SmashWiki talk:Smasher article guidelines

I thought about creating this long ago, but never got around to it, until now. Simply, it's a guideline putting into words what we already enforce with smasher articles, into an easily referenced guideline. Discuss it here, talk about any changes and polishing that should be done before making it official, or speaking any objections you have. Omega Tyrant 16:07, 17 November 2015 (EST)

Yes, yes, 1000 times yes! Support. ---Preceding unsigned comment added by a turkey! Or maybe DatNuttyKid. 16:11, 17 November 2015 (EST)

Support After a long history of vanity articles and non-notable ones, this is long overdue. Disaster Flare (talk) 16:20, 17 November 2015 (EST)

Support per Disaster Flare and the fact that it would relieve us of some smasher stubs. Nyargleblargle (Talk | Contribs) 16:21, 17 November 2015 (EST)

Support. Exactly what we need. This will hopefully prevent any vanity articles from appearing in the future. However, it may be difficult to find some of the desired information for TO pages and other articles. John PK SMAAAASH!! 16:24, 17 November 2015 (EST)

Support This should have been here long ago. The article is also very well-written and straightforward. If there are any imperfections, I honestly can't see them right now. Drill Blaster Mark 2 (talk) 16:33, 17 November 2015 (EST)

Support What everyone said, etc. etc. --MeatBall104 16:44, 17 November 2015 (EST)

Very Strong Support. I honestly think this is our first pivotal guideline that is 100% flawless. It's well written, concise, necessary, and quite frankly overdue. There is no reason to oppose this. Ganonmew, The Thankful Evil Clone 19:34, 17 November 2015 (EST)

Support, although I do have a question about one element that may be worth considering including as well. Do we want to have some kind of criteria on SW:NOTE or elsewhere for tournament notability? That way we could specifically clarify which tournaments on a Smasher page are worth having as an internal link (because the tournament deserves a page) and which need nothing more than a link to a SmashBoards thread or similar. Miles (talk) 14:57, 18 November 2015 (EST)

That's a very good point. I personally feel it is unnecessary to include tournaments that are just Smashboards links, since most of those are probably not notable. John PK SMAAAASH!! 15:27, 18 November 2015 (EST)

@Miles: As I see it, pretty much any offline tourney with a tangible prize that isn't extremely minor (say like some house tourney between a crew) is notable enough to have it on the wiki in some form. However, the tourney should be regional-sized to get its own article, while for less significant local tournies, we should instead have an article on the tourney series they're a part of, with each individual tournament's result listed on the series page (like I did for the old BEST series my region had, which speaking of I need to update). Online tournies should be considered not notable for SmashWiki documentation nor tourney result listing by default, unless they're really major like that global Smash 4 wifi tourney Zero won or the Brawl-era AiB ladders.

@John: Barring the exceptions I covered above, every tourney goes into a smasher's PR, earnings, reputation, etc., and thus their result in them is necessary to record. Omega Tyrant 07:49, 19 November 2015 (EST)

SUPPORT TO THE MAX what is not to love about this idea? Nintendofan1653 (talk) 06:37, 19 November 2015 (EST)

Support although I'm going to have to change the copy-paste table I have referenced on my userspace to include the winnings... ugh. Winnings in itself should probably be clarified a bit more; what happens if there isn't any data available, should it be left blank or put as 0 or — ? kenniky 22:19, 21 November 2015 (EST)

Tournament earnings can be reasonably deduced if the results page doesn't list them; simply find out the entry fee of the tournament, the total amount of entrants, and the prize split, then some simple math will deduce the amount that was won by each players. Tournaments also mention when they have pot bonuses and such that increase the earnings beyond the prize split. As such, the information can still be filled out. Omega Tyrant 19:35, 23 November 2015 (EST)

Support It seems to be unanimous. I'll let OT do the honors though, if he's ready. Serpent King 20:19, 22 November 2015 (EST)

Indeed it is.. I mean, who would oppose this after hundreds of vanity articles? Ganonmew, The Thankful Evil Clone 07:29, 23 November 2015 (EST)

Given that we have no way of knowing when OT is coming back now that he seems to be done with his activity spree, can an admin implement this? ---Preceding unsigned comment added by a turkey! Or maybe DatNuttyKid. 16:46, 23 November 2015 (EST)

