UESPWiki:Community Portal/Archive 14

This is an archive of past UESPWiki:Community Portal discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

UMP- bugfix mod section for Morrowind

This is a proposal to add the UMP- The Unofficial Morrowind Patch to the Mods

Quote: What it is:

"The Unofficial Morrowind Patch (UMP) fixes almost all of the bugs and problems with Morrowind and its expansions. While the official patches by Bethesda only fixed a couple of dozen bugs, this patch fixes several hundred. The goal of this patch is to make the game completely bug-free (within the abilities of the TESCS)."

WHAT IT DOES

The Unofficial Morrowind Patch does following: Fix any bugs in the quests that make them incompletable or skip you ahead. Correct spelling & grammar mistakes in the dialogue and object names, and give them a uniform appearance. Make global scripts end when they are no longer needed. Make quests be marked as Finished so they no longer appear in the Active Quest list when they should be. Correct any mesh or texture problems in the objects. Correct incorrect subtitles Add any objects that were not included in the ESM files, but were included on the game CDs Fixes many other bugs and problems with the game" [1]

Discussion moved from Wrye's talk page:

Wrye, I posted this a few weeks back with no reponse, is this (still) worthwhile?

Would it be OK to add an unofficial bug fix section similar to what is done for Oblivion? I am thinking of the following: The UMP is highly regarded in the community, and fixes a lot of annoyances. I think it would be a great addition to Tes3Mod. There is no contact info given on the site, not sure what needs to be done to get permission. Any thoughts?

Cheers, --Benould^•T•C 18:15, 16 April 2008 (EDT)

First, you should checkout this discussion if you haven't already. That's the archive of where we were discussing adding UOP documentation. Then, you should probably bring the subject up on the Community Portal.

Second, I'm pretty rusty on my Morrowind stuff, but generally, it seems like a good idea. A few specific thoughts though: I recall that there was a second competing patch (that was less large? maybe it was incorporated?). This confuses the situation somewhat compared to Oblivion (where there is only one mega-patch). That may warrant consideration.

In short, bring the idea up on the community portal to see what the reaction is. If there are no objections, I'd say go ahead. --Wrye 01:49, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

I'd like to get some input before creating the page in Tes3Mod:Mods. Also, if anyone has a way of contacting the author, I'd like to hear his opinion. As to wether to then integrate what the mod fixes into the Morrowind pages, that would be a separate discussion. For now, I think a page with a general description and a link to the specifics would be enough. --Benould^•T•C 11:09, 17 April 2008 (EDT)

The UMP has been added to the TES3 space at Morrowind Mod:UMP --Benould^•T•C 02:18, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

Update

An email was send to the author thanking him and informing him of the link placement, so far no response. A template has been created for easy addition to affected page, {{UMP}}. This concludes the discussion, if there is no further input within a week, please archive.--Benould^•T•C 23:40, 4 July 2008 (EDT)

Quoting and Punctuation Format

(Previous discussion at UESPWiki talk:Style_Guide#Quotes)

It has been suggested that I bring up this grammatical issue here to hopefully achieve consensus on style.

Throughout UESPWiki, different styles of punctuation are being used in regards to quotation marks. Some are using the traditional standard, more popular in the US, while others are using the "logical quoting" standard, which is more popular in the UK and in technical writing (including the US). See: Wikipedia on Quotes & Punctuation for more details.

In my observation, whether through choice or ignorance of any other style, we seem to be using "logical quoting" most often around the Wiki, where quotes are treated identically to parentheses and punctuation is grouped accordingly. In other words, if you're quoting just the word "sample":

This is a "sample". (period belongs with sentence, not quote, so goes outside)

This is a "sample." (traditional style where punctuation is always inside the quotes)

but if quoting the entire sentence

"This is a sample." (whole sentence inside, so punctuation is inside)

Obviously, different people will have different opinions, and this is a very minor issue, to be sure. With so many pages, I don't see a site-wide edit being practical, regardless of which style is chosen (if any), but if we can reach a consensus, it would certainly prevent "style-wars" in the future, and hopefully a consistent style would emerge over time as people begin to adopt the one decided upon.

While my choice would be the logical quoting, since traditional quoting is more common in the US, and we use US English throughout the site, I can see where that might be the more "logical" choice. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 13:17, 29 April 2008 (EDT)

Interesting notion. I believe there are two different uses for the quotation marks. Their literal intention (to quote) and the use of lessening the strength of certain words. For example:

The carving on the stone read "Almsivi".

The Goblin is more "real" than the Daedroth.

The first example shows the literal example. The quotation marks mark the beginning and end of a phrase taken directly from a source. It shows that it was unaltered. I think we should stick with the keeping any punctuation that was originally inside the quoted text inside. This would be the logical approach, but as it is helps maintain the the authenticity of the quoted text, this holds my preference.

In the second example the quotation marks are used to give an altered meaning to the word "real". It only serves to show that the Goblin belongs more to the mainstream fantasy creatures than the Daedroth does. While I also feel strongly about using the logical quoting for this case, I can imagine that some people don't feel like that. I just made this distinction because I think that logical quoting when using it in its literal sense is best. --Timenn < talk > 13:53, 29 April 2008 (EDT)

Actually, you used logical quoting in both examples (though neither really applies in the second, since there's no other punctuation besides the quotes). In traditional quoting (sometimes called typesetters' quoting), your first example would've been:

The carving on the stone read "Almsivi."

