Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history • Hacker News Board

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#131

Post by blincoln » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 4:59 PM UTC

pdimitar wrote: post #128

Yet another proof that having `wget` to download websites, `git` to control for versions (what changed since last pull) (or restic/borg to do more of less the same) and/or host them somewhere is (a) extremely easy and (b) somehow mind-blowing to a lot of people who call themselves "technical" or even "programmers". Weird. I get what not having time and energy is, I truly do, but if you cared so much about this commun…

Based on your description (wget + git), I think your bot is going to miss a lot of content on modern websites. Have you tried viewing the content you've archived recently?

A lot of modern websites don't even download the actual page/article content until some JavaScript runs. I noticed this in particular when I was collecting daily Monkeypox stats from the CDC website.[1] The Internet Archive had indexed the public URL every day, but that page used JavaScript to download the actual daily stats from a separate JSON or XML file and used that data to render the page. The Internet Archive bot was only downloading that data file maybe every 2-3 weeks, so even though they had archives of the page for almost every day, nearly all of the per-day data was missing.

I don't write bots often anymore, but for the last ten years or so I've defaulted to using an automated instance of an actual browser, because it's the only way you'll get all of the page content to load accurately, especially on sites that use the "lazy loading" anti-pattern.[2]

Even if you do that, it's still another step (probably several steps) to archive the content, because the browser just loads the page and resources, it doesn't save them, and in a lot of cases images in articles are downscaled and you want to archive the full-res version as well.

TLDR: make sure you're really backing up what you think you're backing up.

[1] At the time, the CDC was only showing the current figures, not the historical data, so if you wanted a graph based for sure on their real data, not some third party, you needed to collect it yourself.

[2] I know a lot of devs think lazy loading is great, because it reduces load on their servers, but it's an anti-pattern for UX IMO because it causes the page to take longer to load than if the browser were allowed to continue loading resources before the user even started scrolling.

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#132

Post by angus-prune » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 5:15 PM UTC

j_4 wrote: post #116

thaumasiotes wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just to not give a purely rosy picture, I'll note that they foster a very combative social justice element which drove some heavy-handed choices This is also true of WotC.

As far as I know, it's a whole different scale of issue. WotC did some fashionable corporate virtue signaling. Some of it sounded reasonable enough to me, some of it was a bit eyerolly but nothing I'm aware of seemed too egregious. To give one example - Netrunner has (had, I guess) a mechanic called Brain Damage, tied to effects which in lore terms did just that to the runner (hacker) character: heavily damaged by na…

Null Signal's blog post[0] about the topic seems to entirely contradict your narrative about how this change is being approached. Have there been further developments since this was first announced?

"You will not be banned for referring to brain damage. We prefer that you switch to core damage, and will remind you, but it’s not an enumerated infraction.

However, if a fellow player is harmed by any aspect of your behavior (including using the old term instead of the new term) and politely requests that you stop, you are expected to do so. We have always asked players to be polite and make easy accommodations when asked, as is clarified by our Code of Conduct. This is not a change in policy."

[0] https://nullsignal.games/blog/core-damage/

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#133

Post by pdimitar » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 5:28 PM UTC

blincoln wrote: post #131

pdimitar wrote: post #128

Yet another proof that having `wget` to download websites, `git` to control for versions (what changed since last pull) (or restic/borg to do more of less the same) and/or host them somewhere is (a) extremely easy and (b) somehow mind-blowing to a lot of people who call themselves "technical" or even "programmers". Weird. I get what not having time and energy is, I truly do, but if you cared so much about this commun…

Based on your description (wget + git), I think your bot is going to miss a lot of content on modern websites. Have you tried viewing the content you've archived recently? A lot of modern websites don't even download the actual page/article content until some JavaScript runs. I noticed this in particular when I was collecting daily Monkeypox stats from the CDC website.[1] The Internet Archive had indexed the public U…

Good points, yep. I'm too indifferent to try and fight to have an automated browser download stuff for me I admit, plus the websites I archive are server-side rendered, but if I ever get to the point you speak of then I'm much more likely to find how are they downloading the data that they're rendering, download their CSS and turn the page to a static one after downloading the data myself.

They're interesting problems for sure but I don't have as much time and energy for it if I'm not get paid to do it.

But I also feel it's a dying art so I try to keep up-to-date every now and then.

(If you can share how you do the automated browser workflow, that will be valuable.)

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#134

Post by pyuser583 » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 5:41 PM UTC

gpderetta wrote: post #97

pyuser583 wrote: post #34

Back in May/June of 2020, they scrubbed cars deemed racist. One card “Invoke Prejudice” corresponded to a URL that contained an obscure neo-Nazi symbol. Geek culture has a nasty side to it. Maybe they found more where that came from, or maybe they just didn’t want the press.

I don't know about URL, but the card had very blatant symbology and WOTC were rightfully ashamed of it.

I don’t know if it was just the imagery - the card itself “Invoke Prejudice” removed all opponents players of a different color.

I could see some very inappropriate banter happening if a player used it - regardless of the imagery.

The imagery was the obvious outcome of the card’s functionality.

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#135

Post by bdw5204 » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 5:41 PM UTC

curtis3389 wrote: post #17

Like GW, gamers can't and shouldn't entrust their joy or dollars to WOTC. These companies only exist to exploit; they have no respect for or understanding of their customers (except maybe that they will probably keep buying no matter how poorly they're treated).

