SmashWiki talk:Post-Merge Cleanup

Project Comments

Post any questions, suggestions, comments, death threats, etc. that you may have for this project below. I'll do what I can to clarify any issues you might run into! --RJM ^Talk 22:32, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm satisfied we finally can get rid of those controversial, heavy opinion based Pros & Cons. With this new attribute or something section, we would need to get sort of the strategy section merged? And wouldn't having it as list form rather than paragraph make it more of a neutral point of view. - Hatake91 (talk) 01:53, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Strategies don't really have a place in a character article. Valuable information can be pulled from strategy guides and cited as a reference, however these are not supposed to be instructional guides and we don't want to make the mistake of telling people how to play as though there is a right and wrong way to do it. We should be reporting fact not inferences based on fact. As to list form, it's not how the information is presented that makes it neutral or not; it's what is being said. Adding a bullet point beside a biased statement doesn't remove its bias. It's best to use your judgment as writers to present the information fairly and fluidly; the format that it takes is a personal preference, I suppose. --RJM ^Talk 17:10, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with that sentiment (ugh@not having typed for a week) — wikis are the perfect places for guides. They allow for collaboration, or rather, what the community deems the best way to play a character, thusly removing the bias inherent in any one writers' guide. However, I may be on the wrong tack here — you may simply be saying that this information should not be in the main character articles but rather in subarticles, such as Roy strategy guide or Marth guide (SSBM).
Otherwise, looks good. Perhaps a fully drafted manual of style as well as other supporting guidelines, such as the talk page guideline, are in order, rather than the pathetic one currently in place. --Sky (t · c · w) 05:54, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

---

Phase 1

There's a lot more work to be done on this project than will ever get done, I know that, but ya gotta start somewhere. I've been fiddling with this project management template for SmashWiki in the hopes of breathing some piping hot life into it. There are several additional phases to be added at a later date as I continue to compile them behind the scenes, but for the moment, we have some information on putting together a proper Character article.

Currently, Brawl is the focus because I expect I'll be able to incite the most interest from editors as well as see tangible results of the work we complete. Melee and 64 sections of the Character "phase" will be coming. In the meantime, please read it over, tell me what you think and maybe poke away at some of the stuff I've outlined--or suggest new stuff! Whateva.

Any questions? --RJM ^Talk 22:32, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Randal, great ideas here. I've been wanting to get rid of the pros and cons section for characters for months, and I'm glad that we're finally going to do it. That being said, would you have a problem if I added (either to this project or to another area) information on what is considered acceptable names for things? Like you said in the intro, many people are creating pages like "The Sonic Combo on Conveyor Belts" that is just his d-smash that happens to be done on a conveyor belt. I'm equally tiered of these things popping up, but even more tiered of not having a policy or project to point to when the people start bitching on my (or yours, or Rita's etc.) talk page. Would you want something like that added here or on another page? Again, great ideas; I look forward to getting started. Clarinet Hawk (talk · contributions) 23:46, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

It's hard to place conditions and criteria on acceptable names. As sysops, I almost think we need to continue to handle those on a case-by-case basis as Brawl grows in popularity. We'll be able to filter out what's legitimate and what isn't by sourcing out the information. There does need to be some sort of policy that at least offers some guidelines for those writing up stuff about their own techniques and what not. However, that's further down the line in another "phase" of the project. I don't want to get too sidetracked because there's a lot to cover and if we're going to do it, we may as well do at once and do it right. Thanks for the input, though, I'll bear that in mind as I continue to expand this project page. --RJM ^Talk 14:18, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

before I do as many as I can

I have a few questions/concerns with the 2 pages that were pointed out to me- Falco/MK (SSBB).

1. Costumes, Idle poses, On-screen appearance, and Victory pose sections were removed. Why?
2. Changes from Melee to Brawl (if applicable) was removed. Why? I found this section informative and interesting.
3. Debut. Is this supposed to be the first game they appeared in or the first game they appeared in with that style? Zelda did most definitely not debut in Twilight Princess.
4. Why were the tilt moves changes to strong side or whatever? The entire SSB community uses the word tilt. Since there's no official name for it afaik, why change it and confuse everyone?
5. Audio section. Was this removed because of the subjectivity? I don't really care about this section (unlike the other4), am just merely inquisitive.

