Talk:Ghost

Merge Ghost (Wario Land II enemy), Ghost (DK series), Ghost (Luigi's Mansion series) into a single "Ghost" article

This talk page proposal has already been settled. Please do not edit any of the sections in the proposal. If you wish to discuss the article, do so in a new header below the proposal.

failed 2-0-0-2-1-9
Sooooo, funny story. I replied to Arend explaining why I considered the ghosts to be the same "species" as generic ghosts... and in doing so, listed multiple design characteristics that stereotypical ghosts lack, such as yellow eyes, and a variety of colors and shapes. It eventually dawned upon me that it would be extremely difficult to string the ghosts I mention in this proposal into anything resembling cohesive.

With that said, though, I'm not closing the proposal yet, because there's something else I've been considering: moving the Luigi's Mansion ghosts to Ghost, with no merging. I feel like people typing "Ghost" in the search bar would likely be looking for Luigi's Mansion ghosts specifically, given how they're the focus of a whole series, rather than any of the other hundreds of objects named "Ghost".

I'm adding an option to this proposal rather than making a new one because I'm pretty sure it would go against the four-week proposal rule if I made a new one immediately after closing this one. Feel free to read my original reasoning below and see if you happen to agree with it, though.

Original Proposal

This is quite possibly the biggest disambiguation on the entire wiki. Nintendo got really lazy when it came to their ghost characters, huh? This isn't a case of the English localizers slacking off, either: I've counted a total of four creatures that are all named either named yūrei (ユーレイ, the Japanese equivalent of our ghosts) or obake (オバケ, sometimes used as a synonym for yurei), and there's also the unnamed ghost from Wario Land 4 who is referred to as a yūrei.

Now, some of these have scraped by for having some semblance of creative design, like WL4's ghost being a pirate and stuff, and the Yoshi's Story ghost being... unique, let's put it that way. However, the Wario Land II enemy ghost and the DK series' ghost are pretty clearly intended to just be generic ghosts, based on the combination of confirmed generic names and (in my opinion) unremarkable appearance.

With that laid out, my intent with this proposal is to try to merge these with the Luigi's Mansion series ghost page, since those games use a similar stock concept for ghosts. It just so happens that there are a lot of types of ghosts in that franchise. The end result would be a ghost page, similar to the frog page that encompasses a wide variety of generic frogs, and the disambiguation here would go to Ghost (disambiguation)

Addendum: Turns out, the ghosts in the DK series were named ポワン (literally, "Point", some kind of French name) on the official Japanese King of Swing website. They were seemingly just called obake in dialogue in Jungle Climber, but with that said, there is a Nintendō Kōshiki Guidebook for DK: Jungle Climber, if anyone has it and is able to confirm they were still named Point.

Also, I pulled a Doc von Schmeltwick and created an example of what the page would look like in my userpage, so you can see what this proposal would look like in action rather than going off of what could go wrong.

Proposer: DrippingYellow (talk)
Deadline: January 29, 2024, 23:59 GMT

Merge all

#Dark-Boy-1up (talk) Per all. #DrippingYellow (talk) Secondary choice, since I'm not as confident in the DK series ghost's generic name anymore.

1. Super Mario RPG (talk) Per proposer.
2. MegaBowser64 (talk) Ghost.

Merge WLII ghost enemy with Luigi's Mansion series ghosts, leave DK series ghost

#DrippingYellow (talk) Per addendum.

Merge Wario Land II & DK series' enemy ghosts, leave Luigi's Mansion series ghosts

#Dark-Boy-1up (talk) Okapii has a point about luigi's mansion ghosts being they're own thing. I don't want to drop the quality in the LM ghosts page. Per all.

1. SolemnStormcloud (talk) Secondary choice. At the very least, these two are generic ghosts that look similar enough.
2. Arend (talk) Secondary choice, per SolemnStormcloud.

