Semi Protection

UESPWiki:Community Portal/Archive 35

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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.

Skyrim Spells

So I've been working on a template to revamp the way the Skyrim:Spells pages work. See Skyrim:Firebolt for an example. Basically, I felt there was more to say about the individual spells than could be easily listed in one page per school. The fact that Firebolt, Fire Ball, Fire Rune, Flames, and Fire Cloak really don't give much in the way of details about how these spells work in practice is a major oversight, I think. Sure, they all do Skyrim:Fire Damage, but they work in completely different ways, so I think it's worth having individual pages for them. Unlike previous games, there's no Spellmakers, so the spells we have are all the spells there are, which means we don't really have to think about them in terms of effects so much. Each spell is more or less unique, so it makes sense to list them separately. (You can also add useful tips, such as how using Ice Spike makes it very easy to find the corpses after the battle because the spikes stick around and glow.) I'd also like to include optional images of the spells in action on these pages. The template could probably use a bit of tweaking still, so if anyone else wants to take a crack at that, feel free. In particular, I'm thinking some of the features might need to be made optional, which could make things challenging. I tried to make the ones on the same row related fields, so that if you use one, you'll probably use the other, but that might not hold true for all spells. Also not sure where to put things like "Speed", which only affect projectile spells. (And that data is harder to find in the CK - I'm not sure where it came from actually.) Opinions? TheRealLurlock (talk) 15:49, 17 December 2012 (GMT)

Should be useful, there probably is quite a bit of information for spells (and tome locations) and Skyrim spells are unique enough to warrant a page. --Alfwyn (talk) 18:11, 17 December 2012 (GMT)
I like the idea of having individual pages for all spells. It means a lot of work on making these redirects into actual articles in the near future, but it will definitely be useful to document more detailed information on them than what we've been able to do with our current setup. I can't help with the template part, but I think what you've got set up currently works well. The information is easy to find and understand at a quick glance, which is how a summary box should be. I especially like the bottom part listing where to buy or find the spell tomes. — ABCface◥ 05:47, 18 December 2012 (GMT)
I'm with you in the general idea and goal, but there is one thing which I feel needs to be said. While it is true that the spells do warrant more attention, I don't believe that they (always) deserve their own unique page. Take the cloak and rune spells. Do we really need six pages to cover all of those spells? I propose that a page be set up for each group of spells (cloak, rune, multiple target, etc.), rather than for each individual spell. I believe that this would greatly reduce redundant information. Obviously, this is of limited application, as it is mostly applicable only among destruction spells, so many spells will have individual pages, but I think that concision should be practiced wherever possible. --HalfStache 22:07, 6 August 2012 (UTC) 06:20, 18 December 2012 (GMT)
I like where you're taking this TRL. And to address Halfstache's concern: the wiki documents the 100+ skyrim magical effects on individual pages, no matter how small it is (e.g., Skyrim:Huntsman's Prowess or Skyrim:Cure Poison), or if they belong to a certain 'group' like Runes (e.g., the various Weakeness to XX or Resist XX). IMO I don't see anything detrimental to documenting each of the 100+ spells on separate pages, like we did for effects. However, there is just 1 little layout issue that is bugging me though, which is the availability section in the infobox. Do we really need that? It doesn't quite look appealing; we can simply put that info in another second-tier header, just like what we did for all ingredients, which have a Plants/Creatures/Sources header. Other than this minor thing, I'm quite happy with the rest of the infobox template.
Oh, 1 more thing. I noticed there are image params; I'm guessing we need images for these pages? (I smell a photoshoot coming :P) So I'm guesing these will be uploaded as SR-spell-Spell Name.jpg under Category:Skyrim-Spell Images? ~ Psylocke 11:25, 18 December 2012 (GMT)
I think it's great. I'd want to think about some ways to make information on availability clearer: So it's clear that it's available from merchants when you reach x in skill y, and the tomes begin to appear as found objects/loot at player level z. --JR (talk) 12:11, 18 December 2012 (GMT)
Yeah, so far I'm only putting in the guaranteed locations of spell tomes, not places where they can be found as random loot. This info is pretty much being copied off the existing spell pages for now. We mention on the top of Spells a few things about finding tomes and at what level they become available. Since this is based solely on spell difficulty, it seems a bit redundant to repeat it on every spell page. I suppose it could be added in such a way that it's automatically determined based on difficulty, and just add a "noloot" param for those few that don't follow those rules. (Not sure how common that is.) Obviously this would be omitted for spells which have no tomes.
To address the point about combining similar spells (e.g. the Rune and Cloak spells), even these have enough differences that it's not too big a deal. (E.g. you wouldn't use a Flame Cloak near flammable gas, but the other two are fine, Lightning Cloak is particularly effective against spellcasters, Frost Cloak slows enemies down so it's easier to run circles around them, etc.) The Rune spells are more similar, but still, the number of such spells that could be combined is much less than in previous games. (e.g. we don't have 27 individual Drain Skill/Damage Skill/Absorb Skill/Restore Skill/Fortify Skill spells like Morrowind did, etc.)
I do have some concerns with spells which are not used by the player. I noticed there's a redirect in there for Skyrim:Firebolt Storm, which not only is not actually listed on the page it redirects to, but I think it's only used by Alduin himself. Not sure if that needs a page or even a redirect, since the redirect doesn't even point to a page which contains the information. We'll see how many of those there are to deal with... TheRealLurlock (talk) 13:38, 18 December 2012 (GMT)

(←) Lesser technical points. I'm not sure about Duration/Magnitude and Area values in the infobox. Those are attribute assigned to the idividual magic effects. For most spells there is a clear primary magic effect, but for spells like Banish Daedra this isn't as clear anymore and the magnitude is different for all three effects there. About the range (and speed) for Firebolt, that information can be found at FireboltProjectile01 (used by the Firebolt magic effect) and found under SpecialEffect/Projectile in the CK. There's just the distance conversion into feet I'm not really sure about (well, a factor of ~21.3 is used, but why?). But that's more a general problem how to describe ranges. --Alfwyn (talk) 14:02, 18 December 2012 (GMT)

Yeah, there's bound to be minor complications on some of these. Of course in that case, the "Banish" part of it needs no duration listing because it's permanent. As for speed, there's really a fairly small number of spells where that even applies. I wonder if that should be put in the template at all? (And if so, how would it affect the layout - can we find another param that would apply to only those spells that would fit side-by-side with it? My original design had only one column of fields, but it got kind of long, so that's why I made it two, but it means you have to take stuff like that into consideration.) Also, we're giving in units of "fps". I'm guessing "feet per second"? But for gamers, "fps" usually means "frames per second", which makes no sense. Would it be better to write it as "feet/sec"? TheRealLurlock (talk) 14:13, 18 December 2012 (GMT)
Thinking outside the Destruction school for a minute, I do see that some spell pages could be reasonably combined. For example, in Restoration, the Ward spells are all identical except in numbers, as are the Turn Undead spells (except the Master one). Fast Healing and Close Wounds are the same, though the other healing spells aren't. In Illusion, the assorted Calm, Frenzy, Fear, and Rally spells are mostly the same. The Conjure/Summon spells in Conjuration all operate the same, though the actual summoned creatures do not, so that's iffy. And in Alteration, there's the Armor spells which differ only in value. I think for these, we might do what we do for generic NPCs and put multiple Spell Summaries on the same page, making all of them redirect to it. I'll see how that works with Ward for now... TheRealLurlock (talk) 16:25, 18 December 2012 (GMT)
So I've done that: Skyrim:Ward (spells). Not sure how I feel about it. I was planning on eventually creating a Spell Data template, much like Template:Item Data or Template:NPC Data, which would read the values from the individual spell pages and greatly simplify the spell list pages. Unless we duplicate that #save'd data on the redirects (which we've done before, e.g. for non-relevant NPCs). Otherwise, only the spells with their own pages would work with the Spell Data template. TheRealLurlock (talk) 16:55, 18 December 2012 (GMT)
I fully support this project, and I'm glad to see that it's going so well. One minor note: if we list speed in feet/sec, shouldn't we also list it in meters/sec as well, for our users that use the metric system? You could abbreviate them as f/s and m/s. We could also list speeds as mph and kph, because most people (I'd venture to guess) measure speed with those two units. • JAT 18:44, 18 December 2012 (GMT)
The units are given as "feet" in the Creation Kit, so mostly we're just copying down numbers. If we were going to do conversions to metric for everything, it'd be a lot of extra work for not much benefit. I'm not even sure if the numbers translate from real life to in-game. If you take, say, the average height of a person from 5-6 feet, does that correspond with the height of NPCs in Skyrim feet? Or are the numbers completely arbitrary? I think the numbers are mainly useful as a comparative measure - Spell X has 5 times more range than Spell Y - you can see it in the numbers. Whether the units called "feet" in the CK correspond to anything like actual real-world feet is hard to tell, and not particularly important anyhow. I just thought that "fps" is so widely established in the gaming community to mean something else altogether that using it as a measure of velocity is a potential source of confusion. TheRealLurlock (talk) 22:57, 18 December 2012 (GMT)
(edit conflict) The one thing that bugs me in the Firebolt section is the large amount of white-space in the purchase section. I've put two other mockups in my sandbox, what do people think?
Jak: they're not often used, but there's a definition here, which is 64 units = 3 feet, or 1 exterior cell (4096 units) = 192 feet. Personally, I find expressing anything in feet to be utterly meaningless, as the scale of things changes (at least visually) when you get into cities and such, and if you calculate it out, the distance between major cities is ludicrously small...on the order of a 5-minute walk in real-life. Anyway, my main point here is that since there are conversions mentioned on the CK wiki and elsewhere, there's probably some reason to use feet. If nothing else, it gives some idea of relative range, even if it's a bit difficult to judge in game. But I don't think there's any reason to also convert to meters, as those aren't used anywhere at all. – Robin Hood↝talk 23:14, 18 December 2012 (GMT)
I already did a similar thing on Skyrim:Flames, in that case separating the free copies from the ones for sale. (Of course in that case, the merchants are utterly irrelevant, since every player starts with that spell.) I'm not sure if it makes sense to enforce 3 columns, though, as you can see in some cases: Skyrim:Flame Cloak, for example, you wouldn't want to squeeze that line into a third of the column. I hate that you have to use raw HTML to make sub-tables within the template, but it works, and is preferable to enforcing a single layout which might not work in all cases. TheRealLurlock (talk) 01:10, 19 December 2012 (GMT)

(←) Yeah, I thought the three-column layout might cause issues in some cases, so I have no issues not forcing that via the template. I do think it looks better to have the "Purchase From" and "Found In" as full header rows, though, then the layout below it can be adapted as necessary. Not sure where/how we'd fit the note like you've used in Flames, but we could probably just put it in right before the "Purchase From" and "Found In" headers, or maybe at the bottom as a "Notes" field.

