Talk:Dragon Wario (Wario Land series)

Should Dragon Wario be included in the Dragon Category and Template? - Walkazo

No, because it's a form of Wario, not an actual dragonn Goomb-omb

Id like to counter that. The Ice Template has Ice Mario and Ice Luigi in it. Why can't the Dragon template have Dragon Wario then? Super-Yoshi^{Talk? C???}

Well I don't think Ice Mario and Ice Luigi should be in the ice template. My views on that are the same as the fire template. Goomb-omb

Fire Creatures

Wario isn't really a creature, so could I remove him from this template?

Goomb-omb 14:31, 1 December 2008 (EST)

No, the Fire Template shows everything that is associated with fire, including Wario. As for "creature", my dictionary's definition is "anything created, especially a living being" which means Wario is a creature. We went with the name "creature" because of this universality: it covers characters (i.e. Wario), species (animals and plants) and things that are neither (like ghosts, and half the things on the template). - Walkazo 22:24, 1 December 2008 (EST)

The fire template seems pretty pointless. Does anyone actually use it to navigate through "fire" articles? Is it even helpful? -- Son of Suns (talk)

No not really. Many fire creatures have appeared in the Mario series, and it would also make some templates like the Ice and Dragon templates kinda awkward if we consider that. Think about it..."Does anyone need to navigate through Dragon articles?" IMO, the more templates an article has, the better it is. Super-Yoshi^{Talk? C???}

I've used it to research species that use fire, and I've used the Dragon template for the same reasons. It's interesting and useful from a scientific point of view. - Walkazo 22:39, 1 December 2008 (EST)

But a category does exactly the same thing, and in an orderly way (not scrunched links all crammed into a little box). I disagree with you Super-Yoshi - I think templates need to be extremely functional, or else they are pointless. More templates does not make an article better. Too many can make it worse. This wiki over-creates templates. Not every category needs a template - the category does it's job just fine. Along with this fire one, we should also probably consider getting rid of the Ice and Dragon ones as well. -- Son of Suns (talk)

Get rid of the elementals if you must, but I ask that we leave the Dragons. They're a valid group of animals, like the Shy Guys, Goombas and Koopas. Also, I didn't know if it's just me, but I find browzing via. templates much more appealing than staring at category lists. Templates make articles feel a bit more connected, IMO. But then again, I'm weird... - Walkazo 22:46, 1 December 2008 (EST)

Yeah I dunno. I guess ultimately I don't care too much. But these templates that are essentially the categories really bug me. Like, what's the point? So yeah, I dunno. Let's get some other opinions, yes? -- Son of Suns (talk)

Ask Stooben Rooben, he made a lot of the templates, and should definitely have a say in this. We might also want to make it a proposal, seeing as it'd affect a lot of articles, and we'd need to spread the word that categorical templates are to be discouraged. Personally, I like lots of templates because it helps small articles like this one get noticed; but I'll admit, it does makes the big pages like Bowser a bit onerous. - Walkazo 23:09, 1 December 2008 (EST)

I don't think it's really worth a proposal since it's just a small change on the very bottom of each page. I still object to "creature" because even though it isn't wrong, I think it is awkward to call individual people "creatures"(I know I wouldn't like being called a "creature!")Same with Fire Mario and Fire Luigi--those are just forms, not separate entities or creatures from regular old Mario and Luigi. Don't care enough to fight for it, really. Having templates-categories has always bugged me on this site, especially when they have the same exact things on both. I don't think that we need templates aside form things like "power-ups", "bosses", or other important material. Just my two cents. Goomb-omb

Well, while I do think some templates that I've made are a bit ridiculous, and plan to soon rid the wiki of them as long as there are no objections (*cough* *cough*), I do think that the templates on this page should stay. I have used the fire template (as well as the dragon one) several times to travel from article to article and compare information. It's easier than waiting for another page to load and then find what you're looking for. I think with certain templates being redesigned to look somewhat like this, they'd be much more appeasing to people. I have two big opinions on this matter.

