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WiKirby talk:Quality Standards (old)

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Revision as of 03:08, 1 February 2012 by T.c.w7468 (talk | contribs) (→‎Official Names: proposal edits.)
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Gender Pronouns

Figured this would be the place to put this. When an article has to refer to the player using a pronoun, should "he or she" or "they" be used? Both are correct, but a standard would be nice. Some "they"s have recently been changed to "he or she" on here, whereas at the MarioWiki for instance, "they" is generally used.--Vellidragon 20:17, 26 September 2010 (CDT)

"They" is wrong, actually. All the grammar books have said "they" is wrong. Pronouns do not mingle in grammar world. "They" is a common trap people fall in when it comes to pronouns. We have to use he/she, he or she, or s/he. And in the MarioWiki, he/she is generally used. I'm changing all "they"s into "he or she". I'm sorry, but that's the correct way. AphelocomaMario.pngAphelocomaマリオ File:BirdonSuperstarUltra.gif 20:25, 26 September 2010 (CDT)
That's actually not quite correct. While certain grammar books reject "they" as the singular pronoun, that doesn't necessarily make it "incorrect"; it has been use since the 15th century, and continues to be widely used and generally accepted as a viable alternative to "he or she". The fact to take into consideration here is that language evolves - just because a word had not originally been used in a certain way, that doesn't mean using it in that way is incorrect if it has come to be used in that sense over time; it's a matter of what's accepted. As for the MarioWiki, all the "he/she"s are being changed into "they" lately.--Vellidragon 20:38, 26 September 2010 (CDT)
It's still not to be used in formal writing. Every single grammar book said that don't fall into the "they" trap and teachers around are probably even teaching students not to use that.
If possible, change "player" to "players" to avoid this confustion.

MISSILE BABY LUIGI 20:45, 26 September 2010 (CDT)

I highly doubt that "every single grammar book" would say that, especially after my research on the subject. Some people are just not willing to accept its usage for whatever reason. Still doesn't change that fact that it's a lot less "clunky" to use either, being only a single word as opposed to three. (Also, appendix on the subject of the MarioWiki: I just noticed it's in their style guide.)--Vellidragon 20:52, 26 September 2010 (CDT)
Because a true pronoun for a gender specific group does not exist, that's why some of us resort to "they". However, using logic, it's incorrect, because "they" is supposed to refer to a group of people while "he/she" refers to an unidentified person. It is hassle using he/she and it does tires readers, but "they" is not correct either, especially in formal writing. A solution is to change "player" to "players".

MISSILE BABY LUIGI 21:10, 26 September 2010 (CDT)

Using logic, "they" can refer to whatever it is commonly used for; as I said above, language evolves. By the same logic that would make a singular they incorrect, "thou" should also be used for 2nd person singular because "you" was originally a plural pronoun. Also check the "singular they" link in the section of the MarioWiki guidlines I linked.--Vellidragon 21:22, 26 September 2010 (CDT)
The problem is, spoken language evolves much faster than written. The singular "they" does not exist just about yet. According to the Heritage Dictionary, 80% of the people find the singular "they" unacceptable. Instead of relying on just internet resources, you should also research via books. All the books I've seen so far suggests using "he or she". Internet isn't always reliable. Besides, plenty of English teachers scorn the "singular they". The point is, to be safe, I think we should use "he or she". It's more formal than "they" and we want to be formal, right? AphelocomaMario.pngAphelocomaマリオ File:BirdonSuperstarUltra.gif 22:02, 29 September 2010 (CDT)
Would anyone oppose to naming this unidentified person? For example, {{CURRENTUSER}} can be set up to call a logged in editors name in the article. For example, an article could say "Vellidragon has to tilt the GBA to roll Kirby in Tilt-n-Tumble. lol Could be fun. Anyways, I gotta go out of town for a few days. But I'll be sure to check to see what you all want to do. Check the Sandbox, I just added the extension, my only complaint is the visible IP when logged out, but I'm looking to see if that can be changed to something else. Or we'd be able to make it a benefit of having an account, "Sign up to see your own name in articles!"Axiomist (talk) 22:33, 26 September 2010 (CDT)
Editors have a range of gender, so saying "Axiomist needs his or her GBA cable to play multiplayer" doesn't sound right. Unless we can rewrite it so we don't have to use pronouns. Or maybe we have some gender-changing stuff, but some people would like to remain anonymous. AphelocomaMario.pngAphelocomaマリオ File:BirdonSuperstarUltra.gif 22:02, 29 September 2010 (CDT)
Moydow and I are looking into it, What it will do is view my own personal preferences and when we use a template {{my}}, on my screen it would say "his" instead of "his or her" or "their". So logged in editors with a gender chosen will see 100% grammatically correct statements, and personalized. But no one would be able to see their settings. The battery of if and switch tags are going to cover all possibilities.
Update: He has it functioning. here So with {{me}} and that one will be for the possessive case of a pronoun, We could build statements like "the player must tap the player's DS with a stylus." No one but me will see my name and gender data, as we all see what our own preferences page set. Anons will see "the player" and we opted to avoid the pronoun altogether and use "the player's". From here, I think we'd have to work out all of the other scenarios in which we would need to build variables for, then implement it, rework the messagebox on the main page touting it, and share it with our NIWA pals to see if they'd like to use it. Axiomist (talk) 22:11, 29 September 2010 (CDT)
How about pronouns such as "he" or "she"? And "him and his"? How would that work? Feminine pronouns have "she" and "her", but masculine pronouns have "he", "him", and "his". AphelocomaMario.pngAphelocomaマリオ File:BirdonSuperstarUltra.gif 22:34, 29 September 2010 (CDT)

