Forum:Codifying an official wiki character order

So recently, people have been starting to show enough dissatisfaction with the currently-not-an-official-policy order we have for characters and series that it's time to pick something and make it official.

	Toomai's order	Miles' order
Design intent	Honour characters as characters. Group similar series and characters together based on their native-series relationships, mostly regardless of their playable properties.	In-game order is paramount. Chronology of introduction and qualities as fighters take precedence over who the characters are.

Currently, Toomai's order is being used on most wiki pages, mainly because it started in a few places and spread out for consistency. This discussion is primarily intended to answer the question: Does one of the orders have significantly more community support than the other?

Users that wish to vote for an order should put a comment in the lists below. Like all wiki matters, the content of the comments matters as much as the number of them.

Toomai's order

In the end, Smash Bros. is what it is because of the characters. Using an order that does not depend much on in-game characteristics as fighters highlights that we focus on the origins of elements as much as their in-game applications, and reinforces that we do not intend any favouritism towards any particular game. Toomai Glittershine The Quintonic 23:49, 8 March 2015 (EDT)

1. In most contexts, I feel this order makes sense, seeing as how that's how the Smash Bros. games order them. However, I do feel that Miles's order makes sense to order the characters within a series, as the Smash Bros. games do that as well. Nyargleblargle (Talk) 15:19, 15 April 2015 (EDT)
2. I prefer when Dr. Mario and Lucina are next to their originals than when they're three miles away. And it's much more universal than Miles' order. ---Preceding unsigned comment added by you. Or maybe Nutta. 10:12, 15 July 2015 (EDT)

Miles' order

Simply put, it makes the most sense to group characters on a Smash roster by their Smash debut order, which tends to match up roughly with how the games and many pieces of official media organize them (similar ideas seem to be behind the sorting in: Trophy Boxes and the CSS). My list is a combination of sorting by debut of a series in Smash and then sorting its characters within that series by their respective Smash debuts. I hope the tables I laid out on the page linked above are self-explanatory beyond that. Miles (talk) 00:11, 9 March 2015 (EDT)

1. This would accurately describe the in game order as long as we're talking about individual games. ZeldaStarfoxfan2164 (talk) is a never lover boy 01:37, 9 March 2015 (EDT)
2. I honestly don't get why having it in another order matters. That being said, I agree with ZeldaStarfoxfan2164 in that having it sorted by how the game does it would be more accurate when describing a certain game. Aidan the Aura Master 07:11, 9 March 2015 (EDT)
3. Chronological order is more important than grouping related characters. Awesome Cardinal 2000 07:44, 9 March 2015 (EDT)

Comments

I think it's time for me to inject some brutal honesty into this: I would prefer literally no order (not even alphabetical order, no order at all) as opposed to Miles' order. That's how strongly I feel about it. Toomai Glittershine The Wacko 15:14, 15 April 2015 (EDT)

Kind of a stark contrast to your previous statement, you know. I'm not trying to be excessively in people's faces on the subject, and it's admittedly not a high priority. I didn't quite realize it was such a point of contention, but I do stand by my system. Miles (talk) 16:00, 15 April 2015 (EDT)

Look, Toom, I understand if you don't like my system, but please stop ignoring the fact that the one time you sought the userbase's opinions on the subject they preferred it. If you want to revive this debate, can we please do it here where it belongs instead of passive-aggressively taking it out of pages? Miles (talk) 23:44, 14 July 2015 (EDT)

Do you deny that alphabetical order is preferable? Toomai Glittershine The Celeritous 23:58, 14 July 2015 (EDT)

It's preferable in some situations, but absolutely not preferable universally. Miles (talk) 00:00, 15 July 2015 (EDT)