The HTML table coding is a necessary evil when you're doing tables within tables. You can get away with using wiki markup a lot of the time, but I find that having to use constructs like {{{!}} instead of a simple {| makes it easier and more readable to just use <table>. We might be able to do some quick & dirty table templates to help out with the most common scenarios...something like {{Table2|col1=|col2=}} and {{Table3|col1=|col2=|col3=}}. If we can get that working well, it could simplify a lot of the coding.

I'm not opposed to the separate headers for "Purchase" and "Found", with the understanding that they should both be optional. Also, not sure what to do with spells like Flames which are neither purchased nor found - you already have them to start. And some spells are given as part of quests, so they're also not technically "found". Then there's cases like Skyrim:Spectral Arrow, which is none of these things, since it can't even be acquired in the game, though I think it was still noteworthy enough for a page. All this was part of the reason I went with the generic untitled block for that, because just "purchased" and "found" don't cover all cases, and I can't think of any good term that does. TheRealLurlock (talk) 03:13, 19 December 2012 (GMT)
In which case, I'd suggest a Notes section, either with an explicit title or without. – Robin Hood↝talk 04:25, 19 December 2012 (GMT)
Okay, so those are all in there. In addition, I made it put the level/Ritual Spell quest requirement for purchasing spells in the header, and also show the level at which things appear in random loot, which should hopefully discourage people from adding stuff they found randomly to the "Found" section. Best of all, it does all this automatically so you don't have to tell it to (and I didn't have to edit all the existing pages to add the feature.) Now, I'm not sure if there are any rule-breaking cases that might need to be addressed. The only override I put in there was the ability to omit the leveled loot section with the "noloot" parameter, which should only be needed on quest-specific spells. (Master spells and spells without tomes automatically omit it.) I think this pretty much covers everything. If anyone can think of any other weird cases or other features that should be included, speak now, because I'm going to start doing all of them soon. May just be stubs for many - I've been focusing on the spells I've actually used, so I can speak from experience. And the only school I have access to Expert and Master level spells for is Conjuration (I'm a Bound Weapon addict). Everything else is Adept or less, though I'm about to get Destruction up to Expert. TheRealLurlock (talk) 05:55, 20 December 2012 (GMT)
If you need any kind of in-game confirmation, I've got a level 81 "do everything everywhere" character with all spells in the game...at least the ones available to the player. (Scary part is, I've still got lots of quests I haven't done!) – Robin Hood↝talk 07:34, 20 December 2012 (GMT)
I went the other route, and have basically done every non-Radiant quest in the game with a few exceptions (including obviously things like which side I picked in the Civil War, Dawnguard, etc.) Was planning on playing a second character and doing the opposite on all those branching quest lines. Anyhow, that maxed character will come in handy, but probably in more of a "you can work on the Expert and Master spells while I handle all the easier ones" sort of way, in true wiki spirit. As I said, I mastered Conjuration and I'm about to open up Expert Destruction spells, but I'm nowhere near on the other schools, so that'd be a good place to start if you wanted to help. TheRealLurlock (talk) 13:23, 20 December 2012 (GMT)

Skyrim Spells (edit break)

(←) Where does that level information come from? For example for Fireball I see a "leveled" list LitemsSpellTomes50AllDestruction used by merchants. Fireball appears there at level 1, but the appearance is controlled by a global value PCDestructionAdept. That global is initially 100 (chance none=100%), but will be changed by the WISkillIncrease02 quest to 0, if the player reaches "adept" destruction level (global PCMagicSkillAdpet, skill level 40, not level 40). At the same time the spell seems to end up at level 1 in the MerchantSpouseSpellsChest. It looks like it ends up on DLC2LootSpellBooks50 at level 1 (use by seekers). Tomes end up on different leveled lists, not in a very regular fashion, some of them unused. In short, I see a confusing number of leveled lists that would need investigation.

All in all I think it may be better to represent the information outside the infobox, like we did for ingredients. it gives us more freedom to document the different cases. --Alfwyn (talk) 13:28, 20 December 2012 (GMT)

Just using the info we already have placed at the top of Skyrim:Spells - it's possible that needs to be researched a bit more. Another thing that occurred to me just now doing Skyrim:Telekinesis (which is basically the same as Skyrim:Telekinesis Effect), is what do we do when the spell page is pretty much the same as the effect page? This is mostly true for effects with only one spell associated with them like most of the Alteration spells (except for the Armor spells), the Bound Weapon spells (do we make 3 articles for each weapon, or just duplicate the effect page?), Invisibility, Muffle, etc. No matter how we arrange it there will be some redundancy. Obviously the effect pages also cover effects from Alchemy and Enchantments as well as spells, but in some cases (Detect Life, Telekinesis, Transmute), the spell is all there is. Should the spell page and effect page just be combined? The Effects Summary's on these pages are mostly useless anyhow - basically all they do is list the school, which is also on Spell Summary. Though the trail and categories are different. Extra categories can be added manually, but not sure about the trail... TheRealLurlock (talk) 14:31, 20 December 2012 (GMT)
I see. As a quick note, the tomes added by Dawnguard, like the one for Heal Undead are not found in random loot and sold by their vendor independent of skill level. --Alfwyn (talk) 14:57, 20 December 2012 (GMT)
There's already a "noloot" param for those not found in random loot, and I can add a param to make the skill level not show for those spells. Does anyone else remember how to deal with the extra linebreaks added by optional sections? See Skyrim:Equilibrium for example. Because there's no "Purchase" or "Notes" sections, we get extra linebreaks in "Found" section. I've tried to fix it, but any fix I come up with breaks every other page instead. I'm trying to remember the bizarre combination of where the #if statements and newlines go to make this work in all cases... TheRealLurlock (talk) 17:42, 20 December 2012 (GMT)
Okay, so mostly what's left are a lot of spells which are the only spell available for their effect: Detect Life, Transmute, Waterbreathing, Detect Dead, Soul Trap, Clairvoyance, Muffle, Invisibility. (There's a few others I'll get to eventually, need testing first.) But what should be the deal for these 1-spell effects? Most of the info for them already exists on the relevant effect page. And many of these effects exist only as spells, not enchantments or alchemy effects, so there'd be no additional information on those pages. Is it worth it to create "<blah> (spell)" pages to disambig from "<blah> (effect)"? Also, for the effect pages, if there's a spell with the same name, I do think they should be renamed to "<blah> (effect)", and a disambig left at just "<blah>". This might cause problems with the templates used for alchemy ingredients however. We'll need to find a way around that problem as well. TheRealLurlock (talk) 19:54, 24 December 2012 (GMT)

Skyrim Spells (edit break 2)

(←) Alright, I need some opinions here now. I've pretty much got every spell up there with a few exceptions. The Sun Damage ones I still need to test (my character chose the other route in Dawnguard). But other than that I've got a whole bunch which would basically be redundant with their respective effect pages:

Should spell pages be created for all of these? I think yes, but we might want to more clearly define what goes on the spell page vs. the effect page, and remove content accordingly from the effect pages to pare them down a bit. I do think it might be best to move the Clairvoyance, Invisibility, Soul Trap, and Waterbreathing effect pages to have the "(effect)" suffix (and similarly move Muffle to have the "(spell)" suffix). The version without suffix would be a disambig in each case. Does anyone know what impact this would have on other templates, such as those use for ingredients?

Another issue to deal with is the Spell Summary template itself. There's a few problems with spacing that occur if certain fields are omitted. For example, spells which are found, not purchased, e.g. Conjure Boneman. There's extra space in that found field that I'd like to get rid of. My attempts to fix this either didn't do anything or broke other pages, so I'd like to get a template guru to take a look at these. Similarly, the row with Magnitude and Area on it was designed to be optional, but if you leave it out, it wrecks the spacing on other rows. I know it's possible to fix these and still make it work on other pages, but I'm stumped.

Finally, I'd like to start adding images to most of the spell pages if possible. One problem is that many of them would require having a character in the shot casting them, which violates our general rule about not including player characters in the shot, but this may be one of those places where we'd have to bend that rule. I could do these myself if people don't mind a female Nord in Dragonbone armor in the shot. (Dragonbone is fairly gender-concealing, but you can still tell. Good for common end-game appearance though.) Or I could change into some robes for a more wizardly appearance, though it'd make my character's appearance more obvious. Alternatively, I could split these up with other players so we have a variety of characters in the shots instead of them all being the same. (Something we'd need to coordinate to decide who gets what.) TheRealLurlock (talk) 02:12, 23 January 2013 (GMT)

To be honest, I've only minimally skimmed the discussion, and while it all appears cool, I do have one question: How would an image of the many in-game characters supplement the articles? Like you said, the rules have to be bent to make the shots possible to begin with, and I personally don't find a handful of random characters casting spells to be all that effective at supplementing the article. It's all just random lighting effects over a player character when you think about it. Before I put in my support for these images, I am curious what additional guidelines would put put into effect for these images, since they would be special images that break the style guide for all our images (and the other games don't have similar images, I believe, which makes this an even less consistent idea with everything else) ES(talk•email) 02:21, 23 January 2013 (GMT)
The other games don't have individual pages for spells either - for the simple reason that they don't really need them. The spells in the earlier games were much more generic than the Skyrim ones. (Plus you could create custom spells, which Skyrim lacks.) Mainly I'd be looking for images of the spells in action, not necessarily the mere act of casting them. So, for example, the Fireball image would be a picture of a Fireball exploding and damaging some enemies, rather than just what it looks like as you're casting it. I'd want to keep the character out of the shots if at all possible, but sometimes it's unavoidable (e.g. the Cloak spells). The purpose is the same as the purpose for many of the images on the site, just to spruce up the mostly text-only pages. Also, when a character must be in the shot, it can be beneficial to see what an effect looks like on a character - do you know what the Rally effect looks like on sight, for example? And can you distinguish it from Pacify? (Rally is slightly greener, I think.) It'd be helpful to know when the effect wears off. In some cases, it's very helpful (e.g. the Rune spells, though I already got those). Sure it's not really necessary in all cases, but many of the images on the site aren't really vital to the understanding of the subject. TheRealLurlock (talk) 03:16, 23 January 2013 (GMT)
I've tweaked your Spell Summary code and copied it to User:RobinHood70/Zain. I've done a little basic testing and it seems okay, but I haven't tried anything particularly challenging. I've removed most of the #ifs because <cleantable> should handle removing the empty rows. In the original coding, the extra space was being introduced by putting all the #ifs on separate lines, which was introducing blank lines at the end of the cell before the next one started. The way to do those is to put the #if back-to-back with the previous code, then use code like this: 
Some other text or conditions{{#if:{{{maybeshow|}}}|<nowiki />
{{!-}}
{{{maybeshow}}} }}
There are a bunch of different variations of the technique. Another one which we've commonly used here is to replace the <nowiki /> with &#32; (a space). – Robin Hood  (talk) 05:14, 23 January 2013 (GMT)
I'm aware of what causes the extra newlines, I just haven't found the magical combination that makes them go away while not breaking anything else in the process. This fixes the two problems I mentioned, but adds a new one - it breaks if there's nothing in the "found" parameter - which is most of them really. So - close, but not quite... TheRealLurlock (talk) 05:24, 23 January 2013 (GMT)
Better? – Robin Hood  (talk) 05:44, 23 January 2013 (GMT)
Seems to work on a random sampling of pages with different arrangements. You want to copy that back to the template page or shall I? I'm actually about to hit the sack, so if there are any issues still, we'll see in the morning. TheRealLurlock (talk) 05:47, 23 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) Well, having looked at every spell page in the process of removing blank fields, it seems to work on everything, so good work. Now I wonder if it's possible to combine Duration + Area or Magnitude + Range on the same line if the other two are blank - but I have the feeling that would make the template far more complicated than necessary, so it's probably not worth it. Now - as to my first question - what to do about spell pages that will mostly duplicate their respective effect pages? TheRealLurlock (talk) 14:30, 23 January 2013 (GMT)

