Template talk:Infobox Smasher

Archive

1. 1

The top-level smasher category

In the same way that we don't put someone in both Category:American smashers and Category:New York smashers, why should we automatically put every smasher into Category:Smashers? It's basically a category containing the entire namespace (plus images, those are fine). I propose we delete the auto-inclusion of the top-level smasher category. Toomai Glittershine The Celeritous 17:58, 18 October 2013 (EDT)

Support for removal of the Category:Smashers on the smasher pages With the smasher pages already having the title, Smasher:X person, the Smashers category is redundant on their page as well. Dots The Meta Knight 18:41, 18 October 2013 (EDT)

So that if someone's looking for articles on a bunch of smashers, they can find them. I don't see what's wrong with a category containing every single smasher article just for organization purposes. Awesome Cardinal 2000 00:15, 19 October 2013 (EDT)

Assuming that every smasher page has the top-level smasher category (which is clearly the intent of having it in the template), the category pretty much becomes a duplicate of Special:AllPages for the Smasher: namespace in addition to being a parent category. It might have been useful before the namespace was added; it certainly isn't now. Toomai Glittershine The Brass 00:43, 19 October 2013 (EDT)

Having a category for the smasher articles is simpler and easier to find than using AllPages. Awesome Cardinal 2000 13:52, 19 October 2013 (EDT)

That's like saying it's okay to have a page called "Characters (SSBB)" that contains all the info found on every Brawl character page. Toomai Glittershine The Irrepressible 17:40, 19 October 2013 (EDT)

The Smashers category does not contain full information on every smasher, it just lists them. I don't see why every character can be categorized into Category:Characters, but smasher articles cannot be categorized into Category:Smashers. If someone wanted to find a page listing all the characters that appear in Smash, they could go to the category, and if someone wanted to find a list of every smasher, they could go to Category:Smashers. Awesome Cardinal 2000 19:40, 19 October 2013 (EDT)

Fixing Category:Characters is the next step then. Toomai Glittershine The Sharp 22:07, 19 October 2013 (EDT)

Would you mind giving a reason or two why you think having the categories there is harmful? Awesome Cardinal 2000 23:32, 19 October 2013 (EDT)

1. Having both "New York smashers" and "Smashers" (or "Characters (SSBB)" and "Characters", etc) in the categories list of a page is redundant. This is hopefully obvious.
2. Bots don't care either way, as long as they're smart enough to recurse (XL is).
3. We don't have to do things just because Wikipedia does, but for the record, they say pages should only be in both a category and a subcategory when the subcategory is not part of a group of mutually-exclusive sets.
4. We currently list all smashers in three ways: everyone in one namespace, everyone in one category, and everyone split into regional subcategories. Usually if you're doing one thing in multiple ways you're doing it wrong. The namespace is kind of a historical artifact that would probably be extremely tedious/difficult to remove. Having regional subcategories is common sense. What's the odd one out here? Toomai Glittershine The Metroid 00:31, 20 October 2013 (EDT)

Support for removal of the Category:Smashers on the smasher pages There's no reason for them to be there when they're /automatically included/. Scr7(talk · contribs) 04:15, 19 October 2013 (EDT)

I hope you understand the idea here is to delete both the manual inclusion and the automatic inclusion. Toomai Glittershine The Golden 09:12, 19 October 2013 (EDT)

Anybody else want to say something about this before I remove the Smasher category include on the smasherbeta? Going to do it in like a few hours if no one else opposes, not to be jumping the gun but. Dots The Arceus 18:32, 24 October 2013 (EDT)

Adding a Project M mains to the template

Something I'd like to propose, as many Smashers play different characters in Project M than in Melee or Brawl. --Timson622222 (talk) 22:38, 4 November 2013 (EST)

Former mains

Some pro players drop notable characters such as UmbreonMow dropping Mewtwo --TheLegendaryKRB (talk) 23:59, 15 February 2014 (EST)