Would it be worth it to extend this in some fashion to deal with crews, tournaments and the like? -Menshay (talk) 16:48, 23 November 2015 (EST)

I would say we probably could. It would require a rename... probably "Competitive article guidelines" or something ---Preceding unsigned comment added by a turkey! Or maybe DatNuttyKid. 16:52, 23 November 2015 (EST)

Dagnabbit guys. Serpent King 16:54, 23 November 2015 (EST)

Well the article as it is can exist. Any additions will have to be in the form of an amendment proposal. Serpent King 16:56, 23 November 2015 (EST)

Update to the policy regarding online tournaments

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

Hey all. So, over the past couple of months or so, smasher articles have been seeing a lot of work done thanks to SmashWiki's ever-hardworking contributors and lack of new Smash content to cover. However, there's one thing I've noticed the community being pretty divisive on when it comes to Smasher articles, and that is whether online tournaments are viable for inclusion or not. As it stands right now, all the policy states is "all verifiable tournament placings should be added", which indicates that if it can be verified that it was them, it should be added. I initially did nothing about this, but this is clearly starting to become an issue, with a few users outright trying to remove online results entirely and one smasher even private messaging me on Twitter asking for their removal. After quite a bit of thinking, I think I have a plausible way we can address this:

1. Smaller articles with not very many tournament placings in general, but still have notability backing them up should keep any online results.
2. Online results will remain for cases where a chunk of the competitive scene revolves around online play (correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly certain a majority of competitive Smash 64 is Netplay-based)
3. On articles with a lot of tournament placings will have any confirmed online tournaments removed, but any big online tournaments should remain (i.e., tournaments with a lot of entrants, including some big name competitors; big prizes are optional). Basically, if it's an online tournament with only like maybe 12 people and only the smasher in question is notable, it can be removed.

Now, despite this proposition, I would like to also offer my two cents, mainly so I can shed some light on why I personally think online results shouldn't be ignored. Look at it this way: SmashWiki's competitive side has always strived to record as much information as possible. Granted, we've lost a lot over the years due to us losing sites like Nintendo Dojo and I'm guessing TioPro, since I can't access the site, but we've always tried to add what we can. I personally feel like purposefully going out of our way to remove online placings completely defies what we've always stood by when it comes to making these articles, and it almost kind of makes us hypocrites if we did do it. It'd be like if you said you were going to collect all the Batman comics ever printed, only to say "I won't collect these issues because I don't like this story arc". This endless list of results is almost like our personal collection. The collector's job is to strive for completion, even if it means collecting the things you don't necessarily like or the things you don't think have much significance. I consider myself a collector when it comes to certain things, so this is just the way I see the whole thing. Don't get me wrong, I'm neither here nor there when it comes to whether this goes through or not, but I just wanted to tell you what I see from my eyes. I put my suggestion and this paragraph here so people have a choice, and will have a bit to think about before voting. Disaster Flare (talk) 00:40, 19 August 2017 (EDT)

Support

1. Sounds good not a lot to say on this one. Serpent King 15:16, 19 August 2017 (EDT)

   Well, you could explain if you support the plausible way to address it or my paragraph on why they shouldn't be ignored. XD My intention was if you agree with the solution, support it, and if you agree with my paragraph, oppose it. Disaster Flare (talk) 15:23, 19 August 2017 (EDT)

   That's confusing. I agree with the given solution though. Serpent King 15:38, 19 August 2017 (EDT)

2. Support per Serpent King. Ganonmew, The Evil Clone 23:15, 19 August 2017 (EDT)
3. Adding online results only for players that don't have a lot of offline tournaments sounds good. In Europe there are not many offline Smash 64 tournaments so the scene in Europe is mostly Netplay-based. Another idea would be to split online and offline tournaments, to make 2 sub-sections in the Tournament results / Super Smash Bros 64 section Patzui (talk) 05:24, 20 August 2017 (EDT)
4. Support, though might I suggest a more firm baseline for which online tournaments are sufficiently large (say, similar in scale to a major/large regional/something else)? Nyargleblargle (Contribs) 11:48, 20 August 2017 (EDT)

   I'd say at least a major would be good enough, provided there's still quite a few well-known players involved. Disaster Flare (talk) 13:03, 20 August 2017 (EDT)

   I agree; maybe even a bit smaller if the players are notable enough. Nyargleblargle (Contribs) 07:51, 21 August 2017 (EDT)

Oppose

1. ...

