Talk:Neutral attack

Can someone tell me how to chose between Melee Link's two tipes of jab? User:Firewario user talk:Firewario 9th April 2009 23:24 (UTC)

Weak attack

I might be wrong, but I think I can recall it being called "Weak attack" somewhere officially. Anyone else recognising it? – Smiddle_T 07:22, 3 July 2011 (EDT)

In Melee, you got a bonus called "Wimpy KO" for KOing someone with a "weak attack", which was referring to KOing someone with your jab. Omega Tyrant 07:45, 3 July 2011 (EDT)

That's weird, I could've sworn that I've heard it somewhere more notable... – Smiddle_T 18:49, 3 July 2011 (EDT)

Meta Knight and notable neutrals

I just noticed that below the Brawl neutral aerials, there is a section about metaknight's infinite jab. It's not an infinite jab, the animation shows 10 slashes and You can keep it going if you hold the attack button. That's just a consecutive jab!

Also, I noticed that on some other articles, such as forward aerial, there is a section on notable attacks. Do we need that here?75.85.64.155 12:39, 26 January 2014 (EST)

MK's jab is an infinite in all its technical aspects, so that's how we should probably treat it.

I'm not sure we need a section on notable jabs (are there really any?). Toomai Glittershine The Frivolous 12:46, 26 January 2014 (EST)

Ike's jab is most definitely notable, especially in vBrawl. — Jigglypuff the Magic Dragon (talk) 14:45, 26 January 2014 (EST)

"Standard attack"

I thought "standard attack" referred to any ground-based A move, to distinguish them from special attacks. Am I mistaken? – Smiddle 05:31, 9 October 2015 (EDT)

I think it officially refers to a jab, but I have heard it used to describe tilts before. Not specials or smashes though. Serpent∞King (talk) 05:34, 9 October 2015 (EDT)

Officially, it means a jab. Unofficially, it means any attack you can do with the A button (i.e. jab, tilts, smashes and aerials). Zyrac (talk) 05:49, 9 October 2015 (EDT)

Move proposal

Hello, SmashWiki. It's been a long while since I was active here, but I've always felt this to be a necessary proposal. In order to better fulfill the wiki's purpose as an accurate, community-friendly encyclopedia, I strongly believe this page should be moved to Jab. Here are, in detail, my reasons why:

• It's much more widely used by the community. I'll open this with what I believe to be a cornerstone of any wiki on a scale comparable to ours, and an important point to remember going forward: SmashWiki is not a forum where the community decides what terms should be used. It's a hub intended to promote the community's process of learning and studying. SmashWiki editors constitute only a small portion of the Smash community at large, and thus the wiki should minimize throwing around terms that sound alien to this large portion of outsiders as if they were widely accepted. Within the more competitive, dedicated community - the one our documentation is predominantly centered around - you'll see "jab" resonate much better than "neutral attack". To prove this, I looked into some Smash-related Discord servers, including our own, and put both terms in the search bar. This is what I found as of the current date:
  • SmashWiki: 1162 results for jab - 79 results for neutral attack
  • Kurogane Hammer: 2394 - 10
  • Mario Discord: 4051 - 27
  • Luigi Discord: 3885 - 79
  • Belmont Discord: 2372 - 32
  • Mega Man Discord: 3642 - 45
  • Ridley Discord: 6911 - 70
  • Wolf Discord: 6266 - 40

Our server has the most proportionate instances of "neutral attack" by a significant margin, and even then the term is orders of magnitude less common than "jab". Uses of "neutral attack" are borderline negligible in the rest. Moreover, a fair number of the results for neutral attack are just Discord picking out the words "neutral" and "attack" from different parts of a message, not for the actual term. One could make the argument that jab is an actual word that can get used in non-Smash contexts, but these are Smash-centric Discords, so the usage of the actual Smash term is (and will be) much more common either way. And these are just a few examples. I can't provide concrete results for Smash communities in other media like Twitter or YouTube, since it's not as convenient to search results in less established places, but given several of the same members from the Discords are also there, you're bound to find very similar results.

Here, let me also bring rapid jabs into the debate. This term is even more widely used than the "neutral infinite" name we seem to have analogous to neutral attack, and especially more than the official name of "flurry attack", to the point our own wiki pages use it a lot more often. Just to corroborate, here are once again results from the same Discord servers, searching "rapid jab", "neutral infinite", and "flurry attack":

• • SmashWiki: 173 - 6 - 7
  • Kurogane Hammer: 340 - 2 - 2
  • Mario Discord: 177 - 1 - 0
  • Luigi Discord: 145 - 1 - 2
  • Belmont Discord: 126 - 3 - 4
  • Mega Man Discord: 128 - 2 - 2
  • Ridley Discord: 670 - 1 - 8
  • Wolf Discord: 216 - 2 - 3

Even more significant ratio here, right?

