F-Zero Wiki talk:Community Portal

Current problems

Its about time this was started! Due to a lack of notability, many articles from Wikipedia will be moved here. This should take care of most of the plagiarism here. FullMetal Falcon 17:55, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposals?

How do we usually handle discussions here, or how should we? I mean regarding some significant change to the wiki. I usually see proposals being the option, with "Support" and "Oppose" sections and all that. Is that something we could start doing, or do we not have an active enough community for that?

We need a proposal to decide if we should do proposals. Alex95 02:52, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

I guess I need to provide an example of how I see this being set up. Pretty much what I have on my Power Master Wiki, though with the obvious adjustments for F-Zero Wiki. I know our community isn't exactly large, with me (and just recently, GuyPerfect) being the only real editors. But I'd like to see something like this set up for future use to allow a community to flourish and to get things moving again.

As the Editor-in-Chief, I could very easily just make this happen anyway, but I like seeing what people think before I start making changes. Though if no one responds, I'll take that as indifference. Alex95 04:51, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

I think a proposal setup could be useful for significant large-scale changes. It would give all parties an opportunity to provide feedback, either pointing out problems or suggesting improvements. In the nearest short-term I don't know how useful it would be what with the "ghost town syndrome" we have at the moment, but the idea certainly has its merits. --GuyPerfect (talk) 17:07, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

I think it could be useful, but you might want to wait until we have more people helping out. Tacopill (talk) 18:51, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Templates

Decided: 2-0, restructure templates.

While I wait for the above discussion to gain more traction (please add to that as well), I'm going to start a proposal anyway, because this is a roadblock for me toward improving the wiki.

I think our templates are poorly put together, created by piecing together other templates just to make a structured one. I understand the point of this is that any corrections made to one template will effect all of them, but this makes it difficult to get to the problem in the first place as you have to go through a template rabbit-hole unless you really know what to look for, and most casual editors do not. Most wikis, such as Super Mario Wiki, SmashWiki, Bulbapedia, and Fire Emblem Wiki use standardized templates that are only on one page and are easy to edit. What's more, if the template is structured properly, there won't need to be any major updates across all of them for long periods of time.

Simply put, I believe our coding structure for the templates is outdated. Now, an alternative would be to simply improve the coding for the puzzle pieces, but the same issues are still there: It may be difficult for editors to put a template together and figure out how to do that when it is much simpler to keep all the coding on one page, and if one of these building blocks breaks, they all do. Additionally, updating the individual pieces will be a very difficult process to make sure they all work together.

Until we formalize a standard proposal process, please vote in one of the options below using #{{user|name}}, leaving additional comments in the comment section. Proposal will end once we feel like enough of an agreement one way or the other is set.

Effected templates being:

• {{InfoBox Begin}}
• {{InfoBox Table}}
• {{InfoBox End}}
• {{Navbox/core}}
• {{Navigation Box}}
• {{tablebegin}} - Literally just {|
• {{tableend}} - Literally just |}

Possibly more I haven't found yet.

Pros to standardized templates	Pros to template pieces
All coding is in one place	Pieces can be used for multiple templates
Structurally sound	Updating one template can effect multiple templates it is used in
Easy to use and understand
Cons to standardized templates	Cons to template pieces
Coding updates will need to be applied to multiple templates	One breaks, anything using it will break
	Annoying navigation to find the template you need to use/update

Proposer: Alex95 19:46, 5 October 2020 (UTC)
End date: 20:57, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Restructure templates to be on one page and more up-to-date

1. Alex95 (talk · contributions) - Preferred option
2. Yeah these templates are pretty silly. I don't think there would ever come a point where any of these "piece templates" would need updated, and even if they did, this is a relatively small wiki. It would be easy enough to edit the base templates individually. This is a messy means for fixing an unlikely problem, saving about 10 minutes or so tops. Serpent King 22:52, 9 November 2020 (UTC)

Comments

For examples on updated infoboxes, please take a look at some works-in-progress on my sandbox page and GuyPerfect's sandbox pages. Alex95 19:46, 5 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm just going to enforce this. Alex95 20:57, 21 December 2020 (UTC)

Changing the format of maps

Right now, most links go to non-existant pages splitting up race courses by game and version. For example, Mute City II (F-Zero). In reality, all pages are just the area with headers for both versions and game. (IE Mute City has a section on F-Zero with Mute City I, II, and III).