Skill level field

We used to document as many smashers as possible, but now we're more specific and only cover notable players. Is this field really needed if it's always going to say "professional" or a variant thereof? - Ceci n’est pas un Smiddle. 12:38, 19 February 2014 (EST)

Yes it's needed, we're still covering players of varying skill, and it serves as a nice shorthand for the player's particular level at each game they play. Omega Tyrant

March

March doesnt work in the template. Look at my page. Its proof. --TheLegendaryKRB (talk) 13:10, 2 March 2014 (EST)

If you actually look at the template, you'll see that it uses numbers instead. Scr7(talk · contribs) 13:14, 2 March 2014 (EST)

ok --TheLegendaryKRB (talk) 13:52, 2 March 2014 (EST)

Years Active?

Would it make sense to add a section in the Smasher Template about a Smasher's Activity in the Smash Scene, or is it just really unneeded? I can understand by the fact you can just put retired in parenthesis or mention that they are retired in the body of the article itself, but think we'd be able to give the readers an idea of when they were active? ~C_Mill24 —Preceding unsigned comment added by C Mill24 (talk • contribs) 19:30, 7 March 2014 (EST)

This seems to me like the kind of thing that is fine in the article body, since it tends to be more complex than just a range of years. Toomai Glittershine The Irrepressible 22:11, 7 March 2014 (EST)

Other Doubles Characters

Since we have other characters for everything else why not for Doubles players??? JCaesar could use it for Wario. Also even if you have one doubles main it will still say Doubles Mains. Just saying. --TheLegendaryKRB (talk) 09:46, 4 April 2014 (EDT)

I wonder if anyones gonna answer??? --User:Myth|<font color="yellow">'''Myth'''</font> File:Myth Kirby.png|19px|link=User talk:Myth (talk) 17:26, 8 April 2014 (EDT)

Combined SSB4 Parameter

Would it be sensible to add combined SSB4 parameters? I'm sure many people are just going to have the same things listed twice for smash 3ds and smash wiiu. It would be nice to have an option to simply add SSB4 parameters, but also leave the individual 3ds and wiiu parameters for people who have them different. ♡FirstaLasto♥ 21:47, 6 November 2014 (EST)

I'd wait till SSB4-Wii U comes out, to see whether people go with their mains in 3DS or not before making a decision. Qwerty (talk) 22:01, 6 November 2014 (EST)

I now have the Wii U version and I can confirm that pretty much every character bug not related to stages is shared between the two versions (even bizzare ones like Dark Pit Kirby being able to float proceeding a throw, and minor animation jitters like Jigglypuffs aerial turning animation.) Seems pretty same to assume that the character are identical between the versions because of this. Besides, even if some people did change their mains due to something other than controller options, I dont see why thats a reason not to include optional mixed SSB4 parameters here. ♡FirstaLasto♥ 00:43, 22 November 2014 (EST)

The game has been out for a while now, so I'm gonna bump this. ♡FirstaLasto♥ 17:24, 4 December 2014 (EST)

Line breaks

The forced line break at “Other SSB4 (Wii U)<br />characters” (and possibly others) causes strange formatting because there may already be a soft break before (there is one after “Wii” on my current browser). I think it should be removed. —Fenhl 03:38, 13 February 2015 (EST)

Skill demotions

Is it possible for one smasher, say he used to be a "top professional", gets demoted to "professional" in skill for not being as dominate as he used to be in the past? Dots (talk) The Omega 17:55, 20 March 2015 (EDT)

Debatable, as we should make clear the highest rank in the scene the smasher in question achieved. Although it's worth noting: I don't think we have set criteria for what distinguishes those two ranks you mentioned, so I'm not sure where one would draw the line. Miles (talk) 17:57, 20 March 2015 (EDT)

How I see it: To be a "professional" is a player who is notably skilled enough to win locals and regionals, while "top professionals" means that a player is notable for being one of the best in his/her region or even his/her country and can often win locals and regionals and is able to place decently (if not highly) in nationals. Dots (talk) The Meta Knight 18:08, 20 March 2015 (EDT)