Willing

Is anyone willing to help implement the personalization feature? There may be cases in which we need to alter the template for a correct usage fit, so a text-replace job won't do at all. I'd also like to hear some thoughts on it. Personally, I think it's an incredibly great tool unique to MediaWiki and we'd be sillier to not take advantage of it. I'm going to get some input from the NIWA forums to have a larger sampling of opinions, but ultimately it's what 3.91.19.28 thinks that matters the most ;) Axiomist (talk) 23:50, 29 September 2010 (CDT)

It sounds kind of strange at first, but I think I'll get used to it. I'll experiment with it first. If you just give me the templates and where to place them, I will gladly help. If the template doesn't work on some spots, I'm pretty sure we can rewrite these spots to make it fit. I just hope people won't abuse the privilege (e.g. 3.91.19.28 SUCKSZ! HAhahaahaHA!1!1). I love innovations! AphelocomaMario.pngAphelocomaマリオ File:BirdonSuperstarUltra.gif 00:07, 30 September 2010 (CDT)
{{me}} produces the user's username: or "the player" when logged out. {{my}} is a bit more complex; it produces "his" for a male user, "her" for female, "the" for one who hasn't set their gender, and "the player's" for logged-out users. There'll likely be more to come. Moydow 00:14, 30 September 2010 (CDT)

Back to this

Anyhow, everyone I show the personalization tools to seems to like it, the thread in NIWA attests to it. So, although "they, their" may not be proper grammar by the toughest standards, the personalization templates marginalize it and offer 100% correct grammatical statements with "his" for logged-in users having male set in preferences, and "her" for females. Is this at all an acceptable compromise to you Missile Baby Luigi? Axiomist (talk) 14:04, 4 October 2010 (CDT)

Sounds fine. It's an excellent solution so we don't have this pronoun+antecedent argument. MISSILE BABY

LUIGI

Appearance Section

May I inquire why we don't use "Appearance" sections? I think that it is useful to know what someone looks like in both words and pictures, and it goes toward complete coverage of a topic. Also, it is used plenty on our wiki and others:

Other NIWA Wikis

--Triple D is awesome 09:36, 29 August 2011 (CDT)

The subject's appearance can usually be summed up in one paragraph or less (not even Dedede's "Physical Appearance" section is longer than a paragraph); this doesn't justify a seperate section, as it fits very well into the article introduction and/or the individual game sections. "Appearance" sections are also very misleading in that they imply that the appearance of the subjects never changes between games/other media (especially by having a picture in there, which will logically be from one specific game), which is very rarely true (summing up the changes the subject has gone through in there doesn't make sense either if we already have the individual game sections anyway to describe the changes in behaviour; it makes more sense to me to use these for appearance changes as well). The fact that some articles on WiKirby have them doesn't justify their existence (as far as I'm aware, the ones you linked are also very, very old); a lot of articles currently have a lot of things wrong with them mainly thanks to the complete lack of staff apart from myself and only very few contributors apart from that as well.
I'm not quite sure what the point is in pointing out articles with such sections on other NIWA Wikis; keep in mind that NIWA is not an organisation that enforces any particular rules or quality standards upon its members, so our standards are in no way related to those of other NIWA Wikis (not to mention the Mario Wiki's Mario and Bowser articles are rarely the best articles to use as a positive example; there's so much wrong with them that they even have under construction and rewrite templates by now).
We have also been through this before (can't be bothered at the moment to find the original discussion) and nobody supported "Appearance" sections; in accordance, tons of articles have been made since then that don't have them, and I'm going by the traits that the vast majority of articles exhibit for writing down the standards (also keep in mind that these have existed and been more or less followed before; it's just that nobody had bothered to adjust the Quality Standards page accordingly, so it was more of a "looking at how it's done in other articles" thing - which has probably caused some confusion about the Appearance sections in the past, actually, since, as you pointed out, some articles use these sections when they shouldn't).--Vellidragon 10:02, 29 August 2011 (CDT)

Official Names

I do understand that this is rather annoying and controversial topic to handle, but the presence of this problem is becoming more important as the wiki grows, and because of that, I have put a lot of thought into this issue for last several days (therefore, my standpoints in what I am about to write may be different than it was before, awhile ago). The problem is that it is very difficult to verify if many things have an official name, as the way I see it, I do not think Nintendo finds it necessary to assign official names to several names of enemies and items, since I would assume from their point of view, it is not necessary (as the majority of people who buy the game just play it and do not care what the name of a certain block is). As a wiki that is starting to enter the realm of several things that for some reason or another, do not have clearly defined official names, or have only filenames as official names, as noted by recent events, however, it becomes necessary to find a reasonable solution to a problem. (beware of wall of text! :O.)

