MTG Wiki:WikiProject Recategorize media

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This project aims to recategorize articles for Magic media and story sources. Media is defined in this context as all published materials external to the cards of the game itself, including deck inserts and packaging, comics and magazines, short stories and novels, blogs and webcomics.

The following qualities of media are considered defining:

  • Whether or not the media is a lore source.
  • Whether the media is printed or digital.
  • The format of the media.
  • The publisher of the media.
  • The language of the media.
  • For single publications, the year of its release.
  • For continuous publications, such as periodicals or websites, the decade(s) in which it was or is active.

By applying these categories, each article impacted by this project will clearly indicate what kind of thing it is, and where and when it came from.

Combinations of qualities

Lore source is a quality of some entire categories, and some individual articles within other categories.

Format is the quality that intersects with other categories the most. Formats can be subcategorized as combinations with the publisher and the year. However, combining all three will lead to excessively small categories.

  • ✅ [[1996 novels]]
  • ✅ [[Wizards of the Coast magazines]]
  • ❌ [[1996 ARMADA comics]]

Print or digital are widespread categories, but articles will rarely need to be explicitly grouped as one or the other, because those domains often use disjoint vocabulary to describe otherwise similar formats.

  • Webcomics vs comics
  • eBooks vs books

Some language-related categories are implicit in the vocabulary used. In those cases, there is no need to name the language.

  • ✅ Manga
  • ❌ Japanese manga

Should English media be categorized as such?

This point should be discussed. Most print media for Magic (outside of the cards and marketing material) is printed in English first, and other languages rarely. Should our categorization assume English as a baseline, or indicate it explicitly?

I think we can consider English the default, much like Zombie are Human unless specified otherwise (or like the sets, where other language set like Salvat are the exception). --Hunter (talk) 15:29, 17 February 2025 (UTC)
Some mangas are printed in Japanese first, most notably Destroy All Humans. They Can’t Be Regenerated --Hunter (talk) 15:29, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Can we make it clever?

Won't implement. This seems like a smart idea, but it can be a later retrofit if someone wants to tackle it.

If print media include their years of release, format, and publisher in their infobox, the infobox can infer categories from those.

That is beyond my capabilities, but go for it! --Hunter (talk) 15:30, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

Canva whiteboard

A proposed category structure can be found here. This link is read-only. For edit permission, please either leave a message on Corveroth's Talk page, or message him on Discord.

Next steps

Go through all external media articles and recategorize according to the following plan. It may be helpful to use this search page as a starting point.

Building the Companies category facet

Building the media type category facet

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