Merge nothing, move Luigi's Mansion series ghosts to "Ghost" and "Ghost" to "Ghost (disambiguation)"

1. DrippingYellow (talk) Per overhauled proposal.

Do nothing

1. Okapii (talk) idk I feel like the Luigi's Mansion ghosts are clearly their own thing, and clogging their page with generic ghosts from outside that series would bring down the page's overall quality. I very much doubt either the Luigi's Mansion or the DK King of Swing devs were designing their ghosts and went "you know, like the ones from Wario Land"
2. Hewer (talk) Per Okapii, and I'm not sure what you're getting at with zombie since that article just covers one enemy from the Wario Land series. EDIT: Still opposing the overhauled move proposal since it seems a bit pointless to decide one of the 16ish different things called "ghost" is the primary one, it makes sense for the disambiguation to have priority when there's this many different things that people might be searching for sharing the name.
3. Cadrega86 (talk) Per Okapii.
4. SolemnStormcloud (talk) Primary choice. With the knowledge that the DK series ghosts have a unique Japanese name (at least in DK: King of Swing), I don't feel quite as comfortable with a merge to the Wario Land II enemy.
5. Dark-Boy-1up (talk) I changed my vote a second time. @SolemnStormcloud is right. DK ghosts do not deserve to be merged with others, and neither does the luigis mansion ones. Per SolemnStormcloud.
6. Camwoodstock (talk) While merging stuff like real-world objects that happen to have vastly different uses in their appearances in the Mario series is fine by us (even if it does yield weird stuff like, say, the Koopa-Kola article--an article that seems to be about 3 distinct drinks that shared a name in early non-game content), merging the basis for an entire basis of a species (the LM ghosts) to just. Generic Ghost Enemy From A Donkey Kong Game. Feels much, much stranger. Ghosts have a pretty well-defined existence in the Mario franchise, so it feels kinda weird to have an article all melded together that's "there's a ghost in Wario Land II. there were like. 2 ghosts in the DK games. Here's a description for the entire Luigi's Mansion franchise and its relationship with ghosts.". And of course, there's the elephant of the room that are the ghost enemies in regards to the merged article--they aren't present on the mockup, and to be honest, we're not sure if that's necessarily even a bad thing, because that has the potential to be a proverbial nuke on that article's usefulness. A disambiguation page really isn't hurting anyone, it gives each of these individual ghosts a designated space on their own articles, and it's generally easier to navigate than trying to model ghosts in the Mario series as though they're one cohesive, franchise-wide consistent thing; this is not 2008, there absolutely is not a cohesive Mario universe.
7. Arend (talk) Per all; the ghosts involved in the proposed merger are all very distinct from one another; with the Yoshi's Story one being green and serpentine in appearance, serving as Baby Bowser's ride in a boss battle; the Wario Land II one being an uncommon enemy that moves in particular patterns, and can turn Wario into a zombie; the DK: King of Swing and Jungle Climber one being another uncommon enemy but can either be a hazard or passed through depending on its opacity, even having a distinct name in the Japanese King of Swing; and the Luigi's Mansion one being an amalgamation of every type of ghost in the series, which would be odd in general to merge with other ghost types from outside Luigi's Mansion considering how distinct each ghost in Luigi's Mansion is. The Wario Land and DK ghosts are probably the most similar if we have to merge any of these, considering how both look like the generic white-sheeted ghost with hole faces, and both having angry eyes and pointy ends at the back of their head, but they still act different in the games they're from, and they have different Japanese names, so any visual similarities are most likely coincidental.
8. FanOfYoshi (talk) This doesn't sit well with me. Per all.
9. Mario (talk) Keep split. This doesn't seem to be a practical merge.

