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Note that there is currently a slight issue with Gatherer: it omits all of the Circles of Protection from Alpha, instead of correctly omitting CoP: Black but leaving the other four in. This is why the link in the infobox (correctly) says 290 cards, but if you follow the link, you'll find that Gatherer only finds 286. I've reported this to the Gatherer devteam, and hopefully it will be fixed in the near future.
Also, please be aware the Crystalkeep data claiming 295 cards for Alpha isn't really ideal, because it counts alternate art as separate cards, which is of possible interest to collectors, but is misleading for everyone else. I'll be going through the sets and changing this to Gatherer stats instead. -- Ashenai
Since I believe that the "Notable Cards" of a set is a highly contentious issue, I'm going to explain exactly why I included the cards I did, and post proof of their notability here. If you decide to add to, remove from, or change the list of Notable Cards, please do the same, so we can have at least a minimal amount of objectivity. Thank you!
The Power Nine is notable because: They have all proven to be game-bendingly powerful, and are all restricted in tournament play. They are the most sought-after and expensive Magic cards in existence, all commanding enormous prices on the secondary market; $200-$2000 is typical for a single Power Nine card.
The Boons are notable because: They were the first and best-known cycle. With the exception of Dark Ritual, they define the single most characteristic ability of each color to this day.
The Dual Lands are notable because: They are the best two-color lands to this day, and are included in every multicolor deck in which they are legal, with no exceptions (to the best of my knowledge). Along with the Power Nine, this makes them the only "auto-include" cards in all decks of the appropriate colors that I know of. (Well, Lightning Bolt and Dark Ritual may also fit the bill). They are also surprisingly expensive on the secondary market.
I consider the following cards Runners-up: Birds of Paradise, Channel, Counterspell, Disenchant, Fireball, Grizzly Bears, Serra Angel, Shivan Dragon, Stone Rain, and Swords to Plowshares. These cards would likely all be notable if they had been introduced in a later set, but the blinding fame of the current Alpha notable cards simply overshadows them, IMO. -- Ashenai 16:35, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
I removed the dual lands; notable Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited cards should probably be cards that were only in Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited.
I added Chaos Orb, which is notable because: It was the first manual dexterity card, and there was only one other, ever, except for "Un" sets. It was also quite widely used while it was legal. -- Ashenai 01:06, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Also, I think Swords to Plowshares is notable as an Alpha card, since it wasn't reprinted after about 1996 (Ice Age), and it is widely viewed as the best white removal card. It also defined what white "spot" creature removal would stand for: a universal (destroy creature instead of "destroy nonblack" etc.) removal spell that usually had the effect of enabling the creature's controller to benefit in some way (Afterlife, Reciprocate). Davemcarlson 23:37, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone find/make a picture that shows the differences between the corners of an alpha card and a non-alpha card? Setitup ( talk) 22:54, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
Consider this a formal merge proposal if anyone is watching. All 3 are just printings of the same set, there's no reason they can't all be covered in one article. The name should ideally be "Limited Edition" except that would surely be confusing due to one of the printings being, uh, "Unlimited." So as a fallback, I think "Alpha / Beta / Unlimited" would be a decent title for the merged piece.
Any objections? Title thoughts? SnowFire ( talk) 01:41, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
Many of the Magic: The Gathering Core Sets are short articles; most Core Sets consist of only reprinted cards. I suggest merging the core sets into between 3-5 articles
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) 18:43, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
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Many of the links are currently broken, notably all the Alpha Oops article links and the /dev/Joe error list. There are probably more that I didn't check. Archive.org seems to have them all saved so it should just need updating with those links. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ruler501 ( talk • contribs) 19:00, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Hello Leitmotiv,
There is explicitly no guidance in the Manual of Style for spacing style, precisely because it does not matter. See MOS:DOUBLE SPACE. It is up to the "local" editors on each article. Because it does not matter to readers, it is strictly a matter of editor preference of those who are working on the article and seeing the raw wikitext; it is not something that is to be "fixed" as the only change. If it was, then Wikipedia would have standardized on one style or the other, with the other being in error. "If it's so ignorable why don't you ignore it" - because your edit is the one that only changes spacing style and nothing else. That kind of edit goes against the keep-the-peace standard; should I run around adding double spaces to every article that is currently only single-spaced, even if I only rarely touch them? (Mindmatrix removed some double spaces too, but as part of an edit that was also making some other tweaks, so whatever.) SnowFire ( talk) 03:59, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
What possible argument is there for keeping the double spaces given that they don't even show up in the article? — Czello 18:54, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
Hello all. This has nothing to do with this article in particular. It has to do with whitespace-only edits. Like I said, if you want to propose a revision to the Manual of Style that imposes single-spacing, please do so on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Speaking strictly factually here about Wikipedia policy - which is what I was communicating above - there is no such requirement to have single spaces, and editors are already discouraged from pointless, do-nothing, invisible-to-readers whitespace edits. That is what I reverted. Nothing to do with this particular article at all. Maybe some more attention to content would be more useful?
