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)

why did you suddenly change the main enemy from king koopa to bowser...
i just wonder why you took away the main enemy and changed it, it is just a bit confusing, i mean if you just kept king koopa then you wouldn't also have to take away all the koopa kids and exchange them for baby bowser.

i have another couple of questions,

(a) why did you change the fun way of the old Mario games and just get new sports games?

(b) who actually is the father of baby bowser, I mean on super Mario sunshine, bowser says it is princess peach but it turns out it isn't?


 * Dude, this site is an encyclopedia created and maintened by fans of the Mario series. We are unnoficial so I fear we can't answer your questions, sorry. --Blitzwing 17:30, 12 February 2008 (EST)

Example Text
The paragraph about the Super Mario Wiki used for the step-by-step example could use a little work. The line, "The wiki was created on August 12th, 2005 by Porplemontage but has not grown active until the past six months," is dated and sounds unprofessional. The statistics could also be updated, though that would be more for posterity than aesthetics. Also, the line "In most of these games, the plumber Mario saves Princess Peach from Bowser, is the main antagonist, such as in New Super Mario Bros." has improper grammar: it should be "In most of these games, the plumber Mario saves Princess Peach from Bowser, who is the main antagonist in titles such as New Super Mario Bros.", or something along those lines. Finally, the link to the Mario series should read Mario series, and all the other series names should be italicized as well. Since this a pretty major redo, I didn't want to go ahead and just do it, in case that would be overstepping my bounds; so I brought it here to the talk page instead. - 23:28, 7 November 2008 (EST)
 * Sounds good to me, and what about removing the "you" in that paragraph? The next section after Describing the Article states No "You"s.
 * Please go ahead. That is something I did awhile ago and I understand it probably needs to be updated. ;) 10:52, 8 November 2008 (EST)
 * Okay, I updated it; I also slightly altered a couple parts in the how-to exposition to fit the new text. Also, Super-Yoshi, the "you" in the sample text in "Describing the Article" was included on purpose so it could be removed in the "No "You"s" section as an exemplar; rest assured, the final incarnation is "you"-less. - 22:39, 8 November 2008 (EST)

New rule
Yoshario: I think abreviations are good because they make titles shorter. However, in the article the full name must be used
 * This was agreed on by sysops. I don't see a problem with making an article title longer, you could just make a redirect with a shorter title. If you want to, you can make a proposal to remove this rule. Yoshario''' [[Image:Yoshi_wearing_mario's hat.jpg|30px]]
 * Making a redirect sounds better, no need to make a proposal :)

A Broken Format
As quite a few users already know, there seems to be some issues with the whole sites format. Clearly there are many thing that can and should be done. It has been discussed on the proposals, on character pages, and even on our own pages. It needs to be discussed here though. There are many things I have to say, and there are many things that need to be covered. Specifically, what I care about the most, and at least first, is the character pages. We all know they're different, it's obvious. I think the one's we should focus on fixing first are the characters like Mario Peach and Bowser.

But first we need to refer to how the pages will ultimately differ and what we can do to make them as uniform as possible. The pages I believe we should pay attention to the most in terms of how we are going to end up formatting everything are Daisy, Bowser, and misc. characters. Daisy and Bowser are great examples because they are two very different but great pages. There's lots of elements we need to pay attention to relating to the fact Bowser is more of a primary storyline character and Daisy is more of a primary spin-off character. This way we can look at the pages most closely similar to each respectively. The next closest to Daisy's would have to be Waluigi's. Not because it's the same right now, but it will be when we figure everything out. And to Bowser's would be first-off Mario's.

I will continue to add more input later as there's still a lot I myself need to look into about each page.FD09

Creating articles about what
Are we aloud to make articles for just about anything in the games? Like for example, the bone you throw in Throw Me a Bone.
 * No. Articles about too minor things are not allowed. 16:21, 3 December 2009 (EST)

Everyone has their (or is it he/she) ups and downs
I'm going to give my reasons I attempted to change this singular "they" thing, instead of using "he/she."

Using "they" as a singular, undetermined pronoun is actually not very unusual. In fact, using "they" as a singular pronoun dates as far back as 1300 C.E., where even famous writers occasionally used it, such as in certain works, one says, "A person can't help their birth" as quoted from the works by W.M. Thackeray in Vanity Fair. Using singular "they" in fact has been so common, we all take this for granted and think this is ok.

However, many tend to avoid it. 82% of people think that this sentence, "The player must find their way to play the game," unacceptable, despite the convenience because it does not follow the traditional grammar rule of pronoun + antecedent agreement (and they associate "they" with a plural antecedent, not a singular, because "they" describes a group of people). Yet "he/she" the grammatically correct version, is rambly and it tires readers. Even though I'm thoroughly against "they", I'm also not too fond about using "he/she" either, because of its awkwardness.

