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Fairies since the 9th edition set have been blue, and is well established since the Ravnica block --Nappidyne 14:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Since when have fairies been a blue thing? I thought that they belonged in green domain.
There's been a steady stream of updates from random anonymous users lately that have included information of... somewhat tangential value. The problem is, this article has reached the point where it's already over-complete, if anything. Often times the added information is elsewhere or just not relevant enough for an encyclopedic summary of the topic. This article is already long (note the warning whenever you edit); we don't need to include every possible fact relating to the game. These can be spun-off into the sub-articles. I'm just posting this here because if you see me reverting out information shortly, it's not vandalism, it's trying to enforce concision. I think it's still possible to eventually get featured article status, but adding bloat isn't going to help.
One other issue: Can we use Gatherer's artwork? I believe that Wizards is okay with using the small versions of actual Magic cards (they get annoyed at the high-res, large versions because they can be used to print good-looking proxies, I assume). After all, practically every Magic site on the 'net uses them, especially the ones selling Magic cards, and WotC hasn't complained. Still, I'll send a formal request on off to WotC just to make sure. A Shivan Dragon or Serra Angel heading up the article would probably be more dramatic than just a card back. This sound reasonable? SnowFire 18:30, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I moved the Notable People list off to Magic: The Gathering people, but that article is in need of some love. If someone more into the Pro Tour and the like than I am wants to have a go at that article, feel free. (Now that I think about it, I wonder if this even deserves a See Also in the Tourney organization section.... probably it's fine just on the bottom.) SnowFire 21:27, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Can someone please UNDO the latest edits on this article? These edits really do no help with making the page better, but rather removed a lot of very important information from the page. I have no clue myself how to do it, so hopefully a more advanced user can simply just undo the latest edit.Thanks. MrCyber 20:04, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
My recent revert probably deserves a quick disclaimer; I'm not trying to censor their existence, but this article is long and needs chopping if anything, not info that is quite peripheral. Furthermore, 222.153.125.49's content was inserted in an almost advertising-esque way, what with the hinting about the alternatives being free and earning store credit (from what I recall, worthlessly pathetic amounts, but details). We already mention those websites at the bottom with comments on how they run leagues and the like. I also think that bringing it up in the "Expense" section is the wrong place - if we were to bring up ways around the Expense, we should really mention proxy cards before even getting into Apprentice & Magic Workstation.
My suggestion would be that if we really want to have this information in here, we should just write up an article on them (possibly for each one, or maybe a "Free Online Magic: the Gathering Clients" article). Then we can mention that article in See Also, or have a sentence mention and wiki-link them when talking about Magic Online. That seem reasonable, people who want the article to mention Apprentice & Magic Workstation more?
(Oh, and as for the comment on the Pro Tour, while there is definitely relevance to that in Product & Marketing, all that information is already in the article.) SnowFire 13:25, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I think that
"the popular series of tournaments adds an element of prestige and weight to the game by virtue of the large payouts and media coverage from within the community. The system is similar to the ones used in golf, tennis and other professional sports. The company publicizes good players who win frequently in order to create a "star" system, and examples to which other players to follow and aspire."
just transmits wizards point of view unchallenged and with no alternatives offfered, the motivations of Wizards in running tournaments cannot be judged only from their press releases. The economic reasons for running the pro tour as a marketing exercise is the most plausible reason for the support of organised play, Hasbro is a company with a responsibility to shareholders not a charity. Many people in my area resent the pro tour because they consider that they are paying for the trips overseas and big prize payouts through the high price of boosters.
The history of apprentice and wizards relationship with the program should definately be included.
"While less functional methods of online play exist, Magic: The Gathering Online has perhaps the smoothest online play component among online CCG front-ends."
ok so if your going to mention that the "less functional" methods exist then you really have to mention the cost difference between the programs. If you read this having never played online before you could easily take this sentance to mean that MTGO is strictly better.
Oh, and no need for 'perhaps' this is the smoothest, it cleary is as it was professionaly designed, is frequently updated with new functionality etc. that is not in dispute. An artificial attempt to offer NPOV in my opinion.
The prominence of magic online over the free alternantives in this article is shocking, just because it is the official program of the company.
Mayby the number of people who use the other programs should be looked into, emailing the main leagues for their number of members, before you decide how dominant MTGO is.
The use of proxies in casual play would be an important addition.
Is a paragraph on the rancored elf controversy going to be added?
I think the alternative options for online play should be briefly mentioned (cost and quality difference) and instead of an article for magic-online we should have one article for all online magic.
I want to contribute constructvely to this article
hi, i was qouting
"While less functional methods of online play exist, Magic: The Gathering Online has perhaps the smoothest online play component among online CCG front-ends."
because i tried adding
"While less functional #free# methods of online play exist, Magic: The Gathering Online has perhaps the smoothest online play component among online CCG front-ends."
which was taken away
i completely agree that MTGO is by far the 'best' in terms of quality but the price difference is not included in this comparison.
obviously they are less functional but if that is the only mention of them then people don't get the full picture of the competing strengths and weakness of the different ways to play online.
"Apprentice & MWS are basically glorified chat programs that happen to let you have fake cards in front where you decide what they do. Adding rule support is a huge difference
there have been improvements from the old apprentice days, Magic Workstation has support for automatic dowload of the pictures and on the servers they host there are always enough people playing to get a type 2 game.
dont forget the vast majority of real life games are played without rules support
the most recent magic-league master had a $400 store credit prize for 1st
to be honest i just think that people should be able to get a fair picture of the main MTG online programs, it would take just a small sentance to cover that alternatives exist that while having no rules support or multiplayer are 1. free (including unlimited drafts) 2. new sets available as soon as spoiler is released.(in comparison to delayed release of sets on MTGO)
i think that under 'expense' this could be included
im not saying more people use the free programs, just that they are a significant enough minority to warrent attention, just like an article on personal computing wouldnt ignore the apple mac, so a sentence about apprentice/magic workstation next to the magic online one for balance, perhaps a sentance under expense.
so under expense i propose something along the lines of;
Some players who wish to play without paying the considerable price of obtaining the cards use 'proxies', buy the gold borderd tournament decks, or use the free magic software clients. An alternative to the considerable expense of taking part in the sanctioned competiive formats is the tournaments run by the magic leagues with prize support.
The prizes offered by wizards are mentioned and not considered blatent advertising ;-)
just got to say Snowfire, i really appreciate your collaborative and engaging responses. My 'expenses' bit is pretty poorly written. I think that the various responses of players to the strange aspect of this game we love (that one can be more competitive just by paying more for better cards) is very important and budget deck are just one player response. The impact on the culture of the game from 'buying power' are very significant and in my area at least only half the resentment of netdecks is their unorginality, people often get very annoyed at being beaten by so called power rares like the infamouse jitte. Yes in many casual games especially with looser formats people can easily find matchs with decks well balanced against each other. But many 'casual spikes' love to play the latest tier one constructions against each other.
So basically the 'Expense' section is a good start but in my opinion could be longer to include non 'building on a budget' player responses such as proxies and freeware mtg clients (their seimi/quasi legal status and the intentionally very low res anti proxy gather included).
The Expense aspect in my opinion fundamentally distinguishs magic from other popular strategy games, not because it costs money but because money put in has in game implications. Compare magic to bridge, risk, chess etc. The cultural impications of mtg expense/secondary market are very important.
Sorry if this post rambles/repeats itself,thank you for your understanding and helpful responses to a very junior wikipedian.
Im back for more LOL
i don't know how to do this myself or if its has previously been decided against, but what about links to www.magiclapoon.com and ugmadness.net?
I think these comic mtg sites are very influentital (i could find the qoute from Adam Forsythe in a wizards.com article praising UGmadness)
Stated in summary of edit by SnowFire: "It is already implied in the article; see "history." It just isn't relevant enough to mention in the first sentence." We are only talking about three letters here, it not as if we are going into great detail listing every single paper he ever took. Hence it is hardly excessive to mention he has a PhD, when you also realise it was in combinatorial mathematics I think that provides a very interesting insight into the person who then created this game. So all in all those three letter do provide a very healthy benifit to cost ratio, probably much better than if any other three letters in the sentance. So if you are really feeling a deep need to take out three letters why not pick some others? Mathmo 22:35, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
The Art of Magic the Gathering makes it what it is, we need to do more to display artworks and the legendary artists who made them.
Dfrg.msc 09:08, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
...and get them to let use their images on Wikipedia. Someone with a good scanner so that when they respond we can have proof. That would get copyright hounds off our back and could help in getting the article to FA status.
"Requests for permission to reproduce or distribute materials available through this Site should be mailed to: Legal Department, Attn: Usage Permissions Request, Wizards of the Coast, Inc., P.O. Box 707, Renton, WA 98057."
