MarioWiki:Proposals

Establish a guideline for citing archived web pages
I've made a previous proposal about this in the past, but it was unnecessarily complicated. To put this as simply as possible, many online web pages are very likely to be taken down at some point, and many already have; a user may come across an online source which is no longer on the live web, and only exists on an online, the largest of which is the Wayback Machine.

To establish consistency when citing pages from these web archives, a guideline should be listed on Citations, below the template for citing live websites. This is what I believe is the best style to follow for such citations: cite the original, unmodified link to a page as usual, then include a statement in parentheses that lists the page as being archived, with a link to where the web archive hosts the page, a timestamp, and finally, the web archive which was sourced. Below is a template of such a citation (the link to the archived page would be accessed by the word "Archived"):

"Author Name (January 1, 2000). . Publisher. Retrieved January 1, 2023. ( June 1, 2022, 00:00:01 UTC via Web Archive.)"

As an example, the list of rumors and urban legends about Mario already uses this style for the majority of its web page citations. Here is an example from that page:

"Nintendo (1985). Super Mario Bros. Instruction Booklet. Retrieved July 8, 2021. (Archived March 9, 2021, 10:01:59 UTC via Wayback Machine.)"

A note should also be added to MarioWiki:Citations that the precise timestamp for a page from the Wayback Machine, the most common web archive source, can be found by examining the date in the URL; for the above example, 20210309100159 can be read as 2021-03-09 10:01:59, and should be formatted as March 9, 2021, 10:01:59 UTC.

To clarify the proposal, this should not be considered a strict rule that must be followed, nor a necessity for every citation of a web page, but simply as a guideline to follow in case a page has already been taken down, or if a link to an archived version of a page is being added to a citation.

Proposer: Deadline: June 1, 2023, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Per proposal.
 * 2) Per proposal.
 * 3) Per everyone, as users might think they’re going into an active link when really they are led into a 404’d link
 * 4) Per all. Preservation is extremely important, and it'd seriously help if we pointed to archives when applicable.
 * 5) This is a great way to combat link rot and I strongly encourage more regular usage of archived pages regardless.
 * 6) Per all.
 * 7) Yes, please.
 * 8) Per all.
 * 9) Per all.
 * 10) per all
 * 11) let’s git archivin’ now
 * 12) Per all.

Comments
I am sick of these “active” links that are really dead or 404 links. This proposal acknowledges said statement of mine. 17:53, May 18, 2023 (EDT)

@ThePowerPlayer Did you give this a 2-week deadline? 'Cause that's for talk page proposals only, normal proposals get one week and so this proposal should end today. SmokedChili (talk) 07:51, May 24, 2023 (EDT)
 * You're very wrong. To quote rule 3, "except for writing guidelines and talk page proposals, which run for two weeks". Spectrogram (talk) 07:59, May 24, 2023 (EDT)
 * Right, that exception escaped my notice. SmokedChili (talk) 08:41, May 24, 2023 (EDT)

Something worth noting: In the case of Flipnote Hatena stuff specifically, the Internet Archive will not do, as they're blacklisted from the Wayback Machine. Instead, however, someone made an external archive of Flipnote Hatena flipnotes called the Sudomemo archive. We've used it before on the Yoichi Kotabe article for his Mario 25th Anniversary flipnote, and nobody seems to object to that one; thusly, should we include something about "if trying to link an old Flipnote Studio flipnote, you may also use the Sudomemo archive"? 13:57, May 25, 2023 (EDT)
 * If it works too well, maybe we could retrieve all the other Mario 25th featured flipnotes thatwere from mario25th,nintendo,com. Including America, Japan, Europe, and Staff Flipnotes afaik. 17:46, May 25, 2023 (EDT)

I feel the need to point out that I have heard tell that certain influential corporate entities are currently making efforts to have the web archive taken down for whatever selfish reasons, so I would caution against full reliance on it. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 13:35, May 29, 2023 (EDT)
 * Can you point to a source for that claim? I don't see any alarming notice on the archive.org site or their blog. Either way, a good measure against complete loss of information is saving it on other digital archives, such as archive.today. What I also did and will continue doing is take screenshots of relevant web pages and upload them onto the wiki outright. 14:52, May 29, 2023 (EDT)