Customs mains

I propose new parameters for listing customs mains in Smash 4. Many smashers main different characters when custom moves are enabled, so with the rising popularity of customs I think this is something we need. —Fenhl 20:21, 1 April 2015 (EDT)

That seems unnecessarily complex for the purposes of an infobox. Toomai Glittershine The Xanthic 21:52, 1 April 2015 (EDT)

Crew vs. sponsor

Since the affiliations of professional Smash players nowadays are called "sponsors" instead of crews," I propose that a new section called "sponsors" be added to this template, and any other relevant section of the wiki have its terminology changed from "crew" to "sponsor." (such as creating categories for sponsors instead of crews, etc.) Awesome Cardinal 2000 17:06, 17 April 2015 (EDT)

Isn't there a distinct difference between a "crew" (bunch of players that get together and call themselves a group) and a "sponsor" (company says "we'll give you money if you use our tag")? Toomai Glittershine The Superlative 17:17, 17 April 2015 (EDT)

Several sponsors treat their group of players as a crew of sorts, as well. I think the two are often conflated because of the ambiguity in definition. Miles (talk) 17:34, 17 April 2015 (EDT)

The sponsors here are still categorized as "Crew" under the smasherbeta template. Awesome Cardinal 2000 19:47, 17 April 2015 (EDT)

Move

Strong support "Beta" indicates that it's a prototype that may need some kinks ironed out. This is not the case, as the template appears to be final and works perfectly fine. Berrenta (talk) 09:39, 10 July 2015 (EDT)

Support per Berrenta —Fenhl 09:52, 10 July 2015 (EDT)

Support as per the above as well as reducing page size (I know it's insignificant, but over a good number of pages). Can we get a bot (XL) on this? ScoreCounter 10:11, 10 July 2015 (EDT)

As the poster, I strong support this, per Berrenta. Serpent King (talk) 21:35, 10 July 2015 (EDT)

Support per all. How hasn't it been moved yet? Nyargleblargle (Talk) 12:33, 13 July 2015 (EDT)

I'm assuming the only reason this wasn't done ages ago was because of the hassle of fixing all the associated usages, although given we can use XL I'm not sure there's a reason not to go forward with the move. Miles (talk) 12:52, 13 July 2015 (EDT)

Strong Support if it's not a hassle to do this with a bot, neutral if it is. I don't know how wikibots work, but I think they can be automated to replace {{Smasherbeta with {{Smasher (assuming this is the desired result). - EndGenuity (talk) 13:02, 13 July 2015 (EDT)

Even though it's a longer name, I would recommend Smasher Infobox instead of just Smasher, to match the format of all our other infoboxes. Toomai Glittershine The Sphere 13:18, 13 July 2015 (EDT)

I didn't think of this. We should probably move it there, in that case. Nyargleblargle (Talk) 13:20, 13 July 2015 (EDT)

2 changes suggested:

1. We break the skill parameter into games.
2. We ditch the brawlcode parameter as it is now obsolete. Serpent∞King (talk) 16:30, 13 September 2015 (EDT)

here is what I came up with. Only parameters that were skipped in the example were the 2ndmain, other, 2ndother, moreother, doubles, and 2nddoubles parameters for each game. Serpent∞King (talk) 17:17, 13 September 2015 (EDT)

sr.eu links

For European players, it could be relevant to include a parameter for linking to their page on http://smashranking.eu, which has data on just about every tourney since two years. – Smiddle 06:59, 2 February 2016 (EST)

Bump. Maybe we could do some thing that imports results from the site as well. – Smiddle 02:45, 2 March 2016 (EST)

I would like that Poultry(talk) the Team Liquid 13:24, 25 March 2016 (EDT)

Yeah, for these players we could list only the most important tourneys, and let the rest of the results be linked. – Smiddle 10:28, 31 May 2016 (EDT)

Former Mains?

