MarioWiki:Proposals

Standardize species as the main article for subjects sharing an identical "character" and "species" name
This proposal is directed at subjects with shared names that have both a separate "character" and "species" article. To sum it up: despite species by its nature alone having way more conclusive appearances throughout the franchise's entire history, practically being universally treated as the official default or "current story" depiction for years by Nintendo themselves (since at least Paper Mario and arguably earlier), and being the far likelier search result for younger fans who didn't grow up aware of these individual characters (which were made popular in legacy media for the most part), the wiki uses the generic character articles as the main default while the broader species article is the one that most often gets the identifier. As far as I can tell, this isn't actually due to any conscious decision on anyone's part, but rather a mere snowball effect inadvertently created from around the wiki's early days.

I guess I must be the one to say it - I sincerely think it is unwise to allow this setup to permeate much longer as it will most certainly not be sustainable forever.

The mission of this proposal is simply to set a wiki-wide organizational standard for all current and future articles that fit this criteria (a few obvious examples would be Toad and Yoshi, but this would also extend to others as well). All this will do is move the current main articles to a character identifier, and move those with a species identifier to the new main article. This proposal will not affect the content of these articles themselves, since I believe any attempt to do so (should it eventually happen) would best be done on a case-by-case basis; it will only affect the titles and links of these subjects. This will take a considerable chunk of time to comb over since this is something that should have been done from the start, but hindsight is 20/20.

An exception will be made for any articles where the species distinction falls under other media. The only current example I'm aware of is Fryguy. Readers will generally be more familiar with the Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic or Super Mario Bros. 2 boss and The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! role over the Nintendo Comics System depiction, which are treated as a transformation of Toads in precisely one story with a quick explanation that was never fully elaborated upon. Fryguy himself is not even considered a proper member of the Fryguy species, as he has a different origin in the game. As such, the proposal will not apply to Fryguy or potentially similar cases.

Update: As an alternative, I've included the option to have articles with character and species identifiers, and instead have the main article be a disambiguation page. This is the current situation with Luma. This is not as extensive as the proposal's main objective, but it allows both articles to exist on equal standing. Note that the above exception still applies. Under this scenario, an additional exception will be made for standard enemies such as Goomba and Amp, who already currently default to their species article and will most likely be searched as an enemy due to their common role.

Proposer: Deadline: February 11, 2019, 23:59 GMT

Make species the main articles

 * 1) This has been a long time coming.
 * 2) Props for the courage of making such a controversial proposal! After what happened with Dorrie and Draggadon and after Nintendo finally went out admitting that the Toad and Yoshi names given to characters are indeed species names, I'll go for the bold choice. This matches Japanese writing conventions as well.
 * 3) Per proposal and per my comments.
 * 4) Per all.
 * 5) Second option.
 * 6) Per all.

Use disambiguation pages instead

 * 1) Per my comments.
 * 2) Per Yoshi the SSM. Rather than having character or species articles outprioritize each other in certain situations, let's have disambiguation pages to link to both articles (but please, remove the Green Yoshi article).
 * 3) Per all; supporting as an alternative.

Keep the current setup

 * 1) I'd prefer it was the other way around, actually. Besides, they're still treated as individuals in many spin-offs, and, let's be honest, more people have played Mario Kart Wii in the past 15 years without playing any other Mario game than any other game in the franchise.
 * 2) Per Doc von Schmeltwick. I don't really get the proposal though.
 * 3) Per Doc. Remember, the Toad and Yoshi characters have been treated as such in games other than Mario Kart and Mario Party.
 * 4) - I can't agree with this. Usually, the individual character has a bigger role than the species (see Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario 64 DS, etc.). If species are involved, they're usually a side element or roster filler, with the New Super Mario Bros. series being the exception coming to mind.
 * 5) Per all.
 * 6) Per all, the current system seems to be on a case-by-case basis, which I think is best. I'd also like to add that Toad does clarify himself that he is the Toad in the Wii U version of Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, as he does mention that his blue jacket is unique. I can't find the exact quote now, but I'm almost certain that he says it.
 * 7) Per my comment below, while our current setup does not really have a standard on which things are the main article for subjects with identical names meaning that it is not 100 percent a case-by-case setup, our current system is the closest to a case-by-case basis than all of the options in this proposal, so per my comment below this my preferred option, and per all.
 * 8) Per all.
 * 9) This doesn't sit well with me, per all.