Can't hurt to try right? Specifically it would be nice to be able to use the 5 colors and the tap symbol along with the permission to use images of cards freely (then we could have a card showing what a land is, a creature, etc.) Additional, since it's referring to the Wizards site as a whole, we could also expand on other products Wizards is responsible for. Of course, that's if they let us. Don't see why they wouldn't though.-- SeizureDog 05:00, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I made a minor edit, "Setup time" should be listed as under 3 minutes instead of 5, as players have three minutes to shuffle and present their decks before a game begins. This is in accordance with DCI rules. ChocoCid 18:49, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
hey, does any body know if there is a magic the gathering wiki in english? Bud0011 04:04, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
MTGSalvation.com has made one, at http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Main_Page conveniently enough. I realize this might 'detract' from Wikipedia itself, but really, a Magic focused wiki can delve into subjects important to Magic, but too minor for Wikipedia itself to care about. 66.159.195.177 05:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
I have removed every unoffical site from the external links. It was becoming a mess of forums and podcasts. The guidelines state that we should only have ONE major fansite in the links. I think we need to discuss which sites should be linked to here. We should have no more than 5 links at most IMO. -- SeizureDog 11:07, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
I put back the five most important links. I kept the Aussie and Brit sites as there were complaints about the article being too Americentric. True, the USA is more important than all other countries combined, but the Brits and Aussies can say the same thing, and this is the English language version of MTG on Wiki. MTGSalvation is the highest profile of the nonspam sites, and is a frequent source of information on upcoming sites on Wiki. The math and storyline links seemed the best of the rest. All the various Apprentice and other online versions should be spun off into a separate article.-- Bedford 04:32, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Hello all, im new to this since ive just signed up, i use wikipedia everyday and i own one of the sites that was in the external links (mtgcast : a magic the gathering podcast network), I didnt add the link nor did i ask anyone to, it was added i guess by one of our listeners because i guess they thought we were relavent to the wiki, i guess this is a request for readmission from myself (i think this is the way it works), rather than just been 1 podcast we have 5 or 6 podcasts so only 1 link would be needed. im not complaining that the links were thinned out but we did get a lot of hits from the wiki (and not just robots) so i guess we were relavent to the wiki.. anyway this is probably the wrong way to do this but o well.. Quozt 15:50, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
no wikipedia is meant as a source of information, someone added a link as information I am requesting its placement back, as for my grammer, this is a "talk" section, there is no need to be so rude, I am not 100% sure how this works but one person does not have editoral rights over one article do they? 195.195.7.61 17:18, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Hello SeizureDog, I think it is highly improper and abuse of your position to degrade fellow posters not on the basis of their argument, but on English proficiency. It is also unbelievably offense and xenocentric to state "True, the USA is more important than all other countries combined..". I also agree with the above poster that by definition of Wikipedia, one person should not exert editorial rights over an article and belittle fellow users. I will be contacting the Wikipedia adminstration regarding your comments and actions. Gust0208 19:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Quozt 21:26, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
There will not be edit war since I have not added the link back, I was requesting that whoever removed check out the link and hopefully put it back, I know a lot of links are removed (as well as articles) because they are created by the owner as advertisements, but this wasnt, I only found out about the link from a link search in google, I felt SeizureDog's comment was personal, and having only just signed up to wikipedia and learning how to use the features as I go along, this was not a "welcome to wikipedia" more a grammer attack, yes I have trouble with grammer, but this is a discussion area not a published article.
but back to the topic of my original post, the link wasnt created by me, nor any of the podcasters on our network (as far as i know), the link was relevant, on topic, yes the site is quite new but its nothing to do with age, its to do with popularity, we have links from MTGSalvation, Magic Deck Vortex, MTGPlymoth, MTGYorkshire and quite a few other magic sites, we are the highest rated unoffical podcast on iTunes/podnova/yahoo podcasts for "magic the gathering" (when I last checked), I have to leave work now, but we can continue this banter when I get home. Quozt 19:49, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I added today (and now see has been removed) a link to the most popular alternative magic the gathering card database, magiccards.info. It is used by a large number of players since it has a much more robust advanced search engine when compared to Gatherer. I would be interested to hear the reasoning behind its removal. It is likely much more widely used than a few of the other non-official links and is very useful to a large number of magic players. Gust0208 02:07, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I think magiccards.info, mtgsalvation.com, starcitygames.com, brainburst.com are the most important ones, possibly phrexia.com would be a good one, but I'm not very familiar with that. ChocoCid 03:10, 14 June 2006 (UTC) As an additional note, "The Math of Magic", while probably not notable, is a very nice analysis of probability as related to the game, and should probably stay. ChocoCid 03:13, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I re-ordered the Official links based on notabilty; I think we can all agree that the main, official site should go first. That said, to prevent silly wars over which unofficial site is the most notable, I think alphabetical order is the only fair way to go there. SnowFire 16:04, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Thats 3 times at least I have seen that someone different has added MTGCast to the wiki and 3 times it has been removed... how come people are allowed to add other links but just not MTGCast?, we may be too new for Pagerank or Alexia (we have an alexia ranking now), I will continue to watch this topic but I dont want this getting personal.
-- Quozt 18:36, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I'm a total newbie to wiki but I know a few folks on this board from MTGSalvation, Starcity, and WOTC boards. I just wanted to update you on 3 of the sites.
Phyrexia.com is rarely updated, however it is the best reference I know of for magic storyline. Even then, it's incomplete in many places.
MTGSalvation would definitely qualify as a top site, while its articles aren't as comprehensive as Brainburst or Starcity, it is the top site in the US for rumor releases and as such has had both contentious and positive experiences with WOTC. (see the lawsuit against Rancored_Elf,)
I'm surprised Starcitygames is not linked. Many established pros write for the site much like brainburst, but I think it's main qualification for inclusion is this - While it's also a store, the current editor of Magicthegathering.com, Ted Knutson, is the former editor of Starcitygames. The Ferret (former editor of SCG) is now the Casual writer for Wizards. Ben Bliewiess is an employeed Writer for WOTC and is also the owner of StarCity.
10-2-2006 - "Bad Luck"
I believe that the Article on the Storyline should be extended. I mean i love Magic and I feel that the books are a big part of it. There are no descriptions of the books and the lists dont show which sets go in order.
The good news is that WotC came through on their side of the deal, much like Italy beating the Czech Republic. I got this in the email recently:
---
Dear Mr. ((My name)):
Thank you for contacting Wizards of the Coast, Inc. (“Wizards”) for permission to use Magic: The Gathering® trading card game images (the “Images”) in the Wikipedia article you are editing at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_the_gathering.
Wizards hereby grants you permission to use several, but no more than, twenty-four (24) Images solely in the Magic: The Gathering Wikipedia article. You agree to include in the copyright/legal text of the article the following: “Images used with permission of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.” For every Image inserted in the article, insert the following text near the Image: “© Wizards of the Coast, Inc. Image used with permission.”
You also covenant and agree to ensure that in no event shall the Images be used in any obscene manner, or in any derogatory or disparaging fashion towards either a third party, its products, or services, or Wizards, its parent company, Hasbro, Inc., their affiliates, or their respective products or services.
Thank you, and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me directly at (number).
Sincerely,
Andrew Smith
Assistant Brand Manager, Magic: The Gathering
---
Sounds fair enough to me. I really doubt we'll hit the 24 card limit, and the article isn't "derogatory" or "disparaging." Do note the limitation to just this article, though.
The bad news is, uh, on our side. Wikipedia seems to be determined to throw the ball game away; when I went to upload the image with the copyright issue nicely ironed out, I got to see the following gem on the licensing tag page:
Do not upload images for which one of the tags in this section applies. They will be deleted.
...
...
...
Presumably the policy was declared in a fit of madness brought on by entirely too much... sugar. It's okay to use "fair use" images where we don't have permission, but it's not okay to use images where we do have permission? Calling Mr. Kafka, please. I checked all the various Image Use pages on Wikipedia, but none of them actually bother explaining this policy. I mean, I can guess- mirrors would be annoyed that they can only take some of Wikipedia's content- but that's their problem, not ours. Not to mention, there's always alt text.
Anyway. I uploaded the images despite this, and grudgingly called them "fairer use." After all, I always thought that we really had fair use shots on any Magic card anyway- it's not like they aren't all right there on the WotC site and countless others, and they are lo-res. I stuck in the copyright information anyway as a courtesy, despite the fact that we are technically not using it with permission, because if we had permission that would be Bad. Note that I didn't quite tag the thumbnail description on each image; the request merely asked that the copyright be near each image, so I figure that Jeweled Bird & Lord of the Pit are near enough to each other that one copyright can cover 'em both.
Two important things are left for Featured Article status:
We also need to decide if the nice 6-card montage we'd been using before should be kept. I like it, but it is a bit small unless you click on it.
As a random other comment, now that the card back is elsewhere in the article, there's an uncomfortable amount of wasted space between the infobox and the table of contents at the beginning of the article. Anyone have any ideas on how to fill that? (Previously, the trivia on the card back helped a bit there). SnowFire 00:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
From Jan 2005 through April 2006 (see archives at top of page) per request. ~Kylu ( u| t) 06:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't we revert to the old back, because Shivan Dragon is merely one creature?