Whew! That was tedious. But I moved all the pages where there is a spell and effect with the same name and fixed all the links so nothing important points at the disambig pages. (There's some user, talk, and archive pages left over, don't feel like touching those.) So - create spell pages or not? Somebody has to have an opinion... TheRealLurlock (talk) 00:15, 24 January 2013 (GMT)

Move File Rights

Kitkat noticed earlier that regular users now have the right to move files. In reality, this doesn't kick in until they're auto-confirmed due to other rights being required, but that's still a significant change from only admins and patrollers being allowed to move them. The permissions change is due to an intentional change in the MediaWiki software—where before, the right was still considered experimental and therefore limited to admins by default, it's now come out of the experimentation phase and has been granted to all auto-confirmed users.

The question is: is this a change we want to go with, or do we want to re-limit file moves to admins and patrollers only? There was a bit of discussion on IRC, and the gist of that discussion came down to "new users might move existing files and break our file naming system" vs. "new users might upload new images, realize they're misnamed, then fix them to conform to our naming system". Both points have merit. Any thoughts from anybody? – Robin Hood  (talk) 21:55, 29 December 2012 (GMT)

One additional observation is that we could instead protect all the major images, and very highly used images, same as templates. There are many images before Morrowind that do not (yet?) meet our newish file naming conventions, whether we want to leave that or change them all eventually I don't know. Mark me down as hesitant to leave it to non-patrollers to rename files though, it seemed to be fine before, even if I was a bit frustrated at seeing rename tagged images sitting for a while before they were looked at. That back-up was rectified, and now there are going to be few enough files that need renamed that it can be left to the patrollers+. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 22:09, 29 December 2012 (GMT)
Silencer, Alfwyn, and I had a small IRC discussion on the instant topic. We think it's ok to allow all auto-confirmed users to change names of images (move image files). Further, we believe that redirects from such moves may or should meet the criteria for speedy deletion. I propose to re-write Help:Images#Renaming_Images so that "if you can understand the following instructions easily and clearly, you can rename an image yourself under certain conditions." Then: move the file; not files with more than 20 pages using it (use {{rename}}) for those; speedy delete if it meets the criteria (e.g., "creator requested; maintenance; whateveritsays"); fix pages using it; prod (do not speed) if deleting a userimage redirect.
If there are no immediate objections, I will at least draft some proposed language to revise the section. I will then place it on the page's talk page and cross-reference it here. I do not have my heart invested in making this change. I just realized through my own troubles that I could have moved an image file much more efficiently and with a lot less help if the instructions had been there. This issue has also been discussed in at least one earlier location: on the Administrator Noticeboard. It has been noted that reasonable objections have been raised to this idea (in the links provided hereabove). --JR (talk) 16:20, 13 January 2013 (GMT)
Ah. There was also an extensive related discussion here. --JR (talk) 15:43, 14 January 2013 (GMT)
This User:JR/Seventh Sand of a Seventh Sand sandbox contains a draft of language proposed to replace the "renaming images" section of the Help:Images page. It would allow all autoconfirmed users to move files and prod or speedy redirects. Please comment with any objection or suggestion. --JR (talk) 21:32, 19 January 2013 (GMT)
Noting the continued lack of objection to allowing all auto-comfirmed users to speed tag image file redirects after moving images, I have proposed also updating the Deletion Policy page accordingly, on it's talk page. --JR (talk) 12:59, 21 January 2013 (GMT)
There's never been any restriction on who can or cannot propose deletion (speedy or otherwise) on a page. Since the actual deletion still has to be done by an admin, every deletion request is by necessity reviewed before it's actually deleted. Not sure a change in this policy is needed as any user, even anonymous ones, can propose deletion already. TheRealLurlock (talk) 13:48, 21 January 2013 (GMT)
Well, there's no real restriction on proposing something for speedy deletion. But there is a policy on what can be speedily deleted. Consequently it is a bit pointless to propose something for speedy deletion which doesn't qualify. A year ago, speedy deletions for redirects were changed to proposed deletions by an admin - precisely because of the policy. That said, current practice is to speedily delete redirects resulting from moves - I think it would be a good thing if the policy reflects that current practice (or else change our practice to follow policy). --Alfwyn (talk) 14:00, 21 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) I think it should be changed because I recently came along, initially ready to move and rename image files quite well, I believe, but then was thrust into a Byzantine nightmare because I decided to take a look at the guidelines/instructions/policies for "renaming images" and "deletion policy" before doing those two things. That all caused me to make a dozen screwups that people had to come along and fix.

I hope the person who follows me has a smoother trip, and accomplishes their goal efficiently without unnecessarily bothering others. This seems like a way to do it, if no one objects. I'm leaving it out on the table. I might eventually ask if anyone objects to going ahead with the proposed language changes, or if there are alternative ideas. So, to be responsive, TRL: I think it's needed if guidelines, instructions, and policies helped all of us to be better contributors and collaborators. Show the best way to so something, not apparently prohibit me from doing it, then following what the policy suggests to have half-dozen people telling me "just do this, don't do that." Of course we have to go through that kind of stuff whenever we're learning something, but—to return your question in reversed form—I'm not sure that a change is NOT needed, or would not at least be somewhat helpful. --JR (talk) 16:03, 21 January 2013 (GMT)

On the subject of speedy or proposed deletion of image redirects, I too would like to see our practice and our policy brought into alignment. I've been using Prod whenever I've done this recently, because there's nothing in the current speedy deletion criteria that clearly allows speedy deletion of image redirects. The arguments for leaving the redirect in place for a while despite all internal links having been updated, are that external links may need to be updated, and there may be users who search for the old name and then have no redirect or anything. Personally, I think those arguments, while both true on rare occasions, are probably not frequent enough occurences for image pages to really matter, so I'm all for updating the policy to allow speedy deletion of image redirects. That said, they've been proposed deletions for ages, so if we want to retain that policy, I have no major issues with that either. – Robin Hood  (talk) 23:27, 21 January 2013 (GMT)
RH, I don't have my heart set on this particular change. More like I said, I just want to help make it as easy as I can for whoever learns or re-learns or tries to learn how to rename image files. Whatever makes things most efficient and is not "dangerous" and no one objects to. I tried to take care of the concern about people speeding redirects with any kind of unrepaired links by proposing clear instructions under the "renaming images" section of the Help:Images page. I suspect that this should make that sort of event extremely rare. It strongly encourages users to use prod, or simply rename, unless they are confident they know what they are doing and have attended to that issue. If this moves ahead, I know that language can still use a final polish, and I will make a few notes on related pages, all directing users away from speedy deleting image files unless they do so "safely". --JR (talk) 03:46, 22 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) I think we may be at or near consensus on the following:

  1. Replace the language at Help:Images#Renaming_Images with that in my sandbox. (Proofreading appreciated.)
  2. Replace a section of the language at UESPWiki:Deletion_Policy#Criteria_for_Speedy_Deletion with language similar to that located here (I will simplify it a bit).

These changes would formally allow admins to speedily delete redirects when auto-confirmed users provide "renamed image" or similar for a reason. They also direct users to follow a procedure to rename images themselves and tag redirects for speedy deletion if they believe they can follow proper procedures for doing so.

From what I have seen, there is recently mostly support of these changes, or no objection. (As stated above, this has not always been the case, and many have recognized associated concerns.) I'd like to decide we have a consensus on this, unless someone suggests further discussion or waiting. TRL said he thought there was no need for a policy change. TRL, if you're eyes are here, where are you on this now? --JR (talk) 15:08, 28 January 2013 (GMT)

Consensus assumed. Described proposals implemented. --JR (talk) 18:01, 30 January 2013 (GMT)
There seems to have been conversation drift from file move rights to deletion policy. I don't believe anybody opposed leaving file rename rights with all users, so I won't make any changes to those rights. If anybody does think we should restrict that right to patrollers and/or admins, speak now, or forever hold your peace (or at least until the next discussion about this). – Robin Hood  (talk) 06:48, 31 January 2013 (GMT)
Oops. RH is right. I only thought about moving and deleting file images. ABCface said something too, about this, and I've noticed that a very high percentage of her thoughts on things is useful somehow. I was super-distracted when you wrote on the IRC about it, so I only have the vaguest idea of what you said. Care to share it? Let's make the policy the best and smartest one, and have everyone on board in whatever we do. --JR (talk) 07:50, 31 January 2013 (GMT)

The UESP Forums

Hello everyone, I'm Arch-Mage Matt, former editor of UESP and moderator of the UESP Forums. For a long time the wiki and the forums have run almost separately and we'd like to help close that gap, including working closer with Daveh and exposing ourselves more to the wiki. We can help each other of this - it'd work for everyone to direct the chatter of the wiki to the forums, so we'd appreciate it if next time you found a wiki or user talk page discussion turning into a conversation, you recommended the participants go to the forums. Continuing in the thought that the forums are an official extension of the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, we think it would be good to have more references to the forums around the wiki so people know where to go if they want to talk - on the front page, Questions page, Getting Started page, the Guide to Helping out, etc. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter! --Arch-Mage Matt (talk) 21:06, 9 January 2013 (GMT)

