Template talk:Galleries

~~DPL~~ SWFlash

How come the template dosen't link to the Super Mario Sunshine gallery?--Yoshidude99 15:42, 6 March 2011 (EST)

Spiny

Can we have a Spiny gallery?Yoshi Go99

Spiny don't have that much artworks, so I guess no. SWFlash

Sprites

Can we have have a sprites section on every gallery? Yoshi dude99

Pom Pom

I added a gallery for Pom Pom if that's not problem. Doh IMissed

Mario's Forms

On subjects section of the template, Mini Mario & Metal Mario are put in characters rather characters rather than forms. While I believe this is a mistake for Mini Mario, I'm not to sure about Metal Mario.
Shy Guy on Wheels ^(T|C|S) 09:27, 15 February 2017 (EST)

It is Mini Mario from the Mario vs. Donkey Kong series, not the form. The Metal Mario is the character. --

TheFlameChomp (talk) 09:37, 15 February 2017 (EST)

Oh. I should of checked that first, but I do think it should say Mini Mario (Mario vs. Donkey Kong) or Mini Mario (Toy) to make sure it doesn't cause any more confusion.
Shy Guy on Wheels

^(T|C|S) 09:53, 15 February 2017 (EST)

Why alphabetical?

Yes, I've read the section about listing the links. It states, "The lists of links should be grouped in a way that makes finding entries simple; generally this means alphabetical order should be used". I want to put emphasis on the word "generally." In many cases, alphabetical order is typical strategy to use, but it doesn't always have to be used. For example when listing a series of games in alphabetical order instead of chronological. I understand this template is for Galleries, but wouldn't it be better if it were in chronological order just like the template for a game's series? Imagine the Mario games template and the Galleries template were side-by-side to each other. If I wanted to find Super Mario Bros., I would look over at the Super Mario series section and see that it's the first thing there. Keeping this in mind, I now want to look at the Super Mario Bros. gallery, so I look on over to the Super Mario section of the Galleries template, assuming to find that the link would be the first one there, only to find that New Super Mario Bros. has taken its spot.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that it would be better if the Gallery template reflected the chronological order of all the series' games since it would "make finding entires simple" instead of having one alphabetical and one chronological? AceFedora (talk) 03:01, 14 February 2019 (EST)

That is exactly the case, in my opinion. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 04:39, 14 February 2019 (EST)

Doki Doki Panic

Since when was Doki Doki Panic a Mario game? Wynn Liaw 09:57, May 4, 2020 (EDT)

Missing entries

The following pages are not linked to in this template:

--Dine2017 (talk) 09:19, December 23, 2021 (EST)

Then you can add them to the template.

Mario JC 07:30, December 24, 2021 (EST)

Categorising Subjects by the Franchise of Origin - The Rationale?

I don't take the credit for being the first one to notice it, but I noticed that recently, Galleries -> Subjects is categorised by the franchise of origin. For example, Baby Peach is part of the Mario & Luigi series while Baby Daisy is categorised under the Mario Kart series. May I know what is the rationale behind categorising the characters in this way? I can't claim to know the best practices but it does make it seem like the list will attract debates, like Toad not being in "Main", or the like. The crossover stuff being its category is not a bad idea, but doing this seems excessive and I guess complicated. Is there a proposal regarding this change that I am missing? Winstein (talk) 12:37, May 12, 2024 (EDT)

This organization invites "importance" discussions (such as with Toad being brought up here), makes it more difficult to navigate the pages and assumes readers have extensive knowledge of the series to know where to look (Baby Peach for instance, isn't grouped with the other babies but is put under Partners in Time; not everyone knows immediately she made her debut in that game). We don't split the items and objects by this, and they're much easier to search for. I would revert it to simple alphabetical even though it can be unwieldy at points.

Mario^-HOHO! (Talk / Stalk) 12:49, May 12, 2024 (EDT)

I think it has to do with the sheer amount of galleries that now exist and the previous "by subject type" getting bloated, but I concur that the current manner for grouping non-game galleries is so confusing it causes more harm than good. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 13:29, May 12, 2024 (EDT)

Yeah, for the purpose of finding a specific gallery this method isn't ideal, but I'm not sure what a better alternative would be. Putting everything in one big alphabetical list was so hard to read that I do think there should be some way to split them into easier-to-manage subgroups, but sorting by origin only works if the reader is already familiar with the origin of the subject in question. I'd be happy to hear any suggestions for alternative methods for organizing subjects. (For the record, the "main" character distinction was decided based on which character galleries are divided into subgalleries.) jan Misali (talk · contributions) 21:16, May 12, 2024 (EDT)

Having thought it over, here are what I consider the main options:

1) The current system, sorting by franchise/series of origin.

