MTG Wiki talk:Notability
Universes Beyond rationale
These bullet points seem reasonable, but they're also somewhat supplemental to the final notability decision. I don't think they need to stay on the main policy article (it feels like they're trying to preempt an argument), but I do think they should remain here on the talk page for future reference. We may want to revisit our stance if particular UB elements become recurring Magic elements.
- A) UB characters require an IP license from their current copyright holder and that license has a limited time-frame. This means UB characters will never be plot relevant and are unlikely to be used multiple times.
- B) UB sets don't actually have a narrative. The Lord of the Rings set used the narrative provided by the books as the card setting but there was no narrative for the set of cards designed by WotC. The same is true for all other UB products released so far (as of February 2024).
- C) There is no in-universe status of Universes Beyond. It's not like the Marvel or DC multiverse, where the characters are incorporated, even tangentially, into the regular IP's meta-narrative. Universes Beyond "universes" are self contained and isolated from the Magic narrative.
- D) Other Wiki's do a better job of covering these characters. Linking to those articles in the Notable [creature type] sections should be sufficient.
--Corveroth (talk) 10:25, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
Pro player notability criteria
I see there was a previous discussion over here. How current do we feel these standards are? Are we still relying entirely on Hunter for pro coverage, or do we have other stakeholders? --Corveroth (talk) 10:31, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
- I've been building out pro tour articles (anonymously) for nearly a decade and will continue to do so. Now that I have an account, I may also start some new player articles. Shield (talk) 22:10, 20 February 2025 (UTC)
Notability guidelines for lore elements
Within the last year, a discussion has started about when characters deserve an article. There is a Discord thread from June 2024 and some additional commentary outside of that thread itself. Yesterday, another discussion started on Talk:Ozox questioning the rationale for that article. I think we ought to work as a community to figure out how we want to handle this. Do not place undue weight on the existing text of our existing policy, because it is a recent draft and has not been thoroughly discussed. Hopefully, we can find a rough consensus: this is not a decision by the non-existent management, nor is it resolved by vote, nor do we need every single person to agree.
I'll start by linking to Wikipedia's notability policy, and in particular its section on deciding when notable topics should have their own pages. That page makes explicit that we're talking about two slightly different concerns: first, whether a topic is notable, and second, whether a notable topic should have its own article.
I accept that there is demand for information about legendary creatures like Ozox, but in Ozox's case, the only thing we can say beyond acknowledging his existence is to note the symbol of Avacyn in the token art, so we can infer the plane he's on. I think that single cards are run-of-the-mill and their simple existence never warrants inclusion on the Wiki. (I would be remiss if I did not note an essay that takes an opposing viewpoint.) A very few cards like Fraternal Exaltation are exceptionally notable, although even in this case, I think that article would be better merged with Garfield's other celebration cards. Ozox is little more than a definition and is likely a permanent stub: the article probably already includes all of the information that will ever exist, and even if a second Ozox card is created, it very well might not tell us anything new about the character. Trying to create an article for every new legendary creature may simply be recentism, and create more permanent stubs. Will anyone be looking for information about Ozox in ten years' time?
For Sarixa or Gulatto Meisha, we can sum up every detail of their relevance to the story in one sentence, and have no other information than their location. Again, this is hardly more than a definition. I think that trivial locations like this ought to be merged into discussion of broader regions, and possibly those subjects merged upward again, until we have an article of sufficient scope. Those locations are likely more permanent stubs, because the story has mostly moved beyond Dominaria and its individual minor locations are not likely to be revisited (also, those locations were referenced once each thousands of years ago and may no longer even exist). Other articles like mana vault are, again, just notes that the subject exists along with descriptions of card art. How is this notable? That article describes a Stone Brain which appears to be more notable, but the vault in that story doesn't appear to be anything more than a container for the brain. The linked Kaladesh story has nothing other than an off-hand mention that one particular mana vault is very heavy. I feel safe in assuming that the Multiverse has many heavy containers, and those others don't have articles: why is mana vault any different?
I am not calling to mass-delete any of this. Many of the subjects of these stubs might belong in list articles, or warrant mention in articles for broader topics. I do not feel the wiki is creating any value for our readers by simply describing artwork, or summarizing a Scryfall search. If you cannot learn something new by reading the article, why is there an article? Corveroth (talk) 18:40, 3 May 2025 (UTC)
- On the one hand, I do agree that these articles are mostly composed of fluff, and I don't think the "describe what the card says/shows" style really helps. At the same time, I do think we should do our best to have links for every character, whether that be to their own page or an anchor on a list page. As the string of "what is the lore of X character" threads on /r/mtgvorthos recently shows, a very common way people find the wiki is that they see a proper noun on a card and want to know more about it, and I think we should do our best to facilitate that. Searching up a character name and being redirected to the top of a page named List of secondary characters/Dominaria, with over 1500 names on it, isn't helping most people. Most characters, even ones that receive blurbs in legends articles, don't exactly meet Wikipedia's standards of notability, but I do think ours deserve to be at least slightly more lax because the existence of art for a character in itself makes them more notable than the vast majority of Magic's characters, in my opinion. RudleyDudley (talk) 03:02, 8 May 2025 (UTC)
- I agree with Rudley here - I think having a page on in-universe named characters with their own cards and their own artwork is a good way to introduce MtG fans to the wiki. I've done the same myself several times, thinking "now who is this guy? I don't know anything about him." and then looking it up on the wiki. Even if the character's page is only something like "This guy is from Innistrad and that's all we know", that's enough of a reward to me for looking him up. I will then also know that he isn't featured on any other cards or artwork or stories and is likely just a one-off, but that's something I can't necessarily get from a list entry on the secondary character page. And yes, several times I've been sent to the secondary characters page and gone "ugh, this page again" (especially before I got into the habit of using ctrl + F on there), it's so much more gratifying to be sent to the page of that specific character. Personally I see the Universes Within versions of UB cards as really straddling the fence here, but that's probably just because I don't like the UB stuff to begin with.--Varghedin (talk) 14:08, 30 May 2025 (UTC)