Talk:Niftski

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: withdrawn by nominator, closed by Siroxo talk 20:55, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that Niftski was the first person to beat Super Mario Bros. in under four minutes and fifty-five seconds? Source: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/04/new-super-mario-bros-record-breaks-speedrunnings-four-minute-mile/
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Pachypanthera

Created by Siroxo (talk). Self-nominated at 05:15, 30 September 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Niftski; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• General eligibility:
• New enough:
• Long enough:
• Other problems: - See below.

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing: - See below.
• Neutral:
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited:
• Interesting: - No.

QPQ: Done.

Overall: Article created on 27 September, and meets the length requirement. All sources are, as far as I can tell, reliable for the material they are cited for. Earwig reveals no copyvio, and I didn't spot any instances of unacceptably WP:Close paraphrasing. There are no obvious neutrality issues. The hook is properly cited but not particularly interesting (to me, at least). The biggest problem here is that if the only thing of note to say about this person is their speedrunning of Super Mario Bros., this is a pretty clear WP:NOPAGE situation where the whole thing could be mentioned in a couple of sentences at the Super Mario Bros. article—as is currently the case. Some comments about the content:

• Niftski is an American speedrunner – nationality unsourced in the WP:LEAD and not mentioned in the body at all.
• Niftski started playing Nintendo around 6 years of age. – the source says "Super Mario Bros. speedrunner Niftski [...] has been playing the Nintendo title since he was about six."
• This time, he brought the time under 4:55, to 4:54.948. A feat that Kyle Orland of Ars Technica compared to the four-minute mile. – this was presumably intended to be a single sentence.
• Orland notes the video of the run worth watching to hear Niftski's exclamations. – ungrammatical.

Ping Siroxo. TompaDompa (talk) 19:10, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks TompaDompa, for your review! I've addressed the four content issues, I used an ABOUTSELF for the nationality. I did consider whether NOPAGE would apply, especially since I am considering a larger expansion of SMB speedrunning, which has had a lot of coverage broadly the last several years. Ultimately, I decided to start here: The significant coverage over several years for this individual is quite similar to a notable athlete, artist, or entertainer. Do you think there is a path forward with an alternate hook, for example:

... that Niftski was the first person to beat the video game Super Mario Bros. in under four minutes and fifty-five seconds, a feat compared to the four-minute mile?

—siroχo 20:13, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Honestly, no. It's pretty clear that the actual topic here is not Niftski but Super Mario Bros. speedrunning. TompaDompa (talk) 00:39, 5 October 2023 (UTC)

@TompaDompa: If you have concerns with the subject's notability then I would suggest bringing this to AFD. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 06:36, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

There's a reason I made reference to WP:NOPAGE rather than, say, WP:GNG. Whether or not the subject of this article is notable, the place to cover the information about Super Mario Bros. speedrunning is that article, not this one. TompaDompa (talk) 12:07, 7 October 2023 (UTC)

Reading the above discussion, it seems like TompaDompa is suggesting that this article should not exist, and instead be merged into the Super Mario Bros. article. If this is the case, then I suggest that Tompa open a WP:MERGE or WP:AfD. If not, then I suggest that this article be assessed to see if it can move forward. Z1720 (talk) 20:01, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm not actually suggesting any content be merged—the coverage at Super Mario Bros.#Legacy seems quite sufficient. I'm saying that this article should either be expanded with non-Super Mario Bros.-related content (if possible) or else be, I suppose, WP:Blanked and redirected. At present, this article is about Super Mario Bros. speedrunning. Whether one calls that a WP:COATRACK, a WP:CONTENTFORK, or something else is not particularly important—this is ostensibly a biographical article but in practice an article about a different subject that is covered at a different article. Additionally, I don't think the hook about the speedrunning achievement is likely to be perceived as unusual or intriguing by readers with no special knowledge or interest per WP:DYKHOOK, so an entirely new hook would be needed. Others may disagree and the nominator should feel free to request a new DYK reviewer if they believe my assessment to be incorrect/unfair. I'd say the ball is in Siroxo's court, and depending on what one thinks about my assessment thus far there are a few different options: request a new reviewer (if I'm wrong), attempt to address my WP:NOPAGE and hook-related objections (if I'm right, and the issues are surmountable), or withdraw the nomination and presumably WP:Blank and redirect the page (if I'm right, and the issues are insurmountable). TompaDompa (talk) 20:26, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

I have withdrawn, apologies for leaving it up too long. I did think such a hook would meet the criteria and be interesting to readers, but if others don't agree that it's interesting, I will defer. As for your concerns, TompaDompa, there's a fair bit more I can pull out of the sources in the article, and there are a couple other similar sources that I didn't use—I will take another pass when I get a chance. —siroχo 20:55, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Edit request

Hey! While I am not a paid editor and have no financial incentive, I'm a friend of Niftski's, so I'm probably too close to make direct edits without going through COI. When I came to him about potentially adding a photo to the article, he also asked if it was possible for the input swapping section be removed as the situation was resolved, and while I don't think that makes sense in full, I do think trimming the section and making it less prominent makes sense. As such, I'm proposing the following changes:

• Remove the subsection header
• Move the content to the equipment and publication section
• Rewrite the text like so:

Original: While Niftski uses a computer keyboard as the primary input method, he occasionally swaps to an NES controller for specific tricks that are easier to perform with it. While input swapping has been allowed by the rules since October 2025, a decision to ban the method was proposed in February of the following year and received the majority vote. On March 30, 2026, Niftski released a video accusing averge11 of rigging the vote to sabotage his progress and claiming that the decision was done in bad faith. Niftski claimed that averge11 sent negative messages about him in private servers to motivate other members to conspire against him, while also pushing to close the vote early to avoid other members potentially voting against the rule change. Messages posted on averge11's private Discord server after the vote such as "no more Niftski" by averge11 themselves were also brought up. averge11 later responded on Twitter, stating that they didn't "have an excuse for some of the behavior brought up in some of these documents, nor [did they] intend to excuse it." After further community feedback, the decision was reversed in July 2026.

New: While Niftski uses a computer keyboard as the primary input method, he occasionally swaps to an NES controller for specific tricks that are easier to perform with it. While input swapping had been allowed since a vote in October 2025, another vote was held in February 2026, where the technique was banned. On March 30, 2026, Niftski released a video accusing another speedrunner of colluding with moderators to rig the vote against input swapping to slow down his progress after he had found success using the technique, claiming that the other speedrunner had spread negative messages about him to influence others and pushed the vote to end early, before some members could make their votes. The other speedrunner would later respond, stating "I don't have an excuse for some of the behavior brought up ... nor do I intend to excuse it." After further community feedback, the ban was reversed in July 2026.

Let me know if there's anything else I need to do; despite being an active editor, this is the first time I've ever made an edit request somewhere where I have a COI, so hopefully I didn't mess up anything in the process. Thanks! Skarmory (talk • contribs) 00:41, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

References