Pros: Consistent with how the "games" portion of the template is organized, and is a very "natural" way to divide characters and species into meaningful groups. Similar to the method used by List of characters by game.

Cons: Navigating the template requires familiarity with the history of the subject whose gallery the reader is trying to find, and many subjects commonly appear outside of their series of origin.

2) The previous system, sorting purely alphabetically.

Pros: The most "default" way to sort a list of names, and navigating does not require knowledge of a subject apart from its name. This is the method used by List of characters.

Cons: Makes the template itself extremely unwieldy with large blocks of unbroken text, sorting purely alphabetically means related subjects are only next to each other if their article names happen to start similarly (ie. Baby characters were grouped together, but Kongs and Koopalings were all over the place), and for subjects with multiple names the process of finding where they are on an alphabetical list becomes much harder as the list increases in size (yes, control-F exists, but that's true regardless of which organizational system is used for the template).

3) Organizing by main/secondary/supporting status.

Pros: Conceptually this aligns with how a lot of people think about the greater Mario ensemble, and is consistent with how many navigational templates for games and articles about game series organize their characters.

Cons: Whether or not a character is a "main character" depends on the specific game; it would not be easy to group characters into these types of categories in a way that accounts for the types of roles they have across the entire franchise. The current system uses "Main character" for character galleries that have subgalleries, so an "objective" taxonomy of the characters and species in these galleries based purely on how many images of them exist on the wiki is theoretically possible, but it's also horribly counterintuitive.

4) Organizing by character type, such as those found in the subcategories of Category:Characters.

Pros: Groups similar characters together in a way already used by a core navigational feature of the wiki.

Cons: These categories are not mutually exclusive, and turning them into a system useful for a navigational template would require significant work.

5) Organizing by species.

Pros: Another organizational system that's already in use elsewhere on the wiki. Allows for very detailed hierarchical structures, as can be seen in the subcategories and sub-subcategories of Category:Species.

Cons: There are not enough gallery subpages for a system this complicated to be useful for a navigational template. This would additionally split up species-diverse groups of characters, such as Wario's employees and the Animal Friends.

6) Organizing mostly alphabetically, but treating the names as though they're ordered with any "modifier" after the base name, eg. sorting "Baby Mario" as if "Mario, Baby", or "Koopa Paratroopa" as if "Koopa Troopa, Para". (These would not be spelled that way in the template itself, just sorted as though they were.)

Pros: Similar to the system that was in use before the template was reorganized, but with just a little bit more structure.

Cons: Much less transparent than the other organizational methods. Even if it makes intuitive sense for navigation, it would be a hassle to expect editors adding new galleries to the template to learn the rules of a complex collation algorithm. It also has almost all of the issues with the alphabetical sorting method itself.

I don't think any of these are perfect solutions, but in my opinion organizing by origin is the most "canonical" way to split what otherwise would be a massive wall of text. I apologize for reorganizing it myself without bringing up the idea on the talk page first though. I personally had trouble using the template the way it was organized before, and didn't consider the possibility that other people would have preferred one big alphabetical directory. Sorry for any trouble and confusion this may have caused. jan Misali (talk · contributions) 14:49, May 13, 2024 (EDT)

I think the tried-and-true alphabetical list is the best since it is the simplest way to look up a character. But may I suggest grouping by alphabets? So like A-F could be a group, G-M could be a group, and so on. It would, in theory, make the list tidier when everything is grouped into smaller chunks.Winstein (talk) 13:42, May 17, 2024 (EDT)

I really think Winstein's idea here is the simplest, most intuitive solution. Complexity does not always equate to "better". - Nintendo101 (talk) 14:48, May 20, 2024 (EDT)

Could sorting by commonly associated franchise (as opposed to series of origin) work? Not everyone knows Baby Peach originated from Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time, but they may know her from the Mario Kart games she has appeared more often in, so we could just list her under Super Mario franchise instead. Or, we could possibly merge some of the spinoff series, if that's not too troublesome.
Also, I think it's kinda weird that Wario is listed under Super Mario series instead of Main, especially since he has his own franchise as well.

rend (talk) (edits) 10:21, May 20, 2024 (EDT)