Comments
@Doc - A playable appearance doesn't automatically grant characterhood. Mario Kart Wii is your example - where, then, is the Dry Bones character article (ditto for virtually every other playable standard enemy in spinoffs)? If they are not notable enough, does that mean that Toad and Yoshi as characters mainly retain notability because of DiC? The characters are certainly not entirely apparent in the modern platformers, because the recent New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe shows that just about any Toad can play the generic role of "Toad" and the Super Mario 3D World Toad might actually be a relabeled Blue Toad. In terms of the more dialog/lore-heavy games like the RPGs, such characters barely exist - Square's Super Mario RPG might have a definitive Toad character, but everything since Paper Mario has greatly diminished him to the point where he barely exists and it's genuinely difficult to tell if the rare instances of singular "Toad" refer to the character or a generic. Even several games later in Paper Mario: Color Splash, where at last a single Toad accompanies Peach, I think the singular "Toad" is thrown around more often to generically refer to other NPCs who are obviously not the same Toad, not to mention there's the infamous "Toad #35".

The primary issue is the general writing style of Nintendo translations (and it's not unique to the Mario franchise) and how they often blend singular word use to refer to species, character, or generic (partially due to inconsistent localization and partially due to the Mario world not being as defined early on). This has been going on for quite a while, too - Kamek will refer to any given Yoshi color as generic/singular "Yoshi" in the Yoshi games, Nintendo Power and Prima Games would regularly flip between character and species usage on the writer's whim (sometimes on the same page), etc. "When in doubt, it's the species" would be the safer approach not just because species have become more prevalent but also because it's something that is constant (meaning it may not always be "the" character, but it's always "the" species). Besides, the current setup doesn't even make a whole lot of internal sense - searching priority for "Toad" should tell the reader what exactly a "Toad" is, not what "Toad, the Toad" is. That might look perfectively presentable to some of us, but it's confusing to uninformed newcomers. And honestly, I think a "shift" (whether it's a major overhaul or something as minor as simply changing around a few article titles) is an inevitability sooner or later, so the question is whether to begin taking care of this now or keep putting it off until it becomes unmanageable. LinkTheLefty (talk) 21:21, 28 January 2019 (EST)
 * I know fully well Toad as a character doesn't exist anymore, and am one of the people trying to get that out to people. However, it just feels wrong to have "Character" be the identifier when the character was named that first. Sure, the species was Kinokio prior, but it wasn't Toads. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 21:25, 28 January 2019 (EST)
 * I personally prefer "Mushroom People" and was confused (and honestly a bit upset) when Paper Mario first came out and changed it...but it's been "Toads" for about twenty years. Even the re-releases of Super Mario Bros. on Virtual Console and through Wii's Super Mario All-Stars Limited Edition changed it to Toads, so its original context is now overtaken. That aside, we consider the character to have debuted after the species, which frankly looks awkward as the current main article. LinkTheLefty (talk) 21:50, 28 January 2019 (EST)
 * Still with Yoshi, it's Yoshi's Island, not Yoshis' Island. As well as Yoshi's Crafted World, and all those other things in between. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 21:54, 28 January 2019 (EST)
 * So? Unithorn's Lair doesn't appear to be the property of any singular Unithorn. (I could probably come up with more examples, but that's the first one that comes to my mind.) 22:21, 28 January 2019 (EST)
 * And there are no singular Unithorns, they fade in and out en masse. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 22:22, 28 January 2019 (EST)
 * That goes with what I mentioned about the writing style / Nintendo translators generally not catching on and communicating the character/species concept very well (e.g. Goomba's Shoe is not a shoe from a literal Goomba character, Boo's Mansion does not belong to a literal Boo character, etc.). The possessiveness of these Yoshi titles was added in localization for whatever reason - it's strongly implied that it's not "Mario's Yoshi" in these games due a green Yoshi being one of the star children. At any rate, Yoshi is also a mess because he practically has a third article (Green Yoshi), and all three have been marked with a rewrite template for ages. LinkTheLefty (talk) 22:35, 28 January 2019 (EST)
 * Regardless, I don't think the species should get dibs. I think it should be the character, or neither. Mostly, though, I'd base it off what people browsing would be looking for, which chances are would be the "character" in Mario Kart Wii or a similar game. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 22:42, 28 January 2019 (EST)
 * I've actually considered just turning the main pages into disambiguations as a second option for the proposal and including both "character" and "species" identifiers, which would admittedly be a lot less work, but I decided against it because the Luma talk page indicated to me that it was unpopular (that, and I don't believe that they're on par with each other, at least not anymore). Should I add it? LinkTheLefty (talk) 23:10, 28 January 2019 (EST)
 * I don't see a reason not to. Anyone who doesn't want to do it that way can simply vote for a different option. 23:18, 28 January 2019 (EST)
 * Sure. So that means that I always wanted the Amp (character) from Mario Party Advance whenever I wanted to look up the enemies in Super Mario 64 or other games. That makes total sense. NOT. The wouldn't make sense at all. The enemies are clearly more popular than the character from MPA. Having the character over species would violate the "Shared titles" policy. I would get even more confusing if characters were allowed over species if we consider Goomba who has three separate characters named Goomba. However, this only removes the possibility of characters for mains.
 * As for them being the same, I see a benefit and a problem. The benefit comes from the fact that it would give species and characters with about the same level of popularity as each other equal rights. The problem comes from the fact that not all species would benefit from this. Let's look at the Amps again. Not one time are they playable characters nor do they are friendly NPCs except in MPA. In this case, I would not want to be taken to a disambiguation page if I typed "Amp" when I just want to find out more info about an enemy in Mario Party: Star Rush, where in has a clear in-game name. But other than this situation and others like it, it could work as well as the (series) identifier.
 * And by typing this out, I am viewing the disambiguation as main as an equally good option to the species as main option. As for the species as main option, I think it is good option due to that species are more popular than anything in general. 10:59, 29 January 2019 (EST)
 * The Goomba formerly(?) known as Captain could be considered a fourth Goomba character. Anyway, including standard enemy articles like Goomba and Amp wasn't my intention with the proposal, so I've adjusted it again to make that more clear. LinkTheLefty (talk) 12:36, 29 January 2019 (EST)

