SmashWiki talk:SmashWiki is not official

I see this as a very necessary and very well-written policy statement. I would like to see it become one of the wiki's official policies. {My name is Miles, and I approve this message.} 19:46, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Maybe what I had in mind before writing this is better off not being said. CAFINATOR ^Indeed 22:56, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

hmm

If this wiki isn't official... then is there a smash-bros related wiki that is official?Lucas-IV- Paper Tosser 09:39, 9 June 2011 (EDT)

No.--Wolf rulez! Star Fox 09:43, 9 June 2011 (EDT)

For a wiki to be considered "official", it would have to be run by and/or owned by the company that owns the content. One case I know of is the Team Fortress Wiki, which was originally independent before being bought by Valve (TF's company) and is now the official wiki of the series. Nintendo does not own any wikis that I know of, so there are no official wikis for any Nintendo stuff. Toomai Glittershine Le Grand Fromage 10:48, 9 June 2011 (EDT)

Rewrite

I request permission to re-write some parts of this policy. It does not seem to be very coherant, and some parts are confusing. For example, the quote "If the community were to eventually prove that Brawl is a broken game (to use a hypothetical example), and all Brawl play cease in favour of Melee competitions, then that content is what the wiki would cover, whether Nintendo endorses it or not. " is not very relavent. It implies that if some sort of proof existed, we would no longer cover Brawl info at all, when that is not the case. Simply stating that Melee competitions play a large role in the Smash Bros. community should be enough to state why we cover Melee competitive scene, as well as Brawl's. There are some other parts that seem irrelevant to what the article is trying to say, such as "However, to someone not versed in martial arts, the word "ukemi" is meaningless.". Mr. Anontalk 22:56, 9 October 2011 (EDT)

I agree that the part about Brawl being a broken game should be reworded or remove. However, I see no problem with the Ukemi/Tech part. Omega Tyrant 23:09, 9 October 2011 (EDT)

The problem with saying "Ukemi is meaningless to many" is that in that specific example, it has nothing to do with why the article isn't called "Ukemi". In fact, the page even goes on to say "The word tech is also meaningless, but tech is used more often". If that is the case, the page should just say "we call the page 'tech' because 'tech' is used more often". Mr. Anontalk 23:46, 9 October 2011 (EDT)

Transplanted comments

NOTE: This section's comments have been moved from their original location, "User talk:Miles of SmashWiki/SW:OFFICIAL rewrite".

Comments welcomed. If there are no major objections, I would like to implement this in place of the current policy in the near future. Miles (talk) 22:04, 2 August 2015 (EDT)

SmashWiki is in no way directly related to, affiliated with, or controlled by Nintendo or Nintendo of America, or any game developer whose content is discussed therein (these parties will be collectively referred to as "Nintendo" for the remainder of this document), except through legal injunction (of which there have been none) or through showing a copyright violation that transcends fair use. SmashWiki is a branch of NIWA and as such, is held accountable only to the standards and practices set by NIWA, as well as any additional standards and practices agreed upon by the users.

How about that? More official. ...pun not intended.Serpent King (talk) 22:11, 2 August 2015 (EDT)

"The only way in which Nintendo could directly control the content of this wiki..." It's that that's throwing me off. Serpent King (talk) 22:14, 2 August 2015 (EDT)

Eh, that's a carryover from the old one and I don't think it's a particular problem phrasing-wise. Miles (talk) 22:20, 2 August 2015 (EDT)

Lol really? I didn't even reference it. Serpent King (talk) 22:23, 2 August 2015 (EDT)

I mean this is mostly an updated and edited version of the existing SW:OFFICIAL. I left parts I didn't think needed reworking as they were. Miles (talk) 22:33, 2 August 2015 (EDT)

I think this rewrite will be useful. Nyargleblargle (Talk) 16:49, 3 August 2015 (EDT)

Okay so paragraphs 1 and 2 seem okay and are kind of necessary updates to the current policy. I don't really know about the rest though; it just looks like moving cheese to me right now, with not much if any improvement. I'll give it another re-read later. Toomai Glittershine The Dispenser 22:51, 2 August 2015 (EDT)

Maybe the rules for PM should be laid out here. Serpent King (talk) 16:43, 3 August 2015 (EDT)

That's not a bad idea... but admittedly I am worried about putting a bit too much of my own opinion on the subject into the policy. As I said in the forum debate a while back, I continue to oppose covering it at all outside of the Project M page itself and tourney/smasher pages. Given the massive downturn in PM's prominence, I am all too tempted to try to push us back to that setup. Miles (talk) 18:06, 3 August 2015 (EDT)