Neutral

1. ...

Comments

Just to clarify for anyone confused, my intention for this was if you approve of my suggested change, support this, but if you agree with me on my paragraph about why online tournaments shouldn't be ignored, oppose it. If this does go through, however, I'll still be keeping track of online results, most likely in my userspace. Disaster Flare (talk) 17:07, 19 August 2017 (EDT)

Another possibility: We could move all online results that'd need removing to a subpage, such as "Smasher:<name of smasher>/Online results". Thoughts? Disaster Flare (talk) 00:39, 20 August 2017 (EDT)

ehhh I don't think it's a good idea to split it up like that. Makes it confusing. Serpent King 20:55, 20 August 2017 (EDT)

"Dead tags"

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

It seems that it's currently only an unwritten rule that smasher articles require mentioning all previously-competed-under playernames/"tags" (or at least I don't know where such rule is written and it ought to belong here). So here's the proposal to fix that: add this under "Other guidelines to remember".

Any seriously-used tags must be mentioned in an article a minimum of once, ideally in the opening paragraph. It is important that all historical references to a player remain valid and traceable, to avoid confusing readers and keep innumerable articles from becoming out of date if a player goes through multiple different tags.

Toomai Glittershine The Free 08:06, July 5, 2022 (EDT)

Support: Given the recent discussions on this topic, this is something important that I feel should mentioned. People should be able to know who a smasher is based on their old tags reguardless of the smashers' opinion about it, and overall documenting in the most complete way should be the most important rule. Omega Toad, the Toad Warrior. (I'm the best!) 09:13, July 5, 2022 (EDT)

It seems me (and others) have completely missed this discussion. I'll regurgiate what I said in a comment here about this topic which explains why it's a detriment to the wiki to scrub usage of old tags:

Here is the conundrum. If we were to "update" the listings of old tags in every old PR, tourney result, etc. documented here, it will just serve to confuse readers that check the PR sources and brackets when they don't see the new tag anywhere. There's then the significant logistical issues to this; we have thousands of smashers documented here and tag changes happen frequently across them, trying to keep up with that and "update" old tag listings isn't realistic, and if a longtime top player decided to change their tag, there would be literally hundreds of pages to go through (if Mew2king for example changed his tag and wanted us to scrub all mentions of M2K off the wiki, there's currently 726 content pages his tag shows up on, would anyone really be up for going through all that?). Tag changes are also volatile; we had an incident where Squerk, who had changed his tag to "tyler", sent someone here to start shit with us because we wouldn't change all old listings of Squerk on the wiki to "tyler"... only for him to change his tag back to Squerk a month later anyway. And it's not work that can be relegated to bots either, when multiple people can have the same tag and/or the tag is a word that gets used for other purposes, while bots can't discern the context of which a tag is used (Light for example shows up on 1573 content pages for a ton of different purposes, going through all that if one of the many players named Light decided it was a "dead tag" would be a nightmare and they probably wouldn't be helping us either). Sure doing this for a small-time smasher whose old tag only shows up on their local PR's page and a few tournament pages wouldn't be much work, but I don't want to start introducing exceptions and being inconsistent with this, that will just open up for other people to argue "you did this for them, why not me?", nor open us up to a top player doing the same and then being faced with scouring through hundreds of pages to scrub any mention of their old tag, all for something that will just worsen the readers' experience.

Plus I ultimately don't see what scrubbing old tags off the wiki practically achieves; the old tags will still be plainly visible in PR images, VODs of old matches, old forum/reddit/twitter/discord posts, or just a click away in a bracket link, and any suggestion that we don't post nor link sources that contain disowned tags is completely unnegotiable. When it comes to the conflict between appeasing the players being documented and having information as complete as possible for its readers, a wiki should always prioritize the latter, with the only appeasements we made being things that really have no relevance to a player's Smash history (such as removing personal information that a reader doesn't need to know to understand the full extent of a player's Smash career).

