Forum:Competitive namespace reorganization

I feel there's been a lot of interest lately over tweaking the dissonance between the current treatment of smashers, crews, and tournaments. There's a couple ways we can go about this. Let's have an official on-wiki discussion.

The historical situation
Way back when SmashWiki merged into Wikia in 2008, it was decided to create a  namespace to place players into. You can read the discussion here but honestly I wouldn't recommend it; it's mostly the two wiki camps butting heads over what the merged wiki's focus and identity should be. Suffice to say that the  namespace was created with strong support.

Crews remained rather undiscussed for another year until this. Again, I don't recommend you actually read the discussion unless you like walls of text. But the gist was that there were too many unnotable crews that needed to be cleaned up, which made the problem of "too many crews in mainspace" mostly go away.

I'm not aware of any previous on-wiki discussion about a tournament namespace. It's a recent issue.

The current situation
First of all, Category:Crews is a mess that needs to be properly split up like we did with Category:Smashers. But once you fix that, we have a total of 80 crew pages. Is that worth a namespace? My gut says no, but I wouldn't veto it on principle.

On the other hand, we have 324 National tournaments and 135 Regional tournaments, plus whatever else isn't in those two categories. That certainly could be deserving of a custom namespace.

The possible courses of action
The way I see it, we have several options, presented alongside the opinion that drives it.

1. Create a  namespace.
 * Crews are too minor to care about, but tournaments aren't.

2. Create a  namespace and a   namespace.
 * It doesn't matter how minor something is, if it's too specific to be ignored, we need to accomodate it.

3. '''Create a  namespace. Place crews into the  namespace.'''
 * Crews are too minor to be alone but need to be somewhere, and among smashers seems most logical.

4. '''Create a  namespace. Rename the  namespace to something like   and put crews into it as well.'''
 * Crews are too minor to be alone but need to be somewhere, and among smashers seems most logical, but then we can't still call them "smashers".

5. '''Create a  namespace. Put both crews and tournaments into it.'''
 * Crews are too minor to be alone but need to be somewhere, and among tournaments seems most logical.

6. '''Rename the  namespace to. Put smashers, crews, and tournaments into it.'''
 * One namespace to rule them all, neatly containing everything related to competitive play.

Ø. Do nothing.
 * Maintain status quo. Is it really a big deal what's in what namespace anyway?

X. Delete the  namespace.
 * Just put everything in mainspace. They're articles on the Smash Bros. series, why keep them segregated?

The discussion: Part 1
There's too many options right now for a typical  to be effective. I think the best idea at the moment is to thin the herd. So instead, vote for which options you do not want to see. Don't just vote for everything except what you do want to see; this is for eliminating the bad ideas and leaving two or three good ones. Once we've cut it down I might make a new page for the "yes" process. You could theoretically raise an idea I haven't thought of, and that's okay too, it just might get things a little messy.

And one more thing: Assume for the moment that all plans are equally technically feasible. We'll deal with that hurdle once consensus becomes clearer.

Toomai Glittershine The Trumpeteer 20:16, 29 August 2017 (EDT)

Part 1 is over. Here are the results:
 * Options 4, Ø, and X have near-unanimous dislike. They are rejected immediately.
 * Options 3 and 6 are less-heavily disliked but are also clearly eliminated.
 * Option 5 has a lot of dislike, but much less so than the above options.
 * Options 1 and 2 are clearly preferred.

The discussion: Part 2
In essense, we've already decided that tournaments will be put into a new namespace. Now we just have to decide what to do with crews - and that basically means by itself we're down to options 1, 2, and 5. So time for the more traditional vote.

Option 1: Create a namespace.
Vote here if you think crews are (currently) best left alone in the mainspace.


 * 1) To Be honest here, do crews really need a namespace, I don't see why they need one. Sure, they're a fairly large part of the Smash community, but I still don't think they meet the importance of Smasher and tournament namespaces, therefore Option 1 is probably the best way to go. Skittles03, the scummy fox main (talk) 13:39, 16 September 2017 (EDT)
 * 2) Frankly, I have to agree with Skittles. Since we're fairly strict as to what constitutes a crew as notable, we don't have a lot of Crew articles to begin with, which kind of renders giving them a namespace to begin with pointless in my eyes. Disaster Flare  Disaster Flare signature image.png  (talk)  03:48, 17 September 2017 (EDT)
 * 3) Agree with the 2 users above me, I think crews are not important enough Patzui (talk) 04:22, 17 September 2017 (EDT)
 * 4) Although crews are important to quite a few people (I'm in one as well), crews are overall a too minor part of Smash Bros. to need their own namespace. Tournaments are a large part of Smash Bros., especially in this era, where major tournaments are showing up on a monthly or even weekly basis now. --Meester Tweester (talk) 01:27, 20 September 2017 (EDT)
 * 5) Echoing Flare and Taste the Rainbow Skittles; I don't see crews needing a namespace. Aidan,  the Spooky Rurouni  17:14, 22 October 2017 (EDT)

Option 2: Create a namespace and a   namespace.
Vote here if you think crews should get their own namespace.

Extra note: Please include in your vote (ideally at the beginning) what you think the crew namespace should be called. The options are Crew, Group, and Team, but you can suggest something else if you think you can get others to agree.