The article I have fixed up to the best of my ability with my limited knowledge can be found at User:Shadowcrest/Zelda. Any suggestions/explanations made either here or on that talk would be great. --Shadowcrest 20:50, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

You've got some good points. The big reason I got rid of the Special Movements sections for the time being is that part of the point of this was to demonstrate that less is more. The articles were getting too cluttered with lots of random crap that was being added (i.e. Snake's Codec, User:SuperBobWhoCantPlaySmash's combos, etc.). By removing those section, I thought it would be a good way to demonstrate the new ideas. Once the fighter page format is standaradized, I plan to go into the back-logs and reinsert the relevant information that got cut. At the present, I wanted to give the most important information, and as this is a fighting game, attacks and attributes get regulated there. As for the Changes from Melee to Brawl, yes they should be added back in. However, I don't like them at the top of the article. The articles are supposed to deal with the characters as they appear in each game. Opening with discussion of the previous game, then, is counter-productive to the purpose of the article. I would suggest one of two spots for that section: Either at the bottom of the Attributes section (below Taunts) as a level three header (===Changes from Melee to Brawl===) or after the Subspace Emissary section as a level 2 header (==Changes from Melee to Brawl==). Lets get some opinions on this before going any further. Clarinet Hawk (talk · contributions) 21:01, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I've updated the project page to account for Changes from Melee to Brawl as a sub-section of Attributes. That was just an oversight on my part, I apologize. Clarinet Hawk has got it right about the Special Movements section, especially because the information is already documented elsewhere as a more complete game-related article in victory pose and fanfare. I addressed this with the guy who compiled those sections on my talk page as well.

"Tilts" being changed to "strong" is a product of the influx of Brawl editors that hit this wiki when the game was at the peak of its pre-release hype. The Smash Bros. DOJO!! was deemed the only official source for smash anything when it first debuted and all of a sudden the terminology we knew so well from Melee had all been "officially" changed. I have a bit of a mixed opinion about this and it kind of irks me that Sakurai can single-handedly invalidate terms that have been in popular usage for years just because he happens to be the head developer. I am of the opinion that the fans of the game--the people that fuel its success--have just as much, if not more, authority on what something should be called. That's why wavedash is still wavedash and not "Landing Special," as seen in the Debug menu of Action Replay. But you can bet that there's still thousands of people who will pass off any fan-made terminology as baseless and unofficial until big daddy Nintendo says it's okay. But anyway, to address your point, I think we'll leave them where they are for now just to prevent any of that backlash from the community at large. Luckily, they don't object to having tilt in bold right in the article introduction to add some balance between the "official" stuff for new readers and the terms in use by the active community. The redirects are all in place and the content is there, so there's no reason to do a bunch of work for no real gain when it's really just a technicality about the article title.

"Debut" should be the game that they first appeared in, yes. The Zelda article is probably trying to emphasize the Twilight Princess model, but it should be changed. As to the "Audio" portion, that was just deemed too trivial to be sitting in a fighter info page when most of the information (except perhaps the Wii remote choice audio) is captured elsewhere in the wiki. --RJM ^Talk 21:38, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

• Tilts -> strong is still ridiculous. However, the backlash you mentioned is all too possible (and probable =/ ), so I guess it can stay. Though I wish it wouldn't. (Though I don't quite understand your wavedash example, since it works toward keeping tilt rather than changing to strong :P )
• Idle poses aren't listed elsewhere, but that is easily rectified.
• I had another thing to bring up... but I can't remember what it was =/

Does the Zelda article look alright to you guys? Before I C+P it over the mainspace version, I'd like to make sure I did everything well enough to be mainspace material. --Shadowcrest 22:14, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, the difference between the wavedash and the tilt is strictly the audience. It was more an example of the difference in attitudes between new Brawl players bowing to Nintendo's every word and veteran Melee players who run the communities and will eventually have the last word. :^)

Your Zelda article looks pretty good. I would suggest bolding things like "Dash attack" and "Forward Smash" in the Moveset section. And they could use some damage ranges as well. Speaking of which, there really ought to be another column in Template:Specialmoves for damage. Just in case you're looking for a quick glance at that information without having to open up an entire article on Nayru's Love, ya know. I might also suggest that "exclusive stickers" and "stickers that can only be used by Zelda or a few other characters including her" aren't the same thing. But otherwise, that's excellent work! --RJM ^Talk 15:51, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Alright, bolding isn't a problem.

