WikiBound talk:Nomenclature

EarthBound Beginnings nomenclature

The game has been released for a while as EarthBound Beginnings, and so it appears to be the name used the most in English. With the actual article moved to its English name, I believe that we should now refer to it as EarthBound Beginnings for the following reasons:

1: The name is now officially used by Nintendo (e.g. in SSB Ultimate), and so we should use it too.

2. The names for the characters, enemies, locations, etc. in the game are all required to use their English names, so why shouldn't we use the English name for the game itself?

3. EarthBound is only to be referred to as "Mother 2" when specifically referring to the Japanese release, and for the sake of consistency the same should be done for EarthBound Beginnings.

Miles's reasoning back then for it to be referred to as "Mother" was because the title was new and unfamiliar to fans, thus wasn't the most commonly used name, and wasn't used by Nintendo aside from promoting the new release. It was understandable then, but that's not the case now, so that's why I propose that we should now use the name EarthBound Beginnings. Omegα Toαd 64 03:20, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

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Support

1. Tacopill (talk) 18:29, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Additional Comments

Any additional comments regarding why the article is nominated for reason can be placed here.

Bump Omegα Toαd 64 23:46, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Page changes

Heyyyyy I don't really agree with some of the changes added here. We should not be naming things due to fans perception—this is in reference to EarthBound Beginnings/Mother, as well as Additionally, the wiki may also use fan names for articles in place of official names under certain circumstances for similar reasons. For example, the unreleased sequal to EarthBound which was planned for the Nintendo 64 is referred to by its fan nickname EarthBound 64 in favor of Mother 3: Fall of the Pig King, as that is the most recognized name within the fandom and additionally does not overlap with the released Game Boy Advance title..

We are an official site and should therefore be documenting things officially. If there is a major change to the presentation of an article, we go off what the official source uses, not what people are accustomed to—otherwise, it's factually not correct! I would like to work to avoid any future instances of this taking place, as working now to correct any active instances of using a fan or secondary name over a primary one. Disambiguators exist for a key reason, as do aboutpage warnings at the start of articles. I would like to suggest the removal of this clause altogether. Trig - 03:33, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

While you do have a point on being factually incorrect in terms of fan names, and I do agree with your concern on it, as well as opening potential floodgates of arguements for users to have any article they want named after a fan name they prefer (I'd rather EBB not be titled as EarthBound Zero despite it being the most popular name). With that said, I've never been a fan of enforcing an "only use the current official name, no exceptions" policy in terms of nomenclature. The fact is we're not an official wiki as we're not affiliated with Nintendo/Itoi, and thus we're under no obligation to use the "most official name" in instances where it isn't necessary/beneficial to us, especially in cases when multiple official names exist and using the "most familiar name" isn't actively harming our wiki in any way.

There are times where forcing an official name can work against us. The reason we refrained from moving Mother to EarthBound Beginnings is because the English name was new while Mother was used for many years prior, moving the page would've resulted in the risk of our wiki getting less exposure, as most people using search engines will be using the names they are more familiar with due to being more widely known as they were used longer. Sure it's not an issue anymore as most casual gamers have adapted to the English name (while the more "hardcore" fans prefer Mother and EB zero), but the same problems would arise if say by some miracle a Mother 3 localization happens and all the characters and such recieve new names that are completely dissimilar to what they've been known by in the fan translation for many many years, and arguably on an even greater scale, along with causing confusion with our wiki using a different name than what basically every other EarthBound related site uses (say if, for example, Fassad gets moved to his official Japanese name "Yokuba", more people will be searching the former in search engines causing our wiki to be overlooked in the search results). On a related note, us using the Mother 3 fan translation's names means we technically are already using unofficial names in titles, and yes I fully realize this is an entirely different situation altogether as that's the closest we are able to get to an official English name, but my point on the benefits of using the names the general public are most familiar with still stands.

I'll also point out that other wikis have a clause to use the more common name in order to increase exposure regardless of whether or not it's official. And since we've used the familiar name clause in the past, I don't believe it's necessary to enforce a rule to use only official names now. The most I would remove is the paragraph of fan names, as such cases haven't come up besides the EarthBound 64 and fan translation examples, nor do I ever see another one coming up unless say a localization actually happens (which itself is unlikely), and instead just make it a general "familiar names" clause with no specific mention of fan nicknames. But I'd rather not completely ban using the most recognized name in place of the "official" name, especially if said name has been used in an official capacity, and make it a hard rule to only use official names.

