WiKirby:Proposals/Archive-2023

Successful proposals archives
Proposals passed in 2023
Proposals passed in 2022
Proposals passed in 2021
Proposals passed in 2020

The following proposals have been successfully passed by WiKirby's community. For older proposals, check the box to the right:

Proposals

Do away with userlang templates (January 19th, 2022 - February 2nd, 2022)

For a while now, WiKirby has allowed openness in terms of American and British English spelling within general words by using these "userlang" templates (most of which can be found here if you want to take a look). As a lot of you probably already know, these simply switch around letters for certain users, from American English to British English spellings, depending on an individual's personal account settings. It looks something like this when coded:

fav{{o}}rite

While I appreciate the effort to standardize words for more users, I personally think it's very unnecessary. For one, the effort that goes into searching for the appropriate words for this seems like way too much effort than it's worth. There will almost always be some words here and there that won't be found and corrected, in part of most new editors having no idea this is something we do here. I actually think this is possibly a big problem for general readers/casual editors. Maybe someone will come across, say, "favour" because of their settings, but then later catch "favor" on a page, because we just simply cannot add these templates to every single appropriate word across the wiki. This easily could be confusing to new users, especially if they try to go in and "fix" the supposed spelling mistake, only to find random brackets that I will note many anonymous editors tend to remove as-is. This likely makes it difficult for some people to understand what guidelines we really have set down here in regards to spelling.

Maybe I went overboard as to why I'm against these templates since it's a fairly small request/change, but yeah, that's the idea I'm going with here. I think having one set guideline for spelling would improve the wiki for the better and make things more efficient and understandable for everyone.

Just to be totally clear, I am not requesting the removal of regional game name templates. I honestly think those are worth having around. How do you guys feel about this? -- Jellytost♡ (talk) 05:44, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Support

1. If there was a way to implement this site-wide without templates then it would probably be a good thing. However, trying to manually get every instance of the word in any and every given page is too much, especially when new users usually have no idea that they exist, and when it's ultimately English both ways, there doesn't seem to be enough benefit to outweigh that. ---PinkYoshiFan 14:39, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
2. I don't think it's really worth all that work of these templates just to have a couple words be different for the few signed in only users. As a side point, some other things different between versions, such as in-game descriptions, should have both versions be visible, instead of using UserLang. --kirb 15:49, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
3. I am in full support. To be honest, I've never really liked this practice in the wiki for multiple reasons. For one, as a non-native English speaker myself, I often don't know alternate spelling of words as I mostly learned American English and that is what most commonly found over the internet, so people like me won't even use them properly, making it so that other editors would need to review edits on lookout for words with different spellings in British English. And as I pointed out in the Discord server, we currently have pages like Holo Defense API with the userlang template used all over it, which makes it such a pain to edit. I faced that myself a while ago with this edit, that should had been simple, yet it was extremely confusing. Also, at least as far as I'm aware, all spelling differences are very minor and usually consist of a single letter, so I just feel overall it's too much effort for something so small. Again, as a non-native English speaker, I didn't notice many of these differences of spelling over the years, are they really that important? Finally, these differences only are visible to logged in users who specifically selected British English as their language, so it's too much effort for such a small number of editors that probably wouldn't mind if they saw "defense" instead of "defence". So, yes, I support removing the userlang templates, for in-game text we should list both in the page itself like we do for Smash Bros. trophy descriptions already, and the game name templates are fine to stay. - Gigi (talk • edits) 16:50, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
4. Did you know that Wars Wiki, the original inventors of the userlang template system, abolished it after a period of time? They probably had a good reason for it! I think it just creates a more complicated system that is less helpful for the new readers and editors. Trig - 19:45, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
5. I have the same feeling that everyone here has. This templates are hard to use for a result that a very small percentage of people will see. It is a big work with little reward. If this is still being used, I suppose that there will be a small negative feeling that there is some page that has a color instead of a col{{o}}r and I don't know if there is a way to use those templates in every page that they should.
   I don't want to talk in the name of someone else, but I think that the readers who prefer more British English will get that this site uses the US English spelling just by seeing that this is an American site, not an European one. For instance, I talk Spanish and I am more fond with the Latin American Spanish writing, so when I go to an European Spanish site that uses their writing differences (like using "vos" instead of "tú"), while it is something that peeks me a bit, I completely get it by seeing that said page is an European Spanish page, and not an Latin American one. It is the same thing here: this is an American site, and so it will mostly use the US English writing, thus I suppose that every reader who prefers the British English writing will get that if they see "tire" instead of "tyre" and so on.
   Essentially: If those templates are still up, they will affect the editors negatively with the amount of work that they give, via either confusing edits, or checking every page to see if they have them, and although it will be beneficial for the readers, said "beneficism" (if you may) will be very small, as a small percentage of readers will see the results of them, and the US/British English differences between words is very minimal. If those templates are eliminated as this proposal proposes (well, with the archiving of the userlang one) it won't be negatively for the editors in any way, and although it won't be beneficial to the readers, the ones that would get "affected" would be a very small number, and they would most probably understand the reason of why this uses the US English spelling.
   Although, if in-game writing does differ between the American or European versions, and the wiki is going to cite them (like with boss captions), I do support of having them both, but either as two tabs, like in here, or as two tables, like in the Smash Bros. trophies as Gigi suggested, instead of using the userlang template.
   In short, these templates requires a lot of work with very little overall benefit. The outcome of ditching out these templates is way more balanced, and thus I support on discarding them. -Kirbeat (talk) 22:32, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Oppose

