User:DrippingYellow/Relatives Proposal

Expand "Relatives" field guidelines to include species with direct connections to a parent species, but significant differences

I've noticed that plenty of articles have been using the "Relatives" section in a way that technically isn't authorized by the guidelines, but that I think could be useful.

The best example I can come up with is the Shroob article, which lists all the other Shroob-adjacent species such as Yoob and Shroob Rexes as relatives, though they technically aren't Shroobs themselves. Similarly, Goombas now have Gamboo and Goombrat as relatives, the latter being because Super Mario Run has a statue description of the enemy that states "Nobody is quite sure of their exact relation to Goombas..." Similarly, Galoombas are stated in the Perfect Ban Mario Character Daijiten to be "a relative of Goomba", and have been stated to be "confused with Goombas" multiple times.

These instances suggest the existence of species that are related to other species but not direct variations of them. The current guidelines of the species infobox do not have any room for these types of relations that are less tenuous than those species that are merely "comparable". The goal of this proposal is to legitimize listing these instances as "related" rather than just "subject origin" or something weird like that.

The syntax description of the "relatives" field would ideally be changed to something like:

An entity with a variant-type relationship with the subject in which there are significant visual and/or behavioral differences between the two. Alternatively used if it's not clear who is the variant of whom (if either), such as with Spoings and Spranglers.

Proposer: DrippingYellow (talk)
Deadline: May 1?, 2024, 23:59 GMT