Overlap between Enemies and Species

[Time Turner]

I have never liked how much overlap is obviously present between enemy categories and species categories. Let me use Category:New Super Mario Bros. 2 Enemies and Category:New Super Mario Bros. 2 Species as examples. I've gone through both categories to make sure that there's aren't any objects tagged as enemies or the like, and as it stands, there are only three entries that don't appear on both categories, and they're all on the species category: Beanstalk (an inanimate plant), Spine Coaster (a living platform), and Reznor (a boss, which may or may not count as an enemy but that's a discussion for another time). Some categories fare better than others, with TT (Category:Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Enemies)YD (Category:Paper_Mario:_The_Thousand-Year_Door_Species) being the best example I could find (although a lot of the enemy entries would also be applicable with the species category), but they all show the same trend of every enemy also appearing in the species category. It just seems wasteful and redundant to have two categories that essentially repeat the same information, expect one of them has an extra few entries that are difficult to notice because they're sandwiched between everything else. At the same time, if the species categories were reduced to non-enemy species only, then most of them would have a negligible amount of entries, perhaps to the point where they face deletion (MarioWiki:Categories#Size_and_scope). In a franchise in which there are a vast amount of hostile species that are naturally tagged as enemies, is it really that necessary to make a category just for the few edge cases?

I don't have an ideal solution in mind for this, but at the same time, I want to get the ball rolling any way I can.

 

[JC.]

Maybe the only enemies that should be included into species categories are the parent species (e.g. Goombas and Koopa Troopas would be included; Galoombas, Paragoombas, Koopa Paratroopas etc. would not). That would at least satisfy the five-entry count while also not making it just a carbon copy of the enemies category. If not, then perhaps the species categories can be reserved for games that have a reasonable amount of non-enemy species.

 

[Shoko]

Remember (MarioWiki:Categories#Placement_on_articles), there shouldn't really be any overlap and duplicate entries in these categories at all.

"Species" is more general than "enemies". Therefore, an enemy article should only get the "enemies" category: not the "species" category. In contrast, non-enemy species should only get a "species" category. And as long as there are enough entries to satisfy having an enemies category in the first place, then there shouldn't be any disagreements?

 

[Time Turner]

Remember (MarioWiki:Categories#Placement_on_articles), there shouldn't really be any overlap and duplicate entries in these categories at all.

"Species" is more general than "enemies". Therefore, an enemy article should only get the "enemies" category: not the "species" category. In contrast, non-enemy species should only get a "species" category. And as long as there are enough entries to satisfy having an enemies category in the first place, then there shouldn't be any disagreements?

One question: do non-sentient plants belong on the species categories? Obviously, in real life, animals and plants are equally species, but the way the category's been used on the wiki has been haphazard. Sometimes (Beanstalk) they're species (Tulip), sometimes (Fire Flower) they're not (Ice Flower). Also at this point, there starts to be overlap between species and items/objects. Part of me is tentatively okay with your suggestion, but another part me also thinks that having a category solely for sentient, non-hostile, non-item species is too narrow and rather unintuitive (at least in relation to the term "species").

 

[Time Turner]

With Niiue's proposal, the issue's been settled. This can be locked and stored away.