The Ronin 22:16, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
See: WP:VANITY. Especially note these parts:
That second rule may be a little extreme, but it's a good general rule (the exceptions are when Steven Hawking wants to help edit the article on Hawking radiation or the like). Now, to be honest, under the old page where we had a list of 20+ links, your article probably would have fit in fine. But we've been trying to slim that down to something more manageable. Plus, blog links are really bad, since they inherently self-promote. Does this newspaper have the article up in their online archives? That would be a much more suitable link, assuming the article is judged to be worthy of the list at all. SnowFire 13:45, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
What about card piracy, home made M:TG cards (Dante's Card Maker), computer games, alternate rules, competions, renowned cards ect? Should some of these not be covered?
User:Dfrg.msc File:DFRG. MSC.jpg
Netoholic and others have made some changes recently. I'll talk about the other issues later, but the image issues need to be discussed now before OrphanBot comes in and makes it more work to switch later.
-The Shivan Dragon / Card back issue has been dealt with above, and it seems roughly even. I won't revert it back to the SD since it seems to be close, but I stand by my preference for the dragon. That said, the newly uploaded version of the card back doesn't look very good; it's very dark. Should we go back to the old one?
-Netoholic said that the Jeweled Bird image "does not convey additional value." How do you come by that? Lots of players have never seen ante cards before (or only dimly recall them), and it's an example of what one is like. It gives something concrete to sit on and say "Oh, so it worked like that" as opposed to having some nebulous idea in your head (do you bet additional cards to the ante? Bidding on special cards? What?).
More generally (and including the removal of the Giant Growth picture), the guidelines for good articles do recommend a fair amount of images to spice things up. I don't see what we're gaining by reducing the number of relevant images we have. Plus, I am firmly of the opinion that the more cards that are in the article, the better. If someone is trying to understand biology, they need to actually go see some plants & animals and mess with them, not merely read about them in a text-only book. It's the same here. The best way to understand Magic is to see actual Magic cards.
-For the Patent issue, while I too have wanted to either source or remove some of the assertions there, Netoholic has removed the actual controversy part that merits it being in the "Controversies" section at all as opposed to the history. We definitely need at least some mention of the fact that WotC's patent is considered suspicious by some. SnowFire 16:05, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm confused. Isn't it obvious what the value is? Giant Growth is an illustration of a common spell type in the game for those who haven't played it. Jeweled Bird, while not illustrating ante, certainly illustrates ante cards, a distinction between Magic and most betting games (You can't show off a jack in poker and declare that there's another surprise round of betting, unlike Demonic Attorney). We could certainly write out some example ante cards in text, but the article is too long as is, and images spice things up and enhance readability while conveying the information just as well, if not better (since it also includes things like the artwork).
This was a bit ago, but I was actually thinking of eventually submitting this article for peer review after making various needed clean-ups and reference citing (but got distracted). From a linked article from Wikipedia:What is a featured article?, User:Jengod/Some common objections to featured status and how to avoid them:
Now, that's obviously a guideline and not a rule, but for reference, your version of the article contains roughly ~7387 words (ignoring references, See also, and links) and 6 images for a ratio of 1 image: 1230 words. I think it could definitely do with more pictures to improve the flow; are 8 or 9 images so horrible?
I find it weird that I have to explain how these add anything to the article. Should an article on birds feature pictures of birds? Should an article on Magic cards feature pictures of Magic cards? This seems like a no-brainer. Now, if you have better suggestions of pictures that you feel would be more appropriate, that's one thing, but simply removing a bunch of images when we're hardly overweight on the image side of things seems odd (we are definitely overweight on text; if you want to chop, I recommend starting there).
As for the controversies section, you are correct that the Collectible Card Games article is the place for it, hence the Main Article template there. That said, the section there needs to explain something about the dispute, preferably a concise summary. Abruptly leaving off with "there's a controversial patent, but we're not even going to hint as to why" isn't good style and leaves people who don't click the link in the lurch. You should at least have an idea of what you're glossing over for those who aren't following every link. SnowFire 20:19, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd prefer to avoid an edit war, but can you explain any further why you oppose pictures and explaining the patent objection, Netoholic? You reverted them out without any comment on the talk page. My above reasons for preferring them stand.
As for the Giant Growth picture, if Khaim can think of a better caption, that's fine, of course, as would a full-on replacement. I don't know if I'd agree with Grizzly Bears as a good replacement picture- it might be a little too simple. Something in the text box other than flavor text would be good, as the "2/2" isn't automatically obvious. Perhaps the currently stranded Shivan Dragon picture would work?
A few other issues: There's still a cite needed on the following passage.
This remark seems weirdly American-triumphalist. Now, I'm all about laughing at inefficient, "liberal Europe," but, uh, I don't see why the US would have such an advantage. American exporters would still have to pay the VAT and any duties. I don't see any reason why European companies wouldn't be able to compete just as well as American ones at something as simple as selling cards. I'm not saying that this is false, but can anyone explain or cite why?
It seems that The Dojo effect article has gone dead (it did exist at one time), and unsurprisingly so. Does anybody still use the term anymore? It was before my time, and I saw reference to it a few times on "back in the day" reminsces at SCG... but all I've heard actually used nowadays is simple "netdecking." I think it was novel for a time back when the Internet was not built into metagames, so they were very local; but now that's expected, so there's just "The Metagame," and of course it's affected by what's online. I'd be in favor of removing the reference, or at least dating it.
Also, the rules section has continued to grow back in detail. I don't think I agree with this; as noted a long while back (in the "to-do" list among other places), we want a simple and basic overview suitable for an unfamiliar audience. If people want to learn every detail of the rules, they can look at the rules page. SnowFire 20:48, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
I dont think magic battlegrounds really deserves a link as much as say apprentice or workstation, battlegrounds may have been licensed by wizards but that doesnt justify it as having a significant level of importance to the mtg community. Battlegrounds is a completly different game to magic wheras apprentics and workstation are different ways of playing the same game. Games made based on movies/tv dont merit links in other wikipedia articles, battlegrounds is at best a poor remake.
Can someone please explain why my link to starciygames was removed? It's arguably the premier site for tournament strategy, with many of the game's best players on its writing staff. RyanEberhart 07:59, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Kind of associated with the post above, but MTGOTraders has been relentlessly spamming the Magic: The Gathering Online article for the last three months (generally successfully, alas). This has included shifting links within the article to imply they are the main/only website that sells on Magic Online ( diff) as well as modifying valid links to official news releases to go to their site instead (see example diff). For those kinds of tactics along with the commercial nature of the site, I submitted a blacklist request (though these things take some time to process). That said, the person behind the account ( User:Blackangel63, created after the IP address being used before was on its last warning) has seemingly offered an olive branch and "only" wants to add it to the External Links now. Thoughts?
I personally think that to be consistent with the stand on SCG, a site with lots of valid content that happens to sell things, we need to also disallow MTGOTraders, a mainly commercial site that happens to also have some (admittedly useful) content. That said, perhaps we want to weaken that stance (and possibly save edit wars and having to have a site software-blacklisted). Figured that this is something requiring some input. SnowFire 21:19, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I think that mtgotraders and any other site of merit that offers free articles should be allowed on the unofficial list. I'm sorry for messing with the links and I had no idea it was that big of a deal. I will accept the internet flogging that I deserve.
Recently, Mike Long, Kai Budde and Jon Finkel have been proposed for deletion, as well as Magic: The Gathering people. I noticed that the main article lacks a link to the latter. Does anybody else think that would be worth moving back into this article, or keeping seperate? FrozenPurpleCube 14:22, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
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talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project.
Agne 21:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
Marblespire and Cloveious, I reverted your changes. For snow mana, I really don't think that's a topic of such great importance that it needs a paragraph in the main article any more than Rebels or Mishra's Workshop need to be mentioned. There are tons of Magic concepts, but we need to focus on the heart of the matter with a clean overview. Perhaps a one-sentence mention of snow in passing can be worked in later. As for your comments Marblespire, myself I am very leery of any comments on games that mention "X is only for expert use" or "B is ." There are only 5 colors in Magic, and saying things like "Blue is also the hardest to play well," while not necessarily false, demands a lot more clarification. It's not something I'd leave hanging without a lot more chatting about the nature of the color wheel- perhaps appropriate if we were to fork off an article on the color wheel, but even still, it'd be very easy to dive into Original Research.
As a general note, I intend to go through the article again soon and try and add some cites and reverse some accumulated build-up of inconsistent edits. I'm still not convinced by Netoholic's repeated reversion away from the other card images in the article, but I laid off fighting the war at the time; I'll probably put a few of those images back, seeing as there wasn't any further development of that debate from before. Any objections/comments to this? SnowFire 03:46, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Netoholic, in order to avoid a stupid edit war, I held off fighting this issue much before- in fact, I took a long break from this article entirely to avoid that stupidity. I acquiesed to your picture removing for now because I'd posted a reply to your non-argument in favor of removal on the talk page and was waiting for a response. Wikipedia civility guidelines generally prefer people hash out a tough topic on the talk page and then edit, rather than have a revert war going back and forth. The fact that I stopped fighting the revert war before doesn't mean you'd "won." Since it'd been awhile and you never replied, I decided to put back just one of the pictures as a compromise (and since others had raised concerns about the other one). Wikipedia works on consensus, believe it or not- despite the fact that I've done a fair amount of editing lately, if the consensus disagreed with a part I preferred, I'd shrug and move on. Can't always get your way.