Establish a standard for long course listings in articles for characters/enemies/items/etc.
"Truck Moving cargo trucks appear on GCN Mushroom Bridge. Stationary cargo trucks appear on the road in GCN Mushroom Bridge R, GCN Mushroom Bridge R/T, New York Minute T, New York Minute 4T, and Bangkok Rush; they also appear on the sidelines in Tokyo Blur 3, Tokyo Blur 4, New York Minute 3, New York Minute B, Los Angeles Laps, Los Angeles Laps 3, Bangkok Rush, and Bangkok Rush 2, as well as in these courses' R, T, and R/T variants where applicable."

The number of courses listed in this paragraph was getting so wild that I had to condense it with the "as well as in these courses' variants" statement. Problem is, this sacrifices specificity. The proposal aims to introduce a guideline whereby lists of this ilk are more digestibly integrated in prose writing. To this end, I propose two options, each based on a format already used on some articles; the preferred format will be applied when the amount of courses listed is 7 or higher.

Option 1: Bullet-point lists

The subject's general description for a particular game is followed by a bulleted list of courses in said game, like so: Slippa

Slippas appear in fifteen levels:


 * Jungle Jaunt
 * Freezing Fun
 * Simian Swing
 * Deck Trek
 * Tire Trail
 * Riggin' Rumble
 * Tricky Temple
 * Snake Charmer's Challenge
 * Mountain Mayhem
 * Spiky Tire Trail
 * Kong Krazy
 * Construction Site Fight
 * Fast Barrel Blast
 * Skyscraper Caper
 * Oil Drum Slum

If a subject displays different traits across one game, such as having different colours or behaviours, and these traits are described on one article as opposed to being split between articles (e.g. Bandits/Coin Bandits in Yoshi's Island), each course in the list is followed in brackets by whatever variations of this enemy appear in the course. In other words, if a subject has traits X, Y, and Z across levels A, B, C, D etc. in a game, then the level list has the following form:
 * Level A (X variation)
 * Level B (Y variation)
 * Level C (X variation, Z variation)
 * Level D (X variation, Y variation) and so on, and so forth.

Option 2: Courses show up in-line when hovering/tapping a certain phrase

When the seventh course is reached in a list, the courses listed from that point on are being integrated in a piece of hoverable text.

Maw-Ray

They are found in Piranha Plant Cove, Piranha Plant Cove 2, Piranha Plant Cove 3, GCN Daisy Cruiser,.

Notice that the phrase "and some of their variants" has a dashed underline. Putting your cursor over it (on desktop) or tapping it (on mobile) reveals these course variants.

If the number of courses slated to be included in hoverable text is too small (e.g. the seventh course is the only one left to mention), previous courses in the list can be integrated in the hoverable text at the editor's discretion.

~

Note: Neither guideline will apply where a subject's course appearances are described individually, like in the Skewer article.

Proposer: Deadline: June 8, 2023, 23:59 GMT

Option 1

 * 1) Not the biggest fan of using hover text for large swaths of important information,  I do agree with reformatting the big sentences though, and I am voting for this potion since it's
 * 2) mobile users won't be able to use the second one.
 * 3) I don't think it's very necessary to standardize this format, but organization and consistency are nice anyways. I personally like lists, and, as stated above, they don't affect mobile users, so this choice makes sense.
 * 4) Per all.

Comments
I do not see the point in standardizing it, really Spectrogram (talk) 14:09, May 25, 2023 (EDT)
 * If you don't see the point, then I suppose you could vote for the "It doesn't matter" option. Or is that not what that's for? 10:51, May 26, 2023 (EDT)
 * Why should I? Abstaining is a better option when the proposal doesn't ruin anything if it passes. Spectrogram (talk) 10:58, May 26, 2023 (EDT)

New features
None at the moment.

Removals
None at the moment.

Change full names of crossover characters to the more often used shortened versions in article titles
This proposal is similar to this one about Conker the Squirrel and this one about Professor Elvin Gadd, except this time, the targets are the many Sonic the Hedgehog characters who appear in the Mario & Sonic games. In these games, the characters are almost always referred to by their shortened names (e.g. Sonic and Tails), but for some strange reason, the wiki article titles don't reflect this (e.g. Sonic the Hedgehog and Miles "Tails" Prower). This is also true of Sonic's Super Smash Bros. appearances, which simply call him "Sonic". Speaking of which, I'm lumping Fox McCloud into this proposal too for the same reason: the Smash games always just call him Fox.

