WiKirby:Proposals/Withdrawn Archive

The following proposals have been withdrawn by the original proposer within three days of proposing them, and thus are not considered failed, but are not passed either:

Proposals

One-time purge of Good status from articles. (August 29th, 2022 - September 12th, 2022)

Greetings, friends. I've been going around the wiki adding information about Character Treat appearances to pages that needed them. In the process, however, I've noticed that a lot of articles that are marked as "Good" seem to be missing large chunks of info. I've done what I can to fix things up, but it's quite clear that we've been too liberal with the icon in a lot of places. As such, I would like to propose the following simple one-time action. We remove the Good icon from every article (not file) that has it, and then we go and check every such article to see if it actually qualifies as Good or not before reassigning the icon.

Just to be clear, this is not a proposal seeking to do away with the Good icon or change how it is used. I just think an action like this would be useful for us and serve as an incentive to double check all of our frontline content to make sure it is actually as good as we claim it to be. What do you all say? --Samwell (talk) 00:51, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Support

1. I comprehend the reason for readding the badge to worthy articles instead of removing it from unworthy ones is to incentivize editors to participate in reviewing articles as if they had to do it for the first time. Having a badge or not does not hinder reading the articles in any way, it will impact them only positively in the long run, and no editor is compelled to do extra work if they don't want to. ⁠–⁠Wiz (talk · edits) 02:03, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
2. I think this will be a good way to look over all of our articles to make sure their quality is sufficient. I remember back when I first started editing the wiki, even though I wasn't personally staff just yet, I swept a lot of Good articles under the rug because I thought they were fine and dandy. Lately I've realized that lots of them are flawed and are simply hiding under that badge. I get that it would be a lot of work, and that we could simply make a list of these flawed Good pages without removing all of the badges. But, no one will be forced to work on the project, and well, it doesn't matter too much either way whether we remove the icons or not, but this would make it clear that this is something to be taken seriously, and allow us to formally decide what is good and what is not. There is the concern of having to do this all over again in the future, but I really don't see that happening any time soon. Our standards are pretty solid these days. The only way I see this happening again is if an entirely different staff team were running the wiki in the future, which is just out of our control. We shouldn't try to control it, but what we can do is set all this down in the hopes that maybe it will sturdy footing for the future. Probably no one back in 2010 thought that this wiki would have become such a dedicated project, with such a dedicated staff team, community, and set of solid guidelines, especially with how things seemed to be going after Axiomist's passing. They had their own rules then, but over time they naturally changed. The idea now is to ensure that articles are of our set standards, since through the years we've developed something sturdy. Back when the badge was first implemented, the standards were probably still all over the place. If some new staff team comes along after all of us and decides things need to be completely different, then that's just how it'll have to be. They might even come along and decide to scrap the Good badge entirely. Also, the issue isn't really that we won't be able to keep track of new information being added to pages. We've been pretty good with that these days. The thing is that it wasn't that way earlier on, meaning a lot of information slipped through the cracks, probably because things weren't as strict back then, which is understandable.
   At least personally, I want to see this wiki strive to be at its prime. It concerns me that many of these older pages have been called Good, but most members of this current staff team haven't much had the authority to mark them themselves.
   I think, if our goal really is to strive to be the best resource for Kirby information on the internet, then we need to make the effort to ensure we're keeping our word, even if that means doing all this extra work. -- Jellytost♡ (talk) 20:26, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Oppose

Neutral

1. Neutral. I think that doing so for every page (or at least the related pages) would be a lot of effort just to re-add them later on, unless I'm missing something and that's just able to be done easily. Either way, I don't mind. Ultimate Kirb (talk) 00:58, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
2. Agree with the cause, not the means. I think it is more work to remove and re-add the template as opposed to simply creating a list with all pages currently and to remove items from said list. I'd be happy to make it myself. I would also, perhaps, encourage the consideration of changing good guidelines during this period of time if any major changes are to be made, that way there is not a second wave of management for good. While I personally deeply do not like the good system as is, I think that these two points should be addressed instead of the current suggestion for editing. Trig - 01:38, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
3. I am neutral because I feel similarly to Trig: agree with the cause, not the means. I just feel it would be simpler to list the current articles marked as Good and then have some sort of checklist of whether or not they've been reviewed by a Patroller+ to keep their Good status. I believe many are leftover from when the Good status was new and it was given without too much thought; we had a similar issue with files a while ago if I remember correctly. I also wonder maybe if the Good system needs an overhaul, but that's another topic and I haven't thought too hard about it; point is, if we have so many pages marked Good that shouldn't have been marked Good, I feel this signals that there is something wrong with the current system. - Gigi (talk • edits) 12:24, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
4. I agree with Trig and Gigi. Listing the current good pages and then manually removing the good badge from pages on that list that don't meet standards seems like it would be better. ---PinkYoshiFan 15:29, 29 August 2022 (UTC)
5. I agree with all those above. Therealtheo123 (talk) 19:04, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