Can i add that to the code for something like Mango's Jigglypuff, Hax's Falcon, Plup's Samus, etc. Poultry(talk) the Team Liquid 14:01, 27 March 2016 (EDT)

Bump Poultry(talk) the Team Liquid 09:15, 28 March 2016 (EDT)

Bump Poultry(talk) the Team Liquid 19:21, 30 March 2016 (EDT)

Bump Poultry(talk) the Team Liquid 16:06, 31 March 2016 (EDT)

And how would that work? Toomai Glittershine The Quiet 16:09, 31 March 2016 (EDT)

What do you mean by that? Poultry(talk) the Team Liquid 17:20, 31 March 2016 (EDT)

Well players often have several, several dropped characters...The section would end up getting clustered. Serpent King 17:30, 31 March 2016 (EDT)

I see your point, but then we could do Notable mains instead Poultry(talk) the Team Liquid 17:34, 31 March 2016 (EDT)

That's the point. I know of a number of Smashers who notably mained multiple characters they ended up dropping. It'd still be quite clustered. Disaster Flare (talk) 17:37, 31 March 2016 (EDT)

We'd also have to have a section for SSB, SSBM, SSBB, SSB4, SSB4-Wii U, SSB4-3DS, and PM, overly lengthening the infobox in some cases. Serpent King 17:38, 31 March 2016 (EDT)

We already have "other [game] characters" which works fine. For the record, the infobox doesn't have to contain all the info. If someone was famous for playing one character, just write it in the article. – Smiddle 10:26, 31 May 2016 (EDT)

Move

Support because tag Poultry(talk) the God-Slayer 18:32, 14 May 2016 (EDT)

Oppose A change like this would affect literally every smasher article on the entire wiki, and we'd have to go through the trouble of tracking down every single one and updating it. That's more trouble than it's worth imo. Disaster Flare (talk) 18:36, 14 May 2016 (EDT)

We have XL Poultry(talk) the God-Slayer 18:38, 14 May 2016 (EDT)

Support per Poultry and the tag. Consistency in template names is always a good thing. Nyargleblargle (Contribs) 22:21, 14 May 2016 (EDT)

Should have been that name in the first place, Support. Serpent King 22:37, 14 May 2016 (EDT)

Support. As long as the bot can take care of fixing all templates. -- Ethan(Discussion) 22:58, 14 May 2016 (EDT)

Support. Ganonmew, The Evil Clone 12:50, 15 May 2016 (EDT)

Support as long as we don't have to fix it manually. BaconMaster 12:57, 15 May 2016 (EDT)

Multiple alias layout

Example: Smasher:Simna ibn Sind

Does this layout look okay for multiple aliases? Or should they be de-emphasized a bit, smaller font, maybe underneath on a new line? I could try putting the commas back in, too, if that's preferred. ライケン Rigel Kent (talk) 05:36, 29 July 2016 (EDT)

My first reaction is "why do we have aliases in that part of the infobox at all?". If someone goes by that many names, it makes more sense to have an entry in the infobox for them, not stuff them all into the title. Toomai Glittershine The Different 09:49, 29 July 2016 (EDT)

Yeah, that's the extreme example, it has more aliases than any other article at the moment. Most look more like Smasher:Wobbles. I'll sketch out some possibilities:

Wobbles "Honorbound"

SSB4 main	Wario

Wobbles

"Honorbound"

SSB4 main	Wario

Wobbles

"Honorbound"

SSB4 main	Wario

Wobbles

"Honorbound"

SSB4 main	Wario

Wobbles

Also known as	Honorbound
SSB4 main	Wario

ライケン Rigel Kent (talk) 17:17, 29 July 2016 (EDT)

First and third look best to me. Nyargleblargle (Contribs) 18:40, 29 July 2016 (EDT)

On second glance, the fourth one is confusing, it looks too much like an image caption. I like the third one too. I'll style it that way for now. Thanks! (As for Smasher:Simna ibn Sind, maybe the aliases could be trimmed down a little.) ライケン Rigel Kent (talk) 17:45, 30 July 2016 (EDT)

