Category talk:VIP

Notability

There's a problem if I come to the category for "very important people" and I don't know who half the people are, even after I read their articles. --Kirby King 18:49, February 20, 2007 (GMT)

Deletion

Delete Useless sounding category. --RoyboyX Talk 17:42, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

Delete No objective way to determine who belongs in this category. Mousehunter321 (talk · contributions) 20:00, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

Delete There is really no use for this category. Terrible is Halloween 20:13, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

Delete This category is confusing and pointless. Dots The Cute Asian 20:22, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

Delete Per above, and putting someone in here is more a matter of opinion. And nobody wants that. Air Conditioner -.-- -.-- --..! 20:57, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

Delete Mostly outdated and unnecessary. Mr. Anontalk 21:10, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

Keep Multiple reasons as to why this category doesn't have to be an opinion category. Simply set a few guidelines on what makes a smasher important. For example:

• Check to see if they're high placing smashers.
• Check to see if they discovered something.
• Check to see if they set a new record for something (Winning with a low tier, entering a tournament when you're under 15, etc.).
• Ask a competitive user if they recognize the name.

The category would help new people recognize who the famous smashers are, without going "He's that one guy in that one tournament" every single time someone mentions a famous smasher. MegaTron1XD 21:46, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

• "Check to see if they're high placing smashers."

In that case, this list is far outdated and not useful. How many of top professionals do you think are here? Even if we needed to categorize all of them, a category like "VIP" is not useful, as compared to something like "Category: Top Professionals", which actually gives some kind of explanation in its title.

• "Check to see if they discovered something."

Why should we have to chronicle every discoverer of every glitch and advanced technique? Does that mean people like this guy should be categorized as "Very Important People" even though there is very little information to cover?

• "Check to see if they set a new record for something (Winning with a low tier, entering a tournament when you're under 15, etc.)."

Since when does this wiki keep track of professional "records" like this? Since tiers are subject to change, information would very quickly be out of date.

As you can see, all three of these things either can be categorized by a better category or don't need to be categorized at all. Mr. Anontalk 22:33, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

Second point would have stricter regulations than what I mentioned. Your counter to the third point is invalid. San brought Ike out of the low tiers, yet he is still famous for that and being the best Ike main. Information such as winning with a then low tier character does not become outdated, especially in multiple unique cases, such as Verm, who mains a character that will never rise out of bottom tier, as he was then and still is a low character. You also disregarded the existance of the second point, in which age was a huge difference. You do not expect a 15 year old like Nairo to place anywhere in the top five of a major tournament, yet such a thing was done. Though you can convert this category to a top professional category, you exclude people who've discovered useful things, but have failed to place highly in tournaments. MegaTron1XD 22:43, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

Second point would have stricter regulations than what I mentioned.

Very well, what are they?

San brought Ike out of the low tiers, yet he is still famous for that and being the best Ike main.

That's why we have Category:Ike professionals.

Information such as winning with a then low tier character does not become outdated, especially in multiple unique cases, such as Verm

If so, what is your basis for excluding players who succeed with high-tier characters from this category if this isn't simply going to turn into a an amalgam of people who should be in, or are already in, Category:Professionals and whomever else you deem to be "important"? Again, that is why we have Category:(character) professionals and respective categories for tournament organizers, game developers and the like.

You do not expect a 15 year old like Nairo to place anywhere in the top five of a major tournament, yet such a thing was done.

While such feats are notable, would Nairo be excluded if he was 5 years older? What if he was 3 years older? If he placed in the top 16, but was two years younger, would he still belong to this category? The point is, while this information is salient for individual articles, it is difficult to objectively categorize people as "VIP" simply because they are younger than their peers.

Though you can convert this category to a top professional category, you exclude people who've discovered useful things, but have failed to place highly in tournaments.

