Template talk:Magic: The Gathering

Artists and Info Box
I have taken some time to clean this up, delete stuff which is overall irrelevant to the game. I want to strive to keep only globally important links in this box, so the "Planes" heading only contains plains which entire sets have taken place on on. Other planes get their spot on the Planes_(Magic: The Gathering) page. As for the "Characters" section, I've limited it to major planeswalkers, and some argument could be made for Gerard's removal as well. Thoughts?Missilepenguin (talk) 23:10, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Pre-release
The navbox looks nearly done from what I can see. There're likely a few other things that should go in, but I think it's time to start a discussion at WT:MTG to get some other views into this. IMO, it's lookin' great right now. Thanks for all the work you're putting into it. lifebaka++ 21:06, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's looking pretty good to me too. Storyline is a wreck, but I'd rather leave that to someone who can keep Urza and Teferi straight.  We'll say that I'm less than enthusiastic about the novels.  Anyway, I'll let you call the shots on opening discussion and moving the template when the time is right.  BTW, am I correct in assuming that you've worked it out so it automatically shows the Sets box on set-related pages and so on?  JamesLucas (" " / +) 21:17, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Not quite automatically, but I've got an idea for the sets. We'll have to use the format   (or "|set", and I could easily add support for many other names) to make it work that way.  So, my idea is to change MTGsets to that code.  Then we wouldn't have to touch a thing on all those articles.  For art-related stuff, we'll have to put in  .  Same sort of thing for the other two sections.
 * I'll go start a discussion now, then. Should be rather short, more of a "we're makin' a navbox, come help" thing.  Cheers.  lifebaka++ 21:28, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds good, on both accounts. We could easily make the latter supports sets too, and so we have the option of phasing MTGsets out at a later date. JamesLucas (" " / +) 21:33, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, it does. I tried to catch everything people might use in the {{#switch:, but let me know if there's anything I should add.  Also, it'll probably help to have a look at meta:Help:ParserFunctions, it explains it much better than I could.  Cheers!  lifebaka++ 21:40, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I just got what you were saying (better late than never). Sounds even better than I had previously thought. JamesLucas (" " / +) 20:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Heh, where do we put notable Wizards employees? Mark Rosewater, for instance. lifebaka++ 01:55, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I put Mark in a place that made sense to me; are there any others? Randy could move out of Players, since he's probably better known for his work with WotC by now. JamesLucas (" " / +) 13:05, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think there're too many more. If there are they aren't in the project cats.  I've gone through Category:Stub-Class Magic: The Gathering articles and the ones linked from it and gotten everything I think we'd want in it, but you might wanna' give it a check too.  Cheers.  lifebaka++ 13:53, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * We did somehow forget Arabian Nights thru Homelands. Oops! JamesLucas (" " / +) 15:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, I can't think of anything else to add. I'm not opposed to waiting for more input, but I've got this doubt it's gonna' happen any time soon. So, shall we up and move it to {{tl|MTG navbox}}? Cheers. lifebaka++ 19:28, 15 August 2008 (UTC) Note: I'm gonna' be out of touch for a few days starting tomorrow EST.
 * I'm game. Let's do it. JamesLucas (" " / +) 20:31, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Release!
I've made  official. It's currently being used on all sets that previously used the old MTGsets template, which is now essential a redirect to this template. I'm also adding it to other MTG pages in a rather helter-skelter fashion. Even though it's in use, please feel free to improve it, especially in the Art & Storyline section. Best, JamesLucas (" " / +) 01:20, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Gameplay & History division
Lifebaka and I originally kept the Gameplay and History box as a single field, since there weren't enough entries to divide it. C mon has correctly (I think) deemed that the box has grown enough for division, and has been so cool as to offer up a pretty reasonable means of classifying its contents (and add Richard Garfield, who, um, somehow slipped my mind?? ). I do want to note, however that Mike Flores is not a Magic Designer, although he seems to fit best with that list of names. I'd encourage suggestions for a subtle renaming of that category. Nothing's coming to me just now. JamesLucas (" " / +) 01:18, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I had the same problem (although I think Flores was on a design team once, can't remember which though). I also considered "Wizard of the Coast" employees or Magic R&D, which are a bit more formal. C mon (talk) 06:34, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Also a possibility, although I think they make a distinction between their "employees" and their freelance contributors, which range from John Avon and Chippy to Mike Flores and The Ferret. Also to be future-compatible with bio articles we might anticipate being written, it seems like we want a more elegant version of Magic-Related People. JamesLucas (" " / +) 11:00, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * How does "staff" sound? That would imply they have Magic-related jobs instead of just being players. Dux is me (talk) 18:59, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds good, I'll go make the change now. Cheers.  lifebaka++ 19:03, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Artists
Is the artist subsection in this template comprised of some random Magic artists? It certainly feels like that. If that is the case I propose to make up a subsection in Category:Game artists named Category:Game artists/Magic: The Gathering artists and just include a link to that category in the template. OdinFK (talk) 08:19, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * If there are other artists with articles, feel free to add them to the template. As for a category, it would be better titled just Category:Magic: The Gathering artists rather than as a subpage of an existing cat.  Cheers.  lifebaka++ 13:05, 11 September 2008 (UTC)