Due to this on going debate about the usage of the singular "they", I think we should change our policy to avoid further confusion. Here's some examples I'll give that can help.

Here's what is going to happen if we go by our current policy:

Current: "The player must learn to control their character."

Some of us will think that's correct, some will think that this is wrong. However, I have a solution to avoid this.

Revised: "Players must learn to control their character."

Changing the singular "player" to "players" is correct and there will be no argument about that. This is another solution.

Revision #2: "The player must learn to control a character.

Changing the possessive form of "their" into an article also eases the case of this.

I hope this helps, and I hope this will avoid further confusion on this subject. All information I gathered are from my grammar book and American Heritage Dictionary. Any thoughts? I also apologize for my rude edit, as I have not given any reasons.

The reason people think "they" is correct is that it is accepted in everyday speech. However, many English teachers and grammar books find "they" used as a singular to be incorrect. It's not just teachers and books. Eighty percent of the population think the same way. I think that we should stick to "he or she". However, this is very clunky. Therefore, we should rewrite sentences to avoid this problem. It's the best solution. The second best is "he or she." Also, we should avoid stuff like he/she or s/he since it is more tiresome than "he or she". And besides, in the title, it's "his or her" ;) 03:10, 30 September 2010 (UTC)


 * No, I'm against using he/she. It makes it difficult to read. And using "they" is deemed by many incorrect, but some believe otherwise. Didn't you read what I typed? Seriously, you don't need to repeat what I just said.


 * Yeah, you're giving me an attitude, chump. I did read what you said. I'm against using he/she, too, ignorant. "He or she" is for last resort scenarios. Why can't YOU read what I just said? I'm agreeing with your points, but you think I want he/she. No. Read again, silly BowerbirdsOnFrenzyMode. 03:28, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

"He or she" is clunky and should be avoided; "he/she" is wrong and should never be used. The way the wiki is written doesn't really lend itself to pluralizing "player": it would be awkward having to switch from plural to singular when switching between "the player" and "Mario" throughout a page, which is often done for variety; it'd seem inappropriate when describing single player games; and I've found that it's easier to talk about something that happens to a player in certain conditions when you're talking about a player. Also, in the "Players must learn to control their character." example, pluralizing "players" but not "character" sounds like there's a disagreement between the subject and object: as if multiple players are controlling one character simultaneously. The next example, "The player must learn to control a character." might work in some circumstances, but if you already had something saying they have to choose a character, from then on, it's not just a character they're dealing with, but the specific one that they chose, so "a" seems a bit lacking, to me. Fortunately, if there's only one character to choose from, obviously "Mario" (or whatever the character's named) can be substituted for "their/a/the character", and there's no issue. Tweaking the overall sentence or rephrasing the information entirely can also get rid of many of these situations, but I'm not recommending that's what we do. "They" is perfectly acceptable - it's not a matter of opinion, it's fact: ask any linguist and they'll tell you it's right, as should your dictionary (if it and your English teacher tell you otherwise, they're wrong, end of story). It's not our fault if people are unaware of this usage of "they", and we should certainly not avoid it for their sakes (like how British spellings are allowed even though the mostly-American userbase view them as being "incorrect" according to their conventions); if anything, us including "they" might teach them something. - 16:56, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * "They" IS acceptable (like I just said, some famous writers use it), but the problem lies in the pronoun-antecedent agreement (of some people) and it's still 82% of people think that "they" is NOT the solution of this problem. That's the majority, and we are only the 28%. If we must tweak the sentence, then that's what we shall do.


 * The dictionary is neutral on this; they just give the statistics and the history, and some people's thoughts on it.


 * "Players must learn to control their character" makes perfect sense to me. Gah, I'm not good at explaining things, but I think the sentence you are thinking is this: "Players must learn to control a character." "Their" refers to "players" and each player possesses a character. Or something.


 * Besides, I think "players" make perfect sense for a single-player Mario game. There are multiple people that play Mario.


 * I'm trying to be as neutral as possible on this, and in reality, I would use "they" over "he/she" or any of that stuff any day (convenience and less rambly), but so many people deem this incorrect, and so many people say otherwise (even though it's only 28%). Ugh.


 * Anyway, I'm glad that you offered a rebuttal and at least you're concerned about this petty issue.