All my arguments at Talk:Magic:_The_Gathering#Recent_shifts. above still stand. Your only argument was:
"Does not add anything" is totally unhelpful as to why you think it should be removed. It's pretty close to saying just "I don't like it." I've already detailed why it does, in my opinion, "add something" and help illustrate ante (at least without making the text wordier). Again, if you can suggest something better, than fine! Heck, you might even convince me I'm wrong. But you're going to have to explain more than "Does not add anything" backed by reverts. SnowFire 13:59, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, first, I'd say it's because there was an AfD on it, and I've got to agree, RRD doesn't deserve its own article. At most, Magic Variants get an article, and that's possibly a stretch. Besides, I noticed that the section on Variants didn't mention anything about Draft variants. Since RRD has been talked about on Wizards.com I think it's notable and verifiable enough to get a place, unless somebody has something else to add.
BTW, I just noticed, there's no mention of Rochester Draft anywhere in this article. Is there a reason for that? FrozenPurpleCube 14:48, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
While I believe that changing colour to color is complete rubbish, if warring breaks out as a result of the spelling, one decision is to set the spelling by the first primary author. Which, by that precedent, is in fact color not colour.
Like I said, this is complete rubbish that some people have to make an issue out of it. Either way is spelled properly. -- myselfalso 04:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I have tried to reduce the game plan section to their bare mechanics by:
- removing or summarizing redundant information - removing the common creature types for each color - not entirely useful, important, and plus, alot of types are shared between colors. - sections referencing advanced players or techniques - typically, this information doesnt apply much to a community, such as excyclopedia readers, who are unaware of the game before this. - moved alot of info, such as the list of Mark Roosewater's color articles, to references, as they dont directly contribute to the article, yet are good reinforcement to what has been said. - a bunch of other edits I unfortunately cannot seem to remember in detail.
I hope it's a good first edit, and if it was a mistake for me to make it, I wont be offended if it gets reverted. Also, it seemed to have logged me out as I was editing, so it was actually I who performed it.
Also, a question: is the enemy/allied color descriptions really necessary? Flashstorm 21:16, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
One point in the article it says Magic has "over 8000" cards, later it says "over 8400". While both could technically be true, it would probably be good to have the number consistant throughout the article.
-- Khaim 13:52, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
The issue brought up before at Talk:Magic: The Gathering#MTGOTraders have resurfaced again. The person who runs MTGOTraders put in a request to have MTGOTraders taken off the spam block list over at the Wikimedia website (see [2], and asked that I bring up the matter (I was the one who submitted the original blacklist request, after all). Since there seems to be less confusion about how Wikipedia works now, it seems more likely that an external link on the MTGO article would be used as WP style rather than infusing links into the article text.
Anyway. I will once again raise the issue: Do we want to open the door to commercial sites in the External Links? As a reminder, Wikipedia:External links does say that "External links should be used sparingly and kept to a minimum. Wikipedia is not a web directory." The "no commercial" clause also allows for easy removal of any non-notable spammer site without having to debate the relative merits of the site.
However, I can't help but think that an EL section without starcitygames and its large backlog of free history and strategy is incomplete. Wizards.com has linked to "classic" articles on SCG quite a few times. And, despite being a commericial site, mtgotraders does offer some useful MTGO-specific information and was recently linked to from wizards.com. If a very high bar is set, with it clear that any commerical site can only be added to EL in spite of its commericial nature, I think we could loosen the policy. Any thoughts? (No comments, like before, will probably mean status quo.)
--
Also, while I'm here, re: Uriel's recent edits. To add "both of which are heavily marketed and aimed at a younger audience" to "Magic’s gross card sales have been surpassed in recent years..." makes it seem defensive for Magic; the implication is that Magic would have done just fine if these evil new games weren't so well marketed. While this may be true, it isn't really the place for the article to say. As for MTGO, while gambling is forbidden, that has more to do with avoiding getting sued or prosecuted in places where gambling is illegal; old ante cards simply aren't implemented. I think the "forbidden on MTGO" phrasing implies that ante cards exist there, and just can't be used in sanctioned events. SnowFire 03:17, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
What are foils? Its mentioned in the text, but i'm not sure what they are exactly. Thanks.
I really highly doubt this. Magic has always been the biggest TCG of them all. As far as I know, Pokemon rather went bust around Fossil and secondary market crashed. And Yu-Gi-Oh! always was a bit of a joke; too many redundancies. Unless this is referring to a worldwide view (I'm not sure if they suddenly went major in Japan or something), I'm willing to bet Magic is still going strong.-- SeizureDog 01:38, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
The Black Lotus card pictured is from Unlimited (note the white border), whilst the caption under it refers to the Alpha Black Lotus, which would have a black border and rounded corners. --Random Guest —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 74.134.225.210 ( talk • contribs) 12:32, 3 December 2006 (UTC).
Why are all articles based on future blocks merged with articles which are based on the first set of the block? Time Spiral article is about both the set and the block; while Planar Chaos gets an article of its own. I don't think the names of the sets should determine where the articles go (it's only because Time Spiral is named after the block is it in the same article -- I believe there are other articles on Wiki which don't do this); there should be a separate article for the block, and then one for the large set named after the block --- 1 contains info about general storyline, info on the block as a whole; while the other is specifically about the first set of the block. Can someone take note of this in the future so that the articles are done right?
I think the people who catch up with making these articles are from an MTG Wikipedia Group (their job is to do articles on everything MTG). I don't know where to find them, so can someone from there take note of this request? 24.23.51.27 23:13, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
If people want to cut down on the size of this article, it seems that a good place to start would be at the oh-so-in-depth descriptions of the symbolosim of each color type, like all those abstract qualities. Not being a seriosu player, I don't feel I have the right to know which priorities to choose (Is it more important that White is "righteous" or "lawful"?, etc). -- 192.154.65.1 20:20, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
The rules on international selling are already mentioned in the Product and Marketing section, I believe. If you feel that there's a relevant expansion, go for it, but I'm not sure what else there is to say. As for writer poaching... come on, that's utterly common. Major publishing houses and magazines do this literally all the time, and frankly, I'm not so sure people consider it a bad thing if a talented independent writer can be noticed and "picked up." (This isn't even mentioned at most magazine articles here on Wikipedia, and magicthegathering.com is way less notable than, say, TIME or the Washington Post). As for "controlling the information flow," again, that's called "doing their job." Every single product producer better be controlling the information flow about their product, and I'll add that Wizards is infinitely more open about their process than 95% of other corporations (do supermarkets want you to know how your hamburger was really made? That would be a "no.") SnowFire 17:52, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
One of the image captions has outdated information. It says that Beta Black Lotus would be most expensive 'normal' card, even though the Alpha one has been more expensive for a few years now. This is due to a DCI policy change: You are now allowed to play a mix of Alpha cards and other cards in tournaments, if you use hard-ish and opaque sleeves. This equalizes the gameplay value for Alpha and Beta cards, so now only the actual printing frequency of these two sets determines the collector aspect value; Alpha had smaller print, so Alpha rares are more expensive now. I'm going to change the caption right away without discussion, since this is verifiable fact. 130.231.89.99 13:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC) Matti Nuortio, Oulu, Finland
since i havent played this game in years, and never intensively anyway, i dont just wanna go ahead and edit. but shouldnt it mention 1. that for 'white' actually the color yellow is often used, such as on the back of the card, which color is much closer to yellow then it is to white. 2. that white is good with the use of enchantments as well as destroying them. 3. that green often uses or is good with mass attacks with lots of huge creatures. 4. i remember in our school we used to use a rule that you shuffled your land cards and all your other cards seperately and then mixed them together 1 by 2 or just about 1 by 2. if that rule has been used more often it should probably have a mention in "luck versus skill". Lygophile has spoken 20:17, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps I'm missing it but I don't see much talk about any of the actual strategy of game-play. After doing a lot of reading on chess and all the various entries dedicated to the strategy of that game, I think this is far too important a topic to ignore. Indeed, I see it as the key distinguishing feature between M:tG and other, less enduring collectible card games, and I think it entitles the game to more credible exploration than less involved games. I think that it could encompass and expand considerably on the "deck types" page, as the old classification of the Aggro-Control-Combo meta-game has almost completely disappeared in terms of relevant strategy. Malichai 22:50, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Noticed this site was added just after my last edit to the page, " Magic-League A website for MTG-online playing / Netdecking". I'm tempted to remove it, but thought there is no harm in first checking with other more active players of magic than myself to see if this site ought to be kept or not. Mathmo Talk 17:05, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Fairies since the 9th edition set have been blue, and is well established since the Ravnica block --Nappidyne 14:44, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Since when have fairies been a blue thing? I thought that they belonged in green domain.