Yes, I think "commonly associated franchise" is an idea worth exploring. However, there are some potential issues with implementation. How exactly would the franchise a character is most commonly associated with be determined? Number of appearances? Some sort of hierarchical "priority" system? Vibes? A lot of the edge cases (eg. Pauline, Kamek, Wario) seem like they would need to be handled on a case-by-case basis, which isn't very practical for a directory of image galleries. Additionally, I agree that the system currently implemented for "main characters" is counter-intuitive. It was decided based on the characters whose image galleries have subpages, since for practical reasons it made sense to separate those from the rest, and "Main" felt at the time like the best way to say what those characters have in common. jan Misali (talk · contributions) 13:20, May 20, 2024 (EDT)

Yeah, I agree. SONIC123CDMANIA+&K(B&ATSA) (talk) 13:26, May 20, 2024 (EDT)

Reorganize

This talk page section contains an unresolved talk page proposal. Please try to help and resolve the issue by voting or leaving a comment.

Current time: Sunday, December 1, 2024, 12:14 GMT

A while ago, I reorganized this template to group characters and species by series of origin (with characters with galleries that have subgalleries separated as "main characters", to avoid what would otherwise be counterintuitive placements of Mario and Luigi). I personally had a hard time using the template before this change (large unbroken blocks of text are hard to read), but in retrospect I should have considered that other people do not have the same preferences I do before making the edits.

See the above discussion for more information about what these options would be. The "Other" option here means "none of these options are ideal, so consider more options and make a new proposal later for those ideas".

All of these options would apply to the "character" and "species" galleries separately; none of them would involve merging the two sections together. Reorganizing some of the other sections of the template to match the system used by the "character" and "species" galleries may or may not be a good idea, but that would be a separate proposal after we've already figured out to do with these sections.

Proposer: JanMisali (talk)
Deadline: July 20, 2024, 23:59 GMT

Do nothing, continue organizing by series of origin

JanMisali (talk) First choice. I think this system makes sense, but I understand it has some flaws.

Continue organizing by series of origin, but move "main characters" to their series of origin (eg. Mario in "Donkey Kong series", Luigi in "Super Mario franchise (Other)")

Revert to purely alphabetical system

Waluigi Time (talk) The old alphabetical list was fine and casual reader friendly, all you had to know to easily find a subject's gallery was their name. This also avoids some pretty awkward placements (Wario and Yoshi can't be listed under their own franchises with any of these options) and getting into the subjective nature of who's considered a "main" character.
Mario (talk) Worked better this way imo
winstein (talk) The secondary choice, tried and true original layout (my primary is the split by letter groups).

Revert to purely alphabetical system, but keep characters with subgalleries split as "main characters"

Keep franchises of origin and characters with subgalleries split, but do not separate by series within those franchises

JanMisali (talk) Second choice. This would solve the issue of some characters' series of origin being lesser known without putting everything in one big list.

Keep franchises of origin split, but do not separate characters with subgalleries or series within those franchises

Hewer (talk) Splitting by franchise seems like a fine way to divide things and is similar to various other navboxes (see Template:Switch for instance), but the subjectivity of the "main character" classification makes me not want to use it. "Main character" is a strange way to identify those with subgalleries, and I can't really think of a better way.
JanMisali (talk) Fourth choice, per Hewer.

Sort alphabetically, but split into different parts of the alphabet to break up the block of text

JanMisali (talk) Third choice. A decent compromise for breaking things up without requiring the reader to have knowledge of a subject beyond their name to find their gallery.
Arend (talk) Second choice. I think the current system is a bit flawed in the sense that one would normally not consider Baby Peach as a Mario & Luigi character, given that she really made her break since Yoshi's Island DS (though separating crossover characters from the rest is fine I guess)
Waluigi Time (talk) Secondary option.
Mario (talk) If it gets cluttered, do this
winstein (talk) As the one who suggested this idea, it's natural that I will pick this option. This is a good compromise between a large amount of subjects and easy readability.
Jdtendo (talk) Seems like the best option to me.

Sort alphabetically, but split different parts of the alphabet and keep characters with subgalleries split as "main characters"

Arend (talk) On the account that Donkey Kong and Wario are to be moved to the main character section as well, considering they're as much main characters as Daisy over there, if not moreso.

Other

JanMisali (talk) ~~Fourth~~ Fifth choice. None of these are perfect, and I would be interested in seeing more people's ideas for improving this template if none of these ones gain enough support to pass.

Comments