The problem with typesetters' quoting becomes obvious here: namely, the carving doesn't actually have a period in it. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 14:27, 29 April 2008 (EDT)

My general practice has always been to use logical quotations for the sake of clarity. I grew up in the US and this is the method I was always taught, so I don't know that this is strictly a UK thing. One thing I also do is to italicize quoted text, i.e.: The carving on the stone read "Almsivi". When using quotes in the second intention, to lessen the value of words, no italics are needed. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 19:13, 29 April 2008 (EDT)

Yeah. I changed some quotes to "traditional" a while ago only because I thought it was correct grammar. I had no idea that there was another method that could be deemed "correct". (See, there was a logical quote!) I now think that logical quotes are a good idea to make things on this site look more clear.—Sam324 13:31, 30 April 2008 (EDT)

It seems we have something of a consensus here - so far no votes for traditional style quotes, so anybody see any reason not to make logical quotes the standard site policy? One thing I did notice is that on Wikipedia's page, linked above, they state that "scientific and technical publications, even in the U.S., almost universally use logical quotation (punctuation outside unless part of the source material), due to its precision." Since this is an encyclopedic website, I think we could say we qualify as a "technical publication". (I just demonstrated both types of logical quotes, hehe.) Personally, I think that if "traditional" quotes, as stated in the article, are just a holdover from the days when they had to do that to keep from breaking the parts on old-style typesetting machines, there's really no reason to continue doing so when the text is all purely digital· (Oh, crud, I think I broke my period key···.··..·.... err...) Not sure where we'd put this policy - we have a Spelling policy page, I suppose we could make a UESPWiki:Grammar and/or UESPWiki:Punctuation page to go with it. Or maybe UESPWiki:Grammar and Punctuation, because I don't know that there are enough things that'd need to be discussed in that respect to warrant 2 separate pages. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 10:04, 1 May 2008 (EDT)

Well, this whole discussion originally came up in the context of the UESPWiki:Style_Guide page (specifically UESPWiki_talk:Style_Guide#Quotes), where there were a couple of traditionalists, before it was suggested that the discussion would make more sense here to poll a wider audience. So the Style Guide might be the appropriate place to put this. That said, a Grammar and/or Punctuation page might not be a bad idea too. I'm sure we'd find other things to put there over time besides this. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 12:13, 1 May 2008 (EDT)

Another vote here for "logical quotes". As to where to put it, how about a UESPWiki:Grammar and Punctuation that has a link and sentence on the UESPWiki:Style_Guide? Besides the above, this page could hold site conventions on "gold, not Gold", "southwest, not South West" and the like. Ok, I just made that direction rule up, stop derail. XD --Benould^•T•C 13:16, 1 May 2008 (EDT)

I'm for logical quotes. I was trained in school to use the traditional standard, but I think the logical standard is much more intuitive. I've been sorta using it without even knowing it existed out of disgust for the traditional standard.--Ratwar 14:59, 1 May 2008 (EDT)

I'd already stated a preference for logical quotes on the original discussion but I should do so again here. I should clarify though and say that I'm actually supporting logical quotes unless the games does something different: the quotations used in the games should always be the standard where applicable. After all, we already reproduce spelling errors faithfully; we should do the same for grammar errors too. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 17:04, 1 May 2008 (EDT)

Well, of course. Any errors made by the games themselves (or any other official material from Bethesda) should remain uncorrected. That's already pretty well-established site policy. Also, while in the case of certain misspellings, we may occasionally make use of the  [sic] template to show that the error originates in the game, not the site, I don't think we need to do so in the case of punctuation that differs from the site standard (or indeed even punctuation that is clearly wrong by any standard) - it's just not important enough to draw attention to in that way. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 01:21, 2 May 2008 (EDT)

I'm in favour of creating a guideline stating that logical quotes are preferred, for the various reasons already mentioned. However, I think it should just be a guideline, and that it should emphasize that the primary purpose for the guideline is to prevent edit wars (either short-term or, more likely, long-term ones where editor A revamps a set of pages, then a month later editor B revamps again, then a couple months later editor C, etc.). I don't think that this guideline should compel editors to change their punctuation habits: editors who are more comfortable with traditional style quotes should still be free to add information using that punctuation style. And I don't think the guideline should initiate a round of going through the site and purging the site of "wrong" format quotes. It's too minor of an issue to necessitate any real action, and implementation has no real impact on the site or its readers. The main recommendation of the guideline, as I see it, would be that logical-style quotes should not be replaced by traditional quotes.

As for where to add it, I'd vote for just adding it to the Style Guide for now. If eventually we end up with a collection of similar guidelines, then at that time a new page may be necessary. But at the moment it seems like a new page would be somewhat barren, or else would prompt a round of new guidelines just for the sake of filling an empty page. --Nephele^Talk 20:37, 5 May 2008 (EDT)

It's been more than a week and there haven't been any dissenting opinions or further feedback. So I've gone ahead and added a blurb to the style guide providing a new guideline on quotation style preferences. Does that work for everyone? If everyone agrees that the new statement is a fair summary of the discussion, then I think the issue has been resolved. --Nephele^Talk 00:02, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

Editing Question

Im really sorry, i just decided to contribute, and i dont really know how to go about it, i was hoping to add a roleplaying idea to the Oblivion:Roleplaying section, and i dont really know how. I'm also sorry to jack this question, but i didnt know how to add a new one. I'm so sorry.- Sword-of-Gods 19:25, 5 May 2008 (EDT)

Several useful links are provided in the welcome message on your talk page; you may also want to look at some of our Help pages. --Nephele^Talk 20:09, 5 May 2008 (EDT)

Mod Attribution Arbitration

I've been butting heads with dev_akm over this change that I made to the Oblivion Mod:FCOM page.

