Since 2013, the wiki has had a gallery for each fighter in their metal appearances in each of the games, with both Smash 4 and Ultimate's rosters being added to the gallery upon each game's release. Earlier this year, in July of 2019, a comparable gallery for each fighter's gold appearance in Smash 3DS and Ultimate was made. Upon the latter's creation, it was deemed redundant by a few people (including myself), while the question of why the initial metal one existed in the first place. As such, I would like to keep discussions about both in one place (as to not have it potentially split between two talk pages), and hopefully come to a conclusion. This also does not have any bearing on the existence of the Metal Box or Gold Fighter pages, as those should be documented just like any other item (though gold fighters don't transform with an item, outside of Xerneas in Ultimate, but I digress).
The metal effect is its own texture, as is the case with the original powerup in Super Mario 64. Its placement in Smash is therefore a unique, appearance-changing powerup, one that gives a unique texture. There are already countless compilations on YouTube for aspects every character shares and how their appearances change depending on the character; I see no real reason why this should be any different, being our own compilation. For the gold fighters, it's literally the exact same as the metal texture, just a different color. Therefore, while I can see why people would want to have both deleted for being unnecessary, as, again, it's just a simple texture that every character uses, in my opinion, the metal gallery should be kept, while the gold gallery should be deleted.
As a side note, the false characters' gallery should stay, and is irrelevant to this discussion; unlike both metal and gold, each character has (even if only slightly) their own unique appearance.
Feel free to discuss. Aidan, the Rurouni 18:44, November 15, 2019 (EST)