MTG Wiki talk:Community Portal/Archive1

Broken mana symbols

Hey everyone. I just made an account to bring attention that the mana symbols are broken on most pages. It's possible it's just me, but if I'm seeing symbols stretched like this, there's a good chance a couple of other people are too. The numerical symbols seem to be more stretched than mana symbols. --Cardinal (talk) 20:28, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

Hi. On my end this looks absolutely fine. Since our mana symbols are SVG files and some user have trouble displaying them correctly I would assume that this is a problem at your end. SVG files are rendered by your browsers and perhaps some extensions (like flash) you might use and may also be affected by your operating system. So perhaps some of your stuff is out of date and causes these errors. May I ask what browser etc you are using? - Yandere Sliver 22:40, 19 August 2018 (UTC)

MTGSCards bug

There is a bug in the MTGSCards extension, which provides the <c> syntax. It currently replaces these tags with links to magiccards.info before template parameter expansion, which prevents us from creating more easy to use templates. For an example, see User:Fenhl/Sandbox/Intro packs. It would be great if the Hydra Platform Team could fix this issue. If the source code for this extension is available anywhere, I'll see if I can contribute to the fix. —Fenhl 09:26, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

Citing sources should be mandatory

So I'm reading around about various Planeswalkers, and none of the articles have any sources at all. Look at Manatarqua. What novel is she from? Is she from a novel at all? In what context is any of this information? That's the biggest problem with this wiki. I could make up a character from scratch and claim they existed, honestly, since I doubt anyone knows who Manatarqua is.

Other articles with more extensive info also have this issue. Paragraphs of info should be cited with novels, specific short stories, or at least "this happened during the events of XYZ block". - 50.243.110.83 02:08, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Hey there, and welcome, and I very much agree. In fact, I started editing here in an effort to fix some of that. Part of the problem is that we have — goes and checks — 4,369 content pages as of this writing, and a lot of the older story pages, like Mrs. Manatarqua there, come from sources that are hard to obtain. The books and comics are generally fairly easy to find if you're willing to invest a modest sum, but story elements from old Duelist issues are quite difficult. The other half of the problem is that this wiki was founded twelve years ago, by a group with more lax citation standards, who were also working with more ephemeral sources (UseNet, forums, etc) than we currently have available (weekly story columns, reliable forums in the form of Reddit, Rosewater's blog, and so on). It should be, and is, an expectation for all new content, but I don't think it's reasonable to strike out large swathes of older content. When we reach back into the game's history like that, I suspect that much, although certainly not all, of it is largely correct, and quite a bit of the oldest content is entirely irrelevant for most people engaging with the game. It is still all verifiable, if not yet verified. Some content may not need inline citations. If you would like to take a more aggressive stance on flagging these issues, or even the grunt work of digging for citations yourself, I'd happily support you. --Corveroth (talk) 02:37, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Besides, in the infobox it says that the source is Planeswalker --Hunter (talk) 06:45, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

I would say this is a main problem on the older articles and especially those about characters. Simply because some information comes from novels and comics, which most people didn't read because they are out of print for 10 years. Adding sources in retrospect is a tedious and slow process. We seriously appreciate every helping hand. - Yandere Sliver 09:07, 18 June 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, one of the biggest flaw of the wiki is that a lot of the old info is without reference. However, I am now a proud owner of (almost) all the old lore sources, so if you find a page which do you think is missing a reference, just contact me: I could be able to find that source and add it. --Firebead elvenhair (talk) 18:33, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Why does this wiki use magiccards.info by default for links to cards instead of Gatherer?

Why bother using an unofficial card database when Gatherer is an officially developed and maintained database that is more complete, provides more information, and (at least in my opinion) has a much better interface and is easier to use? I guess magiccards.info provides price information, which Gatherer doesn't, but given Gatherer's greater completeness (I've found a couple of cards that magiccards.info doesn't seem to have), more information available (i.e. rulings), and actually being an official WotC source, why shouldn't the card link syntax go to the Gatherer page by default? Jedibob5 (talk) 03:38, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Entirely because MagicCards.info, this wiki, and the extension that links the two were created by the same person, Hannes Roth. Hannes was the owner of MTG Salvation from shortly after its founding until its sale to Curse in 2012. During that period, MTGS started this wiki, and Hannes linked his card database to it. (Following the Curse acquisition, the wiki became a part of Gamepedia, and we've more recently renamed the wiki to remove the word "Salvation" from the name.)

Flash forward to the modern day, and the card database is as much a sore point for us as it is for you. It's simply a low priority for Gamepedia team to create an alternative extension using some other database. We've also discussed this with the MTG Salvation crew, but haven't really gotten anywhere. I've also dabbled in trying to roll a pure javascript solution myself, but frankly, I am not well versed in that language. If you're an experienced programmer, or know one, please, let us know! --Corveroth (talk) 04:22, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Interesting. Well, I'm no master at it, so I can't make any promises, but I do have some experience with Javascript. I could take a look at it, if you want. Jedibob5 (talk) 18:45, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

JS is possibly the least convenient option. It would need to identify magiccards.info links at page load, extract the card name and set name if present, and rewrite that link to the equivalent on the target database site. There is another conceivable JS solution, namely a prehook on page commits that writes the desired link into the page wikitext, but I'm going to immediately veto that on the grounds that wikitext must be editable with a bare minimum of technical familiarity. Inserting unnecessary raw links in it is simply unacceptable. However, this does mean that in the event that we do implement a JS-only solution, any visitor without JS enabled will still see the original magiccards.info links.

