Forum:Competitive namespace reorganization

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

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 Smasher: 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 Smasher: 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 Tournament: namespace.

Crews are too minor to care about, but tournaments aren't.

2. Create a Tournament: namespace and a Crew: 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 Tournament: namespace. Place crews into the Smasher: namespace.

Crews are too minor to be alone but need to be somewhere, and among smashers seems most logical.

4. Create a Tournament: namespace. Rename the Smasher: namespace to something like Competitor: 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 Competitive: 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 Smasher: namespace to Competitive:. 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 Smasher: namespace.

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

The discussion

There's too many options right now for a typical #'''Option Q''' ~~~~ 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)

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• Exclude: 3, 4, Ø, X I don't like the idea of squishing crews in with smashers. I do think something should be done. Toomai Glittershine The Trumpeteer 20:16, 29 August 2017 (EDT)
• Exclude: 3, 4, possibly 6, Ø, X Deleting the smasher namespace sounds like the worst idea possible, I agree with all of Toomai's points above, and 6 just seems like a lot of work for relatively little gain. Serpent King 20:33, 29 August 2017 (EDT)
• Exclude everything except 5. Crews are worthy of mentioning, but there aren't that many compared to tourneys, so this seems like a more logical option for me. Black Vulpine of the Furry Nation. Furries make the Internets go! :3 20:55, 29 August 2017 (EDT)
• Exclude 5, Ø, X, and maybe 4. I would prefer a streamlined, logically constructed competitive namespace (so my preference goes to 3 or 6), but lumping only crews and tournaments together seems pretty arbitrary IMO. Crews and Smashers make sense together, but "competitors" is a bit of an awkward namespace. Nyargleblargle (Contribs) 21:50, 29 August 2017 (EDT)
• Exclude 4, 5, 6, Ø, and X. I think a Tournament: namespace is long overdue, and crews can end up in Smasher: or elsewhere; they're barely on my radar in this situation. I'm not a fan of Competitor:/Competitive: composite names, so I'd skip those. Dumping Smasher pages back into the mainspace seems like a terribly bad idea. Miles (talk) 23:19, 29 August 2017 (EDT)
• Exclude everything except 6. I seriously could give less of a crap about the scene as a whole, but for the better of the wiki, I'm gonna throw my hat into the ring. If things are inconsistent, then they should be made consistent. Put the competitive stuff over in its own little corner, and keep it from the rest of the information about the games themselves. It seems pretty simple, in my opinion. Aidan, the Wandering Dragon Warrior 20:09, 30 August 2017 (EDT)
• Exclude: 3, 4, 6, Ø, X. Per SK and Toomai. -- Beep (talk) 20:13, 30 August 2017 (EDT)
• Exclude: 3, 4, 5, 6, X. 3: Crews in the Smasher namespace seems messy and misleading. 4: Smasher namespace is simple yet specific, and works really well, so why change it? 5: "Competitive" doesn't sound right, it seems like it would be confusing and vague. 6: See 4 and 5. X: I think we can all agree that that is a horrible idea. Alex Parpotta the flying lobster! 20:15, 30 August 2017 (EDT)
• Exclude: 3, 4, 5, 6, Ø, X. I honestly don't have too much of a problem with tournament pages and crews being part of the mainspace. However, I would prefer a distinction between pages made about the game and pages made about the community, which is what the Smasher namespace already does, and what I feel tournament and crew pages should fall under as well. Exclude Ø. I don't like lumping certain aspects of competitive play together into one namespace, as there can be overlap between the names of crews, tags of Smashers, and names of tournament series (see KTAR), making it a nightmare to keep track of everything. This excludes 3, 4, 5, 6, and X. -- Yellow of the Grove 20:21, 30 August 2017 (EDT)
• Exclude 1, 3, 4, Ø, and X. In all honesty I forgot we ever had articles on crews, I don't really see them as a significant thing in their own right separate from the Smasher articles, but that's going a little too far off-topic. In the knowledge that they will be kept on the wiki, they will at least need a namespace, thus ruling out Option 1. Toast ltimatum 20:22, 30 August 2017 (EDT)
• Exclude 3, 4, 5, 6, Ø, and X. Renaming and merging some things are unnecessary, and I'd rather keep things separate and organized as their own things. I can see things like "Competitive" ending up misleading. Solareon (talk) 20:23, 30 August 2017 (EDT)