• Official terms aren't the law. Jabs are indeed given the official name "neutral attack" in Ultimate. But this is where one of our most essential and ubiquitously-influential policies comes into play as a counterargument: SmashWiki is not official. We do not call techs "breaking your fall". We do not call DI "launch shuffling", nor SDI "hitstun shuffling". For that matter, we've made it clear that the "hitstun" in question – the freeze period upon a hit – is to be called hitlag, while actual hitstun is a character's inactionable period during knockback. Likewise, we never abided closely to calling tilt attacks "strong attacks" when the latter was an official term. We do not call forward tilts "side tilts", which I'd even argue is a more common term in the community at large than neutral attack or any of the aforementioned. When our continuous use of "neutral attack" is not in line with one of our most important policies, that we base such a large part of how we convey information here, I hardly believe it's a tenable position to hold.

• Jab has also been an official term. That's right, Ultimate actually has one instance of using jab as a term for this move! The description of the Skills in World of Light that enhance jabs states "Increases the power of neutral attacks, such as jabs". It's not quite conclusive since it strangely uses both terms in the same sentence, but it does give an idea that a sizable amount of "neutral attacks" can be referred to as "jabs", which at least acknowledges the term as used by the community to some degree, even if not directly.

That sums up my points. With everything laid out on the table like this, I hope this is as clear a proposal as it can be. DrakRoar the game design dragon 20:49, January 14, 2021 (EST)

I support this move. ...I honestly don't think I've seen/heard a whole lot of people say "neutral attack" in favor of "jab" myself. Aidan, the Rurouni 02:30, January 15, 2021 (EST)

Support: Not much else to add, considering jab is somewhat official now. Omegα Toαd, the Toαd Wαrrior. (BUP) 03:25, January 15, 2021 (EST)

You are correct that the community at large uses "jab" far more frequently. However, consider the following:

1. Unlike your other examples of us moving things to less-official names, thie one is part of a "set" of all the normal attack names. Currently (as of SSBU officializing "tilt"), we use official names for 21 of the 28 moves (see Template:Attacks), and of the non-official ones 3 have no known official English term to use instead, so we're 84% official. The idea of decreasing this percentage, and increasing the inconsistency, feels wrong. (In fact I wouldn't straight-up oppose moving "forward tilt" and "forward smash" to "side tilt" and "side smash", although that would cause even more disruption than this would and thus is still quite bad, and "pummel" and "grab aerial" have to stay regardless to avoid the confusion of official terms calling them the same thing.)
2. We have never seriously considered moving "Reflector (Fox)" to "Shine", or "Vegetable" to "Turnip", even though it's obvious that the fan-preferred terms far eclipse the official names in usage. How close are "normal attack names" to "individual special move names" in terms of "unofficial names should never win just for being popular"? (Although admittedly the naming of some Final Smashes being a debate rather than a clear-cut case shows even this isn't as tight as it probably should be.)

Overall I oppose because I don't think the change will buy us anything compared to the effort required. Remember, normal attack names are tightly integrated with thousands of pages, templates, and images, and while a bot can do some of the work, editors still have to set it up and check all that it does afterward. Compare to the payoff - "jab" will be the page instead of the redirect? Tons of articles use "jab" in the text anyway and it's no big deal. You put "smashwiki jab" or "smash bros jab" into Google and it hands you this page anyway. I'm just not seeing the reward for such a disruptive change. Toomai Glittershine The Indescribable 08:07, January 15, 2021 (EST)

I strongly, strongly support. The use of "neutral attack" feels like an egregious failure to meld with the greater community's language. As for Toomai's counterarguments:

1. I fail to see why any weight is being placed on this percentage of official attack names. There is no policy that dictates this is a percentage that ought to be kept high; contrarily, the existence of SW:OFFICIAL renders any sort of "officialism check" entirely arbitrary and unnecessary. SW:OFFICIAL exists because what should be kept consistent for a wiki intended to be a community resource is not the use of official terms, but of widely-used ones. In trying to maintain a precedent for the use of official terms despite popular alternatives, inconsistency is introduced to the wiki, not solved. Jab is used frequently on this wiki by virtue of being the simpler and wider-understood term. Instead of treating this like an inevitable slippage into the breaking of policy, we should correct the policy itself.
   
   To argue that a move to "jab" would cause inconsistency is flawed on two fronts: if the goal here is to stay consistent with official content, we're in violation of SW:OFFICIAL by trying to supplant a simple and pervasively-used term with its rarer, more unwieldy official counterpart; if the goal is to stay consistent within the wiki's usage of the term, we are already failing, and it's far more preferable to correct this error by normalizing the community term.
2. This second point is not chiefly an issue with the current argument, but of the potential to establish a precedent for messy special move name changing arguments down the line. I do not believe this will be the case, as not all official terms are created equal.
   