For bonus points, fetch the card image and display that in a tooltip on the link. For further bonus points, ensure that the tooltip code looks nicer than a raw rectangle at a single fixed position from the link (i.e. chooses direction based on scroll direction, has a border, offset to mitigate flickering). There's also the question of whether the target site permits fetching images in this manner, and requesting that permission. --Corveroth (talk) 19:24, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Oh, yikes. I take it we don't have access to the source code of the extension used? Jedibob5 (talk) 20:12, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

We've had several discussions in the past, but I'll ask the Gamepedia staff that question directly. If anything comes of it, I'll let you know. --Corveroth (talk) 20:48, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

(reset) Okay, this is about what I expected. The wiki and the extension are separate pieces of software, and while Curse acquired the wiki with the extension installed, they did not receive a license to the extension. The extension is also devoid of any useful metadata, so its author remains officially unknown, however much I expect that Hannes is largely or solely responsible for it. That means that the code cannot be released to us, and it'll be difficult or impossible to track down anyone who might be able to release it to us. The alternative, of course, is writing a wiki extension from scratch. --Corveroth (talk) 21:24, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

Let's continue to play with this idea a bit, though. If we were to manage to get our card links changed, which database would we prefer to use? --Corveroth (talk) 04:29, 26 August 2017 (UTC)

I actually like the current database better. It is a bit slow to update but for me it is much easier to navigate. By far! And, not unimportantly, it links to all planechase cards, which gatherer doesn't. --Hunter (talk) 07:10, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Scryfall. Today I wrote a drop-in replacement MediaWiki extension that links to SF instead of mc.info, has image tooltips (with SF's permission), and accepts a "set" parameter. It does not yet handle <deck> tags. It's quite crude, but a passable proof of concept. Check it out here. If you're interested, it could be polished by someone who actually knows MW/PHP/JS/CSS best practices. --Kroocsiogsi (talk) 06:15, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

You are quite the scholar and gentleperson. This looks quite good, and personally, I would be very happy to have this installed here. I'll send a ping towards the folks in charge to see how they feel about moving forward. --Corveroth (talk) 06:27, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Sold! I would be all for this change that looks just so good. - Yandere Sliver 11:22, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

It sounds like the primary concern is the license you'd like to release the extension under. Gamepedia would require it to be MIT or GPL2 licensed, and internally vetted before it could be deployed. --Corveroth (talk) 14:34, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

It's MIT licensed. You can find the repo here. To reiterate: also not ready for prime time. E.g. doesn't handle <cards>. --Kroocsiogsi (talk) 23:45, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

That's awesome. You're awesome. Thank you.

Without wanting to promise too much, myself and/or some others might be able to offer some help developing it. When you're satisfied with its state, we'll look into deploying it here. --Corveroth (talk) 19:39, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

I am satisfied, with caveats. Issue tracker is here. 1. Doesn't handle <cards>, but it looks like that functionality is broken anyway, and I'm not convinced it should exist. 2. Doesn't export decklists. quincognito will work on that this weekend. Comments about what formats we should support can be added to the issue tracker. 3. Needs more extensive testing and feedback. There may be additional functionality of MTGSCards of which I'm unaware. Pull requests and feedback are welcome. Feel free to kick the tires on the Amazon AWS instance linked above. There is some development discussion on Discord. Add me (NilsEnevoldsen) if you want to be part of it. --Kroocsiogsi (talk) 06:53, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Are you still interested in this extension? I asked Curse to look at unbreaking <cards> so I could see what it did and replicate that behavior, but they were busy, so it won't happen soon. I also added an MTGO decklist export, and if there's interest I'm willing to look at implementing more formats and API calls to various websites, but let me know if the current state of the extension is acceptable. --Kroocsiogsi (talk) 20:24, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

In principal, yes. I will point a curse mod in your direction. - Yandere Sliver 22:03, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

(reset) Hey there. I want to let everyone know that I checked in with Gamepedia staff, and the ticket for this was being looked at as recently as today. Nothing more concrete yet, but it's not forgotten. I'll make sure to keep checking periodically. --Corveroth (talk) 22:54, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Corveroth. I merged in a pull request from Gamepedia last week. --Kroocsiogsi (talk) 19:36, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Any progress? :-) --Kroocsiogsi (talk) 18:49, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

And it's live!! Anything we still see of the old links is residual caching problems. You, sir, are a badass. =) --Corveroth (talk) 21:22, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Awesome! --Kroocsiogsi (talk)

It broke Template:card, e.g. Wit's End (Magic 2013). We'll have to look at that. --Kroocsiogsi (talk) 22:01, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