Bump. Barring any major opposition I really want to get this in place. Miles (talk) 13:10, 5 August 2015 (EDT)

The only nitpick I have is the following phrase:

“

Prima Games guides or other fansites

”

Since Prima Games isn't a fansite, could we remove the word "other"? Nyargleblargle (Talk) 13:16, 5 August 2015 (EDT)

I guess the phrasing of that was ambiguous; the intended meaning was "other fansites besides SmashWiki", since we are also a fansite. Miles (talk) 13:35, 5 August 2015 (EDT)

What about move names that are official in other games

Specifically Kirby's Vulcan Jab among others? Is this allowed? Serpent King (talk) 20:51, 10 August 2015 (EDT)

Or Link's "Jump Attack" (SSB4 only)? Serpent King (talk) 20:54, 10 August 2015 (EDT)

Has to come from a Smash source. Miles (talk) 21:01, 10 August 2015 (EDT)

Prioritizing Official Names

After the debate surrounding the official names of the Heros, what is preventing us from using the official names to eradicate any chance of debate? Also the Poltergust article has been the subject of debate as well and I think revisions to this policy can prevent that. I feel like this policy has become less of a real policy to follow and more of a cheap bullet point when arguing why the name you want should be the name of the article. I can't imagine I'm the only one that thinks that we aren't prioritizing official names, but I'm open to persuasion. Up to date and official names should always be the name of the article, unless, as stated in the article, another name is almost always used in place of the official names, such as tech. But making the claim that we should use Poltergust because "no one calls it Poltergust G-00", or that we should keep Beast Ganon because "Ganon, the Demon King is too long", and then referring to this policy is just not a strong argument. KungFuLakitu, Spiny Overlord 15:05, July 30, 2019 (EDT)

It's not a cheap bullet point; unlike other NIWA wikis, the SmashWiki has a major focus on the fans and community, and we take that into consideration when deciding on page names. Characters, moves, stages, etc. are referred to by what they're actually called, but there are other times when a fan name has much more usage than an official term (see "tech" instead of "ukemi"). We actually had a discussion on this in the Discord server earlier, and I would like to address it before someone else does: the names for Hero given in the presentation were not presented as official names. Aidan, the Rurouni 15:27, July 30, 2019 (EDT)

Special move names

I've brought this up a couple times, but nothing's really been done about it. So I'm bringing it here.

Currently, there are two different move proposals—one for Poltergust G-00 and one for Ganon, The Demon King—to have those pages moved to a more generic term to encompass the whole of the move. I think that this is a terrible idea, and moreover think that special moves should be an exception to "SmashWiki is not official" (the suggestion for which having created proposals to move both Mega Evolution pages to more proper terms pop up), primarily because:

1. "SmashWiki is not official" by no means is the same as "SmashWiki should refrain from using official terms". That has never been the case, and that will never be the case; we are an encyclopedia of information for the general public that occasionally covers fan terminology (teching, wavedashing, moonwalking, all that jazz). People keep bringing up "SmashWiki is not official" as a point to move pages to shorthand terms, when that's entirely not the purpose of the rule.
2. There already is an exception to "SmashWiki is not official": "In the absence of either an official name or a highly recognized fan term, such as most characters' normal moves, it is preferable to leave a name section blank than to "invent" a name for an unnamed move such as Mario's down smash. Non-official sources for such things such as Prima Games guides or other fansites are unacceptable, and should be removed on sight." Couple this with the fact that we flat out don't give a move's page a name until what the name actually is is confirmed (seen with Final Smashes for characters like Duck Hunt, Dark Pit, and, most recently, Steve), and it makes it painstakingly clear that we already don't take fanmade names for things like this.

It's time this got settled once and for all. Aidan, the Spooky Rurouni 13:44, October 29, 2020 (EDT)

It would definitely be useful to clarify that there are situations in which using official names is the better cause of action. One example of this which we have ALWAYS been consistent on is menu section names, and yet I'm still having to clean up people referring to Move List items as "skill previews" (which is particularly unusual because that term is only really applied to smash by other Wiki users, and not the community as a whole).