   Consider that Reflector and Turnip are special moves, even the most common of which are only used by single-digit numbers of characters, and all of which are rigorously defined and named through in-game move lists, trophies, etc. Compare that to jabs – every single character who has ever been in Smash has had a jab, but official names for the term are, compared to special moves, often hidden within more obscure resources. This results in generally increased relevance of jabs as a discussable concept with regards to the series at large than any single special move. Furthermore, while that combination of circumstances is not the only one that facilitates the creation of fanmade terms, it does change the reason for which the terms are created and the purpose they fulfill due to a comparative dearth of official references to "neutral attack" despite its status as an official term. The official use of "neutral attack" is such a rarity that I believe the advent of "jab" was more brought about by the perceived need to fill a lexical gap than as an alternative to a known, existing term. I believe this is a contributing factor to jab having become such a widely-used term, and is simultaneously grounds to replace "neutral attack" with "jab", but not to, for instance, replace "Reflector" with "shine".
3. As a final point, I'd argue that the result of this move will be beneficial enough to justify the work involved. Consider if, as of the Smash 4 era, we had decided to abide by officialism and refer to tilts as strongs throughout the wiki. Although searching "forward tilt" would still lead you to the page about the concept, "strong" remaining as the prevailing term would create an unnecessary and uncomfortable schism between common speech and wiki presentation, resulting in second-guessing, potential inconsistency of style, and in severe cases a hindrance in the flow of information and learning. The current case with jab/neutral attack is analogous to this scenario, and it's one worth correcting even if it takes a while – and even then, if we have a lot of people making coordinated edits assisted by bots, the switch and all its repercussions could be done and dealt with in a matter of mere days.

All this considered, I do not believe there is a justifiable reason to maintain the use of such a term under the circumstances. Nymbare and his talk 19:43, January 15, 2021 (EST)

Oppose, I find myself concurring with Toomai’s comment above. Black Vulpine of the 🦊Furry Nation🐺. Furries make the internets go! :3 20:33, January 15, 2021 (EST)

Support I don't agree with Toomai's reasoning at all. Firstly, the argument you mentioned about consistency with the official names does not apply here. It just so happens that most of the official attack names also happen to be the most commonly used names by the community. As for things like "side smash" vs "forward smash", it's not our fault that the community sometimes arbitrarily decides on the names of moves, and "neutral attack" is one of the least commonly used official names compared to the unofficial term. In addition, I don't think that "it's too much effort to do it" is a good argument. The disparity between SmashWiki's usage of "neutral attack" vs the community's usage of "jab" is not going to get any better. People are going to keep writing articles with "neutral attack" in them, which is only going to make the wiki look further out of date/out of touch, so the best time to fix things is now. We've had cases like this before, where we change the wiki's usage of a widespread term. Usually what happens is that the old phrase gradually gets phased out of the wiki's article text (where a seasoned editor might stumble upon the term "neutral attack" while editing and then change it to "jab" out of convenience). I don't see anything different happening here, and I don't think the issue is as big as you are making it out to be. Awesome Cardinal 2000 22:22, January 15, 2021 (EST)

I Oppose the change, Thegameandwatch The Nerd 05:00, January 16, 2021 (EST)

I have realized an additional reason (which I sensed before but couldn't articulate) that I believe this rename is a poor idea. Every other attack has always been named after the input (the one exception being "pummel", for a variety of reasons). Even the character-unique attacks like Piranha Plant's "footstooled attack" and Terry's "dodge attack" fit this pattern. Renaming "neutral attack" to "jab" would break this standard (in not exactly a minor way, since it's always the first in attack lists) and create a new exception. I believe this is enough justification to not automatically follow the "use common fan names" guideline.

I also ask this: Why is "jab" being treated as a different term entirely, rather than as a shorthand? Shorthands are not necessarily abbreviations of the root (usually yes, but not always). Toomai Glittershine The SMASH-GINEER 17:00, January 16, 2021 (EST)

It should not be based on what you think is correct, it should be based on what the community considers correct, regardless of how uneducated/misinformed the majority of the fanbase is. And "jab" is not a shorthand for "neutral attack" the same way something like "fair" is for "forward aerial". Awesome Cardinal 2000 17:04, January 16, 2021 (EST)

If you think this is a question of "correct", than answer this: Does the community actually believe that "jab" is correct? Or are they just using it because it's easier to type/say than "neutral attack" (thus, a shorthand)? Toomai Glittershine The Incomprehensible 18:52, January 17, 2021 (EST)