I tried a fix, which would result in tons of edits: {{card/sandbox|Corrupt|USG}}

Also the hover feature no longer works Template:Card/sandbox - Yandere Sliver 16:38, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Github Issue started. - Yandere Sliver 16:45, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I fiddled with Template:card/sandbox. The hover feature works again. It would still require work. Template:Set by code is super useful. Wish we had Template:Code by set… --Kroocsiogsi (talk) 21:13, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Hold my beer. I'm going in. --Kroocsiogsi (talk) 21:14, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

(reset) Nice. I cleaned up the sandbox page a bit. - Yandere Sliver 21:18, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Oooh baby. How does sandbox2 look as a drop-in replacement? --Kroocsiogsi (talk) 21:27, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm tuning out for a bit. Looks like you're well on the path to mitigating this. It looks a lot more tractable than I expected, since Template:Code by set might actually work pretty well. It's brittle, but it probably mostly works. In the long term, using a set code is probably preferable. --Kroocsiogsi (talk) 21:30, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

It is definitely works well. I would probably drop an update on the normal template page. - Yandere Sliver 21:32, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Looks like you deprecated parameter 3 (the wiki set page name), which breaks links that made use of parameter 3, such as Sifa_Grent#In-game_references. Do you have a strategy for identifying and replacing those? --Kroocsiogsi (talk) 22:09, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Ah yes good point. I put the parameter back in essentially all these pages need updated before be can true depricate Category:In Use. - Yandere Sliver 00:02, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Okay was not much... But I ended up deprecating parameter 4 which is never used in the wiki. All other parameter cover all use cases we have in the wiki. And when stuff is broken we have a way to fix it. - Yandere Sliver 00:37, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

AND... Done. There is a new hidden Category:Unknown set error. Which allows us to pick up issues in "code by set" and "set by code" and therefore let us check if each instance of {{card}} works as expected. TL;DR: We have completely transitioned. - Yandere Sliver 15:45, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

Amazing job! Good work, people! --Hunter (talk) 18:35, 20 April 2018 (UTC)

New infobox

Probably I'm missing something obvious, but with the new character infobox it isn't possible to enlarge the character portrait whn clicking on it.--Firebead elvenhair (talk) 23:15, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

I assume you mean the link to the file itself? I can reestablish that. - Yandere Sliver 23:46, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

So should work again. - Yandere Sliver 23:54, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. --Firebead elvenhair (talk) 00:28, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

Request for bot to check for broken links

I was notified that there are some links of the form <c title="Powder Keg">Powder Keg|Magic Player Rewards</c>. I didn't realize there were links of this form? Oops. ScryfallLinks doesn't parse them correctly. I dislike this syntax, and I think it would be better to change any remaining links of this form than to change the extension. On Magic Player Rewards, I changed them to <c set="mpr">Powder Keg</c>. (Although {{card|Wasteland||MPR}} would also work.) Could somebody with a bot already configured check for any remaining links of the form <c …>…|…</c>? Thanks. —Kroocsiogsi (talk) 18:07, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

These links are from the time we still used magiccard.info as external database and yes they do not work anymore. This syntax stopped working after the switch to scryfall and II am kind of glad because I am not a fan of it either.

Both your solutions work. The card template is the preferred solution imo. Mainly because it is easier to search for page which transclude the card template while with c-tags I am stuck with scanning through the entire wiki.

I am honestly a bit surprised that we still have instances of this syntax I hoped we had it removed entirely from the wiki, but I will try to get my bot to find the remaining instances (if any). - Yandere Sliver 20:21, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Okay I went through the whole wiki. I hope I didn't miss anything, because <c …>…|…</c> has unfortunately quite a number of false positives when used as regular expression. I will probably adjust the regex to kick out the false positives.

Again I would suggest to use the c-tags only when using no attributes and use the template for the more complicated use cases. If something changes in the future it is easier to fix the template instead of going through the whole wiki every time. - Yandere Sliver 03:02, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Thanks so much! The regex I'd try first is /<c[^>]*?>.+?\|.+?<\/c>/. What did you try, and what false positives did you get? —Kroocsiogsi (talk) 01:41, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

I essentially did that, but I get matches like this:

<c>Dragon Broodmother</c>, which makes multicolored tokens;<ref>{{NewRef|arcana/alara-reborn-prerelease-card-2009-04-21|''Alara Reborn'' Prerelease Card|[[Magic Arcana]]|April 21, 2009}}</ref> whilst the [[release card|launch party card]] was <c>Knight of New Alara</c>

Which bizarrely doesn't match when I try it in a regex tester I usually use.

So yeah, no clue what happens there. - Yandere Sliver 02:08, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

Ah, right, I didn't think it through. Ensure that you don't match across tags by replacing . with [^<], so: /<c[^>]*?>[^<]+?\|[^<]+?<\/c>/. –Kroocsiogsi (talk) 15:18, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

That worked nicely. I only missed on page before so the logic is no longer used in the wiki. I also replaced the logic with the set attribute to use the template instead since that is easier to search for and manipulate globally. - Yandere Sliver 17:32, 19 March 2019 (UTC)