Comments

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the DK one's intended JP name is "Powan," with DKJC calling them "ghosts" or "yurei" in a "this island's full of ghosts" bit of dialogue. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 01:33, January 15, 2024 (EST)

I figured that they were originally called "Powan" but renamed to just "Ghosts", since "ghost" was in katakana so I assumed it was its proper name. Looking into it, though, katakana seems to be moreso used as italics or something similar to help make the text easier to parse? Not entirely sure now. DrippingYellow (talk) 11:18, January 15, 2024 (EST)

@DrippingYellow I think its funny that you referred to the frog page because there is already a debate about it happening right now. I voted that the frogs all stay on one page. I think that just like in the frog debate, simplicity matters. So that's why I am voting that these ghost pages get merged. -- Dark-Boy-1up 11:56, January 15, 2024 (EST)

This proposal is kind of the inverse of that proposal's view on the frog, come to think of it. The main arguments for the frog were that it has a unique Japanese name and has differences compared to other generic portrayals of frogs, whereas here I'm arguing that pages be merged because they're just generic portrayals of ghosts and have generic names in both English and Japanese. I included the Luigi's Mansion usage of "ghost" because it is moreso an umbrella term that calls back to the same stock concept of spirits beyond the mortal plane. To me, they're about as different from generic ghosts as the two Super Mario RPG frogs are from normal frogs. DrippingYellow (talk) 13:01, January 15, 2024 (EST)

@Okapii "I very much doubt either the Luigi's Mansion or the DK King of Swing devs were designing their ghosts and went 'you know, like the ones from Wario Land'": That is not what I was getting at, I was saying that they are not their own species, they're both just ghosts. I might be having second thoughts about the DK: Jungle Climber ghost, but the Wario Land II ghost is almost definitely a generic ghost, just look at both its English and Japanese names. "idk I feel like the Luigi's Mansion ghosts are clearly their own thing": I disagree with the notion that the Luigi's Mansion ghosts are their own kind of spectral being. They follow the same logic as stereotypical ghosts: they are the souls of people or creatures who have died, as evidenced by the LM1 portrait ghosts, they have the ability to float through the air as well as pass through walls, and generally only obey the laws of physics in certain instances. If they're just called "ghosts", then they're not some weird variety of spirit or anything like that: they're ghosts, simple as that.

@Hewer My rationale behind the comparison with the Zombie was that it has a generic name, even in Japanese, zonbi (ゾンビ, literally "Zombie"), not unlike how the Wario Land II ghost enemy is just named yūrei. DrippingYellow (talk) 16:04, January 15, 2024 (EST)

But the zombie comparison doesn't really support your point, seeing as that article isn't a collection of generic zombies like you want ghost to be, it's just about a single enemy from Wario Land. And as for "If they're just called "ghosts", they're ghosts, simple as that" - you're only trying to merge three of the at least 12 things called "ghost". Hewer (talk · contributions · edit count) 17:14, January 15, 2024 (EST)

The point of bringing up the zombie wasn't to illustrate an example of a collection, it was to point out that the ghost having a generic name and design was not an outlier in the Wario Land series. ...Which, to be fair, probably doesn't support my point. But I think you're misreading my "If they're just called ghosts" statement to apply to all of the enemies called "ghost", when I felt I was pretty clearly referring to the Luigi's Mansion ghosts specifically. In the top of the proposal I specified that I limited the scope of this proposal to these three because they had a shared generic name in both English and Japanese and (in the case of the DK and WLII ghosts) a generic design. DrippingYellow (talk) 17:31, January 15, 2024 (EST)

@Camwoodstock What is the basis for saying the Luigi's Mansion ghosts are a "species" of ghosts, though? Other than because the article just says it (citation needed?), the Luigi's Mansion series to my knowledge does not distinguish these from normal ghosts in dialogue: I recall them referring to "ghosts" with a lowercase "G" in my Dark Moon and Luigi's Mansion 3 playthroughs. And if they are a species, then their defining characteristics are inconsistent between games: the ghosts in Luigi's Mansion and Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon are seemingly natural trouble makers, but the Dark Moon ghosts specifically are able to be pacified with the titular Dark Moon, and the Luigi's Mansion 3 ghosts are actually all friendly, only being (mostly) enemies because King Boo controls them. It makes less sense to categorize the Luigi's Mansion ghosts as a whole species separate from regular ghosts, and more sense to say that they're all types of standard ghosts.