@LinkTheLefty, can we delete the Green Yoshi article? I hate that one! It annoys me to see that thing exist. I'm out of words... the content in the Green Yoshi article should be merged with the Yoshi species article. MarioManiac1981 (talk) 22:51, 28 January 2019 (EST)
 * That's probably a separate discussion/proposal, but I'm also not a fan of it. Treating the Yoshi colors as we do enemy colors would reduce overlap. LinkTheLefty (talk) 23:10, 28 January 2019 (EST)
 * The Yoshi colors have little reason to have their own articles. Differences they have are usually restricted to a few games, Yoshi's Story and Super Mario World, but vast majority of colors cases, colors are pure cosmetic. 01:20, 29 January 2019 (EST)
 * Yeah, that'll probably be my next proposal since it's on my radar now. LinkTheLefty (talk) 10:45, 29 January 2019 (EST)

@Toadette - That's not the issue here; as stated, this proposal will absolutely not affect the content of the articles themselves and will thus preserve the history/legacy of these characters (hence the "character" identifier). The issue is that singular use in either species or generic contexts have become increasingly more common to the point where the original character is no longer certifiable and, for all intents and purposes, effectively phased out (Toad's "possible appearances" section could very easily be much larger if we were even mildly stricter about it). Over time, character has become secondary to species, plain and simple. We also continue to make certain assumptions based on both playability and the general mindset of "there's a generic member of the species standing there by itself minding its own business, so let's add it the main/character page" (one example would be Yoshi in Paper Mario: Color Splash, but there's many more). Overall, I think having the character pages as the wiki default contributes a lot to this unnecessary bloat, gives a false impression that a single recurring character is officially still in direct use today, and is a roadblock for discussion. I don't see any benefit to leaving it as-is when the signs are blatant. LinkTheLefty (talk) 10:45, 29 January 2019 (EST)
 * In all due respect this should be a case-by-case basis, as when I want to search for Boom Boom, I most likely want to see the character page. However, when I search Amp, I want to see the species, not the MPA character. I do not fell that a single proposal would really solve anything, as there is a large amount of variety with characters with species names, some important, some not so much, and while if option 2 passes there is exceptions with the standard enemies such as Amp, I fell that disambiguation pages would make it too complicated as you would not immediately go to amp when you search for amp for example, and with option one there is cases where I would prefer to see the character and not the species meaning that I cannot honestly vote to support that option, however there is cases where I would rather see a species rather then a character, meaning that I cannot honestly vote for option 3 either. 14:31, 29 January 2019 (EST)
 * The purpose of the proposal is to define these articles' standards, which were seemingly created on an informal "first come, first serve" basis, to better align with the common contemporary species depiction of these subjects over the largely-bygone prominence of the characters, as well as to help make the treatment of these articles more uniform. So I feel that the first option best accomplishes this goal. LinkTheLefty (talk) 16:30, 29 January 2019 (EST)

