Rename: ambiguous: The Mario

Wouldn't hurt, just to make sure.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

Use in the pages starting with "A":

• Ace Combat - Correct.
• A Commander Is You - Correct.
• Act Of War - Not a perfect example, but the trope is used correctly.
• Adventurer Archaeologist - Correct.
• Characters/A Game Of Gods NPCs - Correct.
• AJ Styles - Correct.
• Alfred J Kwak - Honestly, not sure. Not familiar with work, not enough elaboration.
• WMG/Alien - Correct.
• Alien Vs Predator - Correct.
• Characters/Alter AILA - Correct.
• Alter AILA - Not sure. Edit: Given the above page, probably correct though.
• Quotes/Alternative Character Interpretation - Misuse. (Refers to Mario himself. Fixed it now.)
• Amplifier Artifact - Correct.
• An Adventurer Is You - Correct.
• An Axeto Grind - Correct.
• Characters/Angel Beats - Correct.
• Arcana Heart - Not sure — character name only. Given the below, probably correct.
• Characters/Arcana Heart - Correct.
• Characters/Archipelago Exodus - Correct.
• Armored Core - Correct.
• AT- 43 - Correct.
• Attack Attack Attack - Correct.
• Avalon Heroes - Correct.
• Awesome Yet Practical - Correct.
• WMG/Axis Powers Hetalia - ... Correct. A bit confusing because it compares two characters to the Mario Brothers themselves, but it seems to be saying a character is similar to the Mario because he is The Mario, so... it is not misuse.

So that's 25 pages using the term, and of them, there was one clear case of mis-use. There was also a couple of cases that I wasn't sure of, because they simply said a character was The Mario without explaining why. This doesn't necessarily indicate mis-use, of course.

I'd say there is no evidence of widespread misuse, and thus, no need for a re-name.

edited 18th Apr '11 5:49:50 PM by girlyboy

I never said that the default position is to rename or anything like that. All I said is that saying "it works" without any clarification or evidence whatsoever is not a good argument (and that everybody against the name change is disregarding arguments in favor of it, but I'll get back to that). Now that I have seen some clarification, I say that just because it isn't being misused, doesn't mean that it shouldn't be renamed, and that is not the only criteria.

The name is fundamentally flawed in that it depends not only on the reader knowing the character, but knowing an oddly specific fact about the character. The balanced stat character is not the first thing that comes to most people's minds, that isn't really what he's most known for, or the first thing people think when they think of him. Mario is an icon, but not of this trope. I've never played the game, but I don't think anybody who played Super Mario Bros. would know this. The name comes from his stats in Mario Kart, am I correct? The trope is named after a character's spin-off game abilities? Really? That is definitely not a good enough reason for it to be a character named trope. So far, nobody has said anything that disputes this.

You didn't find many misuses? That's because none of Mario's other characteristics are tropes, other that this not very well known characteristic. It's still ambiguous because the name doesn't really speak to what the article is about, as Mario has many other more well known characteristics.

So no this name does not "work".

edited 21st Apr '11 11:32:07 AM by aaeyero

That's not how misuses work. Misusing would be to list the trope in a context that is not the trope, and so far almost all the uses are for character that are middle stats. That means people are getting the name, even though logically they should be screwing it up the way they screwed up The Umbridge.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

You're missing the point. It's a completely unjustified character named trope, (and I just explained why it is). That is enough reason for it to be renamed.

Okay, you're sounding like me in my earlier days here. Trust me, no matter how bad a name can seem, when the use is high, and the misuse is low, the name falls under what we call a "working" name, not how intuitive or sensible it actually is.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

The problem with your argument, aaeyero, is that it does, in fact work and such has been demonstrated. Just because logically it seems like it should be being misused left and right based on other trends in misuse of character named tropes doesn't necessarily mean that it will be or is being misused like that.

Also, I think many people here may well be underestimating how well known of an attribute of his this is. I mean it seems to always be Mario's schtick when there are other characters.

edited 21st Apr '11 12:23:13 PM by Balmung

No, it is not. That is one of our main polices of this wiki. Read this and you will notice that not renaming is the default. Renames are only suggested if the trope is not working.

Note the "Reasons to propose a rename" should be only even considered when the trope is not working already. The "Reasons not to rename" comes first, aways.

And, "working" means "hight inbounds and no misuses". Which The Mario is.

Argleblargh I even put it in my signature. Why do people love renaming things so, why?

If I may compare some numbers from a previous thread...