Pages that will be renamed by this proposal:
 * Fox McCloud -> Fox
 * Sonic the Hedgehog -> Sonic
 * Miles "Tails" Prower -> Tails
 * Knuckles the Echidna -> Knuckles
 * Amy Rose -> Amy
 * Shadow the Hedgehog -> Shadow (character)
 * Vector the Crocodile -> Vector
 * Blaze the Cat -> Blaze
 * Silver the Hedgehog -> Silver
 * Rouge the Bat -> Rouge
 * Espio the Chameleon -> Espio
 * Jet the Hawk -> Jet (Sonic the Hedgehog)
 * Jet -> Jet (Mario Tennis: Power Tour)
 * Wave the Swallow -> Wave
 * E-123 Omega -> Omega
 * Sticks the Badger -> Sticks
 * Cream the Rabbit -> Cream (character)
 * Charmy Bee -> Charmy
 * Big the Cat -> Big (character)

Redirects using the full names will be kept, of course.

Proposer: Deadline: June 4, 2023, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Per proposal.
 * 2) Per proposal
 * 3) Per proposal.
 * 4) The only part of this we'd hold contention with has been addressed, and after reviewing the list again, these all make sense to us. Now, admittedly, we didn't go scouring the list of every character article on the wiki, so there might be a few we're missing; but we can definitely address those as the crop up, and these are the vast majority of the ones we can think of anyways.
 * 5) Per proposal.
 * 6) P e r       p r o p o s a l.

Oppose

 * 1) There are some crossover characters with shortened names that overlap with Mario subjects. And using the series name to disambiguate just emphasizes how non-Mario they are. If Sonic the Hedgehog is going to be moved to Sonic, then shouldn't Jet the Hawk be ? Actually, if there's proof of their full names somewhere in a Mario crossover like in the Super Smash Bros. Brawl trophies, then their page names should remain the same. The Sonic logo in Smash is proof that Sonic is Sonic the Hedgehog from Mario's perspective, so Sonic's name has to stay and every other crossover character whose full name was stated.

Comments
Jet from Mario Tennis should be prioritised over the Sonic character as he is a Mario character. 13:40, May 28, 2023 (EDT)
 * Seconding this. We should probably make "Jet (MT:PT)" be just "Jet", and "Jet the Hawk" can be "Jet (Sonic the Hedgehog)". We'd be glad to support if that was addressed, but otherwise... Wow, that's a potential bit of Wiki Jank waiting to be discovered 10-odd years from now. ;P 13:54, May 28, 2023 (EDT)
 * I thought of that, but I wasn't sure what identifier to use for Jet the Hawk since he's made multiple appearances (and for some reason I thought there was already a case of a crossover character with priority over a Mario character, but looking at the articles we have I guess I was remembering wrong). I'll settle for "Jet (Sonic the Hedgehog)" though as it's consistent with Slime (Dragon Quest) (as well as the former Steve (Minecraft) and Roy (Fire Emblem) articles). I've changed the proposal. 14:04, May 28, 2023 (EDT)
 * Works for us! 14:15, May 28, 2023 (EDT)

Don't you think "Shadow (character)" might be confusing due to the existence of Shadow the Dog, a WarioWare character? 18:57, May 29, 2023 (EDT)
 * I doubt it, since that article isn't using the title Shadow. If it was then the identifier would need to be more specific, but as it stands, I think Shadow (character) works fine. Compare Leo and Leo Luster, where no identifier for Leo works fine because the other Leo uses a full name. It's not a perfect comparison since in Shadow's case we need an identifier because of the SMRPG enemy but it gets the point across. (Speaking of which, I noticed that Ninja is another crossover character sharing a name with an SMRPG enemy, except they share naming priority. Maybe there's a case to move the current Shadow article to "Shadow (enemy)"?) 19:15, May 29, 2023 (EDT)

Miscellaneous
None at the moment.