Talk:Counter (marker)/Full List

Good job Mike

Magnificent job! --Hunter61 15:13, 27 August 2011 (EDT)

Thanks :) You've been doing great work on all of the races. --GeoMike 15:30, 27 August 2011 (EDT)

Lesser Werewolf mistake

There is a mistake in where Lesser Werewolf is placed. It is listed under -1/-0 counters, but actually gives -0/-1 counters (giving itself -1/-0 until end of turn). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by HamsterBoo (talk • contribs) 23 September 2012.

Thanks - Fixed : ) --GeoMike (talk) 21:48, 23 September 2012 (EDT)

Page purpose and refinements

I'd like to propose that this page be reduced dramatically and replaced with something like this demo. I think that this list, as it stands, has ballooned to include a great deal of un-noteworthy trivia, and is of such length that it deters browsing. The proposed replacement is currently generated by a Lua script running on this page's wikitext, and further maintenance will require little more than running a modified version of that script against a list of all known counter types. Due to the scale of this edit, I do want to give notice on this page before initiating it. Corveroth (talk) 00:07, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

I think that should be GeoMike's call. It's his baby. --Hunter (talk) 04:39, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

I've actually been toying with rearranging this page to be more like the Full List of Tokens Table, where the counters are sortable alphabetically, and I still think this would be the better approach. Even with Corveroth's tidy version, it's still not particularly organized and hard to navigate. I'd be happy to throw something together to demonstrate. --Ten19 (talk) 05:01, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

I'd ask, what is there to sort? I think that trying to reproduce here an exhaustive list of any large set of cards is fairly pointless. The odds of missing one or more cards grow rapidly (there were something like 200 fewer +1/+1 counter cards on the original page than in the Gatherer search), we have no tools to help users sort through those cards based on additional criteria (as Gatherer would), and because we lack even mouseover previews, users would need to navigate away from the wiki for additional information no matter how we present the set.

That was the underlying set of assumptions behind my redesign. Our purpose here should be to list the counter types (or token types, or whatever other interesting quality of cards), and direct the user to a more appropriate tool for further information, whether that be magiccards.info, Gatherer, or some other site. For very small sets of cards, simple uniqueness may be sufficient to make an enumeration of those cards noteworthy, but for larger sets, attempts at listing are error-prone, detrimental to accessibility, and require excessive amounts of maintenance. Corveroth (talk) 18:10, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

My concern was more with producing a clean table that presents the core information you've already assembled: the names of the counters and a rough estimate of the number of cards they appear on, not an actual list of the cards, as I don't think it very feasible to try and maintain that for counters. I think a nice clean table with the primary sort method being the name of each counter (the other being how often the counters appear) would be more beneficial as a source of information for the wiki than its current format. --Ten19 (talk) 12:46, 8 May 2015 (UTC)

If the only two columns are counter name and card count, is a table the best method of presentation? Since the name of the counter is largely irrelevant (except in assembling the set of cards that use it), is there ever a reason to sort by name? If there is, is sorting alphabetically a better method of finding a given name than simply using the browser's Find function? What does a table actually offer that a pre-sorted (by card count) list does not? Corveroth (talk) 00:54, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

The name of the counter is, in my opinion, the entire point of presenting this information. If someone wants to know a) what sort of counters exist in Magic and/or b) what sort of cards, or any trivia that's related to that counter, having a table with the counters presented in alphabetical order makes sense. It's not very user-friendly or accessible to assume users will use a browser's find function to locate the information, and many, many similar articles on the Wiki present information in a clean, organized fashion, and I feel we should maintain consistency with this as well. --Ten19 (talk) 03:30, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

I feel like focus on the name of the counter misses what I feel is the primary purpose - to identify the sets of cards that share a counter type. Simply listing the types is a minimal goal, and accomplished with far less effort than either of us has put forth. Going beyond identification, I see value in noting which cards share a type, which may enable gameplay intercompatibility. I would also endorse and participate in an effort to flesh out my demo page with descriptions of relevant mechanics, sets or blocks, or truly noteworthy cycles, as has sporadically been seen on the original page. I think that such content would be much more valuable than offering the choice between sorting by name or by count, and I do not believe both efforts could coexist - paragraph text is a bad choice for tabular content.

In short, I think the we should work to establish the identity of the counters, rather than merely relying on their label. Aside from that, I think that the two of us, at least, are agreed that the full list, and many of the truly trivial notes ("first non-artifact creature to use charge counters"?), are contributing little? Corveroth (talk) 05:24, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Adding in trivia, cycles, card connections, all of that is relevant information very well could, and should be included. My point was that whatever the extra data we include, all of that should be framed in a clean table that does in fact list the names of the counters as the primary sorting method for ease of use; the names of the abstract objects we're talking about is the most important thing. Everything else is secondary and can certainly be fleshed out. --Ten19 (talk) 05:41, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

What are the criteria for including such observation on a card? Any quality of the card that sets it apart from others that use those counters? The first <x> card, where x is... what? Type? Subtype? Color? The current trivia has no apparent standards.

