User:Lou Cena/Forum:Changing the miscellaneous symbol

A lot of talk was done on Template Talk:Symbol/Archive 1 back in February, but it escalated into a flame war where several users, me included, could not make an effort to stay civil, and thus discussion was forced closed without a real consensus. 3 months later, here we are, hopefully to reach a proper consensus this time.

Currently, the placeholder symbol for characters, items, and others from series that are not represented with a playable fighter or a stage use The symbol used on Melee’s Battlefield instead. In February, User SeasnWheeler proposed to change it to the ellipsis used for the music list and spirit team setup instead. I personally support changing it, but I will give out detailed analyses on both of them below Lou Cena (talk) 01:23, May 2, 2019 (EDT)

The proposed change
An ellipsis. It is used as the official miscellaneous symbol in Ultimate for music and the spirits team setup. However, as SmashWiki is not official, there must be another reason for this to be used. And there is in fact another reason: it actually looks like something that would be used to represent miscellaneous characters and others. The current symbol doesn’t exist anywhere outside of Melee and this wiki, which would leave many users left wondering why it would be used.

However, this symbol has also been argued to look too much like an options button, which would prompt newer users to click on it believing it’s an options button. However, the placement of it suggests that it still a symbol, and I’m not just saying this because it’s in the same place as the other symbols. If you look on social outlets such as reddit, those options buttons tend to be in the corner of a box, not in the center of an infobox. Furthermore, a lot of those options buttons are for comments, not infoboxes.

Speaking of Smashwiki not being official, while that is a valid reason to not have any strict rule on changing it, it is generally preffered to only use an unofficial term if it is highly used (for example, forward tilt/side tilt, or tech/ukemi). This symbol is not one ofthose cases. For example, this fanmade chart seems to have accepted the new misc. symbol. There is little to no reason us to not adapt to the change either

The current symbol
A circle cut into eighths. It has been argued that it gets the point across of everything coming together. However, I personally disagree with his notion. The above symbol, while it doesn’t look like any other series symbol at all, at leasts exists outside of the Smash series. This is going to be confusing to new users who have no clue what this even is. Even in the case where people will immediately recognize this symbol, this begs the question on if Melee’s Battlefield is a miscellaneous property instead of a Smash property because it’s using the miscellaneous symbol. It shouldn’t be kept because of a preconceived notion that only older users can understand.

It has also been argued that we shouldn’t use a new symbol for characters who have gone without one just because it’s official. Only 4 pages are from minor universes that are completely absent in Ultimate: Bacura, Cloaking Device, Lloyd Irving, and Proximity Mine. 3 others, Pooka, Gil, and Heihachi are part of Pac-Man’s Namco Roulette, so they could be argued for this as well, but that’s beside the point. So many assist trophies and mii costumes from minor universes are in Ultimate, and the number of those compared to the number that aren’t are clearly infavlur ofthose that are in Ultimate. Why should 95% of misc. character pages use an unfitting symbol to accommodate for the remaining 5%?

Debate
Now that I’ve laid out the groundwork for both symbols, feel free to debate down below (not yet though, as this is still a draft). Remember, this is not a vote, so if you plan on debating, make sure it has substance.