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)