Jab is definitely not the shorthand form of neutral attack, it came around because it's popularly used to describe these kinds of attacks in other fighting games, and happened to stick in Smash. It's not like Smash players looked on the official website and said "Neutral attack is too complicated, let's abbreviate it as 'jab' for short." The shorthand form of neutral attack is probably closer to "AAA" or “neutral A”. Awesome Cardinal 2000 22:42, January 17, 2021 (EST)

Okay so this is not a case of "we'll call it X because Y is bad", or "we'll call it X because we don't know any better", but rather "we'll call it X because we like X". I think this is an important distinction: the only reason people use the alternate term is because people use the alternate term. There's no additional reason such as "the official term wasn't known until too late" (like "ukemi" vs. "tech", or "attribute" vs. "effect"), "the official term is too unconventional" (like "prat fall" vs. "trip", or "Super Smash Bros. for 3DS and Wii U" vs. "Super Smash Bros. 4"), or "the official term is actively confusing" (like "grab attack" vs. "pummel" and "grab aerial", or "hitstun" vs "hitlag"). Because of this, I think the "it's more popular" argument is a fair bit weaker. This is why, in combination with the unique circumstance that this is not a lone term (as it resides in the pattern of naming attacks after inputs), I don't think we should rename it. Toomai Glittershine The Zesty 07:53, January 19, 2021 (EST)

It is not the wiki's job to actively question why people use a certain term over the other. In addition, just because the official name for a term was discovered too late, doesn't mean people will automatically switch to using it. Do you think that people would really call it "ukemi" over "tech" if they knew it was called that from the start?

Frankly I don't understand why you're so insistent on preserving the page title for a term that's used at least 100 times less than the more commonly used name, for reasons that fail to transcend SW:OFFICIAL. Our policies state that we should use the community's name as the title, not "unofficial title if the official name is too weird/complicated/etc." If we changed every single mention of "neutral attack" to "jab" on SmashWiki, I believe that the articles would become more readable and accessible to the community, by replacing an archaic term with one that everyone knows. Awesome Cardinal 2000 14:39, January 19, 2021 (EST)

The spirit of SW:OFFICIAL is that we should not be forced to use official terms simply because they are official. I am demonstrating that there is reason that isn't "it's official" to keep "neutral attack" as the name - that being it is not a lone term, but part of a larger system of terms that is reasonably formulaic and fairly self-consistent. People can keep using "jab" as a shorthand in article text, it's no more confusing than shorthands like "fair". (Yes, things can be shorthands even if they don't appear related, like "zair" for "grab aerial", or "Bolts" for the "Tampa Bay Lightning" hockey team. Language is weird sometimes.)

And of course, SW:OFFICIAL only says that "the fan term may be chosen instead" "on a case-by-case basis" (emphasis added). People seem to be under the impression that we have to make this move because there are numbers of term popularity. But even if we followed the letter of the policy rather than the spirit, that is not the case. There is reason beyond what is and isn't official to not change this. Toomai Glittershine The Different 00:14, January 20, 2021 (EST)

The examples of "jab" and "fair" you listed are not the same. "Jab" is not a shorthand for "neutral attack." Using the term "fair" or "Bolts" in an article sounds extremely casual and perhaps not like formal encyclopedic speech, while using "jab" instead of "neutral attack" sounds encyclopedic in any context. In addition, there is no formulaic "system" in place at all with regards to the names of these articles, unlike what you think. Every move name other than "neutral attack" is named only after the community's most commonly used name (with the exception of maybe "get up attack" over "floor attack," though that might be a move for a later date). The tilt attacks were officially named "strong attacks" until Ultimate, yet the pages were named as "forward tilt" etc. for years, so our article titles clearly aren't based on what's official. The moves "forward smash" and "side special" are performed the same way with the control stick, yet one is called "forward" and the other is called "side," proving there really is no rhyme or reason when it comes to naming these pages.

And SW:OFFICIAL states "Prioritize using official names unless a different name is much more widely used." And the "spirit" of SW:OFFICIAL has always been that the widespread and popular community name should be used over the obscure official name. Do you really not think that a 100 times greater usage of the unofficial term applies here? Awesome Cardinal 2000 13:13, January 20, 2021 (EST)

You missed the point of how moves are systematically named after their inputs. "Jab" and "strong side" are not inputs, while "neutral attack" and "forward tilt" are. There is indeed some inconsistency between "forward" and "side", but there's only a single exception (side special) so it's not all that bad, and as stated above I am open to fixing it (although not enthused for it).

In addition, "neutral attack" is far from an "obscure" name. It's not like "prat fall" or "impact stall", where the first reaction to using it is probably "what?". People just don't commonly use it because it takes a lot of effort to type out compared to "nair" or such, and there's not really a better way to abbreviate it. Toomai Glittershine The Cloronic 20:46, January 20, 2021 (EST)