MarioWiki:Proposals/Archive/19

Any proposal decided and past is archived here. Use the scroll box to see votes and comments. This page is protected to maintain the discussion as was. Please add archived proposals to the bottom of the page. Create Gallery Pages CREATE PAGES 10-0 The merchandise pages have been in a mess for a while. I propose a change to the current system by merging together merchandise pages into gallery pages. The only merchandise not affected by this proposal are books, publications, and Mario themed games since there is a lot of information to be covered. The gallery system has worked on a few pages like Figurines and Toys. Of course, the galleries won't be exactly like those pages. The descriptions will be more neutral and organization will be by manufacturer or type. Reasons why this change would benefit the wiki: Many stubs and short pages would be removed. Many dead-end pages would removed. Easier to read about multiple merchandise objects at once. More organization and easier for editors. Fan-made or fan-named products won't have separate articles. The gallery pages to be created are as follows: Clothing – Anything that is designed to be worn. Food – Anything consumable or used in consumption, like Mario themed gummy worms or Mario themed plates. Toys – Anything that can be interacted with, like yo-yo,r McDonald's promotional item, or plushiess. Miscellaneous – Things that just don't fit anywhere else, like a Mario Neon Sign. Things that will be done if this proposal passes: All the merchandise images will organized by the above categories. All the previous merchandise pages will be deleted since the redirects will serve no purpose. New merchandise pages will be deleted and any images will be relocated to appropriate galleries. The Merchandise page will be organized like this. Proposer: Knife (talk) Deadline: 4 January 2010, 17:00 Support Knife (talk) – Per my proposal. Tucayo (talk) - Per Knife. Zero777 (talk) I am Zero! When I looked at the merchandise article you are right, it is a mess, it will be a good idea to do that. Zero signing out. Gamefreak75 (talk) Per Knife. Supermariofan14 (talk) - Per Knife. BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) There's nothing to say when it comes to merchandise, so placing this on a gallery page is needed. I deem this proposal necessary. Redstar (talk) - Per proposal Fawfulfury65 (talk) Per Knife FunkyK38 (talk)- Good idea. Per Knife. Walkazo (talk) - Per Knife. Oppose Comments Um...what is that proposals thing in the draft? Marioguy1 (talk) Ignore that part. Knife (talk) I know, I was just letting the general public know Marioguy1 (talk) I think Toys and Collectibles should just be one page (as "Toys"), since it's hard to draw a clear line between them; some people collect anything and everything, while others simply play ("interact") with it all, especially kids (when I was little, I didn't care if my dinosaurs were "models", "figurines" or "action figures" - they were all just toys to me). Board games could probably fit in Toys too, and then anything that absolutely could not be played with (like neon signs or collector's cards) could go in Miscellaneous. Also, will Nintendo Monopoly be merged into the galleries? It seems substantial enough to keep its own separate page. - Walkazo (talk) Points taken.--Knife (talk) 23:47, 29 December 2009 (EST) Listen, while this idea may be good on the short term -- in the long term, we will realize that some of the items like Nintendo Monopoly, and possibly other notable items may have enough info to create their own article. Info would have to include: the official name (if it has one), how it was promoted in some way, which company did they make this product, when it was released, and all that info that is good for creating an entry for a merchandise item. I had some plans that have to do with merchandising, but I'm focusing on the following things: Userspace, and the Mario Party 1, 2, and/or 3 mini-game articles. RAP (talk) 02:18, 30 December 2009 (EST) Miis KEEP CURRENT COVERAGE 0-16 I am new here and not sure If I'm doing this correctly, but I propose to extend what this wiki covers to a greatly overlooked part of the Mario universe. Miis. The reasons for this are, 1) They could be considered crossover from other series. 2) I think that they may play a larger part in the Mario series in the future. To help back this, I wish to point out that Sonic and DK have numerous pages dedicated to them. These barely make the cut, and so, I think this is precedence enough to add these and other overlooked series characters part of the wiki. Proposer: MiiMe (talk) Deadline: 4 January 2010, 17:00 Support Oppose Edofenrir (talk) - Our current coverage of Miis is fine; they have all of their appearances listed, and their article is featured. They do not originate in the Mario series, so they don't need any more coverage. And if they will become more important in the future, then the future will be the right time to expand this info. As for now, we live in the present. Reversinator (talk) Per Edofenrir. Fawfulfury65 (talk) - First of all, did you know that the Mario Series is actually a sub-series of the Donkey Kong Series? That's why we cover Donkey Kong games and characters. We don't cover, the Sonic Series, except the Sonic characters that appear in Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. So right there, you know why we have all those articles dedicated to those series. If that's not enough, per Edo. Stooben Rooben (talk) — Per Edo. BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) Per the fury of Fawful. GigaMetalLuigi (talk) As said time and time again, our current Miis article covers them enough. Indeed we have multiple pages for DK and Mario characters as they appear in multiple places as different things. We're not dedicated to Miis or any of that such. Until then we don't need any other Mii articles added. Tucayo (talk) - Per EdO!!! and I dont like miis.... Cobold (talk) - per Tucayo. MATEOELBACAN (talk) - Per All Zero777 (talk) I am Zero! The coverage of the Miis are fine as they are; all third party characters (Miis can sort of be considered third party) only have info covering there cross over (not including there info boxes), and the information given about the Miis conserning there appearence in the Mario series is just fine. Zero signing out. Walkazo (talk) - Per all. Gamefreak75 (talk) PEr all. Time Q (talk): Per all. FunkyK38 (talk)- Sonic and DK BARELY make the cut? What? Those are two incredibly important characters! Plus, we already cover Miis just fine. They aren't major charaters like Mario, or even minor characters like Toadette, so they really shouldn't have a huge fuss made over them. Per Edo and FF65. Supermariofan14 (talk) - Wait! Hadn't I voted before? Anyways, per all. T.c.w7468 (talk) Per all. Comments Fawfulfury65: Really? I thought it was vice versa regarding the Donkey Kong thing. Still, something that splits off the main series would still be allowable on the Mariowiki, such as the Yoshi games. BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) Well, Mario first appeared in Donkey Kong so... Fawfulfury65 (talk) What are we even voting on? What would happen if the proposal passes? Have a list of possible Mii faces? That's not even realistically doable. - Cobold (talk) If the proposal does pass, we will probably have to make articles on things like Wuhu Island and all those games featuring miis. Fawfulfury65 (talk) @Zero: Miis were made by Nintendo. Thus, they are not third party. Reversinator (talk) I'm pretty sure he was just using "third party" as a way to refer to character originating outside the Mario series (is there an actual term for those? "Third party" nor "Crossover" seem like accurate titles). BabyLuigiOnFire and Fawfulfury65: the original Donkey Kong titles are not considered part of the recent Donkey Kong series (i.e. Donkey Kong Country, DK: King of Swing, Donkey Konga, etc.), and are usually organized so that the emphasis is on their relation to the Mario series (see {{DKGames}} and {{Mariogames}}). At most, the two series are equally spun-off of the original Donkey Kong, but that does not make Mario a spin-off of the ongoing Donkey Kong series. - Walkazo (talk) I go now from this wiki. MiiMe (talk) @Walkazo It's second party. Reversinator (talk) I propose this proposal get deleted as MiiMee has left...:/ Gamefreak75 (talk) We can't do that. Garlic Man (talk) I know, but I think we know the outcome now...Gamefreak75 (talk) Just let it fall through normally; patience is a virtue. Reversinator: thanks! - Walkazo (talk) How little you all know. I am never fully gone... MiiMe (talk) Huh? Fawfulfury65 (talk) What, are you going to come back as a vandal, spam the crap out of us and then get shamelessly banned? Reversinator (talk) Please do not comment this any further. - Edofenrir (talk) Use Present tense for In-game elements/events USE PRESENT TENSE 12-0 As I edit articles, I see in-game events being told in past tense(ex. "Level 4 consisted of these enemies..."), present tense(ex. "The boss of Level 4 is..."), and even future tense(ex. "The player will then encounter Donkey Kong..."). Some articles use multiple tenses in the same paragraph which, obviously, is grammatically incorrect and looks unproffesional. Of course, actual events in real life that happened in the past or will happen in the future should be their respective tenses. But in-game events, which happen each time somebody plays the game, should be in present tense. To enforce/clarify this, creating a policy may be a good idea as well should the proposal pass.(Read EDIT below) This would help people to write articles in present tense when creating a new one, as well as edit existing articles to match the policy. EDIT: Should the proposal pass, a guideline will likely be added to the existing Manual of Style policy, rather than a separate policy. Proposer: Garlic Man (talk) Deadline: 6 January 2010, 17:00 Support Garlic Man (talk) Edofenrir (talk) - I have waited a long time for such a proposal! Splendid! Per Garlic Man! vellidragon (talk) - I was thinking about making this exact proposal earlier today, but I wasn't sure if there was already a guideline like this. I've come across unfitting past tense phrases in a lot of articles, mainly those about recurring enemies. Using past tense to describe how an enemy acts in a game makes it seem as if that game didn't exist anymore, or nobody could play it anymore, which is obviously not the case. I've been fixing some of it here and there, but there's a lot more of it still. If no guideline like this exists yet, there definitely should be one. Grandy02 (talk) - I admit that I wrote several articles in past tense (especially when related to the WarioWare cutscenes), but my views have changed. Pure fiction should be handled as such and there really needs to be a guideline. LeftyGreenMario (talk) I'm always wondering what tense should I write in when it comes to revising articles (most of the time, I use past tense, because I probably think that the game event already happened). This proposal is necessary. Zero777 (talk) I am Zero! Hmmm I never notice that, but you are correct, using a combination of past, present, and future ghost tense is very unprofessional. Zero signing out. BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) per LeftyGreenFatMan (not an insult, I know my sister, she won't take that as an insult). No variety is allowed when it comes to tenses, according to the grammar rules. I was pondering what tense to write in, and this is the solution. Redstar (talk) - Per my annoyance at in-article tense-jumping and not knowing which way to standardize it. Gamefreak75 (talk) Per all. Supermariofan14 (talk) Pel all. FD09 While there are some more important things the manual of style needs this is very important. Tucayo (talk) - Per Vellidragon and his/her comments. Oppose Comments I don't see what's wrong with the future tense example in your proposal description. IMO, some variety can't hurt. Time Q (talk) Look at the talk page for Lou Albano. Apparently, with real life people, if they die, then the article must be changed to the past tense. Reversinator (talk) Time Q: Grammar doesn't allow variety when it comes to tenses. If it's present tense, for example, then the whole article has to be present tense. LeftyGreenMario (talk) Well, I think we should use the tense that is used here. I rewrote that article because it was in present simple and sounded really bad. I think that some sentences as :"The MEssage Block provides" are correctly written in present, but some other as "The fourth Dragon coin can be found" should use that tense. Present perfect, IIRC. ANyways, both are presents. Tucayo (talk) "...can be found" is simple present as well, it's just a passive construction. Present Perfect is a construction with "has/have", i.e. "has been found". Present Perfect can also be used in a Simple Present text quite well; "after Mario has [done something], he can" etc. It's mostly a matter of how tenses are used really; "Mario has completed the level" etc. could not be used in a Simple Present text. I guess the guideline/policy/whatever shouldn't limit the tense to Simple Present (that would actually exclude Present Progressive as well, which can be useful in some cases), but simply require that the overall text should be in the "present".--vellidragon (talk) Nice, thanks. And also, the article said before things like :"After a couple of more Rex and the second Dragon Coin, a Super Mushroom pops out of a bush when the player passes. That sounds really bad, as well as unprofessional. Wll those things be allowed? Tucayo (talk) The fact that that sentence sounds bad doesn't seem to have much to do with the tense. It should go without saying imo that articles should be well-written; the proposal's point appears to be that in-game events should be treated as such, taking into consideration they're going to occur everytime someone plays the game.