We already have a link to the forums on a notice that appears while editing any talk page, which hopefully is having some effect. —Legoless (talk) 22:24, 9 January 2013 (GMT)
I do know that Musicman247 has fixed a lot of those links and I'm not sure we think they are entirely helpful. There are a lot of "I don't know there is a forum!" comments (or a blog or a chatroom, for that matter) and I think this is a horrible tragedy. The forums are flourishing and have grown incredibly just in the last year or two since I took them under my wing, and the community is warm and friendly. I think it would be beneficial for the site as a whole if the forums got a bit more recognition. Currently we are a very small and often hard to discover link smashed under "community" that is way at the bottom of the index anyhow. The community is what makes this site thrive - why not celebrate it?
The forums and the wiki started off together; then they drifted apart. But I would love to have us at least play off each other and build UESP together. With Dave now dedicating full time and my own time to dedicate forum-side, I think this is easily possible! So come on, Wiki Editors. Show us some love. -- Avron the S'wit (talk) 14:51, 10 January 2013 (GMT)
I recommend that a small group of people, especially those who are members of both communities, develop a specific and short proposal, with specific action items. Perhaps constructing an example or two of any changes you'd suggest for sidebars. Maybe there should be a specific place for a sort of group of people to work together on ideas for connecting the two communities to the degree they're separate. I have to admit, I have never looked at the forums. The above looks enticing. --JR (talk) 15:23, 10 January 2013 (GMT)
We could always create a forum page with brief information about what to do there and use a discussion page linked with it for partnered ideas and things? Personally I think some people would have fun there. We do have competitions and other fun things for a breather here and there I'm certain some people would enjoy; plus we love taking in your more chatty users. Chat away at the forums! The forums and wiki do share two separate purposes (knowledge vs discussion), but that's also their strengths. -- Avron the S'wit (talk) 16:37, 10 January 2013 (GMT)
I have to admit, I created an account for the forums months ago and found the whole thing so confusing (having never used any forums in my life) that I've never logged in since. Anyway, I noticed the links that Musicman247 fixed, and I'm glad that he's done that. The link that Legoless was referring to, however, was the one in the pink message box when editing a talk page, like here. It links to http://forums.uesp.net/ .
Anyway, I agree that where the link is placed on the sidebar is pushed down enough that it's easy to miss. Currently, we also provide a link in our standard welcome message for new users, but it's a good idea to think about where else we want these types of links. Personally, I think all Lore articles and most game-namespace articles should be free of any links to the forums, as those namespaces are meant to be professional pages regarding the content described. From conversation in IRC, I'm guessing a lot of the "regulars" around the wiki would probably agree on this note. However, when it comes to other pages, such as the ones mentioned by Arch-Mage Matt above, I think adding links to the forums would be appropriate—and helpful for those who are interested in such a community. So, let's consider the ideas Arch-Mage Matt suggested:
  • Main Page — Honestly, on this one I'm not sure there's a place for it with the current layout. I'd prefer to leave the forum link off of this page. But if we were to place it somewhere, without having to change the layout of the page, I can see only two places where it wouldn't seem out of place. One, is the very first blurb on the top right side of the page. It currently reads "Welcome to the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages! We have been building a collaborative source for all knowledge on the Elder Scrolls series of games since 1995, and we could use your help! To begin browsing our site, you should select one of the games on the left side menu. If you would like to help us build the site, you can learn how to get started as an editor, read over the help files, or look through our guide to helping out." I suppose we could add to that blurb, with something short and simple like "If you'd like to chat with other users about the Elder Scrolls, please consider using the UESP forums." The other place would be after the string of links beneath the logo and blurb. So we would have "All Elder Scrolls Games • Searching • Questions • How to Contribute • Help Files • Forums". Like I said, I prefer leaving the forum link off the main page. These are just ideas for where it could be placed if we decide we want it there.
  • UESPWiki:Questions — I think this page is perfect for a link to the forums. We could easily add a new section similar to the "Ask on IRC" section, but for the forums. We could even mention that while wiki talk pages are meant to be used for discussion of articles themselves, the forums are open to general chitchat.
  • Getting Started — There is already a link at the bottom of the page. I suppose the information could be expanded slightly, but there's no need for additional links anywhere.
  • Helping Out — There's a mention/link of the forums in the "Public Relations" section, but I find that to be kind of... odd. I'm not sure where else we could put a note or link to the forums on that page, but maybe someone else can think of something. (crossed out later after realizing that link was to Bethesda forums, not UESP forums, oops)
So, that's just a response to the pages Arch-Mage Matt mentioned above about link placement. There might be other pages where forum links could be appropriate, such as General:Fanfiction and I do think that there are a very limited number of game-namespace pages on which a forum link could be appropriate, such as Oblivion:Recommended Mods or the various Easter Eggs articles (e.g., a "See Also" section directing users to the forums to discuss details of eggs and possible eggs in a less strict atmosphere).
Last thing is, I do think it's odd that we have a Forum Rules page, but no general Forums page on the wiki (unless we have one that I'm not aware of?). And, do we have a forum userbox? If not, maybe we should add one? — ABCface◥ 19:43, 10 January 2013 (GMT)
That's all great! I like those ideas. Matt and I were going to do the Wiki page. I had added on the Forum Rules page discussion that that particular page is grossly outdated and not maintained. I'd really rather nuke it and just have a Forums page with links and a quick overview; I think that would be more productive, but I'd love to see what the community things would be most useful. -- Avron the S'wit (talk) 20:59, 10 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) I just wanted to say that the additions sound nice, but I believe you're really underselling and underestimating the UESP Forums when you think of what goes on there as just "chit-chat". In the Lore section alone we have long, thought-out discussions about how all the pieces of TES Lore fit together and what the implications are for the future of the series. There is also a Skyrim Help section where many people go for guidance in completing quests and solving problems with bugs even after they have consulted the UESP Wiki. I would ask that you give the UESP Forums a fair look before dismissing it. -- Musicman247 (talk) 06:13, 11 January 2013 (GMT)

I'm sorry! I really didn't meant to come across as dismissing the forums, I was just going from Avron's "knowledge vs discussion" note in the post above my own. My ideas were by no means meant to be offensive or dismissive, just short ideas of where/how to place the links. I think the community as a whole should decide where to put them, but the forum members who are knowledgeable about the forums should have more input as to how things are worded, etc. because (as noted) many regular wiki users don't use the forums or know much about it. — ABCface◥ 06:29, 11 January 2013 (GMT)
That's also our goal: to educate the wiki users on the forums. It's extremely useful and many users do migrate there. Of course, forums are discussion based and do serve a different purpose than the wiki, but that doesn't make them full of just chitchat, and being a UESP umbrella you will find the discussions as up to par as they are here, if not more - although I don't think that was your intended point. But it seems the easy thing is a forums page, which I'll create. I do think that adding a link to the forums in your welcome message would be beneficial, as would more forum prominence, but a wiki page full of helpful links and a brief run down might be more useful for the wiki-inclined. Oh, and a forum userbox would be super. Musicman could craft one up easy. -- Avron the S'wit (talk) 15:58, 11 January 2013 (GMT)
There is currently a link to the forums in the welcome message, but it's pretty small. I think it should be more prominent, mainly since from what I've seen, the majority of initial wiki edits that trigger a welcome message are gameplay questions and comments that are better suited to the forums anyway. --Xyzzy Talk 19:14, 11 January 2013 (GMT)
Try not to take offense at ABC's comment about "chitchat". Her description was dead-on. The Wiki Talk Pages are only supposed to talk page content, period. There is some leeway, but if it's exploited it'll quickly be cut off. Forum threads are much more open to off-topic discussion then a wiki discussion on the same topic. If anything, it's a point for the forums as many people mistakenly think we tolerate excessive amounts of socializing here. As for her underselling and underestimating the importance, I don't see how we could logically do much more then what she suggested without it becoming intrusive to our content. There's no reason to argue when we're just trying to argue. The forums are a more casual location to discuss the games, without the strictness of the wiki to worry about. That's the appeal, that you have chitchat without someone like me telling you to go to a different section of the site (and eventually forcing the matter if you persist). Trying to sell it any other way, while it would be a fabrication, makes it come off as a less organized version of the wiki that's more prone to seeing false information sneak in. If anything, use your tolerance for chitchat as a strength. You allow gossiping about the games, we don't. You allow plenty of discussion unrelated to ES, we don't. You allow people to just talk about how they thought that scene X in game Y was awesome, we don't. And to clarify, it's not like the games are even the most popular topic on the forums. Just to prove the point, here are the currently active topics on the forum as of time of writing (I put a star next to ones that clearly were related to ES):
That's like what, 21 out of 50 unrelated to ES? To further prove my point, let's look at total number of topics and comments. Ignoring site related sub-forums, you're looking at 22342 threads relating to the Elder Scrolls with around 292505 comments to them versus the General Discussion threads which have 2684 topics and 308375 comments. Statistically, forum users are talking about ES less than half the time.
As for the provided suggestion about how to increase knowledge of the forums, I'm starting to think we're going about this the wrong way entirely. Yes, I agree that a link should be added to certain pages (mod pages and UESPWiki:Questions (although I see the latter as more of an oversight then anything else)). A lot of our traffic is just people who want a quick solution to some problem they've suffered, with them not sticking around to read the blog, peruse the forums, or join the IRC Channel. I don't think we can do much to attract those people to stick around for the long term at all, so the forums will logically not see them. So what we're trying to do is increase the number of wiki editors that use the forums. I've already put considerable effort into doing that (see the addition of the forum notice, the addition of a mention of the forums in the welcome message, and prodding conversations with advice to take it to the forums should it get away from helping the wiki). It has led to some users who would fit in better in the forums going over there, but that's not really going to bridge any gaps. What's needed is for ,ore wiki editors who intend to stay with the wiki to contribute on occasion to the forums. Organizing cross-site projects is one of the better ways that I've seen suggested towards getting this done. Like perhaps a project to implement new themes into both of the areas of the site in question. --AKB Talk Cont Mail 21:19, 11 January 2013 (GMT)
I think the main concern the forum admins have with wanting to promote the forums more is to help inform your wiki editors that there is a place for talk and chitchat (and to also warn that there are rules for topic and behavior - it is not a free for all as AKB might have accidentally implied), which would help inspire more conversations, and to help contribute to the site development and be included in site development or issues. While we are not ranked under the same priority as the wiki, we do talk with Dave via e-mail frequently and we also want to grow UESP as a whole site. And honestly, just because of the history of the forums in its most recent years, wherein it grew and developed independently of the wiki and its users, for the most part, it isn't a reason to feign ignorance with an "us and them" mentality. We all operate under the same site banner, UESP, and I think that it would be nice to have some mutual conversation and awareness, if not between users than at least between site staff on the administrative levels, so that we can further develop UESP. But given the many results of the survey that claimed to not know about the forums or wanted more forum interaction, I don't think brushing it off is quite completely fair. We have plenty of room for your editor discussions and et cetera and you are even called upon to help with questions in your very own Wiki Subforum, where users ask questions about wiki pages.
In the end I am not forcing wiki editors to come to the forums, since it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I don't think asking for a more prominent link or awareness to help benefit your readers and members who may be potential forum users is asking for too much. At the end of the day it's about community, and I'd rather have one without a "wiki vs. forums" sort of mentality. I don't expect any overnight changes and I certainly don't want to "impose" on the beautiful layout of your excellent content, as that would be silly, but a little camaraderie would be appreciated. -- Avron the S'wit (talk) 15:38, 13 January 2013 (GMT)

Forums: Break 1

When I was in my little IRC room I made where I talk to Vely, Kat, and a few others regularly, Kitkat made a fair point, and I wanted to put a small proposal out. Camaraderie is two sided. It's not "We do, you benefit". All the proposals so far have been in the interest of making the forums more prominent on Wiki pages, but there hasn't been anything on our end... Granted, UESP's wiki contents are more prominent, and if you know the forum exists, you ought to know the wiki exists, but in reality, there is terrible representation of us on the forum side too. For example, when I was last on, I could only find one back-link to the Wiki proper, and that was the standard link in the logo.

