Collab: Level Articles

Excuse me, but this...kinda died. This needs more advertisement.
 
I've created an article for every NSMBW level and made a level template for SMB3 and SMB2. Gonna start splitting the world articles into levels.
 
Hey guys, I checked this wiki thread to see how progress is shown, and noticed some changes to how level info is shown in the wiki. Interesting developments indeed, with everyone in the topic involved. The splitting of worlds into levels is a big one. Anyway, I have something to say:

I noticed that in recent level articles, there's less written info, and thought of it upon seeing level articles such as:
This is compared to articles like:
My take is that the recent level articles focus less on guiding the player by providing instructions, and more of a general outlook of what the level is about. One oddball exception that took on the less written text is:
But this seems to be a trend.

I'm focusing on 2D platforming levels more than race courses, or 3D levels with missions because they seem to be the main foundation. Do you think this direction is appropriate? Is this is the case?
 
My take is that the recent level articles focus less on guiding the player by providing instructions, and more of a general outlook of what the level is about.
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That's a good thing: articles =/= walkthroughs.
 
The thing about this scenario is that there's a proposal that declares walkthrough-like articles to be allowed in the wiki after an attempt to disallow it by Glowsquid (MarioWiki:Proposals/Archive_3#Walkthrougth-style_level_article.) back in 2007. That's around 5 years ago when that happened. Recommend doing it again? Checking the proposal, there might be a conflict between the two sides once more.
 
We seem to comply with the opposite of that proposal's outcome these days, as any level which is an excessive wall of text is almost always given the {{rewrite}} template and/or trimmed down. We could either make another proposal to officially overturn the old one, or we can simply follow suit to today's standards.
 
I'm not sure how the process works as of now, but I have no idea which side has a higher priority for standards to follow: proposals first or set up standards to bypass the proposals first (used by the staff on certain occasions). If I recall this correctly, the reason the proposal system was made was that everyone can have a voice on resolving problems and solidifying standards that weren't established long ago compared to today; it was back when the standards were freeflow and very loose. Some act like guidesets more than rulesets that must be followed; the wiki wild west!
 
RAP said:
standards to bypass the proposals first (used by the staff on certain occasions).
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You mean Rule 13? That's for vetoing proposals as they happen or shortly thereafter: stuff that's simply gotten old and outdated doesn't get cancelled, it just gets, well, old and outdated.

I kinda just wanna make the old proposal blue in MW:P/A, put a line about it in a policy page somewhere (unwritten rules are bad), and be done with it. Unless we're worried about folks questioning it and forcing us to make a proposal to make it clear what's-what.
 
@Walkazo: Not just Rule 13, stuff that you Staff people implemented on general conscious by the staff themselves without a proposal. I can't say any specifics, but I faintly remember you saying something about it.

Unwritten rules = bad? I like to agree, but that's how the wiki got around to stay up when rules can't be established, with even the tiniest of the details; mostly for experimentation out of the blue. Even I'm guilty of doing for it upon coming back. Most of it is because we don't bother putting around perimeters or forgot about it.

Here are some examples of unwritten rules of my own or from something else:
  • My latest one involves putting in fixed widths on tables outside of templates. It was back when I discovered that I don't have to use a % anymore! Examples include Power-Up_Panels (completed the work and removed the construction tag), Ice Hockey (Mario Party 5) (a complete rework from the previous table) and Mario%27s_Picross#Levels (which I only put the fixed width on "Level"; I had to leave the others alone). It is further justified by the fact that when you're not logged in as a user in MarioWiki, there are ads between the left side, and the content to the right side. That takes up a chunk of space. The tables would look ugly otherwise.
  • Another one (not in my proximity) involves adding a bunch of random colors on templates. That seems to be solved with the further fleshing of MarioWiki:Navigation Templates with establishing colors. It only applies to series, not infoboxes. I created Template:Minigame-infobox and put in the color orange. However, checking Category:Infobox Templates, there seem to be infoboxes that are specific to certain games compared to my infobox that I made.
  • Last example has to be how the Mario Party series mini-game articles are supposed to look like. Overtime, since the mini-game articles are created, more sections are added to try and make it uniform. Saddened by the quality of the articles, I wanted to launch a wiki collaboration with a new established article structure specifically for those articles so that the info can be fleshed out more and make it more complete. I had the details written down during my grunt work on relocating in-game text info from those Mario Party series mini-game articles. I have yet to put up this due to lack of participation for the last few days or couple of weeks in wiki collaboration
I think we might be mixing rules on wiki functions with article structure rules. Speaking of article structure, I wonder where is User:Son of Suns... I'm not sure if the wiki was better or worse without him...out him...

. . . . .

Anyway, back to level stuff - the reason that I say put up a proposal to try again is that there's a notable opposition that wanted the walkthrough-like articles to stay; which is why I'm asking if redoing the proposal is an option. I actually wanted it to go on and just favor doing this just like you said, but 'dat perceived opposition.
 