--vellidragon (talk) Reversinator: Biographies and such that describe real life events that happened in the past should be past tense(ex. "Brawl was released the following year..."). Garlic Man (talk) But what would you put if you want to say Mario will fight a boss after going through an area full of spikes? Supermariofan14 (talk) "The player then must fight a boss after going through an area full of spikes". Garlic Man (talk) I used "will" several times in the last articles I wrote. For example "They will not leave their place until Wario comes near", "When the treasure hunter does so, Shieragutchi will quickly move up", or "For defeating a Yukiotoko, Wario will be rewarded with a Bronze Coin." Would these sentences have to be rewritten as well? --Grandy02 (talk) Yes. They would become something along the lines of these: "They do not leave their place until Wario comes near", "When the treasure hunter does so, Shieragutchi quickly moves up", and "For defeating a Yukiotoko, Wario is rewarded with a Bronze Coin." A good example of what the proposal is aiming for is the plot section of the Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door article. -Garlic Man (talk) The proposal has a minor change. I just remembered about the Manual of Style policy, and that's where this rule would go, not a policy in itself. Garlic Man (talk) I agree with Time Q in that variety can't hurt - as long as it is done well, which it usually isn't, sadly. I'm not against setting standards, since they'll increase the overall appearance of the articles, however I don't think any one tense will do all the information justice. Reading present-tense History sections would feel odd (in school we learn that Genghis Khan invaded the Middle East and China, not that he is invading); so if we have to chose a conjugation for Level Articles and History sections of larger articles, it should be past tense. However, that would also seem inappropriate in Character Page introductions and sections such as Personality ("Princess Peach was a loving ruler." ...So, what is she now? A tyrant?): therefore, we should be able to use present tense in those sections. The stuff concerning the real world is going to be formatted this way (past, present and future in appropriate situations), if I understand Garlic Man correctly, and if we can make that work, we can make the fictional stuff work too. - Walkazo (talk) The problem is that we're dealing with in-game stuff here which is going to repeat every time someone plays the game. Yes, "Genghis Khan invaded the Middle East and China" - it has happened, and he's not going to invade it again because he's dead. But "Parakoopas appear in Yoshi's Island" and "lose their wings when you jump on them", not "appeared in Yoshi's Island" and "lost their wings when you jumped on them" - the latter format is currently used for way too many enemy/species articles and would imply that they're not in the game anymore, and you can't jump on them to make them lose their wings anymore, which is of course not true; yes, the game was released in the past, but unless your game cartridge is broken, they're still going to be there and will be defeatable like that every time you play the game. In-game happenings aren't real world events; they don't only happen once.--vellidragon 10:07, 3 January 2010 (EST) @Walkazo: You're right, histories and biographies should be written in past tense(E.g. Princess Peach made her first appearance in Super Mario Bros). Also, as Vellidragon also explained, Genghis Khan was a real man who existed in the past. As such, human biographies (e.g. Shigeru Miyamoto, Deanna Mustard, etc) would be written in past tense. However, if you're talking about something in a game, such as a plot of a game, it should be written as if you're going through the game, not as if you've already finished the game. If it's written in past tense, it seems like it would never happen again. Of course, when you're not necessarily speaking about in-game elements, this wouldn't apply. For instance, in the trivia section of a game article, you may see "The release date for Example Game was delayed twice before its final release", and this is OK, because it refers to the game as a real life object, rather than the content inside the game. (sorry if my explaination is confusing...) --Garlic Man (talk) Since the events happening in the Mushroom World are fictional, the sections in articles describing in-game events (aka the plot itself) are basically summaries. I don't know how this is handled in America, but here in Germany, it is a general rule that summaries have to be written in present tense. This is commonly what is teached in schools (and any deviance is hit with penalty). On a personal note: I think by using present tense, we could show our still-lasting respect for old games. Past Tense seems to imply that they are already forgotten (something I don't want to stand for). - Edofenrir (talk) I wasn't formally taught about tenses in respect to fictional works at all; looking at my old assignments, it was mostly in present, with some past tense mixed in (usually dealing with things that were described as being past events by the book itself, but also when talking about early plot points). In response to vellidragon and Garlic Man, I already understood that we'd be using past tense to describe RL events (the first part of the last sentence of my first comment, though perhaps I should have made it more than an aside), and in my vote I mentioned that ongoing things like Paratroopas losing their wings should be deal with in present tense (again, I should have been more explicit). I didn't like the idea of dealing with the games as if we're going through the games because that sounds a bit too much like walkthroughs, whereas past tense would be more like the articles are narratives in themselves. However, I've decided that I don't really oppose the standard enough to vote against it. I do have one final concern/question: in Character Pages containing Background sections in their Histories (dealing with preludes to RPGs, or overviews of their lives prior to their first chronological appearance going by release dates), could past tense be used in the Backgrounds or will it need present tense like the actual appearances' expositions? - Walkazo (talk) As far as I'm aware, in summaries of fictional events, past tense can only be used for background information if it happened before the start of the timeframe that is being summarised (which in this case would be the game the section/article is dealing with, or all the games in which the character appears if the section does not mention any specific one). E.g. if a character were to mention in a game that they moved to, let's say, Toad Town, and you don't see them do just that during the game's events, it would make no sense to write it in present tense, since it happened before the timeframe that is being dealt with and unlike in-game events witnessed by the player in some way is not going to repeat when the game is replayed (the person will state that they moved there every time, but they won't move there again if it doesn't actually happen during the game's events). This is based on what I was taught & what I think makes sense though, other people may disagree.--vellidragon (talk) Mario Wiki Pulse NO WIKI PULSE 1-7 I suggest to put a new section on the main page, it shall be called the "Mario Wiki Pulse". Basically it's just something that shows either the top five or twelve articles most seen in that week. note: if this is not possible to do then remove this proposal. Proposer: Zero777 (talk) Deadline: 7 January 2010, 15:00 Give it a Pulse Zero777 (talk) I am Zero! Well there wasn't that much to say since it is so simple but it is a good idea. Zero signing out. Let it pass....... away BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) A really bad article may end up getting on the front page which may give the wiki a bad reputation. There is a reason why we have featured articles, it's to make us look great. But having bad articles on the main page isn't so great. Besides, there may be a possible repeat of the featured article on the list. And I don't see any point on what article gets seen the most. We are here to provide information, not to showcase what articles were the most viewed this week or whatsoever. Edofenrir (talk) - The basic idea is good, but there might be a slight problem. I think most people come here for, well, the main content. What would we do to prevent articles like Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Wario, or the most recently released game from occupying the list overly long? I'm gonna think aloud for a moment: Perhaps we could take on this matter the other way 'round. Instead of highlighting the articles that already have tons of attention, we could highlight some really obscure and overseen articles. It could even benefit the wiki itself, if our editors come across these articles and improve them. My (weird) thoughts to that subject. Fawfulfury65 (talk) Changed my mind. Per BLOF. Walkazo (talk) - We already have FAs, so adding another list of pages people should look at to the crowded Main Page seems like overkill. The Wiki Community box already lists pages and projects that need contributors, so Edofenrir's reverse idea is also unnecessary. It just seems like extra work with very little to show for it; we'd be better off focusing on fixing the pages straight away. Paper Boo Guy (talk) Per BLOF. Supermariofan14 (talk) Per BLOF, too. T.c.w7468 (talk) Per all. Comments Fawfulfury65: Sorry, but "I like this idea" is not a reason why you should support. Please list your reason why you support this proposal. BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) I think I like this idea, this could be interesting. BLOF, I don't think there's a problem with having bad articles on the Main Page. There's already the "Pages Seeking Contributors" section where we list bad articles, after all. Also, our most important article, which may be the most-viewed one, is quite bad actually. It may help to improve those articles, so why not? There's still one problem though: We already have a lot of stuff on the Main Page. A way to solve this would be to get rid of the Featured Image section. We hardly had any new nominations recently, looks like we're running out of good images, so I think it's time to say good-bye to it. If you modify your proposal so that we replace the Featured Images with the "Pulse", and if it's realizable technically, you have my vote. Time Q (talk) @Edo: Not a bad idea either. Another idea that comes to my mind is to put articles on the Main Page that have the most increasing number of views compared to the previous week (so we wouldn't have articles like Mario that always have a large number of views but rather articles about current topics of interest). But I doubt this is possible technically. Time Q (talk) @Walkazo: I wasn't talking about pages without many contributors, I was talking about pages that get overlooked by our visitors because they are too obscure (don't confuse it with badly-written). Pages with very few views. It doesn't matter though, because I wanted to open new possibilities for this didcussion. - Edofenrir (talk) Edo: I feel like that idea would likely result in a list of(or very similar to a list of) the newest articles in the wiki. The real target for your idea would be pages that have been around for months/years that have only been viewed a few hundred times, correct? Garlic Man (talk) Yes, old pages that nobody visits (probably because their existence is not well-known). What I was trying to say is, if we're going to highlight something (please note the "if"), then it should be those articles. Because, why should someone advertise something that already has masses of attention? - Edofenrir (talk) People might not be visiting those pages because their topics aren't very interesting, in which case asking people to come to them is futile because they'll probably just leave again. Also, if a page's subject matter isn't well-known, it will be difficult for most people to write about it, and again, calling their attention to the article will not help things very much. "If you build it, they will come" is the cliché that comes to mind for these pages: people who are interested in the obscure things will find their way to the articles on their own (a stub will still register in Google searches); it may take some time, but someone will show enthusiasm for editing the neglected pages eventually. - Walkazo (talk) Talk Pages Needing Answers ADD FEATURE 5-0 Not the best name for it, but that's all I can come up with. Anyways, this proposal is to add a little part in the MarioWiki Community section that addresses two talk pages who have an unanswered question. Some of these questions have been on the Mario Wiki for at least a year now, and I'm pretty sure somebody will be able to answer these questions. The thing is, there aren't many talk pages with the talk template, and it's hard to figure out which ones have a question. So, since we already address articles that are stubs, I feel that without this, more and more questions will come-and stay-unanswered. Proposer: Reversinator (talk) Deadline: 9 January, 2010, 20:00 Add Feature Reversinator (talk) Per proposal. Supermariofan14 (talk) I need answers! Fawfulfury65 (talk) This would be good, because no one ever notices talk page questions. MATEOELBACAN (talk) Per Reversinator Ralphfan (talk) – Per all! Leave as it is Comments Y'know, theoretically we already have Category:Unresolved talk pages, which lists talk pages with open questions. The practical problem you mentioned, concerning that many of talk pages with questions lack Template:Talk, can hardly be solved by a Proposal. You need to encourage the users themselves to use this template with more confidence. - Edofenrir (talk) I know about the category. But the thing is, a lot of people don't know about the template and as a result, don't know about the category. My proposal would bring more awareness to them. And I'm not saying that my proposal will answer the questions. I'm just saying it would address them in a more visible fashion. And how do I encourage users? What, I go up to their talk page and say "Hey, if you have a question, make sure to use Template:Talk"? Reversinator (talk) I don't think another link to unresolved talk pages is necessary, since as far as I know they're already linked to on the Wiki Maintenance page. I do agree that the template is probably not used enough though. Not sure how possible this is, but maybe it could be mentioned in Help:Communication; the help page is linked to in the welcome template and tells people how to use talk pages, but as far as I'm aware does not currently mention the Talk template. It wouldn't seem out of place imo for the template to be mentioned there; just a suggestion though.