Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Magic: The Gathering/Archive 3

New navbox

JamesLucas has (with minimal help from me) been working on a new navbox for MTG articles at User:JamesLucas/Template:MTG navbox. It's pretty nearly done and ready to transclude onto pages, so we'd like the assistance of anyone who can help finishing it up. A discussion here on where to put the navbox after its done (or nearly done) would also be nice. I personally (as well as James, I believe) am thinking of putting it at Template:MTG navbox, since the space is currently empty. Your thoughts and comments are appreciated. Cheers! lifebaka++ 21:32, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

lifebaka is too modest, but most of you probably already know that. I also want to add that MTG storyline is far from my area of expertise, so anyone who wants to give input on that subject either on the talk page or directly in the navbox will be especially welcome. JamesLucas (" " / +) 21:41, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

The new navbox is live at {{MTG navbox}}! I encourage everyone to slam the doors and kick the tires. JamesLucas (" " / +) 01:28, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Magic: The Gathering

Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Wikipedia:Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection for the holiday season, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 23:14, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

I've listed the current version [1] as the best. Any objections? lifebaka++ 14:05, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Stolen from WP:D&D, the nomination criteria for this release are

1. Articles that give context (Poverty for Poverty in Pakistan)
2. GA+ articles of mid importance or higher
3. B-Class articles of high importance or higher
4. Start-Class articles, only if they are part of a set or are essential.
5. Articles needed for completeness
6. Country subdivisions of major countries (for example, Australian states)

Are there any articles we're missing, which do or could fall into this list? For reference, the B-class cat is Category:B-Class Magic: The Gathering articles. From there, I'm thinking that Magic: The Gathering sets and Magic: The Gathering rules are the easy choices. They'd be simple enough to add, as they are very important to the project and would have been included if we used the |importance= parameter in {{mtgproject}}. From C-class, I'm thinking that Power Nine could be worked up to B-class without too much trouble, and maybe Magic: The Gathering deck types too. I'm drawing a blank from start and stub class, as most of them are sets or otherwise more esoteric in nature; we should work them all up to at least C-class in time, but there's no need for that push now. Let me know if there's anything else we'd like to include. Cheers. lifebaka++ 14:14, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think deck types should be included. The classification is very subjective, at least where the subtypes are concerned. Also the card examples seem very arbitrary to me. The power 9 would be a much nicer inclusion as they are not subject to any change. I've been doing some work on the article lately but some more needs to be done. OdinFK (talk) 15:09, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm heading to replace the version selected with the current version [2], after my copyediting work. Unfortunately I didn't finish, but I'm pretty sure it's better than before. Cheers. lifebaka++ 04:51, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Good Article

After helping get Gary Gygax to Good Article status, I want to keep up the momentum; I have now nominated Wizards of the Coast. BOZ (talk) 02:34, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Wizards of the Coast is now up for GA review. If you're interested in helping, come join me. :) BOZ (talk) 21:37, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

The article is now officially a GA. :) BOZ (talk) 00:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Coordinators' working group

Hi! I'd like to draw your attention to the new WikiProject coordinators' working group, an effort to bring both official and unofficial WikiProject coordinators together so that the projects can more easily develop consensus and collaborate. This group has been created after discussion regarding possible changes to the A-Class review system, and that may be one of the first things discussed by interested coordinators.

All designated project coordinators are invited to join this working group. If your project hasn't formally designated any editors as coordinators, but you are someone who regularly deals with coordination tasks in the project, please feel free to join as well. — Delievered by §hepBot (Disable) on behalf of the WikiProject coordinators' working group at 05:54, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

New Gatherer

Wizards of the Coast has released a new version of Gatherer that provides a number of improvements. I've updated Template:Mtgcard to use this version. Someone here may want to run a bot to update existing links that don't use the template. NeonMerlin 17:18, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Notability of Magic players

Hi!

For athletes there are criteria about what constitutes notability and therefore eligibility for a Wikipedia article. I think there is no such thing for Magic players right now. I stumbled across that when working on the Worlds article recently. Most of the player links are red there and actually many of the linked players are certainly not notable.

I propose that a Magic player is notable if he has achieved one or more of the following:

• became a member of the Hall of Fame
• became Pro Tour player of the year
• won a Pro Tour
• three Pro Tour final day appearances
• earned more than 200 lifetime Pro Points

The list became a bit longer than I hoped. Criteria one, two, and three are quite obvious inclusions imo. Criteria four and five are not so obvious, but I included them because some of the most famous players of the game achieved none of the first three (Mark Justice for example).

OdinFK (talk) 09:03, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

• It's not a good idea to build notability standards in that manner. We don't want to bypass WP:N. From that list we aren't guaranteed to find significant coverage, except for Hall of Famers whose profiles have already been published. Jay32183 (talk) 00:22, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Hmm. Certainly I don't want to bypass WP:N, but why does it make sense to have such criteria for athletes and not for Magic players anyway? For example in football the criterium is an appearance in a fully professional league... OdinFK (talk) 15:04, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

That's an inappropriate criterion as well. Not all players in a fully professional league will have significant coverage. Sometimes players who've never been in a fully professional league will get significant coverage. The base for inclusion is supposed to be from the availability of sources, so some notion of importance. That's why WP:N makes the distinction between notability and fame. Jay32183 (talk) 22:35, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Okay. I don't want to stress this any further, but I have one more question: Does it make sense to use such criteria the other way around? Obviously none of the above mentioned criteria guarantees that sufficient coverage of the topic is available or even possible. But on the other hand, should every topic be covered in the wikipedia just because sources exist? I am pretty sure that this is not the case, either. As I remember, these criteria in athletes were used mainly as a reason for exclusion. That was the way I imagined these criteria here, too, as a guideline to not have articles about players satisfying none of the criteria. OdinFK (talk) 08:17, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I would think LSV would merit having an article. He is known by his initials...isn't that good enough? 72.129.92.179 (talk) 08:47, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure being known by initials is not an indication that sources are available. Jay32183 (talk) 20:31, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

They might be, though. If you've got some sources and would like to start on article on this LSV fellow, drop me a line here and I'd be happy to help you with it. Cheers. lifebaka++ 20:39, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Does your WikiProject care about talk pages of redirects?

Does your project care about what happens to the talk pages of articles that have been replaced with redirects? If so, please provide your input at User:Mikaey/Request for Input/ListasBot 3. Thanks, Matt (talk) 02:02, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Copyediting of Magic: The Gathering

Hi!

Can a native English speaker please read the Magic: The Gathering article and check for necessary copyediting? I did some work on this article lately and I'm confident that it can be repromoted to Good Article-status soon. The suggestions of the delisting and the peer review have been all adressed more or less (we should get back to some of the PR suggestions later), but I'm not a native speaker and thus am not able to cover copyediting very well.

Also if you have some experience with the application of the style guides on the use of italics and quotation marks it would be great if you could check the article for possible improvements in this area, too.

Regards, OdinFK (talk) 13:18, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

I'd be happy to go over it a few times, though I'll be the first to admit I'm not the best copyeditor in the universe, so help is always appreciated. Probably this editing is going to be very subtractive in nature, given that the article is somewhat bloated, but we'll see. I'm on vacation right now, but I'll get started on it by the end of the week. Cheers, everyone. lifebaka++ 21:37, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Magicthegathering.com at AFD

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Magicthegathering.com

I don't really follow Magic anymore, and I never owned any of the Magic-specific books (which are preferred for this kind of thing), so if anyone has any solid non-trivial references to the website that aren't on the website and can point these out at AfD, that'd be appreciated. This article isn't even a particular interest of mine, just caught my eye back in 2007 as horrible and needing a complete rewrite. SnowFire (talk) 23:44, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Merging of Pro Tour Hollywood 2008 article

Hi!