I agree with Toomai. The primary alias is enough in the infobox. Additional aliases may be covered in the article. – Smiddle 09:19, 15 October 2016 (EDT)

Social media links

How about adding these to the template? Feels a lot more relevant than 3DS / Miiverse info tbh. – Smiddle 09:19, 28 December 2016 (EST)

Character -> Fighter

Please see my move request on Main character's talk page. Fighter is just overall a better, more proper term and I would like to see it used in this infobox. I'm unsure if I'm supposed to get permission before editing such a widely used template, so here I am, awaiting approval. It'll only take me a few minutes and nobody'll care, really. Sincerely, Samuel the BANjO-KAZOOiE Boss. 13:08, December 7, 2020 (EST)

Changes to the Skill parameter

This is a closed discussion about an accepted proposed change on SmashWiki. It remains for archival purposes.

Since this infobox's inception in ye olden days of SmashWiki, there has been a Skill parameter, with the acceptable entries being "Professional" and variations of it. However, the usage of "Professional" seems to be a relic from the MLG era, where MLG would call its qualifying players "Professionals", which was picked up by the Smash players at the time, and we have since been stuck using terminology that has never really sat right:

• While "Professional" can be used to refer to someone who is just good at something, the more prominent definition is to refer to someone who has made a legitimate career out of a thing. There are very few Smash players who could legitimately be called "Professionals" in that regard, and while the terminology doesn't need to be strictly used that way, we repeatedly have had issues where people have taken the Skill parameter to mean that rather than just "Professional means good player", as well as some mockery over the wiki's usage of "Professional".

• It just isn't prominent terminology within the Smash community. People don't say "Top professional", they just say "Top player"; people don't say "Pro-amateur", they just say "Mid level player", and so on.

• The current terminology accepted within the Skill parameter doesn't really give us room to expand our options to use within the parameter, "Top professional" itself isn't actually a formal term, and it could be argued that we could use another designation or two on top of what we already have, given for how many players "Top professional" gets thrown on that are still clearly below the actual top echelon but clearly above what we typically call "Professional" level players (e.g. there's a difference between higher end and lower end PGR players, and there's a difference between the lower-end PGR players and good players who aren't PGR'd). If we were to add another option between "Top professional" and "Professional", what could we even call it that still fits within the terminology? "Higher professional"? "Upper professional"? "Almost top but not quite professional"? It would get silly.

With all that said, I'm formally proposing we change the terminology we use, as well as opening discussion on adding additional options. I'm open to hearing ideas, but to start with, what we have now could be changed to:

• Top professional -> Top level
• Professional -> High level
• Semi-professional -> High-mid level
• Pro-amateur -> Mid level
• Amateur -> Low level

We could also do a simple 1 to 10 numeric scale, with 10 being reserved for like the top 5-10 range of players, but we might not want to get too varied with options, so as to not make deciding skill designations more difficult and more prone to argumentation. Plus a numeric scale may be less immediately obvious in its meaning to readers, and may require them to read supplemental material on how the wiki bases its scale in order to understand it. In any case, lets discuss this. Omega Tyrant 09:26, May 2, 2022 (EDT)

Support going with the new "level" moniker, though it'll be a major pain to probably change it from the thousands of Smasher pages we have at the moment. Also as mentioned in Discord, I support changing the "professional" categories into "player" categories and splitting them up by skill level. CookiesCreme 12:18, May 2, 2022 (EDT)

Support Let's go with "levels." --Meester Tweester (talk) 05:46, May 3, 2022 (EDT)

Support yeah I do think the Smash community wouldn't use some of the terms we currently have. More distinctive skill levels for smashers would be cool as "better pro/better top players" exist but it is hard to come up with new skill levels. NPM Morr!? 10:57, May 4, 2022 (EDT)

Support The professionals thing felt very confusing to me, as no matter what players are better than the other they're just simply called professionals. With the Top Level, High Level, etc, I believe that this could definitely make it easier for people to understand the players' skill. Howplayz 11:11, May 4, 2022 (EDT)

