NintendoWiki Coverage and Scope - main thread

[tacopill]

It has long been debated and discussed exactly what NintendoWiki covers, and how far in depth that coverage goes.

so, I am putting it out on the table (metaphorically) so we can finally decide what should be covered, what shouldn't, etc.

You are free to bring up any idea for a coverage topic, but don't go too far in depth on it. If you feel something shouldn't be covered (either already talked about or not), feel free to bring it up.

Once a coverage topic has been thoroughly discussed and approved through consensus, please start a new thread on that topic. Feel free to discuss navigation templates, lists, article structures, etc. about that topic.

To start this off, I am going to up my proposed Coverage and Scope that I wrote a few years ago.

To help this along, I have been putting together a table that shows a "level" of how important/approved/etc. a coverage policy/topic/etc. is. (sorry, this is a complicated matter ) Please check it out here.

Topic Specific Threads
Hardware Thread.

[dkpat]

I'm expecting this topic will become controversial. lol
Here's my thoughts, and some topics I'm going to bring up. (I apologize for the length)

First bit is the (historical) discussion of "Nintendo Wiki" versus "NIWA Wiki". There has always been some level of debate about whether the wiki should focus more on acting a wiki hub for NIWA, or should focus more on Nintendo content. I feel like this topic has become more settled, with Nintendo coming out the priority of the two, but there is probably still some to discuss here. Much of this stems from the fact that N-Wiki tends not to have it's own staff, and instead they are all just members from other NIWA wikis.  The hope is of course that N-wiki will gain it's own dedicated staff, but doing so has been an issue. I also would like to question some of the depth that N-wiki goes into about NIWA, since Nintendo is it's topic, not NIWA. I do not believe that NIWA content should be discussed on the wiki. That is my opinion. The depth at which it covers member wikis and the organization itself seems a bit excessive to me under this purpose, but not altogether unhelpful.

Now, there was recently a discussion in the skype chat about whether or not individual games should be covered as their own page.  The reasoning behind not covering them is that the coverage that Nintendo wiki would have is nothing that the page on the respective member wiki wouldn't have, so it would just be a weaker analysis of the game and would detract from the member wiki. Instead, the wiki would cover the series as a whole, and link to the member wiki for the respective games. I tend to favor this approach.

There is also the topic of smaller game franchises, which wouldn't merit their own wiki (Ex: Ice Climber). I was told that full coverage of these series was part of the reason behind creating Nintendo wiki. I do not agree with this approach. It creates unnecessary clutter on the wiki and would just make the wiki confusing. I feel they should be covered to the same extent as any other franchise that n-wiki covers.

[Level 3]

My personal opinion is that N-Wiki should cover Nintendo as a company, focusing on things like hardware, history, etc.

Software should not be covered in depth, as the other member wikis exist for this purpose. Though some important series or games that have shaped Nintendo as a company, or heavily contributed to it's success, like the original Super Mario Bros, or the Zelda series, could get their own articles, they should focus on how they affected Nintendo as a company rather than go in-depth about the games.

Basically, any hardware-esque thing can have a dedicated article. First, and maybe second party games can have their own articles but any 3rd party games should be kept in a list of "games for X console", as they really don't have much to do with Nintendo outside of having a game on the console.

Any game that has it's own article should also focus on what it has brought or done to Nintendo, and should not be covered in the same manner other wikis cover their games. This would require a template/standard that needs to be created.

[Tucayo]

The problem with the "important series" approach would be to come up with an objective system to determine which are important and which aren't. Only the main 3? Series with more than X games sold?

In my opinion coverage should be:
*Full coverage of hardware.
*Full coverage of history and people.
*Articles on all series. 
*Game articles only when there is no member wiki to link to.
*Keep current coverage of NIWA.

[tacopill]

on the topic of series:
Before joining NIWA, or it going public,  TTE started to give each franchise a color scheme, and if a NIWA wiki existed, then the franchise page and series page reflected each other, in color.

(I don't think anyone knew there was 100+ franchises though).

When I joined, I continued this trend, and had help from Tina, Vellidragon and a few others. Later on, other people joined, tried to contribute in various ways. And over time, we/I sort of had this idea that the wikis would help decide franchise-specific stuff, like color schemes and games. While independent stuff, like article structures and general design of templates.

As time went on: people disappeared, things changed and how we handled things changed with it. 