At issue is just a stylistic question. IMO, the page had started to become cluttered with "by author" phrases. My stylistic point is that too much of that clutters up the page and inteferes with the flow of text.

Note that this isn't just a question about this page, but a question about any page that refers to mods. Should mods always be referred to as "Some Mod by author" or should they usually be referred to as "Some Mod"? Note too I'm not arguing against listing the names of authors in tables (where interference in text flow isn't an issue).

Anyway, I would appreciate it if another editor(s) visited Oblivion Mod talk:FCOM#Mod Attributions and made a stylistic call. I think that both dev and I can live with it going either way -- we just need another voice(s) to resolve the tie. --Wrye 18:57, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

Done. Thanks Ratwar and Nephele. --Wrye 22:31, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

Debate about Mods Page

The wider community should be aware of a discussion taking place about modding and what type of pages should be hosted by UESP. For some reason the discussion isn't taking place on this page so I thought I should point it out for those who haven't got that page on their watch lists. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 15:10, 7 May 2008 (EDT)

Yep, please look if you're interested in Oblivion mods policy. (The discussion is on the Oblivion Mod talk:Mods page because that's the top page for Oblivion Mods.) --Wrye 19:14, 7 May 2008 (EDT)

Search function

Could we add a "Select All" and "De-select All" button to the Search page? In my opinion, it would help a lot with broad and specific searches. I have no idea how hard it is to implement... --Benould^•T•C 21:15, 8 May 2008 (EDT)

I've tracked down the code changes necessary to add this feature (technically as checkboxes rather than buttons, but close enough). I've modified a copy of the relevant PHP file, but for the change to actually happen Daveh has to update the wiki's version of the file. I'll post a message on his talk page, too, to let him know about it. --Nephele^Talk 23:21, 16 May 2008 (EDT)

Gender on NPC pages

This is something that's bothered me for a while, not the least because I started the trend way back in the dark days before the NPC Summary template. I've been thinking that it's a bit odd to always start off every NPC's page with a sentence that looks like:

So-and-so is a male Imperial, who such-and-such etc.

It sounds so much more natural just to leave out the gender and say:

So-and-so is an Imperial who such-and-such etc.

First of all, the gender is usually readily apparent by the name, not to mention the frequent use of gender-specific pronouns in the text. Second, most if not all NPC pages now have pictures which make it pretty obvious, and finally, if you were still confused, the NPC Summary clearly states "Male" or "Female" right there in the box, 2 inches away from the text. Referring to somebody as "a male" whatever is dehumanizing, making them seem like the subject of a laboratory experiment or something. (It's even worse when the race is given first: "So-and-so is a Khajiit female...") These pages are supposed to be sort of brief biographies. You'd never see an article where the first sentence is: "Abraham Lincoln was a male politician from Illinois who was elected the sixteenth president of the United States in 1860." It's simply not necessary to mention his gender, as there are many other clues that would make it readily obvious. (Even if I hadn't picked a name that almost everybody recognizes.) Originally, we were including the gender in the text because the text was all there was. With some of those Khajiit, Argonian, Bosmer, and Altmer names, it wasn't necessarily obvious, and there wasn't a picture or Summary box on the page to clear up any possible confusion. But now with all the other clues we're giving all over the page, it doesn't seem like it's still necessary to explicitly state this in the text on every page. I'd like to propose that we begin changing these pages to have a more natural sounding text to them. Obviously, it's a pretty big job considering how many of these pages there are, so I'm not saying we should go crazy and fix all of them right away. Just if you're changing something else on an NPC page, you might as well fix that as well, and we'll gradually phase out this laboratory-style writing from the pages. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 15:47, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

I have no problems with that, but then at some point, someone's going to ask why we have "Imperial" and "such-and-such" there, as they're also mentioned in the NPC summary. Though I'll be the first to agree that it does sound better to say "...is an Imperial thief" (or whatever) than "is a male Imperial thief". --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 21:51, 12 May 2008 (EDT)

Ditto. I mean, we could go on eliminating all details until all we have on an NPC page is the summary box and quests and notes, but I think that the gender is superfluous. Somercy 11:06, 20 May 2008 (EDT)

I've left the gender out on the couple of NPC pages I created recently. I think having the race there is helpful, although I'm not sure about the class, and I'm definitely not convinced they need linking. Given that everything is there in the infobox (with links) it seems overkill to duplicate everything. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 13:14, 20 May 2008 (EDT)

When I de-stubbed 100+ NPCs, I just followed the formula at the time, it was incredible boring to do that task ;) There isn't much to say about many NPCs, other than what the info-box provides. I agree that male or female is often superfluous, but given that's how it is written in 95% of the cases... just seems like a waste of effort to go through all these pages again. The links are duplicated as well, maybe we could reach an agreement not to add more? Also, I thought the statement of not part of any quest and has no unique dialog was banned, or is that for Oblivion NPCs only? --Benould^•T•C 13:44, 20 May 2008 (EDT)

(outdent) Okay, so I've just written another module for RoBoT that will go through and make a few changes to NPC pages. For pages containing "is a (fe)male (Linked Race) (Linked Class)" it will:

• Remove the word male or female,
• Adjust the indefinite article to "an" where required,
• Unlink the race
• Unlink the class and change it to lower case. If there is no linked class, do nothing for this step.

