SmashWiki:Notability

This page documents an official SmashWiki policy, a widely accepted standard that all users should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. If in doubt, consider discussing changes on the talk page.

Notability is a quality defined, for the purposes of this Wiki, as any article pertaining to the competitive community of the Super Smash Bros. series in a significant way. This includes but is not limited to community members, crews, teams, organizations, tournaments, power rankings and circuits.

Notable community members

Community members include people such as players, tournament organizers, modders, and content creators. They may be considered "notable" if they fall under any of the following criteria:

• Have participated in or run offline tournaments that use standard tournament rules, and have achieved at least regional recognition. What qualifies as "regional recognition" is subjective, but as a rule of thumb, being ranked on at least a notable sub-regional power ranking is usually a surefire indicator of having achieved significant regional recognition, as well as participating in the organization of a long-running tournament series that is a region's staple. If a player has never been PR'd, they can still be considered regionally recognized if they have achieved strong results and their lack of a ranking is only due to residing in a particularly stacked region, residing in a region that doesn't have an accepted ranking, or just never having been active enough to get ranked. A player can also be considered regionally recognized through a proven history of tournament participation with adequate-enough success, with greater leeway given the stronger their region is.
  • Online players may still be considered notable if they consistently place high in notable online tournaments.
• Have contributed high-level content to the Smash community or has contributed significantly in other ways. For example, being involved in a highly regarded tournament-streaming team, discovering and reporting information about the inner workings of Smash including specific characters or mechanics, being a high level commentator, creating and uploading popular tutorial videos, being a highly regarded Smash modder, being an especially popular Smash-based content creator, contributing to the growth of the community, etc.
• Can prove legitimate regional or greater fame within the competitive community otherwise not covered by these guidelines.

"Most historically significant players" guidelines

The "most historically significant players" section of character articles are for, as the name directly states, the players who have made the most significant historical impact on the character's competitive metagame. Smashers listed in these sections must be accompanied by a brief description detailing the smasher's most notable feats with the character and/or their contributions to the character's metagame, to explain why they're one of the most historically notable players for that character. Edits adding a smasher to these sections with no or an insufficient explanation may be removed immediately. There should also generally be discussion before adding or removing players from these sections, and any additions/removals made without consensus on the article's talk page or in the wiki's Discord server will likely be reverted.

The following criteria and guidelines apply to these sections:

• No more than ten players can be listed in a character's MHSP section, unless the character in question has been approved to have a higher limit due to having an especially large playerbase and many top-level players, in which case that limit must be adhered to. If an editor believes a character should have their limit increased, or decreased in the case one believes a character's limit is too lenient, it should be brought up for discussion on the character's talk page. Also note that the player limit is not a mandatory minimum either, and it is discouraged to add more players to a character's section just to fill the limit out; lesser played characters should not be having as many players in these sections as the more meta-prevalent characters do.
  • The following characters share their MHSP sections due to being nearly identical gameplay-wise: Daisy and Peach, Richter and Simon, Dark Samus and Samus, and Dark Pit and Pit (in both Smash 4 and Ultimate). Additionally, Pyra and Mythra share their sections due to being semi-cloned two-in-one characters, and the few players who have played either of them entirely solo have not achieved any historically significant success doing so. Similarly, the individual Pokémon of the Pokémon Trainer (Squirtle, Ivysaur, and Charizard) do not have their own individual sections for their Brawl incarnations nor Ultimate incarnations, since it is mechanically impossible to play them entirely solo in either game (and players that still attempt to play any of them solo are nearly non-existent). This is not the case for their Project M incarnations however, as there they are entirely separate characters, while the Pokémon Trainer does not exist.
  • The following characters have a 20 player limit: Fox (SSBM).
  • The following characters have a 15 player limit: Captain Falcon (SSB), Kirby (SSB), Pikachu (SSB), Captain Falcon (SSBM), Falco (SSBM), Marth (SSBM), Peach (SSBM), Sheik (SSBM), Meta Knight (SSBB), Bayonetta (SSB4), and Cloud (SSB4).
  • When a new character is released, they should not have a MHSP section until a year after their release, and any attempts to prematurely create one will be instantly reverted with no room for argument. After it has been a year since the character's release, a MHSP section will be allowed to be made for the character, but only with a five player limit until two years after the character's release, where they'll then be allowed the standard ten player limit. In the event of a new Smash game, this rule must be adhered to for the game's entire base roster, starting from the game's official release in all major regions.
• Players in these sections should have placed highly in several high-caliber tournaments with many especially noteworthy wins using the character in question, and their overall placements/wins should be among the greatest on a historical scale relative to other players of the character. Some leniency is expected for the less represented and lower tiered characters, but it should be within reason.
• Players in these sections should have national recognition for their usage of the character outside of sandbagging and/or must have made significant contributions to the character's meta.
• Online results should naturally be given considerably less weight than offline results, though in absence of significant offline results for the character and/or when online play has made up the bulk of the character's competitive life, players with primarily online results shouldn't be dismissed in favor of players whose offline results are of a clearly inferior caliber.
• While more recent results are generally given greater weight in competitively active games due to the generally continually advancing metagame, editors should try to be aware of recency bias and avoid it within reason (e.g. a player shouldn't be automatically included in a character's MHSP section immediately after one big result, especially if it would come at the expense of removing a more established player). Any player included in one of these sections should have already accomplished enough with the character that their inclusion would have considerable lasting power even if they never played the character in any tournament again.
  • On a related note, keep in mind that these sections are not a list of the character's current best players, and any edits trying to treat them as such should be reverted.
• Editors should be aware of top player bias, and not automatically include established top players in the MHSP sections of lesser represented characters with which they got one good result with or occasionally play, just on the basis of the player's name value.
• The summaries should be well-written and actually contextualize to readers how the player is historically significant to the character's metagame, they should not just be a regurgitation of results and contextless wins that most readers will not understand the significance of. These summaries must be concise too; anything more than a few lines should be trimmed down. Additionally, claiming a player to be the best in the world with a character should be avoided unless there's a strong consensus for it.
• In the event where wiki users cannot come to a consensus on which player(s) to include and/or exclude in these sections, input should be sought from an outside authority, such as the relevant character's Smashcord.