--vellidragon (talk) I think this is a good idea. And about the whole issue itself: I don't think a Proposal about this subject is necessary (yet). Everything you've addressed could also be put into a suggestion on the respective talk page. If a Sysop sees your suggestion and likes your idea, it might get realized shortly after. We (including myself) tend to hold a lot of Proposals for such things that easily could be suggested otherwise lately. - Edofenrir (talk) I felt free to apply vellidragon's suggestion to this page. I hope it looks appropriate for everyone this way. - Edofenrir (talk) We could get rid of the "... have at least one section under construction" line on the MarioWiki Community template and replace it by unresolved talk page questions. Naming articles under construction on the Main Page makes no sense at all IMO, since usually someone is working on them and they do NOT need other contributors at the moment. Time Q (talk) If I recall correctly there are construction templates on pages that remained untouched for quite some time, but that's beside the point. You are basically right, we should consider to swap those. - Edofenrir (talk) Birdo's Sex Revisited DELETED It's a long proposal, but please read it before voting. No "tl;dr"'s please. T_T Way back when, we had a proposal to refer to Birdo as female in all situations. The result was a 15-1-0 blowout in favor of "She". One argument that many agreed on was that calling transsexuals "it" is offensive to transsexual people. But if we dwell into the depths of English grammar, we find that animals should be refered to as "it", rather than he or she. However, this argument may also be argued back with the fact that Birdo is an anthropomorphic character, which may have different guidelines regarding pronouns. But also, Birdo is refered to both as female in some games and male in other games. In this proposal, we're trying to determine whether Birdo is acatually female or not. Brido dresses like, speaks like(minus the low voice), and attempts to act like a "Girl", but is Birdo really "Female"? Gender may refer to what the person wants to be, establishes themselves to be, and what other people perceive them to be, but Sex is the actual bodily organization of the organism. Remember, Birdo is an animal, not a person. Birdo may be a girl on the outside, but what is she actually on the inside? This proposal prosposes that Birdo should be refered to as "it" in all situations. The thing is, some sources say Birdo is female while others say Birdo is male. Some argue that it's male in Japan and female everywhere else. I don't believe we should discriminate between countries on this. Each source is an individual element, and nationality should be disregarded. Basically, there's no difinitive evidence proving which sex Birdo truly is. Some sources say this, others say that. And they're both as official as the other. Nintendo appears to contradict with itself and thus Birdo's sex is unknown. Although some American sources say female, and this is an American wiki, other sources from other countries say otherwise. We should judge this situation based on the entire world, not just one language, and so Birdo should be called "it". Proposer: Garlic Man (talk) Deadline: 17 January, 2010, 20:00 For lack of evidence, refer to Birdo as "it" for the moment Garlic Man (talk) -- Per proposal. Assume that Birdo is Female without conclusive evidence YoshiDaisyfan1 (talk) -- You are right by saying some American sources refer to Birdo as she and I think since this is an American wiki that we should go by our American sources, not by other country's sources. Also, most of the info just stated about Birdo's sex should be put in the gender section on her page. Edofenrir (talk) - Before I get to the actual point: Birdo is an animal as much as Mario is. She's a sapient being, and therefore qualifies as a person. Everything else would be just an elitist glorification of humankind. As for the actual question: We need to make a diversion here. A diversion between gender (mentally) and sex (bodily). We know Birdo's gender to 100%: It's female, in every version (because she identifies as such). Her sex on the other side remains unclear up to this point. However, Though the body is a part of oneself, the decisions an individual makes is what forms a character. A transgender is what he/she decides to be, nothing more, nothing less. Therefore, the character Birdo is female, and should be refered as such. Redstar (talk) - Edo already stated much of what I would have, and I applaud this wiki for its understanding of the subject. The Birdo article already works well as it is, so switching over wouldn't benefit it in any way. Cobold (talk) per the Edo. vellidragon (talk) - Per Edo. In any case, "it" would not be a solution for adressing someone whose gender you don't know, and referring to a male-to-female transgender person as "he" is discriminatory. It's fine the way it is. Comments We also can't ignore her voice in Mario Tennis (N64). Just sayin'. YoshiDaisyfan1 (talk) I think she's a girl, because in Super Mario Advance, I think, when the character encounters her she says some sat=ying of some sort with a feminine voice rather than a masculine one. And aren't there different colors of Birdos as their are of Yoshis? Like in Yoshi's Story when choosing which Yoshi to be, the pink has the pink (or was it white) Yoshi has the most feminine voice while the Black Yoshi has the most masculine. At this point, I neither support or oppose. Gamefreak75 (talk) @Edo: Firstly, if you read the proposal, I clearly said we're trying to determine Birdo's sex, not her gender. But going by your arguement, do we really know that Yoshi is male as well? Yoshi has a high voice, lays eggs, etc. But, at this point, we are only considering Birdo to be female because we think she is. Is she? Nobody knows, besides the fact that she seems to act like one, but there are no standards of being a "girl". Koopas, according to your definition, are also people, "sapient beings", but yet we refer to the turtles as "it". They can bounce along the ground or hover back and forth with their wings, which will fall off if the Koopa Paratroopa takes damage, turning it into a normal Koopa Troopa. Why don't we call Koopas male? Because there are multiple? There are multiple Birdos, too, if you remember. The real reason as to why we don't call them male is because we don't know. If we knew, we would call them by whichever gender they are. However, when it comes to Birdo, we assume she is female, but the definition of "Female" is: "A member of the sex that produces ova or bears young." Birdo is Feminine, not Female. I don't know if any of you know about Eddie Izzard, but almost all of his performances, he cross-dresses, speaks like a female, etc, etc. Nobody recognizes him as female, however. He shows every characterstic of being a female on stage, establishes himself to be female, but alas, he is male. Birdo could actually be a transvestite, which are refered to as their actual sex, not the sex they assume themselves to be, but again, we don't know. I'm not trying to say Birdo is female or Birdo is male. I'm saying we don't know. Garlic Man (talk) We're not referring to Birdo as female because "we think she is", but because it's appropriate in either case. Referring to a transgender person by their physical sex is not respecting their status as transgender. We don't know Birdo's physical sex, that is correct; in fact, it is probably different depending on which language a source is in, but why do we have to refer to her by her physical sex to begin with, other than possibly insulting transgender visitors to the wiki? Wouldn't it be sufficient to state in the article that it's unknown whether Birdo is physically female or transgender, but refer to her with the only appropriate pronoun (she) throughout the article?--vellidragon 10:59, 10 January 2010 (EST) @YoshiDaisyfan: I specifically mentioned the thing about the American Wiki, but if we were to do that, we would have to change every Mario Kart Wii article and Mario Strikers article back to the American versions from the European versions. There was a proposal regarding that a while ago. Garlic Man (talk) As opposed to what the "Oppose" section title says now, we do have evidence that Birdo wants to be female, don't we? Birdo would in any case either be female or male-to-female transgender. She would have to be referred to as "she" in either case; calling a male-to-female transgender person "he" (or female-to-male "she") is just discriminatory and rude (suggesting they should be called "it" even more so).--vellidragon 10:40, 10 January 2010 (EST) Remove Featured Images From Main Page KEEP 10-14 I propose to set the Featured Images project on hiatus - that is, to cancel the process of selecting a Featured Image each week and featuring it on the Main Page. I'm well aware that many users like this project, so please consider my arguments before voting: The project was extremely inactive lately. For example, the last non-maintenance edit on the FI page was three days ago, compared to dozens of edits a day some time ago. The last nominated image was added even 15 days ago, when we had several new images a day some time ago. And currently we have only 4 nominated images, in contrast to 15 or more images some time ago. It simply seems like we're running out of good images to feature which - if we don't do anything about it - will lead to the situation that we have to feature a bad image just because there are no better ones available. The idea of Featured Images is questionable in itself. While it makes sense to feature articles (because they're our own work as a wiki), it makes little sense to feature images which are only the work of Nintendo or other companies, but not of our wiki. You may wonder what we will do with the new-won space on the Main Page if this proposal passes. Well, I do not propose anything, but there's already a lot of stuff on the Main Page so we don't necessarily have to replace the FI by anything. But of course we can put something different in its place if anyone has a good idea. Proposer: Time Q (talk) Deadline: January 10, 2010, 15:00 Get Rid of It Time Q (talk): Per the reasons given above. Cobold (talk) - the images are not our work, so we should not just pic a "good image" and upload it there. It does not compare to featured articles this way. Maybe we could use the gained space to advertise the wiki a bit more, e.g.: what tells us apart from the Mario Wikia or what subjects are still eagerly looking for contributors (like most of the Game Boy games), as new visitors are likely to only scan through the most popular games and find that they are all already done. Edofenrir (talk) - I agree with Cobold. I also never really grew accustomed to the FI nomination system in general. Walkazo (talk) - Per all. I always thought it was unnecessary. Bloc Partier (talk) - Per all. Ever since we had a stolen image featured in it, I thought it was worthless. Super Mario Bros. (talk) YES! I don't like how the process goes (that is why I stopped editing the FI nominations page for a long time). Before we continue the project, we need a massive reform of the project: although the project is, essentially, full of bias, the state it is in now is horrendous. We have fan votes like "ZOMG DK is in the image so its an instanant vot3 fr0m me!!!!!!!!!!11111111111111" and other stupid pointless votes like that. We need to have a way to clear the detrimental bias from the system as well as get the project more active and able to help the wiki. Also, I extemely agree with Cobold. Perhaps we could create a supplement to the Featured Image project on The 'Shroom. The bias could go into the votes if done like that because The 'Shroom is a community project, not our main hub. T.c.w7468 (talk) Per all. Twentytwofiftyseven (talk) Per all. Stooben Rooben (talk) — Per Cobold. RAP (talk) – Per all, especially Cobold -- while Wikipedia allows such a system of featured images with their own reasons; in what I see, Featured Images is actually different from Featured Articles. While all of us have the opportunity to vote, we have to be aware that an image was distributed by Nintendo, (drawn or created by someone in the company), while an article (composed of official Nintendo info about the series of Mario, Yoshi, Wario, DK and etc), was written by various users that contributed in an attempt to create a very good article. Also, per SMB for suggesting that this type of concept should go into the 'Shroom. Mario304 (talk) I had to cast my vote in. I, myself, am running out of ideas for a Featured Image. I agree with everything said above. Keep It Fawfulfury65 (talk) I think the FIs give the main page a colorful touch. To me, it seems like there are still many great pictures out there that are just waiting to be featured, and as more games are released, so will more great artwork. Without FIs the main page would look too bland for me. Baby Mario Bloops (talk) - It brings us things that FF65 said above. We can't get rid of it. Why do we need a new image each week? We don't have a new FA every week. We can always reuse some, and that way we won't run low on images, won't use bad ones, and we always see some of our favorite images each week. Other wikia's do this, and why not, we do that with FA's... Supermariofan14 (talk) Per Fawfulfury. BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) Unlike what SMB said, I haven't seen a lot of fan votes compared to featured articles. Ok then, to my point, removing the FI would make our wiki main page text, text, one image from the news, one image from featured article, hmmm, oh yeah, more text! Per Fawful's Fury sixty-five and the Baby Mario/Blooper hybrid. Zero777 (talk) I am Zero! There is still a lot of good images to nominate even if there screenshots. And like FawfulFury65 said it gives a colorful look to the main page ever since the polls were removed. Zero signing out. LeftyGreenMario (talk) I don't like this idea. I think there is still a good amount of images not unearthed in the wiki. Besides, there might be great and newer images in the future when more games come out. Besides, the closest thing to a fan vote I've seen was on that hideous Yoshi group picture (the white background). A lot of people voted on that "just because Yoshi is in." Otherwise, the votes are not so bad compared to some of the Featured Articles' ones. And I don't like those ideas to replace the Featured Image spot :P. Per all. 4DJONG (talk) After polls were removed this has been the most entertaining part of the page other than the FA, and the wiki is full of great images ready to be featured, and the voters an commenters are just being lasy, and if they just start nominating and voting the section should be back up and running also there haven't been many fan votes other than the yoshi group pic. Lu-igi board per all. more games will be released meaning more great pictures. plus, there are still hidden gems somewhere on the wiki. Tucayo (talk) - The FI's give the MP a colorful touch, they make it worth looking at. If we run out of noms, we can cycle them, like FA's. That will leave a hole in the MP. If you want, I, personally, will take Ccare of the nom page. Gamefreak75 (talk) PEr all. We all know that when SMG2 comes out, there's going to be a huge load of images uploaded, and most(or at least some) will look very good on the main page. And like everyone else said, what's going to replace that huge chunk of grey space on the front? Lemmy Koopa Fan (talk) Per all. There was a proposal on this before. It failed. and like Gamefreak75 said, once SMG2 there will be new nominations coming out the ying-yang! And also like BabyLuigiOnFire said, the main page would just be text... text... text (other than the picture on the News Template). So yeah. On with Featured Images! P.S. There is hardly any fan votes compared to FAs. (Except maybe the Yoshi one) Karinmij (talk) Per all, I like the FI-section and the idea behind it. I don't know, but perhaps the low activity lately was due to the holidays and maybe when new games (such as SMG2) are released, it will get more active. Ralphfan (talk) – Per Tucky. Marioguy1 (talk) - NO The FIs are a thing that people can easily understand. While it takes a small degree of knowledge and diligence (not to mention comprehension) to read an article, it takes almost nothing to look at a picture. So much easier to look at a picture, so much happier to look at a picture, so much better to look at a picture. Plus, if you think Images can't be professional then look at wikipedia's front page. Oh ya, and per tucky. Comments What will happen to the currently nominated images? Will we continue to vote on them and not allow any more images to be nominated, or just yank the project effective