So, I propose a standard: if a piece of trivia contributes to the description of the counter type as a whole, it should be included. This standard is in line with the purpose of the page: to list counter types. Information about those counter types is relevant to this page. Information about individual cards using that counter belongs on a separate page for said counter, if that counter is notable enough to warrant an independent page (this might be another project worth considering!). The exception to noting information about individual cards would be when such cards are individually of major relevance to the counter type. The trivial case for that exception might be for cards that are the only user of a given counter type (e.g Frankenstein's Monster).

This retains mentions of the first occurrence of a counter type, observations such as the link between divinity counters and indestructible, links to broader mechanics that utilize those counter types, and gives room to note counter types that exist as a result of errata. It eliminates, primarily, inconsequential "firsts" such as at Flood_counter (while still noting the first appearance!) and fringe information such as that noted on Ichor Rat. Corveroth (talk) 06:10, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

tl;dr: List the counter types here. Give the notable counter types their own pages, keep exceptional per-card trivia on those counters here, and move most per-card trivia to that counter's page. Retain trivia for non-notable counter types here, if valuable, only because it has no other home. Corveroth (talk) 06:33, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

This is GeoMike - sorry for the late reply to this discussion. I spent a lot of time in creating the list of tokens. I know it is not perfect, but I'd hate to see it destroyed. One bit of trivia, I'd definitely would like to keep is the name of individual counters, especially those counters on cards that were initially unnamed and through errata became named. --LegacymtgsalvationUser1033 (talk) 01:47, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Hey there, Mike! Now that we've got you in here, I'm going to reset the indentation on this thread for the sake of readability. I don't want to "destroy" it either; there's value in the page. In terms of content, I see the page as composed of a few broad slices: counter names, lists of cards associated with each counter, meta-information about the counter (keywords, major cycles), and trivia (every possible permutation on "first <X> to <Y>"). Set aside, for now, the question of formatting. What of that content do you consider non-negotiable? What criteria have you used for selecting trivia (I suspect I could alter my script to find something uniquely "first" in a gameplay sense about nearly every card on the page)? How do you feel about the proposal to split counters out into individual pages and leave redirect links under the appropriate headers here? Corveroth (talk) 02:38, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in response. I haven't been on here very often. I'd really like to keep the list of cards associated with each counter and the first set that card appeared in, this I'd like to say is almost non-negotiable. I like the major cycles and keyword mentions, this would be next in priority of keeping. I was just gathering trivial facts as I found them, but I know it can appear "ugly" and it can be done away with it if really necessary. --LegacymtgsalvationUser1033 (talk) 18:01, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

No worries. I've come to tolerate this wiki's love for abundant list content, much as I loathe it personally. My desire for a concise, navigable overview of important counters was fulfilled by creating Template:Counter_types instead. --Corveroth (talk) 18:47, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Removed Hedron Counters

I removed the listing for "Hedron Counters" as I couldn't find any sign of such a beast. The section referenced the non-card "Prism Network"; looks like an foreign language spoiler of "Prism Array" was mistranslated to "Prism Network" with hedron counters instead of crystal counters. - jwanders 9 July 2016‎

Energy counters from Mirage

Heads up: they are now Vortex counters --Hunter (talk) 15:25, 30 September 2016 (UTC) http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/feature/kaladesh-update-bulletin-2016-09-30

A page for every counter?

I notice User:Lol pie seems to be adding a main page for every counter. While normally I hold the "add whatever content you want on fan wikis as long as it's relevant to someone" perspective, I do think organization-wise this is excessive. I wanted to speak up before they put in so much effort (which I appreciate!) that it would be a travesty to change course :)

In terms of direct impact, the links add page clutter to this page (multiplied by the gazillion counter types), and it creates a split/duplication in where information about minor counters is stored and updated.

Philosophically/policy-wise in terms of "what pages should exist?", we definitely don't have a page for most individual cards. Yet quite a lot of these counter types are used only on a single card - so we're essentially making a page for that card with a "loophole" that it has a counter to justify it. It seems contradictory. It just doesn't seem necessary to me. In fact, I was recently thinking we should remove the individual sections for each single-use counter, and simply put them in one bullet point list at the end!

Personally I'd go with a loose threshold of about 5 cards using the counter before it seems reasonable to make a page for it. It's arbitrary, but it seems like a reasonable point that implies "this seems like an actual design trend and not just a relatively arbitrary name because a few cards needed some kind of counter to work".

