Talk:List of Mario franchise characters

Requested move 4 July 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: No Consensus - Numerically, and in terms of argumentation, this is a wash. Arguing conciseness is a strong argument for moving, but accuracy and consistency are also reasonably argued against it. Whilst I found the argumentation did lean towards moving, it did not do so decisively enough for a clear consensus to appear. (non-admin closure) FOARP (talk) 07:24, 3 September 2024 (UTC)

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List of Mario franchise characters → List of Mario characters – More concise title, WP:CONSISTENT with other video game franchise characters lists:

• List of Donkey Kong characters
• List of The Legend of Zelda characters
• List of Star Fox characters

etc. Mia Mahey (talk) 17:20, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose I think it's at that name because we don't want people to suddenly start adding every character from a work of media who happens to be named "Mario". ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 07:20, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
• Support per OP and WP:CONSISTENT Lazz_R 23:05, 5 July 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose I'd argue that List of Mario franchise characters is actually more WP:CONSISTENT with the current article naming convention. For Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, and Star Fox, the main article of each franchise does not have a title with "franchise" disambiguation, so it makes sense that there is also no "franchise" disambiguation in their respective character list articles. However, franchises with main articles that do have a "franchise" disambiguation in their title (which is the case for Mario (franchise)) also explicitly have "franchise" in their respective characters article:

• Alien (franchise) and List of Alien (franchise) characters
• Predator (franchise) and List of Predator (franchise) characters
• Madagascar (franchise) and List of Madagascar (franchise) characters
• The Loud House (franchise) and List of characters in The Loud House franchise
• Family Guy (franchise) and List of characters in the Family Guy franchise

spintheer (talk) 02:22, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

• The current name is definitely not appropriate. It should either be List of Mario characters or List of Mario (franchise) characters. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 01:24, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

  I would support option B here. spintheer (talk) 02:20, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

• I think one thing we're missing here is that the title would have Mario italicized. I'm not sure I see the issue with "List of Mario characters" as a title. Landfish7 (talk) 08:58, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

  Good catch Red Slash 06:05, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

  Just noting that the italics have no bearing here, per WP:ITALICTITLE Mediawiki cannot store italic titles, so that would be implemented post-move by using WP:DISPLAYTITLE. (That, and the italics may not always render/be readable to everybody, so it's not a good idea to count on them) ASUKITE 18:12, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support - context will make it very very very very obvious that this is about Nintendo's Mario universe Red Slash 06:05, 10 July 2024 (UTC)
• Support per nom and Red slash. The title does not have to spell out every possible misunderstanding. The lead section can clarify that yes, it's obviously the franchise and not characters named "Mario". SnowFire (talk) 04:59, 11 July 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose per spintheer. As proposed by the nominator, WP:CONSISTENT is the relevant policy, and it would actually point to the current title as more appropriate. AVNOJ1989 (talk) 18:08, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Support Since I think it would be pretty obvious for anyone searching "List of Mario Characters" that it's characters from the Mario franchise. I think WP: CONCISE could apply here. Urchincrawler (talk) 19:42, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

• Comment (already supported above). Re the opposes citing consistentency, I'm not sold those other articles are useful comparisons. A casual reading of "List of Alien characters" would be characters that are space aliens in general, "List of Predator characters" animal-people who are also predators, "List of Madagascar characters" characters of origin in Madagascar, etc. This kind of misreading is vastly less likely with "Mario" where the wrong reading of "Mario" is clearly silly. "The Loud House" and "Family Guy" are a bit different, but if I had to guess, they're in their current form because a two or three word "adjective" form can be a bit awkward, i.e. "List of [The Loud House] characters"? They are more relevant, but I wouldn't put much emphasis on those two articles. The general point is that "Mario characters" is concise and natural, and will be read correctly by 99% of readers, especially since context (either a Google search with an image of the Mario crew, or a link in a video-game related article) will make the subject obvious. SnowFire (talk) 03:10, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

  I'm very confused by this comment. ""List of Madagascar characters" characters of origin in Madagascar, etc." isn't a list of all characters of origin in Madagascar, but a list of characters from a specific franchise – i.e. the Madagascar CGI animal film and TV franchise. That's why such articles benefit from having "franchise" specified in the article, to avoid the mistake you seem to have made here. AVNOJ1989 (talk) 17:00, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

  That's precisely SnowFire's point. See my comment below spintheer (talk) 19:51, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

  As spintheer said, that was exactly what I was saying, so not a "mistake." I'm saying that it makes sense to title the Alien article "List of Alien (franchise) characters" because that is clear and unambiguous, but "List of Alien characters" could be misread. But that the form "List of (Term) characters" is still fine and a good, concise default when there isn't such a misreading. I doubt readers would see "List of Mario characters" and think "this is about characters named Mario," so therefore the Alien precedent isn't relevant. SnowFire (talk) 21:41, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

  I get the source of the confusion now. I disagree with the idea "I doubt readers would see "List of Mario characters" and think "this is about characters named Mario," and therefore don't follow along with the conclusion that the Alien (or other) precedents wouldn't be relevant. The comments in this thread assume everyone is more familiar with Mario as a video game character from some 1980s Atari game and a couple CGI movies as compared to a rather common name in some parts of the world. That doesn't completely defeat the argument as being made – after all, Sofia is an article about the city (as compared to Sofia (given name)), but you'll have to make a more robust argument that bear in mind that while you hear "Mario" and think bing bing wahoo, that's not necessarily what first comes to mind for everyone else. Looking at the way the conversation is progressing, I think the Shrek comparison is the strongest example that's been provided so far – if there was any article along these same lines that could make an argument to drop the 'franchise' I think it'd be Shrek, and the fact it's even there tells me WP:CONSISTENT says it should be there. AVNOJ1989 (talk) 22:07, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

