Collab: Fixing pages with the wrong tense

[ThePremiumYoshi]

The page MarioWiki:Manual of Style (MarioWiki:Manual_of_Style#Verb_Tense) states that pages describing fictional characters, events or places must be written in the present tense (the events of a game happen whenever you play it, after all), while non-fictional stuff, like the biography or the history of a video game, must be written in past tense. However, there are many pages, especially articles that describe enemies and items, that are written in the past tense, or keep switching tenses during the presentation of what the item does, or how the enemy behaves.

Take this paragraph from the Lakitu page as an example:

Lakitu's first appearance release-wise was in Super Mario Bros., whose manual aptly described him as "the mysterious turtle who controls the clouds". Lakitu debuted in World 4-1 in this game, where he would simply move back and forth at the top of the screen, ducking into his cloud to toss Spiny Eggs (which would hatch into adult Spinies upon collision with the ground) down at Mario or Luigi. Lakitu could be destroyed by both a stomp or Fireball, earning the heroes either 800 or 200 points, respectively; a Lakitu also dressed up as Bowser in World 5.

As you can see, that paragraph is clearly written in the past tense, which is not consistent with how the Manual of Style deals with the usage of verb tense on articles, and should be reworded to the following (which also touches up other aspects of the writing):

Lakitus debut in Super Mario Bros., whose manual aptly describes the enemy as "the mysterious turtle who controls the clouds". Lakitus first appear in World 4-1 in this game, where they simply move back and forth at the top of the screen above Mario or Luigi, ducking into their clouds to toss out Spiny Eggs (which hatch into adult Spinies upon collision with the ground). Only one Lakitu is present on screen at any given time, and they can be destroyed by both a stomp or Fireball, earning the player either 800 or 200 points, respectively. A Lakitu also dresses up as Bowser in World 5.

We should not have these sorts of contradictions on the wiki's articles, as it can potentially confuse new users as to which is the correct tense to use on the wiki. Not many users seem to notice this, though, so several pages have this inconsistensy.

If you see a page with severe tense issues, be sure to add the {{tense}} template to it, seeing as the template is not linked to any mainspace article as of yet: Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Tense

 

[User4042]

I did that with some articles, so I'll help