Talk:Booster pack

Examples

The number of examples here seems somewhat excessive. I'm going to prune it down to a couple different variations of packing, unless somebody objects.Chunky Rice 22:21, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I think that seems reasonable. Yes I agree that it's gotten a little out of hand, since we just needed a few demonstrative examples. -- Slordak 13:22, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Meanings of Booster pack

The article on the Battlefield series links here but the makers of Battlefield seem to use Booster pack to mean a mini-expansion pack. I think the alternative use of the term should be mentioned. Sdmitch16 (talk) 09:09, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

Image

I uploaded a better image to represent the article. Unfortunately it is only of Magic booster packs. It would be great to have a single image showing Magic, Pokemon, Yugioh, and maybe something like Flesh & Blood. I couldn't find something like this on the internet that wasn't extremely low res. Leitmotiv (talk) 20:23, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Okay, I uploaded a less-Magic-centric photo that a card shop kindly donated to the Wiki Commons, per my request. Hopefully there should be no Fair Use issues, since the article is about booster packs, and it depicts no single IP, and represents the 3 major brands, plus a fourth lesser known brand. Leitmotiv (talk) 22:00, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure whether there would be any fair use issues there, but there are issues in uploading that to Commons as CC-Attribution, per https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Copyright_rules_by_subject_matter#Product_packaging, which doesn't even allow a basic cornflakes packet. By uploading it to Commons under that licence you're saying that it's okay for me, a member of the public, to crop out the Yu-Gi-Oh or Flesh and Blood artwork and use it for some other commercial purpose, like selling pin badges. The shop that took the photo doesn't own the copyright, they can't release the artwork under CC-Attribution. --Lord Belbury (talk) 08:04, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

You're definitely right. My mistake! I will try to fix this soon. Leitmotiv (talk) 21:04, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

I've flagged the image for immediate deletion, since it's misrepresenting the copyright, but I've taken a copy on my hard drive here if you need it again.

I'm doubtful that the same image would qualify under WP:FAIRUSE, though:

• "no free equivalent is available, or could be created, that would serve the same encyclopedic purpose": a drawing of an imaginary booster pack, or a freely-licenced photo of a more obscure card game (like File:Moekana_Booster_Pack_(7156858650).jpg) would still adequately get across to the reader what a booster pack was, if they'd never seen one and were trying to understand the idea, I think.
• "Multiple items of non-free content are not used if one item can convey equivalent significant information": a photo of four packs is unnecessary if a photo of one would suffice.
• "its presence would significantly increase readers' understanding of the article topic, and its omission would be detrimental to that understanding": as you said on the deletion page for the previous image, an actual Magic the Gathering booster pack does show the effort they put into the marketing appeal, but I think that can be conveyed in article text if it's particularly important. The casino token article, for example, uses an image of a chip from a fictional casino, even though a real casino chip would more usefully show the design and marketing effort that actual casinos applied.

Keep in mind what Wikipedia is trying to do here: "Wikipedia's goal is to be a free content encyclopedia, with free content defined as content that does not bear copyright restrictions on the right to redistribute, study, modify and improve, or otherwise use works for any purpose in any medium, even commercially." A free photo that's a bit worse than a copyrighted one, yet still gets across everything it needs to, is the route that Wikipedia prefers to take. --Lord Belbury (talk) 08:18, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

@Lord Belbury: You're confusing me again! lol You mentioned in the other thread that displaying just Magic packs is not acceptable which is why I was aiming for multiple unrelated company products using their promotional material/artwork. Now you are saying a picture of just 1 booster pack will suffice? Seems to go against what you said earlier. Correct me if I'm misunderstanding you.

If we can somehow obtain a fake booster pack like the fake casino token I'm game. But I wouldn't even know where to start looking, if one even exists. I definitely feel that a photo is necessary to depict what a booster pack is for the uninitiated. "Booster" is a very vague term. Describing a booster pack could be done with effort, but a picture is, as they say, worth a thousand words. There is currently no free image that depicts the common booster pack as seen in English speaking countries as would be described on an English-centric Wikipedia article. The current Japanese one with English prose appears to be Japanese specific, and additionally the pack is obscured by cards hiding its identity and makeup. As far as I can tell, it looks nothing like booster packs found in the Western Hemisphere. It adds nothing to the identification of an English-centric booster pack. Leitmotiv (talk) 18:28, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

In the other thread I was saying that the article here is about the general concept of booster packs which hold cards or miniatures. Illustrating this with a photo of a Magic booster means that it's incorrect to claim in the fair use statement that "the article as a whole is dedicated specifically to a discussion of this work", because the article isn't just about Magic boosters. Afraid I don't know enough about fair use policy to know whether a shot of four different copyrighted packets is better, but it would seem strange to me that an inappropriate photo of a single Magic pack could become acceptable if three other packs were put next to it.

I think the Japanese photo is useful for showing the reader that the packs contain cards, and that the pack is about the same size as the cards. (There's also a whole Flickr album of shots of it, I've uploaded another one at File:Moekana Booster Pack (7156858846).jpg which doesn't have the cards obscuring the packaging, although I do think the shot with the cards is more useful for showing what a booster pack basically is.) I'll add the image with cards back to the article further down, and improve the caption for the foil-packs image. --Lord Belbury (talk) 12:43, 31 October 2021 (UTC)