There's been a steady stream of updates from random anonymous users lately that have included information of... somewhat tangential value. The problem is, this article has reached the point where it's already over-complete, if anything. Often times the added information is elsewhere or just not relevant enough for an encyclopedic summary of the topic. This article is already long (note the warning whenever you edit); we don't need to include every possible fact relating to the game. These can be spun-off into the sub-articles. I'm just posting this here because if you see me reverting out information shortly, it's not vandalism, it's trying to enforce concision. I think it's still possible to eventually get featured article status, but adding bloat isn't going to help.
One other issue: Can we use Gatherer's artwork? I believe that Wizards is okay with using the small versions of actual Magic cards (they get annoyed at the high-res, large versions because they can be used to print good-looking proxies, I assume). After all, practically every Magic site on the 'net uses them, especially the ones selling Magic cards, and WotC hasn't complained. Still, I'll send a formal request on off to WotC just to make sure. A Shivan Dragon or Serra Angel heading up the article would probably be more dramatic than just a card back. This sound reasonable? SnowFire 18:30, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. I moved the Notable People list off to Magic: The Gathering people, but that article is in need of some love. If someone more into the Pro Tour and the like than I am wants to have a go at that article, feel free. (Now that I think about it, I wonder if this even deserves a See Also in the Tourney organization section.... probably it's fine just on the bottom.) SnowFire 21:27, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Can someone please UNDO the latest edits on this article? These edits really do no help with making the page better, but rather removed a lot of very important information from the page. I have no clue myself how to do it, so hopefully a more advanced user can simply just undo the latest edit.Thanks. MrCyber 20:04, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
My recent revert probably deserves a quick disclaimer; I'm not trying to censor their existence, but this article is long and needs chopping if anything, not info that is quite peripheral. Furthermore, 222.153.125.49's content was inserted in an almost advertising-esque way, what with the hinting about the alternatives being free and earning store credit (from what I recall, worthlessly pathetic amounts, but details). We already mention those websites at the bottom with comments on how they run leagues and the like. I also think that bringing it up in the "Expense" section is the wrong place - if we were to bring up ways around the Expense, we should really mention proxy cards before even getting into Apprentice & Magic Workstation.
My suggestion would be that if we really want to have this information in here, we should just write up an article on them (possibly for each one, or maybe a "Free Online Magic: the Gathering Clients" article). Then we can mention that article in See Also, or have a sentence mention and wiki-link them when talking about Magic Online. That seem reasonable, people who want the article to mention Apprentice & Magic Workstation more?
(Oh, and as for the comment on the Pro Tour, while there is definitely relevance to that in Product & Marketing, all that information is already in the article.) SnowFire 13:25, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
I think that
"the popular series of tournaments adds an element of prestige and weight to the game by virtue of the large payouts and media coverage from within the community. The system is similar to the ones used in golf, tennis and other professional sports. The company publicizes good players who win frequently in order to create a "star" system, and examples to which other players to follow and aspire."
just transmits wizards point of view unchallenged and with no alternatives offfered, the motivations of Wizards in running tournaments cannot be judged only from their press releases. The economic reasons for running the pro tour as a marketing exercise is the most plausible reason for the support of organised play, Hasbro is a company with a responsibility to shareholders not a charity. Many people in my area resent the pro tour because they consider that they are paying for the trips overseas and big prize payouts through the high price of boosters.
The history of apprentice and wizards relationship with the program should definately be included.
"While less functional methods of online play exist, Magic: The Gathering Online has perhaps the smoothest online play component among online CCG front-ends."
ok so if your going to mention that the "less functional" methods exist then you really have to mention the cost difference between the programs. If you read this having never played online before you could easily take this sentance to mean that MTGO is strictly better.
Oh, and no need for 'perhaps' this is the smoothest, it cleary is as it was professionaly designed, is frequently updated with new functionality etc. that is not in dispute. An artificial attempt to offer NPOV in my opinion.
The prominence of magic online over the free alternantives in this article is shocking, just because it is the official program of the company.
Mayby the number of people who use the other programs should be looked into, emailing the main leagues for their number of members, before you decide how dominant MTGO is.
The use of proxies in casual play would be an important addition.
Is a paragraph on the rancored elf controversy going to be added?
I think the alternative options for online play should be briefly mentioned (cost and quality difference) and instead of an article for magic-online we should have one article for all online magic.
I want to contribute constructvely to this article
hi, i was qouting
"While less functional methods of online play exist, Magic: The Gathering Online has perhaps the smoothest online play component among online CCG front-ends."
because i tried adding
"While less functional #free# methods of online play exist, Magic: The Gathering Online has perhaps the smoothest online play component among online CCG front-ends."
which was taken away
i completely agree that MTGO is by far the 'best' in terms of quality but the price difference is not included in this comparison.
obviously they are less functional but if that is the only mention of them then people don't get the full picture of the competing strengths and weakness of the different ways to play online.
"Apprentice & MWS are basically glorified chat programs that happen to let you have fake cards in front where you decide what they do. Adding rule support is a huge difference
there have been improvements from the old apprentice days, Magic Workstation has support for automatic dowload of the pictures and on the servers they host there are always enough people playing to get a type 2 game.
dont forget the vast majority of real life games are played without rules support
the most recent magic-league master had a $400 store credit prize for 1st
to be honest i just think that people should be able to get a fair picture of the main MTG online programs, it would take just a small sentance to cover that alternatives exist that while having no rules support or multiplayer are 1. free (including unlimited drafts) 2. new sets available as soon as spoiler is released.(in comparison to delayed release of sets on MTGO)
i think that under 'expense' this could be included
im not saying more people use the free programs, just that they are a significant enough minority to warrent attention, just like an article on personal computing wouldnt ignore the apple mac, so a sentence about apprentice/magic workstation next to the magic online one for balance, perhaps a sentance under expense.
so under expense i propose something along the lines of;
Some players who wish to play without paying the considerable price of obtaining the cards use 'proxies', buy the gold borderd tournament decks, or use the free magic software clients. An alternative to the considerable expense of taking part in the sanctioned competiive formats is the tournaments run by the magic leagues with prize support.
The prizes offered by wizards are mentioned and not considered blatent advertising ;-)
just got to say Snowfire, i really appreciate your collaborative and engaging responses. My 'expenses' bit is pretty poorly written. I think that the various responses of players to the strange aspect of this game we love (that one can be more competitive just by paying more for better cards) is very important and budget deck are just one player response. The impact on the culture of the game from 'buying power' are very significant and in my area at least only half the resentment of netdecks is their unorginality, people often get very annoyed at being beaten by so called power rares like the infamouse jitte. Yes in many casual games especially with looser formats people can easily find matchs with decks well balanced against each other. But many 'casual spikes' love to play the latest tier one constructions against each other.
So basically the 'Expense' section is a good start but in my opinion could be longer to include non 'building on a budget' player responses such as proxies and freeware mtg clients (their seimi/quasi legal status and the intentionally very low res anti proxy gather included).
The Expense aspect in my opinion fundamentally distinguishs magic from other popular strategy games, not because it costs money but because money put in has in game implications. Compare magic to bridge, risk, chess etc. The cultural impications of mtg expense/secondary market are very important.
Sorry if this post rambles/repeats itself,thank you for your understanding and helpful responses to a very junior wikipedian.
Im back for more LOL
i don't know how to do this myself or if its has previously been decided against, but what about links to www.magiclapoon.com and ugmadness.net?
I think these comic mtg sites are very influentital (i could find the qoute from Adam Forsythe in a wizards.com article praising UGmadness)
Stated in summary of edit by SnowFire: "It is already implied in the article; see "history." It just isn't relevant enough to mention in the first sentence." We are only talking about three letters here, it not as if we are going into great detail listing every single paper he ever took. Hence it is hardly excessive to mention he has a PhD, when you also realise it was in combinatorial mathematics I think that provides a very interesting insight into the person who then created this game. So all in all those three letter do provide a very healthy benifit to cost ratio, probably much better than if any other three letters in the sentance. So if you are really feeling a deep need to take out three letters why not pick some others? Mathmo 22:35, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
The Art of Magic the Gathering makes it what it is, we need to do more to display artworks and the legendary artists who made them.
Dfrg.msc 09:08, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
...and get them to let use their images on Wikipedia. Someone with a good scanner so that when they respond we can have proof. That would get copyright hounds off our back and could help in getting the article to FA status.
"Requests for permission to reproduce or distribute materials available through this Site should be mailed to: Legal Department, Attn: Usage Permissions Request, Wizards of the Coast, Inc., P.O. Box 707, Renton, WA 98057."
