General Discussion

that's about as messy as template:star, but not of the same magnitude
 
I actually have no problem with the characters and species being listed alongside the items in the Star template: they all have separate subheaders, after all, and it seems like a perfectly useful way to organize the Star pages. I've even found the Star-realm-related locations being all grouped together useful for reading (although that section's technically "misc").

The alternative to the one template is having a separate template for the species and characters like how other species groups are dealt with, but why bother having two templates when one will suffice? And when you think about it, characters =/= species, yet we have no problem lumping them together - the main thing here is that there are many star-related items in addition to the characters and species, unlike most groupings, hence it stands out. Plus there's the fact that the lines between living and inanimate objects is pretty blurred in the Mario series: Super Mushrooms flee, Invincibility Stars bounce, the Beanstar makes faces, screams and blows itself up. Hell, if you really think about it, Super Mushrooms are a species of mushroom, like how Piranha Plants are a species of plant, and Yoshis are a species of animal.

I agree that Star (species) needs work, and that lumping all star-related things together is too broad, but rather than stripping out massive amounts of pages, we should enhance Template:Stars to make it more organized and useful.

So keep the characters, keep the species, make a proper location section and deal with the few truly "misc" things better, and then divide the items, into the power-up-type stars you're talking about now (although the "eyes" thing is a rather speculative and flimsy criteria to use, tbh), perhaps a star-related section for things like the Star Cures, the Star Rod and Star Pieces, and possibly a miscellaneous section for things like Launch Stars, rather than letting them drift off into the realms of template-less organizational dead-ends.
 
Walkazo said:
I actually have no problem with the characters and species being listed alongside the items in the Star template: they all have separate subheaders, after all, and it seems like a perfectly useful way to organize the Star pages. I've even found the Star-realm-related locations being all grouped together useful for reading (although that section's technically "misc").
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All right then, although I'm still not comfortable lumping Brighton and Starlow with stuff like Eternal Star and the Star Spirits; they bear little connection to each other, and I think that's the main gist of the problem.

Walkazo said:
The alternative to the one template is having a separate template for the species and characters like how other species groups are dealt with, but why bother having two templates when one will suffice? And when you think about it, characters =/= species, yet we have no problem lumping them together - the main thing here is that there are many star-related items in addition to the characters and species, unlike most groupings, hence it stands out. Plus there's the fact that the lines between living and inanimate objects is pretty blurred in the Mario series: Super Mushrooms flee, Invincibility Stars bounce, the Beanstar makes faces, screams and blows itself up. Hell, if you really think about it, Super Mushrooms are a species of mushroom, like how Piranha Plants are a species of plant, and Yoshis are a species of animal.
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Eh, Mushrooms and Stars can't be really compared to Piranha Plants as I feel Piranha Plants are more animal-like than still-life like plants and rocks. The Mushrooms and Stars aren't treated as if they're living beings, therefore a species, even though they have a face and sometimes make weird facial expressions. They're treated more as lifeless items that can change facial expressions. Just because they move or bounce doesn't make them a living species. So I disagree with you on that part.


Walkazo said:
I agree that Star (species) needs work, and that lumping all star-related things together is too broad, but rather than stripping out massive amounts of pages, we should enhance Template:Stars to make it more organized and useful.
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True, true, but I don't necessarily agree with some of your statements.

Walkazo said:
So keep the characters, keep the species, make a proper location section and deal with the few truly "misc" things better, and then divide the items, into the power-up-type stars you're talking about now (although the "eyes" thing is a rather speculative and flimsy criteria to use, tbh), perhaps a star-related section for things like the Star Cures, the Star Rod and Star Pieces, and possibly a miscellaneous section for things like Launch Stars, rather than letting them drift off into the realms of template-less organizational dead-ends.
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We're not using just the eyes here, but they all have the same shape and they do have some sort of connection in terms of design and that they're all extremely helpful entities, some even crucial to the gameplay, although some do serve very similarly, like the Star Cure. Maybe we can use a "related" section here and there, but I think the stars with similar design should be treated as the "main" section while the rest can be grouped into something else.
 