To reiterate, we have Category:Professionals. The simple act of discovering something does not make someone automatically notable enough to be considered "very important". Toadbanjoconker did not discover wavedashing, but he is notable because he popularized it in a video he uploaded. And again, there is no objective way to determine how important a discovery is to warrant belonging to this category, not to mention that most people who would fit the above criterion are already professional players who would belong to one or more of the aforementioned categories e.g. Ken Hoang and the Ken combo.

Ask a competitive user if they recognize the name.

Since no one has responded to this point, I'll just say that this lacks any relevance whatsoever to the discussion. Mousehunter321 (talk · contributions) 23:54, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

Rather than counter your statements one by one like you did mine, I'd rather make a general paragraph that won't distract me from the main focus. I will admit that I do not have regulations in mind, while more competitive users who actually know things would. The idea of just throwing things into a Category:<character> professional page would not help single out smashers who have truly accomplished something in the SSB series metagame. Putting the top Ike main in a category with a bunch of decent Ike mains prevents him from being noticeable, as there is nothing in the category that says, "Hey, look at me! I'm important!". In addition, take a look at someone like M2K's page. People recognize him as among the top smashers in the US. Yet, nothing in his categories outside of VIP would indicate that he is at all significant. The only category to make him noticeable outside of a VIP category would be a top professional category, which would exclude several notable discoverers of techniques who have not yet to master them like those who copied the technique and made it better. The regular professional category is just full of people who can place 20th with MK, while VIP and top professional would place the people who have placed 1st often with MK and separate them from the MK mains who place low in multiple tournaments. As for the Nairo point, consider this: What makes a 15 year old different from an 18 year old? What makes a legal adult who can drink and drive different from a teenager who is not allowed to do such things without getting in trouble with authorities. Someone who's 17 would have to undergo much more judging than others, but a 15 year old simply does not have to go through that kind of judging. Finally, saying that you can disregard a point because no one has responded is heavily biased towards yourself, seeing as how the majority of the Wiki is asleep or just not capable of answering, while the competitive users are asleep for sure. MegaTron1XD 00:26, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

I fully support singling out smashers who have truly made significant contributions to the metagame, as long as it is done in a manner which exemplifies the accomplishments of said individuals beyond lumping them into a poorly defined group. I do not believe that adding another category to a smasher's article significantly enhances a reader's understanding of said smasher's accomplishments versus expanding the article to reflect their status in the Smash community. That said, my primary concern is that it is impossible to objectively define who would belong in such a category: if San is in, then is Ryo? San's arguably the best Ike player in the U.S., but Ryo's ranked #2 in Florida ahead of Seibrik and Nick Riddle. Enlighten me, how many tournaments does someone have to win to be qualified as "VIP"? If I win five small tournaments, does that count as one big tournament? And as for the difference between adolescence and adulthood, your argument is invalidated by the fact that there is no lower limit on the legal drinking age in multiple countries such as Greece, Norway, and Poland, not to mention that drinking and driving have little bearing on Smash (excluding the fact that the former is a rather common practice at tournaments.) As for the last point, where you posited that an effective qualifier is to "ask a competitive user", would you like to define a "competitive user"? The fact that the majority of current SmashWiki users focus on Brawl notwithstanding, our active user base as defined by Special:ActiveUsers numbers less than 100, of which many edit only the Smash Arena! Additionally, there is the problem of other users who consider themselves "competitive" yet engage in behavior such as constantly johning about the lag on wi-fi. Would they be effective judges of whether a smasher is "VIP"? Lastly, I would like to point out that SmashWiki compiles the achievements of notable individuals in the Smash community; it should not have to pass judgement on whether an individual is eminently notable or not. I've said enough, but my question to you is this: what objective way do you propose to qualify smashers for this category? Mousehunter321 (talk · contributions) 01:11, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

While I do not think discoverers of glitches should be VIPs (I discovered The Flop Block, I'm not a VIP), I do think we should Keep the category, I can see the practical use of it. Toast ltimatum 22:37, 4 October 2012 (EDT)

I have not yet made a full judgment on this yet, but I'll point out the "we have no objective way of determining this" argument is invalid. Many things on the Wiki are subjective, and this is no exception; you can't aim for full objectivity all the time. However, there really is no overly complicated way of figuring out who goes here like Mousehunter claims. While there will be borderline cases, a lot of the people who would go here are pretty damn obvious. We don't need "objective" measures to determine that Ally, Alex Strife, and San have been very important people in the Smash community and thus belong here. We also don't need objective measures to determine that Hylian, Bloodcross, and myself do not belong here. The argument regarding this has been blatant strawmans, and those that want to delete this should argue a different point than that "this can't be objectively determined".