I have proposed to merge Pro Tour Hollywood 2008 into the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour season 2008. As I was starting to do just that it occurred to me that most of the information would have to be eliminated then. While most of the presented information is actually redundant (visit the Pro Tour article etc.) I'm particularly wondernig about the metagame part. Something along these lines would probably improve the introduction of the PT in the PT 2008 season article, but I'm not sure how to incorporate this as the content is partly PoVish and party unreferencable. Any suggestions how to do that? I know the question is a bit vague, but anything might help... OdinFK (talk) 09:34, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Card images

What, exactly, is the policy on fair use inclusion of card images into MtG articles? The Magic: the Gathering article has some, but they've all been removed from the Magic: the Gathering rules article for some reason, which really sucks. Can we put them back? As far as I can tell, they satisfy all of the fair use image criteria. --Ashenai (talk) 09:22, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Magic: The Gathering back to GA

Hey!

Our signature article is back to Good Article status. Thanks go to everybody who helped and to User:Gary King for his constructive GAN-review. OdinFK (talk) 06:38, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Notable cards in set articles

I think it would be good for the articles on the various M:TG sets to have an overview over the most notable cards in the set. Cards like Library of Alexandria or Force of Will provide much of the character of a set for many players and I think such a list would thus be a great addition for every Magic player reading a set article. It would be necessary to provide criteria for the notability of cards then. Every single Magic card is probably notable somehow to someone, but I guess only a few are so notable that they coin the reception of a set. Suggestions for notability criteria? OdinFK (talk) 09:55, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it's possible to have objective criteria; as you say, every card holds some importance to someone, somewhere. I think the best we could do is set a guideline that sets a limit on the number of cards that should be in this kind of list. Obviously, if we picked, say, five cards, we could still have more or fewer for a certain set if the circumstances were different. There's a danger of encouraging people to always feature five cards even when it's not called for, but the cost of that is small, versus the impulse to always write about lots and lots of cards because it's more fun for certain editors to do that, even though it highlights trivial content. Croctotheface (talk) 16:49, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Most, if not all, of the set articles did have notable cards sections. After much debate and editwarring, they were removed, almost entirely due to the efforts of User:A Man In Black. I fought to keep them, for what it's worth, but I had less energy to devote to the argument than he did.

Anyway, I'd be in favor of replacing them, but everyone should be aware of this history. --Ashenai (talk) 12:00, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I do remember that, and I think there was certainly a strong argument to be made against the level of inclusion that previously existed. That doesn't mean that "notable cards" sections are bad by definition; the only argument I could see against them in principle is that prose sections would be better and less inclined to invite editors to add a certain card they personally like to the list. Croctotheface (talk) 20:39, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Notability of Pro Tour Players

I feel we need to set some guidelines on as to which Pro Tour players qualify as notable. There are a number of players, who currently have articles that stand our from the rest due to the fact that they don't seem quite as important. I'm thinking specifically of Antti Malin and Brian Selden.

My suggestions are:

• Any player who is a member of the Hall of Fame. This pretty strait forward, the best players in the history of the game clearly should have articles. All Hall of Famers already do.
• Any player who has been Player of the Year. This of course would include Shoota Yasooka and Paul Mcabe, but the rest of them all seem noteworthy.
• Any player who has who has at least six pro tour top eights. This is generally accepted as the cut-off for guaranteed inclusion of the Hall of Fame. Consider reducing to five or adding five including a win.
• Any player who has won multiple Pro Tours. Maybe including one individual Pro Tour or some other mark of individual success.
• Any player who has won the Magic Invitational. If they've won the all star game, they're certainly noteworthy enough.

Thoughts? Suggestions? –Sir Sputnik (talk) 17:57, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually we had precisely this discussion before. Take a look at Archive 3. If you do note also that I would choose less inclusive criteria now than I proposed back then. Regarding the notability criteria themselves:

• • Hall of Fame is a no-brainer.
  • Pro Player of the Year is still a sure thing in my opinion. Even Paul McCabe and Shouta Yasooka were on top for a whole season. McCabe even has a certain notability due to being the only PPotY that seems to appear in one year only.
  • Six Pro Tour Top 8? "This is generally accepted as the cut-off for guaranteed inclusion of the Hall of Fame." Where did you get that from? I mean even if that's true the criterium does not do much at all if they get included in the Hall of Fame. I think the organic cut-off would be five. We use that in the Pro Tour article anyway and I think it's right. To reach 5 PT Top 8 is already a monster accomplishment. Even the very best (exluding Finkel & Budde...) need at least three years at the best of their game to achieve this.
  • Multiple Pro Tour wins is already a no-brainer. I don't see the point of making it more complicated by saying "It has to include one individual title". Sounds like a Lex Blume to me. Considering the state of team PTs right now it is unlikely that it will to apply someone in the next decade anyway.
  • Invitational? I think this is a no-no. To win the invitational is a one time-achievement and as you don't even had to be very notable (probably will probably argue here, but for a time you could qualify via rating) to qualify I don't think this constitutes notability. Also I'm against guidelines that narrow.
  • Pro Points: This has not been mentioned, but I think that a player with a certain number of Pro Points should be considered notable, too. Sensible thresholds would be 200 or 250 points (achieved by 22 and 39 players). The least notable players with 250+ would probably be Justin Gary and Itaru Ishida. Not that bad, actually. With 200 you also have to include Osamu Fujita and Jon Sonne. Still not too bad. I vote to include a criterium of 200+ Pro Points constituting notability.

Finally I want to address some general issues with this type of guideline. I think this guideline should be used strictly inclusive. LSV doesn't meet any of these criteria and probably will not in the foreseeable future. He is notable anyway because everybody knows him and he is considered to be the hottest thing in Magic since almost two years. WP:Notability just takes precedence here. Also on the other hand a person meeting any of these criteria does not necessarily make a great WP-article (Try to write one about Paul McCabe...).

I suggest that this should be a guideline and this guideline should be applied as follows: "If a Magic player meets any of the criteria proposed in this guideline the Wikiproject Magic: The Gathering suggests that the player has achieved a notability within the game that justifies an article in the Wikipedia. A player may achieve notability in other ways. The general notability criteria of the Wikipedia always take precedence."

OdinFK (talk) 07:11, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree entirely that this should be just a guideline. It just would be nice to have something approved by the project. Concerning Pro Points, I had completely forgotten about this statistic and would agree that 200+ seems reasonable. This six top eight cut-off as far as the Hall of Fame goes comes from comments made (mostly by Brian David-Marshall and Randy Buehler) during Pro Tour coverage. Five seems like a reasonable cut-off seems reasonable and it just isn't what it used to be. The invitational win was intended as a way to justify Jens Thoren's article who doesn't meet any of these criteria. I was unaware that rating was used for qualification for the invitational at one point.

