Super Mario Wiki
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The Super Mario Wiki, or simply MarioWiki, is a collaborative knowledge base dedicated to documenting anything and everything about the Mario franchise and its related Nintendo series.
Super Mario Wiki was founded on August 12, 2005 by Porplemontage - its origins (as handily detailed by its own About page) can be traced back to a project known as the GamerFocus Wiki Network, a blog and collection of gaming wikis started by Halopedia founder AgentSeethroo. Porplemontage helped with the project and started three new wikis which would join Halopedia in the network: the Video Game Cheats Wiki (CheatsWiki for short), the GamerFocus Wiki (a general video game wiki), and the Super Mario Wiki, which outlasted the other two wikis and continues on to this day alongside Halopedia.
As a database focused on all aspects of the Mario series, including spin-off series and crossover series, the Super Mario Wiki distinguishes itself from other video game wikis in covering both the primary franchise and all other sub-series and games which have emerged as their own distinct franchises in the greater Mario series. This includes crossover games such as the Super Smash Bros. series, which are covered from the perspective of the Mario series; relevant guest appearances, cameos and other historically significant games (e.g., Doki Doki Panic and Panel de Pon, which were precursors to Super Mario Bros. 2 and Tetris Attack) also fall within the site's purview, though games that were packaged with Mario games do not.
Early 2010 saw Super Mario Wiki form an alliance of independent Nintendo wikis with Bulbapedia and Zelda Wiki in order to both create a bulwark against farm operators such as Wikia (now FANDOM™) that interfered with editor input, and provide assistance to small up-and-coming independent wiki communities. While Porplemontage initially dismissed the request due to a combination real-life obligations and a healthy skepticism for wiki networks in general at the time, the Super Mario Wiki community insisted on the idea and were successful in pushing Porple to accept the proposal. Over a decade later the network is still going strong, with over 30 member wikis including the Donkey Kong Wiki, which had moved to a Wikia fork previously but closed in 2019 and had its unique content merged into the Super Mario Wiki.
The thriving community has a written and edited monthly newsletter known as "The 'Shroom", which delivers the latest wiki and community news alongside some entertainment to editors and readers of the website alike. In addition, they have a dedicated forum in the Super Mario Boards, which serves as both a place where wiki projects and other aspects of site management are coordinated, and as a community outlet for discussions of various kinds.
- April Fools' Day: Since 2013, it's a tradition to usually swap out the main page of the wiki for something appropriate - for example, 2022's prank was a made-up leak regarding The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
- Captain Obvious: The Pirate Goomba is
a Pirate Goomba.the subject of a community joke regarding edits that evoke this and/or Department of Redundancy Department. The writing guide also has an appropriate section to boot. - Fancruft: It's had its bouts of this as any major wiki is bound to - but it's still something else to have had a full length article dedicated to the voice of Princess Peach in a single game. Said game was Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, whose plot revolves around Peach's voice being stolen by Cackletta, and eventually revealed that it was never Princess Peach's voice that had been stolen to begin with, but instead the voice of Birdo disguised as her. Needless to say, the wiki advises against this when writing articles.
- Fannage: Discouraged in articles as well.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: This trope tends to be a common pitfall when writing, and was even common in the wiki's older days; it still occurs now and then, particularly if the subject's from a Mario RPG.
- Great Big Book of Everything: MarioWiki's goal is to be this for the Mario franchise as a whole.
- Guide Dang It: Documenting and solving these isn't the wiki's purpose - while stage and enemy articles can still serve as guides in a limited role, the writing guides discourage a "pseudo-walkthrough" approach to writing up articles.
- Iconic Logo: Since 2017, the wiki uses a red-and-white mushroom with the wiki's name on the cap.
- Minus World: MarioWiki has pretty detailed coverage on the Trope Namer from Super Mario Bros. as well as other examples.
- Purple Prose: The guide to writing cites an instance of this to dissuade editors from writing plot summaries that don't... actually summarize anything. See also Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness below.
- Running Gag:
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Cited as something to be discouraged in the wiki guide to good writing.
- We All Live in America: Averted - the Super Mario Wiki is sizable enough to have a dedicated global fanbase, and the Mushroom World Encyclopedia project seeks to connect the world's independent Mario wikis. The writing guides also note that while you shouldn't feel the need to explain simple puns, idioms and cultural references are fine if they would otherwise be Lost in Translation.