Everyone above me is right, we are a community, and the lack of promotion of each other have made us largely independent of each other. There are things that need to be done on both sides, and I would support making each piece of the UESP network more prominent on each site. I have been on the wiki as a registered editor since September of 2011, and I didn't know we had the forum until something this past summer.

To summarize it, I am all for the promotion of the forums, whilst in theory, it's one "UESP" community, in reality, we are two distinct, independent communities, and we can both stand to gain, but for it to work, there needs to be a little give and take on each side in order to get people from both communities exploring each other's communities so that we can get that close-knit feeling we all desire.

That was just my quick thought on it --Snowmane(talk•email) 20:12, 13 January 2013 (GMT)

Then how can we better serve you? As I am not primarily a wiki editor, I can't tell what you're looking for. What can you use us for? How would forum features help the wiki? I'm not looking to ruin the wiki and stick a big fat "UESP FORUMS ROCK" stamp all over everything. There are some forum-implemented discussion features you can integrate in the wiki software, I think, but Musicman247 would have to go into that, as he is the technical fellow, if that is something you would be interested in pursuing; perhaps a simpler layout for discussion pages using forum-like features would be more beneficial than wiki coding? (Just an example - I've no idea which way you guys would like to go.) So perhaps we can start the discussion in a better direction by asking how our awesome features can help you! Where can we benefit the wiki? Now you guys are in the spotlight - give me some ideas! I promise chocolates. -- Avron the S'wit (talk) 22:23, 13 January 2013 (GMT)
I am not interested in being informed of, or educated about the forums, but we could benefit from some additional promotion of the forum, as attested by the numerous posts that delve into subjective, rather than factual, information on our talk pages. My major concern with this discussion is the way it is developing. To me the forum users are trying to bully the wiki editors into accepting their view. Some of the language here is very patronizing, and as supposedly highly regarded users, whose supposed aim is to educate us so-portrayed forum-haters, you are not doing very well in your aim. For example, Avron, "asking how our awesome features can help you", sorry but our features are awesome too, and they work very well. If there is something you think can be of use, then those who don't use the forums can't very well ask about them, can they? Also talk of the quality of the discussions is not our concern, it is the subject matter that is at the heart of the reason why there is a UESP forum in the first place. No let us not descend into a petty squabble, but return to the subject proper which is to promote the forums, and let us do so constructively, rather than destructively.
Back on track now, and a question that I don't know if you can answer, but maybe at least look at, is a single user account for both the forums and the wiki, this is what truly makes us separate, and could do more for integrating the wiki and the forum than anything else I can think of. Plus the quicker we get an overview page for the forums on the wiki (much like the IRC page) the better. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 23:21, 13 January 2013 (GMT)
Oooohhh... I LOVE CHOCOLATES! You're my new bestie, Avron! :D
Joking aside, I like Silencer's suggestion. If we could attach one username to each the Wiki, the forums, and even the dead blog if we wanted, and then on each we promoted the other two in a fairly prominent way to let people be aware that we have these wonderful things, and it was a hassle free jump from one to the other with one account, it would make things a LOT easier.
I notice that Avron or someone else has always got a fun little contest or game running on the forum each day, what if something like that was done, but for both networks? We merge the communities into one set of accounts, rather than two separate accounts (not sure technically what that would take, but there'd be work), and then we made note of the merger and the new ease of use, and the fact that it was there, and then, we come up with an incentive to get users moving between the communities and interacting, like a contest or game of sorts. Nothing fancy or necessarily requiring a fancy mail-in prize or anything, just something fun that is designed simply for the point of encouraging mingling between users.
And, I've been giving thought to actual ways to make the forums more prominent, and in addition to better sidebar placement, what if on each game's main page, like OB:Oblivion, MW:Morrowind, SR:Skyrim, etc, we put a link down in Miscellaneous that went directly to UESP's forum category for that game for conversation with other players and whatnot? --Snowmane(talk•email) 00:26, 14 January 2013 (GMT)
You cannot have a single account for wiki, forums and blog. Phpbb, Mediawiki, and b2evolution aren't compatible pieces of software. I guess you could theoretically patch together some monstrous piece of software to do that, but it would take up too much time to program, and make it compatible with future upgrades. It's just not a feasible project. --AKB Talk Cont Mail 00:40, 14 January 2013 (GMT)
Personally, I haven't participated in the forums because it involves logging into another account. If possible, I would love to see connected accounts.
So far the idea seems to be adding forum links to each game's main page, along with a special forum page. I would also suggest adding a forum link to future news articles announcing the announcement or release of a new game, something like "Talk about this in the forums!" That would reduce speculative posts on the wiki, I think. Along with links from the games' pages, a link from the Lore main page would probably be useful, too. I've seen a number of conversations in lorespace about "what could/could have/will happen?"
I don't think the wiki needs better exposure on the forums. There's already an entire section there dedicated to the wiki, with links here in a general info post. Of course, I also don't visit the forums.
There's one thing I'd like to point out, though, to Arch-Mage Matt, who said "We can help each other of this - it'd work for everyone to direct the chatter of the wiki to the forums, so we'd appreciate it if next time you found a wiki or user talk page discussion turning into a conversation, you recommended the participants go to the forums." There's a templated message for that, and I know myself and some other editors have stepped into a discussion to say "This discussion is better suited to the forums." I don't think we've been slacking on sending people over, but I also don't think I've seen many forum-like posts lately. So I think that point's covered.
I'd also suggest cutting the chitchat about chitchat. It gets us nowhere and wastes time and space. Forums are for discussion, wiki is for articles--good, we've all got that, so let's forget it and move on, aye? Vely►t►e 01:15, 14 January 2013 (GMT)
I know that most of you have not visited the forums, but please know that almost any time a question comes up about content in a game, the Wiki page is linked to almost immediately. So there is a lot of promotion for the Wiki on the forums. Putting links on the wiki discussion pages to relevant sub-forums would be good for both, I believe. It would let more people know there is a forum where they can discuss things like speculation, and it would reduce the amount of work Wiki Admins would have to do steering discussion pages in the right direction. If this is agreeable, Avron and I could start putting those links in so it wouldn't be more work for you guys.
As far as a single sign-on goes, there was an extension created to allow it between MediaWiki and phpBB, but the developer has not worked on it for close to a year and it seems it does not work for the latest versions of each. If this is something that would be desired I could round up a couple of coders I know from the Forum and see if we can get it in working order.
I think combining the Wiki and the Forums for the Contests is a great idea that I would like to see happen. Promoting a sense of community and camaraderie throughout all parts of the site will bring in more users who will stick around and contribute, rather than just stop by to find out a bit of information and then leave. That was me for many years. I came to the Wiki for bits of information but never did more than that until I discovered the forum. The forum gave me a place to discuss the games that I loved so much without worrying about knowing Wiki formatting. I did eventually start adding to the Skyrim Wiki, but anonymously. So I am one example of someone sticking around to help because of the community. -- Musicman247 (talk) 02:38, 14 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) I'm pro-inclusiveness, but also for individual liberty and ease or making choices. UESPWiki:Reference_Desk, there are links to the forum that list several games, but not Skyrim. That could be updated. I don't yet know how. Really.--JR (talk) 13:38, 14 January 2013 (GMT)

I don't think "single sign-on" is the feature we need. Logging in sperately is fine, but going to the trouble of registering twice is a plain hassle. It creates a barrier for anybody active just on one side - more so for the forum because you can edit the wiki anonymously, but not the forums. Technically it will be some work to authenticate from a common source like ldap and unify the account creation process. But far more work will probably be needed to merge accounts, that is to decide when two accounts are the same and when not. Heuristics like the same email-address provided will work for some. Not sure if it worth the effort, but a single uesp account would be a nice thing. --Alfwyn (talk) 13:59, 14 January 2013 (GMT)
Musicman247 is a wonderful tech guy, so if he thinks a single login would be possible and it's something wiki editors would like to have, we would love to look into it. Alfwyn does bring up a good point about how separate to keep the accounts, but I don't know how deeply you want to consider that. I myself am myself no matter which half of UESP I am on (which is either good news or bad news!). We could always have custom profile fields for special wiki information, if you'd like to share that as well, but that's a point to discuss going forward.
I would really like to also apologize for any overzealousness on my behalf; I don't want our eagerness to share the forums space with the wiki users to come off as an attempt to steal your turf. Given the success of the forums the last two or three years, we simply would like to say that a) we do exist, b) we are doing fun things, and c) we want to do those fun things with you! If we can benefit you, we would love to. I know that I once came in and offered a wiki user a link to the forums The Arts subforum to share fanfiction, for instance - which got me thinking as to how we could store some of the things that the forums welcome but perhaps the wiki is not quite willing to serve, if possible. I only wish to know what you would like or what keeps you from enjoying the forums, if you are curious about them. I have a group of users who are both forum and wiki users and I'm sure that they would love to help you, if that is welcomed. Why, had it not been for Kiz I would have never known anything about wiki formatting, and boy is it no feat for the weak of heart! It just goes to show how dedicated and great the wiki editors are, which is what makes UESP the best TES site on the web. Now, as for the Competition of the Month (the CotM, as we call it), I would love to welcome the wiki to also join in, and perhaps to bring it here if that is what you would like. If anyone is interested, you can let me know. If it would not be intrusive I would love to brainstorm how to make it across both forum and wiki and even figure out a special wiki prize (as we have prizes, yes!). I am fishing for ideas for those of you who would like to do those things. The beautiful thing and what makes UESP so successful is that it allows you to get involved as much or as little as you want to. I know what the forum users want, but I would love to hear what wiki editors would enjoy, too. (And, of course, I welcome everyone to send me ideas or start a discussion on my talk page. It's lonely!) -- Avron the S'wit (talk) 14:22, 14 January 2013 (GMT)

Forums: Break 2

(←) So, we've established that we need more links to the forums from the wiki. This is based on many user comments in the site survey, on the forums, and here. So let's move forward and figure out where we agree to place links, and get them posted.