@BBQ Turtle - Claiming that his jacket's unique is probably the joke. LinkTheLefty (talk) 16:30, 29 January 2019 (EST)
 * It might not be consistent across games, but as far as I know, he's the only red Toad in that game with a blue jacket. The others have red jackets, or different coloured caps. I believe it's a similar case with Mario Kart Wii- what I'm trying to get across here is that in some games, the Toad is differentiated from other Toads by having a red cap and a blue jacket. BBQ Turtle (talk) 16:46, 29 January 2019 (EST)
 * @LinkTheLefty if we did make the species pages the standard for the main pages of characters and species with the same name then examples such as Boom Boom where people are most likely to search for the character may be confused as why they are on the species page, so while the treatment of these articles being more uniform would be great the first and second options do not offer the flexibility regarding these characters/species pages that a case-by-case basis would give. Also, while Toad claiming that his jacket is unique may be a joke, it also may not and instead could be a reference to Super Mario Bros. 2 and other instances where a Toad is playable. 16:54, 29 January 2019 (EST)
 * Would this idea be better addressed case-by-case? I suppose so - after all, cases such as Birdo and Fronk are admittedly not as strong - but for cases like Toad and Yoshi, I firmly believe that their current standing is increasingly weakening with each major release, and it would seem prudent to make a necessary shift towards favoring the objective appearances of these subjects over our nebulous interpretation in the probable event that Nintendo does directly make an inconvenient statement that risks the state of those articles imploding in on themselves (that, or the generation of fans that grows up on today's games will continue to raise objections with the wiki's approach until it can no longer be ignored). The best analogy I can give is whenever a fantasy creature in fiction refers to a character by the generic descriptor "human" - it obviously doesn't suddenly make that their actual name, and other Nintendo franchises that have taken similar approaches simply don't have this problem among fans. This is the modern context in which these subjects are addressed, which can be observed as recently as Mario Tennis Aces (in fact, a cursory glance at Toad's possible appearances section would indicate that this may have been the intention for a while now). While some won't take the character articles to mean that there is literally a reliable, recurring existence/continuity to these subjects, that is the purpose behind their creation and the impression still given. All in all, I don't think there is anything wrong with having a consistent standard as a protective measure. Also, I don't think your example is a particularly strong one because I and several others found the rationale for that split held up weakest to scrutiny...but that is a totally separate discussion. LinkTheLefty (talk) 19:45, 11 February 2019 (EST)
 * Definitely case-by-case. I'm open to considering Toad, as he's just plain not considered a character in any capacity outside spinoffs anymore, but "Yoshi" was treated as a character in mainline games as recently as SMG2. And no, I'm not counting SM3DW "Toad," given the way NSMBUDX treats Blue Toad and Yellow Toad. As for Kamek as a character, most appearances identified as such either relationship-with-Bowser-wise or behaviorally make deliberate callbacks to the SMW2 entity (with DT making a callback to NSMBW), and recent games seem to be trying to push the distinction even in Japan (note the bowtie in SPM). Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 20:30, 11 February 2019 (EST)

