Talk:Political Correctness Gone Mad

I don't know if it belongs, but I can say what they did with Magic: the Gathering. They banned seven cards (even from Vintage) due to being racist, and removed the images from the Gatherer database (although their database was already incomplete anyways), and even changed the Multiverse ID number of a single card, from 1488 to 485302. A lot of people complained, including collectors saying their cards are worthless, people disagreeing about if some of them are actually racist at all, saying they are doing too much, people wanting to use those cards in a deck (usually due to the effect on the game and nothing else, but sometimes due to the set it belongs to instead), etc. Removing the images from their database is probably the least bad thing; they aren't removing Oracle texts and rulings (fortunately), Scryfall still archives the images, and I don't blame them for wanting to be not racist. But they shouldn't have changed the Multiverse ID number; I think that even goes against the W3C's policies, too (there is no redirect). And they shouldn't ban cards for this reason either, especially in Vintage. But if some of these cards cause problems with game balance in the format that they are used in, then they should remain banned in those formats, except Vintage where they should be restricted instead (although there are a few Vintage bans that I agree with, such as Chaos Orb). I think that they should have to reverse it, and make Invoke Prejudice the only card with two Multiverse ID numbers, having the old number redirect to the new one. But for now, know that if there are any links in this wiki to Multiverse ID 1488, you will have to change them to 485302.

I have no objections to you adding it. I can't say I'm on board with the bannings, but I wouldn't have a problem with them denouncing the cards in a fashion similar to what HBO is doing with Gone With The Wind. I remember a youtube video that I for the most part liked (that was up well before George Floyd got murdered), except they complained that WotC still had Invoke Prejudice on their website.

Also what is the W3C? Does WotC have some legal obligation to follow W3C's policies?

I also have no problem with them denouncing the cards (although I don't know what HBO is doing with Gone With The Wind). They can say they don't like that they did that in the past, and that is OK. Removing the images isn't so bad, and fortunately they haven't removed Oracle texts (and I hope if they ever need to issue errata, they will continue to do so, although it is unlikely to need to add new errata probably). They shouldn't have banned them though, especially in Vintage.

WotC has no legal obligation to follow W3C's policies, although it would be a good idea to follow the one about "cool URLs", as doing so would avoid problems with broken links. (There are also other technical reasons why I think changing Multiverse IDs is a bad idea, unless they accidentally gave two cards the same Multiverse ID, but I would expect the database to have a PRIMARY KEY constraint to prevent that from happening.)

I can understand Invoke Prejudice showing up in a feature match of a tournament being pretty darn embarrassing, but to my knowledge WotC only occasionally runs sanctioned events in the formats it was legal in (except probably side events at GPs and stuff). But it's not like those cards saw any meaningful amount of play (and if they did I imagine there would be an even bigger fuss about player's tournament viable decks getting hurt), and it's not like it was a competitive card... it does have a lot of devotion though.

As for the HBO thing, they have taken down Gone With The Wind, but their statement on the matter indicates they will put it back up along side information about historical context. The precise information and how it will be displayed hasn't been publicized. I imagine it'd be like the thing Disney forces you to watch before you can watch Der Fuehrer's Face on the Walt Disney on the Front Lines DVD.

OK, that stuff makes sense. If they want to avoid the embarrassment of Invoke Prejudice showing up in a feature match of a tournament, then maybe they could put them in a list which allows them to be banned in televised tournaments (or if the tournament rganizer otherwise wants to ban them)? I think they already ban unofficial token cards for televised tournaments anyways, so it isn't too unusual. This would also allow them to be banned/restricted/unbanned based on game balance in different formats instead.

That HBO thing you mention now makes sense; that would probably help. Putting a disclaimer first before the rest is displayed also makes sense, although I am against "being forced to watch it" (DVDs have many antifeatures), but it is OK to include such a disclaimer.

Nevertheless, I would not really expect them to restore the images to their card database unless they make a better effort to improve their card database (there was already many things missing even before they removed the racist images). (I do think they should make the old Multiverse ID redirect, though (currently trying to access it just fails). But for now, you should just check for existing links and update them. However, if the link refers to the picture rather than only the Oracle text of the card, then you will have to change the link to Scryfall instead.)

Seems weird for players to deal with different card legality depending on circumstances other than the date (and format). Not that they haven't done that already .

Thinking about it more, I think I'm in favor of the bannings. Since this is about real life game play (and not MTG lore for example) there is a good chance it falls under the disqualifying "No real life examples, please" anyways. I think we should remove it, or at the very least a YMMV tag. I do like the scryfall click to reveal image more than taking down the image entirely thing though.

I would delete this post if I could