As a couple of examples:

• Aenar is a male Nord Barbarian -> Aenar is a Nord barbarian
• Gaea Artoria is a female Imperial Guard -> Gaea Artoria is an Imperial guard
• Gamin Girith is a male Dunmer -> Gamin Girith is a Dunmer

I can leave out any or all of those steps, so what do people think? The consensus is definitely against gender being in the description, but what about the other steps? For the technically-minded, the regular expression I'm using is is a (male|female)\s+?\[\[([^\|]+?)\|(altmer|argonian|bosmer|breton|dunmer| imperial|khajiit|nord|orc|redguard)]]\s+?(\[\[[^]]+?]]) so it won't match unless the gender and race are as expected. If that doesn't get a match, it tries again without the bit after the race. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 08:15, 21 May 2008 (EDT)

Cheers to RoBotT! The example "Gaea Artoria is a female Imperial Guard -> Gaea Artoria is an Imperial guard." looks good to me. The definition what the characteristics of a given NPC are is given in a clean sentence. If a user wants to check out race and class details, the links are still available in the info-box. Good work! --Benould^•T•C 09:21, 21 May 2008 (EDT)

Well all the examples are based on the same code - I just wanted to show a couple of different results. I'll leave the debate open until Saturday morning (London time) and run it then so the server will be relatively quiet and I can check the results more easily. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 10:21, 21 May 2008 (EDT)

While we're at it, should we match MW NPCs to UESPWiki:Oblivion_NPC_Redesign_Project#Quest_Involvement? I think the statement "is not involved in any quests" is unnecessary, but we need to have a consensus, or else we get a lot of theses edits. Quests will be linked on the page, no need for the sentence.--Benould^•T•C 13:11, 21 May 2008 (EDT)

I'm of two minds about the unlinking, but I'll go with the consensus. Just to double-check, in your regular expression, I see a space before the word "imperial". I'm assuming that's just a line-wrapping issue and that the original is correct (or that spaces are ignored and it's irrelevant). --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 13:13, 21 May 2008 (EDT)

Yes, the space was there to allow a line-break. There might need to be more to this because some of the pages don't quite conform to that pattern, especially now some pages have had the gender removed. Linking to the race may serve some purpose, but linking to the class seems unnecessary to me. It isn't going to be relevant for 95% of players and is linked in the infobox. I'll obviously follow a consensus though. I'd also agree that the "is not involved..." line should go. It's redundant after all. That's a job for a different module - I don't want to try to do too much at once. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 13:21, 21 May 2008 (EDT)

I haven't chimed in to this discussion so far. In part, because I feel like it's something that is more appropriate to discuss in the context of, for example, the Oblivion NPC Redesign Project. I'd rather have any tinkering with the text done as part of a larger effort to improve the pages, instead of having editors go through each of the hundreds (thousands?) of NPC pages just to tweak a couple words. In addition, though, I'm not sure that my feedback is really going to help resolve anything, because it doesn't really agree with most of what's already been said. Anyway, here goes....

In short, I'm against having a fixed "formula" prescribing exactly what the introductory sentence should say. I don't like the existing unofficial formula, "[Person] is a [gender] [race (link)] [class (link)]." But I also don't particularly like substituting another formula, such as "[Person] is a [race] [class]." The NPC summary is there to provide the formulaic description. I think the introductory sentence should provide a concise, recognizable description of the NPC, focussing on how players are likely to get to know the character -- independent of whether that information happens to correspond to easy labels such as gender/race/class.

In some cases, a "good" description may be similar to the existing formula. The statement, "Ardaline is an Altmer Alchemist at the Bravil Mages Guild," provides a pretty accurate summary of the facts a player will care about: what she does, why you're likely to interact with her, where to find her, etc. From that information, I'm able to recognize the NPC. But in other cases, the formula fails miserably. For example, "Helvius Cecia is an Imperial Rogue and a member of the Thieves Guild in Bruma" leaves me pretty clueless. The "rogue" class tells me nothing about what he does in the game. His membership in the Thieves Guild isn't particularly relevant: it doesn't tell me where to find him, for example; it doesn't affect other aspects of gameplay, such as whether or not he provides training; the most significant aspect of his membership isn't even hinted at, namely that the Gray Fox uses his house as a meeting spot. In my opinion, it would be far more useful to ignore his class and affiliation and instead start out with the reason why he matters: he's the master trainer in hand to hand. Just as a quickly-written example, I'd say this sentence would be more useful than the existing one: "Helvius Cecia is an expert in Hand to Hand combat who lives in Bruma's lower class neighborhood." That tells me where to find him, hints at his appearance (e.g., lower class clothes), as well as telling me why he's relevant to the game. Subsequent sentences can go on to detail his connection to the Thieves guild, or other interesting information.

As for the topic of interest here, namely gender, I'm similarly unconvinced that a universal formula will always work. In many cases, the gender probably is unnecessary and should be left out. But in other cases, it's possible that the gender is unclear or that the gender is an important aspect of the character. For example, with Argonians and Khajiiti the gender may need to be mentioned more frequently than with other races because it's not obvious from the picture. Or there are some NPCs whose gender defines their role in the game: the sirens in Anvil, for example. If the information can be made obvious in some other way (e.g., describing the person using a gender-specific noun such as seductress, or husband, or whatever), then that's sufficient. But if an explicit male/female adjective is helpful for clarity, I don't think it should be left out just because there's a rule saying that it's not part of the formula.