I actually attempted to start a discussion for sorting out the Mega Evolution articles on general proposals, but there was virtually no response to that... Alex the Weeb 14:18, October 29, 2020 (EDT)

I think the confusion for "skill preview" lies in The Spriters Resource, since they call it that; I agree that it shouldn't really be a wiki-wide term, though I'm not against it being used in, say, filenames. Aidan, the Spooky Rurouni 14:41, October 29, 2020 (EDT)

Bumping this. Aidan, the Thankful Rurouni 10:54, November 6, 2020 (EST)

I wholeheartedly agree to this. Black Vulpine of the 🦊Furry Nation🐺. Furries make the internets go! :3 14:55, November 6, 2020 (EST)

I realize that this isn't what this proposal is necessarily for, but I 100% oppose the mega evolution merge...and by extension this proposal I guess. The names and scope of articles is to be settled on a case by case basis, there is no reason to change that. Serpent  King 15:25, November 6, 2020 (EST)

Disregarding the Mega Evolution part (whether or not those can be merged or kept separate can be figured out outside of this discussion), if we're going with the mentality of "moves shouldn't be named unless they have a name", then I fail to see how that doesn't apply to this. Aidan, the Thankful Rurouni 16:15, November 6, 2020 (EST)

How about this compromise: this proposal is made official to prevent Ganon and Luigi's final smashes from being renamed, but the Mega Evolution pages are made an exception due to their vastly different abilities and due to said characters being from the same series? 72.219.72.215 16:17, November 6, 2020 (EST)

The two could also be renamed to "Mega Evolution (Lucario)" and "Mega Evolution (Charizard)", if separation wanted to truly be kept while still matching the official names, but, given how we already have Final Smashes that share a name with different mechanics on one page already, I don't see why they should necessarily be separated, but I'm not going to push for it if no one else wants it. Aidan, the Thankful Rurouni 16:45, November 6, 2020 (EST)

We already have a proposal for clone final smash pages like Critical Hit. To add on my comment, while I did already state it on the General Proposals, I would just stick with the official names for the mega evolution forms of Lucario and Charizard. S3AHAWK The Thankful One 17:10, November 6, 2020 (EST)

I think there's some conflation of points here.

1. The purpose of using article titles like "New Character's Final Smash" is because, in most cases, we have literally zero to work with. The first move we had to do this for was Peach Blossom, and we had literally no choice but to use an "empty" title because there was no precedent in the Mario series to suggest a name from. Compare something like The Mighty Jinjonator, for which it was extremely easy to guess the name for, and if we didn't have the rule against it, I think we would have used it initially.
2. The precedent of Peach Blossom is the only reason we do empty titles for special moves at all, even in the aforementioned obvious cases. I do however think it's a better habit than inventing names from nothing, because we don't want to be a source of potentially-later-revealed-as-misinformation.
3. I do not think there is anything inherently wrong with the idea of having a more "general" name for moves like the Poltergust or Ganon (for which there are minimal if any practical differences, only visual ones). In fact, I wouldn't be opposed to moving the Hero's Bow page to "Bow (Link)", given how it has a different name in almost every game but behaves pretty much the same in all of them.
4. You mentioned how Zero Laser shares a page with Zero Laser, and I think that needs to stop because they're too different mechanically. Roy's is fine, it's not different enough (in the sense it could be a custom move in SSB4).

Also, the explicit note about players' guides character move names was put in on a single admin's opinion many years ago despite the protests of many other users including myself, and has over the years been degraded by so much proof to the contrary that it really needs to go. (The part about inventing names from nothing can obviously stay.)

So I suppose in general, I oppose making an exception for this. Toomai Glittershine The Quintonic 17:25, November 6, 2020 (EST)

1. Is it not directly against the fact that SmashWiki isn't speculative to put a page under a temporary name before confirmation? The only exceptions to this that I can immediately think of off the top of my head are Yggdrasil's Altar and Spiral Mountain, both of which were named such to start with because of their Japanese names, which lined up with the English names in the respective games' translations, but even those specifically had a thing saying the name was based on the Japanese name, not an official one.
2. I agree, especially since we're, essentially, the primary Smash Bros. wiki.
3. I can see a case for a merging of all the "Bow" pages to be made, especially given how (as you mentioned) each of them is essentially the same, but I think that, given that most new people would come on here to look for the most recent Smash Bros. game's information, they'd know it under that name instead of the old one—older fans will know the older names, sure, but if it all directs to the same place, then it shouldn't really matter.
4. I would hardly put the two Critical Hits' differences on the same level as a custom move, given the fact that it's a completely different animation—something that can also be said for the two Zero Lasers. To put Roy's Critical Hit on the same level as a custom move would be putting it on the same level as Young Link's Fire Arrows, the Wolf Flash, and PK Freeze, which are, in essence, the same move as their original counterparts, but ever so slightly different, while Roy's Critical Hit has a completely different animation, despite being under the same name; it does, however, achieve the same purpose as the other one (even if severely underpowered), just like the Zero Laser.

