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.
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 creating a PipeProject.
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 should 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]".

---

===[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.]

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

====Oppose====

====Comments====

---

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

• Remove Template:SSB Moves. (Discuss) Deadline: November 8, 2011 23:59 GMT
• Split Tanooki Mario and Statue Mario. (Discuss) Deadline: November 19, 2011 23:59 GMT

Writing Guidelines

None at the moment.

New Features

Blacklisting inappropriate titles

Over the past few weeks, I've noticed disproportionately inappropriate usernames being created. Such as "Stop blocking my socks", and other usernames, such as a username insulting another user on the site.

Suppose that someone creates an account called "GGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRR B.wilson's A RETARD!!!!" How is the thing prevented from happening the next time?

If we insert the following Regex:

.*[Bb]\.[Ww]ilson.* <newaccountonly|errmsg=This username has been identified as harmful, and has bene blacklisted from creation. Please choose a different username.>

If they create an account again that contains B.wilson (even with alterations, such as B.Wilson or Bwilson) the text in errmsg will be displayed: This username has been identified as harmful, and has bene blacklisted from creation. Please choose a different username.

This can also prevent inappropriate page moves, edits, and page creations. Do you think it's a great idea? This Regex should be stored on MediaWiki:Titleblacklist. I made this proposal due to the fact that the page is empty.

Proposer: B.wilson (talk)
Deadline: November 8, 2011, 23:59 GMT

Support

1. B.wilson (talk) What would not make it a good idea?

Oppose

1. Walkazo (talk) - These accounts are all caught and blocked very quickly and if the name's really bad, we can suppress them from view. And even before this new suppression feature, we easily dealt with inappropriate names by renaming the accounts. But most of the time, they're just stupid names and they're just not worth any trouble or concern at all. Our system works perfectly fine: we don't need some fancy new blacklist feature. Don't fix what isn't broken.
2. MeritC (talk) - Per Walkazo.
3. M&SG (talk) - Per MeritC and Walkazo.
4. Bop1996 (talk) AFAIK, this wouldn't really affect most of the users except admins, so if the admins would prefer to keep things the way they are, I don't see any reason to change it. Per Walkazo.
5. Toad85 (talk) Per Walkazo, though if we didn't have as awesome admins as we do here, I would probably support it.
6. Mario4Ever (talk) Per Walkazo.
7. BoygeyMario (talk) Per Walkazo.
8. Jazama (talk) Per all
9. Magikrazy51 (talk) Per Walky.
10. Zero777 (talk) Per Walkazo. Also it just seem to me (maybe just right now) that anybody will have ownership of their username and cannot be used by another person, even a part of it.
11. Lakituthequick (talk) Per Walkazo and Marioguy1's comment.

Comments

Oh, okay, it seems that the admins here at Super Mario Wiki are too passionate... ;) --B.wilson (talk)

No, given opposals on ALL OF MY proposals, and that only the proposals made by admins pass...I so did not mean that. --B.wilson (talk)

I meant, the only problem with a part of the community here is that they simply lack any good taste. I am not attacking anyone for the most part, nor am I saying this place is a bad place - this place has great administrators and a great community. But the only problems are that only proposals made by admins or a group of them pass (any newcomer can see the archive), or made by extremely trusted contributors who have been on the site for some time. I only have been here for a month, but that doesn't increase any chance that this proposal should fail. So the point of the proposal is to blacklist inappropriate usernames, so they cannot be created. So time to hide mentioning of them from edit summaries (which can take a lot of time if lots of edits), blocking them, and cleaning up after them can be replaced by contributions that will benefit from this wiki. I am actually trying to help you guys help benefit the wiki by more mainspace contributions, but it seems like... --B.wilson (talk) 03:56, 6 November 2011 (EST)

In the nearly a year I've spent here, plenty of regular users have made successful proposals, even if they aren't highly experienced or knowledgeable. The reason it looks like your proposals are just an admin bandwagon is because your proposals affect admins the most, and the vast majority of our community defers to what the admins prefer to do in these cases, as it'd be highly counterproductive to take an action changing how the admins do things if the admins would prefer not to change it. Bop1996 (talk)

That may be correct, but this doesn't affect administrators much. All this is is discouragement of adding plain references, using a simple template for filling them in easier, and tags on pages for experienced users to drop by and fill em in. --B.wilson (talk) 09:01, 6 November 2011 (EST)

In the case you mentioned, Walkazo pointed out that simply raising awareness about a better way to reference would work better, and to be honest, if you spend enough time here with a big release coming up, it's pretty hard not to notice that people sometimes have a hard time referencing just with a link. As for your other two proposals, those would have mostly just affected the admins, so it's no wonder that if the admins voted it down, the rest of the community followed. Bop1996 (talk)

The point of the matter is, B.wilson, this proposal will be work for us - every time the trolls find a new user to troll, we will have to add another title to the blacklist. Even then, a troll will either find a way around it or move on to another user. It is a waste of time hankering ourselves to find a way to stop the trolls when the damage they do is extremely minimal as is.