Damage ranges- no problem, but what should be done about things like Nayru's Love that hit multiple times? Some knockback occurs for each hit (I think), so it's not likely someone will be in it for all the hits. Should we assume all of them hit and list accordingly?

Exclusive stickers and a few people including X aren't the same thing, but they're the closest you're going to get. Nothing (iirc) applies only to Zelda, and there are few characters that actually have stickers only usable by them- I can only think of Olimar, Mr. G&W, Snake, Sonic, and R.O.B. offhand that have exclusive stickers, and Ganon has one or two for himself. I just used the example set in the Meta Knight (SSBB) page which was pointed out to me as a complete example, and that seems like the best (and only) way to do the stickers section.

Working on Captain Falcon, I've come across Single/multi Player event matches and trophy description. What should I do with these? --Shadowcrest 21:22, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, also:

1. Are smashes/strongs called Forward smash or side smash?
2. I'm going to use this order for smashes/aerials: Forward(side?), back (if applicable), up, down. --Shadowcrest 21:31, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Attacks with multiple hits still have a damage range, even if it's from 1% to 35%. The idea is just to include information about the minimum and maximum amount of damage you can incur by being hit by any one of the attacks. I wasn't aware that exclusive stickers didn't apply to every character, but if that's the case, it might make more sense to have "Exclusive Stickers" only on the characters where it's actually true and then have separate pages for List of Zelda stickers much like the trophy argument.

Captain Falcon's event matches section is too trivial to keep. There's plenty of places where event match info is being documented elsewhere in the wiki and it really just doesn't have any bearing on who the character is as a fighter. Same goes with trophy description--we'll probably address that per the discussion below.

Forward smash has always been forward smash to me. It's so drilled into my head that I don't even know what the DOJO says offhand, but I don't anticipate a lot of backlash there anyway. --RJM ^Talk 20:40, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh right right, forgot 'range'. As for stickers, List of Zelda stickers would either imply stickers that feature Zelda (of which there's only like 3) or a list of stickers from the Zelda universe (not all of which apply to her). IF you were to do it the second way (by universe), you'd end up with lots of pages like "List of Animal Crossing stickers" with 1 or 2 things in it. Adding stickers that can only be applied to that or a few more characters seems like the most practical way to do it imo. --Shadowcrest 17:19, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

"Redirects should never be categorized"

Just noticing this project page now... I think this particular part might cause some issues with how some content is arranged unless we come up with an answer quickly: In some character pages like Bowser and Kirby, there's trophies showing different incarnations of the same character, like "Wedding Bowser" and "Tornado Kirby", and right now the trophy descriptions for those are in the main characer articles. If we wanted to keep it like that, we would categorize the redirects "Wedding Bowser" and "Tornado Kirby" with the appropriate trophy cats so that in the trophy category pages, those redirects would be listed as trophy pages, and clicking them would bring you to the trophy sections of the main character pages. (IMHO this would work very well if we want those trophies on the normal character pages.)

If we're prohibiting categories of any sort on redirect pages, however, that'd pretty much mean that we would need to create separate articles on Ball Kirby, Fighter Kirby, Fire Kirby, Beam Kirby, Needle Kirby, Sword Kirby, Sleep Kirby, Wing Kirby, Ice Kirby, Plasma Kirby, and Tornado Kirby (the Kirbster is just that awesome in his creator's eyes to get that many different trophies ^_^), and put smaller character descriptions and the trophy sections (and probably stickers too) and categories onto those pages. But since everything here is supposed to be written in a Smash Bros. perspective, it would actually work that way to have all those articles, I think.

