiki's conjectural and foreign tags would still be easily cleaned up with just the partial citation option. Or we can take a more case-by-case approach if it is best. LinkTheLefty (talk) 21:30, 23 October 2018 (EDT)
 * I received a copy earlier, and the first thing I did was flip to the SML section to check the new name of the Roto-Disc-looking obstacle that the Japanese version calls Kaitensuru Honō ("Spinning Flame") only to find, to my great dismay, that it's labeled as ROTO-DISC. In addition to the Kuromame mix-up, there are a lot of other oddities that stood out to me like the off "Game Boy Player's Guide" names reused in the SML section, Para-Bob-omb and Red Spike Top in the SMW section, directly adding that Bubba is the alternative name of Boss Bass in the SM64 section, Sentry Beam getting its Japanese name Laser Pod and Jump Beamer getting the name of Sentry Beam, Spoing suddenly known as "Bouncing Scuttlebug" in SMG yet named properly in SMG2 (Sprangler is intact in both sections), Hefty and Big Goombas in the NSMBU section respectively and erroneously referred to as Big and Mega Goombas in the NSMBW section (as we did), and the general use of certain terms that I'm aware originated from this very wiki from mostly over a year ago such as Pipe Fist, Fire Jumping Piranha, Killer Chair, Fish Bone and Tweester in SMG, Starbag, Rainbow Note, Ghost Vase, Whimp, Mega Grrrol, conjectural Sunshine NPCs, Switchback Platform, and the transliterations in the SML2 section (as I now realize they must be from us outside of the Three Little Pigheads' individual names because the original Japanese version of the Encyclopedia plainly gave the name of "Bomubomu" as "Bomubomu 1・2・3" and also gave the name of "Be" as the alternate "B Fly"). I could keep going, but this is such a surreal doozy. On the other hand, Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia happens to be the only modern source I've found that gives Cape Mario its correct name of Caped Mario. Go figure.
 * I'll admit, this is more unusable than I thought and it's no wonder that no one wants to go for the full citation option, but I do see some instances of passable localization buried in it (seemingly courtesy of the other translator if we're being honest, though regardless it needed tighter quality control as it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in Nintendo for allowing a product's release in this rough state, especially after such a long delay). If the partial citation option passes, I believe we can work with the following: Falling Ceiling, Scenic Course (unique translation!) and other SML2 locations including the Casino, Giant Gringill, Chibi Chomp, Ground Urchin, Remote-Controlled Clown Car, [Torpedo Ted] Launch Pad, Targeting Ted Launch Pad, Piranha Pod, and possibly other names for things we do not yet have any name for (e.g. Lemmy and Wendy's "Decoy Doll" from SMW or the "Innertube Goomba" and "Skating Goomba" from SM3DW).
 * If we go with the no cite option, I'd assume it should at least be acceptable to use Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia for redirect purposes only, since that would otherwise confuse casual readers. LinkTheLefty (talk) 19:20, 24 October 2018 (EDT)
 * Um, "Tweester" in SMG was on a trading card for ages.... Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 20:21, 24 October 2018 (EDT)
 * So essentially, what Super Mario Galaxy was to "Porcupuffer" then. LinkTheLefty (talk) 20:51, 24 October 2018 (EDT)

Whatever people's thoughts are on this issue, I think this goes to show that making sure wikis are as accurate as possible is important since so many people just assume whatever's on them is 100% factual. And that people should stop treating information on wikis as 100% factual if it's not sourced. BubbleRevolution (talk) 22:18, 23 October 2018 (EDT)

We should probably use their names as redirects. That way, they can't be moved to them. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 18:45, 24 October 2018 (EDT)

@Bloc Partier: We wouldn't be "picking and choosing" what's official and what isn't. We'd simply allow anything from the book to be cited that doesn't originate from this wiki. And by the way, inactive users are absolutely allowed to vote. - 00:55, 25 October 2018 (EDT)
 * Well, alright, but then would we write in stone somewhere the list of stuff that didn't originate from the wiki? Would we reference that list every time something comes up? My wording was perhaps not the best, but I still see it as a bureaucratic nightmare. Naive users could easily assume that everything from the encyclopedia was official if some of the things were renamed. I don't know, I see where the "allow some" side is coming from, but I'm really not super comfortable with the idea. I felt the same way when we allowed Prima's official "inaccuracies" to fly. And, thanks! I've been following the drama from the SMW Twitter, and I don't edit much anymore, but the wiki holds a special place in my heart. I felt like I should chip in. 01:05, 25 October 2018 (EDT)