How does this sound:

• Any player who is a member of the Hall of Fame
• Any player with five Pro Tour top eights (top four for team events count as top eights)
• Any player who has been player of the year
• Any player who has won multiple Pro Tours
• Any player with 200 lifetime Pro Points or more

If a Magic player meets any of the criteria proposed in this guideline the Wikiproject Magic: The Gathering suggests that the player has achieved a notability within the game that justifies an article in the Wikipedia. A player may achieve notability in other ways. The general notability criteria of the Wikipedia always take precedence.

I also would like the guidelines to be published somewhere a little more prominent than just a discussion archive. My suggestion would be on the project's main page under the players section.

Sir Sputnik (talk) 14:15, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Perfect if you ask me. OdinFK (talk) 14:41, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

When you add this to the project site you might as well add something to the following effect: "As of the suggested criteria the following players should receive an article sooner or later (no need to hurry):

• Paul McCabe (Magic: The Gathering player) (1996–97 Pro Player of the Year)
• Shouta Yasooka (2006 Pro Player of the Year)
• Bram Snepvangers (282 Pro Points)
• Tsuyoshi Ikeda (259 Pro Points)
• Itaru Ishida (250 Pro Points)
• Antonino De Rosa (242 Pro Points)
• Masashi Oiso (240 Pro Points, 5 Top 8 appearances)
• Osamu Fujita (238 Pro Points)
• Steven O'Mahoney-Schwartz (237 Pro Points)
• Alex Shvartsman (232 Pro Points)
• Osyp Lebedowicz (210 Pro Points)
• Michael Pustilnik (208 Pro Points)
• Masahiko Morita (208 Pro Points)
• Jonathan Sonne (204 Pro Points)
• Eugene Harvey (Magic: The Gathering player) (202 Pro Points)
• Carlos Romão (200 Pro Points)
• Scott Johns (5 Top 8 appearances)
• Anton Jonsson (5 Top 8 appearances)

Also watch out for Akira Asahara (189), Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa (182), and Luis Scott-Vargas (171). They might cross the threshold soon. (all data as of 12 August 2009) OdinFK (talk) 18:27, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Template:Infobox Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour season

I would like to widen this template since some of the names don't fit properly. Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do so. Help would be appreciated. –Sir Sputnik (talk) 21:38, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

About future expansions

There is a (very) recently closed discussion at Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Deprecating "Future" templates that calls for the removal of all "future <blah>" templates, such as the {{future product}} template we use on upcoming expansions. Regardless of whether or not we agree with the consensus (which is neither here nor there), there was a statement in the discussion which said that these templates can be used for internal project management, identifying articles which need work/monitoring/etc. due to covering future events. I was wondering if we might want something along those lines, possibly categorizing these articles or using a blank template for tracking purposes. I believe such a template could be useful to us while not annoying the readers, and I can whip up some code relatively easily if anyone else thinks it a good idea. Cheers, everyone. lifebaka++ 21:38, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Template:mtgcard

How do we feel about this template? My feeling about it is that its best use is put external links in the bodies of articles. I personally don't have a problem with this use, and I think the template can be helpful this way in much the same way that inline links to other articles is helpful. However, my general impression is that a lot of editors don't consider it good practice to put external links in article bodies. Realistically, there are not going to be many cards (if any at all), that merit linking in "external links" sections, so the template doesn't serve much purpose if we're not cool with linking cards from the main text. And if we think that such linking is bad, the template is an attractive nuisance because it's absolutely begging to be applied to any instance where a card is mentioned in an article. Croctotheface (talk) 07:37, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Good point. Actually "many editors" is not quite precise, as of Wikipedia:External links it is generally not considered to be good practice to have links to external pages in the body of articles. Also in most cases one should think carefully whether it is useful to mention specific cards at all. This might be useful in a notable cards section in an article about a specific set, but in a more general article like Magic: The Gathering article it is probably better just to explain concepts. For example I very recently removed the mention of Unholy Strength from the Demonic themes section in Magic: The Gathering. The concept is well explained and should be very clear to everybody without the example.

In cases where we really want to point out specific cards --like we want for the cards the Invitational Winners have designed-- we can reference the cards in a notes section like done at The DCI#Invitational. I know, I have done better tables already and it is also not extremely elegant, but it is at least compliant with WP:External Links. An alternative would be to have a "subsection" in the External Links section providing links to all cards mentioned in the article. Anyway in my opinion it is useful to have the template because we want to link cards one way or the other and we definitely don't want to fix every link when Wizards reorganizes their website the next time. OdinFK (talk) 09:11, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I'll set aside my attractive nuisance argument for now and give my case, on the merits, for using the template the way I think it's intended.

We need to be careful about following WP:EL (or any other guideline) just because it's a guideline. There are obvious good reasons to discourage linking certain things within the text, particularly full length prose pieces such as, say, someone's official website biography; however, links to cards don't have the same issues. By their very nature, cards, unlike longer textual or visual works, are small and can be referenced quickly. Furthermore, one reason (and probably the main reason) that bibliographic citations are preferred over simple external links is that the citations should include more information (author, title, date, etc.) than just the link. Here, the only relevant information is the card name; linking to cards is more analogous to linking other Wikipedia articles than it is to linking other reference material.

There's a common sense basis for all this, too, since knowing what a card does is usually essential to being able to understand text that references it. This does suggest that we should be careful about unnecessarily referencing cards, since doing so reduces the accessibility of the article, but in cases where readers are better off from our mentioning the card, they are likewise better off if we link the card so that it's easy for them to see it. Otherwise, they have to go through the trouble of looking it up via some other means in order to fully understand the text.

We have WP:IAR for a reason, and this is one where I think we should use it here. For one, I think that the note at The DCI#Invitational is the sort of counterintuitive silliness that IAR exists to prevent. How are readers served by having to click this tiny little piece of superscript text that in no way says or suggests that it will help show them what the cards do or look like? I suspect very few readers benefit from doing it that way. The only "benefit" I see to anything is compliance with WP:EL--but that's not a true benefit anyway because guidelines are not ends in themselves. This looks, to me, like a case where the guideline is failing the readers, so we shouldn't follow it. Croctotheface (talk) 09:46, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

As I see it, the template is useful regardless of whether or not we can agree on its use inline in articles (OdinFK gave the reason for this: it's much simpler to update the code in just a single point). So the question is more one of whether or not we use it all that much.

It's true that EL suggests that we not use external links in the body of an article, I believe both to discourage the addition of spam links and because such links are usually ugly. The former of these two clearly wouldn't apply to a link to a card, as the link serves solely to illustrate the card itself. The latter issue is one I can agree with, but I (very) recently made a change to {{mtgcard}} to make the links more visually appealing. So, I do not believe there is a good case for excluding the links except that we wish to follow the guideline for the guideline's own sake, and there is the good argument against following the guideline that such methods of following it will be confusing to our readers (as Croctotheface points out). Therefore, I believe we should use the template in the body of the article when necessary.