I've gone through this discussion and copied down all the page suggestions I've seen for where we may want to place links. For each page, I'll add an idea of where the link could be placed or how, either my own or one mentioned by someone else in this discussion already. If anyone is strongly opposed to any of these pages having links added, has constructive input on how to improve the wording, or can think of somewhere better to place the link on a particular page, please give your feedback. I'm not trying to take charge, just gather all the ideas and try to move this forward.

  • Main Page — At the end of the blurb on the top right, add a sentence such as: "If you'd like to discuss the Elder Scrolls with other users, please consider using the UESP forums!" Also, maybe add a link after the "Help Files" link (on the same line as "We are currently maintaining # articles.", below the logo)
  • UESPWiki:Questions — Add a new section similar to the "Ask on IRC" section, but for the forums
  • UESPWiki:Getting Started — There's already a link at the bottom of the page (is it fine as-is, or does it need expanding?)
  • UESPWiki:Helping Out — Add a link to the Wiki Subforum(?) in the "See Also" section
  • Welcome message — There's already a link, but should we emphasize it more and make it more prominent? It was mentioned that it may be helpful to make it stand out a bit more.
  • General:Fanfiction — Add a "See Also" section with a link to the Subforum for The Arts
  • Morrowind:Recommended Mods & Oblivion:Recommended Mods — Add a "See Also" section with a link to the Subforums MOD-Morrowind and MOD-Oblivion, respectively
  • Easter Eggs pages for DB, SR, SI, OB, BM, TR, and MW — Add a "See Also" section with a link to the Morrowind Subforum (for MW, TR, and BM pages), a link to the Oblivion Subforum (for OB and SI pages), and a link to the Skyrim Subforum (for SR and DB pages)
  • Main "hub" pages for ON, DB, SR, SI, OB, BM, TR, MW, RG, BS, DF, AR, Travels+ — Add a link to the "Miscellaneous Information"/"See Also"/"External Links" section, as follows: ESO Subforum for ON; Skyrim Subforum for SR and DB; Oblivion Subforum for OB and SR; Morrowind Subforum for MW, TR, and BM; Redguard Subforum for RG; Battlespire Subforum for BS, Daggerfall Subforum for DF; Arena Subforum for AR; and Travels Subforum for each Travels page
  • Each Featured News blurb — Add a line at the end of each new News blurb saying something like "Talk about this in the forums!" (depending on the news blurb itself, we can make the forum link more specific, directing the user to a particular subforum or thread)
  • Lore:Main Page — I'm honestly at a loss here, I don't know where a forum link could go on this page. Anyone have a suggestion?
  • UESPWiki:Reference Desk — I think JR made the same mistake I did somewhere above, seeing a link to Bethesda's Official Forums and assuming it went to the UESP Forums (so we should probably clarify those). Anyway, I don't know where a link to our forums would work on this page either, though I can see us directing users there depending on the question they happen to ask
  • Forum-like Posts message — I don't think anything needs to be changed here, but it wouldn't hurt to mention it in case other editors or forum staff think that it could be reworded or improved in any way.

So, that's the list of pages which have been mentioned so far, please comment if you oppose strongly to any of these specific pages, and add any constructive input you have to offer in terms of the specifics of these suggestions. Also, I personally think we ought to make most (if not all) of these links into plainlinks, so if you don't agree, please say so as well. And please add any additional suggestions of pages from which we can link to the forums, in case you think of some we haven't mentioned yet.

Also, Avron launched the UESPWiki:Forums page, which looks great! Musicman added a Forum Admin userbox and Silencer added a basic Forum User userbox, so there's a start to getting some forum representation on Userpages as well.

This is about community. We all love TES games, or we wouldn't be here. So let's move forward to bringing this community closer together. :) — ABCface◥ 02:40, 18 January 2013 (GMT)

You know I approve! I would love to get everyone's feedback on Alphabetface's comment here. This was a great and informative idea, particularly given the ideas below with the discussion links, too. I would love to see more community discussions on our forum space, and would love to continue our history of linking back to the wiki. I love the idea of the announcements/news idea; I had discussed with AKB earlier using our Announcements subforum to include all UESP site news in general (and not just forum announcements, which we also use it for), but we could never decide an easy way to do it. This would be great and offer people a chance to discuss things and would help reinforce the notion of community...maybe without everyone appearing scary and territorial. UESP is a site composed of quite a few things; it can only grow and move forward beyond the amazing site it already is today. Plus, there are some good ideas for ways for us to host a link to certain wiki page areas in our separate subforums, too, I'm sure. We have a lot of wiki linking on the forums in posts, but not necessarily as constant reminders. (Do we need it? Everyone knows UESP's wiki is the place for TES info. But link love is always good!)
Also, wiki friends, if you would like some information added to the UESPWiki:Forums page, do let me know. I would love to make it informative for everyone, but particularly you! -- Avron the S'wit (talk) 02:50, 18 January 2013 (GMT)
I am all for the changes, but as for posting the forums link in each news article... That's a lot of news articles on the main page plus the two links already immediately above the news, so it seems redundant to have that many links to the forum on the main page. I am against that particular proposal, but the rest are fine by me. --Snowmane(talk) 03:01, 18 January 2013 (GMT)
Okay, it's been over a week and no one else has expressed opposition to this. I'll go ahead and start adding some links to the noted pages later tonight (excepting the blanket link additions to news blurbs). — ABCface◥ 17:42, 25 January 2013 (GMT)
I've updated just over thirty pages with links to the forums, so most of the list above is taken care of. An administrator will have to make the changes to the Main Page, since I don't have the needed permissions.
The Welcome message now links to the UESPWiki:Forums page rather than the main forums page itself. I'm not sure if we need to emphasize it more or not-- I'm going to leave it be for now, and see if anyone has any input on that.
Currently, there are no forum links on the Lore:Main Page and I personally think that's for the best. However, I do think we could benefit from adding a notice to both Lore_talk:Main Page and UESPWiki_talk:Lore with a link to the Lore Subforum, so I'd love to get some feedback on that. (I didn't want to go ahead and do anything like that without input since it wasn't included in the above list, but if no one opposes to this either, I'll add it in one week.) — ABCface◥ 06:09, 26 January 2013 (GMT)
Talk page links are always a good idea on pages that generate a lot of pointless discussion. Adding a notice to the two lore talk pages sounds like a good idea. —Legoless (talk) 15:48, 26 January 2013 (GMT)
Okay, I'll go ahead and do so on the 2nd if no one opposes before then. Also, thanks for getting the links on the main page. :) — ABCface◥ 05:03, 28 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) Oops, I kind of dropped the ball and forgot about this. So, it's five days overdue, but the notices/links have been added to those two Lore talk pages. Definitely feel free to improve on them as needed! — ABCface◥ 04:43, 7 February 2013 (GMT)

Site Performance

I've just changed one of the wiki's configuration settings to help clear our job queue (the list of maintenance things the wiki wants to do). It's a little high right now because of all the template edits Jak and I have done. In the past, the default value has been known to cause performance issues on the site, but we're on far better hardware at this point. I've still tried to be conservative, though, and set it to half it's normal value, just to be safe. So far, everything seems fine to me, but if anyone notices any site performance problems, please let me know and I can either revert to the previous value or aim for somewhere in between. – Robin Hood  (talk) 22:14, 9 January 2013 (GMT)

I've been experiencing rather annoying performance problems, and have had many other users report similar issues. --AKB Talk Cont Mail 00:21, 10 January 2013 (GMT)
Okay, I've tweaked the setting back down (from one update every other page read to one update every four). I know Dave's doing some database-related stuff right now too, and I'm not sure how much of an impact that might be having. If we're still getting lag after this, I'll bump it back to the original value so we can be sure what's causing the issue. – Robin Hood  (talk) 00:31, 10 January 2013 (GMT)
(edit conflict) Recent Changes is unavailable, and it returns that page to me. --Snowmane(talk•email) 00:32, 10 January 2013 (GMT)
I see the same thing. I'll see if there's anything unusual that I can see from here, but the changes I've made shouldn't be responsible for that issue. It might be a result of what Dave's doing; I'll send him an e-mail just to be sure. – Robin Hood  (talk) 00:37, 10 January 2013 (GMT)
A hard refresh fixed it on my end. Maybe a minor cache issue or something? – Robin Hood  (talk) 00:42, 10 January 2013 (GMT)
Ditto for me on a refresh. --Snowmane(talk•email) 01:18, 10 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) My problem cleared up with your change. Thanks! --AKB Talk Cont Mail 01:44, 10 January 2013 (GMT)

Easier Ad Reporting

I've implemented a very basic ad reporting form that makes reporting a "bad" advertisement much easier. It includes the ad code which can help me track down exactly which ad(s) to disable. If you see an ad that you feel is not appropriate for the UESP simply click the "Report Ad" link next to the ad, fill in any comments you wish to make and press the "Submit" button. This will send an e-mail to me with all the detailed information. I've tested the form in all major browsers but if you run into problems with it just let me know. -- -- Daveh (talk) 01:51, 11 January 2013 (GMT)

CS List Issues

The CS list broke a few days ago when I had to reload the databases from a backup on content3 when its replication broke. Unfortunately, it now appears that the CS data on content3 wasn't being replicated properly. Likely content3 was being used for database writes for the CS list instead of db1 so when I loaded a complete backup from db1 we lost all the data that was only on content3. I'm seeing if any of the lost data from content3 can be restored because otherwise I have no idea how or where it came from although it must have occurred sometime after December 9th which was when the CS data replication was started.