User:Lol pie, I'm curious what prompted you to create the pages. Is there any way we could accomplish your goals but within this page? I noticed a few of them have icons, which is a nice addition. Maybe we could come up with a format to show those here? Perhaps in a floating image box to the right of each section. Many counters don't have icons, so I don't think we'd have too many colliding boxes...

Other information definitely seems redundant with simply looking at the card. For instance, Aegis counter has no icon, and its set, use, and placement on creatures are all described within the (single) card's text. The set is already on this page, and the other things could easily be here too with like 1 extra line of space.

One idea that's been considered before is table-ifying this list. Columns could be Name, Placement of counter (e.g. placed on creatures), First uses, Icon, Additional notes.

I have no particular authority here so I'm eager to hear what others think! a) Are main pages for each counter too cluttered? b) Should we try to add more info here that would've gone on the main pages? c) Table-ification? - jerodast (talk) 18:00, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Just one clarification, my "5 card threshold" proposal is not intended to be an absolute. For instance Acorn counters are oddball enough that they'd seem noteworthy even if they only appeared on the one Un-card. But that's not true of most of them.- jerodast (talk) 18:12, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Coincidentally enough, this older revision of counter template documentation also went with a default 5-card threshold. Not sure if it was removed because people disagreed or just not the right place for it. https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Template:Infobox_counter?oldid=232625 - jerodast (talk) 20:38, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

Derp, just realized icons already show to the right of the relevant sections. However, the top ones are pushed down by the table of contents. (Reducing the size of the TOC is one reason I didn't want the one-use-only counters to each have their own section...) Maybe we could experiment with left-aligned icons. Those are already used for the +/- counters, although those sections' text format are a bit different because they have more cards. There's no way to get a column-ized TOC right? - jerodast (talk) 18:26, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

Oops, just saw User:Lol pie and User:Hunterofsalvation actually did start this discussion even earlier over on Talk:Arrowhead counter. Since that page is theoretically only about a single counter not all of them, I'm gonna try to move the discussion back here. Quoting from that page:

"Hi. I guess my thoughts were having just the big forever growing list just gets a bit hard to read and more unmanageable as time goes on. Since they are unique named mechanics I figured it would be good to treat them the same as things like Types and keyword abilities which we make pages for and don’t just have big lists of. It makes them easier to find, organize, and read about which was my reason for starting to make individual pages for them." -User:Lol pie

I do disagree with this rationale:

• • • Calling each counter a "named mechanic" is incorrect in my opinion. Counters as a whole are a mechanic. Some specific counter types defined in the rules are each mechanics. Some counter types are used to form a theme within a set, so they're identifiable mechanics. But simply having a name does not make it a distinct mechanic, no more than tokens with names and abilities (e.g. Land Mine) are each a distinct mechanic, or that cards with names and unique abilities are each a mechanic. We don't have pages for every individual token or card; we don't need one for every type of counter. Being unique is actually an indicator that the card speaks for itself and doesn't need a wiki page.
      • Keyword abilities almost always appear on multiple cards, and are defined in the rules as concepts that exist in the game even without reference to specific cards. Creature types also almost always appear on multiple cards, and have an in-universe flavor to explain. This doesn't apply to one-off counters - the only mechanic that exist comes from that card's text; only lore to explain is that inferred from that card. So, not noteworthy beyond individual cards, and this wiki does not try to be a card database.
    • Making individual pages for everything wouldn't make the big list easier to maintain. It actually makes it harder, since each link to the "main article" would take more space, and changes about any counter would potentially touch two places instead of one. I do agree that big lists are unwieldy, but most editors don't seem to be in favor of just getting rid of them...even if I would probably support it :)
    • Interesting point about ease of search, but when I tried something like "scream counter", the top result is this list. So it doesn't seem like a big problem. (Curious if you ran into some issue along those lines though!) One thing that's done elsewhere is redirects into the big list. This avoids the redundancy of having a whole page that basically just repeats the text on a card, but still gives the ability to find or link to the counter by a dedicated page name when you want. Again, the search seems to handle it pretty well already, but it's an option.
    • Is there anything specific you're getting at when you say it's more "organized" and easier to read on separate pages? I find it equally organized whether it's individual or in a list (as long as the list has a Table of Contents and clear formatting, which in my opinion it does). Actually, I think something like Template:Counter types is more organized when it DOESN'T have every single one, since you can pick out the major ones much more easily yet still see minor ones quite easily by going to just one other page. As for reading about the one-off counters, I actually find it easier with them in a single list, rather than opening separate pages where the only content you get is what's already in the card text. But that's subjective I suppose.

As an amusing side note, I just want to point out that {{Counter types}} still says "Not all counters needs their own pages", although the rationale for this declaration was erased several years ago, so a new discussion seems reasonable. - jerodast (talk) 05:11, 23 June 2022 (UTC)