• 1) All navigation templates should be collapsible completely. This means all the way down to one row. Then, said templates should be reorganized in an easy to navigate manner, be it by alphabetizing it's contents, or by grouping them together and alphabetizing them. (That's my favorite way to do it, as you can see with many of my later templates.) By doing so, navigation templates take up exactly the same amount of space, but can be enlarged with the click of a button to find exactly what you're looking for.
• 2) All navigation templates should refer to any one of the following:
  • Game-specific templates — when making a template based on one game, you should break it down into four main sections: Locations, Items, Enemies, and Bosses. Other sections can be added if necessary. (Examples are {{SM64}}, {{SMB2}}, and {{Super Mario Bros.}}.)
  • Series-specific templates — this should mainly be used to target an entire series of games with one common feature. This one feature would be broken down into its appearance within each game in the series. (Examples are {{Racecourses}}, {{MP}}, and {{Boss}}.)
  • Species-specific templates — this should only be used with enemies with a large amount of species, as well as a reasonable amount of characters based on said species. (Examples are {{Goomba}}, {{Hammer Bros.}}, and {{Fire}}, and even {{Dragons}}.)

So, having said that, I strongly support keeping the templates that are on this article. I have actually been thinking of starting a proposal that would enforce rules like these on navigation templates, so that the current mess we have on some articles could be completely rid of. I would need the help of others though to actually tackle the feat of setting those rules in to all templates though; that's why I've yet to actually mention it until now. — Stooben Rooben 06:45, 5 December 2008 (EST)

I agree with one completely. I agree with two mostly, except that I don't think all navigation templates have to be one of three options. What a template needs to do is to somehow discriminate information either based on organization offered by a game itself (such as {{Star Spirits}} or {{Crystalstar}}, where one game provides a boundary to organize a single unified set of characters, items, etc.) or by effectively organizing a large amount of information about a single topic ((such as {{Coins}}, where the same concept that is used across series is effectively organized into several sections for easy navigation). Basically, we shouldn't restrict ourselves to any one (or three) types of template, but be open to multiple ways of organizing templates, as long as those templates offer a simple way of organizing and navigating through articles, and not simply replicating a category, especially if a category is filled with many articles only loosely affiliated. So a template like {{Magic}} would fail, as it is not organized around an "official" concept (like who is a Star Spirit) nor is it a strong central topic (like what is a Coin) - who is a magician and who is not is somewhat arbitrary (afterall, everyone in Mario's party and every bad guy in the game Super Mario RPG could use "magic"). -- Son of Suns (talk)

Grouping templates into main types would definitelty help regulate what's being made, cutting down on the useless ones and making the good ones look similar (and thus improving the Wiki's overall appearance). Also, I think {{Coins}}, {{Star Spirits}} and {{Crystalstar}} all resemble species-wide templates, but with items and character groups instead. Maybe an umbrella type covering species, characters and items should be used in place of "species-wide" templates (especially considering half of those templates are made up of characters, and also includes things like ghosts, which people have argued aren't "species" - so phasing out that term is killing two birds with one stone). Unfortunately, we might have trouble coming up with an umbrella term for all these things (the only universal word I can come up with is "noun"). - Walkazo 14:18, 5 December 2008 (EST)

SoS: Walkazo hit it right on the nail with the first part of her statement. I apologize for not elaborating more on this before, but {{Coins}} and {{Mushrooms}} would fall under the same rule as {{Goomba}}, and others like it. That would technically be the fourth option — a navigation template that neatly links all items related in the way that they either all appear in a game together, or that they're all of the same "species" (for lack of a better term), just as {{Mushrooms}} is. Templates like {{Crystalstar}} and {{Star Spirits}} would fall under option two (though it says "series-related"; I couldn't think of a better term. :P), because the Star Spirits and the Crystal Stars all appear together in the same game. They could even be compounded into a template like {{Paper Mario}} or {{TTYD}}, etc. I do agree entirely with everything else you and Walkazo said though. -- Stooben Rooben (talk) 14:44, 5 December 2008 (EST)