To address Ultimate Kirb's concern, this action would be relatively simple for me to perform. All I have to do is do a text replace for articles to remove the Good icon. Mind you, it will be a task to ensure that articles are good before reassigning them, but I think it's one worth doing to ensure the wiki is high quality, and I don't mind doing the brunt of the work if needed. --Samwell (talk) 01:00, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

So, to those who voted neutral on the grounds that it would be "too much work" to go through with this proposal and would rather have a checklist: I understand your concern, but I think you should look at it this way. If we simply added a list of pages to check on Project Clean-Up, I get the feeling that it would just end up becoming another thing to add to the bucket list of "things to do eventually". My concern is that there are a lot of pages right now that have the Good icon but aren't warranted one. I don't think it's good form to let the "Good" badge remain on such a page when it hasn't been checked properly. That's why I am proposing to do it this way, so that when an editor sees that icon going forward, they know for sure that the page has been properly reviewed for quality. Not having the icon does not necessarily mean the page is bad; just that it has not been completely reviewed. Naturally it will still be necessary to have a list of all the pages to review and check them off when we are done, but I think this extra step will help add the necessary weight to the icon. We are essentially starting from scratch, and deciding on a case-by-case basis which articles are truly deserving of "Good" status. Trying to do it the other way around I think would result in unnecessary inertia in the checking process.

Put simply, I think we should do it this way so that the Good badge can carry the meaning it is meant to right away, rather than waiting until all the articles have been checked. --Samwell (talk) 18:10, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

My issue with this approach is that there are over 3,000 pages right now marked as Good. From taking a quick look, most of them appear to follow our Good standards, and so for these taking away the badge, only to come later and go "ok, nothing to do here, making Good" feels like a waste of time. Not to mention that removing all Good badges would make it so that the pages currently not marked as Good would also mix into the ones that are already Good, adding even more work than just checking the currently marked Good pages. We would need to check every single article in the wiki instead.

I still stand by the belief that instead we should focus on why these pages were marked as Good when they shouldn't have. Are the Good guidelines not as clear? Should the handling of Good badges be more supervised by staff? Before we do something like this, we need to understand why this happened in the first place. Without it, I fear we could do this, then in a year or so have to do again. I mean, if we trust staff to handle these badges, then why are so many Good pages not really fit for the Good status when only staff can give them? And how can we know for sure that it won't happen again?

Moreover, I feel if we do this... Then I guess we will have to do this every time a new game releases? Or every time we have a new event? An example: Fly! Kirby of the Stars has been marked Good, but it recently was featured in the Music Fest, and while info about it was added, it's still missing an audio file, and that's simply because no one got to it yet. We don't have this decided either, but what happens to pages that get outdated due to a new game, event, or anything? If we're worried about users browsing a page, finding the Good badge, and realizing that the page actually isn't "Good", we also need to address this.

All these paragraphs to say that I believe other issues are at play here. I'm not confident in supporting this proposal until we are positive something like this won't ever happen again. - Gigi (talk • edits) 19:31, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

I don't think it is too much work, but that your method to make the change is more work than necessary. I think we have plenty of people happy to shuck through a large list, and that it would be a project constantly being worked on. That said, I honestly do not believe this is a large enough issue to warrant concern about not being done ASAP. Good status is useful more for editors--not necessarily readers. I don't believe that inaccurately assigned good pages are inherently "bad", either. They weren't maliciously added and it does not necessarily mean that they aren't without a decent quality. To go back through and undo a majority of pages that ARE genuinely correctly attributed with good and that ARE of sufficient quality would, in my opinion, be more work to properly manage and would decrease any incentive to actually go back through and re-add good to pages. Adding is always more difficult than removing, not in a complain-y way but in a literal logistical fashion way. I think most people DO want to see this take off, but your proposed method is simply not going to be the quickest result. Trig - 19:34, 29 August 2022 (UTC)

Formally disbar the use of any wiki-based source for files that is not itself sourced (August 5th, 2022 - August 6th, 2022)

Greetings. So, I've been putting in some effort recently to try and find sources for the items in the Files lacking sources category, and I think we've collectively done a good job narrowing things down. I will remind everyone that it is the goal to have zero unsourced things on the wiki at the end of the year, so anything left over will be deleted or otherwise shelved as appropriate when that time comes. While doing my work earlier today, I decided to take a hop over to PidgiWiki, which has historically been used as a source for files on WiKirby. When I got there, however, I noticed that they'd recently updated their galleries to include several unsourced images from our own category, and did not specify that they'd gotten it from there, or anywhere. I further noticed that files on PidgiWiki are not sourced in general.

