Differences between MarioWiki and Wikipedia

[czar]

Hello—I'm currently writing a number of Mario-related game articles on Wikipedia, many of which have been peer reviewed and rated as "good articles". (My intent is to feature the whole Super Mario video game series.) But here, I'm trying to understand the quality standards at MarioWiki and whether it would be worth importing my work to the equivalent game articles on MarioWiki. Core differences appear to be MarioWiki's emphasis on fair use images, characters with only primary source or no references, and unconfirmed/rumor-based trivia. Wikipedia doesn't allow those things, but that's owing to it being an encyclopedia rather than a complete Mario resource. Are those types of things desired in MarioWiki entries?

I'd like any general feedback on the differences between MarioWiki and Wikipedia, as well as whether it would be worth importing Gameplay, Development, and Reception sections with full citations from Wikipedia. Would my article on Wikipedia not be eligible for Featured status here despite not including the minutiae of plots and character lists that are not covered in secondary sources? From my read of the Featured criteria, they would be eligible as is, but I don't know what policies may exist on including level walkthroughs and whatnot. For instance, what type of additions would something like my current rewritten and live article on Yoshi's Island need in order to be featured here? Thanks!

 

[Duskull]

Could we maybe see your Yoshi's Island article over at Wikipedia, I don't know whether it's the one currently in use or on a workpage of yours?

Desire based, free images are good for us, we don't really need full references for things that can generally be gathered by playing the game, and we definitely do not want unconfirmed information or speculation, stuff like that is generally removed upon sight other than on our page of notable Mario rumours. We do try and pride ourselves on being a Mario encyclopedia.

I would advise against importing all the section over here, generally because we don't want to plagiarize, though feel free to adapt your writing if you feel it's better than what we have here, maybe start a discussion on relevant pages on which parts you feel could be improved with adaptations of your writing.

Chances are a cut-and-paste article from Wikipedia would not be eligible for Featured Article status. Other than the plagiarism I mentioned earlier it wouldn't give details on enemies (as it's not 100% relevant to Wikipedia) and as a result in our eyes it would be lacking full coverage of the game, our current Yoshi's Island article lacks those details as well as the moment so if it was nominated it could fail for that reason (as well as the rewrite tag on top of it), the special items and transformation tables are generally something that we'd prefer for FAs on the whole.

Also, with level walkthroughs not a good idea. Our level articles should generally read an overview of the level rather than a full step-by-step thing, although we do cover where collectibles are hidden.

Hope this helps you

 

[Glowsquid]

whether it would be worth importing my work to the equivalent game articles on MarioWiki.

I might be misinterpreting what you mean by "importing" and I apologize if I am indeed doing that, but if you mean copying the Wikipedia content as is, don't. Generally speaking, the writing must be original to the wiki.

You are correct in that the wiki doesn't require to cite primary sources - if I look at Wikipedia's Yoshi's Island page, statements like:

Koopas arrive to take Baby Mario[5] and Yoshi loses a life.[10] The player can replenish the timer by collecting small stars[5] and power-ups.[2]

don't need to be sourced as these are plainly apparent facts that can be gained from watching footage or playing the game. However, the wiki is not supposed to host "unconfirmed [as in, non-sourced]/rumor-based trivia.", and there have been efforts in recent year to clean trivia sections and improve standards for sourcing (particularly names).

There's no written standards for development and gameplay sections (there is a guideline page for reception and sales), but if you want my opinion as a wiki admin...


For Gameplay sections: These tend to be generally half-arsed, but I'll say this: Being a fansite, some level of familiarity with the source material is expected. As such, it's acceptable to write something like "Super Mario Bros. 3 is structered similarly to its predecessors" and then go on to describe how Super Mario Bros. 3 changes and add to the formula, rather tham reiterate "Super Mario Bros. 3 is a level based platforming game". Simple objectives statements such as "Super Mario Bros. is a platformer" or "Paper Mario takes several elements from Super Mario RPG" don't need to be sourced either.

For Reception: The format is supposed to be a paragraph sumarizing the overal reception and commoin points of praise/contention followed by a template providing reviews exceprts (like this), but the format's been slow to adopt.

For Development: This one's going to be particularly biased since I've written a good chunk of the development sections on the wiki, but then again nobody challenged me on that so...