It can be much more difficult to assess the notability of players from smaller, less-developed Smash regions (outside of North America, Western Europe, and Japan). In general, these players should have achieved exceptional tournament results with their character in their region, and have attained notability for their usage of the character in larger Smash regions.

Notable tournaments

Tournaments and tournament series are considered "notable" if they fall under one of the following criteria:

• Have a sufficient amount of notable or ranked players in attendance. Power rankings in this case may only be considered notable if they fall under the criteria listed in the "Notable power rankings" section.
• Have a sufficiently large prize pot.
• Have a sufficiently large attendance.
• Has contributed to the consideration of any notable power ranking or has any other provable importance to their region.

There is no hard criteria for what makes a tournament notable enough for its own page, though the standards are generally laxer for games with smaller scenes, and smaller regions may be given more leeway for notability considerations. Additionally, while a single tournament may not be deemed notable enough for its own page, it is usually acceptable to have a page covering a tournament series it was a part of. Any one of these criteria may be mixed in order to increase the "notability" of a tournament.

Specific tournament types

• Invitationals: Invitationals are typically always considered notable due to the fact that invited players are almost always ranked on either a global or a regional ranking.
• Arcadians: Arcadians should only be considered if a large attendance is present or if players that entered are considered to be notable outside of rankings.
• Locals/Weeklies: Locals or weeklies generally should never have pages for individual tournaments, barring truly exceptional iterations like MSM 100, but proven long runners important to their regions should receive pages encompassing the entire series.
• Circuits: Circuits and any other point-based series are permitted so long as they fall under any of the same criteria. If the tournaments in question qualify for pages, then the circuit does too by default.
• Online tournaments: Due to the simplicity involved with hosting and attending online events, as well as the fact they are almost always free entry, and the lesser prestige of online play as a whole, online tournaments are held to much greater standards to be deemed notable for coverage. Like with locals/weeklies, a long-running online tournament series with consistent prize payouts and strong attendance may merit having a page covering the series, rather than having pages covering individual tournaments.

Notable power rankings

Power rankings are only considered notable enough for their own article if they encompass a game's community on a global or regional scale. Specifically, regional power rankings are only considered notable for an article if they encompass a particularly large part of the competitive community, such as a country, state, or territory. City rankings may be listed independently if the city alone is deemed to be larger and stronger than most other regions; a good example of this is the New York City Power Rankings. Sub-regional rankings that form a part of a greater region can be still considered notable for coverage and for determining the notability of smashers, but such rankings should be listed on the power rankings page for the greater region instead, and in the case where said greater region lacks any centralized ranking, then it is appropriate for the page to be made up entirely of its sub-regions' rankings. Sub-regional rankings can be considered not notable for any coverage at all if they're deemed to cover an overly narrow scope of the community, when the competitive scene it covers is especially small and/or has an especially weak group of players; this is subjective with no hard criteria, and has to be determined on a case-by-case basis, but generally a ranking for a single small city (i.e. a city with a sub-100K population) or for a college/university will be determined not notable enough for coverage.

Additionally, global power rankings, or any other type of superregional ranking, may only be deemed notable for coverage if a significant portion of the greater community acknowledges and supports them.

Online power rankings are never valid for coverage except for the Wi-Fi Warrior Rank or any rankings that encompass a region that is notable offline as well, such as the Smash 64 European Online Power Rankings.

If any given section in a power rankings page, whether it be a sub-region or a specific game, becomes too large, then a subpage should be created to replace it. The most recent ranking should still be left up on the main page, with a link to the subpage containing the complete archive of past rankings.

Notable teams

"Teams" under this context refers to any crews, esports teams, or other community organizations that have gained a significant presence within the competitive Super Smash Bros. community.

Crews can generally be defined as any group of players that tend to play or enter tournaments together, but do not support its members financially. Crew members tend to make their crew known through the use of "tags" that are placed before the their player names and through the in-game name entry feature. Crews may be considered notable if they are made up of notable players and have established themselves within their respective community.

Esports teams can generally be defined as any organization that officially sponsors a player financially. As with crews, players who are sponsored almost always bear their team's tag prior to their name. Esports teams may be considered notable if they sponsor any notable player(s), though this does not mean every team deserves an article. Articles should only be created if the team in question either sponsors any amount of top players or a group of lower-ranked yet still notable players. The amount of lower-ranked yet still notable players needed before an esports team can be considered notable should be defined on a case-by-case basis. Teams that do not fall under this category should instead only be added to the List of esports teams page.

Other community organizations, such as tournament organizing groups, streaming groups, or modder/developer groups, may be considered notable if their contributions to the community are deemed significant.