immediately? - Walkazo (talk) I was thinking to yank it immediately (before this proposal passes, or if it does, however, we will regularly feature one more image on Thursday). Time Q (talk) @Fawfulfury65: The Featured Images haven't been there for that long, and the Main Page worked great before we had them. As you can see, almost no new images were nominated lately, so this will likely lead to a bad image on the Main Page if we continue the project. However, if it turns out that there are really lots of more images that should be featured, we could bring the project back. It's not like it's lost forever if this proposal passes. Time Q (talk) In order to vote, I need to see how will the Main Page will look after we remove this. Tucayo (talk) We can make it so that there is a new FI every month so we don't run out of FIs too fast... That's all I can think of, but I really don't want to put the FI system on hiatus because its the only thing I usually enjoy on the Main Page. How long will it be gone anyway? Fawfulfury65 (talk) I can already see people complain how boring it is to have the image changed only once in a month. This would probably prevent bad images from being featured, but we should better get rid of it completely. Time Q (talk) THis is ironcial, we take polls because they are way too active, and now you want to take this because it is not very active. In FA's, the same articles are used again and again, we could do the same. Tucayo (talk) Although I do agree that the voting system is weird, I think the idea of Featured Images is still good, and hope that we can come up with a better way to make this work and bring it back, if it does go to hiatus. I also agree with Tucayo's second comment, about circulating featured images on the main page. @TimeQ's proposal: Even if featured images may not be our "own work", great images, be they artwork or screenshots, serve as a very good appeal to the Mario series itself. Garlic Man (talk) I agree with the above comment. The games aren't our work either, we simply take them from other resources or just by playing the games and implement them into an article. The images are part of the Mario series, we are a Mario wiki, so I think that it would make our wiki look nicer and more visually appealing. BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) I'm not a Baby Mario/Blooper hybrid (sigh). Anyways, every featured FA has more than enough images. Getting rid of FI's is like taking away images off a page. All would be text, and we would see no color, no interesting things to point us out. That would be the main page if we got rid of it. Also, do we play Mario games with lots of images? I don't think we play it like we read a novel. Baby Mario Bloops (talk) As I already said, we have had the Featured Images only since last April, which means the Main Page existed for years without them and worked perfectly. I understand that you can't imagine it since you probably joined after we started the FIs, but it's true. And no, you cannot compare it to taking away images off a page at all. Time Q (talk) We don't feature games, we feature articles, that's a different thing. But we do feature images which is kind of strange considering we were not involved at all in their creation. Time Q (talk) Here's a concept, we keep all the archived images and the current FI, and start playing them again, starting with the first one and continuing until the current image resurfaces, at which point the cycle repeats itself. I know this disagrees with the second part of the proposal, but I think it could work. Any objections? Timmy Tim (talk) While this would be better than continuing the project like it is, I think it would still be boring to just repeat the same images. Why not put something completely different on the Main Page in place of the FIs? Of course, we can still keep the archive of already featured images, so they won't be lost. Time Q (talk) Time Q: We are dismantling the Main Page slowly. The QOTD, the Affiliates thing (well, that was Steve), the Calendar.... This would leave a huge gap in the MP, and unless I am shown how will it be accomodated, I would have to oppose. Tucayo (talk) You're right in that it would leave a gap on the Main Page, so we have to find a solution. Either we move some of the other templates or we find something we can replace the FIs for. Does anyone have an idea? Time Q (talk) I checked the FI archive and there are 38 images. By the time every picture gets shown again, the majority of the year will have past and the earlier images may not seem stale at all when the cycle restarts. Timmy Tim (talk) Maybe, but please see my second argument. Time Q (talk) Time Q: I don't find your argument saying that "the wiki worked just fine without FI's" justified. Just because something is functional enough to supply one's needs does not mean improvement would hurt (Remember, the Main Page looked like This for years and worked just as fine too). I'm not against removing FI's(for now), because I'm thinking the Featured Images page will only be put on indefinite hiatus, not deletion, I hope? I also agree with Tucayo that even if the proposal passes, we should think of something to put in its place before taking out that big chunk. (Although, if I must say my opinion, coming up with new things and then abandoning them too often in that section [e.g. polls, FI] makes the wiki seem like it isn't commited to its plans, which in a way shows unproffesionalism) --Garlic Man (talk) Yes, it would only be put on indefinite hiatus. Time Q (talk) A few things, one, I been a user since May, but I was a guest since two years ago. Two, we improve our main page, and it has gotten way better than before FI's thanks to them. Three, we have now a few new nominations, and they are still coming, so we aren't running out. Four, I didn't like FI's at first, but now they are a very important part of the Mario Wiki! Fifth, use my prior reason, reuse FI's like FA's. That is all... Baby Mario Bloops (talk) Regarding your first point: Okay then. Second: Well, what do you say about my second argument that the notion of FIs is questionable then? Third: It's obvious that the reason for new images being nominated is this proposal. Before I made it, there have not been any new nominations for days. Fourth: They're nothing we couldn't get rid of. Fifth: Under which circumstances should we reuse the images in your opinion? Time Q (talk) That's what I said Tucayo! Reuse, try going green with FI's, lol... Baby Mario Bloops (talk) I find that none of the opposers has an argument against the statement that featured images are questionable, as they are not our own work. You seem to be only referring to the nomination system. - Cobold (talk) That's right... Time Q (talk) Okay, two comments. First, as stated above, I admit that we can't get rid of the FI template on the Main Page without doing any further changes, that is either to re-arrange the other templates or to put something else in the FI's place. Does anyone have an idea what we can do here? Second, it's obvious that the quality of the nominated images is getting lower and lower, so if we decide to keep the FIs, then in order to prevent bad images from being featured we should reuse older pictures. Under which circumstances should we do so? My suggestion would be to feature a new image only if it is has 10 or more "positive votes" (with positive votes, I mean the number of support votes minus the number of oppose votes). Time Q (talk) Yes, we should reuse old pics until SMG2 comes out, because when it does the wiki will be flooded with excellent pics to nominate. 4DJONG (talk) Time Q and Cobold: I will restate this: the images are part of the Mario series and the articles aren't our work either. We just play the game and implement its information into articles. Again, the images are from the Mario series, our site is about the Mario series, therefore, it's ok to feature images regarding to Mario in this series, be it our work or not. BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) "The articles aren't our work either"? oô Are you sure you want to go on with that statement? - Edofenrir (talk) Well, technically, this is our work, but the storyline, gameplay and stuff aren't our work. BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) Not just "technically". To make a good article, information has to be collected (often from many different sources), the loose information must be organized, the article concept must be planned, authentic and comprehendible summaries must be written, good images must be found to support the article, sources need to be given, and good templates and categories must be searched and included. Just because we didn't create the sources ourselves doesn't mean our work is less worth, or can be disregarded. - Edofenrir (talk) Per Edo. As I stated above, we don't feature the games. We feature something we made about the games (=articles). But on the other hand, we don't feature something we made about the images, but the images themselves. This is questionable. Time Q (talk) Time Q: They are just to have something different from the articles, proposals, etc. To give a nice look to the Main Page, something colorful, something that is actually seen. Tucayo (talk) Time Q: How do you know the reason new nominations are being set up is this proposal? People could've just found new images. And also: I don't care if the images aren't our "own work". They're the only thing I ever usually look at other than the proposals, and they are a very important part of the main page. If we delete this then what will we delete next? News? (Note: I said that because like Tucayo said, there has been a lot of deletions on the main page.) Lemmy Koopa Fan (talk) Time Q: It will create a big hole in the main page if you remove the FI. We can reuse images like articles in the FA. And besides when SMG2 comes out, there will be dozens of pictures flooding the FI. Jjfs6mk&c (talk) “Time Q: They are just to have something different from the articles, proposals, etc. To give a nice look to the Main Page, something colorful, something that is actually seen.” —User:Tucayo We have images from the Featured Article template and the News template. Having another image that is on the Main Page because a ton of biased noobs voted for the characters instead of actual quality is not good. Let's have it on The 'Shroom, where bias can actually go. “Time Q: How do you know the reason new nominations are being set up is this proposal? People could've just found new images. And also: I don't care if the images aren't our "own work". They're the only thing I ever usually look at other than the proposals, and they are a very important part of the main page. If we delete this then what will we delete next? News? (Note: I said that because like Tucayo said, there has been a lot of deletions on the main page.)” —User:Lemmy Koopa Fan Well, it's a good thing that nominations are being set up because of the proposal, but what about when the proposal is archived? It will most likely go baqck into a state of inactivity until another proposal is made. I know you may not care about the images not being "our own work", but others do, making that comment just utterly stupid. I don't care if you look at the Featured Images page the most, the system isn't working and it needs to be put on hiatus and a better system developed. Also, that deletions from the Main Page comment is ridiculous. We made those adjustments because the time the page to load the page was insanely slow (Quote of the Day), it served no purpose after the awards (Tourney Template), it served no purpose whatsoever (WikiNews template), or the system of selecting what went into the template was overly biased (Polls). We want to put FIs on hiatus so we can fix the problems before it becomes irreversable and then we have to completely cancel the project (like what happened to the polls). Super Mario Bros. (talk) "Having another image that is on the Main Page because a ton of biased noobs voted for the characters instead of actual quality is not good." Actually, there is no bias on the nomination of images when compared to Featured Articles (hint:when compared to). You should check for yourself, the majority of votes are placed because of the image itself. BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) “Let's see how this turns out...” —User:Timmy Tim “Though I agree with Time Q that it's a low quality picture (when enlarged), I really like it so I support this one :)” —User:Karinmij “Yay, Mini-DK is blind!” —User:Vini64 “If you look real closely, you'll see that Mario needs to shave. (Just a little)” —User:S.M.Sfreak “I don't know why but I really like this picture. And it is big!” —User:Fawfulfury65 “I am Zero! Well even though the skis are blurred, DK looks weird with his teeth, and Mario's sideburns are a lighter shade of color, I still like this picture. Zero signing out.” —User:Zero777 “This is why we have featured images!” —User:GalacticPetey “Poor Luigi XD.” —User:Lemmy Koopa Fan “Ha! it has a humorus plot to it. Poor Luigi takes the cuts and bruises while Mario escapes unharmed. Well Luigi is more clumsy....” —User:lpsc00l “No background, yuck :P” —User:Marioguy1 “The image at full size looks good but I don't think it should be featured.” —User:tonym101101 “luigi+ball=epic fail” —User:baby dk “Ja.” —User:Platitudinous “I am Zero! This was already nominated twice and it was put down. Zero signing out.” —User:Zero777 “I don't like that wallpaper and... MARIO PARTY 7 F****NG SUCKS!!!” —User:Vini64 “terrible.” —User:Lu-igi board “It's boxart!!! if you want boxart up then you might as well put up a picture of the box” —User:Pixlfreak “Ermmmmm... I am on support list so... i have to say I love that galaxy!” —User:LuigiMadness71 “OHMYGOSHI'MGONNADIE... oh, it's an awesome picture.” —User:Platitudinous “Oh my, a floating house. How interesting!