Can't hurt to try right? Specifically it would be nice to be able to use the 5 colors and the tap symbol along with the permission to use images of cards freely (then we could have a card showing what a land is, a creature, etc.) Additional, since it's referring to the Wizards site as a whole, we could also expand on other products Wizards is responsible for. Of course, that's if they let us. Don't see why they wouldn't though.-- SeizureDog 05:00, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
I made a minor edit, "Setup time" should be listed as under 3 minutes instead of 5, as players have three minutes to shuffle and present their decks before a game begins. This is in accordance with DCI rules. ChocoCid 18:49, 4 June 2006 (UTC)
hey, does any body know if there is a magic the gathering wiki in english? Bud0011 04:04, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
MTGSalvation.com has made one, at http://wiki.mtgsalvation.com/article/Main_Page conveniently enough. I realize this might 'detract' from Wikipedia itself, but really, a Magic focused wiki can delve into subjects important to Magic, but too minor for Wikipedia itself to care about. 66.159.195.177 05:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
I have removed every unoffical site from the external links. It was becoming a mess of forums and podcasts. The guidelines state that we should only have ONE major fansite in the links. I think we need to discuss which sites should be linked to here. We should have no more than 5 links at most IMO. -- SeizureDog 11:07, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
I put back the five most important links. I kept the Aussie and Brit sites as there were complaints about the article being too Americentric. True, the USA is more important than all other countries combined, but the Brits and Aussies can say the same thing, and this is the English language version of MTG on Wiki. MTGSalvation is the highest profile of the nonspam sites, and is a frequent source of information on upcoming sites on Wiki. The math and storyline links seemed the best of the rest. All the various Apprentice and other online versions should be spun off into a separate article.-- Bedford 04:32, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Hello all, im new to this since ive just signed up, i use wikipedia everyday and i own one of the sites that was in the external links (mtgcast : a magic the gathering podcast network), I didnt add the link nor did i ask anyone to, it was added i guess by one of our listeners because i guess they thought we were relavent to the wiki, i guess this is a request for readmission from myself (i think this is the way it works), rather than just been 1 podcast we have 5 or 6 podcasts so only 1 link would be needed. im not complaining that the links were thinned out but we did get a lot of hits from the wiki (and not just robots) so i guess we were relavent to the wiki.. anyway this is probably the wrong way to do this but o well.. Quozt 15:50, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
no wikipedia is meant as a source of information, someone added a link as information I am requesting its placement back, as for my grammer, this is a "talk" section, there is no need to be so rude, I am not 100% sure how this works but one person does not have editoral rights over one article do they? 195.195.7.61 17:18, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Hello SeizureDog, I think it is highly improper and abuse of your position to degrade fellow posters not on the basis of their argument, but on English proficiency. It is also unbelievably offense and xenocentric to state "True, the USA is more important than all other countries combined..". I also agree with the above poster that by definition of Wikipedia, one person should not exert editorial rights over an article and belittle fellow users. I will be contacting the Wikipedia adminstration regarding your comments and actions. Gust0208 19:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Quozt 21:26, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
There will not be edit war since I have not added the link back, I was requesting that whoever removed check out the link and hopefully put it back, I know a lot of links are removed (as well as articles) because they are created by the owner as advertisements, but this wasnt, I only found out about the link from a link search in google, I felt SeizureDog's comment was personal, and having only just signed up to wikipedia and learning how to use the features as I go along, this was not a "welcome to wikipedia" more a grammer attack, yes I have trouble with grammer, but this is a discussion area not a published article.
but back to the topic of my original post, the link wasnt created by me, nor any of the podcasters on our network (as far as i know), the link was relevant, on topic, yes the site is quite new but its nothing to do with age, its to do with popularity, we have links from MTGSalvation, Magic Deck Vortex, MTGPlymoth, MTGYorkshire and quite a few other magic sites, we are the highest rated unoffical podcast on iTunes/podnova/yahoo podcasts for "magic the gathering" (when I last checked), I have to leave work now, but we can continue this banter when I get home. Quozt 19:49, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
I added today (and now see has been removed) a link to the most popular alternative magic the gathering card database, magiccards.info. It is used by a large number of players since it has a much more robust advanced search engine when compared to Gatherer. I would be interested to hear the reasoning behind its removal. It is likely much more widely used than a few of the other non-official links and is very useful to a large number of magic players. Gust0208 02:07, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I think magiccards.info, mtgsalvation.com, starcitygames.com, brainburst.com are the most important ones, possibly phrexia.com would be a good one, but I'm not very familiar with that. ChocoCid 03:10, 14 June 2006 (UTC) As an additional note, "The Math of Magic", while probably not notable, is a very nice analysis of probability as related to the game, and should probably stay. ChocoCid 03:13, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
I re-ordered the Official links based on notabilty; I think we can all agree that the main, official site should go first. That said, to prevent silly wars over which unofficial site is the most notable, I think alphabetical order is the only fair way to go there. SnowFire 16:04, 14 June 2006 (UTC)
Thats 3 times at least I have seen that someone different has added MTGCast to the wiki and 3 times it has been removed... how come people are allowed to add other links but just not MTGCast?, we may be too new for Pagerank or Alexia (we have an alexia ranking now), I will continue to watch this topic but I dont want this getting personal.
-- Quozt 18:36, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I'm a total newbie to wiki but I know a few folks on this board from MTGSalvation, Starcity, and WOTC boards. I just wanted to update you on 3 of the sites.
Phyrexia.com is rarely updated, however it is the best reference I know of for magic storyline. Even then, it's incomplete in many places.
MTGSalvation would definitely qualify as a top site, while its articles aren't as comprehensive as Brainburst or Starcity, it is the top site in the US for rumor releases and as such has had both contentious and positive experiences with WOTC. (see the lawsuit against Rancored_Elf,)
I'm surprised Starcitygames is not linked. Many established pros write for the site much like brainburst, but I think it's main qualification for inclusion is this - While it's also a store, the current editor of Magicthegathering.com, Ted Knutson, is the former editor of Starcitygames. The Ferret (former editor of SCG) is now the Casual writer for Wizards. Ben Bliewiess is an employeed Writer for WOTC and is also the owner of StarCity.
10-2-2006 - "Bad Luck"
I believe that the Article on the Storyline should be extended. I mean i love Magic and I feel that the books are a big part of it. There are no descriptions of the books and the lists dont show which sets go in order.
The good news is that WotC came through on their side of the deal, much like Italy beating the Czech Republic. I got this in the email recently:
---
Dear Mr. ((My name)):
Thank you for contacting Wizards of the Coast, Inc. (“Wizards”) for permission to use Magic: The Gathering® trading card game images (the “Images”) in the Wikipedia article you are editing at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_the_gathering.
Wizards hereby grants you permission to use several, but no more than, twenty-four (24) Images solely in the Magic: The Gathering Wikipedia article. You agree to include in the copyright/legal text of the article the following: “Images used with permission of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.” For every Image inserted in the article, insert the following text near the Image: “© Wizards of the Coast, Inc. Image used with permission.”
You also covenant and agree to ensure that in no event shall the Images be used in any obscene manner, or in any derogatory or disparaging fashion towards either a third party, its products, or services, or Wizards, its parent company, Hasbro, Inc., their affiliates, or their respective products or services.
Thank you, and if you have any questions, feel free to contact me directly at (number).
Sincerely,
Andrew Smith
Assistant Brand Manager, Magic: The Gathering
---
Sounds fair enough to me. I really doubt we'll hit the 24 card limit, and the article isn't "derogatory" or "disparaging." Do note the limitation to just this article, though.
The bad news is, uh, on our side. Wikipedia seems to be determined to throw the ball game away; when I went to upload the image with the copyright issue nicely ironed out, I got to see the following gem on the licensing tag page:
Do not upload images for which one of the tags in this section applies. They will be deleted.
...
...
...
Presumably the policy was declared in a fit of madness brought on by entirely too much... sugar. It's okay to use "fair use" images where we don't have permission, but it's not okay to use images where we do have permission? Calling Mr. Kafka, please. I checked all the various Image Use pages on Wikipedia, but none of them actually bother explaining this policy. I mean, I can guess- mirrors would be annoyed that they can only take some of Wikipedia's content- but that's their problem, not ours. Not to mention, there's always alt text.
Anyway. I uploaded the images despite this, and grudgingly called them "fairer use." After all, I always thought that we really had fair use shots on any Magic card anyway- it's not like they aren't all right there on the WotC site and countless others, and they are lo-res. I stuck in the copyright information anyway as a courtesy, despite the fact that we are technically not using it with permission, because if we had permission that would be Bad. Note that I didn't quite tag the thumbnail description on each image; the request merely asked that the copyright be near each image, so I figure that Jeweled Bird & Lord of the Pit are near enough to each other that one copyright can cover 'em both.
Two important things are left for Featured Article status:
We also need to decide if the nice 6-card montage we'd been using before should be kept. I like it, but it is a bit small unless you click on it.
As a random other comment, now that the card back is elsewhere in the article, there's an uncomfortable amount of wasted space between the infobox and the table of contents at the beginning of the article. Anyone have any ideas on how to fill that? (Previously, the trivia on the card back helped a bit there). SnowFire 00:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
From Jan 2005 through April 2006 (see archives at top of page) per request. ~Kylu ( u| t) 06:11, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't we revert to the old back, because Shivan Dragon is merely one creature?