 * There are a lot more artists with articles. Take a look at the list I created: List of Magic: The Gathering Artists. It's nowhere near complete yet, but there are already a lot more artists with articles (more than 30 compared to ~20 in the template). We could also just put a link to the list into the template instead of including a more or less random sample of MtG artists. OdinFK (talk) 13:20, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and added in the list, but not any more artists. I don't know well enough which are the most important.  If there's any you feel are missing, feel free to make changes or suggest specifically what you'd like done.  Cheers.  <i style="color:green;">lifebaka</i>++ 13:29, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Images?
I'm confused a little by this edit, which states that the use of images in the navbox is inappropriate. The image, Image:Magic the gathering pentagon.svg is public domain, and there's absolutely no non-aesthetic reason I can think of not to have it in there. And I personally think it looked good. Cheers. <i style="color:green;">lifebaka</i>++ 18:17, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Nearly a kilobyte of extra code (putting it another way, nearly 10% of the total footprint!) to add two tiny icons of no encyclopedic value. We do not put images inline with the section headers of articles, nor randomly in the course of text, and there's no need for an exception here. Were there some real at-a-glance value to these icons (such as there is in putting a flag icon in the header of some nationalist navboxen) then I could see a counter-argument, but this template is already vastly too intricate for its own good and we could do with significantly simplifying it. This was a simple way to do that without losing any information. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 18:27, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It's transcluded instead of substituted, so I'm not terribly worried about how complex the template code is. Nothing really comes to mind immediately to simplify it, either, since it basically just makes use of another existing template family.  If you've got any suggestions, feel free, but I'm pretty sure most changes that don't change the template massively would make the coding more complex.  Really, I don't feel strongly enough about the images to argue over it, though I do still prefer them.  Cheers.  <i style="color:green;">lifebaka</i>++ 18:59, 3 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm very much in the "don't customise the navbox unless absolutely necessary" camp; it's a means to an end (getting people to related articles) and not a Christmas tree to stuff full of baubles. And I'm a big fan of keeping navigation one level deep and using more domain-specific navboxen on sub-articles rather than taking four or five existing navboxen and wrapping them all in an even bigger table. While these are aesthetic differences to a degree, I feel that keeping things simple avoids infomation overload and helps with the usability of the navbox section of an article. Chris Cunningham (not at work) - talk 19:36, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Miniblocks
With the unveiling of Rise of the Eldrazi as a large set, I think we need to evaluate how we want to capture the new, less uniform block structures. It seems weird to give ROE its own line in the navbox, but then again, Shadowmoor got to start its own line, so we need to strive for consistency. At this point I'm thinking we need a new way to differentiate small and large blocks (like bold and non-bold) and let lines show block-years (Sept thru Aug, Coldsnap exempted) regardless of miniblocks, but I think there might be better ideas out there. Anyone? JamesLucas (" " / +) 17:26, 14 November 2009 (UTC)


 * I would just give ROE its own line in the Zendikar section of the Navbox. It's basically what was done with the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor block, too. Also while consistency is nice I would not be too strict here as this navbox will lend itself less and less to the kind of consistency you desire. If you feel something needs to be explained you can always do that in the respective article anyway. OdinFK (talk) 19:19, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Deletion of future blocks
Anyone know why Shake through Friends blocks were removed? If nobody shows up to defend this decision within a few days I'm just going to go ahead and undo this. Sniffnoy (talk) 19:06, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I attended the anonymous user at this discussion (User talk:124.177.175.135). If he doesn't answer, feel free to undo his edit.--Narayan (talk) 09:56, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Bedlam
So I agree with Narayan that Bedlam shouldn't be listed yet, but I thought it might be useful to explain where it's coming from. Ken Nagle and Kelly Digges both mentioned a set codenamed "Bedlam" in this article today, but it's clearly not a normal set as they still have several years before they get to the end of the currently listed codenames. Most likely explanation is that it's going to be their new multiplayer thing, ala Planechase and Archenemy. But I think adding it at this point is just too speculative. Sniffnoy (talk) 16:39, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the clearafication. This might be interesting, but is indeed too speculative to add on this template. --Narayan (talk) 16:55, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

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


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

I recommend streamlining all the expansions so that the blocks only direct to the next block; not the core sets, and not the peripheral product. Core sets can have links to the next core set, and same thing with the periphery stuff, which may just be consolidated anyway. Leitmotiv (talk) 19:42, 4 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Not exactly sure what this has to do with the template, but you're probably right p  b  p  19:53, 4 October 2013 (UTC)


 * dang, where should I have posted this? Leitmotiv (talk) 20:02, 4 October 2013 (UTC)


 * TBH, there isn't a really good place, and this isn't the worst. I'd also suggest posting at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Magic: The Gathering  p  b  p  20:31, 4 October 2013 (UTC)


 * The navbox now has a "Next Block" parameter under the "Next Set" parameter to clear up the second two hiccups (Alpha and Beta are merged into Limited Edition (Magic: The Gathering)) following this same discussion at WT:MTG.

Magic categories to be merged back to block structure discussion
A nomination can be found here: Categories for discussion/Log/2015 February 16 to merge Magic categories back to blocks from sets. Feel free to join in on the discussion. Leitmotiv (talk) 18:27, 16 February 2015 (UTC)