 * 1) Just call it "crew" I guess.  Alex Parpotta  the  flying lobster!  13:38, 16 September 2017 (EDT)
 * 2) Namespace as Crew.  MH  StarCraft  Mega Man X SNES sprite.png 13:47, 16 September 2017 (EDT)
 * 3) Slight preference is for this over option 1, but I consider "Competitive:" unacceptably awkward. I guess "Crew:" would be the best choice here, although we should consider ahead of time whether this includes sponsor pages. Miles ( talk)   18:49, 16 September 2017 (EDT)
 * 4) I'm reluctant in general about separate namespaces, however it seems we are down to only these 3 options. This seems like the only good option in my opinion, because if we're going to have a Tournament: name space, a Crew: should also be made, since those don't feel like they belong on mainspace. A Competitive: namespace could work, but smashers are also important in competitive, aren't they? So this is the only rational decision in my opinion. F0rZ3r0F0r (talk) 19:28, 16 September 2017 (EDT)
 * 5) Call it "Crew" and I will approve! Dragonfirebreath25 (talk) 19:34, 16 September 2017 (EDT)
 * 6) I know of a few tournaments and crews that have the same name, most notably Royal Flush. Give them a separate namespace and call it ‘crew’, or at the very least, get them out of the mainspace, which should be about just the game itself. Black Vulpine  of the Furry Nation.  Furries make the Internets go! :3 05:09, 17 September 2017 (EDT)
 * 7) Namespace called "Team", consisting of both crew and sponsor pages. Firstly, a "Competitive" namespace would just lump everything together so it would be pretty inconvenient, and there can be tournaments and crews of the same name as mentioned above. Now referring to the Team namespace specifically, crews and sponsors have differences (crews are run by players only, whereas sponsors are run by or have involvement from non-players), so simply calling the namespace "Crew" would be informal. "Team" refers to both of them however, so it makes sense to call the namespace that. Also leaving crews and sponsors in different namespaces would be inconvenient and probably confusing to most people. Scr7 (talk) 12:46, 17 September 2017 (EDT)
 * 8) This is so the mainspace is only reserved for the contents of the games. ZeldaStarfoxfan2164 (talk) is a never lover boy 20:13, 21 September 2017 (EDT)
 * 9) Per Scr7. Ganonmew,  The Evil Clone  07:55, 23 September 2017 (EDT)
 * 10) I've decided I do not care what we call the crew/team/sponsor namespace as long as we make a move and stick em in their own namespace.  Serpent SKSig.png  King  20:04, 23 September 2017 (EDT)
 * 11) Namespace as "Crew." We already have a crew page on the wiki so it seems like it would make sense. Not to mention that some people might be confused somehow with Team Battle. Regardless of the name, I think it would be best to implement both of these changes as soon as possible.  John  John3637881 Signature.png  HUAH!  10:47, 29 September 2017 (EDT)
 * 12) Probably the most consistent option. Nyargleblargle.png Nyargle blargle'''  (Contribs) 10:02, 2 October 2017 (EDT)
 * 13) Namespace as "Crew". The issue I have is that crews will come and go and no one is able to be there to know when it has disbanded. Can we set a parameter where if nothing has changed after a year or two that we can flag for current update of crew and move them to the discontinued crew? While having the rest be labeled as active crews maybe? That way we won't have to filter through so many out-of-date materials. And if you want to categorize even more, split the crews off into SSB, SSBM, SSBB, PM, and SSB4. Just a thought, nothing more.  Lv20ninja  Lv20ninjaDonkeyKongHeadSSB.png   (talk)  08:08, 3 October 2017 (EDT)
 * 14) I think “Team” is the best of the available options for me. - The Gamer 91 (talk) 10:01, October 6, 2017 (CT)
 * 15) Namespace as "Crew" per many of the above arguments. Bwburke94 (talk) 23:38, 6 October 2017 (EDT)
 * 16) Namespace as Crew Although I understand the logic of crews being too minor to deserve a namespace, that's more the fault of the decision to have articles on crews in the first place. Having articles about crews open their pages with "Tournament:" would be confusing and misleading. I would prefer the prefix "Sponsor:" if the articles were just ones such as 2GGaming and VGBootCamp, but the inclusion of pages like Ha Ha You Lose and San Diego Love! ♥ throws a spanner into this.  Toast  Wii U Logo Transparent.png ltimatum Transparent Swadloon.png 09:01, 11 October 2017 (EDT)
 * 17) Namespace as "Team" for the reasons already given by others above. Sniffnoy (talk) 17:44, 13 October 2017 (EDT)
 * 18) Namespace as "Team", feels the most natural. -Menshay (talk) 12:04, 14 October 2017 (EDT)
 * 19) Per everyone.  Pen  ro  10:34, 10 November 2017 (EST)

Option 5: Create a namespace. Put both crews and tournaments into it.
Vote here if you think crews should share the tournament namespace, which would be named appropriately.


 * 1) The reason that Smasher: was created in the first place, I imagine, was to distinguish in-game content from out-of-game content, and one namespace is sufficient for this. Furthermore, are we really sure that there aren't even more subjects relating competitive play, which will not fit under the very specific namespaces of smasher, tournament, and team?  – Smiddle 16:05, 8 November 2017 (EST)

The decision
It is pretty clear that option 2 is the winner. Next steps: XL (which if you don't know, is a bot that I run) will be handling the mass-move of all tournament and crew pages. However, this can't be done immediately; there needs to be a fair amount of preparation (such as generating the lists of "from pages" and "to pages"). Once the bot is ready to go, Porplemontage (the owner/developer) will be contacted to add the namespaces. Toomai Glittershine Da Bess 18:39, 11 November 2017 (EST)
 * There will be a  namespace. This is basically unanimous.
 * There will be a  namespace, with   acting as a redirect (as Image: does to File:). I know this isn't the consensus, but I believe it is the better option, and having the redirect available means it doesn't really matter too much.