MarioWiki:Proposals

Proposals can be new features (such as an extension), removals of previously added features that have tired out, or new policies that must be approved via consensus before any action is taken. Any user can support or oppose but must have a strong reason for doing so, not, e.g., "I like this idea!" "Vote" periods last for one week. All past proposals are archived.

A proposal section works like a discussion page: comments are brought up and replied to using indents (colons, such as : or ::::) and all edits are signed using the code {{User|User name}}.

This page observes the No-Signature Policy.

How To

Rules

1. If users have an idea about improving the wiki or managing its community, but feel that they need community approval before acting upon that idea, they may make a proposal about it. They must have a strong argument supporting their idea and be willing to discuss it in detail with the other users, who will then vote about whether or not they think the idea should be used. Proposals should include links to all relevant pages and Writing Guideline proposals must include a link to the draft page.
2. Proposals end at the end of the day (23:59) one week after voting starts, except for Writing Guidelines and Talk Page Proposals, which run for two weeks. (All times GMT.)
   • For example, if a proposal is added at any time on Monday, August 1, 2011, the voting starts immediately and the deadline is one week later on Monday, August 8, at 23:59 GMT.
3. Every vote should have a reason accompanying it. Agreeing with or seconding a previously mentioned reason given by another user is accepted.
4. Users who feel that certain votes were cast in bad faith or which truly have no merit can address the votes in the Comments section. Users can ask a voter to clarify their position, point out mistakes or flaws in their arguments, or call for the outright removal of the vote if it lacks sufficient reasoning. Users may not remove or alter the content of anyone else's votes. Voters can remove or rewrite their own vote at any time, but the final decision to remove another user's vote lies solely with the administrators.
5. If a user makes a vote and is subsequently blocked for any amount of time, their vote is removed. However, if the block ends before the proposal ends, then the user in question holds the right to re-cast their vote. If a proposer is blocked, their vote is removed and "(banned)" is added next to their name in the "Proposer:" line of the proposal, which runs until its deadline as normal. If the proposal passes, it falls to the supporters of the idea to enact any changes in a timely manner.
6. No proposal can overturn the decision of a previous proposal that is less than 4 weeks (28 days) old.
7. Any proposal that has three votes or less at deadline will automatically be listed as "NO QUORUM." The original proposer then has the option to relist said proposal to generate more discussion.
8. All proposals that end up in a tie will be extended for another week.
9. If a proposal has more than ten votes, it can only pass or fail by a margin of three votes. If a proposal reaches the deadline and the total number of votes for each option differ by two or less votes, the deadline will be extended for another week.
10. Proposals can only be extended up to three times. If a consensus has not been reached by the fourth deadline, the proposal fails and can only be re-proposed after four weeks, at the earliest.
11. All proposals are archived. The original proposer must take action accordingly if the outcome of the proposal dictates it. If it requires the help of an administrator, the proposer can ask for that help.
12. Proposals can only be rewritten or deleted by their proposer within the first three days of their creation. However, proposers can request that their proposal be deleted by an administrator at any time, provided they have a valid reason for it. Please note that cancelled proposals must also be archived.
13. If the administrators deem a proposal unnecessary or potentially detrimental to the upkeep of the Super Mario Wiki, they have the right to remove it at any time.
14. There should not be proposals about creating articles on an underrepresented or completely absent subject, unless there is major disagreement about whether the content should be included. To organize efforts about completing articles on missing subjects, try setting up a collaboration thread on the forums.
15. Proposals cannot be made about promotions and demotions. Users can only be promoted and demoted by the will of the administration.
16. No joke proposals. Proposals are serious wiki matters and should be handled professionally. Joke proposals will be deleted on sight.

Basic Proposal and Support/Oppose Format

This is an example of what your proposal must look like, if you want it to be acknowledged. If you are inexperienced or unsure how to set up this format, simply copy the following and paste it into the fitting section. Then replace the [subject] - variables with information to customize your proposal, so it says what you wish. If you insert the information, be sure to replace the whole variable including the squared brackets, so "[insert info here]" becomes "This is the inserted information", not "[This is the inserted information]". Proposals presenting multiple alternative courses of action can have more than two voting options, but what each voting section is supporting must be clearly defined.

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===[insert a title for your Proposal here]===
[describe what issue this Proposal is about and what changes you think should be made to improve how the Wiki handles that issue]

'''Proposer''': {{User|[enter your username here]}}<br>
'''Deadline''': [insert a deadline here, 7 days after the proposal was created, at 23:59 GMT. (14 days for Writing Guidelines and Talk Page Proposals)

====Support====
#{{User|[enter your username here]}} [make a statement indicating that you support your proposal]

====Oppose====

====Comments====

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Users will now be able to vote on your Proposal, until the set deadline is reached. Remember, you are a user as well, so you can vote on your own Proposal just like the others.