From time to time we changed what we were looking for in an "important series" and how to handle it:
* Rare Games - formally first-/second- franchise games at one point were put on a list of games, by development or publishing company. These are not on the  Flagship template
* Dragon Quest series - newly first-/second-franchise games got franchise pages, especially upon new members coming in.  These are on the franchise template.
* Kingdom Hearts - games from franchises of affiate wikis got pages in order to promote cross-traffic with them.

----
now for the rest of them:
I support hardware, history and people, although I hardly know anything about it, so I can't contribute there.  I kind of hope to keep the game articles, but am totally biased on that part.

I have also recommended we include companies that have had relationships with Nintendo, do have a relationship or may have one. These could include Capcom, Konami, Rare, Sony and Microsoft; all depends on how it and Nintendo are related.

[Torchickens]

The problem with the "important series" approach would be to come up with an objective system to determine which are important and which aren't. Only the main 3? Series with more than X games sold?

In my opinion coverage should be:
*Full coverage of hardware.
*Full coverage of history and people.
*Articles on all series. 
*Game articles only when there is no member wiki to link to.
*Keep current coverage of NIWA.

I mainly support this. When I think of NintendoWiki, I feel we could make it a unique site about Nintendo's heritage rather than a database of games (NinDB does that better than us).

The only thing I disagree with is the current coverage. I think articles on games that are only licensed by Nintendo like Digmon Racing should be deleted, unless Nintendo did play a role in the development of such a game in someway.

[dkpat]

*Full coverage of hardware.
*Full coverage of history and people.
*Articles on all series. 
*Game articles only when there is no member wiki to link to.
*Keep current coverage of NIWA.

This.

Though when we do link to a member wiki's article on a game, that link needs to be made special, so that the user realizes they are leaving Nintendo wiki.

I would like to propose the idea of articles on select Nintendo characters. The primary ones that are known world wide as being Nintendo. (Ex: Mario, Pikachu, Samus, Link, a few others)

I also like the idea of having articles on companies who have competed with, or worked with Nintendo. Coverage of these companies wouldn't expand beyond that article however.

[Maxite]

I like Tucayo's suggestion. We should focus on series/franchises, but we can cover specific games if there is no parent wiki to cover them. Otherwise, we should cover Nintendo, the people, and the companies.

I am opposed to covering specific characters. An article on "notable characters" would be fine, and it could go into the development and history of the character(s). Specific articles I feel would be overly confusing policy wise (what would the official justification and criteria be for picking one character over another?), and the member wikis would likely have better articles on said character to begin with.

[Vellidragon]

I think articles on games that are only licensed by Nintendo like Digmon Racing should be deleted, unless Nintendo did play a role in the development of such a game in someway.

I believe the Digimon and the Simpsons game articles were created not for any justified reason related to the wiki's stated purpose of Nintendo coverage, but as a special benefit to Wikimon and Wikisimpsons for affiliating with NIWA (so yes, N Wiki's catering to NIWA members and affiliates instead of treating itself like an independent entity has been going on for a while).

And speaking of independent entities,

*Game articles only when there is no member wiki to link to.

I personally feel it would harm N Wiki's alleged independency even more if even major subjects like Super Mario Bros. are covered off-wiki (not to mention the creation of an inconsistency in coverage, the reason for which is in no way apparent when viewing N Wiki as a seperate entity from NIWA) for apparently no other reason than to not "steal" traffic from the member wikis. I think what we should be looking for is something that makes sense for N Wiki as its own entity; the most common criticism of it is that it's nothing but a puppet wiki operated by other NIWA members to promote the network, and deciding to entirely ditch such coverage for other wikis' benefit would only take that further. And, as was brought up on Skype recently, if there is no independency, what's N Wiki even doing in NIWA (an independent wiki alliance) as a proper member?

That said, even thinking of other members' benefit, I believe covering the games in their own articles can actually work better for that than just putting outgoing links into a table, as the articles are more likely to show up in web searches etc. and are already interlinking to other members for more info (they also cover blurbs and have the potential to cover a lot of technical information, which are not covered on the focus wikis). I continue to be perfectly fine with the Kirby articles on N Wiki, for one.