Introduction aside, I think the general consensus here before is a policy that states that if there is an official name, then it needs to be used and verified as an official name from Nintendo, unless there is absolutely no way to find an official name. The problem with abiding strictly by this policy is that there is a large amount of created uncertainty and the inability to make relatively safe assumptions of names (such as the space in between CarryDee, and whether the Metal Blocks in other games are the same as the specifically-mentioned Metal Block in the Kirby Mass Attack game manual. Though I was in support of using file-names as official names in the past, I am currently wary of using them now, because even though Nintendo made them, it is something that is in the code and was probably not intended to be an official name ("Wgalbo" was an example of this), and was probably implemented for programming convenience. Technically, if we purely abide to such a strict official-name only policy, we would not even have certainty that a Waddle Doo in Kirby's Return to Dream Land is actually called a or the same as a Waddle Doo, since the gamefiles of the particular game only show the character as a "Doo", and for that one we have made the safe assumption that the character that looks like a Waddle Doo in Kirby's Return to Dream Land is simply called a "Waddle Doo".

I am not saying that we entirely loosen the wiki policy against speculation, I'm merely stating that strictly naming items only based off of names Nintendo creates, and aversion to any small amount of hypothesising probable naming by Nintendo will cause several problems and roadblocks to expansion of this wiki, and can even make our wiki look like it is based off of technicalities and not as a comfortable, friendly source of information as we would like the wiki to be. Therefore, I propose the following guidelines (subject to discussion and revision, but as a starting point)

  1. If an official name exists in apparent form (in a manual or in-game), that name will be used.
    1. If the same official name exists for different objects, a proper parenthetical will be added to the end of an article of that object (for instance Blue Bandanna Waddle Dee should be moved to Waddle Dee (character with blue bandanna).
  2. If an official name exists in Japanese and can be verified in Japanese (or another language for that matter), but not in English, the name will be used with a Japanese (or other) language template added to it.
  3. If two official names exist for the same item, the most recent common name should be used, with a reference in the article that there was another name, with proper redirects made. (so, Copy Pedestal should be moved to Copy Essence eventually, with a reference and a redirect of the previous name.
  4. If an object does not have an official name in a particular game, but an official name exists for an item which is effectively the same item in another game, that name should be used (for example, my Waddle Doo example, and potentially the Metal Block example)
    1. Official romanisations "into English" should be used if such romanisations were used for similar enemies in the past.
  5. If only a filename can be found:
    1. If the filename matches reasonably the Japanese official name, it will count as the official romanisation, with proper notices on the article.
    2. If the filename cannot be verified against the Japanese official name, but it is reasonable as a name, it will be used, with proper notices in the article.
    3. If the filename appears to consist of of a space beyond a reasonable doubt, and does not have an apparent Japanese official name, it will be used as two words, with proper notices in the article (this conflicts with the resolution that we had here, but I found this to be necessary). These should have proper notices in the article.
    4. If a term in the filename tends to correspond to an official name like the string "Dee" corresponds to "Waddle Dee" and the character appears to be a variation of the object referenced in the term, then the string in question in the filename should be replaced by the correspondent name, with "reasonable spaces" inserted where necessary. (This may or may not apply to the Dee characters, because it needs to be discerned whether the Dees are actually variations with Waddle Dees, especially the "Carry Dee"). These should have proper notices in the article.
  6. If a clear correlation in the naming conventions between an official name can be drawn to a character in question and a name can be drawn beyond a reasonable doubt, then the name can be used (so for example "Water Galbo" can be used because it is correlated with Water Galboros, a character with an official name, with a proper explanation in the article.

Note that many of these rules rely on determining something "beyond a reasonable doubt", meaning that we have to reasonably deduce Nintendo's intentions for what would be an official name, but not beyond a point where it is obviously speculation. My summarised point here is that WiKirby must find a balance where it can provide information in a comfortable and readable manner in situations where the official name is uncertain. Again, this proposal is not perfect, I just came up with it off the top of my head, mainly, and I hope we can come up with a consensus. I apologise if I annoyed anyone with this subject (and the length of this post), but it seemed necessary to bring up. T.c.w7468 17:42, 29 January 2012 (CST)

1st round of edits to the proposal marked in red. T.c.w7468 21:08, 31 January 2012 (CST)