Well, the Toad quote is: Hey there! I'm Toad. There are lots of my fellow Toads here from the Mushroom Kingdom, so try not to get us mixed up with each other. Some of us are here to compete in the Games, some are the cheer squad, and some are acting as the managerial staff. We've got Blue Toads, Red, Yellow, Green, Purple... There are lots of us, but if you're looking for me, just keep an eye out for this stylish blue jacket. He says that if you're looking for him you have to look for the blue jacket. Making the playable one with that color so you could recognize him among the many makes sense, but you need to remember that, before the concept of a Toad character was even a thing. And as LinktheLefty noticed, this remained the standard appearance of Toads. . Of course playable characters need to stand out, but that doesn't mean that the appearance isn't the standard one, just that in those game they need to use the other color variants not to create confusion among the players.--Mister Wu (talk) 20:15, 29 January 2019 (EST)

For your information, there is no real flexibility in the current setup. There is a lone Boom Boom? He goes into the Boom Boom character page. There is a lone Toad with a red cap and a blue vest? He goes into the Toad character page, regardless of whether they state he's the Toad of Super Mario Bros. 2 or not. A lone green Yoshi? He goes into the Yoshi page. And in case you were wondering, the name actually gives us a different information than we think, since Nintendo clarified that they use species names as character names - not unlike what was done in Pokémon, another Japanese franchise that follows the same conventions of naming a member of a species with the species' name. After all, what happened with Dorrie and Draggadon definitely confirmed this approach - what seemed unique names were actually species' names. And Kinopio was indeed introduced in Super Mario Bros. as a name to identify those Mushroom Kingdom citizens - recent bios confirmed that the name is still used with this purpose, and even noted how some of these, such as Toadsworth and Captain Toad, indeed have unique names. Unsurprisngly, those Toads also ended up with a unique appearance as well. By the way, there has recently been controversy on this matter, so there are definitely issues with the current approach that has troubles dealing with characters with standard appearance named after the species that as such, might or might not be the same recurring character. When using these naming and appearance conventions, this question becomes irrelevant, and I'd be hardly surprised if Nintendo's goal was exactly this.--Mister Wu (talk) 20:15, 29 January 2019 (EST)
 * If there's a singular Yoshi, then it's the character Yoshi. It may not necessarily be the same character Yoshi from another game, but they're both portrayed as being "the character Yoshi." And that's what really makes or breaks that. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 20:27, 29 January 2019 (EST)
 * This interpreation would warrant the merging with the species - what's the point of creating pages separate from the species pages for a role (being a playable character or a lone Yoshi) instead of actual characters? Plus, the wording would have to be changed, since we surely don't imply that Yoshi might be a different character every time and the page just deals with the role of playable or lone character.--Mister Wu (talk) 21:56, 29 January 2019 (EST)
 * Nope, do what we do with Kamek, as they are sometimes treated as individual, sometimes as species, and sometimes both at once. Having all that on the same page would be stressfully confusing. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 22:00, 29 January 2019 (EST)
 * But it would match how Nintendo treats them. After all, people had to learn to do that for Pokémon which does the exact same thing of presenting characters with standard appearance of the species and bearing the name of the species, I don't think it's impossible to them to apply the same reasoning here.--Mister Wu (talk) 22:31, 29 January 2019 (EST)
 * It's how they treat them, except when they don't. When it flip-flops every three games with no indication of stopping, why go to all that trouble, when, once again, it should about what visitors will most likely be searching for? Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 22:39, 29 January 2019 (EST)
 * The flipflopping is actually exactly part of what I was trying to say, so you misunderstood what I said. In any case, we are facing problems in the maintenance of the pages, the case of Yoshi being the most evident one. And yes, we are stating that Yoshi is always the same one - we say that in the intro of the page, when we report that he's the same one who saved Baby Mario and Baby Luigi. If anything, if you don't want any change in terms of the pages we have, you should at least consider updating the page so that it reflects the view you just expressed.-Mister Wu (talk) 23:26, 29 January 2019 (EST)
 * Update the pages we should, and I've tried doing a bit of that with Kamek's. It's a large undertaking, to be sure, but it's still needed. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 23:30, 29 January 2019 (EST)
 * Thanks, I'm glad we're finding some common grounds.--Mister Wu (talk) 23:56, 29 January 2019 (EST)
 * I did update the intro to that page, and plucked some flowers from it. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 23:58, 29 January 2019 (EST)

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