As of September 2010, The Mario had 452 wicks and 1036 inbounds.

As of today (seven months later, almost to the day), it has 629 wicks and 2,157 inbounds.

A.k.a. about +25 wicks and +175 inbounds per month.

This is how you measure whether an article is "working".

---

Now, I may be able to clarify some of Aquillion's checks back on page 1. Let me see:

Reference to Mario himself and decidedly not Mario the trope:

• New Super Mario Bros (no gameplay differences whatsoever between Mario, Luigi, and the two Toads*
  ^{Required to maintain balance in multiplayer co-op}
  )
• Shigeru Miyamoto (context of being Nintendo's mascot)

Reference to Mario himself, ambiguous whether it fits Mario the trope or not:

• Super Mario RPG
  • Combat Medic

I can't figure these out either:

• Mushroom Kingdom Fusion: It says that Mario himself is the Party Tank, but also "average as ever" in overall stats. So it isn't ... but it is?

If we add this to girlyboy's sample, that about triples the rate of confirmed misuse (1 in 25 -> 1 in 10). So we really need a wider sample here.

edited 22nd Apr '11 9:52:05 AM by Stratadrake

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

Don't forget DQZ's sample also. To quote, "I checked some wicks, specifically all the "E's", and there wasn't any incorrect wicks." That is, if I count right, a sample of 22 wicks finding 0 misuse.

Edit: Also, unless I'm mistaken, Aquillion didn't actually say how many items they looked at to find this misuse. They said they didn't look at everything, of course, but still, we don't know what the sample size was.

Frankly, the evidence for renaming this trope was so tenuous from page 1, and only continues to grow more tenuous, and frankly it's hard to see the very continuation of this discussion at this point as anything other than evidence of a strong pro-renaming bias within the TRS. And That's Terrible.

edited 22nd Apr '11 10:33:35 AM by girlyboy

The point is, it's being misused to refer to the character, as far as I can tell, nearly every single time the character appears in a context where he doesn't fit the trope. It has a lot of wicks and inbounds on account of being helluva old, but helluva old isn't a reason not to rename.

(Additionally — is this meant to be a videogame trope? I found a huge number of uses along the lines of 'character X is The Mario of this harem romance show, because they're not extreme in any fashion.)

Come on. You know there are disagreements about when to rename in the Trope Repair Shop, there's no need to get personal about it. Some people prefer to rename whenever a better name can be determined or because of a general consensus that a name isn't any good; there have been plenty of renames based solely on that, especially for character-named tropes. Misuse is only one of many different things that can require a rename. People who don't know what a trope means may not necessarily be actively putting it in the wrong place (because it doesn't lend itself immediately to an alternative meaning), but they may still be finding it hard to read cases where it is used; it might also break the flow where it comes up even for people who can remember its meaning with some effort.

edited 22nd Apr '11 11:07:34 AM by Aquillion

^ I think you missed the part where this article has gained 1121 inbounds in the past seven months alone. That has nothing to do with being old, as the vast majority of trope articles that have been around that long don't even break 100 inbounds over their lifetime, much less 1000.

Visit my contributor page to assist with the "I Like The Cheeses" project!

I believe the proper form of this explicative is hella.

That growth shows that many established tropers know what it means, which is easy for an old trope on a common concept. That doesn't show that it's working in the sense that, say, someone can glance at it on a page, instantly say 'Oh! That's what that trope I've always known about in the back of my head is called!' and run around using it themselves.

I feel that much of the resistance to badly-needed renames is based on that sort of thing — a name becomes 'established' here on T Vtropes, and based on that it's considered a good name or above consideration for a rename. But T Vtropes shouldn't be insular or written solely for its own base of editors; names should be chosen so they're easy for everyone to understand, not merely people who have been editing here for years.

Since long-standing users make up a huge chunk of our editors, but the vast majority of readers never edit, the way that a trope is used cannot show that it is 'working' — it can show when something is wrong, but as our editors are not our only audience, it cannot show when something is right.

"This name is intuitively misleading" is a valid argument even in the absence of misuse. Obviously it still requires consensus that the article is intuitively misleading, but it can't be automatically dismissed by saying 'well, all the established tropers who do the majority of our editing are getting it right!'

edited 22nd Apr '11 11:22:33 AM by Aquillion

No. Inbound links are specifically traffic that comes from outside of the wiki, with search pages being excluded. This means that this is traffic that was deliberately linked to from outside the wiki, and thus the name resonates among far more than just established tropers.