The Ronin 22:16, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
See: WP:VANITY. Especially note these parts:
That second rule may be a little extreme, but it's a good general rule (the exceptions are when Steven Hawking wants to help edit the article on Hawking radiation or the like). Now, to be honest, under the old page where we had a list of 20+ links, your article probably would have fit in fine. But we've been trying to slim that down to something more manageable. Plus, blog links are really bad, since they inherently self-promote. Does this newspaper have the article up in their online archives? That would be a much more suitable link, assuming the article is judged to be worthy of the list at all. SnowFire 13:45, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
What about card piracy, home made M:TG cards (Dante's Card Maker), computer games, alternate rules, competions, renowned cards ect? Should some of these not be covered?
User:Dfrg.msc File:DFRG. MSC.jpg
Netoholic and others have made some changes recently. I'll talk about the other issues later, but the image issues need to be discussed now before OrphanBot comes in and makes it more work to switch later.
-The Shivan Dragon / Card back issue has been dealt with above, and it seems roughly even. I won't revert it back to the SD since it seems to be close, but I stand by my preference for the dragon. That said, the newly uploaded version of the card back doesn't look very good; it's very dark. Should we go back to the old one?
-Netoholic said that the Jeweled Bird image "does not convey additional value." How do you come by that? Lots of players have never seen ante cards before (or only dimly recall them), and it's an example of what one is like. It gives something concrete to sit on and say "Oh, so it worked like that" as opposed to having some nebulous idea in your head (do you bet additional cards to the ante? Bidding on special cards? What?).
More generally (and including the removal of the Giant Growth picture), the guidelines for good articles do recommend a fair amount of images to spice things up. I don't see what we're gaining by reducing the number of relevant images we have. Plus, I am firmly of the opinion that the more cards that are in the article, the better. If someone is trying to understand biology, they need to actually go see some plants & animals and mess with them, not merely read about them in a text-only book. It's the same here. The best way to understand Magic is to see actual Magic cards.
-For the Patent issue, while I too have wanted to either source or remove some of the assertions there, Netoholic has removed the actual controversy part that merits it being in the "Controversies" section at all as opposed to the history. We definitely need at least some mention of the fact that WotC's patent is considered suspicious by some. SnowFire 16:05, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm confused. Isn't it obvious what the value is? Giant Growth is an illustration of a common spell type in the game for those who haven't played it. Jeweled Bird, while not illustrating ante, certainly illustrates ante cards, a distinction between Magic and most betting games (You can't show off a jack in poker and declare that there's another surprise round of betting, unlike Demonic Attorney). We could certainly write out some example ante cards in text, but the article is too long as is, and images spice things up and enhance readability while conveying the information just as well, if not better (since it also includes things like the artwork).
This was a bit ago, but I was actually thinking of eventually submitting this article for peer review after making various needed clean-ups and reference citing (but got distracted). From a linked article from Wikipedia:What is a featured article?, User:Jengod/Some common objections to featured status and how to avoid them:
Now, that's obviously a guideline and not a rule, but for reference, your version of the article contains roughly ~7387 words (ignoring references, See also, and links) and 6 images for a ratio of 1 image: 1230 words. I think it could definitely do with more pictures to improve the flow; are 8 or 9 images so horrible?
I find it weird that I have to explain how these add anything to the article. Should an article on birds feature pictures of birds? Should an article on Magic cards feature pictures of Magic cards? This seems like a no-brainer. Now, if you have better suggestions of pictures that you feel would be more appropriate, that's one thing, but simply removing a bunch of images when we're hardly overweight on the image side of things seems odd (we are definitely overweight on text; if you want to chop, I recommend starting there).
As for the controversies section, you are correct that the Collectible Card Games article is the place for it, hence the Main Article template there. That said, the section there needs to explain something about the dispute, preferably a concise summary. Abruptly leaving off with "there's a controversial patent, but we're not even going to hint as to why" isn't good style and leaves people who don't click the link in the lurch. You should at least have an idea of what you're glossing over for those who aren't following every link. SnowFire 20:19, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd prefer to avoid an edit war, but can you explain any further why you oppose pictures and explaining the patent objection, Netoholic? You reverted them out without any comment on the talk page. My above reasons for preferring them stand.
As for the Giant Growth picture, if Khaim can think of a better caption, that's fine, of course, as would a full-on replacement. I don't know if I'd agree with Grizzly Bears as a good replacement picture- it might be a little too simple. Something in the text box other than flavor text would be good, as the "2/2" isn't automatically obvious. Perhaps the currently stranded Shivan Dragon picture would work?
A few other issues: There's still a cite needed on the following passage.
This remark seems weirdly American-triumphalist. Now, I'm all about laughing at inefficient, "liberal Europe," but, uh, I don't see why the US would have such an advantage. American exporters would still have to pay the VAT and any duties. I don't see any reason why European companies wouldn't be able to compete just as well as American ones at something as simple as selling cards. I'm not saying that this is false, but can anyone explain or cite why?
It seems that The Dojo effect article has gone dead (it did exist at one time), and unsurprisingly so. Does anybody still use the term anymore? It was before my time, and I saw reference to it a few times on "back in the day" reminsces at SCG... but all I've heard actually used nowadays is simple "netdecking." I think it was novel for a time back when the Internet was not built into metagames, so they were very local; but now that's expected, so there's just "The Metagame," and of course it's affected by what's online. I'd be in favor of removing the reference, or at least dating it.
Also, the rules section has continued to grow back in detail. I don't think I agree with this; as noted a long while back (in the "to-do" list among other places), we want a simple and basic overview suitable for an unfamiliar audience. If people want to learn every detail of the rules, they can look at the rules page. SnowFire 20:48, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
I dont think magic battlegrounds really deserves a link as much as say apprentice or workstation, battlegrounds may have been licensed by wizards but that doesnt justify it as having a significant level of importance to the mtg community. Battlegrounds is a completly different game to magic wheras apprentics and workstation are different ways of playing the same game. Games made based on movies/tv dont merit links in other wikipedia articles, battlegrounds is at best a poor remake.
Can someone please explain why my link to starciygames was removed? It's arguably the premier site for tournament strategy, with many of the game's best players on its writing staff. RyanEberhart 07:59, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Kind of associated with the post above, but MTGOTraders has been relentlessly spamming the Magic: The Gathering Online article for the last three months (generally successfully, alas). This has included shifting links within the article to imply they are the main/only website that sells on Magic Online ( diff) as well as modifying valid links to official news releases to go to their site instead (see example diff). For those kinds of tactics along with the commercial nature of the site, I submitted a blacklist request (though these things take some time to process). That said, the person behind the account ( User:Blackangel63, created after the IP address being used before was on its last warning) has seemingly offered an olive branch and "only" wants to add it to the External Links now. Thoughts?
I personally think that to be consistent with the stand on SCG, a site with lots of valid content that happens to sell things, we need to also disallow MTGOTraders, a mainly commercial site that happens to also have some (admittedly useful) content. That said, perhaps we want to weaken that stance (and possibly save edit wars and having to have a site software-blacklisted). Figured that this is something requiring some input. SnowFire 21:19, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
I think that mtgotraders and any other site of merit that offers free articles should be allowed on the unofficial list. I'm sorry for messing with the links and I had no idea it was that big of a deal. I will accept the internet flogging that I deserve.
Recently, Mike Long, Kai Budde and Jon Finkel have been proposed for deletion, as well as Magic: The Gathering people. I noticed that the main article lacks a link to the latter. Does anybody else think that would be worth moving back into this article, or keeping seperate? FrozenPurpleCube 14:22, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Note: This article has a very small number of in-line citations for an article of its size and currently would not pass criteria 2b.
Members of the
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Agne 21:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
Marblespire and Cloveious, I reverted your changes. For snow mana, I really don't think that's a topic of such great importance that it needs a paragraph in the main article any more than Rebels or Mishra's Workshop need to be mentioned. There are tons of Magic concepts, but we need to focus on the heart of the matter with a clean overview. Perhaps a one-sentence mention of snow in passing can be worked in later. As for your comments Marblespire, myself I am very leery of any comments on games that mention "X is only for expert use" or "B is ." There are only 5 colors in Magic, and saying things like "Blue is also the hardest to play well," while not necessarily false, demands a lot more clarification. It's not something I'd leave hanging without a lot more chatting about the nature of the color wheel- perhaps appropriate if we were to fork off an article on the color wheel, but even still, it'd be very easy to dive into Original Research.
As a general note, I intend to go through the article again soon and try and add some cites and reverse some accumulated build-up of inconsistent edits. I'm still not convinced by Netoholic's repeated reversion away from the other card images in the article, but I laid off fighting the war at the time; I'll probably put a few of those images back, seeing as there wasn't any further development of that debate from before. Any objections/comments to this? SnowFire 03:46, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Netoholic, in order to avoid a stupid edit war, I held off fighting this issue much before- in fact, I took a long break from this article entirely to avoid that stupidity. I acquiesed to your picture removing for now because I'd posted a reply to your non-argument in favor of removal on the talk page and was waiting for a response. Wikipedia civility guidelines generally prefer people hash out a tough topic on the talk page and then edit, rather than have a revert war going back and forth. The fact that I stopped fighting the revert war before doesn't mean you'd "won." Since it'd been awhile and you never replied, I decided to put back just one of the pictures as a compromise (and since others had raised concerns about the other one). Wikipedia works on consensus, believe it or not- despite the fact that I've done a fair amount of editing lately, if the consensus disagreed with a part I preferred, I'd shrug and move on. Can't always get your way.