However, I also believe we should keep such links to a minimum. Very few concepts truly need us to link a card, especially in the more general articles. And unless we truly need to mention the card and link it, we probably shouldn't, to avoid unnecessary bloat to our articles and unnecessary external links. Does this seem reasonable to everyone? lifebaka++ 14:15, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Strangely I did not know about WP:IAR, but with that knowledge added, Lifebaka sums it up nicely for me. OdinFK (talk) 14:46, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I'm glad that we are basically all in agreement here. The only other thing I want to say is this: I don't want to be completely afraid to reference/link cards; the question shouldn't be whether it's absolutely necessary but rather whether it's better to reference the card than to not. Obviously there are a lot of factors, including all the stuff we've been talking about, that enter into that equation. Croctotheface (talk) 21:30, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

One final comment from my side: I don't like that the Template disguises links to the Gatherer as internal Wikilinks. This can be confusing to the reader and I don't see a reason to deviate from the well established look of eternal links here. I think that needs changing. OdinFK (talk) 06:31, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Hey, I know this doesn't apply to the conversation you've had about the template, but it seems the best place to write (considering no one sees the dedicated discussion page for {{mtgcard}}). And it seems as though your conversation has been over for almost a month. I've updated the template a bit. All I've added is references to specific card editions. I am wondering if there are any complaints or any requests for changing it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.68.98.171 (talk) 23:38, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Style issues -- proper names

We need to be clear about what names are proper and which are not. "Banned" and "restricted" are not proper names by anyone's judgment, including Wizards'.[3] The names of constructed formats (Standard, Vintage, Legacy) are almost certainly proper names and should be capitalized. This makes sense because while "banned" and "restricted", used in a Magical context, pretty much retain their plain English definitions, that's not the case with something like "Standard". While it may be the small-s standard way to run tournaments, that's not necessarily true for everyone, and likewise for Vintage and Legacy.

"Constructed" and "Limited" are the ones that trouble me, as I can see ways they are similar to either of our categories above. I'm interested to hear thoughts on all of this, but especially this final, more ambiguous category. Croctotheface (talk) 10:01, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

There's always the "Block Constructed" format, which would tend to suggest that Constructed should be capitalized (and then, by extension, Limited as well). This would appear to confirm it, with the quote: "Official information about Constructed formats and the Standard format..." So, we should be capitalizing Constructed and Limited as well, I believe. Cheers. lifebaka++ 14:35, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't think we should just go by what Wizards does, though I think they're generally quite reasonable about things like capitalization and branding. If that changed, for instance if they started capitalizing "Banned List" for basically no reason, I would say that we should not follow their style there. That said, I'm cool with capitalizing Constructed and Limited if that's the general usage. Croctotheface (talk) 21:32, 16 September 2009 (UTC)

Style issues II: keyword abilities

I posted this over at the main MTG article: I noticed in this article that we're capitalizing the keyword abilities, such as flying. This is just incorrect; those are not proper nouns, and they're not rendered in title case on the cards; they sometimes happen to be capitalized because they're often at the start of a line. We need to fix this throughout the article and at any other articles that do the same thing. Croctotheface (talk) 10:55, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Performance by country in Pro Tour seasonals

Hi all!

I have added a section about the performance of the various countries in the season to the Magic:_The_Gathering_Pro_Tour_season_2009 article. As the included criteria might considered arbitrary I thought I would explain here and if there are good reasons to use different criteria it can be changed any time.

T8: Almost self-explanatory. If we compare players by the number of Top 8 appearances it makes sense to compare countries by the number of Top 8 appearances, too. I've chosen two appearances as a cutoff to avoid listing each country which had a single appearance by chance.

Q: The number of players is less there as a measure of success, but to put the number of Top 8 appearances into a relation to the qualified players. In 2009 for example you can see that the US had 10 Top 8 appearances to Japan's 6, but also had almost three times as many players on the Tour. I've chosen fifty players as a cutoff here as then the biggest Magic-playing nations should be included regardless of their success in the season.

Q/T8: Numbers of players per Top 8. Without this the number of players wouldn't have made much sense. No cutoff as this is only derived data.

GT: Gravy Trainers are there as a measure of the countries base strength regardless of the number of Top 8 appearances. I have not chosen a cutoff here, but if I were to choose only 3 or 5 makes sense as higher numbers are too exclusive (this would be covered by Q than anyway), lesser too inclusive (making for a cluttered table). 5 is probably still too inclusive, though.

Best Player (PPts): Just as you would list the highest-scoring player in a football seasonal article it makes sense to list the highest-scoring Magic player of a country I suppose. I made a cutoff at 50, mainly because it did not seem very reasonable to exclude Brazil/Paulo Vitor. Some people will also find it telling when a country has just one superstar, but nothing much else.

OdinFK (talk) 19:13, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

WP 1.0 bot announcement

This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:33, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Tools to help your project with unreferenced Biographies of living people

List of cleanup articles for your project

If you don't already have this and are interested in creating a list of articles which need cleanup for your wikiproject see: Cleanup listings A list of examples is here

Moving unreferenced blp articles to a special "incubation pages"

If you are interested in moving unreferenced blp articles to a special "incubation page", contact me, User talk:Ikip

Watchlisting all unreferenced articles

If you are interested in watchlisting all of the unreferenced articles once you install Cleanup_listings, contact me, User talk:Ikip

Ikip 02:10, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Upcoming Video Game

Why are upcoming sets like Rise of the Eldrazi categorized with "Upcoming Video Game"? _Blake ^{(Talk·Edits)} 17:53, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Never mind. Someone removed the template from the page. _Blake ^{(Talk·Edits)} 00:42, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Artists pages at AFD

List of Magic: The Gathering artists has been nominated for AFD, along with the following Magic artist articles: Paul Bonner, Sue Ellen Brown, David A. Cherry, Dennis Detwiller, Fred Fields, Mark Harrison (comic artist), David Ho (artist), Quinton Hoover, Dana Knutson, Stephan Martinière, and Terese Nielsen. 204.153.84.10 (talk) 19:45, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Franz Vohwinkel, John Zeleznik, Nene Thomas, and Randy Post are also up for AFD. 204.153.84.10 (talk) 19:37, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

External links in article text

Hello. I notice that the template {{mtgcard}} is used to link to various Gatherer web pages, sometimes within the text of articles (at least, there are some external links in the text of Dissension). Be aware, though, that the Wikipedia guideline WP:External links suggests, "External links should not normally be used in the body of an article. Instead, include appropriate external links in an "External links" section at the end of the article, and in the appropriate location within an infobox, if applicable." Note, too, that the guideline recommends against an article having multiple external links to specific pages within the same site. This is a guideline rather than an official policy, so members of this project should use common sense in deciding how to handle such links. Happy editing, Cnilep (talk) 14:10, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Article alerts

This is a notice to let you know about Article alerts, a fully-automated subscription-based news delivery system designed to notify WikiProjects and Taskforces when articles are entering Articles for deletion, Requests for comment, Peer review and other workflows (full list). The reports are updated on a daily basis, and provide brief summaries of what happened, with relevant links to discussion or results when possible. A certain degree of customization is available; WikiProjects and Taskforces can choose which workflows to include, have individual reports generated for each workflow, have deletion discussion transcluded on the reports, and so on. An example of a customized report can be found here.

If you are already subscribed to Article Alerts, it is now easier to report bugs and request new features. We are also in the process of implementing a "news system", which would let projects know about ongoing discussions on a wikipedia-wide level, and other things of interest. The developers also note that some subscribing WikiProjects and Taskforces use the display=none parameter, but forget to give a link to their alert page. Your alert page should be located at "Wikipedia:PROJECT-OR-TASKFORCE-HOMEPAGE/Article alerts". Questions and feedback should be left at Wikipedia talk:Article alerts.