Brian and Booster don't have much in common either yet they're side-by-side in Tem:Human. It's one of the unavoidable troubles of having such a broad and variable series. My general feeling is that as long as things aren't uselessly vague, it's better to have more connectivity than less connectivity, and subdivided templates are the best way to encompass a lot of stuff without compromising organization.

I'm not arguing to treat different Mushroom items as species or anything like that: that's cause organizational chaos. I was just being a devil's advocate on account of my RL profession as a biologist, where even basic things like "what is a species" and "what is life" are up for debate (viruses being the "is it alive?" point of contention). Obviously we can't use the same criteria on the wiki - the Mario series is too fanciful (i.e. robotic enemies like impracticality iceberg). My point of that last bit was just that while there are obvious "species/character/item" bins, it's worth keeping in mind that it's not completely black and white, so it's not the end of the world if the odd bin out is grouped with the other two every now and then as long as the overall subject matter is the same (in this case, "star-related stuff").

Treating things with an overall similar design and function as the "main" stars sounds fair, I suppose, but only because it's a fairly substantial sub-category of stars unto itself - like how Koopa Troopas are worth being distinct from misc. Koopa species, and whatnot (only keeping it within the same template because it's not THAT distinct a grouping).
 
I'm honestly not a fan of things like the human template and whatnot, simply because, as you mentioned, there are huge discrepancies between the entries. From a reader's perspective, I can't imagine someone who'd want to jump from Marth to E. Gadd to Booster to Tommy Treehugger while perusing articles. Making templates for games? Makes sense, since someone reading an article would likely be interested in other subjects from that game. Making templates for Goombas and Boos? Sure, since the entries, whether character or species, all have a clear resemblance in both appearance in abilities. Making templates for Humans... I don't see a point in having that increased connectivity: if someone actually was interested in looking up a species that is hardly ever actually mentioned in the games (dumb question, is is technically speculation to have the majority of those entries as humans or does common sense override that?), we do have a category for exactly that (which I'm still iffy on but I think it's a better substitute). Besides, even if they don't have a species template, they're still going to have a template for whatever game or show they're in, so it's not like they're going to be stranded on their own. What actual benefit is there for this "bonus" connectivity?
 
Well, it beats the category in that it at least divides by overall series. If I ever do want to find humans for one reason or another (and I HAVE needed to do just that from time to time), I always use the template. Without it, I'd be stuck slogging through the category and having to deal with all the alt media characters and stuff, when all I wanted was a Mario or Wario VG series human. For the same reason, I pretty much never use species categories, since they have characters mixed in with them, and that's annoying, so I use the nice template instead, as it separates the subjects for me. Our job is to make information retrieval easy as possible, and templates help us do that - including Tem:Human.
 
Mostly fanfiction stuff. Adding obscure references to my stuff, trying to figure out who unnamed cameos in other stuff are, etc. And sometimes I just browse the random human pages for the sake of browsing through all the random humans. Like, all the generic names - who are these people? And then they're all so boring, you forget about them and have to revisit the pages a couple years later to remind yourself that Bean is some kid riding a horse and Onnanoko is a secret character in Wrecking Crew '98, and other such Trivia to fart away the hours with.
 
Mhm... Personally, I don't think casual boredom and one-off notes in fanfics are enough of a justification to warrant having an entire template across 300+ articles. I mean, I do like to dive into random assortments of names that I don't recognize as well (I make it sound like a taxing chore, don't I?), but considering I don't recognize Kaoru or Hercufleas any more than I recognize Sheri or Kiryl, it really doesn't make much of a difference to me. Also...

Walkazo said:
For the same reason, I pretty much never use species categories, since they have characters mixed in with them, and that's annoying, so I use the nice template instead, as it separates the subjects for me.
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That... doesn't really apply with humans, does it? I mean, I know you're making the same point with the games and all, but that seems like different areas.

(While we're discussing this, since Rookie (Bowser) is the only one to strictly be called Rookie in this "form", unlike Birdo or Popple, could the article be moved to simply Rookie?)