[Torchickens]

I personally feel it would harm N Wiki's alleged independency even more if even major subjects like Super Mario Bros. are covered off-wiki (not to mention the creation of an inconsistency in coverage, the reason for which is in no way apparent when viewing N Wiki as a seperate entity from NIWA) for apparently no other reason than to not "steal" traffic from the member wikis. I think what we should be looking for is something that makes sense for N Wiki as its own entity; the most common criticism of it is that it's nothing but a puppet wiki operated by other NIWA members to promote the network, and deciding to entirely ditch such coverage for other wikis' benefit would only take that further. And, as was brought up on Skype recently, if there is no independency, what's N Wiki even doing in NIWA (an independent wiki alliance) as a proper member?

That said, even thinking of other members' benefit, I believe covering the games in their own articles can actually work better for that than just putting outgoing links into a table, as the articles are more likely to show up in web searches etc. and are already interlinking to other members for more info (they also cover blurbs and have the potential to cover a lot of technical information, which are not covered on the focus wikis). I continue to be perfectly fine with the Kirby articles on N Wiki, for one.

Good points. Thinking about the NIWA Wiki related game pages again, some of them serve as relatively good summaries and like you said, some of them have blurb sections that are useful. I personally feel it would be a shame to get rid of them and people can always click a link on the 'short summary' notice at the top of the article if they want more information on another Wiki. As was suggested on Skype, I think, these pages could focus more on aspects including reception and the development process (it would be fun to go through Iwata Asks for instance and pick out some trivia) too.

The other pages in that category aren't so good and are arguably just 'skeletons'. Maybe those should be converted into inter-wiki redirects until (if) somebody wants to make a fuller article about the game.

There is also the topic of smaller game franchises, which wouldn't merit their own wiki (Ex: Ice Climber). I was told that full coverage of these series was part of the reason behind creating Nintendo wiki. I do not agree with this approach. It creates unnecessary clutter on the wiki and would just make the wiki confusing. I feel they should be covered to the same extent as any other franchise that n-wiki covers.

In terms of extra articles about e.g. characters, modes, etc., like how there is currently a Condor article, I agree those shouldn't be on the Wiki.

I would like to propose the idea of articles on select Nintendo characters. The primary ones that are known world wide as being Nintendo. (Ex: Mario, Pikachu, Samus, Link, a few others)

I also like the idea of having articles on companies who have competed with, or worked with Nintendo. Coverage of these companies wouldn't expand beyond that article however.

I support this. It might get tricky to find out whether certain characters are popular enough. For this we should probably look at the reception those characters have received on the Internet, books, etc. like how Wikipedia only has a select few articles on certain Pokémon species and lists the rest.

What about third-party characters like Sonic and Mega Man. Should those be included?

[Tucayo]

My issue with having articles on every game is that most of the times they will be inferior in quality to the article in the correct wiki. This can also detract editors from the specific wikis, not only readers, as it was mentioned. It's not inconsistency because there is one very simple rule: there's a wiki to link to, we link to it; there isn't, we have the article. Regarding what was said about NWiki not being independent; truth is, it's part of the hub, ergo becoming a "hub" wiki, so it won't be able to be fully independent. Plus, it is run by us, the staff of the other wikis. This isn't a Wiki we adopted and helped, this is a project we started from scratch to boost our hub.

And I support coverage of Nintendo-related companies and am partial towards the character articles.

[dkpat]

Any articles about a specific game on N-wiki will almost certainly be inferior (at least, for the sake of the member wikis, I would hope they are.) Obviously N-wiki shouldn't focus on the plot of any game they create an article on, but member wikis, in my opinion, shouldn't solely focus on the plot of a game either. They should cover the other sections about a game like the development process. I guess that's up to the wiki, but I think that should be part of any in depth coverage of a game.

N-wiki should not be treated as the pet project of NIWA, that isn't fair to it, and honestly, it suffers because of it. To this extent, I fully understand it covering games that any NIWA wiki covers. (reminds me of some approval thing that Mario wiki apparently had to do to allow donkey kong wiki in? which seems so silly to me) We as the members of NIWA need to all realize that nintendo wiki is going to cover that topic, and accept that point blank. It is entirely unfair to say they can't, or shouldn't. It is the discretion of the wiki community, not niwa, to link to member wikis.

[KidIcarus]

Whatever you guys choose, I hope you follow a parallel structure. I think it would be confusing to readers if you had a separate article for all 32 levels of Ice Climbers (after all, this is how in-depth Super Mario Wiki gets into Super Mario's levels), and you didn't even include an article for each Earthbound game.

[FlyingRagnar]

I also agree with Tucayo suggestions.  I don't have a problem with having redirects to member wikis in the case of many games (in case someone is looking for things on the wrong site), but otherwise game articles should only exist for games not covered somewhere else (Ice Climbers, Game&Watch). 