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Thanks. — Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 09:22, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Request for comment on Biographies of living people

Hello Wikiproject! Currently there is a discussion which will decide whether wikipedia will delete 49,000 articles about a living person without references, here:

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people

Since biographies of living people covers so many topics, nearly all wikiproject topics will be effected.

The two opposing positions which have the most support is:

1. supports the deletion of unreferenced articles about a living person, User:Jehochman
2. opposes the deletion of unreferenced articles about a living person, except in limited circumstances, User:Collect

Comments are welcome. Keep in mind that by default, editor's comments are hidden. Simply press edit next to the section to add your comment.

Please keep in mind that at this point, it seems that editors support deleting unreferenced article if they are not sourced, so your project may want to pursue the projects below.

Ikip 02:10, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Magic: The Gathering articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Magic: The Gathering articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 23:17, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Card Set articles

I noticed one or two of the Card Sets (think it was Homelands and Alliances), the first word of the article (card set name) was bolded and in italics. I checked a couple other articles and they weren't in italics so I removed italics from a couple articles. Then I noticed some others had the subject in italics. Has a decision been made on which it should be? --Mjrmtg (talk) 13:28, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't think there has a decision, but generally speaking, the first time the subject is mentioned in an article it is bolded, and the names of Magic sets are generally italicised whenever they are mentioned, so it would make sense that the first word of a set article be both bold and in italics. Sir Sputnik (talk) 14:51, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Use of Next Set / Last Set in set infoboxes

There has been a tentative discussion about this on the talk page of the infobox although no real conclusion was reached. I think it is not very useful to have "next set" point to the set that is next in the chronological order of release. The two sets will have almost no meaningful connection quite often. Instead the sets that have a meaningful connection like Unglued/Unhinged or the Masters Editions are not linked to each other. I guess it would be much more useful for most readers to restrict these links to sets in the same category (use List_of_Magic:_The_Gathering_sets as a guideline). For some sets (duel decks) this is already done, but there is no consistency. OdinFK (talk) 09:36, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Mirrodin

mirrodin should have 2 separate articles (one for plane and one for set) as there is now the scars of mirrodin block and soon the upcoming duel decks: mirrodin pure vs new phyrexia. 174.3.74.254 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:31, 8 February 2011 (UTC).

MTG players

I am concerned about the number of references that are exclusively the wizard web site while a notable website and a RS for verifying events I am not sure that it would count for establishing WP:GNG. Looking through the criteria that you have listed for a player to have their own profile page includes Pro Tour points and these seem not to be comparable to standard criteria needed for other games players. Similarly voting in 5 Hall of Fame players a year based upon only 100 pro tour points does not make a subject notable for their ability in the game compared with the inclusion criteria for games such as chess, bridge, go or Xianqi. While winning the world championship is clearly notable. Some of the lesser achievements should really require wider coverage and this should be cited in the individual article. It would be desirable if you tightened your inclusion guidelines.Tetron76 (talk) 12:57, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

While I agree that more non-wizards sources should be used, I have to question how much you actually know about the Pro Tour. The World Championship is just one event, and some world champions have done very little of note after their win. (Uri Peleg, 2007, for instance). The Hall of Fame by contrast, while official only requiring a player to have earned 100 pro points, requires a player to have had a lasting impact on the game at the highest level. As for points, I am unfamiliar with the criteria for other games, a player who has earned 200 pro points or more throughout his career will have been at the top of the game for a number of years, or will have been on tour for a very long time. In either case, they will have received significant coverage. Sir Sputnik (talk) 14:58, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

There are several issues that your response raises. Yes, it is true that I don't have expertise in magic the gathering and only had peripherally heard of the Pro-tour but this doesn't strengthen the case for player inclusion. If an invitational world championship winner cannot be thought of as a significant player then it raises the question how significant is someone who has never won a major MTG event.

• If there are several other further mentions of notability then clearly a player would make the wikipedia notability guidelines. But otherwise it should be shown that the player has a significant impact on the game. I.e. setting records, top player at a particular time, added a new idea that has since been integrated into the play, furthered the wideness of the game.
• Popularity of the game doesn't make the players automatically notable. Consider monopoly with more players and higher cash prizes. The problem is that the points thresholds set for both the hall of fame and the 200 points without the hall of fame are too low to be justifiable thresholds on their own.
• There are currently 53 players with over 200 points and a further 137 with over 100 points.

However, the top level that is recognised by wizard (level 8) requires winning more than 50 points in a season.

• There are also questions as to how comparable it is between players when there is no fixed tournament set.
• If a single outcome has high luck then by players being offered 3 round byes it would seem that any high standard player who played the entire season for 10 years would meet the 200 points level but this could be well below grandmaster.

There could well be many RS to counter all of my points but I only found one of the players mentioned in my cursory press search. [4]

Tetron76 (talk) 18:15, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the 200 point threshold is arbitrary and it is also not generally a good indicator of a player's notability. It serves its purpose when a player has become really good in the last couple of years. For example three years on level 8 definitely make a player notable within the game. Ten years on level 4 on the other hand not so. Right now I don't really see a problem, because most of the 200+ players are notable if you don't want to raise the standards to something like hall-of-famers-only. That Hall of Famers should be included is beyond doubt in my opinion. The 100 point threshold is just a cutoff to not have 5000 players on the ballot. To get 40% of the voting commitee voting for you, you have to have had a lot of impact on the game.

Regarding the World Championship: In Magic this is actually a bit like if the tennis association decided to call the winner of the Wimbledon tennis tournament World Champion. Sure he was the best in the world at that time, but why is not the winner of the French/US/Australian Open the World Champion? In Magic the Worlds are not that different from other Pro Tours either. Thus are all Pro Tour winners notable or none? Just the World Champions draws a line where it might seem sensible if you just consider the name of the title, but if you also consider the achievement it really doesn't.

"it should be shown that the player has a significant impact on the game". I like that passage. It might not be easy in all cases but we should strive to make it more clear how a player has excelled at the game. Considering that many of the articles are cleary still stubs there is no real fault in not mentioning that because the article is not yet refined enough, though. Compare this to a 3rd league footballer in Germany for example. They all have articles, because they are deemed notable, but there is nothing in these articles showing why these players are notable. Also you can actually find much more information about first-rate magic players than about third-rate footballers, too. Only problem is, that much of the information comes from Wizards, which the Wikipedia is not too fond of.

While this may not answer all your questions and concerns I hope that it helps to get some insight into why we did things the way we did. If you have any further questions just ask. I'll answer them gladly and a couple of others, too. Cheers, OdinFK (talk) 21:08, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, you have addressed several of my concerns. I suppose my key concern was that MTG clearly requires a lot of separate pages due to features in the game but there is a difference between reporting results and giving a player a profile.

Now, while I am confident that these criteria make a player notable to other MTG players; if you consider the question for each player if there were no MTG player profiles existing at all would meeting any single criterion in the list make them notable enough to have their own wikipedia profile? I think you will find that you answer no for some of the profiles.

When you include a player's profile you set a precedent. 5 or more top 8 finishes is probably what is required to be professional, but a top 8 finish on paper is not particularly notable. To finish 8th you can still lose at least 3 matches in a Swiss. This is not to say that they couldn't turn out to be one of the strongest players ever, but this is yet to be known.

