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.png Nyargle blargle (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. -- Meat Ball  104   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 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  John3637881 Signature.png  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  [[Image: TyranitarMS.png ]] 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 &mdash; ? 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  [[Image: TyranitarMS.png ]] 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  SKSig.png  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  SKSig.png  King   16:56, 23 November 2015 (EST)

Update to the policy regarding online tournaments
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 SKSig.png  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  Disaster Flare signature image.png  (talk)  15:23, 19 August 2017 (EDT)
 * That's confusing. I agree with the given solution though.  Serpent SKSig.png  King  15:38, 19 August 2017 (EDT)
 * 1) Support per Serpent King. Ganonmew,  The Evil Clone  23:15, 19 August 2017 (EDT)
 * 2) 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)
 * 3) 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.png Nyargle blargle'''  (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  Disaster Flare signature image.png  (talk)  13:03, 20 August 2017 (EDT)
 * I agree; maybe even a bit smaller if the players are notable enough. Nyargleblargle.png Nyargle blargle'''  (Contribs) 07:51, 21 August 2017 (EDT)

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: /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 SKSig.png  King  20:55, 20 August 2017 (EDT)

"Dead tags"
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. Toad.png  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. Grand Dad.png NPM    Morr!?  NaughtyPigBoi.jpg 01:52, December 1, 2022 (EST)