Which way should we go about this? Erik Jensen ^{(Appreciate me here!)} 20:15, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

List of Kirby trophies, or Kirby trophies, as you prefer. ;P
However, you do bring up the good point that all redirects not being categorized might be a bad idea. Something for me to consider (as I've been doing since I read it). --Sky (t · c · w) 21:51, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I don't really understand how trophies being in the main character articles has anything to do with categorizing redirects...(?) How does not categorizing redirects mean that we have to create trophy-specific articles? I mean, currently with the trophy descriptions in the character page, why doesn't Wedding Bowser just redirect to Bowser? And if we end up creating List of Bowser trophies, what's wrong with having Wedding Bowser redirect to that? And what does that have to do with categories at all? Am I missing something here?? --RJM ^Talk 15:58, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

If the decision's to make pages like List of trophies about Samus and List of trophies about Kirby ("List of Kirby trophies" would make it sound too much like a list of trophies about the Kirby universe anyway), that'd square away well enough the issue I was thinking about. It's a third-option I hadn't thought of. =P Erik Jensen ^{(Appreciate me here!)} 18:04, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Fighters' Names Cleanup

I noticed this on the Captain Falcon (SSB) page. Shouldn't we keep full names on the characters' own pages and list the articles under the names used in the SBB games? (ex: Wolf O'Donnel (SSBB) should be moved to Wolf (Super Smash Bros. Brawl) since his name in Brawl is Wolf and the abbreviation SSBB may also stand for a future Smash Bros. game? Enzeru (talk) 17:29, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree that it should be their in-game name. Zelda (SSBB) is already at the proper location, I had assumed that they all were. --Shadowcrest 19:55, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

There was quite a bit of back-and-forth arguing about that early on, but I think it's safe to say that the name in smash is the way to go since it's a smash encyclopedia and not a Nintendo one. Leave "SSBB" as is, though. That creates a ridiculous amount of unnecessary work. --RJM ^Talk 20:43, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Brawl Fighters' Attributes

One thing about SSBB characters' attributes sections has been bugging me for quite some time. Excluding Bowser (SSBB)#Attributes, all SSBB Fighters have 1-3(?) paragraphs explaining the characters' pros (with a few cons added in) and 1-2 paragraphs explaining the characters' cons (with a few pros added in). So basically, we still have the same thing as Pros & Cons only in paragraph form. I suggest that we mix the pros and cons in SSBB pages together, making the attributes section similar to SSB and SSBM attributes like Donkey Kong (SSBM)#Attributes and Ice Climbers (SSBM)#Attributes. A problem with the way the SSBB articles are currently set up is that they are redundant (the Meta Knight article mentions that all special moves can be used for recovery twice, the Donkey Kong article mentions that he has poor vertical recovery twice, the Dedede article mentions that he is slow twice, etc.) Additionally, I feel that certain things need to be said right next to each other (e.g. should the Meta Knight article really say all special moves can be used for recovery in the first paragraph, and then that all special moves put him into a helpless state at the bottom of the second paragraph?)

A few SSBB pages won't be changed by this idea. Since Falco and Wario only have two significant weaknesses (poor KOing power and vertical recovery; poor range and air release; respectively), it would be hard to mix only two weakness into so many strengths. For the most part though, I think that pros and cons should be mixed together instead of having paragraphs consisting 90% of just one. I'm stated my idea here to make sure it reflects consensus. Enigmatic Mr. L 02:56, October 11, 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I think this would be a lot more useful than the style we have now, as it is definitely more organized. Also, it might help with explaining better why characters are in the tier they are in, since we'd have this list of attributes to prove it. RAN1domchupunch!!99 03:40, October 11, 2009 (UTC)

Minor side note: We need articles on "air release" and "ground release". The phrases are used in articles, but their meaning is never stated. PenguinofDeath 12:41, October 11, 2009 (UTC)

It started with purely attributes, but with the 100+ editors we had at the time, some felt it necessary to include pros and cons. If you look through edit histories of some of them (Meat Knight, Falco, and Mario for sure) you'll see that they started off as purely attributes. I don't know if we should just go back and revert all of them to the original attributes sections, if we should just leave it, or if we should just reword them.Smoreking^(T) _(c) 12:52, October 11, 2009 (UTC)

I dislike the idea of changing them all back to purely attributes. As the Post-Merge Cleanup states, "...the information found in many of the Pros & Cons sections is actually quite valuable and shouldn't be purged completely...". I agree with that. Enigmatic Mr. L 18:21, October 11, 2009 (UTC)