I am sure that these are probably measures that you will keep under review but I was meerly trying to ensure that you don't lose the non-MTG perspective as there will be many more players who will soon meet these qualifications.Tetron76 (talk) 17:53, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

5 or more Top 8 is required to be professional?? Playing one match on the Pro Tour is the official definition of professional in Magic. 5 Top 8 finishes is basically the equivalent of 3000 hits in baseball. Top 8 is an official statistic. The sources say it is significant. That's not a judgment call by Wikipedians. Jay32183 (talk) 21:33, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I used the phrase professional to refer to an income after expenses that would equate to the equivalent earnings to a full-time professional position without any additional income and the prize payout would not meet this criteria below this level. I read all of the sources that are being used on this topic and none are independent of MTG! as I said all I was really after was a more focused perspective (which I felt OdinFK was moving towards) the profile difference between baseball and MTG is huge even if the skill were equivalent.Tetron76 (talk) 14:53, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

The sources don't need to be independent of MTG. They need to be independent of the subject, which would be the players themselves. The articles would be better with more sources, but it isn't necessary for the articles to exist. Jay32183 (talk) 22:03, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

Biographies and people in categories

See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Board_and_table_games#Biographies and people in categories

As you have already done for MTG Project, I am hoping to build guidelines for notability criteria for what makes someone notable in the games field i.e. Wikipedia:Notability_(sports)#Curling. Especially games players that I feel needs to have a section similar to the sports and athletes. An example of a question that has just arisen is does winning the first scrabble world championship count as just WP:Oneevent. Combined contribution issues also need defining.

The other conversation is do we want to have category inclusion criteria does a certain threshold need to be met before we add someone to Category:Chess players. Should Ben Afleck count as a poker player?Tetron76 (talk) 15:08, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Dominaria

Noticed the AfD wasn't bot listed on project page and thought you might be interested.Tetron76 (talk) 15:56, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

I have also asked for comments on merging/redirecting all of the locations and characters. None of them seem to be notable. If somebody feels they can find significant coverage in reliable sources, then that would be great, but as of now, they should be redirected. I would like to get some comments to make sure this would be alright, and the merge will not be refuted in some way. _Blake ^{(Talk·Edits)} 02:43, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Use of MTGSalvation's Wiki

So I have been trying to clean up the Wikipedia Articles tied to Magic, but given that there is an extensive and popular wiki at MTGSalvation where all the minutia of stroyline and character can be discussed, what do we feel about linking mostly to that wiki? Or would it be preferable to host all those nuanced bits of lore here on Wikipedia? I am perfectly fine with either solution, but I would like to not waste time on porting over info if its going to get deleted for being too trivial. Missilepenguin (talk) 21:06, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

notibility guidelines apply here as everywhere, as does undue weight I wouldn't start indiscriminately adding trivia. As a general rule (IMO) I think that the news of the MTG community, modern as a new format, change in the way core sets work, general information about new sets and such is fine. But we don't need an article on every planeswalker, location etc. that gets created each year by WOC. I don't think linking to a fan based wiki is necessarily considered a reliable source in most cases... take a look at WP:EL as well for more guidance. Cheers! Crazynas ^t 22:39, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Linking to a fan based wiki for further reading, rather than as a source, could be beneficial though. We would need to be careful about how we arrange that though. Jay32183 (talk) 00:08, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd suggest keeping most of the in-universe stuff on MTGSalvation and linking to it from Wikipedia's Further reading/External links sections. Subject-specific wiki(a)'s generally end up of being of a much more interesting and of a higher-quality than Wikipedia articles, because they are not restricted by notability/verifiability/no original research/non-free image restrictions (somewhat ironically the rules that ensure Wikipedia's quality of non-fictional topics.) —Ruud 00:27, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

MTG Categories

These seem to be confused, so I've been working on them, I created Category:Magic: The Gathering game concepts to replace the more narrow Category:Magic: The Gathering strategy, I created Category:Magic: The Gathering professional events for all those pro tour season pages. I've been thinking of categories for, well I want to call it Category:Magic: The Gathering flavor but I know that's the wrong word, to encompass all the story line elements we have pages on. Thoughts? Crazynas ^t 17:07, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Calling it "flavor" would make sense to the people who play Magic, but I can see how there would be confusion. Perhaps we could call it something like Category:Magic: The Gathering story elements? Also, I linked the cats above so they can be reviewed more easily. Cheers. lifebaka++ 17:23, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Yea, I was trying to figure out how to do that, thanks. MTG:Story elements sounds good to me. Crazynas ^t 02:53, 16 September 2011 (

Diffusing Categories

It bothers me that in Category:Magic: The Gathering players the Americans are a single diffused sub-category while the rest are not. I'm also wondering if Category:Magic: The Gathering sets should be diffused it's at 99 pages and only going to grow. If so then how to do it? Along with Category:Magic: The Gathering duel decks, we could have Category:Magic: The Gathering expansion sets, Category:Magic: The Gathering promotional sets or Category:Magic: The Gathering special release sets, and Category: Magic: The Gathering core sets would just about diffuse the entire cat except for the two lists which I would recommend keeping there. Crazynas ^t 10:12, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Hmm... While I don't believe diffusing the categories is necessary yet, since Wizards keeps publishing sets and players keep becoming notable I get the feeling that it will be, and when it is it'll be a mountain of work. If you're willing to do the legwork on this, feel free, I bet we'll appreciate it later. Cheers. lifebaka++ 12:45, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Card images in set articles

I started at discussion at the copyright noticeboard regarding inclusion of Magic cards in each specific set article. Crazynas ^t 20:14, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Standard structure for set articles

I've been working on set articles off and on for some time and I noticed that the structure of these articles varies more than is actually warranted by the differences of the sets. Other projects have Manuals of style for standard articles. For example in football they have a MoS for clubs. Wouldn't it make sense for us to have a Manual of Style for set articles as well? (And for players' articles, but that's for another time) Thinking about it, I came up with the following sections which in my opinion warrant inclusion in most articles.

• Intro — Brief summary of Name, release date, number of release, description of the expansion symbol, and very distinctive features of the set.
• Set history — For older sets there is often some information available on how the set was created. For newer sets the process is standardized, thus it wouldn't make sense to create such a history.
  • Bannings/Restriction — Basically a testimony to the set's impact on tournament play.
  • Reprints — Cards later reprinted are testimony to the set's legacy.
• Reception — Might want to into 'Set history'. There are plenty of reviews from major Magic sites, unfortunately independant reviews are scarce. Digging up some set reviews by major authorities of the time might be in order.
  • Prizes — Might want to be an independant section or also part of 'Set history'. Most of the time Magic sets don't win prizes as most prizes are awarded for Eurogames or CoSims independantly, but occasionally there are prizes (from Origins for example).
• Rarity breakdown — This is only interesting for sets with strange rarities. Necessity for this section ceases after Alliances.
• Mechanics — Keywords and ability words obviously go here. Other mechanics should be more prevalent than just a plain cycle. Non-keyword, non-ability-word mechanics should probably cite a reference of that being a mechanic of a set.
• Storyline — At least there should be a condensed version of the storyline that Wizards gives on their page for the set. A summary of the plot of the respective book would be nice to have of course.
• Art — There is rarely much written about this, but when a major artist, formerly not associated with Magic, has pieces in the set it would be nice to put it here. If something can be extracted from the style guides (Wizards publishes such articles occasionally) it can be used as well. For example for Lorwyn and Shadowmoor it would be relatively easy to detail how the art had to reflect the transition from good to bad in the inhabitants.
• Rules changes — Comes up once in a blue moon, but should be in the article when rules were changed.
• Supplements — The set was obviously sold in boosters, but what else was there? Theme decks? Intro Packs? Fat packs? Books? Comic Books? etc.
• Notable cards — This section is still rather delicate as it is very much in the eye of the beholder what constitutes notability. A card put into the section without reference should be immediately deleted.

