MarioWiki:Proposals

Writing guidelines
None at the moment.

New features
None at the moment.

Trim extraneous Game & Watch coverage
As it currently stands, we cover too much information on a lot of our Game & Watch pages. As the result of a proposal a couple years back, aside from the ones that are Mario-related, we only cover the games that appeared in the Game & Watch Gallery games with modern remakes that include Mario information. But those games that remain covered are covered in full, leaving us with a lot of information that's irrelevant to the scope of the wiki. If you need an example, just look at the page for Ball and see how much of the information here isn't related to Mario at all. Therefore, I propose that we cut these articles down and focus on their Mario-relevant appearances as minigames in the Game & Watch Gallery series, while still taking care to properly acknowledge and address their origins.

This will remove coverage of the original systems themselves, the classic versions of the games, ports, and other miscellaneous pieces of information, such as references to the original games in Smash. Basically, if it doesn't relate to the modern, Mario-relevant versions of the game, or isn't relevant to Mario in some other way (i.e. Ball's Mario-themed appearance in the SMB Game & Watch), it goes.

Affected articles:
 * Ball
 * Boxing
 * Chef
 * Egg (Game & Watch)
 * Fire (Game & Watch)
 * Helmet (Game & Watch)
 * Manhole (Game & Watch)
 * Octopus (Game & Watch)
 * Oil Panic
 * Parachute (Game & Watch)
 * Rain Shower
 * Turtle Bridge
 * Vermin

I've intentionally omitted Greenhouse from the scope of this proposal since it's the first appearance of Stanley the Bugman and has some relevance, but it can be re-assessed at a later time if preferred.

Proposer: Deadline: June 10, 2022, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) Beep boop (per all).
 * 2) 011100000110010101110010 (per)
 * 3) Per all.
 * 4) Per all.
 * 5) As a Game & Watch main, I can support delivering a Number 9 Judge to this (Per all)

Comments
Do you think those article this information could be moved to NintendoWiki? 18:29, June 3, 2022 (EDT)


 * If this is to pass, I definitely think we should help move all our information to the NWiki. It could potentially be a lot of hard work and thoroughly researched information disappearing.
 * They seem to have pages already, but if there's any information that's missing over there, I don't see why not. -- 19:19, June 3, 2022 (EDT)

Could I see an example of what content would be cut after this proposal passes? The content on the pages don't seem to be excessively off-topic from Mario. 20:40, June 5, 2022 (EDT)
 * I went with Manhole as an example, which you can see here. All of the content that doesn't relate to the Mario-relevant version of the minigame in Game & Watch Gallery has been removed, with the exception of WarioWare which has been moved to trivia. You can also see which categories will be in use on the new page. Feedback is welcome of course as I'm not exactly an expert on Game & Watch. (As another example of this already being put into practice, see Flagman D-D.) -- 13:34, June 6, 2022 (EDT)
 * I see, and yeah, some information does seem excessive. I do think that a short coverage of the appearance of the game from the Game & Watch gallery pages should stay, since that's content from what's arguably a Mario game, or at least, like in Fortune Street or Mario & Sonic, it's more of a Mario game than Super Smash Bros. is, and Super Smash Bros. has entire articles with zero Mario content like "Home-Run Contest" 20:52, June 6, 2022 (EDT)

Here's a list of pages that will be affected by the proposal: Nintendo eShop, Nintendo 3DS, DSiWare, List of games, List of games by date, List of games by genre, Game & Watch (most images of alarm sprites and devices), the Game & Watch template, and all classical version images and media files not related to the Mario franchise found in the Gallery series and Game & Watch Collection pages. This action will also render many categories in Category:Game & Watch images empty, so they should be deleted too. There are also numerous articles that refer to the original G&W game. These may need to be delinked from the new versions of the current articles as they will focus only on the Mario-related minigame versions. There may also be a lot of de-italicizing if the reference is to the minigame as opposed to the original. If you find other pages that may be affected, add them below.--Platform (talk) 11:53, June 10, 2022 (EDT)

Changes
None at the moment.

Decide how to cover Mario Kart Tour bonus challenges on course articles
The layout of each bonus challenge in Mario Kart Tour (e.g. Ring Race) depends on the course in which it is set. It tracks, therefore, that these challenges should be covered in detail on their relevant course articles in addition to their parent article. If you wish to see how a course article would look with coverage of its bonus challenges, scroll down to the "Mario Kart Tour" section in the "History" section here.

However, bonus challenges have been observed to appear multiple times across the game's tours, sometimes with changed objectives, which prompts wiki users to regularly update their list entries. Simply copying and pasting these entries onto another article would make it more difficult for users to be aware of which needs to be updated where. On the other hand, adding a way to transclude entire entries (allow information entered on a page to be automatically transferred to another) would spaghettify the original code and potentially deter users from updating it with new information. For instance, this is how the code for an average bonus challenge entry currently looks:


 * MKT Tour1 YoshiCupChallenge.png
 * New York Minute
 * MKT Icon Yoshi.png Yoshi
 * MKT Icon PipeFrameLimeGreen.png Pipe Frame
 * MKT Icon SuperGliderLimeGreen.png Super Glider
 * 5
 * 8
 * 12
 * New York Tour
 * 12
 * New York Tour

(source: Do Jump Boosts article)

and this is how it would look with a transclusion mechanism in place:

A bit ugly, innit? On average, this would only save a small number of bytes on the target article--less than 100, really. Picture, now, an entire table with the same code plastered repeatedly. I believe the wiki should account for editor friendliness too, especially when the returns of optimisation are disappointing.

I am not sure how to proceed here. I am unwilling to go ahead with either option unless I have a clear-cut vision of each one's net advantages. I will thus be resorting to the community's choice.

Proposer: Deadline: June 9, 2022, 23:59 GMT June 16, 2022, 23:59 GMT

Transclude sections

 * 1) I'm not very well informed on MKT since I don't play it, but from what I can see, transclusions seem preferable to copy-pasting and having to update multiple pages. The transclusion code, while a bit bulky, is hardly impenetrable and I don't see how it would complicate updating the tables. It's not like the updates would require overhauling the table code, just adding a new line or two.

Comments
Mario Kart Tour's tables tend to be pretty sloppy overall (no offense but this ranked cup table is rather monstrous though other tables don't fare much better) though I'm not really understanding this proposal. Probably repetitive content? Maybe the table format just isn't suitable for this sort of thing? 10:55, June 9, 2022 (EDT)
 * The tables' designs aren't what the proposal is about (though, if you have suggestions for their improvement--here for instance--by all means state them somewhere appropriate). The proposal is to decide on an optimal way the already existent table sections on bonus challenge pages can be reproduced on relevant course articles. Both the copy-pasting and the transcluding methods come with their disadvantages, so I was hoping we would decide on the one option with less. I could simply go through with an option I see fit, but if it later proves to be less optimal or editor-friendly than the other (e.g. the bulky transclusion code would discourage editors who typically update these bonus challenge pages) I'd have to re-edit tens of pages. Why not pre-empt that with wiki consensus? 11:17, June 9, 2022 (EDT)