To support, or oppose, just insert "#{{User|[add your username here]}} at the bottom of the section of your choice. Just don't forget to add a valid reason for your vote behind that tag if you are voting on another user's Proposal. If you are voting on your own Proposal, you can just say "Per my Proposal".

Talk Page Proposals

All proposals dealing with a single article or a specific group of articles are held on the talk page of one of the articles in question. Proposals dealing with massive amounts of splits, merges or deletions across the Wiki should still be held on this page.

For a list of all settled Talk Page Proposals, see here.

Rules

1. All active talk page proposals must be listed below in chronological order (new proposals go at the bottom). All pages affected must be mentioned in the brief description, with the talk page housing the discussion linked to directly via "(Template:Fakelink)". If the proposal involved a page that is not yet made, use {{fakelink}} to communicate its title. The Deadline must also be included in the entry. Linking to pages not directly involved in the talk page proposal is not recommended, as it clutters the list with unnecessary links. Place {{TPP}} under the heading.
2. All rules for talk page proposals are the same as mainspace proposals (see the "How To" section above), with the exceptions made by Rules 3 and 4 as follows:
3. Voting in talk page proposals will be open for two weeks, not one. (All times GMT.)
   • For example, if a proposal is added at any time on Monday, August 1, 2011, it ends two weeks later on Monday, August 15, 2011, at 23:59 GMT.
4. Talk page proposals may be closed by the proposer at any time if both the support and the oppose sides each have fewer than five votes.
5. The talk page proposal must pertain to the article it is posted on.

List of Talk Page Proposals

• Merge Card Roulette to Roulette Box (Discuss) Deadline: August 28, 2012, 23:59 GMT
• Refer to Raccoon Luigi as Template:Fakelink (Discuss) Deadline: August 28, 2012, 23:59 GMT
• Move Flagpole to Template:Fakelink (Discuss) Deadline: September 3, 2012 23:59 GMT
• Merge Metal Luigi into Metal Mario (character) (Discuss) Deadline: September 5, 2012, 23:59 GMT
• Move Sledge Bro. to Sumo Bro. (Super Mario Bros. 3) (Discuss) Deadline: September 6, 2012, 23:59 GMT
• Create articles for Mario and Yoshi's Power Flower forms. (Discuss) Deadline: September 6, 2012, 23:59 GMT

Writing Guidelines

Stressing the Trivia and Miscellaneous Info Guidelines

Draft: User:Coincollector/test zone#MarioWiki: Trivia and Miscellaneous Information

Looking at this, I've decided to give chance for this discussion, see this draft.

As the title of this proposal sez, it's time to stress the trivia sections in the Guidelines, because I've seen that several users constantly bloat the Trivia sections of several pages (specially games and consoles) with lots of information that are simply irrelevant or that can be moved to another place of the article. Addtionally, the length of the Trivia section of the Manual Style is pretty negligible compared to other sections of that page, so it's possible that the users ignore what the section tells them and they can do whatever they want.

I also want to include in this proposal the miscellaneous information alongside the trivias because, the latter sometimes also contain information regarding to topics like game development, reviews, merchandise, and actually we can make sections for those bits of information and improve soon after.

The draft you see has just been made recently, but maybe is not big enough or maybe I'm roughly explaining the situation, so feel free if needs any other detail to add or specify - It's that all I could think about for now.

Proposer: Coincollector (talk)
Deadline: August 26, 2012, 23:59 GMT.

Support

1. Coincollector (talk) I've made a decision.
2. Glowsquid (talk) trivias are such a pandemic that I don't see anything wrong with putting more focus on them on the guidelines page.
3. Raven Effect (talk) Per Proposal.
4. Walkazo (talk) - I'd rather see the suggestions I made in the Comments incorporated into the draft, but ah well, something is better than nothing and we can always edit the policy after it's approved, since the main idea will remain the same.
5. Mario4Ever (talk) Per Walkazo.
6. MarioSmasher (talk) – per all.
7. MeritC (talk) Per all.
8. Lindsay151 (talk) - Per all.
9. Knife (talk) - While it can be covered as a subsection under manual of style, I believe this is one thing that needs it's own separate guideline, considering how much we have a problem with it.

Merge

This option will make the draft I've made be moved into the Trivia section of the Manual of Style, judging the size of the guideline.

1. YoshiKong (talk) I believe that it would be best to merge the draft and expand the section in the Manual of Style. It would make sense to collect all the related infomation about article standards on the one page, rather than leaving the short section and adding {{Main}}, linking to the proposed guideline. Though we could expand the section with the proposed content and create the guideline as an individual page, it would in a way breach MarioWiki:Once and Only Once.
2. Koopa K (talk) Per YoshiKong.
3. Technickal (talk) Per them.