With that said, I support a strict policy of keeping old tags intact on wiki for PR listings and tournament results where they were used, and having smasher pages mention all serious tags a player ever competed under, in the interest of keeping information as complete as possible for readers, and the sheer impracticality of scrubbing old tags off the wiki. Omega Tyrant 11:17, August 14, 2022 (EDT)

Support, removing old tags is such an unnecessary attempt to erase part of your history. With most of your old data likely still accessible under your old tag, it is basically completly pointless in doing so and only let people discover your old tags by looking up your old tournament data while also giving editors hassle to remove those supposedly "dead tags". Attempting to remove a serious old tag achieves absolutely nothing and we shouldn't allow exceptions and inconsistencies either. NPM Morr!? 01:52, December 1, 2022 (EST)

Wins lists

An ingrained practice on Smasher articles is for people to shove in a list of players the subject has beaten at the end of the intro. People in Smash have loved listing off their wins since forever, but I always disliked the practice of these list of contexless wins:

• They leave out where the win happened. Beating a globally ranked player at a local they likely weren't taking very seriously, or pulling off a big upset in pools and then not even making top 64 after, is less impressive than providing the win out of context sounds.
• Beating a big name player while they were practicing secondaries or outright sandbagging obviously doesn't have the gravitas that saying you have a win against them normally would.
• Saying you got a win on one of your region's best players sounds impressive, not so impressive however if it came with a 1-20 record against them, but of course these wins lists will leave out that it took you 20 losses to get that win. On the flipside, a 1-0 record ain't so impressive either, how many times has it been boasted that someone has a "winning record" against a top player but it turns out they only played in tournament once and fluked an upset in their one encounter?
• With top and near top level players, wins lists just come off as a random assortment of globally ranked names, you could just make up a player with a list of made up top 100 wins and it would sound just like most other such articles. With typical regional level players, wins lists will largely be a list of their region's PR'd players, with a few good OoR players and maybe one globally ranked player they upsetted before.

At best, these wins lists are trivia that might make you go "huh, neat", and otherwise your eyes just glaze over reading this bloat that tells you meaningfully little of the player's accomplishments. Speaking of bloat, these wins lists have a tendency to go on way too long; we started the arbitrary "list no more than 8 wins" limit a couple years ago as a compromise to reign them in back when wins lists regularly stretched over a dozen players, but many people aren't aware of that and will just tack on more wins to a list that already has eight wins, leaving us with more work to clean it up or leaving the intro with a terribly bloated wins list that just turns off readers.

With that said, I'm gonna propose ending the practice of listing off contextless wins in the intros of Smasher articles, and removing all wins lists we come across on already existing articles. Instead, significant wins should be explained with their proper context in a player's history section, or if the player doesn't have one and an editor doesn't want to bother making them one as is the case most of the time, at least make the effort to explain the player's most significant wins in their intro (which will likely be the player's best result or two anyway, that would also help give more context to their best result listing in their infobox). Another idea is to give players a H2H records section or subpage that has a table of their win/loss records against other notable players, where you can in effect list off their notable wins but also let readers know how many times they lost too, which would at least expose those aforementioned lopsided losing records and 1-0 records. But that would take a lot of work and I understand people likely not wanting to put in the effort for that, so just at least explaining a player's biggest wins instead of listing off wins with no context is improvement enough. Omega Tyrant 23:45, March 28, 2024 (EDT)

Oppose, I think that win lists help easily reflect some of a player's most notable accomplishments, and as long as the wins are legit (not including secondary sandbagging and such) I think they are totally fine to have in the intro. Ninja1167 (talk) 00:21, March 29, 2024 (EDT)

If the win is actually one of their most notable accomplishments, then you should able to provide the context to explain why. A win with no context is hardly informative for the reasons stated. Omega Tyrant 03:16, March 29, 2024 (EDT)

I like the basic idea. I will note of course that both applying it and enforcing it will take a large amount of work that, unlike other recent-ish changes, cannot be aided by bots in any way. Toomai Glittershine The Labbie 10:00, March 29, 2024 (EDT)

Support. My opinions correlate with OT, but I'm still going to list out my reasonings:

• Win lists rarely, if ever, have any context behind them. Literally anyone could look through Smashdata and pick out eight of a player's best wins, however just because a player has a win over another player does not mean that win was "legitimate". Are the wins during an actual tiered event or a notable regional, or are they from a weekly? Is the win on a person using their main or was said player sandbagging or under a handicap (this especially gets harder for smaller events with less recorded VODs)? For players with multiple mains, which character was used to defeat which player? Also, when did this win take place? A few examples I can think of include:
  • DarkStalker, who has a win over Glutonny, however the win was over an inebriated Glutonny sandbagging as Ganondorf. That didn't stop some players from adding Glutonny to the win list.
  • Lui$, who had a win over Sparg0... at GENESIS 6, way before Sparg0 was even remotely close to the level he is at currently and when Lui$ was likely a better player than Sparg0. So why was Sparg0 listed as a win for Lui$ up until recently?
  • Snacc has wins over Earth and Shuton's Cloud for Smash 4. However, both wins took place at Kyojin Dojo, years after Smash 4 was even relevant. I do admit this was on me.
• Win lists tend to get overbloated. The win list was meant to be a quick reference to some of a player's best accomplishments, however there is also such thing as too many players listed, which tends to happen to these lists, especially for older players. The eight-player cap was basically a non-written rule that I initially started, mainly so that win lists wouldn't just expand to absurd lengths. This was the case for many older players, where win lists tend to surpass 10, with even one going up to 15. At that point, the win list kind of loses its purpose and just ends up being a regurgitation of names that will be increased whenever a player takes another win. A longer win list literally serves no purpose but to continuously reinforce that the player can compete against good players. I appreciate all the editors who have been trying to maintain the eight-player cap, however this issue becomes increasingly harder for players at a higher level, as it will come to a point where it's really hard to sort out the eight best wins (see, Lima). This brings me to my third point,
• Several players who don't need win lists still have them. Only players on a higher skill level than the player who made the upset should be listed, and as a player becomes a higher skill level, it means there are less and less reason to list certain players. However, there have been several cases where win lists weren't removed even if they reached the highest level. A very egregious example is CaptainZack, who is ranked 15th on the PGR 100 yet still had a win list for Smash 4 until 2021. People are more prone to keep adding to the list instead of removing when the time comes, which is one of the reason that leads to bloat. Connecting to the previous point, the win list for many players at or near the top is just a list of 8 top 20 players, which at that point feels unnecessary because they had basically prove they could compete against the best of the best.

I do think there is still some merit in listing wins with context, however what we have right now is not really effective in my opinion. CookiesCreme 12:16, March 29, 2024 (EDT)

Oppose - I understand the arguments and issues, however, I believe they provide some useful information if a player doesn't have a tournament history section. Having a list of wins is an easy (if imperfect) way to give you a rough estimate of player level. Especially, in conjunction with an another imperfect measure, placements. That said, I think there is merit in putting extra rules on win lists. Wiifitkid (talk) 12:45, March 29, 2024 (EDT)

As I'll reiterate again, if the wins are that important, you should be able to provide the context to explain that importance, even if it's just something as basic as "this player got 4th at X superregional with wins on A, B, and C". whether it's in a proper history section or the intro. And I'll keep arguing that they don't provide helpful information when you just get a list of them with no context behind them. I'll pull up two random SSBMRanked players for example; here's mvlvchi, who article states "He has wins over players such as Fiction, Ginger, SluG, moky, ARMY, Magi, Professor Pro, and Panda", and then there's Palpa, whose article states "He has defeated players such as Magi, bobby big ballz, Lucky, Frenzy, Albert, SDJ, and Mekk". What is the meaningful difference here, how will the typical reader comprehend the significance of those wins, and how does this explain to readers why Palpa is ranked 12 spots higher on the 2023 SSBMRank? Or on the opposite end, lets look at some of the current notability cases where we have some more borderline regional-level players, for example Amud, whose article states "taking sets over players like Takumi, Rayito, Dunkel, Tesla, T@cho, Perón, Byaks, and Soul", or JacintoDC, whose article states "He has taken sets off of players such as Aliluc, Cyrano, Boira, Byaks, Dunkel, Keme, Kaizen, Tesla". How does this help explain the notability of these two players, especially when player database reveals they both have abysmal winrates (averaging less than 1-2 at tournaments), farther proving my point on how wins lists can be very misleading when someone can build up a lot of "impressive" regional wins by just getting a lot of opportunities to squeeze out one win at locals. Omega Tyrant 18:04, March 29, 2024 (EDT)