I don't know the exact term to use, but perhaps what we are getting that is that we should only create templates to reflect officially established boundaries (whereas category pages could be more for grouping articles the wiki feels should be together, such as "undead" or "clones," but don't necessarily have an "official" basis or boundary). All the "good" templates we have noted (for the most part) seem to be reflecting boundaries established by Nintendo, either through a single game (there is a clear boundary between what is in one game from another), through a single series (there is a relatively clear boundary between what is in a series and what is not in a series), a species (which are for the most part distinguished from other species and their varieties, although at times there are hybrid creatures like Spiny Shroopas which would be in two templates), a clearly distinguished type of item (such as Switches, which are clearly different than other types of objects, or Crystal Stars, which are distnguished from other artifacts), etc. That way templates could be restricted to official types of organization, while categories could be used to group those articles we feel should be grouped, but that are not necessarily defined by Nintendo nor are in stable boundaries. -- Son of Suns (talk)

So the Templates would be official and the Categories common sense? Sounds good in theory, but what may seem like an obvious relation to some may not be for others. For example, I say Clubbas are Koopas, since they share many physical similarities, but if I include them in Category:Koopas that would be wrong, because it is merely speculation. Also, in some cases templates act as more than a navigation platform, but an organizational tool as well, like {{Siblings}}. If templates were canon-only (for lack of a better label), that template would have to go; but a mere category could not show which siblings are related to who, and would be far less useful for our readers. Going back to the Koopas, in things like Dark Paratroopa, the only template used is {{Koopa Paratroopa}}, because, even though it's also a Koopa, there is no Koopa-wide template (see here for an example of what it would look like (with species only, so double that is what we'd end up with)), so that relation can only be shown with the Koopa Category. In this example, the official template is supplemented by the equally official category (making categories represent informal relations only would disallow that). There's so much going on with Templates and Categories, redefining them so drastically would take a lot of work and spark a lot of confusion. - Walkazo 00:49, 6 December 2008 (EST)

Couple resonses (I need to list them so I don't forget them all):

1)Regarding categories, obviously some categories would still be based on official definitions of a topic, such as Koopa, so Clubba won't belong. And it's not like Categories would be filled with unofficial information, it would just be information that has not been specifically defined by Nintendo. So for example, the creatures in the undead category are all undead and probably most if not all have some sort of description that points to that. However Nintendo has never explicitly defined an "undead" class (perhaps that is the word we are looking for) so a template (according to my schema) would not be created for this category.

2)I agree that the Siblings template would work better than a category, but the entire concept of cataloguing siblings seems speculative and perhaps not even necessary - if you looked at the article you would know who the sibling was. The problem with the Siblings template is that the sibling "groups" have no relation to each other. That "class" of people has not been defined by Nintendo, but who is in each family has been defined (relatively). So what may be more effective is to have an individual family template for each family mentioned, listing the relationships between them. That would be more helpful to me, as I could circulate around articles in a clearly defined concept.

3)Just to repeat, categories would be about official "classes" as well, not only about informal relations. So Dark Paratroopa under this schema could be in the Paratroopa template and the Koopa category. So ultimately categories would be about any type of relationship, be it official or informal, while templates would be for articles that are explicitly bound around a central concept (and what is a Paratroopa is clearly defined from other Koopas).

And I am just throwing my two cents in, as it seems Stooby may be planning a proposal...a proposal that may take a lot of work to eventually complete. What I wrote above was not to imply we should immediately make all the changes I stated above, but to consider them if we were to create a template policy. -- Son of Suns (talk)

Sorry, I didn't mean to start anything :/ Goomb-omb