The extent to which a formula will work or fail probably varies widely, depending upon the situation. In Morrowind, it's likely that the class will be used more frequently in the descriptions, because as a player you are more aware of NPC classes: each player provides a "my trade" blurb summarizing their class; trainers' skills are dictated by their class, etc. It's also likely that any newly created pages will be more formulaic: if you're just trying to flesh out a few dozen stubs, you don't necessarily want to take the time to analyze each NPC. But as the pages evolve, I'd rather see them change from more formulaic to less, rather than the opposite way around. Currently, it seems that adherence to a formula is encouraging editors to make the NPC descriptions more generic, by replacing customized parts of the description with less-meaningful class identifications. Using a bot to update the pages, unfortunately, only exacerbates the problem of generic content. Well-written descriptions and sentences can't be written by bots.

Finally, I think that links should be used whenever there is a linkable word. So if the race and/or class are mentioned, I don't see how it hurts the wiki to make those words be links. I don't think we should insist on using the precise class name just so that a link to the class can be squeezed in. But if the natural wording of the sentence introduces standard game terms, I think the term should be a link.

Hopefully my input isn't completely disruptive :| --Nephele^Talk 19:00, 21 May 2008 (EDT)

I completely agree with you about the formula. I'd also prefer to see it done as part of the ONPCRP but that's not going to be complete for a long time and doesn't apply to Morrowind NPCs in any case. The reason I suggested changing the pages en masse is that at the moment there is the appearance of an "official" formula, and it's not surprising that a couple of editors have decided to make every page conform to it. If that's going to happen I'd rather have a formula that's less bad even if we can't have one that's good - at least until we can redo the pages by hand. On the other hand, your point about the non-human races is a fair one and deserves consideration. I certainly can't tell the gender of "Beewos" just from the name, but I think I could guess with "Hides-His-Heart" or "Only-He-Stands-There".

With the links, I can definitely see the use of the race link but, for Oblivion at least, the class link seems a link too far. If I see the word "Alchemist" linked, I'd rather it went to a description of what an alchemist is and does than a page listing all the NPC classes. Similarly, "Guard" would be better going to Oblivion:City Guard. If there's a class that doesn't have an obvious page to link to then I wouldn't bother. The link to the class stats is still in the infobox and I don't think it's important enough to have it in the main text. I'd also agree that some classes are unnecessary on the pages. It's definitely worthwhile describing Melisande as a Witch, but Anedhel? At least that hasn't happened to Goblin Jim yet. Other classes such as "Pauper" or "Enforcer" aren't going to help anybody.

So pace your comments about bots (I'll enroll RoBoT in a creative writing class :) ) I still think it's a good idea to have one go through and take out the gender - leaving anybody that's a Khajiit or Argonian alone, and also leaving alone the links on the other parts. It's not a perfect solution but it's the best available for now. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 04:29, 22 May 2008 (EDT)

Unfortunately, I'll have to take the majority of the blame for the way things currently are. I did a ridiculous amount of putting the NPC template on the Oblivion NPCs pages over a year ago, and as I was doing that, I was adding the "(Name) is a (gender) (race) (class)" blurb, because, frankly, it was the easiest thing to do (hey, that was a lot of work!), and it had been done on the other NPC pages. A lot of these pages had nothing, so I thought that was at least an improvement. I also added the "not involved" blurb because, at the time, I needed something to signal to me that I hadn't missed anything; that it wasn't an oversight. If no one's opposed, I'd love to go through them all myself and "personalize" them. I agree with Nephele; it's practical when the pages are still being developed, but as they're being "polished," they should sound less generic. This is a task made for me, so unless anyone really wanted a bot to do it, I'm game. --GuildKnight^Talk2me 23:35, 22 May 2008 (EDT)

This sounds like a job for Super...errr...some bot

Okay, I'll be the first to admit, I'm uptight (not the first word that came to mind) about these things, but I find it very distracting on Talk pages to have the TOC bumped half-way down my screen because of uncategorized talk that was added above it by those that weren't thinking about it or didn't know how to start a category. I'm sure NepheleBot or RoBoT could easily add an "Uncategorized Talk" category to Talk pages (or alternately, a __TOC__ tag, though that has the disadvantage of forcing a TOC to be present). But the big question is, does anybody else find it distracting enough to be worth it, or am I the only one who's "uptight" about it? :) --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 14:53, 21 May 2008 (EDT)

Yup, there's me. I'm similar in that way. I hate it when things are slightly wrong. For example I was once in a restaurant, and I almost went mad because there was a picture on the wall that was slightly crooked. But yes, I think that would make me feel better aswell. - Game Lord^{Talk|Contribs} 15:21, 21 May 2008 (EDT)

Yes, and I'll put my name down in the OCD club, but I'm not sure "Uncategorised Talk" is the right phrase because I just know that people will treat is as a license to add whatever they like as a follow-up. If anything, I'd say "Question" would be better as it's so noncommittal. IF - and it's a big "if" we do this, there's something that's bothered me: categories. At the moment it's a pain to look at the Uncategorized Pages list because there are so many talk pages appearing on the list. Adding a category of (NAMESPACE)-Talk would help make that page (and Uncategorized Pages) easier to use than at the moment. Oh dear. At least three of us are bothered about this. That's quite disturbing. :) –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 15:38, 21 May 2008 (EDT)