I don't see much difference between the business model of trading card games and the business model of the EA Sports Ultimate Team mode other than the existence of physical items.

This business model is really good from the company's perspective because it increases revenue and involves less effort and less risk than releasing complete games at a single price. But it means that the way to win is to be willing to spend more money than everybody else. It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that companies that base their business model on pay to win would have about as much respect for their customers as a typical OnlyFans personality has for her customers.

I think people who enjoy card games would be better off making alternatives where the focus is on skill rather than how much you're willing to pay. Even if you aren't a competitive Magic or Pokemon card player, playing those games casually supports a company that exists to extract money from "whales" just like EA Sports or the companies making those awful freemium phone games. And it is at least an order of magnitude easier to make a good card game without pay to win than it is to make a good football simulation game without pay to win.

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#136

Post by j_4 » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 6:27 PM UTC

angus-prune wrote: post #132

j_4 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, it's a whole different scale of issue. WotC did some fashionable corporate virtue signaling. Some of it sounded reasonable enough to me, some of it was a bit eyerolly but nothing I'm aware of seemed too egregious. To give one example - Netrunner has (had, I guess) a mechanic called Brain Damage, tied to effects which in lore terms did just that to the runner (hacker) character: heavily damaged by na…

Null Signal's blog post[0] about the topic seems to entirely contradict your narrative about how this change is being approached. Have there been further developments since this was first announced? "You will not be banned for referring to brain damage. We prefer that you switch to core damage, and will remind you, but it’s not an enumerated infraction. However, if a fellow player is harmed by any aspect of your beha…

You'll notice that was added in an addendum, they must've backtracked. I haven't seen it before. What I saw was the original announcement and the resulting Reddit discussion, in which the article author and several other members of the organization had a very different, self-righteous, and downright combative tone. The threat of banning people for not complying was explicitly spelled out.

That Reddit thread is here. It seems to have been thoroughly cleaned up, but you can still see some slivers. I don't think it's worth wading through it, especially if Null Signal learned to be more diplomatic from it - just wanted to make it clear that I was being truthful, or at least as best as I could. I remember the "violence" and "morally deficient" bits as direct quotes, but my memory might be faulty and hyperbolized.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Netrunner/comments/vvr25h/nisei_an_...

(NISEI is the former name of Null Signal Games, that's also a term they deemed insensitive, and chose to fully rebrand.)

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#137

Post by rsync » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 7:06 PM UTC

courgette wrote: post #58

rsync wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I'm imagining it's mostly text and images." You are almost certainly correct and, further, it is likely the text represents almost 100% of the value. There is no excuse for this buffoonish behavior. Just absurd.

I agree, but also : apparently that content is still accessible on IA, under the older link scheme. If it’s that important, someone should scrap that, zip it and put it on a tracker.

Free rsync.net space to anyone undertaking this or any efforts like this.

Just email.

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#138

Post by YeGoblynQueenne » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 7:07 PM UTC

williamcotton wrote: post #120

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, I think maybe there was a lot of the kind of comment that you mean, in what has been deleted, but there was a time that Wizzards' site published high quality articles on strategy and competitive play. I'm thinking of the time when Fires (of Yavimaya) was the deck to beat and Zvi Mowshowitz was one of the contributors, along with other members of ... team fireball, I think it was? The articles by MaRo we…

From what I can tell they kept the good stuff and deleted the fluff that no one was visiting. Here’s a classic Zvi article: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/top-50-artifacts-a...

Good stuff! I actually remember reading that one, thanks for sharing.

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#139

Post by sp332 » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 7:22 PM UTC

kappuchino wrote: post #99

charcircuit wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

robots.txt only prohibits people from using the wayback machine to view the archive. The IA still has it archived. If someone later changes the robots.txt to something more permissive it will put back everything on the wayback machine.

Wrong. (If you know better than I please cite a credible source). I requested to purge the archive from a domain I have since the former owner put semi legal crap there. Apart from robots text, I was asked to set up one specific page with a hash-like url to signal that I am really, really sure about the purge. Thats all that is needed. The process is described here: https://help.archive.org/help/how-do-i-request-to-r…

Well there is this example from 2007 https://archive.org/post/133690/robotstxt-only-gives-tempora...

Re: Magic the Gathering players lament the loss of 30-year history

#140

Post by j_4 » Sat, Jan 28, 2023, 7:38 PM UTC

ixwt wrote: post #115

j_4 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of note here is Null Signal Games - https://nullsignal.games/ Android: Netrunner was a great cyberpunk-themed, asymmetrical card game which ran 2012-2018, and ended because of a licensing disagreement between FFG and WotC. Null Signal Games is a donation and volunteer-driven organization which has been shepherding the game - designing new sets, commissioning artists, providing prize kits, and organizing big events to…

I'm quite into this space. I played virtually every LCG that FFG published. I still have all of my original Netrunner LCG cards. I'm very interested in seeing how Null Signal progresses. The LCG community has always had problems with gaining new members. A new game would launch, tons of people pick up the core sets. The games get into their first few cycles, and then no new people start to join. Then another LCG woul…

Yeah, LCG seems like such a great and ethical model, but has a proven track record of being hard to keep alive.

I'm currently a very happy player of Flesh and Blood TCG and think it's a fantastic game with great stewardship, but I have very mixed feelings about game economy entirely based on boosters, especially now that I work on games myself.