If anyone has been working the CS data or code in the past month or knows where the new tables ACHR_VMAD_Record, casting_type_Lookup, and scripts came from and the new field AllItems.mod_status let me know. Overall there are 115 new records in the CSData_SData database alone on content3 that don't exist on db1. -- -- Daveh (talk) 15:07, 12 January 2013 (GMT)

I've extracted the CS databases from a week old backup on content3 which appears to have all the missing data. I've restored that to all databases and it appears to have fixed the issue so far as I can tell. I've also changed the CS database write command (in cswrite_conn.inc) to point correctly to db1 instead of content3 to prevent this issue in the future (assuming this is the only place in the code that needs to be changed). If there are further issues in the CS list just let me know here or via e-mail. -- -- Daveh (talk) 16:18, 12 January 2013 (GMT)
I've also added the cs.uesp.net sub-domain which jumps directly to the CSList since I can never seem to remember the URL. This doesn't appear to "break" anything but let me know if you see anything wonky. -- -- Daveh (talk) 16:27, 12 January 2013 (GMT)

Integrated Blog with the Wiki?

While I was bored and playing with my character database on Wikia, I was bored and playing with the main page after I got an idea from TESWiki's main page. What if, since we are talking about how to integrate everything better, we use the Wikilog extension (list of features), which would add blogging capabilities to the Wiki-proper, either in it's own namespace or however we want to do it, and then we do stuff like news postings to that? Wiki syntax will be usable on the blog, and in the case of news posts, it can be set for multiple users to use a specific post, if that's what the post is set to, so proofreading and whatnot can still happen, and plenty more features.

You can see from my aforementioned Wikia page, a proof of concept, using the basic layout of our theme, using the in-house blog, as well as an extension similar to Tabber, and it enables me to use tabs to sort what shows up, as seen here.

<tabber>
News=
<bloglist summary="true" summarylength="450" timestamp="true" type="plain" count="4" order="date">
<category>News</category>
</bloglist>
|-|
Snowmane's Thoughts=
<bloglist summary="true" summarylength="450" timestamp="true" type="plain" count="3" order="date">
<category>Snowmane's Thoughts</category>
</bloglist>
|-|
User Posts=
<bloglist summary="true" summarylength="450" timestamp="true" type="plain" count="3" order="date">
<category>Blog posts</category>
</bloglist>
<hr>
<div style="text-align: right">[[Special:CreateBlogPage|Write a blog]]
</tabber>

I'll be honest, I have yet to determine if the use of <bloglist> is available via the aforementioned Wikilog extension, or if it' by another plugin, although in theory I don't see why it wouldn't.

As you can see, from the source off of my userpage, you can filter the posts so that only posts under a specific category (such as news) would show up in the News tab. And, as a means to make the blog more prominent, and help people to find it, we could use the tabber extension or similar to tab the page, and let user posts come up to be easily shared via a "User Blogs" tab or something.

The drawback to this, is we are creating a blog via extensions on the wiki, so the current blog, which is running off different software, would become obsolete, although on the flip side, Daveh doesn't have to manually grant a blog login to users requesting it, since it's now an integrated wiki feature.

As for tangible gain in the news department, changing over from just using UESPWiki:News to using the blog, there is virtually no tangible gain, as you'd still create the news and add cats like you normally would, it's just being delivered to the main page in a new way, and how useful it is as a news medium rides pretty firmly on how well the concept of an in-house blog is taken by the community.

However, I firmly believe that it's something worthwhile, and the merits of site-wide access to the blog outweighs the cons of making UESPWiki:News and the current blog obsolete, seeing how the blog would enable users an additional means of communications, such as if I were to, in theory go play ESO right when it was out, we can use it similar to the not used General:Reviews that I found sitting several years untouched not long ago.

Anyway, like I was saying, you can see the code for the specific blog sections (or at least similar) above, and my Snowmane's Wiki will serve as proof of concept, since I emulated our main page on it to prove the point.

Opinions? --Snowmane(talk•email) 19:50, 14 January 2013 (GMT)

I'll start off being completely honest, I only read the first bit, and scatterings of the rest. I'm not sure how a blog might help, I have never really been a fan of it. But on wikipedia, projects have Newsletters that come out every so often (here is an example of one and another here). This might be a better format, each week (or two, or each month, whatever is decided on) people could write an article for it, be it a blog like post detailing their adventures in editing, or a proposal of a new project, or an opinion piece on the state of the game, or even a specific detailed post about Lore. After writing this, I realize that this could all be done via a blog too :) But, if we do a blog, and not a newsletter, I have now detail some awesome ideas for posts :) I would be glad to help out with either one. Jeancey (talk) 20:10, 14 January 2013 (GMT)
I've never been a fan of the Wikia blog format. It has always seem rather informal, and I see little appeal for adopting it. Replacing the news with this seems wrong. A blog is generally someones opinion on a subject, while saying something is news is more authoritative. I also think it gives a bad impression on the front page. It takes away from our currently authoritative position in the ES community by having specific user's contributions attributed on the front page, especially if opinion pieces are added.
Also, if anyone wants a blog account, you don't have to ask Daveh for one. You can simply create an account, and leave a request to have it upgraded by an admin. Not that it really matters as the blog never gets any attention anyway. I spent about a week cleaning the thing out when I first requested an account, had to leave for a while, and discovered it was in just as bad a shape as when I first took an interest in it. I don't have the time available to dedicate to reviving it, but either way I don't want anything like what we have on the blog on the front page. It's something I planned on looking into over a lull in my current schedule or over the Summer. Of course, if anyone is interested, just ask. --AKB Talk Cont Mail 20:36, 14 January 2013 (GMT)
I'm sure a few tweaks could conceal attribution when it's moved to the page after being posted, and counter argument that newspapers and magazines attribute authors, although I understand what you and Jeancey are getting at about it possibly being not helpful. Everyone is talking about better integration of our existing features, and it was just a concept I found interesting and wanted to share, just so we could have ideas floating around. And, I've got absolutely nothing better to do, and have been drifting around rather aimlessly, so if you can walk me through the process, and then give me an idea of what you have in mind for that area of the site, I'll give it a glance-over as well, if you want fresh eyes, that is. --Snowmane(talk•email) 20:50, 14 January 2013 (GMT)
Unless someone actually wants to write on the blog, I see no reason to do anything with it. —Legoless (talk) 20:54, 14 January 2013 (GMT)
If anyone does want to, all you have to do is create an account, and then ask for permission to write. As for what I have in mind for it, I intend to first clean it up. A bunch of spammers leaving comments. While only admins can see unapproved comments, it does make it hard to find any legitimate comment. There has to be better ways to take care of the spam then manually deleting it, but I've yet to have the time for that. Then I'd find some topic I could write about regularly, like I could write about what I'm playing once a week, or do a detailed look into playing the old ES games for someone who got into them with the newer additions. This would give it regular content, giving it a bit of a pulse. Then I would invite editors and users to write for it as well, allowing me to back away from it if I couldn't update it myself while hopefully allowing for multiple different bloggers to provide content several times a week. All the while I'd do certain other tasks to make sure it stays alive, like add blog documentation to the UESPWiki section of the site. It's a fairly simple plan, I feel. It would just take a while to do. And also I'd have to work in "Actually learn how to use the blog", but that seems like a minor detail.
I should be able to give you the permissions if you want them. As of now though, I'm not sure we need to further integrate somethings. While I think it's important for users to have access to things like the blog, I don't want that to be the first thing they see. Even if we do hide attribution, I can't get past my negative view of having blogging on the front page. If we're going to hide who is posting it, then the only real change would be in terms of quality of the posts. Now we would be looking at the front page seeing more opinionated pieces added to it. And if we don't allow that, their really isn't a reason to change anything. --AKB Talk Cont Mail 21:11, 14 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) Done. "snowmane". As for how opinionated the posts are, in the features link I posted, it mentions that you can set multiple authors to one post, and all would receive write access to that post, in addition to attribution to all of them (not that attribution matters if it's hidden by default). And, the tabs could be clearly labeled, and the "News" category tightly monitored, so that only say... Patrollers and admins, who write the news anyway, would be posting in the news category, and any others can be quickly dealt with, and the categories removed while making clear what the requirements for "News" is, while maintaining the "UESPWiki:News" page for news to be proposed, before someone posts it to the main "News" thing.

And, IDK if the features were even read or if I mentioned it above, but you can put blogs in as many namespaces as you wanted. You could theoretically have a "News" NS for admins/patrollers/anyone else designated to write news, and then like Wikia, have a "User blogs" section, which we can either make exceptionally clear is opinionated or it can be put in a less prominent place than "front and center". Just a handful of thoughts. I'll take a break from rambling for a bit now so that the conversation can develop either way. Like I said, I can see the pros and cons to each either way we do the blog thing, and it was just a little suggestion, since we are talking so many ideas about the wiki now. --Snowmane(talk•email) 21:33, 14 January 2013 (GMT)