Further, you're looking at a page that performs better than 98% of the 150,000 articles in this entire site. If what you said was true, nearly every page that has been around for a while would have similar numbers. But the vast majority don't.

Further still, your reasoning goes against the Trope Renaming Guidelines, which clearly spell out that high inbounds, high wicks, and low misuse are the primary indicators we have that a trope title is "working."

From Trope Renaming Guidelines, the first bullet under "Reasons not to rename":

edited 22nd Apr '11 11:25:41 AM by Meeble

Visit my contributor page to assist with the "I Like The Cheeses" project!

"Some people prefer to rename whenever a better name can be determined or because of a general consensus that a name isn't any good; there have been plenty of renames based solely on that, especially for character-named tropes." Then I am sorry, but those people were wrong, and those renames were wrong also.

There is a set of guidelines for renaming that I think should be followed. It says that if a trope works — if it is widely used, and is being used correctly — then the name should be kept. Yes, as with any guideline, there will be exceptions, but they should be just that — rare exceptions, for extreme cases.

The fact that some other renaming discussions were decided improperly on the basis of faulty arguments is no reason why this one should be permitted to go the same way.

You keep claiming there is misuse, but we have now had multiple attempts to find misuse, and it seems, once again, that the trope is used correctly the overwhelming majority of the time. I'm sorry, but "I think this name leads to misuse even though there is very little evidence of much misuse despite us looking for it fairly thoroughly" is not a good argument for renaming.

I think you should have more faith in the ability of our readers to figure this stuff out.

Also, speculation about how clear or unclear the name is based on intuition is inherently subjective and unprovable. What actual evidence we have says we should keep the name; why should we dismiss it based on intuition?

Also, you do realise that from a reader's point of view, trying to use a wiki where numerous articles regularly have their names changed can be confusing and not very much fun? That there is, in fact, inherent value in keeping the current name — unless there's actually evidence that it is leading to problems?

That especially if a name has a lot of inbound links, that means some readers are finding the wiki thanks, in part, to the current name, and that changing it will only confuse a segment of potential readers, and may well leave us with a name that would not gain as much exposure, and would not get us as many new readers in the future?

edited 22nd Apr '11 3:10:07 PM by girlyboy

I would argue that people who have played the Mario games—a substantial amount of people—would know that Mario is almost always the most well-rounded of all the characters. It's been that way since both versions Super Mario Brothers 2, especially the North American version, where the other three playable characters were known and used more for their special abilities (Luigi's jump, Peach's hover, Toad's speed).

That besides, arguing against the trope name due to its connection to a spin-off series would make more sense if we were dealing with a less popular spin-off series. As it stands, the Mario Kart series is one of the best selling branches of the overall Mario series. Indeed, Mario Kart Wii has sold more units than any other Mario Wii game—and it's widely known among players of the game that Mario and the class that Mario is in are well-rounded. But this is true even in games where Mario is the default/first available player character.

And even if you haven't played a Mario game, what, exactly, is Mario known for compared to other well-known video game characters? This is honestly what confuses me about the argument against this name, is that no one's stated what Mario is more known for. Just for being popular? I doubt the average troper would confuse being "the Mario" with being a mascot, otherwise you'd have everyone from Jack Frost to Ronald Mc Donald being called "the Mario". Compared to other well-known video game characters, Mario is known for being one of the most basically powered of them all. He isn't fast, he hasn't mastered any weapons (except a hammer, perhaps), he can't copy his enemies' abilities, he can't use magic on his own, he can't fly on his own, he can't jump that high on his own, he isn't that strong without power-ups, and has absolutely no defense. So, yeah, compared to other franchise characters, Mario pretty much is The Mario of them all.

You know, Mario seems to be the everyman hero in video games. That might be why he's also associated with this.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

Mario's third out of five in nearly every stat in the game.

edited 22nd Apr '11 8:43:52 PM by Servbot

Yeah, references to Mario himself in video games are extremely likely to also be examples of the trope. That's why we named the trope after him.

I do agree with the notion that Mario is so iconic that some editors will pothole his name anywhere it appears, not because it actually fits the context, but because he's the goddamn Mario!

(Pardon the language.)

But then again, where arguments are concenred, concepts and theses are not as convincing as raw numbers.

An Ear Worm is like a Rickroll: It is never going to give you up.

If a rename ends up being necessary, The Balanced One could work.

I had a dog-themed avatar before it was cool.

There is no indication at all that a rename would become necessary, but Redirects Are Free.