Sounds good, but please make it a {{TOCright}}, preventing the user from having to scroll past the TOC first... Much cleaner page layout, and a pet peeve of mine. --Benould^•T•C 15:42, 21 May 2008 (EDT)

Just one minor input: I don't think we should start adding a category to every talk page. The reason that talk pages are showing up on the uncategorized pages list is because that special page is broken, along with a handful of other special pages (see the crossed out entries on Helping Out, for example). Talk pages are not supposed to ever be shown in the list of uncategorized pages. I'd rather get the chunk of PHP code that's responsible fixed rather than introduce a system where we need to constantly be adding a meaningless category to every new talk page that gets created.

OK, while I'm at it... one more thought. Similarly, if we don't like the default display used for every TOC on the wiki, I think we'd be better off changing the default style of all the TOCs (once, in a single central place) rather than editing hundreds of pages to add a chunk of code to each of the pages. --Nephele^Talk 19:07, 21 May 2008 (EDT)

If fixing the PHP is an option then I'd definitely prefer that. I thought that was something to be avoided though? The other point isn't about the way the TOCs look, rather about where they appear. See Oblivion talk:Horses for example - the TOC appears after a large block of text and it would be much better if it could be at the top. If there's a way to do that centrally it'd be great, but I'm not sure there is. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 03:50, 22 May 2008 (EDT)

D'oh! You just had to go and point out one that sooooo badly needs fixing, didn't you?!? Now I'm just itching to fix that, but I'll leave it as is for the point of demonstration. (Yes, I know, I could fix it and point the link at the pre-fixed version, but let's try not to indulge the OCD habits too much, shall we?) --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 12:04, 22 May 2008 (EDT)

(Colon killing spree: Initiate!) As little wieght as my opinion holds, I would gladly support this. I tend to be rather picky about tiny faults as well. Problem is, would all the rigging of bots and applicating of edits cause mass server lag? Or have I missed a trick? --HMSVictory^Talk 12:09, 22 May 2008 (EDT)

We need to be somewhat cautious about making PHP changes, because the various code customizations will make upgrading the wiki software more complicated. But the fact is that some bugs can only be fixed by modifying the PHP. For example, there is no way to fix Special:Deadendpages or Special:Uncategorizedcategories without changing the PHP. I think having a non-buggy site is a higher priority than minimizing maintenance work at some unknown future point. Also, we already have a fair number of PHP customizations, and in the particular case of Special:Uncategorizedpages (and, for that matter, Special:Uncategorizedcategories), our existing PHP customizations are responsible for the problem. Fixing a chunk of code that has already been customized introduces no new maintenance issues.

As for TOCs, I understand the point that Robin Hood initially brought up. In my previous comments, I was just trying to respond to Benould's request about adding {{TOCright}} to every talk page on the site. If right-floating tables of contents are universally desirable, then we should introduce that as a site-wide style change instead of adding {{TOCright}} to every page. --Nephele^Talk 14:46, 23 May 2008 (EDT)

I can't say anything about PHP, other than what Nephele says makes sense. As to a universal TOCright, hmm, it would probably work in many cases and have a more functional and pleasing result, like here. Problems would arise on pages with an info-box on the right side, unless the code could be "smart" enough to make an exception for that. I am not sure how many pages with both TOC and info box we're talking about here, but some checking by hand would likely be needed. --Benould^•T•C 15:18, 23 May 2008 (EDT)

For myself, I'm not a fan of a right-sided TOC, though a TOC that allows the text to wrap around it on Talk pages might be nice (like {{TOCleft}} does). But I'd have to say only on Talk pages, though...too many problems could arise from introducing that kind of thing globally. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 10:59, 24 May 2008 (EDT)

Agreed on that point - in many cases, you WANT the TOC to be after the introductory text. Not so much on Talk pages, but on actual articles (e.g. Bloodmoon:Raven Rock, just from the list of pages I have open in tabs right now) it's actually preferable to have that first paragraph above the TOC. It's hardly a major concern, but if it's possible to change a little CSS or something to make TOCs always on top for only Talk pages, I'd say go for it. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 11:09, 24 May 2008 (EDT)

I love this place!

Ok, this is the Community Portal, and I have something to say about the community here. I love y'all! This wiki has a solid community backing everything we do, and I think that is the reason this is the best wiki, by far, on the internet. I just wanted to publicly express my gratitude for such a dedicated and supportive community helping to guide this wiki forward. Thank you all! But a special thanks to the ones who have made this community for me; thank you: Nephele, Somercy, Rpeh, Ratwar, Lurlock, Eshe, Vesna, Benould, RobinHood70, Timenn, and Uniblab; you have made this more than just a website, and I've come to think of you all as "friends." And, of course, thank you Daveh for making this possible! This wiki is an accomplishment we are all proud of! --GuildKnight^Talk2me 17:44, 4 June 2008 (EDT)

Just a question

How do you make a new page? — Unsigned comment by Dhdyhd (talk • contribs)

See this page. You can find it linked from the help pages in the left navigation bar. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 14:14, 9 June 2008 (EDT)

Oblivion:Schemer

Something funny is going on with this page. If I try to view it without logging in, I get a "Database Error" with this description:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was: (SQL query hidden) from within function "Job::pop". MySQL returned error "1205: Lock wait timeout exceeded; Try restarting transaction (localhost)".