Generally, I feel development sections should be about the creative decisions by the people behind the game and notable events/decisions taken during said development. Again, to take Wikipedia's as an example:

While Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto worked on Super Mario World, he thought to make Yoshi the series' "next hero" since the game designer did not like the other Yoshi games, including Yoshi's Safari and Yoshi's Cookie and thought he could make something more authentic. When he first brought the game to Nintendo marketing, they declined the game for having Mario-style graphics rather than the vogue, computer pre-rendered graphics of Donkey Kong Country. In comparison, they felt that his game lacked the power to impress.[11] Incensed and opposed to the style, Miyamoto instead further escalated his cartoonish visuals into a hand-drawn, crayon style.[11][4] Nintendo's marketing department accepted this revision. Miyamoto later recalled feeling that the marketing department wanted "better hardware and more beautiful graphics instead of ... art".[11] Around the time of his rejection, Miyamoto said that "Donkey Kong Country proves that players will put up with mediocre gameplay as long as the art is good."[11]
Shigeru Miyamoto, Mario creator and Yoshi's Island producer, was responsible for the game's signature art style.

Yoshi's Island was developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES).[2] According to Miyamoto, who served as a producer, Yoshi's Island was in development for four years, which let the team add "lots of magic tricks".[12] The game cartridge used an extra microchip to support the game's rotation, scaling[10] and other sprite-changing special effects.[5] Yoshi's Island was designed to use the Super FX chip,[10] but when Nintendo stopped supporting the chip, the game became the first to use Argonaut Games's Super FX2 microchip.[12] The chip powered scenes including a drawbridge falling into the foreground, rotation effects like rolling and enlarged rather than reanimated enemies, and a psychedelic effect in a level when Yoshi touches a floating fungus.[8]

Yoshi's Island was released first in Japan in August 1995, and two months later in North America and Europe.[2] At the time of release, the Super Nintendo was in its twilight as a console[13] in anticipation of Nintendo's upcoming console to be released the following year, 1996.[12] Yoshi's Island was rereleased for the Game Boy Advance as Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3 in North America on September 23, 2002.[5] In the game's preview at E3 2002, IGN named Yoshi's Island "Best Platformer" on a handheld console.[14] The Game Boy Advance version is a direct port of the original, apart from few changes. The developers used the Yoshi voice from a subsequent series game,[10] cropped the original display to fit the handheld's smaller screen,[6] and added exclusive bonus levels.[7] Like the other Super Mario Advance rereleases,[7] the handheld version includes the 1983 game Mario Bros. with support for up to four players via link cable.[5] The new cartridge did not need an extra microchip to support the original's special effects.[10]

The Game Boy Advance version of the game was ported to the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U via Nintendo's digital Virtual Console platform.[5] The port retains the handheld version's cropped screen and pack-in Mario Bros. game, though its multiplayer mode is disabled.[6] The 3DS version was released on December 16, 2011,[15] as an exclusive reward for early adopters of the Nintendo 3DS. It did not receive a wider release.[6] The Yoshi's Island port for the Wii U was released worldwide on April 24, 2014.[6] At E3 2010, Nintendo demoed "classic" 2D titles such as Yoshi's Island as remastered 3D games with a "pop-up book feel".[16]

The bolded is what I feel should be what development sections are about. Statements about the technical aspects and changes made to a version are better off elsewhere, and things like "[Game] was released on [date] for [platform]" in my mind, simply reiterate the release info present on the opening template, and not in a particularly informative or interesting way either.

So yeah, hope this helped?

 

[czar]

Very much so—thank you! Looks like I should stick to Wikipedia. Two more questions:

• Apart from the suggestions you gave above, what new sections or edits would an article such as Wikipedia's current Yoshi's Island need to have Featured status here? Or does it need to be completely rewritten?
• What are MarioWiki's norms about references/sources? Are there rules on when they are necessary?

And re: plagiarism, Wikipedia contribs are licensed under cc-by-sa (same as MarioWiki), so it's fine to reuse content as long as Wikipedia is attributed in that edit summary. I just recently rewrote The Lost Levels, Yoshi's Island, and Super Mario Land from scratch, and I'm even more liberal on my release licensing, so those are all especially fine.

 

[Duskull]

It would want the thing we described above, like tables detailing enemies and bosses with attacking patterns. It would also need a level list, items (formatted in table form), a description of the bonus games found in, sections like beta elements, glitches, some of the staff who worked on it, a gallery, all the forms Yoshi can transform into, a plot section, references to other games within the Mario series and references of it in later Mario games. We also probably wouldn't want a full "sequels and spin-offs" section, mentioning the two other games in the series would be good enough for here. The "Legacy" section would also probably go under "Reception" for here, and the gameplay section would be split into several parts.

MarioWiki:Citation Policy should tell you all about how we reference stuff.

Regards to plagiarism, it may be legal to take directly from Wikipedia, but we want our writing to be original. Various edits have been undone here because it's a simple copy-pasta job from somewhere else.

 

[freakworld]

We don't have WikiProjects...

...anymore

(too bad I wasn't there when that proposal passed, it would've needed like one more vote against it.)
(yes i still havent got over you guys shutting down my beautiful pipeproject that was technically inactive anyways)