I remember you saying that you've been pushing for the guidebook move names to be used, which, I would like to clarify, is not the point of this proposal (and is actually something I support). And I agree, the "inventing names from nothing" should stay. Aidan, the Thankful Rurouni 19:24, November 6, 2020 (EST)

The Peach Blossom case happened in 2007, before SW:NOT existed. So the fact that we currently have a policy that we can't use logical/speculatory names may just be another result of that precedent.

If redirecting to the newest page doesn't matter, then surely redirecting to the general-est page doesn't matter either. In fact I would argue general-est is better in that sense because it's better future-proofed. (Not by much, since we can't predict when a well-established name suddenly changes, but it's something.)

Toomai Glittershine The Yellow 19:37, November 6, 2020 (EST)

There appears to be some misinformation about the Mega Evolution proposal, so I'd like to clarify that. The current proposal is not a merge proposal, but a move proposal, which is why the respective articles have the move template on them. The articles would remain separate, but be named "Mega Evolution (Lucario)" and "Mega Evolution (Charizard)", as they appear on their respective trophies. The reason for this is because we don't name final smash articles simply after the characters that appear in them, but rather by what the final smash itself is called. Alex the Weeb 03:39, November 7, 2020 (EST)

I might've been the one who supported renaming the mega evolution pages, and I still support renaming them, so thanks for pointing that out. I only suggested making them an exception to the official name rule because there was opposition towards the idea; however, as the main oppositions believed they were being merged and not renamed, as well as looking at the general proposal that has 3 support votes so far, yes, I believe that they should be renamed. About Zero Laser and Critical Hit, those are significantly different from the differing characters (Roy's I believe is actually based on one of his unique attack animations, while Marth's is just a generic attack used by any swordfighter in his game, so I'm not understanding the stigma that it could be a custom special). They should be split. 72.219.72.215 15:39, November 16, 2020 (EST)

I would argue that, while SmashWiki may not be official, putting the use of official terminology first and foremost if possible is conducive to its agenda on the whole. Here's the way I look at official vs. unofficial:

SmashWiki is, above all, supposed to be helpful and informative. Informing curious fans about a game should, first and foremost, entail telling them about what the game is, and not how other fans interpret what it is. If there's an official term for an element of interest, whether it be a move, game, character, etc., that official term should be the page name, with most certainly fewer exceptions than there are at present. If there's a more commonly used fan name, that's why we have redirects and opening paragraphs informing the curious fan of the fact that the term they were looking for is merely a fan-made term; the page name and display title should both still use the official title. But, in situations like that of rage, where there is absolutely no official term and no-one uses anything different, it is perfectly acceptable to use the universal fan terminology, so long as it's made clear that it's fan terminology, of course. And finally, in instances where the official title is rarely used or obscure, a redirect or disambiguation template/page is in order. In a perfect world, once they step into SmashWiki, a curious fan doesn't even consider for a second that the fan-made term they searched for is official, or vice-versa.

I've been waiting L.O.G. knows how long for an opportunity to post that speech, and none of my peers have found any logical fallacies with it. The Wiki doesn't always have to be official. But in the same way Wikipedia only gets its info from reliable sources, the most help we can do is to point our readers to where the games came from. Sincerely, Samuel the Banjo-Kazooie Boss. 16:29, November 16, 2020 (EST)

Uh, and for names that are only official in other languages, the English fan term is also acceptable, as long as the complication is, again, made completely clear. Sincerely, Samuel the Banjo-Kazooie Boss. 16:34, November 16, 2020 (EST)

Unofficial Lingo

This policy has ruled that official terms should be used unless a fan-made term has clearly overtaken it in popularity. There is no clearly defined protocol for a fan-made term that has significant traction, but not quite enough to overtake the official term. There is seemingly an unwritten rule that these terms are placed next to the official term at the start of an article in parentheses, bolded, and properly defined if there is a history behind the term. An example are the special move pages e.g. Neutral Special also has Neutral B. I propose adding an addendum that explains using unofficial lingo within the confines of the appropriate articles is acceptable, and should be placed in parentheses and bolded, defining them if necessary.The Other Jared (talk) 00:01, December 29, 2023 (EST)