Neutral

1. For now, I'm going to stay neutral on this proposal, because I think there is a case to be made either way, and I really want to see what the community at large thinks before I pick a side. --Samwell (talk) 05:48, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
2. Neutral about spelling (at least for now), but I support stoping usage of UserLang to hide information from other users. I also slightly lean towards removing regional name changer templates and stuff like that, since they can't be applied everywhere (such as tabs or aboutfile) and causes clutter. Superbound (talk) 16:27, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
3. At that point, there's not much reason to keep regional game name templates either. We should explicitly either fully support British English or not at all. Something that wasn't mentioned - metric and imperial units - should both be listed. I generally agree with other arguments; they can be complex in some cases, although I don't think newbie editor confusion should be the main reason we remove features from the wiki. ⁠–⁠Wiz (talk · edits) 22:43, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

So, I want to have a list of every template that will get affected if this passes through. For what I get, the following templates will get deleted, along with a description of what each one does, for quick reference ("us" is if the reader has the language set as American English, while "gb" is if it is set as British English):

• {{er}} us=er - gb=re
• {{gray}} us=a - gb=e (gray - grey)
• {{installment}} us=l - gb= (installment - instalment)
• {{l}} us= - gb=l (l - ll)
• {{maneuver}} us=euver - gb=oeuvre (maneuver - manoeuvre)
• {{o}} us= - gb=u (o - ou)
• {{tire}} us=i - gb=y (tire - tyre)
• {{z}} us=z - gb=s

If there is a template missing from the list, add it please.
If there is a template in the list that won't get affected, delete it please.
If there are some templates that won't get deleted, but that still will get affected in some way if this passes, please add it/them to the list in some way.
If there is some error here, or you feel that some wording/structure of the list could be better in another way, feel free to change it. -Kirbeat (talk) 06:18, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I will go ahead and put it out there that this general template will be affected as well. -- Jellytost♡ (talk) 06:30, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

If the proposal passes and the templates are deleted, which spelling will we use? Or will there be no rule, and users can use any spelling they want to? Superbound (talk) 16:27, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

The regional game variants of the UserLang template (Kirby's Return to Dream Land/Kirby's Adventure Wii, for example) will be here to stay, as mentioned up-top. Seems that the generalization equivalents for stuff like colour, favourite, grey, etc. are going to go if the proposal passes. – Owencrazyboy17 (talk)

If we get rid of the UserLang templates but keep the regional game name templates, what will we do with instances like the first line of Kirby's Return to Dream Land? StarPunch (talk) 20:27, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

As specified on the Discord, I think the best idea for now would be to default to the American English name as a title and in the description, with the British name as a redirect going forward. The original userlang template (linked on my comment above) would be archived and go unused in mainspace. When/if someone makes another proposal for the regional game templates, we can sort out more then. I also want to address the comment Vipz made by saying that the removal of these isn't primarily because of "newbie confusion". That was mostly something obscure I noticed while thinking about this. I would say the large effort and confusion overall for all of us, just for a few people, is the main reason I'd like to abolish this, along with wanting consistency to be prominent.

