Forum:General proposals/Archive 5

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Changing PAL terms to “British English”

Smashbrosfan99 seems very adamant about changing this, but in my honest opinion, I think the way it is now is fine. PAL also refers to Castilian Spanish replacing Mexican Spanish, and regular French vs. Canadian French (if there even is any difference) so I think generalizing it as PAL is fine. Lou Cena (talk) 01:55, May 4, 2019 (EDT)

Have to agree. Even if it's technically inaccurate terminology, it's effective shorthand for the European standard versus the American one. DryKirby64 (talk) 03:17, May 4, 2019 (EDT)

Perhaps there could be a page that explains the difference, as well as why the Wiki uses "PAL" over "British English"? Wolff (talk) 03:22, May 4, 2019 (EDT)

This page goes over it briefly. DryKirby64 (talk) 03:32, May 4, 2019 (EDT)

Then perhaps when PAL and NTSC are mentioned, they should probably link to those pages if they don't already. unfortunately, I don't think they explain the supposed problem of "PAL" vs "British English". Wolff (talk) 11:55, May 4, 2019 (EDT)

Might as well unveil the elephants in the room - only the Nintendo 64, GameCube and Wii use the NTSC and PAL connections for their original releases so using those terms would make sense for those games. The 3DS, Wii U and Switch use HDMI connections, so stating NTSC or PAL to refer to releases in those countries would be not only inaccurate but also outdated as well. Aside from the 3DS and Wii U, the Switch is region-free, meaning any game from any country in any continent can work on the Nintendo Switch in question; also helps that most first-party games don't have a drastic change between the English in the Americas region setting and the English in the Europe or Australia/New Zealand setting. Apparently, using the term PAL region for the 3DS, Wii U and Switch games is perfectly acceptable at the moment when it isn't for everything I just described. It's even used for the pages that talk about Spirit Board events, when the pages in question are literally "websites," which, need I remind you, can be viewed literally "anywhere." So, what should we do? I have a few options, which were the same ones I used to figure out what to do on the Mario Wiki (sure different wikis have different rulesets, but hopefully we can come to an agreement):

1. Use the American and British terminology for everything.
2. Use NTSC and PAL when talking about Super Smash Bros. 64, Melee and Brawl and use the American and British English terminology for 3DS, Wii U and Ultimate.
3. Use NTSC and PAL for basically everything.

In my honest opinion, we should absolutely not consider doing choice 3. Going with choice 1 should simplify matters in the long run, almost choice 2 isn't a bad idea either. What do you guys think? – Smashbrosfan99 (talk) 19:37, May 4, 2019 (EDT)

I said something to this effect on you talkpage but I'll paraphase it here: Yes it's technically obsolete to use "PAL" in the sense of "regions that use the PAL technology". But players don't really use the term like that anymore, and in some ways they never have - its current place in the gamer lexicon is "the Europe/Africa/Oceania region". In fact, Wikipedia's page on the PAL region covers how the region is defined independently of its page on the PAL technology, specifically going over how the game industry uses the term; the page on regional lockout does very similar.

Therefore, because the internet at large is continuing to use NTSC and PAL for gaming regions, we should also continue to do so. Toomai Glittershine The Producer 20:29, May 4, 2019 (EDT)

I'm in agreement with Toomai. The gaming community still uses NTSC/PAL, as does much of the rest of the internet. Our terminology here should be based on what the Smash community uses; hence, NTSC/PAL should stay. DarkFox01This is horrible… 21:05, May 4, 2019 (EDT)

Just found this now, but on the Substitute page, it mentions an error in the Wii U version but not the 3DS version in the European Portuguese version. It doesn't even use "PAL," it literally uses European Portuguese to describe it. All the more reasoning why the usage of NTSC and PAL should be limited to the first three Smash Bros. games...for the most part as these games often have different language options, so mentioning "This change is not present in the PAL version," seems to imply it isn't present in all language options, when we're really only focusing on the American and British differences of the English language only. – Smashbrosfan99 (talk) 23:59, May 7, 2019 (EDT)

"Not to be confused with..."

This has been copied over from Template talk:Disambig2, as I realized the discussion belongs on this page.

Several pages currently have a disclaimer at the top of the page reading:

Not to be confused with [[X]], {{{descriptor of variation from X}}}.

There is currently no template used for such disclaimers. Variants of {{disambig2}} have been created in the past, including for and redirect. What should be the course of action for Not to be confused with...?

Possible solutions include:

• Replacing the Not to be confused with... cases with {{disambig2}} or {{for}}.
• Creating a new variant of {{disambig2}}, perhaps named {{confused}}, to deal with the cases.

Using pre-existing templates may provide additional clarity, but may also appear redundant in some cases. I'd appreciate the community's feedback on this issue before any action is taken. DarkFox01:D 21:18, May 4, 2019 (EDT)

This seems like a good idea, but it feels like it’s just going to be more work to change everything to the template instead of keeping it as is. It seems like you want future proofing, but we can’t really speculate about the future. Also, the regular disimbag template is more helpful in most situations in my opinion. The one situation where I can see this being helpful is with Galeem and Galleom. Lou Cena (talk) 22:24, May 4, 2019 (EDT)