Not 100% sure about this one. To me, it feels like another "Most historically significant players" situation where the proposed name would technically be more suitable, but feels a little awkward and doesn't get the point across as quickly to an average reader who doesn't follow the competitive scene. With that being said, right now I can't think of anything better, so I guess I will leave my Consent to the "levels" terminology, and if I come up with something I will get back to you. (Although I vehemently oppose the numeric scale idea, as that presents itself as though we had some kind of algorithm or formula to figuring out exactly how well someone performs.) Sincerely, Ender Reeve Musk. 23:43, May 29, 2022 (EDT)

I personally don't mind the changes to level, the problem for me relies on my perspective towards Amateur and Mid Level. For me, an amateur or Pro Amateur player normally means someone that does not play competitively but played the game casually, or someone that attended tournaments mainly for content like Alpharad. The use for Semi-pro is normally used for players that attend tournaments but rarely get Top 16 at regionals/weeklies. That's not a pro-amateur player, is just a player with experience but not as good as those that are consistent or really good at the game. In my opinion, there should be a change in relation to the difference between Professional players within a region, Professional players known more as Hidden Bosses, and worldwide known Professional players, but not Top Level (ex. Peanut). The change from Level instead of Professional is not bad, but it seems more confusing. Kind regards, Tacho99. 13:10 June 14th, 2022 (EST)

@Ender: I would say the current setup is harder to grasp for non-competitive readers, "professional" would give them the idea of someone who makes a living playing Smash when that's the case for so few players, and the lower levels are just esoteric, while "high level" gives them the more appropriate idea of "this guy is good at Smash", "high-mid level" gives the idea of "someone above the competitive average", "mid level" is simply average, and "top level" is literal in meaning they're at the top level of competitive play.

@Tacho: Respectfully, I really do not understand what you're trying to say here, especially the tangent about semi-pro and pro-amateur. And trying to change the skill level parameter to be relative to region is a no-go, when that will just make things more complicated to manage, one's skill relative to the absolute scale is more relevant information (especially when people regularly compete in other regions or move to other regions), and one's ranking on their local/regional PR already shows their relative-to-region ability. Omega Tyrant 07:44, August 19, 2022 (EDT)

On second thought, you're completely right. Support. --Ender Ryzen Musk. 09:26, August 19, 2022 (EDT)

Support. Very much needed update and is definitely a lot more straight forward than the current standards. Señor Mexicano (talk) 21:44, August 20, 2022 (EDT)

Support. I also agree with the idea of adding another level between "top professional" and "professional" (and possibly one between "professional" and "semi-professional"), since the concerns very much apply to edits suc h as this user's. RickTommy 20:55, January 13, 2023 (EST)

New terms for the inbetween skill levels

It has been a while, but this proposal is not dead. The biggest sticking point is we're in agreement that we need a new skill level between top level/top professional and high level/professional, but there is no clear answer on what to name it. So I'm making a vote here of the options I thought of, so I can get a clearer consensus for which option people think is the best. On another note, whatever option is decided here, will also be used to replace semi-professional rather than my earlier suggestion of "high-mid", as it is functionally the inbetween of high and mid level, and the terminology should be consistent (so for example, if "Borderline top level" wins here, "Semi-professional" will become "Borderline high level").

If anyone has any suggestion for a term not among the options, leave a comment and it may be added to the votes if other people think it's a good suggestion. Omega Tyrant 12:56, March 17, 2023 (EDT)

Borderline top level

1. ...