I'm not a fan of having lots of different color schemes on the same wiki, but that is not an issue if there are not articles for all the games.  That might be just a personal preference; I prefer a wiki to look consistent in terms of color scheme on all pages.

[dkpat]

In attempt to summarize the discussion thus far, and to set in stone what we all agree upon... Here we go!~
(Please note, I am not injecting my opinions into this particular post)

Definite Topics:
*Full coverage of hardware.
*Full coverage of history.
*Full coverage of Events.
*Full coverage of Nintendo Employees.
*Single article for competing companies.
*At least one article for every series.

The rest of what has been discussed still seems up in the air to me.  We have agreed that full coverage of any game series should not happen (Ex: Ice Climbers), but not the extent to which said series should be covered in comparison to other series. Related to that, We haven't come to any definitive consensus regarding coverage of Individual games. Some people are saying N-wiki shouldn't cover them, some are saying they should cover all of them, and some are saying they should only cover those without another member wiki. Another topic that doesn't have a clear decision is coverage of select Nintendo "mascots" The issue here would be determining who those mascots are.

I believe that is a thorough synopsis of the thread so far. Can we get those bottom things ironed out, please?

[SeanWheeler]

And what about characters? We have a page on Mario, and while he may be the primary mascot of Nintendo, I don't think he should be the only one to get his own article. Pikachu appears everywhere on Pokémon merchandise. Kirby has a bigger role than Mario in the Subspace Emissary of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. And Legend of Zelda starring Link is very popular. The rules clearly say certain characters like Bulbasaur and Meta Knight don't get articles, but what about the ones almost as popular as Mario? More of this discussion can be found at Mario's talk
page

[dkpat]

The rules clearly say certain characters like Bulbasaur and Meta Knight don't get articles, but what about the ones almost as popular as Mario?

It's those rules that we are debating here. lol.  (though I agree that those examples aren't notable enough for sure) I'm in favor of select Nintendo Mascots having an article, but we need a criteria for selecting them. There was a related Wikipedia article that had a list of Nintendo mascots... (also, I hate bbcode) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_game_mascots

[SeanWheeler]

And even with that Wikipedia article, it doesn't have any sources. Could Olimar be a mascot despite having only three games? I don't think so. And Pikachu is more of a mascot than Jigglypuff. Pikachu made more appearances in advertising than Jigglypuff. Pikachu can have an article, but I don't think Jigglypuff needs one.

[KidIcarus]

My understanding is that Jigglypuff was used as a major mascot in some regions... perhaps not the primary mascot, but as significant as what Luigi is to Mario

[SeanWheeler]

Then maybe Jigglypuff can be notable? This notability thing is hard Bulbasaur and Meta Knight being examples of what not to cover. Bulbasaur is the very first Pokémon in the national Pokédex and one of the three Kanto starters, and is a very nostalgic Pokémon. And it is what our affiliate Bulbapedia named themselves after. Meta Knight is popular in Brawl, and is on top of the competitive tier list. Well, the tier list is not that important as people deny the existance of tiers and it is based on popular opinion. However, the Kanto starters Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle were very popular. And their final evolved forms Venusaur, Charizard and Blastoise have appeared on boxarts for Green/LeafGreen, Red/FireRed and Blue respectively as the only characters on the boxart. The legendary Pokémon Ho-Oh, Lugia, Suicune, Groudon, Kyogre, Rayquaza, Dialga, Palkia, Giratina, Reshiram, Zekrom, Kyurem, Xerneas and Yvetal are on the boxarts of Gold/HeartGold, Silver/SoulSilver, Crystal, Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Black, White, Black2/White2, X and Y respectively. These Pokémon on the main games' boxarts are called version mascots. And there are famous characters from the Mario series such as Mario (who we already have a page on), Luigi, Princess Peach, Bowser, Donkey Kong, Wario, Yoshi, Toad, Goomba, Bullet Bill. And we have Captain Falcon to thank for the Falcon Punch meme. And a lot of company wikis on Wikia including Wikia's version of Nintendo Wiki have character articles. And Super Mario Wiki has full coverage on Donkey Kong and Super Smash Bros. despite the existance of Donkey Kong Wiki and Smash Wiki in the NIWA. The characters are a major part of Nintendo. Don't see why we can't just cover all of them. We have game pages even though the appropriate wikis have them too.