Talk:Enchantment

Enchantment tags and pages?
I would like to discuss with you some ideas I had, before eventually implementing them: it will take a lot of time, so it's better to decide in the first place if it's worth the effort or not. It's all about Enchantments:
 * 1) should we create a page for each enchantment in the game? For example, we should state on Houndmaster's page that it creates (generates? grants?) a "Master's Presence" enchantment (granting +2/+2 and Taunt), the same way King Mukla's page contains "Bananas" as "generated cards" and Hogger's page contains "Gnoll" as "summoned minions". Of course Bananas and Gnoll are cards, while enchantments are less "concrete": do all have an icon? where can we find them? is it clear for each game effect if it creates an enchantment or not?...
 * 2) should we tag somehow cards that generate/create enchantments? With a normal tag or a hidden one? Which one (enchantment, generate enchantment, create enchantment,...)? Should we use additional hidden tags to categorize them (like enchantment - stat setting, enchantment - +x/+y, enchantment - non-stat related, ...)?

Let me know what do you think about it! (is it interesting? is it doable? is it worth the effort?)

Elekim (talk) 18:59, 23 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I actually went over these questions way back when I was first setting this stuff up, and again more recently :) I ultimately come down on the side of 'no' for point 1, but I'll explain the reasons:


 * Firstly, the work of creating and maintaining pages for all enchantments is quite a lot of extra work. This isn't in itself a reason not to do it, but the work needs to be justified and 'worth it'. The maintaining part is noteworthy: every time enchantments are added they would need pages creating and incorporating into the rest of the wiki.
 * Enchantment lists are not complete. This has always been the case to some degree, with some missing enchantments from Classic only imported recently, and other still missing. However, the people who import the data for us have also changed their rules, which ultimately means we're probably not going to get data imported except for major content releases. As a result, we will lack enchantments added (or 'found') at any other time, including those which match regular cards. There are also some cards we're still unsure whether use enchantments or not.
 * Images for enchantments are never imported, and I don't know where you'd find them, if possible at all. Having to search for them individually each time would add a lot to the workload.
 * Ownership of enchantments is sometimes uncertain. This affects content and also page names, since we have a number of identically-named enchantments.
 * Enchantments are very unimportant. Their consequence is usually already spelled out in card text, and where not it's spelled out in the Notes, in far more detail than the enchantment text itself.
 * Enchantments are very simple. They literally are simply a line of text. This is also already listed on the enchantment list pages, although this is less accessible due to not having individual pages.


 * None of this means it shouldn't be done, but for me, it's a fair amount of extra effort, and for very little gain. Personally I'm always working to find ways to reduce the workload for adding new content (like automating systems), and also lately trying to pare down some of the more needless stuff, due to the work it takes to maintain it, and workers being in short supply; so expanding that workload for little benefit doesn't appeal to me!


 * In terms of tagging pages as creating enchantments, I have been thinking about this for a very long time; I almost added it when I first introduced the tagging system years ago, but it came up after I had already done most of the initial push and I never got back to it. I think "Enchant" would probably be the best term; it's grammatically correct and not unnecessarily wordy. It would be an ability, and would make the current infobox breakdowns feel a little more accurate. In theory you could add hiddentags, but again that's a very high level of detail which imo isn't really necessary and would need ongoing work to maintain. You're welcome to go ahead and add "Enchant" as an ability for all such cards :)


 * In terms of card pages, in theory it would be cool to add the name of the enchantment created (if only because it's often a pun or flavourful term) but I'm not really sure where we'd do that. The infobox would probably be the best place, but it feels a bit overkill, since there's no need for anyone to know the name (or to click the link, even if we did have individual pages), and the infobox is best kept to essentials.


 * Ultimately enchantments in themselves are so inconsequential they don't really seem to fit in anywhere. I guess this is the intentional design: players shouldn't have to read the enchantment text after creating the enchantment to know what it does! As a result, I'm not sure there's really a place for them on the wiki beyond the lists we already have. -- Taohinton (talk) 04:04, 8 November 2016 (UTC)


 * While all the above still holds true, I have started experimenting with creating very stub pages for enchantments. The reason is that in creating the usual enchantment list page for the new expansion, I realised that I was already forced to put a fair bit of effort into copying, linking, creating redirects for, and creating a table for, the various enchantments - as a result, creating pages for them and then automating the table creation actually becomes a reasonable proposal. However, I can only see this being efficient with minimal pages, and I still can't see the point in putting the effort into developing those pages properly - although there's nothing stopping someone else from doing so.


 * The one other consequence of this is that we now have multiple pages for certain enchantments that came with the Mean Streets of Gadgetzan, most notably the Smuggling series. This is an inevitability with enchantments due to repeated name use. I'm not sure yet if this is reasonable or excessive. If having pages for enchantments is considered a positive, then it's arguably worth it.


 * I'm still not sure if this was a good experiment or a bad one, but at any rate it's underway. -- Taohinton (talk) 07:12, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

Enchantments and increment attributes
This page seems to overlap a lot with increment attribute page. Is there a reason for both to exist? Blue Banana whotookthisname (talk) 10:39, 2 December 2017 (UTC)