Hopefully all of that makes sense. -- Jellytost♡ (talk) 00:08, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Personally, I'm kind of in the same boat as Vipz, and think that if we are going to do away with the userlang templates, then the game name changer templates should go as well. Leaving those in place would create another awkward halfway house situation like what we had with the reception sections. As for imperial vs metric units, I think it's fine to list both generally speaking. --Samwell (talk) 00:52, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Yep, I getcha. Will most likely make another proposal for those after this one (unless someone beats me to it). I just didn't feel comfortable with requesting that much of a change in one proposal without having some discussion first. I basically thought a small step first would be best. -- Jellytost♡ (talk) 18:50, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

Reception sections on game pages: Yes or no? (January 2nd, 2022 - January 16th, 2022)

Time for the first proposal of 2022. Looking around the wiki, there are a handful of game articles which contain sections for "Reception", referring to how a game was perceived both critically from review sites and at large by the public, including sales figures where applicable. Having a section like this on a game page is traditional for places like Wikipedia, and is done on several other NIWA wikis. However, there has been a fair amount of reticence towards the idea of having these sections on WiKirby for a number of reasons, which mostly come down to personal preference, and that is part of the reason why most games do not have such sections. However, I think it's important for us as a community to decide one way or the other definitively, rather than maintaining this awkward halfway house approach.

So, here are the choices in short:
Vote Support if you are in favor of adding reception sections to every game page that warrants one, and expanding existing sections to be more complete.
Vote Oppose if you would rather WiKirby did not do reception sections at all, and remove the ones that currently exist from pages.

Vote now with your phones (or other computerized devices). Please do not vote by carrier pigeon, as that service is discontinued. --Samwell (talk) 11:37, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Support

#Honestly, after looking through our current reception sections within pages, I really don't want to just throw them away, because it's some pretty interesting stuff. I agree that going further with them regarding information could be tricky, but we'll be fine as long as we know where to put the right boundaries, imo. That said, I moreso want to see these sections on all appropriate game pages, rather than possibly extending them beyond reasonability.
It could be argued that reception is mostly unofficial, but I really can't follow that line of thought, since we cover similarly unofficial material on the wiki, like glitches and speedrunning, which are cases of something more or less unofficial eventually becoming enough of a considerable impact in the games and the community at large that they're worthy of the spotlight on wikis like this. I will admit that reception is still a bit of a different case for a few reasons, but hopefully that gets my point across.
Might change my vote once others put their two cents in, since I'm personally in a numb spot right now that might be spinning all of this around for me, but this is where I stand for now. -- Jellytost♡ (talk) 18:15, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

Oppose

1. I'm really only in opposition because of how difficult it is to quantify this kind of information in a standardized way. Sales is a good metric, and review scores are tricky but still fine, but beyond that how much can we really say that isn't personal interpretation? It's not a bad idea, just one that would be hard to keep consistent across the wiki, and it just doesn't give that much to users coming to the wiki.LeoUnlimited (talk) 14:12, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
2. These sections don't add much value to a seasoned fan reader, and whatever we already have can just be donated to Wikipedia. If they have anything interesting to say, for example how the game plays, just adapt it into the Gameplay section. When it comes to covering community-oriented content, no adequate site exists for glitches, while one does for speedrunning and another for unused content, rendering our weaker coverage redundant. Sales are a good figure, but I feel iffy to opinions, however reputable. Primary/official magazines like Nintendo Power will always praise/promote the games on another hand. For official information, people would look here. For how the game fares, people would look into review sites. ⁠–⁠Wiz (talk · edits) 05:51, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
3. Okay. Thanks to those who gave their opinions and gave me a clearer insight on this whole thing. Apologies if what I said before made absolutely no sense. I forgot to consider just how vague and subjective reception in general can be, even on so called "professional" sites, making it considerably difficult to settle on a proper way of doing things overall. I can generally see now what the problem with these sections are, and would think the best way to "settle things" would be to retire this reception concept. Scattering any solid information throughout the article(s) sounds just fine. -- Jellytost♡ (talk) 17:47, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
4. After thinking about this for a couple days, I've ultimately decided to go against it. While I don't have any strong feelings in either side, I am opposing because I don't feel they add much to articles and, as mentioned by others, are usually pretty subjective. While we could use bigger sites like Metacritic and only use reviews from there, reviews are still subjective. I think everyone else will agree with me that the internet reviews like that of Kirby games are often widely different from the fandom itself, praising the more experimental games like Canvas Curse and Epic Yarn while considering games important to the franchise like Return to Dream Land as okay games. I do want to mention however, I like listing of sales, so I would at least like to see sales listed, but I am also okay if they aren't. - Gigi (talk • edits) 11:49, 7 January 2022 (UTC)
5. I personally do not like game reviews, it can easily make people skip a game that has the potential to actually be a fun experience for them. Besides, I don't think it has its place on a wiki, but otherwise I don't have much more to add since the others already summarized my thoughts on this. Halcyan (talk) 17:48, 14 January 2022 (UTC)
6. Reception sections usually end up full of personal opinions of reviewers and wiki editors. As well as specifically in the case of this wiki, most Kirby games are generally regarded/received the same way regardless of game by reviewers and general gaming community. In the end, I think subjective content does not really belong on a wiki.SaviroZenu (talk) 00:36, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Neutral