Finally, Leitmotiv, if you can cool the temperature slightly? You wouldn't insult people who write using different spellings than you're used to, correct? Then please accept that some people have different spacing styles as well. It's not "incorrect." It's just different. SnowFire ( talk) 21:41, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
I suppose I should offer a compromise here. Leitmotiv asked for "a valid reason why you should reinsert them". Just to be 100% clear, this is not the place to relitigate single vs. double spaces stylistically about which one is better. I'm not here as some double space evangelist to convince you that double spaces are better, and all of the above arguments about how single spaces are really better are similarly irrelevant to me. So let me explain why this Wikipedia policy is in place, although I think I kinda already did above: it's very similar to WP:RETAIN, the guideline for different national varieties of English. Suppose there are two productive, good faith editors. One writes the Apple article with single spaces (or European-style dates, or something else irrelevant) and does a good job. The other writes the Orange article with double spaces (or American-style dates, etc.) and does a good job. Furthermore, both of these editors maintain these articles over time, continuing to update them in the writing idiom they are comfortable in. Now suppose some drive-by editor comes in and disrupts them: they change Apple to double spaces, while a second drive-by editor of the reverse bent changes Orange to single spaces. This editor is attempting to "standardize" Wikipedia ono their preferred spacing scheme which they believe is superior to the other. What does this achieve? No matter which side you support, hopefully you can agree that these drive-by editors are not helping. At the absolute worst case, they are annoying or even driving away helpful, productive editors who wrote the content in one style. It's bad because it doesn't help readers, but it does hurt an editor, at least one of whom you agree with in this hypothetical example. Now, if these new editors were actually revising content? That's a different story. But if it's just a drive-by edit? That's not helpful. It's actually harmful to Wikipedia, because it makes editors stressed and wastes time in disputes like these. Both of these hypothetical drive-by editors should be reverted, including the one who is using "your" style! And indeed, if someone had come in and put double spaces on a single spaced article with no other changes, I'd have reverted them too. Despite preferring double spaces myself.
This is the entire point of the style guideline, essentially: to avoid pointless, time-wasting disputes that distract from real content work. For some matters of style, this is resolved with a rule: do it this way. For others, it is resolved by no rule: we don't care, and you shouldn't either. Do whatever you like if you are writing new content, but also don't go on a crusade against old content that doesn't fit your preference. If you do, you are wasting time, and should be reverted.
So that being said, I'm perfectly happy to concede on this particular article if there's a real desire for consistency in this article for some reason. Whatever. What I don't want is this taken as a license to run around removing double spaces everywhere on all articles because it's "better". There is no such policy. If I were to edit some section of another article we both follow using double spaces, then don't just follow it up with an edit saying "fixed your error" removing them or the like, because it doesn't matter and you shouldn't care, in the same way I wouldn't run around changing your articles to use double spaces with no further change. And yes, it sounds crazy, but people really have been banned for this kind of thing - editors who ran around making pointless whitespace only edits that gummed up watchlists for no apparent reason. ( Special:Contributions/Brogo13 for one recent-ish example.) SnowFire ( talk) 23:34, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
Clearly the only decent compromise is to remove every space from the article. Literally all of them. — Czello 22:13, 4 November 2020 (UTC)
![]() | This article was nominated for deletion on 3 October 2013. The result of the discussion was keep without prejudice to merge. |
![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||
|
Note that there is currently a slight issue with Gatherer: it omits all of the Circles of Protection from Alpha, instead of correctly omitting CoP: Black but leaving the other four in. This is why the link in the infobox (correctly) says 290 cards, but if you follow the link, you'll find that Gatherer only finds 286. I've reported this to the Gatherer devteam, and hopefully it will be fixed in the near future.