Right now almost no articles mentions in what kind of boosters the sets were sold. Number of cards and composition should be in the article somewhere as well. Also there are almost no pictures, but to have free pictures of boosters of the set would probably be helpful as well.

The sections I suggest and the order are product of not much more than a bit of brainstorming, so feel free to comment, correct, critize, add, etc. OdinFK (talk) 12:12, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Long and detailed third party article about magic (good ref)

The headline says it all. The article is long and detailed. Information mainly about the 2012 Players Championship and its participants, but it touches on many other points as well. It's a very good reference if you want to have a source besides the official wotc stuff.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/20/3326708/magic-the-gathering-players-championship

OdinFK (talk) 12:57, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

More set symbols added, Fair Use information needed

I've been adding a bunch of symbols I created to the older Magic expansions. A lot will now need copyright info added. If you'd like to help and keep these symbols, please contribute by editing the fair use info for these. Ones I've currently added to pages: Arabian Nights (Magic: The Gathering), Antiquities (Magic: The Gathering), Legends (Magic: The Gathering), The Dark (Magic: The Gathering), Fallen Empires, Homelands (Magic: The Gathering), Alliances (Magic: The Gathering), 5th Edition (Magic: The Gathering), Mirage, Visions (Magic: The Gathering), Stronghold (Magic: The Gathering), 6th Edition (Magic: The Gathering), Urza's Legacy, Urza's Destiny, and Fifth Dawn. Leitmotiv (talk) 00:47, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

List of Magic: The Gathering professional players

I created the page List of Magic: The Gathering professional players. I have not included it in the mtg template yet, because so far it has only players over 300 points, and I think 100 pro points would be a nice cutoff. The idea of the list is to be analogous to lists as List of Bayern Munich players, with the difference that of course the mtg list encompasses all pro players of the game instead of players of a specific team. If you like to work on it, go ahead (of course). Cheers, OdinFK (talk) 15:55, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of expansion set articles

A discussion is taking place as to whether a 24 articles on MTG expansion set are suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, or whether they should be deleted.

The articles will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Invasion (Magic: The Gathering) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:41, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

See also another group nomination at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alpha (Magic: The Gathering). --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:29, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Merging the articles on Alpha / Beta / Unlimited

As a heads up, I opened a discussion at Talk:Alpha (Magic: The Gathering) on the topic. While there are a few specific quirks for each printing, there's no reason why those 3 can't be covered in one article - there's too much repetition, otherwise. SnowFire (talk) 01:43, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

The A/B merge & U-10th merges are complete. Someone else want to volunteer for merging M2010- present together? I'd lightly suggest "Magic: The Gathering Core Sets, 2009–present" or the like for the title, but it's trickier. "Magic 2010- Magic2014 is catchier, but would require a move every year, and might imply it included non-core-set stuff... SnowFire (talk) 06:16, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Pictures

Is there a place to get pictures for this type of article without violating copyright? I'd like to do an article on weirds, but it'd seem really abstract without a picture (Maybe Melek and a blistercoil).Supernerd11 (talk) 14:06, 19 November 2013 (UTC)Supernerd11

Theros also needs an expansion symbol, is WotC good enough for that?Supernerd11 (talk) 15:45, 19 November 2013 (UTC)Supernerd11

Never mind, apparently you make your own. Thanks, Leitmotiv! Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 04:31, 12 February 2014 (UTC)

Magic: The Gathering Conspiracy

The page for Conspiracy was just created, but it's a stub. Any help expanding it will be appreciated! Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 14:32, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Improvements needed

Since the expansions have been consolidated into blocks, the "next set" or "previous set" links in the infoboxes can be confusing. I've navigated through it a few times now from Alpha to Shards of Alara and have these suggestions:

• Hiccup no. 1 Alpha does not link to Beta (I tried fixing this a while ago, but it is beyond me. This may be a moot point if the early expansions are consolidated
• Hiccup no. 2 occurs when you go from Exodus to Portal Second Age. It's unintuitive as to where to go next, because you have to click on the previous set for Urza's Destiny, instead of the next set.
• Hiccup no. 3 occurs when you are going from Shadowmoor to Masters Edition II. You get there, but there is no continuing link to Shards of Alara. You get stuck in a loop of Lorwyn to Masters Edition II.

I recommend streamlining all the expansions so that the blocks only direct to the next block; not the core sets, and not the peripheral product. Core sets can have links to the next core set, and same thing with the periphery stuff, which may just be consolidated anyway. Leitmotiv (talk) 23:01, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I say to keep the order the way it is now (with the fixing of the Lorwyn/Masters Edition II loop and Rath/Portal problem, I'm not sure right now how to go about doing that; Alpha and Beta are one in the same now). This gives the user a clearer picture of the order of releases, plus it prevents people from saying "Well, if we can skip the core sets, why can't we just go straight from Ravnica to Return to Ravnica? The second is basically a direct sequel to the first, after all." (exaggeration to prove a point). The non-block stuff is important, though maybe not as Vorthos-friendly as the regular expansions. Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 03:31, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

I don't think a concise order is necessarily needed. It would be nice if we can implement the core sets though. I think everything that is not a standard set or core set should be stripped out of the linear release links. Your example, as you noted, is extreme hyperbole and doesn't prove anything (that's why it's important to avoid exaggerating, because it weakens an argument). It also creates a frame of mind that is hard to prove if it exists or doesn't exist. Leitmotiv (talk) 17:32, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

Maybe, but can I ask why we need to get rid of the extra sets? It seems to me that none are dominant or inferior to any of the others, so keeping all of them and putting them in order of release seems like the most logical thing to do. (Thanks for the argument tip, by the way) Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 18:35, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

It's the extra sets that lead to the discombobulated madness that is the series of links as we see them now. Some are standard, normal releases. Others were one-offs and others could be simply noted in the article the date of the release. I think a good comparison is albums. Sure you could squeeze in all the singles, EPs, box sets, compilations, but it still looks like the gigantic mess that it is. If you stay strictly with the LPs, it makes for a more coherent, and smoother ride. Leitmotiv (talk) 19:37, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

I've been doing a lot of thinking, and I eventually decided that a "Previous Block/Next Block" thing above the "First set in the X block" in the infobox would be the best option here. Unfortunately, I can't get them to show up in the infobox, no matter what I do. I'm pretty inexperienced with templates, you got any idea how to implement this? Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 23:13, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

I like the idea of blocks only, too. I would recommend removing any supplementary sets. Let's see how it goes. Leitmotiv (talk) 04:16, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

Alright, how's this look? Supernerd11 :D Firemind ^_^ Pokedex 03:34, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

Template merge

I'd like to bring it up here before taking it to WP:TFD, but I'd like to propose a merge of Template:MTG video games and Template:Magic: The Gathering. I'd think that a row for the video games towards the bottom of the Card Sets section would be a good place for the them. Supernerd11 _{Firemind ^_^ Pokedex} 16:18, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Seems reasonable to me. Crazynas ^t 16:32, 13 August 2014 (UTC)