1. I personally think that a reception section would be a good thing, but they are also based (almost) entirely off unofficial material, so I could go either way. ---PinkYoshiFan 14:06, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
2. I don't want to delete what we currently have for reception sections, but personally public reception is a no-go. Review sites give one score and that stands, public reception often changes by a drastic amount over time and there's almost allways two sides at minimum, as the Sonic Community taught me. So if I was the being with unlimited infinite power around here, I'd only let reception from review sites be on the game pages and nothing else. Infinite Possibilities (talk) 23:25, 4 January 2022 (UTC)
3. I don't feel that these sections are something that this wiki should aim to do so much, as "WiKirby seeks to provide the most accurate, complete, and concise information about the Kirby series" (- WiKirby:About ) and I don't think that reception about video games are completely accurate, complete and/or concise.
   This doesn't mean that I am in complete opposition with them, because experience (and thus, reception) of games are essentially part of the games themselves, some inconveniences like not knowing about which sites are the most "professional" to take reception off can be solved "innerly" between editors by choosing some specific ones (like just building reception sections around just IGN, Nintendo Life and Polygon, to give an example; but also choosing some specific reviewers to evade polemic reviews like IGN's "7.8 too much water" about Pokémon ORAS and "5" about Star Fox 2) and that there are some points that couldn't be mentioned in article pages, like Star Allies' main Story Mode being perceived a lot as being ultra easy. Although I don't mean that I am in complete support either, as nor me nor every reader gets into WiKirby to see specifically the reception about the games, and choosing which specific reviewers opinion would be used to build said sections would be a chaos, so I am fine either way.
   In any case, I don't think that having some game pages with reception sections and other without them (as it is right now) is good; either all of them have reception sections, or nor of them has them, so I am against leaving the receptions that we have while prohibiting any new ones, if "Oppose" wins.
   Lastly, I do am in favor of including completely objective information like sales numbers (which could be included either at the end of the opening paragraph or in the game's infobox), and "whether the game meets some other objective(s) set out by the producer(s)" as Samwell mentioned. -Kirbeat (talk) 19:46, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

So, naturally, I cannot vote on my own proposal. However, I would like to give my own thoughts on things relating to it. Some have made the case that the voting choices lain out here are too all-encompassing, and that a middle ground solution where we only consider reception from dedicated professional review sites be considered. This sounds fine on paper, but I would like to point out that there have been several instances of so-called professional review sites (IGN being the perennial punching bag example) giving reduced scores for games based on things generally agreed to be silly or unimportant. As it turns out, it's not actually possible to objectively evaluate a game's quality. The closest you can get, I suspect, is to judge how well the game sells, whether or not it has value to the consumer (in whatever form that value takes), or whether the game meets some other objective(s) set out by the producer(s).

Because of this subjectivity, it is my opinion that leaving the reception section in a situation where only "professional" review sites are considered would be creating another awkward halfway house situation, where it could then be further debated what does and does not qualify as "professional". That's why I think it's preferable to either have reception sections that include things like user aggregate data and overall public perception, or to just decide that WiKirby does not have an obligation to cover this aspect of games at all. Considering the potential difficulties that would come with verifying such information, I personally lean toward us not doing reception sections. --Samwell (talk) 17:25, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Where in the policies does this proposal belong? WiKirby:General content policy? ⁠–⁠Wiz (talk · edits) 20:04, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

That would probably be the best place to put it. I was initially thinking about putting a note on it in the layout policy, but that page generally does not talk about what shouldn't be in articles. --Samwell (talk) 20:11, 15 January 2022 (UTC)