Also, I did mention the Boo in the intro, and I included almost every single character from the "Ghosts" category as either "derived subjects" or "notable members" in the infobox, following the template of the Frog page in how I structured it: the ones I didn't include were the subspecies of other ghosts. Did I mention the Frog article again? It feels like everybody is ignoring that comparison I made in the proposal... DrippingYellow (talk) 10:57, January 17, 2024 (EST)

@Arend Don't take this the wrong way but... did you even read my proposal? I specifically excluded the Yoshi's Story ghost, and as I mentioned, obake (label for the DK series and Luigi's Mansion ghosts) is often used as a synonym for yūrei (the label for the Wario Land II ghost), with both usually being translated into English as "ghost", and both also being generic words. And see the above reply to Camwoodstock for how I feel about the Luigi's Mansion ghosts. DrippingYellow (talk) 11:09, January 17, 2024 (EST)

Fair enough about the Yoshi's Story ghost, though I'd question why to list it with the other ghosts you do want to merge in the first place when it's irrelevant. You mentioned the Wario Land 4 ghost separately when that one is also named "yūrei" in Japanese (albeit with different kana). Regardless, you're right, I should've read that more thoroughly.
And I wasn't talking exclusively about the "yūrei" and "obake" names when it comes to the WL2 and DK ghosts. As both of us know, the DK ghosts were called "Powan" in the Japanese version of King of Swing, which is a unique name; I thought you'd be aware that I was taking that into account since I did specifically mention in my vote that the Japanese King of Swing had a distinct name.
As for the Luigi's Mansion ghosts, I still feel it's weird if we have that merged with the ghosts from other series; whereas the Wario Land II and DK ghosts are separate uncommon enemies from one or two games each, the Luigi's Mansion ghosts cover a variety of subspecies across the whole Luigi's Mansion series: each with somewhat similar appearances, attacks, and ways to defeat them. Yes, they do have aesthetic inconsistencies per game, but it's kinda like that Gold Ghosts, Greenies and Goobs are as similar to each other as Klaptraps, Klampons and Krimps are. The latter three are definitely Kremlings instead of generic crocodiles, as the former three are Luigi's Mansion ghosts instead of generic ghosts. That's why I feel merging the Luigi's Mansion ghosts with other generic ghosts would be a bit odd to me. rend (talk) (edits) 11:58, January 17, 2024 (EST)

I guess the Kremlings are a fairly close comparison, but I feel like there is a major difference: the Klaptraps, Klampons, etc. are actually called "Kremlings" and not "crocodiles", something that cannot be said about the various "ghosts" in the Luigi's Mansion series. The ghosts have a generic label in Japanese, as well as a non-capitalized, also-generic label in English. If they were named "Spooks" or something like that, I might concur that they were intended to be a unique "species" from standard ghosts. They do appear to have certain design characteristics that other ghosts don't (colorful, having large, glowing eyes, and coming in a wide variety of shapes), but I think that could be chalked up to that just being how ghosts look in the Luigi's Mansion art style. DrippingYellow (talk) 12:17, January 17, 2024 (EST)

@Hewer concerning updated proposal: deciding on a popular page to make the first result instead of a disambiguation is not a new concept, though. Mushroom, for instance, takes you to the well-known Mushroom as an item, and not the one-off status effect, the figurine from WarioWare: Twisted, or the tire from Mario Kart 7; those are in Mushroom (disambiguation). Or how about Goomba logically taking you to the classic enemy, and not immediately to the disambiguation page for the nine other characters that were all at some point also named "Goomba"?
The deciding factor for both examples is how likely someone is to be looking for a certain article when they type "Mushroom" or "Goomba". I think the equivalent for "Ghost" is the Luigi's Mansion ghosts, since again, they are arguably the main feature of a whole series of games, plus they are depictions of actual ghosts and not merely transparent copies of characters (e.g. Ghost (Mario Kart series)). DrippingYellow (talk) 20:38, January 18, 2024 (EST)

I'm well aware that disambiguations don't always get priority, I just don't think there's a particularly compelling reason Luigi's Mansion ghosts should be considered the primary ones in this case, unlike extremely commonly recurring things like Goomba and Mushroom where the primary subject is a lot more obvious. Hewer (talk · contributions · edit count) 12:36, January 19, 2024 (EST)