Forum:Attempt to fix the Notable Players sections number 2

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This discussion is in regards to a proposed change on SmashWiki. The discussion must first meet with a consensus before it is implemented.

The wiki has known this to be a problem for several years now, yet the notable players sections has continue to persist in being bloated in the character articles for every game (except for Brawl's, guess that's one upside of few people still caring about that game), and it has become quite the overwhelming problem to manage. These sections were originally made with the intention of noting each characters' "most historically significant players", not as a place to throw every pretty noteworthy player on there, however this clearly was not achieved. I blame a part of this for how poorly this idea is communicated through the title of these sections (you just need to be considered "notable" to have an article at all, how does that differ from being "notable" for these sections?), the fact the guidelines for these sections are buried in our general notability policy page and thus most random part-time editors responsible for the bloat will never see it, and the lack of a strict limit that allows the "line" for what's acceptable to be pushed farther and farther. So I propose implementing the following:

• Rename the sections. I'm unsure of this now, but even just going with "Most notable players" will convey the idea of what they're for better. If you have any suggestions, please tell us.

• Put a hard limit to listing no more than ten players on these sections for each character; when a reader is presented with a long list, they're naturally going to get overwhelmed and gloss over what's written there, while for most characters there isn't going to be more than ten players that are especially important to their current history. It's an arbitrary limit, but one that's high enough to cover who really merits it in most cases, while setting a hard line to save wiki editors the work of having to keep out the riffraff. Note that this limit will not be required to be filled, so substandard inclusions shouldn't be accepted just because the character doesn't have ten players listed yet.
  • However in the case of characters with especially huge playerbases like Melee Fox where the ten player limit would clearly not do them justice, they can get an exemption to increase their limit to say 15 or even 20 players. This will be decided by a case-by-case basis, and can be proposed on the relevant characters' talk pages.
  • Daisy, Richter, Dark Samus, and Dark Pit will have their sections shared with their respective parent character, it would be silly to maintain separate lists for what are essentially the same character (or nearly the same in the case of Dark Pit), and not doing this would effectively give those characters essentially double the player limit. Not doing this could also allow someone to try "gaming" the system to get their name in one of these sections ("Oh I'm not a significant enough player to crack the top ten for Peach? But I'm actually a Daisy player, so put me on the Daisy list that isn't filled up yet").

• In every section for every character of every game, put an editing notice that lists the player limit for that character, and directs people to read the guidelines before adding or replacing anyone. It might be a pain adding such a notice to every single character article, but it'll be the only way to get the driveby IPs and the non-invested part time users to see what our standards are, and save us a lot of bad edits in the process.

• In controversial cases where wiki users can not decide if a player truly belongs or who to have on when two or more players are heavily contested for the "final spot" in one of these sections, we'll try to differ to the characters' respective discord channels for an "official" ruling (or some other authority if the discord is non-cooperative or if any problem is raised against that specific discord).

• New characters will not be allowed these sections at all until six months after their release, and at that point they'll be given a default five player limit, which will only be increased to ten a year after their release. This standard will additionally be applied to future Smash games. It's common sense, early results are always the most dubious and tend to have little if any lasting impact on the character's competitive history, while many players will drop the character within that timeframe. So this will have save us from having to deal with a lot of questionable rapidly-changing crud and from having to try splitting hairs between similar low-sample early results.

• I'm going to rewrite the aforementioned guidelines to be more clear on the standards (and add what this proposal does), but one big amendment I plan is to no longer entirely dismiss online results. With Covid, about half of Ult's competitive life has been online now, and both Ult + Melee are going to have over a year of their competitive history be pretty much entirely online. Of course online results will naturally be given less weight, and big offline players prior to Covid who don't play online won't be removed (such as Light), but we shouldn't be pretending this online era didn't happen, nor inherently give players from weak isolated regions more weight to their "notability claim" just because they got to play in some restricted offline tournies, compared to an online player competing against and achieving wins against stronger competition.

Well that's it, state your support/oppose, and suggest any additional ideas you have. Omega Tyrant 15:20, March 24, 2021 (EDT)

Support

1. you have my sword. —-Lattie (talk) 15:32, March 24, 2021 (EDT)
2. Immensely support. I will probably never be able to find it, and I've probably brought this up before, but I'll never forget seeing a Facebook post in a Smash Bros. group where the OP asked about getting onto Smash 4 Pit's notable players section, and the comments were absolutely filled with "lmao add yourself". I'm hoping that communications both between the wiki and the greater community as well as inside the wiki itself will help solidify exactly what these sections are supposed to be for, and give players who deserve a spotlight exactly that. Aidan, the Rurouni 15:32, March 24, 2021 (EDT)

Comments

I'm assuming the echo sections would basically be "Peach and Daisy professionals" and specify which character they use more. CookiesCreme 15:26, March 24, 2021 (EDT)

A couple pieces Im not sure about. First, I don't think a final arbitration is a good idea as that gives a sense of a finality. While I do think it's a good idea to ask discords, I can tell you from experience a top 10 list will cause a lot of debate and disagreement (even if there are commonalities). I do like like the idea of a hard limit but I'm not sure if 10 is too limiting. We would need to see how it played out. That said, I like the idea of expanding the number beyond 10 for popular characters (see Palutena). Finally, it's not a huge deal but I'm not a fan of merging the echos. I don't feel that gaming the system is really going to be problematic as Daisy already has like 10 players listed and more importantly I don't feel like players will care enough to switch their main to an alt just to get listed. I don't feel it's our place to determine which characters should get sections and which ones shouldn't because their too similar to one another. The game already considers them separate characters. Otherwise I agree with this proposal. Wiifitkid (talk) 15:33, March 24, 2021 (EDT)