Talk:Counter (marker)/Full List

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)

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)

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 Counter_(marker)/List_of_Counters#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)