If I log in, the page displays correctly. Is it me, a temporary glitch, or is something more sinister going on? --Gaebrial 10:07, 10 June 2008 (EDT)

I get the same result, but that's probably not surprising. I'd guess that somebody anonymous tried to access the page when the database was down during the morning reboot, which means every anon editor will get that error message because of the way the caching works. Of course, I could be utterly wrong about that. Hopefully Nephele or Daveh will know more about the cause, and more importantly, how to fix it. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 10:16, 10 June 2008 (EDT)

I purged the page this morning which, as far as I can tell, fixed the problem. --Nephele^Talk 01:20, 11 June 2008 (EDT)

Proposed Policy: Authored Lists

Quite a while back, I proposed that we host Recommended Mod Lists (or more generally Authored Lists). Because of the nature of this type of thing, that proposal has moved forward very slowly. I.e. although it was proposed a year ago, until a week ago, we've only had one example of such a list (Review:Wrye's_Fun_Oblivion_Videos).

A second list (Review:A's_List_of_Recommended_Mods) has now been added, so debate is now a bit more real, and so is under discussion again.

Because this has been discussed before and because there's been discussion on separate pages, the existing discussion is actually already quite long -- too long to put on the Community Portal. Accordingly, I have started a new proposed policy page: UESPWiki:Authored_Lists. If you're interested in the issue/discussion, please visit UESPWiki_talk:Authored_Lists.

Note: Although this notice is fairly short, if Authored Lists are accepted, then they constitute a notable exception to the wiki's Anyone can edit rule. The pages are not fully user owned, but they are also not fully open to editing. Again, please see the discussion, if you're concerned about this type of usage.

--Wrye 18:53, 10 June 2008 (EDT)

Unfortunately, this discussion seems to me like it might be just be a bit premature, mainly because of an odd coincidence in timing. Over the last couple weeks, several editors have been bouncing around ideas and brainstorming about the general organization of the site's namespaces. We'd been just about to convert the random ideas into some coherent suggestions and start a community discussion on the topic. One of the main subjects of such a discussion would be the general question of what we want to do with articles that are not typical wiki (e.g., community-written) articles. I think it would be better to first resolve some of the general namespace organization questions, and then afterwards see what that means for individual examples, such as Authored Lists.

So, any chance we could delay this discussion until after we've discussed in general what we want to do with articles that are exceptions to the "Anyone can edit" rule? Thanks :) --Nephele^Talk 01:13, 11 June 2008 (EDT)

Okay, but if that's going to take a while, then the "Proposed to Move" templates should be removed from the two Review space pages until the issue is read to be discussed again. --Wrye 00:06, 12 June 2008 (EDT)

Baton Articles: Another example of a similar things is the Somewhat Acerbic Modders Dictionary. Like Authored Lists, there is a strong subjective element to the page, which means that editorship/authorship should be limited. However, like authored lists, the article is intentionally set up to be passed like a baton to later editors. I.e. unlike say a fanfiction or personal review, it is intentionally designed not to be owned by a single person.

Non-Removal: Another characteristic of this is that the article is not owned to the point where the original author can remove it. While everything at the site is under cc-by-sa (which means that any contribution by one author can always be re-instated by another), by common usage, we don't enforce that rule on user pages. I.e. if a user removes something under his user page, the general rule is to not reinstate it. But this usage is undesirable for Baton articles. But putting a Baton article in a non-userspace, the author surrenders the usual, "allowed to delete stuff in his personal space" rule. --Wrye 17:50, 13 June 2008 (EDT)

Rename: Authored Article - I've been trying to think of a good name for this sort of thing. E.g. "Authored List", "Baton Article", "Protected Article", "Limited Article", "Reserved Article". But I think that "Authored Article" is most accurate/succinct. --Wrye 18:28, 13 June 2008 (EDT)

Discussion continued at Namespace Reorganization.

Namespace Reorganization

Discussion has been moved to UESPWiki talk:Namespaces. See UESPWiki talk:Community Portal/Archives for discussion of why move was made]]. --Nephele^Talk 22:05, 20 June 2008 (EDT)

More Namespace Reorganization

While we're on the subject of radical reorganization, I have another proposal for a change to the namespaces. I suggest that we might want to change all of the Main pages for each of the games to be Morrowind:Main Page, Oblivion:Main Page, etc., instead of Morrowind:Morrowind, Oblivion:Oblivion. The recent recreation of the Redguard article illustrates why this change makes sense. (It's currently the only game that doesn't have its own Mainspace redirect, which is probably why people keep creating it, and why they will continue to do so - non-Admins have no way of knowing that the page was already created and deleted in the past. I admit that I should have checked, but whatever.) Additionally, I think that Morrowind:Morrowind should really be an article about the province of Morrowind as it relates to the game Morrowind. (Like the fact that 2/3rds of the province is not actually seen in-game, for example.) Likewise, Oblivion:Oblivion should be an article about the planes of Oblivion, (possibly move Oblivion:Planes of Oblivion there) Daggerfall:Daggerfall should be about the county and city of Daggerfall, Redguard:Redguard should be about the race, Battlespire:Battlespire should be about the tower, etc. The second part of a page name should be the subject of the article as it relates to the first part. This is something of a major change (not so much in that it involves a lot of work but in that people might have Oblivion:Oblivion bookmarked or linked from other sites), so I think if we decide to do so, we should put a notice onto the top of each of these pages linking to the Main Page articles and suggesting that people update their links. It makes sense for the same reason that Lore:Tamriel (or Lore:Tamriel as it may soon be called) should really be an article about the continent of Tamriel, not just a main page for links. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 12:50, 15 June 2008 (EDT)