(sarcasm)” —User:Fawfulfury65 “I nominated this once” —User:Lu-igi board “It looks like they're all saying "Holy shmoly!"” —User:Lemmy Koopa Fan “I will nominate only for Wario's face. LOL!” —User:Lu-igi board “I am Zero! The reason why I didn't nominate this when I nominated two or three MP pictures at the same time is that DK looks like an orangutan. Zero signing out.” —User:Zero777 As you can see, I have found many votes that are not good. Most of them (but not all): Are fan votes. Do not make sense. Are not well-detailed. Are just pointless. I was actually tempted to put a lot more, but I decided to take the most obvious ones into this list. We need to set a standard for voting, as Featured Images will never be completely unbiased. However, we need to outlaw votes that fall under categories such as those that I listed. Super Mario Bros. (talk) Although I don't think you should have called out those users by adding their names to the quotes(The quote by itself would have gotten the message across), FIs, unlike featured articles, do not have specific guidelines. All they say is "those quality, intriguing, witty, provocative, rare, important, and otherwise simply interesting images that can be found throughout the site's articles." If a user had put, "This image is simply interesting" as their reason for support, it would follow exactly the guidelines. Whether something is interesting or not is the User's opinion, and the whole purpose for the voting system is to see if there are a majority of people who think it's a good image vs. don't think it's a good image. The reasons following the votes, in my opinion, hardly matter in the entirety of the process. --Garlic Man (talk) Per GM - Tucayo (talk) Use <blockquote></blockquote> for quotes - it takes up less space and makes the discussion look neater. Old-fashioned quotation marks (with or without italicized or bolded text) work fine for the smaller quotes, like in Garlic Man's latest comment. I just think using {{quote}} is a bit excessive. - Walkazo (talk) Remove Latest Proposal from Main Page DELETED Every time now when I go to the main page (Which is like every day), the latest proposal section says "None at the moment". Because of that, I suggest removing Latest Proposal from the main page. Proposer: MarioKart66! (talk) Deadline: 24 January 2010, 15:00 Remove It Don't remove it Cobold (talk) - it just said no proposals because we had no proposals at the moment. During more active days, we have a lot of proposals and it makes a lot of sense to notify users of current discussions on the wiki. Just because there have been no proposals within the past week means that this space is completely useless. Also, I see no proper filler for the space. Reversinator (talk) Before the proposal below, there weren't any proposals, so we had to put "None at the moment". Now that we do, a proposal will go there. Zero777 (talk) I am Zero! From putting this proposal up, it will appear on the main page. Plus if the proposal section is removed, there will be a big area of the main page blank. Zero signing out. Baby Mario Bloops (talk) - I hate switching my vote, but the people above have strong points. It was not changed in a long while, but that just means that it wasn't changed because of a reason. We do need to update it more, though, but I'm sure it will be solved. Also, the main reason why I switch, it helped my see what is new in the proposal page. MATEOELBACAN (talk) - Per All. Randoman123456789 (talk) - Per all. Gamefreak75 (talk) Per all. Fawfulfury65 (talk) There usually are a ton of proposals, but just for that short time there weren't. Per all. Ralphfan (talk) – Proposals are one of the most integral parts of the Wiki. Just because we went a few days without a proposal does not mean they are obsolete. Walkazo (talk) - Per all. Comments Reorganize Attack Pages for Smash Series DELETED Okay, there was indeed a proposal for this that set the standard for the way it is now, but this is not a good thing. The first problem here is that because the attacks of characters from the smash series are on the pages, it clouds up a lot of the characters page with descriptions of the attacks as well as images of the attacks. It is in one word, ridiculous. It might work out a little okay on characters who don't have full pages such as Fox, but characters like Mario have ridiculous pages clouded up by ridiculous amounts of Smash info. Here's an example of how bad the character pages are with the special moves crammed in on them: [1] I'm proposing we wither set up the attacks like they are set up on the SmashWiki, which is a really good style, OR we set them up so that every attack is listed on one page of attacks for th smash series, but obviously organized correctly so as to set up the ease of the viewer. The SmashWiki set up goes like this: http://super-smash-bros.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Attacks Here you can find all the links that show how the pages are set up for all the moves. It is an in-depth setup and is actually very useful and well done. The whole point of this proposal is to get the Special moves of characters off of the character's page, but if this style was voted on we would have a lot more organization on this site as well. The next option would be simply removing all the special moves from the character pages and creating one page that covers each playable character's special move in its own section. Really simple but not as wonderful as the above option unless everyone on this wiki wants it to be that easy. Before you oppose you should know that the two options here are simply to clean up character pages and if the reason you are opposing is because you don't feel like making an effort, rethink, because as I am creating this proposal I will work as hard as I can to make sure it gets done right. Also, why would you have a problem with how setting up smash information works when I am trying to follow the style of the ACTUAL smash wiki? Proposer: FD09 Deadline: 26 January, 2010, 15:00 (EDT) Follow the Style of the SmashWiki FD09- The setup is smart and organized. Reversinator (talk) Per the nine daisies of foreverness. Create One Page That Organizes Everyone's Special Moves Keep Special Moves With Explanations, Images, Character's Page Fawfulfury65 (talk) I like it the way it already is. It doesn't really clutter the page, and makes navigating easier for special moves. If we follow that Smashwiki's way, we may end up with a few stubs, which are not wanted of course. Putting it all into one article... that reminds me of the old glitches page, a huge page that takes forever to find what you're looking for. Knife (talk) – Per Fawfulfury. It may be cluttered on a few pages, but it saves readers from navigating to multiple pages just to read about one move. Garlic Man (talk) - Per Knife, and all of our articles should be Mario related. Template:Fakelink has nada to do with Mario. Tucayo (talk) - I was near to supporting, but I disliked the way you phrased the proposal. Per Knife, we dont need minimal of stub articles to cover a subject that is OK where it is. Coincollector (talk) - Agree with these guys. The only thing they would need is a small cleanup with the images (they spoil the text's organization a bit). Gamefreak75 (talk) Inconsistent, useless, and though it may "seem" organized to some, it will be a huge flop after it is completed. Per all. Walkazo (talk) - Per Knife and Garlic Man. Also, one big page would be bad because all the images would take forever to load, especially on older computers. Comments Okay, all of you seem for the current system because you don't want stubs, but you completely ignored the option of putting them all on their own page which would not make looking up moves hard at all, especially compared to what its like now. And the idea that all the images would be hard to load is funny, considering the whole point of this proposal is because of character, pages which have LOTS of images.FD09 Bring back the Friend Lists BRING THEM BACK 9-1 Well, I was noticed by the User Cobold (talk) that the friend list were not allowed anymore until this old proposal, but then why we have the friend userboxes? Did they become obsolete? Also in the welcome template a part of the letter says: "Feel free to delete this message when you're done reading it. After all, your user space belongs to you.. but of this space belongs to you, then, why the users can't made a list of the users who they consider his/her friends? Wasn't their userspaces belong to them? So, I think that the friend list must be back due that these good reasons. Proposer: MATEOELBACAN (talk) Deadline: 24 January, 2010, 15:00 (EDT) Bring back them MATEOELBACAN (talk) - Per Proposal. Reversinator (talk) - I agree. I mean, what's the harm of saying who's your friend? Betaman (talk) Per Mateoelbacan. Baby Mario Bloops (talk) - I can understand getting rid of the crazy, all over the place list of friends, but every kind? This must get passed, it help outs the user that has one find their friends faster than typing it in and having the chance of mispelling it or having to look up the users name if it is hard to remember (like MATEOELBACAN for example). It doesn't take up that much space (unless you have 100 user friends) and it does no harm but just helps. Zero777 (talk) - I am Zero! I get the user sub-page restriction, I barely get why we can't use infoboxes, but what's the promblem of having a list of your friends, it's not like theres a person who is friends with everybody. Zero signing out. Ralphfan (talk) - Per all. Ugozima (talk) - Per all. Supermariofan14 (talk) - I like to say I'm a friendly person. Fawfulfury65 (talk) - Per my old comment that I had here before and per BMB in the comments section. Forget it Super Mario Bros. (talk) – See my comments below. Comments Baby Mario Bloops (talk) - I'm sort of confused, what is the proposal trying to do. I understand the friend list, but I'm still kind of confused what the point it is trying to show. MATEOELBACAN (talk) - For example, you have yoir friend list in your Userpage now, but that isn't allowed (see the link of my proposal) and if this proposal doesn't win you'll must remove it. What I don't like about this proposal is that it takes one thing that a template says, and twists it. The {{Welcome}} was created a few years ago, back when we didn't have users who spammed their page excessively. The whole "It's my userspace, and I should be able to put whatever I want on it!" arguement is very flawed. Freedom is not something you should abuse. Freedom only works with a responsible person or responsible people, and when users start to abuse the freedom they have, rules are made to make sure that our website is safe. Essentially, out of many wikis out there, we offer the most freedom with userspace and try our best to reserve the rights to your userspace. The leader himself, Porplemontage, installed extensions that allowed only the user that owned the page and the Sysops to be able to edit the pages. In all technicality, the userspace is property of the wiki's, but we let you use it to represent yourself. Porplemontage, and to extent, the Sysops and Patrollers, are the final say in what gets included in userspace. – Super Mario Bros. (talk) 18:57, 17 January 2010 (EST) I don't talking about that, I don't say that a user must abuse of the "powers" that line to make things prohibited or inapropiated in its user page, but as Reversinator said: What's the harm of saying who is your friend? - MATEOELBACAN (talk) The harm is that it can bring strife between immature users. "Why am I not on your friends list?", "I thought you were my friend...", "Add me to your friends list." Overall, the point of the lists is actually quite redundant, and you should actually make use of the userbox loophole you pointed out. The lists actually do nothing: you don't have to put a user on the friend's list in order to be their friend. Users have gotten along fine without the lists, so if it isn't broken, it doesn't need fixing. Super Mario Bros. (talk) I see the use of friends list quite useless as userboxes seems to be he new friend list. However, I neither support or oppose. I personally won't have a friends list because it just clutters your userspace. Gamefreak75 (talk) 2 things, the line in {{Welcome}} was removed, and, I have seen flame wars cause of friend lists. Tucayo (talk) Really? You have? I don't know what to say... I'm gonna remove my vote then. Fawfulfury65 (talk) Wait, yes, flame wars do happen. How often though, compared to flaming period. If users will flame just because of a friend list, then they are too insucure and don't even belong as a user here. If you can't control your feelings, then what better way to have that shown on a simple thing that shows the immaturity of the users. It's not the list, it's the user that reacts to things such as above. Baby Mario Bloops (talk) Well, you've got a point. Let me think about it... Also, shouldn't MarioKart66!'s vote be removed, because he's a sockpuppet? Fawfulfury65 (talk) I basically have nothing against friends lists and see no great harm in them. People just want to advertise their friends a little, and there's nothing wrong with that as long as it stays civilized. I'm just commenting here to highlight once more that you can not do whatever you want on your user space. I don't know how such a rumour could originate. - Edofenrir (talk) Oooh, I'm gonna bring up another problem and then disappear! We are a wiki on Mario, this here wiki on Mario has users contributing to facts on Mario and if they are busy trying to make friends and editing their userpages then they won't be contributing facts on Mario, will they? This kind of stuff can go on Userpedia. Marioguy1 (talk) You stressed the fact that this would detract users from making contributions on Mario, but I don't think sending them to Userpedia would help that cause. And some people can multitask and make many great edits in Main Space while having a fruitful userpage as well. (Although mine may be too fruitful x_o)--Garlic Man (talk) Having userspace is what kept me on this wiki. Instead of constantly editing mainspace, you can read about other users and enjoy chatting with them. If it wern't for friends, I would have gotten bored and left. And if it does keep user away from edits the mainspace, they'll just get a warning and be blocked if they don't listen. Fawfulfury65 (talk) Like Garlic Man said, people multitask (such as me). I wouldn't call my userspace overly long or descriptive though (-_-'), but I try my best to do the job. It's like sending a drug addict to jail, instead of rehab to help them out. It will only worsen the situation because the person may become corrupt and you probably know from here.