Editing Talk:Chancellor

== Split Chancellor and Minister ==

Please allow to begin by apologizing for reopening another can of worms, but I really feel this is an injustice that absolutely needs to be corrected. The Toad Minister and the Chancellor are clearly two different characters, made by two different developers for two different games (yes, I know PM was developed as a "spiritual successor" to SMRPG). I also apologize in advance for the length of what became a dissertation on the subject, but there’s so many points that I feel went unaddressed in previous debates.

#{{User|DrBaskerville}} Per proposal.

#{{User|Hewer}} This is one of the most speculative merges I've ever seen pass and the idea of merging based on similarity rather than being the same thing conflicts with [[Talk:Grab Block#Merge White Block with Grab Block 2|plenty]] [[Talk:Poison Mushroom#Merge Rotten Mushroom into this page|of]] [[Talk:Mushroom Genie#Re-merge Mushroom Genie and Genie of the Lamp|other]] [[Princess|splits]] [[Talk:Warp Block#Warp Box and Warp Block merge?|on]] [[Talk:Super Mini Mario World#Split this article into Super Mini Mario World, Mini Land Theme Park, and Mini Toy Carnival|the]] [[Talk:Golden Pipe#Split this page into Star Pipe and Golden Pipe|wiki]]. Per proposal.

#{{User|Camwoodstock}} Per Hewer especially; we don't see why we shouldn't split these considering we split things that are even more identical than the Chancellor and Minister.

#{{User|DesaMatt}} Per all.

=== Oppose: Keep merged ===

#{{User|Seandwalsh}} Per all.

#{{User|PaperSplash}} To me, it's less about them both being being "Toadsworth-prototypes" to me and more that they share the exact same title in the source language of their respective games, per Doc von Schmeltwick's Mushroom King argument (and said title lacks the significant additional qualifier and contextual difference in role that the Minister of Massage has). The distinction in title was purely introduced in translation which in my opinion makes arguments about their respective semantic differences irrelevant (again, especially given the lack of a significant difference in role in actual context). I feel that this is another case of "this wouldn't even be a debate if the translations stayed consistent" as argued with the Chestnut King/Goomba King in the merge proposal. And as for why their respective translated titles in all other languages don't match unlike the latter's, that mainly comes down to the other European translations of PM and the SMRPG remake (and the Chinese one in the former's case) being largely based on the English one, and the original version of TTYD in contrast had each European language largely refer directly to the original Japanese script and then do their own thing from there (along with them each evidently doing their homework on the Japanese terminology used in the first game and mostly staying consistent with how it initially ended up in their language whenever applicable, except for English which stumbled quite a bit in this area and Italian which didn't have a native translation of the first game to compare with, although they did refer to the English one in some cases). I also don't think the "different studios" argument holds much water in the first PM's case; it ''is'' a spiritual successor to SMRPG and as LinkTheLefty mentioned in the merge proposal, there are [[Star Hill|several]] [[Star Way|other]] [[Dried Mushroom|apparent]] [[Snowman Doll|references]] to SMRPG in the Japanese script of PM that the English translation overlooked, but we still acknowledge all of them to varying extents, so deeming this pure speculation would result in us refusing to acknowledge the clear connections that we acknowledge elsewhere. I also agree with the the arguments Blinker made in this proposal and the previous one in favor of them being merged.

=== Comments ===

::In terms of real world equivalents, I view Toad Minister as more like the caretaker of Peach's Castle (like a mayor of a city) and Chancellor more like the head of government (like the president of a country).  President and mayor are different offices, just as minister and chancellor are different offices.  Again, this is not confirmed by anything in the games, but I think it is clear based on the fact that they are given different titles in both Japanese and English. If they were intended to occupy the same office, they would be referred to by the same office in the original Japanese as well as translations. Even if they are meant to hold the same office, we've seen multiple instances of different characters holding the same "office" but still being treated as unique individuals. {{User:DrBaskerville/sig}} 15:25, June 28, 2024 (EDT)

:::"If they were intended to occupy the same office, they would be referred to by the same office in the original Japanese as well as translations." What. First of, they ARE referred to by the same office in the original Japanese version, that being ''daijin''. The fact that SMRPG '''usually''' specifies that he's the "'''Mushroom''' minister" doesn't change that. And don't you think the different names in English are better explained by the fact that the two games were translated by different people? It's not particularly helpful to be theorizing about the lore implications of a glorified translation difference... [[User:Blinker|Blinker]] ([[User talk:Blinker|talk]]) 16:41, June 28, 2024 (EDT)

@Blinker: It doesn't mean they aren't the same character, but it also doesn't mean that they are. If there's nothing actually telling us that they are the same, this remains speculation. {{User:Hewer/sig}} 12:00, June 28, 2024 (EDT)

:"Wikis aren't really meant to be reliable information after all" ...What? Even if we can't guarantee that the wiki is 100% accurate and correct at all times because of its editable nature, that doesn't mean we don't try to be as accurate as possible. Anyway, we should default to splitting rather than merging if we don't know whether two things are the same, since merging would imply that they are the same. See examples linked in my vote. {{User:Hewer/sig}} 16:57, June 28, 2024 (EDT)

::Seconding what Hewer said about accuracy. I overlooked that in my response. {{User:DrBaskerville/sig}} 20:32, June 28, 2024 (EDT)