All my arguments at Talk:Magic:_The_Gathering#Recent_shifts. above still stand. Your only argument was:
"Does not add anything" is totally unhelpful as to why you think it should be removed. It's pretty close to saying just "I don't like it." I've already detailed why it does, in my opinion, "add something" and help illustrate ante (at least without making the text wordier). Again, if you can suggest something better, than fine! Heck, you might even convince me I'm wrong. But you're going to have to explain more than "Does not add anything" backed by reverts. SnowFire 13:59, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
Well, first, I'd say it's because there was an AfD on it, and I've got to agree, RRD doesn't deserve its own article. At most, Magic Variants get an article, and that's possibly a stretch. Besides, I noticed that the section on Variants didn't mention anything about Draft variants. Since RRD has been talked about on Wizards.com I think it's notable and verifiable enough to get a place, unless somebody has something else to add.
BTW, I just noticed, there's no mention of Rochester Draft anywhere in this article. Is there a reason for that? FrozenPurpleCube 14:48, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
While I believe that changing colour to color is complete rubbish, if warring breaks out as a result of the spelling, one decision is to set the spelling by the first primary author. Which, by that precedent, is in fact color not colour.
Like I said, this is complete rubbish that some people have to make an issue out of it. Either way is spelled properly. -- myselfalso 04:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I have tried to reduce the game plan section to their bare mechanics by:
- removing or summarizing redundant information - removing the common creature types for each color - not entirely useful, important, and plus, alot of types are shared between colors. - sections referencing advanced players or techniques - typically, this information doesnt apply much to a community, such as excyclopedia readers, who are unaware of the game before this. - moved alot of info, such as the list of Mark Roosewater's color articles, to references, as they dont directly contribute to the article, yet are good reinforcement to what has been said. - a bunch of other edits I unfortunately cannot seem to remember in detail.
I hope it's a good first edit, and if it was a mistake for me to make it, I wont be offended if it gets reverted. Also, it seemed to have logged me out as I was editing, so it was actually I who performed it.
Also, a question: is the enemy/allied color descriptions really necessary? Flashstorm 21:16, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
One point in the article it says Magic has "over 8000" cards, later it says "over 8400". While both could technically be true, it would probably be good to have the number consistant throughout the article.
-- Khaim 13:52, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
The issue brought up before at Talk:Magic: The Gathering#MTGOTraders have resurfaced again. The person who runs MTGOTraders put in a request to have MTGOTraders taken off the spam block list over at the Wikimedia website (see [2], and asked that I bring up the matter (I was the one who submitted the original blacklist request, after all). Since there seems to be less confusion about how Wikipedia works now, it seems more likely that an external link on the MTGO article would be used as WP style rather than infusing links into the article text.
Anyway. I will once again raise the issue: Do we want to open the door to commercial sites in the External Links? As a reminder, Wikipedia:External links does say that "External links should be used sparingly and kept to a minimum. Wikipedia is not a web directory." The "no commercial" clause also allows for easy removal of any non-notable spammer site without having to debate the relative merits of the site.
However, I can't help but think that an EL section without starcitygames and its large backlog of free history and strategy is incomplete. Wizards.com has linked to "classic" articles on SCG quite a few times. And, despite being a commericial site, mtgotraders does offer some useful MTGO-specific information and was recently linked to from wizards.com. If a very high bar is set, with it clear that any commerical site can only be added to EL in spite of its commericial nature, I think we could loosen the policy. Any thoughts? (No comments, like before, will probably mean status quo.)
--
Also, while I'm here, re: Uriel's recent edits. To add "both of which are heavily marketed and aimed at a younger audience" to "Magic’s gross card sales have been surpassed in recent years..." makes it seem defensive for Magic; the implication is that Magic would have done just fine if these evil new games weren't so well marketed. While this may be true, it isn't really the place for the article to say. As for MTGO, while gambling is forbidden, that has more to do with avoiding getting sued or prosecuted in places where gambling is illegal; old ante cards simply aren't implemented. I think the "forbidden on MTGO" phrasing implies that ante cards exist there, and just can't be used in sanctioned events. SnowFire 03:17, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
What are foils? Its mentioned in the text, but i'm not sure what they are exactly. Thanks.
I really highly doubt this. Magic has always been the biggest TCG of them all. As far as I know, Pokemon rather went bust around Fossil and secondary market crashed. And Yu-Gi-Oh! always was a bit of a joke; too many redundancies. Unless this is referring to a worldwide view (I'm not sure if they suddenly went major in Japan or something), I'm willing to bet Magic is still going strong.-- SeizureDog 01:38, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
The Black Lotus card pictured is from Unlimited (note the white border), whilst the caption under it refers to the Alpha Black Lotus, which would have a black border and rounded corners. --Random Guest —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 74.134.225.210 ( talk • contribs) 12:32, 3 December 2006 (UTC).
Why are all articles based on future blocks merged with articles which are based on the first set of the block? Time Spiral article is about both the set and the block; while Planar Chaos gets an article of its own. I don't think the names of the sets should determine where the articles go (it's only because Time Spiral is named after the block is it in the same article -- I believe there are other articles on Wiki which don't do this); there should be a separate article for the block, and then one for the large set named after the block --- 1 contains info about general storyline, info on the block as a whole; while the other is specifically about the first set of the block. Can someone take note of this in the future so that the articles are done right?
I think the people who catch up with making these articles are from an MTG Wikipedia Group (their job is to do articles on everything MTG). I don't know where to find them, so can someone from there take note of this request? 24.23.51.27 23:13, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
If people want to cut down on the size of this article, it seems that a good place to start would be at the oh-so-in-depth descriptions of the symbolosim of each color type, like all those abstract qualities. Not being a seriosu player, I don't feel I have the right to know which priorities to choose (Is it more important that White is "righteous" or "lawful"?, etc). -- 192.154.65.1 20:20, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
The rules on international selling are already mentioned in the Product and Marketing section, I believe. If you feel that there's a relevant expansion, go for it, but I'm not sure what else there is to say. As for writer poaching... come on, that's utterly common. Major publishing houses and magazines do this literally all the time, and frankly, I'm not so sure people consider it a bad thing if a talented independent writer can be noticed and "picked up." (This isn't even mentioned at most magazine articles here on Wikipedia, and magicthegathering.com is way less notable than, say, TIME or the Washington Post). As for "controlling the information flow," again, that's called "doing their job." Every single product producer better be controlling the information flow about their product, and I'll add that Wizards is infinitely more open about their process than 95% of other corporations (do supermarkets want you to know how your hamburger was really made? That would be a "no.") SnowFire 17:52, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
One of the image captions has outdated information. It says that Beta Black Lotus would be most expensive 'normal' card, even though the Alpha one has been more expensive for a few years now. This is due to a DCI policy change: You are now allowed to play a mix of Alpha cards and other cards in tournaments, if you use hard-ish and opaque sleeves. This equalizes the gameplay value for Alpha and Beta cards, so now only the actual printing frequency of these two sets determines the collector aspect value; Alpha had smaller print, so Alpha rares are more expensive now. I'm going to change the caption right away without discussion, since this is verifiable fact. 130.231.89.99 13:44, 17 January 2007 (UTC) Matti Nuortio, Oulu, Finland
since i havent played this game in years, and never intensively anyway, i dont just wanna go ahead and edit. but shouldnt it mention 1. that for 'white' actually the color yellow is often used, such as on the back of the card, which color is much closer to yellow then it is to white. 2. that white is good with the use of enchantments as well as destroying them. 3. that green often uses or is good with mass attacks with lots of huge creatures. 4. i remember in our school we used to use a rule that you shuffled your land cards and all your other cards seperately and then mixed them together 1 by 2 or just about 1 by 2. if that rule has been used more often it should probably have a mention in "luck versus skill". Lygophile has spoken 20:17, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps I'm missing it but I don't see much talk about any of the actual strategy of game-play. After doing a lot of reading on chess and all the various entries dedicated to the strategy of that game, I think this is far too important a topic to ignore. Indeed, I see it as the key distinguishing feature between M:tG and other, less enduring collectible card games, and I think it entitles the game to more credible exploration than less involved games. I think that it could encompass and expand considerably on the "deck types" page, as the old classification of the Aggro-Control-Combo meta-game has almost completely disappeared in terms of relevant strategy. Malichai 22:50, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
Noticed this site was added just after my last edit to the page, " Magic-League A website for MTG-online playing / Netdecking". I'm tempted to remove it, but thought there is no harm in first checking with other more active players of magic than myself to see if this site ought to be kept or not. Mathmo Talk 17:05, 5 February 2007 (UTC)