I get your argument but it doesn't change the point I'm making. The win list can give you a rough estimate of level just as placements can. It's not going to tell us why someone is ranked 12 spots higher on a global ranking. Placement notability can also be misleading. In Brawl going 2-2 on average in Kanto or Tristate can be very misleading in terms of skill level or even relevance. Or another example, placing top 16 at 120 person events in Kansas is not the same as doing so at Sumabatos. While still notable, it's not even close to as difficult. Point is the more imperfect measures in the article the better picture someone can get. All that said, I agree that the more context we give in an article the better picture someone will get of a players notability or level, but that isn't the same thing as saying their is no value in a win list. Wiifitkid (talk) 18:28, March 29, 2024 (EDT)

"I get your argument but it doesn't change the point I'm making. The win list can give you a rough estimate of level just as placements can."

It does address your point; how do the contextless win lists meaningfully add to the articles of the two SSBMRanked players I brought up, when they read as just a random assortment of other SSBMRanked names to readers, and the worse ranked player has the "better wins" on the surface to those who do know who those players are, or how does it do anything but make those Argentine 1-2ers sound better than they actually are?

"In Brawl going 2-2 on average in Kanto or Tristate can be very misleading in terms of skill level"

Your typical Tristate or Kanto 2-2er will still probably have proved themselves better than other region's players at majors or any other large events, especially when they travel out of region.

"Or another example, placing top 16 at 120 person events in Kansas is not the same as doing so at Sumabatos. While still notable, it's not even close to as difficult."

Cursory knowledge of those regions goes a long way here, and ranking systems are already going to be rating the Sumbato events higher. But ultimately, you could just explain the context to those placings... like I'm saying should be done with wins.

"but that isn't the same thing as saying their is no value in a win list."

A wins list with no context is of little value, for the reasons that have been stated over and over. But also, why would it be so damn hard to just add some context to the wins? I already pushed the same for placings through the addition of adding entrant numbers and highlighting majors in results tables, so that readers could better discern between the more significant tournaments in someone's results, which was accepted by everyone here with no fuss (I didn't even need to make a formal proposal for it). And the same push for more context has been going on with the MHSP sections, that were nearly always just a dry regurgitation of contextless results and wins (and most of them still are). Just add context, whether it be wins, placings, the MHSP sections, whatever, it's not hard. Omega Tyrant 19:11, March 29, 2024 (EDT)

"contextless win lists meaningfully add to the articles of the two SSBMRanked players" - It doesn't in this instance. But the vast majority of players aren't globally ranked. If we wanted to banish win contextless win lists from globally ranked players, I'm down.

"contextless win lists meaningfully add to the articles of the two SSBMRanked players"

It doesn't in this instance. But the vast majority of players aren't globally ranked.

"Your typical Tristate or Kanto 2-2er will still probably have proved themselves better than other region's players at majors or any other large events, especially when they travel out of region. "

I don't disagree. My point is just that win rates, tournament placings, win lists all provide information helping the reader have a better gage of a players level. Obviously the more information and detail the page goes into, the better. But win lists still provide more info than not having a win list. Better to have one than not to have one, for players that don't have more valuable information (example:global ranking, tournament history section, etc).

"A wins list with no context is of little value, for the reasons that have been stated over and over. But also, why would it be so damn hard to just add some context to the wins?"

With all due respect, you haven't shown that. You've only shown how win lists on their own can be misleading. But you haven't shown how it's better to have a page where there is no win list, with no tournament history or wins with context which is essentially what well have with the majority of the pages with this proposal. Win lists also provide context. If a player has Kola, Ddee, and Sonido wins, their probably pretty good. It's a valuable insight to have rather than just having random placements. And a lot of us are adding context to wins, if you've read any of the new pages. But that doesn't change that the majority don't have that information now, and that those pages would be worse off by just removing win lists. Wiifitkid (talk) 20:30, March 29, 2024 (EDT)