 * It doesn't matter if the majority think "they" is wrong - that's their problem, not ours: our only concern is that our wiki is grammatically correct, and using "they" is correct, so we will use it. The majority of the users are Americans, but we still use British spellings because those spellings are also correct; one of the major arguments against the decision to use the first official international English names as the titles of our pages was that most of the people using the database know, for example, WarioWare, Inc.: Minigame Mania as WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!, but the push for making the wiki more internationally-friendly outweighed the idea that the majority gets the right-of-way. Besides, we don't even know if the majority of users think this way: that 82% is almost guaranteed to not reflect the small slice of people from all over the world who spend their free time writing about Mario. All the Sysops who commented on the issue knew that "they" works as a singular gender-neutral pronoun - that's why we went ahead and made the rule. We don't intend on going back and changing it. - 19:51, 16 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Ugh... look, "they" is incorrect-and don't forget that there are some Canadian users, eh? That's sorta disrespectful. Americans. No wonder you're in this mess. "They" is incorrect, and I'm sorry if I'm being rude to the Sysops, but the rule needs to be changed-they is simply incorrect and using it makes this wiki seem unable to properly use English.M&amp;L+No Moar Picklez=Wurld War III=&#91;&#91;Image:SMG YellowLuma.jpg&#124;45px&#93;&#93;&#124; 23:44, 7 February 2012 (EST)
 * I am a Canadian. You insulting the Americans is what's disrespectful. "They" is proper English, and anyone who taught you otherwise is wrong. The use of "they" on this wiki is non-negotiable, so don't try to re-open the issue. - 15:29, 8 February 2012 (EST)

MW:Trivia
should be put at the top of the Trivia section so as to provide a link to the full policy.

05:45, 7 November 2012 (EST)

MarioWiki:Empty Section Policy
Can somebody provide a section for this policy? So far, this policy appears to be invisible for users like me, unless they're brought up as an oppose point. 21:19, 12 March 2013 (EDT)
 * Somebody already did it.  11:14, 27 June 2016 (EDT)

On the Topic of References
So, I was thinking about how we should deal with references. Mainly, how we deal with punctuation in conjunction with references. The standard I use in my edits is I place the reference after the punctuation, which I think look neater; however, others may put the reference before the punctuation. Therefore, I wish to raise this question: should there be a standard for this, and if so, which one should we use? As is probably easy to figure out, I'm partial toward putting them after punctuation marks and such. I do this because I mainly like the look of it, plus it easily clarifies what is actually being referenced, which the other method fails at: if the reference is just attached to a word, how are we certain that it's the factuality of the entire sentence or sub-clause is being verified, instead of just the word itself? 14:14, 11 July 2015 (EDT)


 * I put it before the punctuation if the reference only applies to that sentence, since it's essentially part of the sentence (no one should reasonably think it's just the last word getting ref'd). I'm a Masters student and been reading scientific papers for half a decade and they all use the before-punctuation form, and every assignment I've written, including all the stuff I've done for my thesis, use this method too: I'd get marks docked if I put refs outside the periods. The only time I puts refs outside the punctuation around here is in the odd case where a ref applies to the whole paragraph and not just the last sentence (in science, you're not allowed to do that: just tediously cite the thing over and over every sentence, or ideally, find different refs to cycle through). So far, I've taken a "first come first served" basis view of how others do it around here, same as with British vs. American spelling and punctuation: if people put it on the outside, I think "yuk, but oh well, at least they bothered to use a ref at all" and don't bother fixing it because for all I know, someone will come along and change it back, and either way, it serves its purpose, so whatever. But if we are gonna say use one method or the other, I vehemently say within-punctuation is the way to go. - 14:35, 11 July 2015 (EDT)


 * I agree with Walkazo's stance: in pretty much every class I've taken that has required references (all of which have strictly used MLA formatting, though I wouldn't recommend putting the wiki under those guidelines), the standard has been to put the reference before the punctuation mark. I personally find it neater to include references as if they're a part of the sentence, which is what I've been doing while editing. At the same time though, I don't think we should worry about having a standard. I find that it's one of those things you easily gloss over when reading an article, like if you see "organise" instead of "organize" and vice-versa: if you're used to one way of doing, you might wince a bit, but it's ultimately harmless to the article on a whole, and a large majority of readers won't notice it.


 * Alright, fair enough, I suppose. Thanks for the input, though. 15:27, 11 July 2015 (EDT)

Tense
Um... what tense should be used to describe an implied event? For example, "In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Moustafa is mentioned in Lumpy's diaries, where he says he received assistance from Moustafa during his search of oil in Dry Dry Desert. Again, Moustafa asked 'if you're a nice guy then give me something nice'. Despite Lumpy's giving nothing, Moustafa took Lumpy to the location where there was oil." An alternative tense that can be used to describe previous events is perhaps the perfect tense ("has received", "has asked", etc.), but it seems clumsy. 11:14, 27 June 2016 (EDT)