Okay, it's in the TfD. Supernerd11 _{Firemind ^_^ Pokedex} 01:06, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

New block layout

A new block layout has been announced, so that'll probably screw with the way we manage blocks for Template:Infobox Magic: The Gathering set. I'd say wait until the sets after Tarkir block are announced before doing anything, but thought I should bring it up. Supernerd11 _{Firemind ^_^ Pokedex} 15:00, 5 September 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

GatheringMagic.com

Gathering Magic is a treasure trove of third-party information for all things Magic. I was informed a while ago that it was written more like a blog, but poking around the site, I don't see a lot in the way of bloggy stuff. Their about page suggests that it's more reliable than your average blog. Any comments one way or the other? Supernerd11 _{Firemind ^_^ Pokedex} 14:15, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Set Symbols

Some of the set symbols are kind of wonky:

-Some are missing (Theros, Journey into Nyx)

-Some are different sizes (Ice Age (Magic: The Gathering))

-Some are rare (Return to Ravnica)

I'll try and work on this. Nighthawk10101 (talk) 01:52, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! I'd do some of these myself, but my artistic skills are seriously lacking :P Supernerd11 _{Firemind ^_^ Pokedex} 17:34, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Potential CFD of interest

Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 February 6#Category:Magic: The Gathering blocks . Nobody's voted yet, some input would be appreciated. SnowFire (talk) 21:13, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Magic categories to be merged back to block structure discussion

A nomination can be found here: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2015 February 16#Category:Magic: The Gathering blocks to merge Magic categories back to blocks from sets. Feel free to join in on the discussion. Leitmotiv (talk) 18:19, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Article alerts

I've suggest that the project consider setting up WP:ALERTS rather than doing it manually. It's not that difficult and once set, it'll be easier to see everything going on with the articles in the project. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:17, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

use of the term "professional" on player articles

I noticed that some notable player articles mention that the subject is a "professional" MTG player, but others don't - just inquiring on what the guideline is for this? There was some mention of "professional" in the archives when discussing the wikiproject notability guidelines, but it wasn't wikipedia-specific. --Sesameball^Talk 22:18, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

There is no guideline on this. Most of this is attributable to inconsistent writing on my part. Sir Sputnik (talk) 17:40, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Re-pinging @Sesameball: because I didn't do it properly the first time. Sir Sputnik (talk) 22:21, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

MTG pro player AfDs

I'm putting a bunch of pro mtg player articles up for deletion at AfD. Just thought I'd give everyone a heads up over here.--Prisencolin (talk) 23:41, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I was a bit surprised by your inclusion of players like Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa and others that I'd think would easily pass WP:BIO, either due to inclusion in the Hall of Fame or simply winning enough top-level tournaments to infer community notability. Many of the same arguments against exclusion are presented in past unsuccessful AfDs. In any case, if many of your proposed AfDs are found to lack WP:GNG, then this WikiProject may have to modify its notability guidelines to something that more realistically infers notability. --Sesameball^Talk 07:18, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

We discussed the guidelines for inlusion here. That was a long time ago, and from experience with using these criteria I think that 200 Pro Points do not really constitute notability. There are way too many players that have stub-like articles, that will not improve in the forseeable future. On the other hand I do think it is hard to argue that Magic Hall of Famers do not have crossed the notability threshold. From my perspective the rest is up for discussion. I'd rather keep the few Players of the Year and 5+ times PT Top 8er, that did not make it into the Hall of Fame, but that is just my opinion. OdinFK (talk) 11:37, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm aware of the the notability requirements listed, but these guidelines allow for pages that don't otherwise meet GNG requirements. Many of these pro players articles just lack reliable, secondary sources, plain and simple and so shouldn't exist on WP as standalone articles. Note that per WP:LOCALCONCENSUS "... unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope. " Also note that an WP:ALTERNATIVE, exists, a fan wiki that covers the MTG pro scene, so its not like this information would be lost if not for wikipedia.--Prisencolin (talk) 18:48, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

I haven't edited Wikipedia in a while, but I wanted to comment on this. I essentially quit as a Wikipedia editor almost a year ago in order to establish the pro scene section on the alternative Wiki that has been mentioned (the MTGS Wiki); this was in part because of the notability issues on Wikipedia. I don't begrudge Wikipedia its notability criteria; in fact, I think you are entirely correct in deleting a number of pro-related articles here, as the MTG-related notability criteria, especially when it comes to the required number of Pro Points in order to be regarded as notable, are too loose. But on a Wiki dedicated to MtG, these criteria quite obviously are slack, and so I figured it'd be more appropriate to continue my work there instead. I will have to extend a thank you to OdinFK and Sir Sputnik for their research on this topic (in particular the Pro Tour Season articles); I've used much of what they've found while building the other Wiki, and you're naturally welcome to contribute there too if you wish to. In any case: I agree with the general gist, but on the other hand, I saw to my surprise that the Nicolai Herzog article has been deleted. If a two-time Pro Tour champion and Hall of Famer is deemed not notable, then I don't think you will be able to keep many articles at all (Jon Finkel and Kai Budde?). I would, at the very least, argue that Hall of Famers should be regarded as notable, if nothing else. Hahahopp (talk) 09:53, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Grand Prix in Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour season articles

Currently, the Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour season articles (e.g. Magic: The Gathering Pro Tour season 2016–17) are organized chronologically, which makes sense. However, this leads to several sections of Grand Prix. More recent seasons simply title them all "Grand Prix". WP:MOSHEAD advises against this: "Section headings should preferably be unique within a page; otherwise section links may lead to the wrong place, and automatic edit summaries for section edits will be ambiguous." Older articles try to solve this problem by explicitly listing the Grand Prix locations. However, this leads to such lengthy titles as Grand Prix: Philadelphia, Lyon, Auckland, Chicago, Bochum, Charleston, Taipei, San Antonio, Lisbon, Toronto, Nagoya, Indianapolis, Denver, Atlantic City, Singapore, Bilbao, Sydney, London. It seems to me that there should be a better solution. 786b6364 (talk) 17:34, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

potential merger of early Magic expansion sets.

Came up ages ago when there were some AFDs on the Core Set articles followed by creating merged list-articles, but some of the other "early" Magic set articles are a bit weak without much good sourcing at the moment. Any thoughts / complaints if I were to merge them?

I imagine it would be something like Magic: The Gathering expansion sets, 1993-1995, and include Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, The Dark, Fallen Empires, Chronicles, and Homelands. (The one asterisk on that list is Chronicles, which wasn't exactly a normal expansion and closer to something like Modern Masters or a base set... except it was tournament legal. But not a big deal, IMHO.) SnowFire (talk) 16:36, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Related to the above, I think I might merge some of the compilation sets & box sets as well, if there's no objection. Magic: The Gathering duel decks has had a notability tag on it for almost three years... I think these short articles would be safer merged together. SnowFire (talk) 18:55, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject

The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template {{Transclude lead excerpt}}.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background

On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you.    — The Transhumanist   07:46, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:24, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Should we add all the Secret Lairs?

There are already 26 Secret Lairs as of 09/25/20. Should we add them to the reprint section? The entire page is getting really long and a little hard to read.

Xraphael75 (talk) 02:51, 26 September 2020 (UTC)