Also, please be aware the Crystalkeep data claiming 295 cards for Alpha isn't really ideal, because it counts alternate art as separate cards, which is of possible interest to collectors, but is misleading for everyone else. I'll be going through the sets and changing this to Gatherer stats instead. -- Ashenai
Since I believe that the "Notable Cards" of a set is a highly contentious issue, I'm going to explain exactly why I included the cards I did, and post proof of their notability here. If you decide to add to, remove from, or change the list of Notable Cards, please do the same, so we can have at least a minimal amount of objectivity. Thank you!
The Power Nine is notable because: They have all proven to be game-bendingly powerful, and are all restricted in tournament play. They are the most sought-after and expensive Magic cards in existence, all commanding enormous prices on the secondary market; $200-$2000 is typical for a single Power Nine card.
The Boons are notable because: They were the first and best-known cycle. With the exception of Dark Ritual, they define the single most characteristic ability of each color to this day.
The Dual Lands are notable because: They are the best two-color lands to this day, and are included in every multicolor deck in which they are legal, with no exceptions (to the best of my knowledge). Along with the Power Nine, this makes them the only "auto-include" cards in all decks of the appropriate colors that I know of. (Well, Lightning Bolt and Dark Ritual may also fit the bill). They are also surprisingly expensive on the secondary market.
I consider the following cards Runners-up: Birds of Paradise, Channel, Counterspell, Disenchant, Fireball, Grizzly Bears, Serra Angel, Shivan Dragon, Stone Rain, and Swords to Plowshares. These cards would likely all be notable if they had been introduced in a later set, but the blinding fame of the current Alpha notable cards simply overshadows them, IMO. -- Ashenai 16:35, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
I removed the dual lands; notable Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited cards should probably be cards that were only in Alpha, Beta, and Unlimited.
I added Chaos Orb, which is notable because: It was the first manual dexterity card, and there was only one other, ever, except for "Un" sets. It was also quite widely used while it was legal. -- Ashenai 01:06, 25 September 2005 (UTC)
Also, I think Swords to Plowshares is notable as an Alpha card, since it wasn't reprinted after about 1996 (Ice Age), and it is widely viewed as the best white removal card. It also defined what white "spot" creature removal would stand for: a universal (destroy creature instead of "destroy nonblack" etc.) removal spell that usually had the effect of enabling the creature's controller to benefit in some way (Afterlife, Reciprocate). Davemcarlson 23:37, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone find/make a picture that shows the differences between the corners of an alpha card and a non-alpha card? Setitup ( talk) 22:54, 28 August 2010 (UTC)
Consider this a formal merge proposal if anyone is watching. All 3 are just printings of the same set, there's no reason they can't all be covered in one article. The name should ideally be "Limited Edition" except that would surely be confusing due to one of the printings being, uh, "Unlimited." So as a fallback, I think "Alpha / Beta / Unlimited" would be a decent title for the merged piece.
Any objections? Title thoughts? SnowFire ( talk) 01:41, 3 October 2013 (UTC)
Many of the Magic: The Gathering Core Sets are short articles; most Core Sets consist of only reprinted cards. I suggest merging the core sets into between 3-5 articles
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) 18:43, 16 February 2015 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
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Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot ( Report bug) 10:38, 23 December 2017 (UTC)
Many of the links are currently broken, notably all the Alpha Oops article links and the /dev/Joe error list. There are probably more that I didn't check. Archive.org seems to have them all saved so it should just need updating with those links. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ruler501 ( talk • contribs) 19:00, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
Hello Leitmotiv,
There is explicitly no guidance in the Manual of Style for spacing style, precisely because it does not matter. See MOS:DOUBLE SPACE. It is up to the "local" editors on each article. Because it does not matter to readers, it is strictly a matter of editor preference of those who are working on the article and seeing the raw wikitext; it is not something that is to be "fixed" as the only change. If it was, then Wikipedia would have standardized on one style or the other, with the other being in error. "If it's so ignorable why don't you ignore it" - because your edit is the one that only changes spacing style and nothing else. That kind of edit goes against the keep-the-peace standard; should I run around adding double spaces to every article that is currently only single-spaced, even if I only rarely touch them? (Mindmatrix removed some double spaces too, but as part of an edit that was also making some other tweaks, so whatever.) SnowFire ( talk) 03:59, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
What possible argument is there for keeping the double spaces given that they don't even show up in the article? — Czello 18:54, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
Hello all. This has nothing to do with this article in particular. It has to do with whitespace-only edits. Like I said, if you want to propose a revision to the Manual of Style that imposes single-spacing, please do so on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. Speaking strictly factually here about Wikipedia policy - which is what I was communicating above - there is no such requirement to have single spaces, and editors are already discouraged from pointless, do-nothing, invisible-to-readers whitespace edits. That is what I reverted. Nothing to do with this particular article at all. Maybe some more attention to content would be more useful?