Comments

@YoshiKong (talk) Good point, but it is possible to avoid that policy if we remove the trivia section of the Style Manual altogether and just leave the link to the Trivia's guideline page, if we look at the Redirects section. Other relatively short guideline pages exist in there. I don't say that it should look better in this way, I just want to find a good way that users can see this rule as important as others. Coincollector (talk)

So, would the "Miscellaneous" section basically be the equivalent of the "General Information" sections usually included in character pages? I.e. it's be on game pages, series pages, TV show and episode pages, console pages, etc. etc.? I've found that, with few exceptions, everything in the Trivias can be incorporated somewhere when looking at character, species, item and place pages: either it fits in the History somewhere, in one of the "General Information" sections (if one's present), or in the intro. However, articles that are based on nonfiction don't have very many places to put extra info, so having a Miscellaneous section would be very helpful. And, if we do have enough info about certain subjects, we could even use the overall "Miscellaneous" header to group more specific sections like "Development", "Reception", and other one-off/oddball sections like the SPM's "Possible Film Adaptation" or SMB's "Alternate Versions and Re-Releases". - Walkazo (talk)

A problem of the manual of style as well. Such pages you say, walkazo, although they esentially follow some style guidelines and retain quality, there are incosistencies in their organization, and the guidelines never have explained the proper order of them, just the history of in-universe subjects. The importance of miscellaneous information it's needed but not mandatory, that's why we still allow the use of trivia sections. To prevent bizarre topics that you also say I explained that such info needs references to validate its existence in the article. Coincollector (talk)

But random topics like the ones I mentioned aren't a bad thing that we want to prevent - if there's enough info to warrant a section on an interesting aspect of the subject, why shouldn't it get a section? The only problem is, as you said, the disorganized clutter at the bottom of pages. Making an overall guide to section orders has actually been on my to-do list for a while now, but we could get a jump start on dealing with the oddballs if we group them in Misc right from the start. - Walkazo (talk)

Ah, OK, I didn't want to be against, Although I'll point out that misc. info needs of good References to avoid bias and speculations - another problem that trivia sections suffer often. About the draft, do you have any comment if it's well-done? Requires more improvement? Coincollector (talk)

It's good. The grammar could use fixing up here and there (if you want, I could do a run through, either now or after the proposal ends), but the content is solid. If you approve of my above ideas, I would suggest adding a note saying that some of the types of content can be given sub-sections in the Misc section if they have enough sourced information to make a decent paragraph or two. - Walkazo (talk)

It was hard to include Walkazo's suggestions, but with that, I've remade and expanded the draft. It's now less generalized than before. Maybe will have grammar issues, but I think did I my best with this one. I still accept any suggestions to add something or leaving as it is now.

Additionally, I'm planning to rewrite the Trivia template in accordance to the guidelines when this passes. Coincollector (talk)

New Features

None at the moment.

Removals

None at the moment.

Changes

Extend Upload Limit

I'm trying to Upload one more GIF File, which is a Mario Tennis Open Puzzle (Swap) from StreetPass Mii Plaza.
The file is 11,3 MB, 1,3 MB to big.
Is it an idea to extend the Upload Limit by at least 5 MB?

Proposer: YamiHoshi.nl (talk)
Deadline: August 24, 2012, 23:59 GMT.

Support

1. YamiHoshi.nl (talk)

Oppose

1. YoshiKong (talk) According to MarioWiki:Image Use Policy, "Images should be optimized and not exceed 5 megabytes in file size." Those are the rules. Otherwise, we would be allowing very large files being uploaded on the database. It would take a while for the images to load for users who have slower connections.
2. Walkazo (talk) - Porplemontage set the 5MB cap for a reason, and we should abide by it. Besides, 5MB is more than enough: there is no good reason to even need files that big, much less larger ones.
3. Koopa K (talk) Per Walkazo
4. MeritC (talk) Per Walkazo; since Porplemontage is the site owner, he has the ultimate say in terms of operation on this site's backend. And I don't see an increase in upload filesize limit being necessary.
5. Mario4Ever (talk) Per Walkazo.
6. MarioSmasher (talk) – You may either compress the image or make it into an APNG, but otherwise… no other ways. And, the MediaWiki software could not stress that size.

Comments

YamiHoshi.nl (talk) Actually, the limit is 10 MB, as I've already Uploaded 9 MB GIF's.

The wiki can handle up to 10 MB, but as Porplemontage said here, only video are supposed to use the extra 5 MB. You can technically upload 9 MB GIFs, but you're not supposed to, and any images that big that do make it on the wiki should be replaced by smaller versions asap. - Walkazo (talk)

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Miscellaneous

None at the moment.