--Gamefreak75 (talk) Well, the deadline was today, what should I do with this proposal? MATEOELBACAN (talk) Archive :) here. Tucayo (talk) Use GMT for all events, deadlines, and dates USE GMT 18-0 Basically, what the proposal title says. The other day, I marked Wii as a featured article, since one week had already passed since the passing of the nomination. Time Q pointed out to me here that we use EST as a reference time. I realized the inconsistency in this, as this proposal page (if you look above), says that EDT should be used as a reference time. If you remember, we have had proposals to allow any kind of English spelling, as well as to use the first official English name for article titles, rather than the American one. These were in effort to maintain the international, non-American biased image that the Wiki strives for. I believe that by using a world-standard time (which happens to be the wiki's default time set in your preferences), there will be less misunderstandings and confusions about deadlines and dates. And most of all, it shows our internationality, rather than being partial to a time zone we are more accustomed to. Proposer: Garlic Man (talk) Deadline: 9 February, 2010, 17:00 Support Garlic Man (talk) - ^Per Proposal Tucayo (talk) - Per Garlic Baby Mario Bloops (talk) - GWT is the main timezone, so everyone in different areas can at least relate to that. King Bean (talk) - Per BMB. GMT would solve time problems (if there are any). MATEOELBACAN (talk) - Per the Garlic Guy Cobold (talk) - per Garlic. Randoman123456789 (talk) - per Garlic Man Red Shell 68066vr (talk) It is used in the preferences. Supermariofan14 (talk) - Per Garlic Man and BMB. LeftyGreenMario (talk) I live in California. I don't like or understand those abbreviated time zones. And consistency is golden. Random User (talk) - Per Garlic. Gamefreak75 (talk) I understand the time zone(s), live in California, all that good stuff. I have GMT as my set time zone already, so per GM and BMB. Joltarious (talk) Per Garlic Man! Stooben Rooben (talk) - Per Garlic. Coincollector (talk) - Agree with ye. Arend (talk) - I hope this means Europeans can also watch our anniversary later... Oh well, per all. T.c.w7468 (talk) YES, this is a more standardized time, though I prefer we use UCT (basically the same thing but w/o DST) Zero777 (talk) I am Zero! GMT is better way to track stuff since it's easier. Zero signing out. Oppose Comments What is GMT??? Red Shell 68066vr (talk) Greenwich Meridian Time IIRC --Tucayo (talk) What is this difference between GMT and EDT? I'm not good at time zones or whatever. Fawfulfury65 (talk) GMT is the same as UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). It's 6:22 am in GMT right now, while it's 1:22 am in EST. Time Q (talk) I have Pacific Time Zone, so for me, it's currently 10:56 p.m.Gamefreak75 (talk) Could anyone tell me what all this EDT thingies mean? LOL, I know I sound n00bish. Supermariofan14 (talk) Its OK to ask :) Its the time zone. EDT is the Eastern DAYLIGHT Time, which is the time of the east coast (NY, Mia, etc) in summer. UCT and GMT are the times of Greenwich. For example, Mexico is UTC -6, which means you ahev to substract 6 hours to the UCT time :) Tucayo (talk) Btw, Greenwich is in London. British time is the same as GMT. - Cobold (talk) OH! OK, thanks, I never knew which one was which. Supermariofan14 (talk) What is GMT, I never understand these time zones either... Joltarious (talk) As Tucayo says above, it is Greenwich Meridian Time, AKA Universal Coordinated Time. This happens to be your wiki's default time in preferences. Red Shell 68066vr (talk) More transparency in discussions AMEND RULES 21-0 After voting in the unfeaturing for the Princess Daisy article last evening, I came home tomorrow to see the page completely blown up, deleted for having "no supporters". I found this claim to be very wrong, as I was very sure that I myself supported that very nomination just yesterday. Browsing through the deleted page with my sysop powers, I could reconstruct the discussion. Still, absolutely all support and oppose votes have been blanked, and I have no nerves to go through the over 100 revisions that the page got overnight to find the exact changes to find out who removed those votes, why and with what authority. I find this to be a very intransparent and confusing way of having a discussion. It is very hard to reconstruct the actual positions of the people who did place their vote, but got it removed. It is also impossible for anyone who is not a sysop to even read the page any more. That bears any reason. Every user in the wiki should be allowed to take part in these discussions and should be able to read them when they are over. Thus, I propose the following changes for the rules of all sorts of discussions (proposals/featurings/unfeaturings): If a vote is determined invalid, whether it is a support vote or an oppose vote, it does not get removed. Instead, it gets striked out with <s></s> tags. Next to the striked out vote, there should be an information of who striked the vote, and why. This could be done with a template similar to {{unsigned}}. Nobody has the right to remove a vote or comment unless it is clearly without any reason offensive or insulting spammy / off-topic All past discussions get archived. That means, all Featured Article nominations and Unfeature nominations get archived - whether they are passed or not, and whether the original proposer removed them or not. Previous passed and not passed feature/unfeature nominations get linked to from the article's talk page for better reference. None of these changes would change the rules as to why comments or votes can be invalidated. All I want to ensure that the discussion can be easily tracked down and are transparent for everybody on the wiki, not just sysops and those who have the patience to plow through endless numbers of revisions in the history. Proposer: Cobold (talk) Deadline: February 15, 2010, 23:00 Support Cobold (talk) - I want every user on the Mario Wiki to be able to view and understand previously public debates and discussions. Glowsquid (talk) - Per the proposal and my comment below. Reversinator (talk) Per Cobold RAP (talk) - Per Cobold. Twentytwofiftyseven (talk) Per Cobold. Fawfulfury65 (talk) Per all. Edofenrir (talk) - After what occured yesterday, this change is definitely necessary. MATEOELBACAN (talk) - Per all. Tucayo (talk) - Per Cobold, even though I have no idea what happened Red Shell 68066vr (talk) Sounds like a lot. I do not want other proposals that are going to make this place a better place deleted. Per all. GigaMetalLuigi (talk) - Per Cobold! LeftyGreenMario (talk) What the heck happened to the unfeaturing Daisy page? Per proposal. Time Q (talk): Per proposal. Transparency is what we should aim for. Gamefreak75 (talk) Per Cobold. Stooben Rooben (talk) - Per Cobold. Walkazo (talk) - Per Cobold. The only thing I was worried about were the striked votes, but as long as they are moved to the bottom of the list and organized with "*" instead of "#", they should not cause confusion with the tallies. Zero777 (talk) I am Zero! Though I didn't notice that I got to say that is a really good rule. Zero signing out. T.c.w7468 (talk) Sounds reasonable. Per Cobold. FunkyK38 (talk)- Per Cobold. Coincollector (talk) Really needed. Per Cobold, too. Ralphfan (talk) – Per all! Oppose Comments One thing I alway found lolzy is when a page gets immiediatly deleted because it "has" no supporter after the previous votes got deleted. Well yes, it may not have support right now you dummy, but someone might find the discussion and bring in arguments that'll change the course of the debate. Cheating users out of that is retarded. Glowsquid (talk) I also noticed that. Whether or not there is no vote in the nomination currently, it still has to stay up until the deadline per the rules anyway. - Cobold (talk) Tucayo, that's the whole point - I also can't really make out what happened. - Cobold (talk) It's kind of ironic: You propose a rule that prevents users who don't stay online all day and night from being surprised at something that happened during the time the were offline - and now I haven't been online during the last 24 hours or so, get to the Proposals page and find a proposal with already 12 supporters which I had virtually no chance to argue against if I wanted to. (Which gives me the idea that it might be good to be allowed to vote on a proposal only after 24 hours or so, I might propose that someday.) But back to topic. First of all, I'm sorry for all the inconvenience the deletion of the nomination page caused. I didn't even think about the fact that regular users as well as sysops might want to trace back the discussion and that they have no chance of doing so when the page is deleted. So, sorry. I'd like to add, though, that all I've done was according to our rules. Nominations without supporters have always been deleted in the past, so there was no way for me to know that just this very nomination would cause such an uprising. Still, I can't support this proposal right away. There are a few questions left. The first being, do you propose to get rid of the voting process of removing votes completely? That is, if this passes, there will be no "Removal of Supports/Opposes" sections anymore? I find this a quite convenient way of dealing with votes you deem invalid. Don't forget that at least one sysop has to agree with the proposal to remove a vote. Of course sysops make mistakes at times, but it's not like a vote can be removed just because three fans of the topic congegrate. Also, I don't think that striking a vote and adding a note would change anything about the "bureaucraciness" of the removal process. Which brings me to my second point, striking votes. A little problem with that is that striking votes messes up the numbering. If 10 users vote on a proposal and three of them are crossed out, the last number in the list is still a 10 rather than a 7. And finally, while I definitely agree with your idea to archive failed nominations, there have been several nominations in the past that were hardly worth archiving. Some nominations are just made by fans of the topic ("Don't unfeature XYZ!") without any serious reasons. What about those? Time Q (talk) Oh, please do not misunderstand me here. Many points you said were wrong in this proposal are not actually in it. There would still be the possiblity to remove support or oppose votes. The only difference is that instead of entirely removing them from the list, they get striked out for better visibility. You can move the striked out votes to a separate list if you think it breaks the numbering. If they are striked, they do not count as anything any more, just like if they were removed entirely. An actual change for the rules of removing support/oppose votes is in the proposal below. Also, don't worry. I did not accuse you for deleting the page. It has in fact been common practice that has been according to the rules to delete nomination pages with no supporters. Thus I have to propose this change in the first place. As for what to archive and what not, I we do not restore any previously deleted nomination pages unless there is a specific request by a user. Future nominations that have failed may be evaluated - if there has been no serious discussion and the original supporter just had a fan vote, there would be nothing to archive. I would use common sense there, along the lines of "clearly without reason, insulting/offensive, spammy/off-topic". Now that you mention it, having a similar 24 hours rule for proposals is a good idea as well. - Cobold (talk) Thanks for your clarification! There's no doubts left now, so I'll support. Time Q (talk) Change rules for invalidating votes WAIT 24 HOURS BEFORE REMOVING INVALIDATED VOTES 18-0 Currently, the rules for removing support votes from unfeature nomination reads: Similarly, not only oppose votes, but also support votes can be removed if they are not well-reasoned enough. The agreement of three users, including a sysop, is needed to remove a vote. This does not, in any way, allow the supporter/opposer to respond to the action taken against his vote. My vote was removed overnight while I was at sleep, giving me no chance to react at all. That is not right. There should be a time window in which the voter is allowed to clarify their statements before it just gets removed while they are away. Especially if the vote was just a "per <other guy>" and the vote of "<other guy>" gets invalidated. I would suggest that the original voter gets 24 hours to clarify their statement. Any process of featuring /unfeaturing is put on hold during that time window. Proposer: Cobold (talk) Deadline: February 15, 2010, 23:00 Support Cobold (talk) nobody can be online 24/7, so the rules shouldn't expect them to. RAP (talk) - Per Cobold. Fawfulfury65 (talk) Per Cobold. Edofenrir (talk) - I agree with Cobold again. MATEOELBACAN (talk) - Per all. Tucayo (talk) - Per Cobold Red Shell 68066vr (talk) That same thing happened to me. LeftyGreenMario (talk) That happened to me. It's irritating. Sounds like a smart solution to this problem. Baby Mario Bloops (talk) - There is a high chance that you misunderstood the proposal/nomination, and they deserve time to change the vote to how they want, or just have it be deleted in about a day or so. BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) - Sounds good to me. Per the proposal. Time Q (talk): Per proposal, it would be fair to give users some time to explain before their votes are removed. Stooben Rooben (talk) - Again, per Cobold. Walkazo (talk) - Per Cobold. Zero777 (talk) I am Zero! Exactly what Cobold said, nobody is on the SMW all the time so it's fair to have a time to respond. Zero signing out. T.c.w7468 (talk) Per Cobold. FunkyK38 (talk) Once again, Cobold has allowed his genius to shine through (or maybe it's just common sense). Per him. Coincollector (talk) - That sounds fair. Lo apoyo. Ralphfan (talk) – Per all. Oppose Comments Okay. Buut. What I wanna know is, how can someone who's reasoning for voting, on just about anything, have the right to stand behind reasoning that is no longer applicable. On the page for the users trying to unfeature Daisy's article, I solved everything anyone complained about to the point all they said was: oh well the page is still poorly written. Stuff like that. Other reasoning included: this section has too much information. Too much information? How can people who just recently opposed a proposal to limit information, tell me the Daisy page has too much? Yes, some users went through afterwards and fixed some stuff on her page, but no, the points I had already resolved were not touched on by any of the people voting to unfeature her article, and no, not any of the things people have currently fixed on her article were mentioned beforehand, aside from the things I myself fixed. Yeah, Daisy's article had stuff that needed fixing, but when people trying to get the Mario article featured try to unfeature an article like Daisy's? an article with many less problems than articles such as Waluigi, Yoshi, and Wario's? Clearly a lot more needs to be done to the featuring/unfeaturing system.ForeverDaisy09 21:28, 9 February 2010 (EST) We are not talking about individual nominations :) Also, I ask you, if something similar was done with a character you dislike, will you try to fix the article in every way possible to keep it featured? Tucayo (talk) Are you suggesting I wouldn't? ForeverDaisy09 21:51, 9 February 2010 (EST) Well, some of your defending points about the Daisy nomination contradicted with your criticism of the Mario nomination. --Garlic Man (talk) WELL it's not my fault the terrible quality of Mario's page is not completely fixable by my hands. But let's stay on subject. ForeverDaisy09 02:47, 11 February 2010 (EST) I do this entirely unrelated to the actual reasonings behind votes on the Daisy nomination. I am also not trying to just make the rules fit any purpose of unfeaturing the article - all problems were cleared, after all. This proposal is not trying to suggest that I could have changed my vote so that it would not have been removed. And I do agree that the entire featuring/unfeaturing system needs a lot more work. I am only proposing the most obvious. The details will probably be worked out by those who were actually present in the mentioned Daisy unfeature nomination. - Cobold (talk) Change Proposal Archives CHANGE 13-0 Our current method of archiving gets the job done, but it isn't very efficient when we want to look back and find a specific proposal. You might need to look through 15 archives (which take a long time to load) to find the proposal you're looking for. When the proposal archiving method started, we didn't feel the need to create separate sub-pages for each proposal. Now we have 18 archives and growing, so I feel that we need to create a new system before the number of archives grows too big and it becomes virtually impossible to find a specific