The last post here was a while ago, but I would like to tackle some of these levels, starting with Super Mario World 2. I have a layout standard for which I will follow in my sandbox on the Wiki. Thoughs? Have I go the OK from you guys?
 
reshiiram said:
The last post here was a while ago, but I would like to tackle some of these levels, starting with Super Mario World 2. I have a layout standard for which I will follow in my sandbox on the Wiki. Thoughs?
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1: I dislike the foreign name translations being mouse-over rather than plainly visible. Strikes me as added tedium for the reader more than anything.

2: Is the shorter (than the current page, anyway) "overview" representative of what you think such sections should look like? Cutting out the bullshit is definitely something I'd support (Who can actually read this?)

Category usage is wiki-wide policy and explained by this unholy abomination of a page. (I also don't see the point of having separate cats for the Advance ports and the original versions - unless I'm missing something?).
 
Yeah, stick with the regular Names in Other Languages system: the mouse-over business is too much work to implement and read, and it's already used (in theory) when there's kanji in a Japanese name (then the mouse-over stuff would be the hiragana).

Also, Trivia goes at the bottom, after the Names section, and it's more ideal to try and incorporate the Trivia into the Introduction anyway.

For categories, I'd say it would be more efficient to have one category for the original's levels, and then a category for the remake's levels would be for remake-exclusive levels, and it'd either be a subcategory of the original's level category or simply cross-linked in the categories' summary texts (i.e. like how MiM and MTM are linked (Category:Mario_is_Missing!)).
 
Glowsquid said:
reshiiram said:
The last post here was a while ago, but I would like to tackle some of these levels, starting with Super Mario World 2. I have a layout standard for which I will follow in my sandbox on the Wiki. Thoughs?
Click to expand...

1: I dislike the foreign name translations being mouse-over rather than plainly visible. Strikes me as added tedium for the reader more than anything.

2: Is the shorter (than the current page, anyway) "overview" representative of what you think such sections should look like? Cutting out the bull*bleep* is definitely something I'd support (Who can actually read this?)

Category usage is wiki-wide policy and explained by this unholy abomination of a page. (I also don't see the point of having separate cats for the Advance ports and the original versions - unless I'm missing something?).
Click to expand...

I've reverted the Other Languages templates to where it was on my version.

And regarding the "Overview" section: yes, I think all "Yoshi's Island" levels should look like this. Obviously it would be a tad longer for all the other levels (and I think the "Enemies" should be a subheader underneath "Overview" instead of it's own thing, like on Make Eggs, Throw Eggs' current page). Not sure if the "In-game help instructions" should be a subheader though.

Furthermore, I'll have a look at the DKC series level articles as well. They're pretty good, but some of them, like you said, are disastrously lengthy and frankly look terrible.
 
I do like having the in-game instructions listed, though I don't think it's needed to list the port's hints when they're nearly identical. Any minor wording difference can be taken care of by using slashes (For ex: "First Hint Block: Hovering Jump (SNES)/Flutter Jump (GBA):").
 
reshiiram said:
And regarding the "Overview" section: yes, I think all "Yoshi's Island" levels should look like this. Obviously it would be a tad longer for all the other levels (and I think the "Enemies" should be a subheader underneath "Overview" instead of it's own thing, like on Make Eggs, Throw Eggs' current page). Not sure if the "In-game help instructions" should be a subheader though.
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I disagree here, I think enemies should have their own section for consistency.
 
wow this thread is old :eekdance:

anyway, i wanted to dust off this thread to bring attention to the missing nsmb levels (Template:NSMB Levels). i've made articles for w7-tower and w7-castle, and also updated world 7's page to be more consistent, but the vast majority of world 8's levels are still missing. i would appreciate any sort of help for this so i don't end up having to make like 10 articles all by myself lol
 
Would it be wrong to give articles to levels that are only named in guides and not in-game? We already do this to an extent with some of the Super Mario Sunshine Shine Sprites, like Pachinko Game and Lily Pad Ride, but I'm talking more about the Shine Sprites that are just somewhere in Delfino Plaza that don't warp Mario to someplace else. The Shine Sprite on the ground floor of the west bell tower, for example, is named "Turbo Dash!" (NP), "Saloon Door Soar" (Prima), "Ramming Speed" (Brady), and "Wreaking Havoc with Turbo" (Versus). Another example, with the Pianta who throws Mario to a Shine Sprite, is "Mario Toss" (NP), "Pianta Chuckster Challenge" (Prima), "Another Crazy Chuckster" (Brady), and "The Chuckster on the Roof" (Versus). It's not like the 100 Coin Stars; these Shine Sprites are uniquely obtained, barring how there's no in-game level for them. Also keep in mind that some of the existing and definitely named levels really (In the Deep Freeze) are not (Yoshi's Ice Sculpture) much better (Scrubbing Sirena Beach).
 
When I was creating the level articles for SMS, I opted to not give those missions their own page, mainly due to the external naming. In game, they don't have a name, and the method of obtaining them is usually "do this one thing". I also kept the Red Coin levels in the secret areas to the page of the main mission, but then Toadette the Achiever went ahead and gave those their separate articles anyway, so :P
 
I'm kinda split on this. I'm fine with having all levels in one page, since that's par for the course for all Mario Tennis minigame stages, but I wouldn't be opposed to those having separate articles as well.
 
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