I'd support that. --Ratwar 13:23, 15 June 2008 (EDT)

Support The changes suggested make a lot of sense, and would help with the other suggested reorganization as well. --Benould^•T•C 13:55, 15 June 2008 (EDT)

Yeah, makes sense. But I'd say we should perhaps do any change fairly slowly. The pages we're talking about are among the most viewed pages on the site. So minimizing the disruption to readers should be a high priority.

We already have redirects at all the various Main Page names (Oblivion:Main Page, Morrowind:Main Page). I'd suggest that first we start by making sure that those redirects are used in all appropriate places (in particular prominent places like the sidebar and the main Main Page). Then perhaps move the current pages to Main Pages, and leave redirects at Oblivion:Oblivion, etc. for some time (months). After it seems safe to assume that most people are using the new main pages, change Oblivion:Oblivion, etc. over to new content. It will take some time, but I think it's warrnanted. --Nephele^Talk 14:55, 15 June 2008 (EDT)

It's a good idea and makes a lot of sense, but I'd second Nephele's call for caution. Apart from anything else it looks like the Tam->Lore debate is heading for a conclusion (even if the corollaries aren't yet) and I'd suggest a One Thing At A Time policy can only be good here. The NS move is higher-priority so let's get that out of the way before starting with this. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 15:17, 15 June 2008 (EDT)

(Colon killing spree) Having come late to the party, I'm finding it a little difficult to (a) follow the discussion sequentially, and (b) find somewhere suitable to add my comments. So, they're all going to be lumped here. --Gaebrial 07:12, 17 June 2008 (EDT)

Moving Tamriel to Lore: Good idea. It seems to me that the purpose of the Tamriel articles is to provide a 'backstory', fleshing out the details of the Elder Scrolls universe, so 'Lore' would be an appropriate namespace. Just as long as BethSoft don't release TESV:Lore.

Removing General: Yes, this seems to be a mishmash of things at the moment, dominated by the BethSoft profiles and fanfiction. The profiles could be put under 'Bethesda' (so General:Pete Hines becomes Bethesda:Pete Hines, for example). If we're also moving the reviews & fanfiction to the user pages, that only leaves a small number of pages to be shifted around or deleted as appropriate.

Removing Reviews: If we're going to host this kind of 'fan-opinion' content (see below), then the user namespace is probably the best place for it. Mind you, the only mod lists I have ever used/consulted to any great extent are Telesphoros' List o'Mods for Morrowind and the FCOM load order for Oblivion, so I'm not best placed to comment on their usefulness or appropriateness for UESP.

Changing Morrowind:Morrowind to Morrowind:Main Page etc.: Sounds like a reasonable standardisation, with the main page for each game being at 'Main Page'. I presume that all of the mainspace pages (Morrowind, Oblivion, etc.) would be set up as disambiguation pages (MW and OB already are, but Daggerfall takes you straight to Daggerfall:Daggerfall) with all the various possibilities listed - so for example Morrowind would link to Morrowind:Main Page (main page about game), Morrowind:Morrowind (in-game page about province), and Lore:Morrowind (general page about province).

One final comment on the question of hosting fan fiction, mod lists, and similar stuff: I believe that this kind of content should only be on UESP if it is going to be of use to somebody other than the author. Otherwise, it's just massaging the author's ego. --Gaebrial 07:12, 17 June 2008 (EDT)

I don't think this is a good idea. There are several issues with renaming the game pages to Main Page. In regular writing, if you are talking about a game, you just refer to it by name. It is very convenient on wiki's that the page the link refers to is often very similar to the description of the link. We use that standard practically everywhere. And in many of the cases that it's not, it's a generalised description. For example, "There is a quest that deals with this gate.". But "Main Page" is not a generalised description of a game.

My second reason for objecting this change is that I feel there can only be one Main Page. Having multiple of those might be confusing, but this is mainly an issue of style. The word "Main" suggests that you can't go any further on the hierarchy of the site.

Third, the case where the page name is equal to the namespace name is a special one. I think we should recognize it as that, and give a single purpose to all of these pages. But if Morrowind:Morrowind describes a province, and Redguard:Redguard describes a race, you will have broken this uniformity. As it is now, all these pages describe an entire game. No page higher in the hierarchy should be available.

Next, the purpose of the namespaces is to avoid ambiguation. If you think on it, the link [[Morrowind:Fighters Guild]] actually means: "Page Fighters Guild is requested." "Which Fighters Guild?" "Morrowind's Fighters Guild." I don't think it is a good idea to cast any form of ambiguation over the name "Main Page".

Changing the game page's names requires much work, and I don't think it's worth it if it raises these issues. There may be a few benefits, but I think it issues raised outweigh them. --Timenn < talk > 04:45, 18 June 2008 (EDT)

Disambig pages

Discussion has been moved to Help talk:Disambiguation. See UESPWiki talk:Community Portal/Archives for discussion of why move was made]]. --Nephele^Talk 22:05, 20 June 2008 (EDT)

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