As for your comments that only proposals by administrators pass, I think you are misreading the data. For example, if you looked at data for any country in the world of human activity, you'd find that when the sun goes down, people go inside. When the sun comes back up, people come back outside. So a proper analysis of that would be that the sun causes people to come inside and go back out. And that analysis would be wrong. If you look at the archives for the proposals, you'd find that when a respected user makes a proposal, it passes. When a newer user makes a proposal, it fails. There are several exceptions in each scenario. Your analysis is that only respected users' proposals pass, but that analysis is also wrong. Going on with the sun-example, people find it convenient to go inside when the lights and warmth are gone and then find it convenient to come back outside when they are back. The sun in no way forces them to do this. Similarly, proposals made by respected users are usually well-thought-out and well-proposed - with proper research done beforehand. Proposals done by newer users are usually not well-thought-out and they are formatted badly so that they don't draw people's attention. The fact that the user is "new" or "old" has nothing to do with whether they make good proposals or not.

A final point I'd like to make would be that there is a reason administrators are allowed to vote on proposals - because they usually know what they are doing. If an administrator opposes a proposal, they will usually have a good reason to do it. In saying that your proposal is failing because everyone is following an administrator, you are disregarding the opinion of that administrator; and if everyone is following that administrator, their opinion is probably an intelligent one. The point is, the admins usually know what they're doing, they're not perfect, but we trust them enough to make proper decisions for the betterment of the wiki. Marioguy1 (talk)

You may be right, I was not attacking Walkazo's opinion. But the only thing I find kind of - not what I expected - is that the entries following Walkazo's oppose just basically said nothing but "Per Walkazo" or "per all", which may be... --B.wilson (talk)

Ah, so you don't really like the "per" votes. Well, I could have typed out everything Walkazo said as my vote, or just "per'd" her. Either way, I'm basically voting for oppose based off her vote, the only difference is that in the case of the latter, none of the content is lost, but it takes a lot less time to just basically say "I agree with Walkazo" or something like that. Bop1996 (talk)

I feel it is more polite to give out my real reasons for votes for consensus, even if it's just a rephrase or paraphrase of another's vote - and then give my original reasons. Best, B.wilson (talk)

Aside from it being redundant to rephrase or paraphrase another user's vote, more often than not, as a proposal approaches deadline, there are going to be fewer and fewer original reasons, simply because initial votes in either direction require a reason, and the users that follow won't come up with a new reason if they agree with one already present. Mario4Ever (talk)

Removals

None at the moment.

Changes

Create articles for media with several references

There are some TV shows/Internet stuff/Movies/Anything else with many references. Some with enough to qualify for their own page. This makes the references pages very long. I feel that doing this would cut back on the references pages. I see many other wikis do it. Some prime contenders would be Futurama and Homestar Runner among others.

Proposer: Magikrazy51 (talk)
Deadline: Novemeber 13, 2011 23:59 GMT

Support

1. Magikrazy51 (talk) Per the words above me.

Oppose

1. Lakituthequick (talk) I don't really see the point for new pages full of references, and besides, it doesn't belong to the Mario series and is not licenced by Nintendo.
2. RandomYoshi (talk) — Per Lakituthequick.
3. B.wilson (talk) Some of the references may not be reliable sources (blogs aren't reliable, while news sources are). Furthermore, if Lakituthequick says it doesn't belong to the Mario series (I will trust their opinion) why do you want to game the article count with articles non-Mario?

Comments

Sorry, but I cannot understand your proposal. B.wilson (talk)

I think that he means that the Video game references page has some entries that are big enough to be considered to be put into a list - he wants the big entries to have pages created for them. That's what I am getting from his proposal, that is. I might be mistaking. RandomYoshi (talk)

Hmmm....if that's the case, I am neutral. Wish there would be a "neutral section" :P --B.wilson (talk)

So let me get this straight. You want there to be a page like "List of Mario references in *insert other media here*" for certain media with large amounts of Mario references. My main beef with this is the fact that your qualifications for splitting them into a new page are very vague, so I'd rather see a kb limit or something before supporting. Bop1996 (talk)

Other wikis I go to have separate pages for a certain TV show or anything else with enough references to qualify for a page. I think the same could be done here. Homestar Runner, for example, has more than enough references. Futurama, possibly. The Mad TV series seems to be getting there as it's only in its second season with many references (although it would be a bit of a stretch right now). I'm defiantly not saying to make pages for everything that referenced Mario, just the specific shows/bands/video game series/etc that have referenced Mario multiple times. Magikrazy51 (talk)

Still I'm neutral. Doesn't allow me to vote :P --B.wilson (talk)

So you'd want an article named Homestar Runner devoted to the Mario references in that show? If that's the case, you still haven't said what makes the number of references in a media qualified to be split. Bop1996 (talk)

Miscellaneous

None at the moment.