Looks like there's two alternative ways of going about this. I'd like to suggest sticking to some form of uniform method.

I'm actually thinking it might be better to kinda do both, with having dedicated pages for versions, with subheaders by game (IE Mute City II is the page, with headers for game appearances).

Would love to know what people think. Trig - 04:13, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

Bumping thread, as this is a major change. Trig Jegman - 00:05, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

In my opinion we should have a page like Mute City for lore stuff and one page for each individual map, as long as its significantly different. AFAIK there's no other "Mute City I" other than in F-Zero, F-Zero 99 and the Satellaview games, which are basically the same and can share an article. I think that's more or less what you're suggesting? In later games, the articles could either be named "Figure Eight" (though I think there's some that share the same name between differnt games) or "Mute City - Figure Eight". Reggimato (talk) 21:21, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

If the track is the same across games, it has one name. If it's different, like Figure Eight may be, it would be Figure Eight (game) instead. I agree with keeping lore pages as a quasi-disambiguation page for lore coverage though. Trig Jegman - 22:08, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

I agree with the idea of having a page for just the lore if there's enough information available for that and a page for each individual track if they're significantly different enough while having variants of that track share an article if they have no significant difference to its layout. I've noticed a couple issues that can arise from changing the format of the track articles though.

For the tracks that have a subtitle such as those found in F-Zero X and later installments, I noticed a potential issue that could arise from Reggimato's suggestion of using a name format like Mute City - Figure Eight for the article name. Some tracks in F-Zero: GP Legends and Climax use the same name for both the name and subtitle (ie Fire Field - Fire Field from GP Legends) or the subtitle would included a numbered version of the track in its subtitle (ie. Mute City - Mute City I from GP Legends, which is the first track in the Platinum Cup or 31st track overall while Mute City I has historically been the 1st track in F-Zero). So instead I suggest going with the subtitle as the article name meanwhile put the full name at the start of the article. For an example with Mute City - Figure Eight, simply name the article Figure Eight or Figure Eight (F-Zero X) and start its article something like this:

Mute City - Figure Eight is the first course in the Jack Cup and first course overall in F-Zero X.

Another issue I noticed is that currently Mute City and Big Blue have crossover appearances in other games, namely Mario Kart 8 and the Super Smash Bros. series. We can do either of the following for those two in particular:

• If it's decided to have a dedicated lore page for Big Blue and Mute City, move the crossover appearances to an Appearance in other games section.
• Make a separate article for them as Big Blue (Super Smash Bros.), Big Blue (Mario Kart 8), Mute City (Super Smash Bros.) and Mute City (Mario Kart 8).

Now that I've brought up the other issues with some suggestions for those, here's my suggestion for changing the format of the maps using Big Blue as an example.

• Big Blue (page dedicated to its lore, links to more specific versions of the tracks)
• Big Blue (F-Zero) (article for the F-Zero version that includes the 3 versions from F-Zero 99 (standard version from F-Zero 99 Mode, Frozen Knight version from F-Zero 99 Mode and standard version from Classic Mode) as subsections since 99 is based on the original game and the only difference in track layout is widening it to accomidate more players)
• Slip Highway (article for the F-Zero: GP Legend version that includes the full name Big Blue - Slip Highway at the beginning of the article since the subtitle differs from the main name)
• Big Blue (GP Legend) (article for the F-Zero: GP Legend version that merely includes the name Big Blue at the beginning of the article since the subtitle is the same as the main name) Herobrine (talk) 10:14, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Awesome. Yeah, this is pretty much what I was going for. Glad to know that most people are pretty on board with this. I'll probably start moving stuff later tonight, then. Trig - 12:46, 3 October 2024 (UTC)