  We'll have to agree to disagree, but I'll just point out that - as the nominator already provided in the nomination - there are scads, scads of articles in the simple "List of XYZ characters" form that don't include a (franchise) disclaimer, even when it is franchise. Not just the Donkey Kong / LoZ / Star Fox ones, but List of Dune characters, List of Halo characters, and 100 more. So even if Shrek is a counterexample (maybe, but there is a difference per below comments on Shrek 1 vs. Shrek-in-general), and even if our sole goal is consistency (which it shouldn't be), that would potentially imply moving the Shrek article instead. SnowFire (talk) 10:15, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

  I see. You argue that, in the examples that I gave above, "franchise" was not added to the character list article title primarily in order to match the original franchise article title, like I claimed. Instead, you raise the possibility that the primary reason for adding "franchise" to those character list articles was to serve as a natural disambiguation (e.g. to disambiguate "List of alien articles") or to address awkward phrasing concerns (e.g. "List of The Loud House characters").

  To address this argument, I raise the following examples in which (1) The character list article title has "franchise", matching the main franchise article title, while (2) "franchise" isn't used or needed for natural disambiguation or to fix awkward phrasing. In other words, the character list article title would've sounded natural and non-awkward without using "franchise", yet it's still used:

  - Shrek (franchise) and List of Shrek (franchise) characters

  - Fantasia (franchise) and List of Fantasia (franchise) characters

  - Terminator (franchise) and List of Terminator (franchise) characters

  I might argue that "List of Family Guy characters" would have also been passably natural and not awkward sounding (and yet it still has "franchise" in the title to match the main franchise article title). But to avoid having to split hairs about this point, I give the above examples instead, which I think show the idea more clearly. spintheer (talk) 19:50, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

  • • I agree that those are certainly closer to counterexamples (or at least Shrek & Fantasia, you could squint and maybe argue Terminator could be read as line terminator characters). That said, one of the reasons for "franchise" is due to possible-if-unlikely confusion with the first entry in a series. i.e. someone might think that "List of Shrek characters" is just about the film "Shrek" (aka "Shrek 1"), "Terminator" ("The Terminator" 1984), "Fantasia" (1940), etc. But the first Mario games aren't literally called "Mario", so this confusion is much less likely that someone will expect only Mario Bros. characters or the like.
    • More generally I think that there are many more examples of the other form (see Category:Lists of fictional characters, too many "List of XYZ characters" to count including the subcategories - we're talking 100+) and if I was being a real stickler about consistency would argue that those could move to "List of Shrek characters" and "List of Fantasia characters". (But would actually leave it up to the main maintainer's preference in practice, if they were really concerned about either my suggestion above with confusion with the first entry, or something else.) SnowFire (talk) 21:41, 16 July 2024 (UTC)

      The way I understand it, WP:CONSISTENT (and more specifically WP:TITLECON) calls for uniformly applying the same decision rules when determining the titles of similar articles, and not for uniformly reaching the same decision outcome. Even if many of character list articles don't have "franchise", a significant number of others still do, as I've shown. Therefore, the current convention requires us to seriously deliberate the relevant considerations for whether or not to include "franchise" in the character list articles, and not just ignore them and blindly go by an article head-count.

      The article titling convention that I was going by is WP:CONSUB: If the title of the main topic (Mario (franchise)) includes the (franchise) disambiguation, then the article titles of subtopics (List of Mario franchise characters) should do the same. I gave examples in order to show this convention in action in other franchise articles. My belief is that if we want to argue that Mario (franchise) shouldn't have "(franchise)" in the first place, that's ok, but I think that we should address that first before changing the titles of subtopic articles. spintheer (talk) 21:00, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

• Support Proposed title is consistent with closely related articles and is clear and concise. Landfish7 (talk) 03:29, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
• Support per arguments in nom. I also agree with SnowFire that the risk of confusion seems minimal; "list of Mario characters" would be an unnatural way to describe a list of characters named Mario. ModernDayTrilobite (talk • contribs) 15:01, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Oppose as Mario is a franchise with multiple notable game series (Such as Mario Kart, Mario Party, and more) that are equally as notable as the main series. Several characters on this list hail from games not associated with the main "Mario" line. (Such as E.Gadd being from Luigi's Mansion and Fawful being from Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga) The current title is more accurate in describing the umbrella properties of the overall franchise, whereas Mario could imply only the mainline games, or one of the other notable sub-properties individually. For people unfamiliar with the franchise, clarifying "franchise" seems more beneficial overall since it clarifies that this roster of characters extends through various types of media, not just a specific one, and additionally is more accurate in describing characters who hail from games not using the usual "Mario" title. Has one ever considered Magneton? Pokelego999 (talk) 16:04, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

Oppose per above, and per the fact that Mario is quite a generic term, and a name, whereas Donkey Kong, or Zelda are very unlikely to ever have real people related to such franchises. Zippybonzo | talk | contribs (they/them) 17:19, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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