Edit: I'll also add we use unofficial fan names for EarthBound music tracks even for tracks that do have official names (Pokey Means Businesses > Cease Existence), of which wherever you search you're far more likely to get the desired result on EarthBound fan sites and YouTube videos by searching the fan names over the official names. And if by chance we were to give each song an individual article, I would favor us using the most recognized names as the article title, while those that do have official names it will be mentioned in the opening paragraph. --Ultimate Toad 16:38, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Hi, I'm not an active contributor here but I am an admin for another NIWA wiki and wanted to give my thoughts to this conversation. I don't believe that it is necessarily reasonable to base decisions on community preference for naming conventions. It is perhaps more reasonable for wikis like SmashWiki where the community integration elements are much more prominent, but generally speaking for a franchise like this, the last thing you want to do is propagate more misinformation about subjects. It may be true that a user would be unlikely to find what they were looking for if they searched a specific fan-made title for a music track. That isn't the wiki's purpose though. The wiki's purpose in principle should be to tell them what is actually true, not what fans agree to be true. You should use official names for tracks regardless of what anyone else is doing because the wiki exists to inform them about these subjects. Perhaps it would not be unreasonable to keep these unofficial labels as redirects to the official names? That seems a much more reasonable decision. I understand SEO concerns, but I feel like SEO should take a backseat to the wiki serving its intended purpose to the reader, rather than telling them what the fans agree to be true. I don't think the SEO of this wiki would suffer terribly in most areas if official names were to be used anyway. I don't think it is reasonable to favor unofficial titles just because they are popular; I think that makes a disingenuous presentation to readers. Wikipedia and SmashWiki have very different goals from a wiki like this, one because of the worldly encyclopedic nature and the other because of its heavy competitive community integration. They don't really make sense as points of comparison. You put "most official name" in quotes but the concept of an official name is a very real thing. It should be respected in this context. I think most readers would generally agree that being told the actual name of something is preferable to being told what the fans generally call it; that's the actual information. The fan translation of Mother 3 itself creates issues by giving alternative names to subjects that are in actuality the same as those from EarthBound, which is something this wiki has been forced to address. I even disagree that that is the closest you can get to official English translations. Rman (talk) 07:25, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

I know this response is very late and I apologize. A lot was going on back when this was first posted and I wasn't able to notice this reply until several weeks later. However, even though you will likely not see this reply as it has been a long time, I feel after some recent events and for future references it is necessarry to explain why I am still against adding a strict policy to only follow official terminology with no exceptions.

If an official name is only mentioned in an obscure source to the point where people don't even know it exists, but there is a highly recognized alternative, it is times like these where it is more reasonable to use a name that the majority of English speakers are familiar with. This is why the battle themes in EarthBound Beginnings use the fan names instead of official names, the official names are used only in an obscure album that was likely never released outside Japan. And we're not propagating misinformation if the opening paragraph will always mention the official name, so we will be "telling them what is actually true" anyways. I will reiterate again that this rule is not to use unofficial names for literally everything that has a fan nickname, the purpose is to only use fan nicknames if the official name is incredibly obscure and a widely known unofficial alternative name exists. If the official name is highly publicized to and easy to find out from just playing the games or reading online, then the official name is the default. And if there is no alternative name then we will also automatically default to the official name reguardless of its obscurity:

You say SEO should be a backseat but I strongly disagree with that. Our goal is to make sure all the information is presentable and easy for readers to access. Most people will search for the subject they want using Google search and the like, and 9 times out of 10 people are searching for Battle with a Flippant Foe and not Battle Theme 1. If they want to find our article, they will need to specifically put "WikiBound" in the search bar or intentionally come to our website and use our search tool. Official names should be the priority, yes, but at the same time we should not be forcing super obscure official names that no one knows as article titles, making our information more cumbersome to find as a result. We should prioritize making our information easily accessible to our readers. And the redirect solution can go the opposite way as well, we can instead use the familiar name as the article title and have the official name as a redirect.

And the Mother 3 fan translation does not create issues when we already have a written policy on how to handle naming conventions if a subjuct has a different name in Mother 3 than in EarthBound and Beginnings and vice versa. And I have no idea what you mean by "I even disagree that the fan translation is the closest we'll get to an official translation", if you mean that a more "official" translation would be to use names that are more accurate to the Japanese romanizations, I'm fairly certain that most readers would agree that it is much smarter not to use Japanese translations and rather use the names from the fan translation.

You said that "Wikipedia and SmashWiki have very different goals from a wiki like this" and "They don't really make sense as points of comparison", however the reason they have the policy in the first place is the same reason we do: accessibility and SEO. Nobody says "ukemi", which is only mentioned in the Brawl website, that's why SmashWiki uses "tech". Just because a name is official doesn't mean everyone knows it. That's why the article is named Battle with a Flippant Foe because Battle Theme 1 is hardly ever known. I will also add for this specific case the genericness of the song name will also cause confusion. It's called "Battle Theme 1", but which of the three battle songs is "1"? So again, using the unofficial names is beneficial as it will help prevent confusion and the hassle of having to go through 3 different pages to find the desired result.

I will finish by at least addressing that we should make it more clear that we only use unofficial names if the official name is incredibly obscure and a widely recognized unofficial name exists as an alternative, so I will add the following point to the fan terminology section:

Unofficial names should only be used in place of official names if the official name comes from an obscure source and a widely recognized unofficial name exists. If there is no well known alternative name then the wiki will default to the official name. Do not use fan nicknames for subjects where the official name is easily accessible, subjects like characters, locations, items and enemies should always use the official name if one exists.

--Ultimate Toad 15:51, 30 March 2024 (UTC)