MTG Wiki talk:Interface WikiProject/Flavored boilerplates

I gotta run so I can't format this so well right now (also I've never used a talk page before so I wouldn't really know how) but one thing we'll have to figure out is whether we want to include quote attributions. I also took out line breaks to make the lists easier to read but those can go back in the final headers. The other thing is that, even though I really do think using the flavor text for Spreading Rot for Universes Beyond is very funny, it's also what they call "not a great look" if someone is bridging from Warhammer over to Magic and they see that on the wiki.

As someone who loves both Warhammer and Magic, I'd have to disagree with you on the Spreading Rot flavor text. I think it fits exactly the flavor that 40K has and would be fine with Warhammer players. It's still a bit of an insult for all the other UB IPs though; especially with the Lord of the Rings and Doctor Who sets coming up. -- RivalRowan (talk) 23:55, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

This project has been under discussion for two years without my participation, but I have one major request to bring to the table: try to choose art that clearly depicts the sense of the mbox, without relying on the reader knowing what card it came from. Except for Ambiguity, which of the card arts listed depict anything ambiguous (not merely potentially unknown, but confusing)? How do robots and zappy books convey "cleanup"? It looks like the intent is to choose Magic art to replace some fairly universal symbols. Don't sacrifice too much communication for the sake of cute insider references. (And remember that we editors are among the most entrenched insiders around. But who needs the wiki? Those who are the newest.) --Corveroth (talk) 08:32, 3 February 2025 (UTC)

Missing templates

I found some other often used boilerplate / hatnote templates that we didn't discuss yet:

• Disambig
• Distinguish
• For
• Main
• Nickname
• Otheruses

--Hunter (talk) 14:13, 13 February 2025 (UTC)

True, although I'm not sure there's much room to flavor them, unless you've seen them flavored on other wikis. RudleyDudley (talk) 05:19, 14 February 2025 (UTC)

Questions before rollout

Hey all, the design is more or less complete (you can see an example at Template:HeaderTemplate, resize to see mobile version [not fully working until we have a mobile theme]) so I just wanted to share some thoughts and questions before beginning rollout.

1. Each template will have a card name title that I think best relays the template's purpose, the art associated with that card, message text relating the template's purpose, and flavor text related to the template - I'd like to cycle through a handful of these at random, but that's a future option.
2. I combined the caption and message text from the old template, which makes some of the messages somewhat long and they can probably be shortened. This is more noticeable on mobile, which shows the full message text and nothing else.
3. This has been discussed before on Discord, but I thought I'd bring it up here as well: should the art have an illustrator listed under it? Should the title and/or flavor text link to the card it's from?
4. Are {{Early story warning}} and Pre-Revisionist both needed? (or either? re: MTG_Wiki:WikiProject_DeRevision)

Feel free to add any thoughts, comments, suggestions, etc. I'm sure we'll add or remove templates as this project moves forward. Thanks all! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RudleyDudley (talk • contribs) 01:41, 11 March 2025 (UTC).

I note that a couple of the art suggestions are cards illustrated by Terese Neilsen and Harold McNeill. It would be prudent to avoid featuring controversial figures like these (or others like Noah Bradley, Seb McKinnon or Fay Dalton etc) in this context if there were other reasonable alternatives. Beatsandskies (talk) 03:25, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

I think some of these canonicity templates ought to be renamed or nixed entirely. Pre-Revisionist, for example, is no longer used anywhere. It looks like {{ambiguous}} is used only on Magic: Legends articles? Non-canon 2 can probably be renamed to something involving Universes Beyond. Not sure how much that influences your decisions. And, as I commented previously, I hope that final decisions for artwork will be made with an eye to having them visually make sense to a new player, rather than relying on recognizing the name of the card behind the art. --Corveroth (talk) 06:34, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

• Agree that Pre-Revisionis can be deleted.
• {{ambiguous}} will come into again when the Netflix series starts. Edit: there already is a Netflix boilerplate, so maybe ambiguous can be specified to Magic :Legends
• Non-canon 2 is also used for D&D, which isn't Universes Beyond. Maybe create a separate boilerplate for D&D? --Hunter (talk) 07:33, 11 March 2025 (UTC)
• I wouldn't have the illustrator's name cluttering up the boiler plate. It would be nice to have it linked to the card, though. Same the title and/or flavor text.
• Nice work, overall! --Hunter (talk) 07:45, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

Suggestions for revising the canon templates:

* Merge Netflix into {{Ambiguous}}: This article or section discusses lore from {{{source}}} that is difficult to reconcile with the rest of the canon.

