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When I create or click on a Magic card link to Gatherer, if the card name has a space, it doesn't resolve (on french context and what ever the browser). For example for Walking Ballista, it results to the following search:

DOES contain Walking+Ballista

Your search returned zero results.

The problem seems to come from the Gatherer site. Does anyone know how to contact them to fix this issue?

There's no problem for me to link to english pages but since it doesn't work with the search URL for non english browsers, could we instead link with multiverseid URL like Walking Ballista. It would not display the popup for the moment but an update could be developed.

Until this issue is solved, it would be greatly appreciated to allow links to other sites like MTG Search Engine and not replace them systematically.

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  • The link you gave goes right to the card for me (OS X, safari). What OS/Browser are you using?
    – Pat Ludwig Mod
    Commented Feb 10, 2017 at 23:29
  • I'm using Internet Explorer or Firefox. I think the problem is linked to the french localization.
    – sinsedrix
    Commented Feb 11, 2017 at 17:54
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    The problem is related to language and there is a feature request to switch to a different engine for linking cards. boardgames.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1652/…
    – Joe W
    Commented Jan 28, 2018 at 18:51

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Your issue is caused by your Gatherer being configured to a language other than English — you mentioned in comments it's configured to French.

Our links to Gatherer aren't super high tech: they just say "hey, Gatherer, look for a card by this name." Gatherer then looks for that name exclusively in the language you have configured for Gatherer. We're an English site using English names; Gatherer would be searching the French list of names for an English name and be unlikely to find anything. What you get is that message about "Walking+Ballista" having 0 results, which you'd also get for any other nonexistent card (e.g. Squirming Ballista which doesn't exist.)

This means Walking Ballista would work for someone with English configuration but not other configurations. Baliste ambulante would work for French, Ходячая Баллиста for Russian, 이동식 노포 for Korean, etc, but not other languages.

For some reason, Gatherer happily adapts language for one-name card names. Disallow happily converts to the equivalent for any other language. However the Gatherer search interface is tricky and arcane... I should ask their support how we should be using it, since we've historically had problems getting it linked to all kinds of cards.

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I would suggest contacting Wizards of the Coast Customer Support.

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    Done, waiting for an answer
    – sinsedrix
    Commented Feb 11, 2017 at 18:03
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Instead of linking a search to the card name, which is locale dependant, one could link the card itself, for example Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger

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    One issue with this suggestion is that if Gatherer changes how their URLs work any direct link could break, however if you use the autocard syntax we would just have to update the parser for that to fix everything that uses it. (The biggest issue with this plan is SE hasn't appeared to have interest in fixing existing bugs we have found in the current implementation, but not working at all might get them todo something about it)
    – diego
    Commented Jan 31, 2020 at 21:04
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    This also doesn't have the nice popup feature that the auto linking does.
    – Joe W
    Commented Jan 31, 2020 at 23:41

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