Finally, Leitmotiv, if you can cool the temperature slightly? You wouldn't insult people who write using different spellings than you're used to, correct? Then please accept that some people have different spacing styles as well. It's not "incorrect." It's just different. SnowFire ( talk) 21:41, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
I suppose I should offer a compromise here. Leitmotiv asked for "a valid reason why you should reinsert them". Just to be 100% clear, this is not the place to relitigate single vs. double spaces stylistically about which one is better. I'm not here as some double space evangelist to convince you that double spaces are better, and all of the above arguments about how single spaces are really better are similarly irrelevant to me. So let me explain why this Wikipedia policy is in place, although I think I kinda already did above: it's very similar to WP:RETAIN, the guideline for different national varieties of English. Suppose there are two productive, good faith editors. One writes the Apple article with single spaces (or European-style dates, or something else irrelevant) and does a good job. The other writes the Orange article with double spaces (or American-style dates, etc.) and does a good job. Furthermore, both of these editors maintain these articles over time, continuing to update them in the writing idiom they are comfortable in. Now suppose some drive-by editor comes in and disrupts them: they change Apple to double spaces, while a second drive-by editor of the reverse bent changes Orange to single spaces. This editor is attempting to "standardize" Wikipedia ono their preferred spacing scheme which they believe is superior to the other. What does this achieve? No matter which side you support, hopefully you can agree that these drive-by editors are not helping. At the absolute worst case, they are annoying or even driving away helpful, productive editors who wrote the content in one style. It's bad because it doesn't help readers, but it does hurt an editor, at least one of whom you agree with in this hypothetical example. Now, if these new editors were actually revising content? That's a different story. But if it's just a drive-by edit? That's not helpful. It's actually harmful to Wikipedia, because it makes editors stressed and wastes time in disputes like these. Both of these hypothetical drive-by editors should be reverted, including the one who is using "your" style! And indeed, if someone had come in and put double spaces on a single spaced article with no other changes, I'd have reverted them too. Despite preferring double spaces myself.
This is the entire point of the style guideline, essentially: to avoid pointless, time-wasting disputes that distract from real content work. For some matters of style, this is resolved with a rule: do it this way. For others, it is resolved by no rule: we don't care, and you shouldn't either. Do whatever you like if you are writing new content, but also don't go on a crusade against old content that doesn't fit your preference. If you do, you are wasting time, and should be reverted.
So that being said, I'm perfectly happy to concede on this particular article if there's a real desire for consistency in this article for some reason. Whatever. What I don't want is this taken as a license to run around removing double spaces everywhere on all articles because it's "better". There is no such policy. If I were to edit some section of another article we both follow using double spaces, then don't just follow it up with an edit saying "fixed your error" removing them or the like, because it doesn't matter and you shouldn't care, in the same way I wouldn't run around changing your articles to use double spaces with no further change. And yes, it sounds crazy, but people really have been banned for this kind of thing - editors who ran around making pointless whitespace only edits that gummed up watchlists for no apparent reason. ( Special:Contributions/Brogo13 for one recent-ish example.) SnowFire ( talk) 23:34, 3 November 2020 (UTC)
Clearly the only decent compromise is to remove every space from the article. Literally all of them. — Czello 22:13, 4 November 2020 (UTC)