Upper high level

1. Support for this, since I think this is the best term out of the four we have at the moment, plus it also emulates how we handle the tier lists as well. CookiesCreme 13:02, March 17, 2023 (EDT)
2. Support, I believe this "upper" term is indeed the best one out of the four too. Others either sound a bit weird or unheard of. NPM Morr!? 13:30, March 17, 2023 (EDT)
3. Support for this, I think it easily works with other terms such as high level and top level, and as long as readers know that there is a term above upper high level, it can easily show where someone's skill level at the game lies, even to more casual readers. Seems pretty straight forward. Ninja1167 (talk) 12:59, March 18, 2023 (EDT)
4. Support for this. I think it makes more sense to have a level between Top Level and High level, than one between High and Mid. Kind regards, Tacho99. 23:36 March 18th, 2023 (EST)
5. Support --Meester Tweester (talk) 19:52, March 30, 2023 (EDT)

Sub-top level

1. ...

Semi-top level

1. ...

Comments

Bumping this, I will be making a decision this weekend, so if anyone else wants to voice their input, do so ASAP. More input would be appreciated, don't want to pass this and then a lot of people come out of the woodwork complaining one of the other options would have been better. Omega Tyrant 19:43, March 30, 2023 (EDT)

I'm declaring this proposal passed. The new skill levels we will be officially using:

• "Top professional" -> Top level
• New skill level -> Upper high level
• "Professional" -> High level
• "Semi-professional" -> Upper mid level
• "Pro-amateur" -> Mid level
• "Amateur" -> Low level

I'll see if we can get a bot to make the change to the infoboxes on all smasher pages, but we will have to go through manually with the players labelled "Top level" to see if they should be re-labelled the newly available "Upper high level" instead. Omega Tyrant 05:44, April 2, 2023 (EDT)

The Skill parameter, again

Recently we changed our skill level terminology and introduced a new skill level between "top level and "high level" called "upper high level", to distinguish between the players that are truly a threat to win majors, and the rest of the top 100ish players, while drastically cutting down on the wiki's overuse of labelling players "top level" (or "top professional" as they were called before). However, where the line is drawn for "top level" has been controversial, with frequent edit wars over it and complaints from outside the wiki. With "skill level" being so subjective, there is no remotely universally agreeable answer for it, so no matter where we draw the line for our skill levels, trying to maintain them will continue to be a big headache, especially when people are so invested in seeing themselves, their friends, and their favorite players being called "top level" or whatever the most desirable skill level rating is. There is also the issue between "peak skill level" and "current skill level", where it's not immediately clear what the skill rating in the infobox is for, and trying to maintain them as separate infobox parameters would add another layer of complication with maintaining an already highly contentious infobox parameter.

I still think the skill level rating was useful as a quick shorthand to let readers know about how relatively good a player was at each given game without the need to delve into rankings, especially so for players that got underranked for whatever reason or are no longer ranked at all. It's clear though that trying to maintain them is more trouble than it's worth, and there's nothing we could do with them that would alleviate the edit wars or complaints, whether it be loosening/tightening standards, adding more skill levels, changing the terminology, etc. So I propose the following changes:

• Just remove the skill level rating parameter entirely from infoboxes on Smasher pages
• Add a "best historical ranking" parameter, where the best ranking a player ever achieved is listed for each game. "Best" ranking would prioritize global rankings if available, then superregional rankings, then regional rankings, etc.
• Add a "best tournament result" parameter, where's the best tournament result a player ever achieved is listed for each game. This would be based on a combination of the tournament's prestige and the quality of wins/losses the player got in the tournament, not necessarily just the biggest tournament the player ever won nor their highest sheer placing, and anything below a major likely shouldn't be considered for this parameter unless the player never competed in a major or did exceedingly poor at them.

Adding these two parameters will largely fulfill the primary intention of the skill level rating in letting readers immediately know how relatively good a player was at their peak, while ridding us of the neverending quagmire that maintaining the skill level ratings is. While there is still subjectiveness involved in what would constitute a player's "best ranking" and especially "best tournament result", at least there is much more objective points to argue over than what arbitrary Top X cutoff is "top level", and people won't be so emotionally invested in which rank or tournament result is listed as their best unlike with what the wiki rates their skill level to be. Do you support this change, oppose it, or have any farther suggestions to it? Omega Tyrant 22:50, January 25, 2024 (EST)