* Move Non-canon 2 to {{External franchise}} and cover both UB and D&D: This article or section discusses the lore of {{{franchise}}}. These topics have no impact on Magic's lore.

I think that {{Non-canon}} and {{Retcon warning}} are mostly just marking articles that need more attention to bring up to standards. I'm not worried about what these mboxes say because I hope to make them obsolete. --Corveroth (talk) 07:55, 11 March 2025 (UTC)

I missed the initial round of commentary, but now that these have started to crop up more I have a couple of thoughts. (In general I'm really enjoying them; these are minor nitpicks.) 1) I find the tooltips kind of distracting; would it be possible to avoid <c> and {{card}} and instead do straight Scryfall links with no tooltip? 2) I don't think it makes sense to force every template to have a title that is also a card name. Personally, I'd prefer to put the name of the card beneath the card art (if card art is used) in smaller text, and forgo titles. 3) With Template:Ambiguous in specific, I don't think the Ambiguity art is visually appealing, nor does it do a great job of communicating what the template is about. It looks like Fact or Fiction was previously suggested, which I think would be a better choice, especially the original art. Increasing Confusion could also work. --Inktog (talk) 19:41, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

Coming in late, sorry! I've just been editing the {{External franchise}} template and between looking at that and at Inktog's suggestions, I don't think we sould be using the card names as hatnote titles. As an example issue, {{Early story warning}} is currently titled "Learn from the Past" but the text of the hatnote is "This article or section contains story elements that may be ignored or contradicted by later stories." I feel this is contradictory messaging; "Learn from the past but also ignore the past." It also makes it difficult for editors to tell what the hatnote is without going into source edit. Given how difficult it can get to line up cards with the intention of the hatnote, it might be better to forego that element for the sake of clarity. -- RivalRowan (talk) 22:52, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

That's fair, I based the original design on other fan wikis' hatnotes, which are generally less wary of using quotes as their titles, but I can see the potential confusion. Do we replace the title with a simply descriptive one? And if so, do we make any changes to the art of templates that use art from the associated card? I'm a bit worried about using card art without any attribution to the card or artist (besides on the image's page), especially in a form like this that feels much more debatably fair use than in an article context. RudleyDudley (talk) 02:41, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Here's my proposed layout. I don't think we need titles, as the information can be communicated just fine without them. And when card art is used, we can add a caption that's a link to the card—or the artist name, if that's better. (This is only a rough mockup; the sizing/margins could be adjusted as needed to make it pretty.) --Inktog (talk) 15:03, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Posted these mockups in the Discord and had one person in support of option 2 and another in support of option 4. Thought I'd post here to see if any others have thoughts, otherwise I'm probably moving forward with option 2.

This project is a product that isn't meant for me, in Rosewater terms. That said, I prefer solutions that explicitly name the wiki task instead of a card (so, 2 or 3), and I want to minimize the vertical space they consume (so, 1). Corveroth (talk) 03:41, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

I was actually more in the 2 or 4 camp, you are right 1 takes the least vertical real estate, so I am happy to support this version. - Yandere-sliver (talk) 08:19, 19 May 2025 (UTC)

I made the changes to mbox.css for options 2-5 the other day and it looks like the cache has refreshed so I'll start converting to 2 and we can see how people feel once they've experienced them around the wiki. RudleyDudley (talk) 01:39, 20 May 2025 (UTC)

I prefer 3 the most as we're using the artist's work for a purpose other than the card itself, so it makes sense to credit directly (perhaps with link to the card). 2 is great too though, and I understand the rollout is already done. Nice work!- jerodast (talk) 09:19, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

I'm not against a combination of 2 & 3 that uses 3's attribution while using a card link like 2. It's relatively simple to update these if others are also in favor of that switch. RudleyDudley (talk) 00:33, 6 August 2025 (UTC)