proposal. Things that would change if this proposal passes: Each proposal would have its own subpage which would be linked as something like Template:Fakelink. That link is supposed to link to the first proposal that ended in 2009. This is to prevent extremely long titles and allow two different proposals of the same name to have different pages. Sub-proposals will be split into regular proposals. For example, this proposal would be split into two different sub-pages since the results are different. Since the second part is not given a formal title, a new title will be created for it like "Rules for Talk Page Proposals". Repeated, overturned, and amended proposals would link to each other. For instance, a page for "Bring back Banjo & Conker" will link to other "Bring back Banjo & Conker" proposals. Scroll boxes would be removed since they are unnecessary on separate pages. Extremely long, erratic, and misleading proposal titles will renamed to something shorter or more appropriate. Proposal archive pages themselves will be deleted, leaving only one centralized archive page which links to multiple sub-pages. The main archive page will remain unprotected and the proposal sub-pages will be unprotected. This is so that relevant information about the proposal (such a recently passed proposal overturning an older proposal) can be added by regular users. Things that would not change if this proposal passes: No content about the proposals will be altered in any way. The only thing about a proposal that can be changed is the title itself (which only happens if there is a good reason for the title change). Results will not be changed and all results (if applicable) will still be in effect. Finally, look at this template created by RAP (talk). The template will be used to list Proposal entries. This is how the each proposal will be linked from the main archive page. All the parameters are described on the page itself. Proposer: Knife (talk) and RAP (talk) Deadline: 21 February, 2010, 2:00 Support Knife (talk) – Per proposal. Reversinator (talk) Per Knife. RAP (talk) - Per Knife, and proposal. Fawfulfury65 (talk) Per Knife. Coincollector (talk) - Ditto BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) Don't you hate you try to search for a past proposal, but have to search through all the archives!? I agree with the proposal. MATEOELBACAN (talk) - Per all. Edofenrir (talk) - Per Proposal. Ralphfan (talk) – Per all. Gamefreak75 (talk) Per all. Walkazo (talk) - Per Knife (mostly: see comment below). Stooben Rooben (talk) - Per Knife. Red Shell 68066vr (talk) It takes a long time to search for a particular past proposal. Oppose Comments I have to make some things clear. Will there be something like Archive/2009 that links to all 2009 proposals, or will all of them be cluttered in a yet huge page? It may be hard to numer all proposals sonce 2005 or 2006 i dunno, so I suggest numbers are something like #09001 09 for 2009 and 001 because it is the first proposal. Protect old archives and proposals such as the main archive page. Tucayo (talk) No, every single proposal will have its own sub-page. The year is simply there to organize proposal pages by year. Notice the /1 after 2009. It shouldn't be too hard. Even the earliest proposals had deadlines, so we can easily number them chronologically. I'd rather leave all the pages unprotected so that regular users can update the pages as necessary. Knife (talk) 22:57, 12 February 2010 (EST) 1 and 2: Ok. 3, update as what? We can protect 2005-2009 archives, and each individual proposal, there wont be any need to edit them. Tucayo (talk) The pages are supposed to dead and all the discussions shouldn't be edited. However, there are certain things that need to be continually updated. For instance, if a "Bring back Banjo & Conker" proposal actually passes, all previous "Bring back Banjo & Conker" would need a note at the top the page stating that the decision was overturned by a more recent proposal. Protecting pages is more retroactive than proactive. Sure, we may be protecting pages to prevent vandalism, but it also means sysops have more duties and responsibilities.--Knife (talk) 23:17, 12 February 2010 (EST) We'll already have to keep an eye on these pages, and updating a handful of recurring issues is a small price to pay for security; it'd be more trouble for the Sysops if someone goes around changing old, unprotected proposals, forcing us to clean up everything afterwards. Also, wouldn't it be better to simply put related proposals on one page? (I.E. all the "Banjo & Conker" proposals go on the original's page, with the later archive pages being redirects, or bypassed altogether by simply linking to the original page in the main archive entries.) That way, all the information can be viewed at once, without having to bounce between different pages, making it easier to fully understand these often complex issues. Finally, I think your original design for the archive page looks better than RAP's (no offence): the background colour seems like overkill, and the fact that the proposers' names and dates don't line up looks unprofessional, as opposed to the chart design that can be seen at the bottom of this page. My only quibble with the chart is that the "Creator(s)" column's width should be decreased to make more room for the dates, but overall, I think it's the better of the two choices. - Walkazo (talk) Would it be possible to use DPL coding to update that list thing? I think there's a way... Marioguy1 (talk) From what I've seen, sub-pages rarely get vandalized. Even if they do, users can easily intercept it. An edit on archive page seems pretty suspicious. It is not really necessary to protect over 300 pages for potential vandalism. However, if this does become an issue, we could always change this rule. It doesn't seem right to have one page for similar proposals. Even though the proposals concern the same subject, everything else might be different. For example, one of the Banjo & Conker proposals contains a third option which is a compromise to keep the content, but cover less of it. The same option is not present in the other Banjo & Conker proposals. Other major differences include the date, the users, and the arguments. We might also have problems classifying a proposal by similarity. No proposal is the same and grouping them on one page would imply that they are. This is more of a matter of opinion. I personally like RAP's template over mine. My template was just supposed to be a prototype. I kinda like the color coding backgrounds, it makes it easier to distinguish between passed and failed proposals. BTW, I just kinda copied the template coding from the games page. Concerning 1 & 2: I don't think I could make those major changes if I wanted to anyways. Today is this proposal's last day and Rule 10 forbid me from making any major changes to my proposal. 3 is a different story: You can always bring up issues about the template itself. @Marioguy: It shouldn't be too hard to update manually. --Knife (talk) Like I said in my edit summary, I should have voiced my concerns earlier (dang life - it's always getting in the way); fortunately, like you said, the rules can always been changed down the line if need be (for both points 1 and 2). Point 3 is more of a now-or-never issue, though, since it'd be rather pointless to code all the archives one way initially and then change it all around just because of aesthetics. As long as it works, I'm not inclined to create a huge fuss over it this late in the game. - Walkazo (talk) 24-Hour Delay Before Voting on Proposals CHANGE 16-0 I propose to introduce a 24-hour delay for each proposal after it is made before users can vote on it. Currently, as soon as a proposal is put on this page, users are allowed to vote on it. This is a problem for the following reason: Sometimes, proposals are made that seem very worthy to support, and within few hours, many votes are added. This is bad for people who are not online during that time but who would like to discuss points of the proposal they don't agree with. When they come online after a few hours and already find dozens of votes, they have no change to argue against them, and some of the voters might not even visit the Proposals page anymore after they have voted. Also, during the 24-hour period the proposal can be discussed and, if needed, edited, before any overhasty votes are made. If this proposal passes, the following changes will be made: Additionally to the "proposer" and "deadline" lines, there will be a line "Voting start" which will be 24 hours after the proposal is made. The voting start time can be exactly 24 hours after the creation of the proposal, however in order to not make things too complicated, proposers can also round one hour up or down (e.g. if the proposal is created at 17:14, one may put 17:00, and if it's created at 17:33, one may put 18:00). The deadline will be one week after the voting start rather than after the creation of the proposal. The usual deadline rules apply (e.g. if voting time starts on a Monday at 18:00, the deadline will be next Monday at 23:00). This proposal would not abolish the possibility for the proposer to support their own proposal right away. Proposer: Time Q (talk) Deadline: February 22, 2010, 23:00 Support Time Q (talk): Per the reasons given above. MATEOELBACAN (talk) - Per Time Q, this is really necessary. Fawfulfury65 (talk) This sounds pretty good, so users can discuss it before voting right away. Tucayo (talk) - Per TimeQ. Many proposals get modified in that time-span, making it so that old votes may be inaccurate. Redstar (talk) - Per proposal Ralphfan (talk) – Per all! Red Shell 68066vr (talk) That's what exactly happened to the Second "Remove FI" Proposal above. 4DJONG (talk) If people vote right away, well the proposal could be edited the votes could be disproven and become useless. Supermariofan14 (talk) - Per TimeQ. Walkazo (talk) - Per Time Q. Ratfink43 (talk) yeah, per all Gamefreak75 (talk) Per Time Q. Stooben Rooben (talk) - Per Time Q. Cobold (talk) - as most voters do not have their own arguments, but just "per" somebody else, this will allow for a more controversial discussion of the subject in question. Mr bones (talk) - Per all. Pie Shroom (talk) Per all. Haste makes waste. Oppose Comments How exactly would we regulate this? – Ralphfan (talk) By taking off votes that users put up before the 24-hour period is up. It would be quite simple. My only question is this: would we allow comments during the 24-hour period? Being unable to comment would be counterproductive. OOps, missed a line in the proposal. Bloc Partier (talk) Non-Mario Appearances in Infoboxes REMOVE 12-2 In infoboxes (the boxes that appear in the top right corner of many articles) e.g. for characters there is information about the first and latest appearances of the characters. While this is fine in my opinion, I propose to get rid of any information about appearances of the characters in question outside of the Marioverse (for lack of a better term; with "Marioverse" I mean all sources and appearances our wiki covers). For example, look at Bomberman (character). He first appeared in a non-Mario game and it's mentioned in the infobox. This kind of information is completely irrelevant to our wiki and just clutters up the infobox. It can be mentioned in an introductory sentence to the article, though, but there's no need to put it in the infobox. It's even worse with the "latest appearance"; there's really no need to keep track of each new appearance of a character outside the Marioverse. Thus, I propose to only put relevant Mario information (including Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Super Smash Bros. and so on) in the infoboxes and get rid of sources that are irrelevant to the MarioWiki. This applies to every kind of infobox, not only those for characters. Proposer: Time Q (talk) Deadline: February 22, 2010, 23:00 Support Time Q (talk): Per the reasons given above. MATEOELBACAN (talk) - Per Time Q again, I mean this wiki is the Super Mario Wiki not the Metroid Wiki, Zelda Wiki, Pokémon Wiki... Gamefreak75 (talk) Per Time Q. Ralphfan (talk) – Per all. Grandy02 (talk) Per Time Q, especially because of the latest appearance. Why would we have to keep track of the latest Bomberman game, for example? King Bean (talk) - Of course. Per all above me. 4DJONG (talk) Well, this is the Super Mario not one of those Zelda Wikis, or Metroid Wikis. Red Shell 68066vr (talk) We can link them to the wikipedia article or to the article in their wikis or wikias. Supermariofan14 (talk) - Per all. Stooben Rooben (talk) - Per Time Q and Grandy. Walkazo (talk) - Per all. Marioguy1 (talk) - I've seen those things around the wiki, they provide no useful knowledge as people who want to read about Mario will not be truly eager to read about Link's first Zelda appearance. I doubt Zelda fans (wishing to read about Zelda characters) will come to the Mario wiki as much as I doubt Mario fans (wishing to read about Mario characters) will go to a Zelda wiki. With the recent establishment of the NIWA, users will be much more at leisure to just find another wiki on the nintendo game that they want to read about and be happy and contribute to that wiki. I would even go as far as to suggest that if they want to have a wiki about zelda and mario, they use wikia or wikkii to create it. Oppose Zero777 (talk) I am Zero! It's not like we give information of every game that charactered appeared, so it won't hurt just to leave it as: Mario characters: first appearence and latest appearence and if they appeared on a 3rd-party game then put that in also as a latest appearence with the name of the game in paraentheses. Third party characters: first actual appearence, then Mario game appearence; latest appearence, then latest Mario game appearence or vice versa. Zero signing out. Pie Shroom (talk) Per Zero. A little bit of coverage won't hurt. Comments I don't think it'll work out right. Does this include Kirby, Ike, Meta Knight, and others for the first appearance thing being irrelevant. Gamefreak75 (talk) None of those characters you mentioned has those infoboxes I'm talking about. But if they had them, we'd put a SSB game as their first appearance rather than a Kirby or Fire Emblem game. Those original appearances can be mentioned in the article itself (for example: "Ike is a character who first appeared in the game Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance..."). Time Q (talk) Oh, okay, that sounds better. Gamefreak75 (talk) But would that not be equally irrelevant? --Garlic Man (talk) I think it is interesting to know where a character originated from. It's the same as with introductory sentences such as "Link is the protagonist of The Legend of Zelda series". Even though we don't cover The Legend of Zelda series: it's simply good information to introduce a character. However, there's no reason to clutter up the infobox with this piece of information. And this is especially true for "latest appearances". Why should MarioWiki readers care when and where Link last appeared outside of the Marioverse? Time Q (talk) I'm with you on the "latest appearance" thing(in fact, I think that thing should disappear altogether, but) I don't think that the first appearance really "clutters up" the infobox. Perhaps a better way to do it would be to mention what series the character originates from, rather than first appearance.