As such, to avoid the possibility of breaking the space-time continuum by using something retrieved from us as a source for that very same thing (a "circular source"), and as a broader rule due to the nature of wiki file uploading in general, I propose that we add a hard rule to the file sourcing policy that any wiki-based source for a file must be itself sourced, or it may not be used. This will also apply retroactively to anything we've sourced to PidgiWiki or another such wiki in the past, and solidify the rule against using images from the Kirby FANDOM (since they almost never source anything). That is the extent of this proposal. --Samwell (talk) 01:43, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Support

1. Support. Not much to say, but I have had my doubts about the legitimacy of unsourced files from other wikis, so this makes sense to me. StarPunch (talk) 01:53, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
2. support, makes sense to me Robothing (talk) 1:55, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
3. I don't know what to say, it just makes sense and I support it. --Basic Person (talk/contribs) 03:18, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
4. During my time on the Super Mario Wiki, I remember being part of a similar issue regarding wiki names ending up on the English version of the Super Mario Bros. Encyclopedia that was similarly dealt with proposal, but that's besides the point. Files without sources or pages without references might not initially sound like a big deal...but when you don't have an easy way of figuring out where exactly you got the info from and by extension, don't know whether such a statement is true or not, then that's crossing the hopefully figurative line. Per proposal. – Owencrazyboy17 (talk) 05:10, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Why would we draw our line at wikis? Kirby's Rainbow Resort (last updated before WiKirby was incepted) also doesn't source their files, no less no more legitimate to use as a source than Kirby Wiki in my opinion. Then review sites like NintendoLife, they also don't list their sources, they are not the origin of the files they reposted. I hope it's clear where this is going. These copyright/sourcing related policies (some of them adopted without a proposal - like deletion of files at the end of 2022) are severely detrimental to a wiki that just got off the ground with filling its galleries. If these new policies were to only affect files uploaded from now on then sure, but we're going to lose even more old files (and probably sooner than the end of the year) and otherwise spend a lot of free time trying to salvage whatever we can from these harmful new policies. I know this vote won't change anything, but I'm allowed to state my opinion. ⁠–⁠Wiz (talk · edits) 05:05, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Neutral

1. I'm hesitant to lean either way. Honestly, yes, I agree that PidgiWiki in specific should not be a listed source because they have a systemic issue of taking images from other places and not sourcing it. That said, I am not sure going after all wikis makes the most sense either. You need to remember, this site is one of the single most extreme cases of sourcing across not only wikis but NIWA too. Functionally? You will be ultimately cutting a very large portion of sources, many of which probably DO have known sources but just are not appropriately listed because they don't use a template similar to our aboutfile. If the rampant citation of sources was a bigger deal for something like MarioWiki, would they not have stressed their users to do the same we have? It also raises the concern of how far we would go for sources. If IGN hosts a screenshot of a game, would we feel its not content enough to go to the press site or another news source it was taken from? If an anonymous user uploads to The Cover Project, can we not feel satisfied to just list the website as opposed to the uploader as the origin of the image? Avoiding circular sourcing is inherently a good goal to strive for, but I honestly don't think that axing all wikis is an appropriate measure, simply because the site does not adhere to our own personal site standards. I would encourage a secondary proposal or alternative voting option for strictly blocking PidgiWiki as a source, as opposed to all wikis as a whole. Trig Jegman - 05:16, 5 August 2022 (UTC)
2. I agree with Trig. This should really be a proposal to block PidgiWiki (or just any site known to result in circular sourcing in general) from being sources. And who says that non-wiki sites can't result in circular sourcing? ---PinkYoshiFan 19:50, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

I just want to clear up what could potentially become a circular source: basically any site where anyone can upload any image? Because for example, we list many images' sources as Kirby's Rainbow Resort, which is a fansite that got these images from somewhere and uploaded them there, but it's not like a wiki where anyone can upload any image, so I imagine sites like that would still be fine to source. Is that correct? - Gigi (talk • edits) 01:59, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, this proposal does not target KRR, because there's no chance that anything there was retrieved from us, and it's not a place where anyone can upload images into the archive. It also generally does not target things like review sites or databases like MobyGames. For now at least, this only concerns other wikis. --Samwell (talk) 02:01, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

I want to point out that fair use, apart from attribution, requires files to be at low resolution. Hosting a sourced 2000x2000px image of Kirby is just as infringing as hosting an unsourced one. If this relatively obscure wiki were to be hit with a DMCA, both sourced and unsourced files would have to go. ⁠–⁠Wiz (talk · edits) 05:22, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

Thing is, if Nintendo or HAL wanted to hit us with a DMCA, I don't think it would matter much regardless of our sourcing or file sizes, they would just do it. The fact that they still haven't after all this time suggests that they see no reason to. This proposal isn't really an attempt to cater to that idea specifically, it's more of an attempt to ensure that we always know where our files are coming from, and to serve as an example of proper documentation to other wikis.

Also, in reference to Trig's vote, I thought to generalize this rule because I didn't want to single out PidgiWiki specifically, and wanted to address the underlying reason behind why we might not want to use their images as a source. It seems hypocritical to target them specifically while using images from other wikis that may also be unsourced. That said, we can discuss alternative ideas and edge case scenarios. --Samwell (talk) 17:38, 5 August 2022 (UTC)

I would like to point out that this would affect a lot of images. There are several affiliate banners that would be considered unsourced under this proposal (which would mean deletion in 5 months if that goes through), and these three logos in particular all fall under this proposal and are all used in mainspace templates. ---PinkYoshiFan 19:50, 5 August 2022 (UTC)