As for the necessity of the category itself, I haven't developed a fully opinion on it yet, but it is certainly capable of working. Omega Tyrant 01:31, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

Also for Mousehunter's question, read what the category is described for:

These people have made large contributions to the game and/or the Smash Bros. player community. The very important people here are recognized as developers of Smash Bros. games and/or members of the player community who have made large and notable contributions to it.

Stop making this more complicated than it needs to be. Omega Tyrant 01:33, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

I'll also refute some of the other delete reasons on here that are just bad:

"Useless sounding category" "There is really no use for this category"

Read the category description, this category certainly has a use.

"This category is confusing"

What is so confusing about categorising the most important people of Smash and its competitive community?

"putting someone in here is more a matter of opinion. And nobody wants that."

It's no mere opinion that the likes of Ally, Ken, and M2K are very important people to the Smash community. Also see what I said regarding objectivity, you can't be purely objective all the time.

"Mostly outdated"

Once very important, always very important. This will never be outdated. If you're referring to it missing people as "being outdated", add the people, and viola. This is no reason to delete.

"Since tiers are subject to change, information would very quickly be out of date."

Doing well with a character considered low tier at any point of time is massively impressive, regardless of if the character is no longer consider such (which if happened, occurred on part of the player who did well with the low tier). Stop with these "out of date" arguments.

"As you can see, all three of these things either can be categorized by a better category."

A split of this category to separate the types of very important people (player, tournament organiser, contributor, developer) is reasonable. Omega Tyrant 02:07, 5 October 2012 (EDT)

Keep After some deliberation, I decided that this category should be kept. Besides pro-delete's arguments being weak, I see merit in this category. It is certainly useful to have a category where one can find the most important/notable people of Smash in one easy to access place. Take a user who's new to the competitive scene; it's very likely they're interested in knowing who the biggest names are, such as myself back when I first discovered SmashWiki in 2006 and learned of the competitive scene behind Melee. Instead of having dig through all the smasher articles to find these people, they can just look at category and find what they're looking for.

For deciding who to put in the category, it'll work just like how we decide notability. If we're fully capable of determining who is notable and who is not, why are we suddenly incapable of determining who are beyond the rest in notability? The majority of cases should be obvious anyway, and it'll be even easier to determine who belongs here than it would be to determine the notability of the typical local/regional level smasher (for one, the people who would qualify for this category would certainly have a whole lot of information available on them).

However, I do think this category should be split, as people will be in this category for different reasons, and someone looking through this category may only be interested in one type of people here (such as someone looking for information on the best players aren't interested in the most notable tournament hosts). As such, I propose we split this into the following categories:

• VIP Players - This category would be for the most important players of the competitive scene. They are either here for being outright dominant up to national level play (Ally, Ken, Isai), being major innovators of their character's metagame (DEHF, Wobbles, TKD), performing well beyond with a lower tier character (San, Gimpyfish, Taj), or some combination of.

• VIP Tournament directors - This category would be for the most important tournament hosts of the competitive scene. Examples would include Alex Strife, Xyro, and Matt Deezie.

• VIP Contributors - This category would be for the most important contributors to Smash. They would be either from vital discoveries and spread of information (God-is-my-Rock), vital contributions to the community from non-tournament means (Nealdt, Gideon), or a combination of.

As for the people involved in the direct creation of Smash, a VIP category won't be necessary, as it's redundant with the game developer category (and everyone there qualifies as VIP by default). Omega Tyrant 10:45, 6 October 2012 (EDT)