(for non-Mario characters, that is) --Garlic Man (talk) @Reversinator: Well yes, the reason we don't cover the information is because it's completely irrelevant here. We can still link to the Wikipedia article about the original appearance outside the Marioverse in the introductory sentence. No need to clutter up the infobox with it. Time Q (talk) @Zero777: Since you just per'd Reversinator, please read my comment above. No relevant information will be lost if this proposal passes. Time Q (talk) @King Bean: See above. Seriously, what is your reason for opposing? Time Q (talk) Sorry, I didn't understand the proposal correctly. King Bean (talk) Question: Are Banjo and Conker games also to be excluded from the infobox? --Garlic Man (talk) I'd say no, since we do cover those games (even though there are only articles about the series). Time Q (talk) @Time Q: Alright, sorry for the delay. I really don't see how it's cluttering up the infobox. There's my big reply. Reversinator (talk) Okay, this is a matter of opinion. Yet I don't think your vote is valid. The only reason you gave is that with the information in the infobox, we can link to those appearances. But we could do exactly the same if we removed that kind of info (from the infobox). In no way do I propose to get rid of the links, so your reasoning doesn't really fit to what I'm proposing. Time Q (talk) Another Proposal on removing the FI KEEP 6-12 We voted to keep the FI via this old proposal - [2]. The FI is like idle and most of the pictures that are there are kind of bad (pixelly, logo everywhere, too small, etc.). and Per the reasons of the old proposal. An alternative is to reuse old pictures like the Featured Articles, as said in the old proposal. Proposer: Red Shell 68066vr (talk) Deadline: February 25, 2010, 23:00 Remove the FI Red Shell 68066vr (talk) Per proposal. Time Q (talk): Per my reasoning on the old proposal. I don't think the main problem is running out of images. I think the main problem is that the concept of FIs is rubbish. Unlike articles, images are not our work. Also see my comment below. Bloc Partier (talk) -- Per all. Walkazo (talk) - Per Time Q. LeftyGreenMario (talk) I'm done with this. We can't do featured images properly unless we have an unbiased point of view. Too bad that's impossible because we use opinions to feature images. Nothing else on our wiki uses opinions to feature things. I think featured images should go down the sewers. And the empty white space? Whatever. I don't care. Stooben Rooben (talk) - Per Time Q. Reuse old pictures Keep as it is King Bean (talk) - There are still a lot of images that deserves to be featured. We haven't ran out of them yet. Fawfulfury65 (talk) If you keep a sharp eye out for images, you eventually find a nice one. And of course SMG2 doesn't have any artwork yet, it doesn't even have a release date yet! I think we'll have enough images for quite a while, though. Reversinator (talk) There's no release date of SMG2, and you're expecting artwork from that game to just fall from the sky? Per all. 4DJONG (talk) As I said before, the wiki still has plenty of images worthy of being featured. Images might not be our work but they give a break from all the writing on the main page, If we get rid of them there wont be any thing but writing on the main page. Tucayo (talk) - Per all. BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) They're still Mario stuff, even if it wasn't our own work. Besides, Featured Images give color and touch to the main page. Come on, think of main page with just two images and the rest are text. Plus, not everyone would look at the 'Shroom anyway. Gamefreak75 (talk) How many times is this proposal gonna come up? Per all. And what do you mean it's been a week and no pics of SMG2? >_>' And like everyone said, who's gonna want to read a main page full of text. The pitures give it personality and color instead of reading text after text. Baby Mario Bloops (talk) - As I said in the last proposal of this, and the fact that your impatient and too literal to realize that SMG2 won't be out in a week, so give it time and enjoy the great images we have around the wiki. Zero777 (talk) I am Zero! Per all. Zero signing out. MATEOELBACAN (talk) Per King Bean. Marioguy1 (talk) - The FI adds an artistic touch to the wiki. We can't have everyone thinking that we are a boring place that nobody wants to be at. We need to do two things to keep the wiki a happy place for some users. 1. Have images as well as articles. 2. Keep The 'Shroom running. This may as well be a proposal to remove the 'shroom as the 'shroom does not include any factual information or help the wiki knowledge in any way. The 'Shroom is simply a community project that many users like and have fun with, as are FIs - while they are very disorganized and very illogical in some places, users still like them and they should stay to make users like the wiki. Pie Shroom (talk) Per all. Comments First of all: Super Mario Galaxy 2 has not been released yet. I don't know what you're talking about. Second: You can't just propose to "reuse old pictures", you should at least propose rules of when to do so. For example, if an image has less than 10 positive votes at the end of a week, reuse an old picture. Third: one of the reasons for opposing my old proposal was that the Main Page wouldn't be balanced anymore without the FIs. Look at our current Main Page. Since talk page proposals were added to it, it's not balanced anymore at all. Now if we remove the FIs and move the talk page proposals to the right, we could balance it out again. Time Q (talk) About the "not our work" thing for the images. I would think of something like this to be going on the shroom', but what if we had some thing like FIs where we could have fan made Mario images made by us users? And the one with the most votes gets on the main page? Maybe? I'm not sure if this is a stupid idea or not so... Fawfulfury65 (talk) I wouldn't recommend that. We only have official content on the wiki, no fanon articles etc., so we shouldn't encourage users to make images themselves. But of course we could have all that in the 'Shroom. Just like the FIs ;) Time Q (talk) Everyone, I checked on a bunch of websites and it says that it comes out on February 11th, 2010. Red Shell 68066vr (talk) You seriously think that it came out last week? Wow. Reversinator (talk) Where did you hear that nonsense? It's supposed to come out around summer time...Gamefreak75 (talk) I checked a bunch a websites, and they all said "TBA 2010". And I look at the official ones. Gamefaqs, IGN, Gamespot, you know, what you should rely on. Reversinator (talk) Same at the Nintendo website. Nintendo is the most official and exact one (obviously). Gamefreak75 (talk) Okay... But we still have to get rid of the FI. Red Shell 68066vr (talk) No, we don't all text on the main page and what someone (I forgot who...) brought up on the first removal of FI was a very good point. What will we replace it with because we can't have a huge are of whitespace on the front page. Gamefreak75 (talk) There's a picture of Mario in the upper left corner and all the ads have pictures. Red Shell 68066vr (talk) That Mario picture is not enough. And ads... I hate those things. They do not count as images in the main page since they are annoying and distracting. Besides, I use Firefox with Noscript and AdBlocker, which means I won't see those ads. LeftyGreenMario (talk) I forgot. There is also the picture from the Featured Articles every article. Red Shell 68066vr (talk) Still, the purpose of FI is to give a colorful touch to our wiki. That image with Featured Articles is just there because people are visual learners. Besides, I don't find the image with the Featured Article very appealing, and the news section either. Where should we fill that empty space, then, if we remove the FI? More text? BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) The Featured Images crap is all opinion based. We can't have that. I don't know what to replace the main page, though. Let's leave it like that. :P LeftyGreenMario (talk) Nah, most of the time, we get good featured images, like the Super Mario Galaxy one and the Height Chart. Well, not everyone has the same opinions as us. Maybe that's why this "well-written" requirement for an FA has pretty much no meaning since we have different opinions of "well-written". Still, everyone can see low quality or blurriness, or white background, but everyone has their own opinion in other qualities of the picture. BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) First of all, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is coming out in March 23, 2010. Second of all, this proposal is probably going to fail considering it is 6-12 and that it wouldn't make the main page any better. Third, there are a lot of good (Mario Party) pictures waiting to be featured. Fourth, @LGM So will the Featured Quote when it passes (look at the above section). Fifth, The ones that are bad usually get deleted in a week. -KS3 (talk) Dude, what the heck are you even talking about? YOU started the proposal! Are you trying to take us for fools? Time Q (talk) @LGM: While I agree with you that the FIs are very disorganized and have horrible reasons so far. That is not a point against the FIs. The FIs are a good idea. The people putting those votes up are the ones you should blame for the disorganization of the page - not the page itself as I really doubt the page itself can do that much harm as it is only a webpage...Marioguy1 (talk) KS3 (talk) I'm going to take a break from here. >_> Nothing to be discouraged about...and it's actually May, not March, it's a 2-month difference. Gamefreak75 (talk) Table Button On Editing Screen CANCELLED You know that making tables is a hard thing to do? Well, I was thinking on that bar on the top of the edit screen? I think that we should add a table button to this, so when clicked, a box will pop up like the one in Microsoft Word, and you can choose how many rows and columns. Then the table appears in the edit box, and all you have to do is change the colour and content. Easy as pie (although not the Pie Button!) I beleive this will save ages trying to remember how to make a table, and new users will find this helpful for their first contributions. Proposer: LucariosAura (talk) Deadline: March 1, 2010, 23:00 Support LucariosAura (used to be specialk) 13:30, 22 February 2010 (EST) MATEOELBACAN (talk) Per Proposal, of course! Mr bones (talk) Per proposal.It will be very helpful. Zero777 (talk) I am Zero! I usually copy paste a table but this idea is more better. Zero signing out. Oppose BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) Sorry, but until we figure out a way we can implement the table button into the appropriate section, I will be forced to oppose. Time Q (talk): Seems like we can't implement that. (Maybe we should remove the proposal then...) Tucayo (talk) - Per Time Q. And yes, I think we should... KS3 (talk) I'm afraid that as well as this is good, (stupid) microsoft can't find out a way to make this work, so I will have to oppose. PS: Microsoft doesn't have the money to make it because we are in a economic crisis. Fawfulfury65 (talk) What's wrong with just copying and pasting an already existing table and fixing it up to match the correct topic? This seem pretty worthless to me. Anyway, per all. T.c.w7468 (talk) Per all, I don't think it is possible, or practical if it is. Walkazo (talk) - Per all. Also, if it really is impossible to implement a table button, it would probably be best to archive the proposal as "cancelled". Baby Mario Bloops (talk) - When I start to doubt the proposal when no votes where above, everyone suddenly came. Per my reasons I kind of stated in the comments and the fact that I don't think it would work out. Coincollector (talk) - It's a pity that this proposal cannot be carried out as we have a downgraded version of the mediawiki that doesn't support this means... :[ Comments This would surely be helpful, but I doubt it's realizable technically. Time Q (talk) Yeah, it would be a good idea, but how would we implement this into the edit page? BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) WikEd has a button to create tables, it inserts the coding and you change it to your liking :) Tucayo (talk) The "Not Pie Button" section reminds me of the Virtual Pie for Everyone proposal. KS3 (talk) Couldn't you just insert the coding on your own? It's what I do and I like it much better as it's much easier to use a preformatted template than doing it on your own. This is sounding a little bit too much like wikia's wikicoding beta for my liking - that's one of the reasons I left wikia. Another option is to copy/paste - that's what I do for the longer templates. Marioguy1 (talk) I don't like having to resort to look somewhere else to copy and paste the table. And I'm still confused at this process, even I've been here for a while. BabyLuigiOnFire (talk) How the heck will the sysops implement this? You can't just say "Abra, Kadabra, Alakazam" and expect everything to work for you. Reversinator (talk) KS3 that is exactly what i was thinking when I put that! Baby Luigi on fire I agree, my current method is copy/pasteing, and it is very hard. and reversinator I was hoping a Sysop would edit the edit bar to make a table button. What else would I mean? LucariosAura (used to be specialk) 10:43, 23 February 2010 (EST) I'm fairly certain that Porplemontage (talk) would have to edit some files in the database to make this work. That's the only way this would work. -- Stooben Rooben (talk) Some questions that should be answered if we do this. 1 - For the button, wouldn't you have diffulty with more typing when it gives you the basics for it, and you need like 60 sections or something? 2 - Most users cut and paste for templates too, and they are like tables. 3 - Also, there are different versions of tables (like this one used here and this other one.), we can't have many buttons for the varied tables. That is about what I have to say. Baby Mario Bloops (talk) Remember this wont be obligatory to use, people would be able to make the tables they want by inserting the coding themselves, this is for people who just want a basic table. Tucayo (talk) @BMB After you click the table button then a window pops up saying what kind of table you want. Then the number of columns and rows you want window appears and you choose how many columns and rows. Then the exact table you imputed into the windows will appear. KS3 (talk) Good summery KS3! LucariosAura (used to be specialk) 11:08, 25 February 2010 (EST) I checked here and didn't find any extensions that could do anything like that. And the one extension that I found that could make a very simple type of table isn't even compatible with our version of MediaWiki. -- Stooben Rooben (talk) That's pretty sad. >__> MechaWave (talk) Ok. I hope that some day someone will make an upgrade we can use on our beloved wiki for mario. ;-( LucariosAura (used to be specialk) 05:15, 27 February 2010 (EST)