I just want to touch back on the newsletter idea. The newsletters on wikipedia often have several editors doing different sections. Sometimes it is opinion, sometimes it is just upcoming news, maybe a section on future DLC or future game rumors, or the latest new from ESO. There could also be a section on the most recent featured articles and images. Comes out every two weeks, and then on the main page there is just a link to the most recent Newsletter, with a short set of links detailing the names of the sections for that two weeks. This is done entirely within the wikistyle and pages, and then you don't really have to worry about comments. The talk page could be reserved for questions for a general ES question and answer section, or for ideas for the next newsletter. The name of the newsletter is open for debate, but it could be an existing lore thing, (for instance, calling it the Black Horse Courier) or a new name that is in the style of ingame publications. Any thoughts on this? It incorporates the blog content without the separate account or weird comment system. Jeancey (talk) 21:51, 14 January 2013 (GMT)
I made you a blogger Snowmane, so you should be able to theoretically blog now. If we do anything, I'd prefer Jeancey's suggestion. --AKB Talk Cont Mail 22:08, 14 January 2013 (GMT)
We struggle to keep up with news items as it is. A newsletter isn't feasible, IMO. Opinion pieces on a wiki doesn't sit well with me. —Legoless (talk) 23:38, 14 January 2013 (GMT)
Well, It wouldn't be the same person and the same piece each time. That way, people don't get burned out. By opinion pieces, I don't mean, "I like morrowind the best because..." things, more like, I looked into the lore, and this, this, this, and this could all be connected, here is my evidence, kind of like a cool "did you ever think about this" section. And even that section would only happen if someone wanted too. It isn't so much news as information from the most active editors. Other ideas could be, a project of the month, where an active project is featured, with a little bit of information about it, and how they can help. Not as extensive as the projects page, but just a few sentences on a project, and a new project is featured each month. These ideas aren't set in stone, and if anyone had an interesting idea for a section, they could suggest it. Jeancey (talk) 23:44, 14 January 2013 (GMT)
First - there's a blog? Hey, there it is, what do you know? Although nobody's posted to it since last May... Secondly - can we make it not look like the 1990s? The wiki and the forums at least have somewhat consistent theming, so we should try to make the blog look like that as well. As for what to use it for, I could see it being a place for people to give reviews of mods, opinions on similar games, stuff like that. I don't see it being a replacement for the news on the main page. That should remain strictly factual and non-subjective. Using the blog for reviews and other subjective content clearly delineates it from the roles of the wiki (strictly facts) and the forums (for discussions). And it would be nice to see more attention paid to the modding community - something we've been trying to find a good way to do for a while now. There's a lot of good stuff being done out there, and it's one of the best parts about the ES series (which is why I'll never buy the console versions), and we've been pretty much neglecting it because it just doesn't fit on the wiki. Anyhow, just a suggestion. TheRealLurlock (talk) 02:20, 15 January 2013 (GMT)
The Forums already have sections devoted to Mods for each game, including favorite mods of members: Mod-Skyrim Mod-Oblivion Mod-Morrowind. If we are talking about the blog being the place for mod reviews, what about having reviews of mods created by users of the UESP? I know that hosting mods on UESP was one of the most voted for things on the recent site survey, would we consider hosting mods and having the blog be the front page for that section? I don't know about you guys, but I see more potential in the blog than just posting someone's "What am I playing" (which is also a topic in the forums: What Are You Playing At The Moment?). Rather than the blog take on the role of something we already have it should be its own thing. Just spitballing, but what if the blog was the main page of UESP that combined news, opinion pieces, mod reviews and other items and then had links at the top to the Wiki, the Forums and whatever other branches UESP may sprout in the coming months? -- Musicman247 (talk) 16:18, 17 January 2013 (GMT)
I would be completely opposed to having the blog as the main page. Community stuff is secondary, and changing the wiki's main page to some kind of ego-stroking monstrosity would be very detrimental to the site's appearance. —Legoless (talk) 17:12, 17 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) Agreed - I think the wiki arrangement is fine as is. I was just trying to offer a suggestion for how the blog could be useful, as distinct from the wiki and forums. As for the mods sections in the forums, it does some of that. I was thinking more along the lines of full articles reviewing certain mods, such as those found on PCGamer and other sites. Maybe a bit more in-depth, describing the good/bad/ugly of various mods. Less like a place for discussions, or a list of your favorites, and more of a general review. (The example I gave may not be the best, because it is basically a list, though it does give screenshots and a full paragraph of review for each, as well as links to download sites, which may have more info. This much I'm not seeing in the forums so much; those seem to be all text, and often no more than a list with little or no explanations.) Of course, it would require dedicated writers to do the reviews and make them look decent and all that. But I think if it were started, we've no shortage of talent to do that kind of thing. TheRealLurlock (talk) 18:00, 17 January 2013 (GMT)

I'm in agreement with Lurlock here. Also, I have to disagree with your comment, Musicman247. As examples of why I disagree with it, the wiki also has a mod section for all of those games (Morrowind Mod:Mods, Oblivion Mod:Tes4Mod, Skyrim Mod:Main Page) that you listed. We also have pages for user's favorite mods as well (Oblivion:Recommended Mods. Under your own argument, you should not have sections for any of those things since we already cover it. In fact, there basically wouldn't be a forum as virtually everything could be found on the wiki. My own suggestion for a "What Are You Playing At The Moment" column (which several other users have already created blogs for on the UESP blog. Like Snowmane's Example.) was intended to be much more in-depth then literally just listing the games you are currently playing, but reviewing them in general and recommending good ones. Just because something is a bit similar to something else, does not mean the idea doesn't have any merit. Either way, it was merely an example of what we could do (as in, something like this in general).
As for your suggestion to review mods by UESP members, I found it hard to determine if you only meant by UESP members or their mods as well. For the latter, I don't see why we wouldn't, for the former I find that to be rather limiting in our possible options. And I can't see any real traction about it becoming the main page or hub or whatever for the site. When there are people against seeing anything resembling a blog on the front page, it's a safe bet there won't be support for it becoming the main page. --AKB Talk Cont Mail 20:28, 17 January 2013 (GMT)
I think it makes more sense to remind users of all the discussions for mods on the (very active) forum, as well as link to those discussions/areas on the wiki pages that AKB mentioned as an extra space (and as we forum admins have been pitching and discussing on this CP page), than to link to a blog no one really uses and whose purpose seems unclear, anyway. -- Avron the S'wit (talk) 20:39, 17 January 2013 (GMT)
I'm sorry, but that's not simply true. The blog draws a surprising amount of traffic. It's gotten 65,000 hits so far this month alone. While that isn't that much, it is decent. The Survey Results clearly show that around 35% of responders have at least used the blog before (more than the chatroom), so it clearly has a fair amount of traffic and people aware of its existence. If we were to actively keep it up, then I'd imagine those numbers would raise considerably. And how exactly are we going to remind users about those sections of the site relating to modding, anyway? The most I'd be willing to do is to add links to Tesmod pages to the sidebar, not much else. It's purpose was also made clear from the start by Daveh: "Welcome to the first post on the UESP blog. A place where I, and possibly other UESP editors or Elder Scrolls fans, can talk about what is on our minds. " Even if we were to ignore the so far criticized suggestions, there are plenty of other possibilities for it. It's especially unfair to complain about it not having a purpose on what had basically become a discussion on what its purpose should be.
The forums are simply not the answer here, and are almost irrelevant to the discussion about revitalizing another ignored part of the site. --AKB Talk Cont Mail 20:59, 17 January 2013 (GMT)
My apologies, then. Given the information above about it being outdated, not often used, and having few consistent writers, I was under the impression it wasn't very often used. (I have clicked on the blog before myself.) It could be juiced up again to be quite a read, I'm sure, and I'd love to see it. Seeing as how most of the time ideas are quite often shot down or criticized, I will be honest to say it's hard to tell when anyone actually wants to discuss new ways to revitalize things, or just wants to keep things the way they are (and I mean that non-aggressively; there are only so few ways to phrase it).
The forum comment was only in regard to links for areas to discuss mods, anyway.-- Avron the S'wit (talk) 21:23, 17 January 2013 (GMT)
Just wanted to say that the influx in blog use is probably from the User Survey specifically mentioning it. As many of the comments were "we have a blog? chat? really?" ;) -- Musicman247 (talk) 21:29, 17 January 2013 (GMT)


(←) Considering there was around 6,500 replies to the survey, that's almost statistically impossible. It's been pulling decent traffic for a while, and our ignoring it is a serious problem. As this has ventured entirely off topic at this point, let's drop this line of conversation now. I'll try to throw together an overview page for the blog for the UESPWiki area of the site later this week, so we may start documenting some key things about it (mainly who has permissions, what it's for, and how to create an account). --AKB Talk Cont Mail 21:45, 17 January 2013 (GMT)

(edit conflict) I've been sitting here for a few minutes looking for a polite way to say it, and while it isn't my place (or at least I don't consider it so) to be pushing conversations in a particular way, I feel like it's worth just getting out there. I apologize in advance for the bluntness of the statement, and I mean no offense to anyone mentioned. Here it is: The forum is not the answer to everything. We are talking about the blog, which has a completely different use than the forum, and to be honest, I fail to see how the forum can be at all relevant to the discussion. Considering how many active discussions are in progress about the forum's representation, or apparent lack of, may we just keep this particular topic on the blog itself? It's confusing enough as it stands to follow what the plan for everything is with all the distinct topics we have merging together like they are. --Snowmane(talk) 21:55, 17 January 2013 (GMT)

Integrate Forums Into Discussion Pages?

In light of the discussion that has been ongoing about bringing the different parts of the site closer together I wanted to bring up a MediaWiki extension called PHPHBB Show Forum (http://mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:PHPBB_ShowForum). Once installed it allows the most recent topics of a specified sub-forum to be displayed within a Wiki page. You can see how it looks on the test site I set up here: http://wiki.musicman247.com/index.php?title=Talk:Main_Page . It links to my test forum and shows the most recent five topics from the General Junk sub-forum on the test forums. As of right now there are only four topics, so only those four are shown.

The code used in the wiki page itself is very small and easy to edit. If we wanted to, we could insert this at the bottom of Wiki Discussion pages to let browsers know what is being discussed in relevant sub-forums in the UESP Forums.

In the same way we could post a link to relevant Wiki pages at the top of each sub-forum to let users know about the excellent Wiki resources we have at our disposal.

Thoughts?

P.S. - I tried to post this with properly formatted links and I kept getting an SQL error. — Unsigned comment by Musicman247 (talk • contribs) at 22:08 on 14 January 2013 (GMT)

Advertising potentially unrelated threads on specific talk pages doesn't seem to have any benefit to me. If anything, it seems rather spammy. Especially when you consider talk pages already display in a bright red box: "Please remember that talk pages are meant for discussing the contents of the article, or for asking specific questions. If you want to chat with other users about X, please consider using the UESP forums instead. ". While it would show off the forums better, it would also be rather bulky, and could easily be seen as spam to users just wanting to ask a question about an article. --AKB Talk Cont Mail 22:08, 14 January 2013 (GMT)
I can understand that. It was just a suggestion. Instead of the most recent topic if there was a directly related discussion concerning a quest or another one of the pages would it be too intrusive to put a small link to the topic on the forum in the discussion page? They are already there for the main pages of Skyrim. Would we be allowed to do the same for other pages? -- Musicman247 (talk) 23:41, 14 January 2013 (GMT)
For me, the criteria for having a random selection would revolve around how relevant the discussions were, on average. As far as linking to specific discussions, if the topic is relevant to the entire page in an ongoing way, then I could see putting an unobtrusive link in a box, much like we currently do with page archives. If it's only relevant to a specific talk page discussion, then a link within the discussion itself, or perhaps at the top of the section if it's highly relevant, would be more appropriate. In that event, we could do something along the lines of our {{Good Question}} banner:
There is a forum discussion related to this topic: Discussion Title
Colour and style would, of course, be changeable, but you get the idea. – Robin Hood  (talk) 23:54, 14 January 2013 (GMT)
That's a fantastic idea! To be honest, I've thought of doing something sort of like this a long time ago, as often forum discussions can be just as relevant when it comes to specific topics. It would be dreadfully convenient for both users looking for a solution and editors wanting to go over available UESP sources before answering a question to have this. The reason I never acted on the idea though was a problem with implementation. We would be hard pressed to find someone with the patience to read through threads and then adding them to relevant talk pages. As the nature of a thread can be a bit off, there is simply no automated way to handle this. I guess you could create some method of sorting threads by keywords and titles, which may speed up the process, but not by much. The best way to do this is to just add them if you see them. Still, I totally support this idea. --AKB Talk Cont Mail 00:21, 15 January 2013 (GMT)
I don't think it would be very hard to find a group of users who are forum and wiki savvy and help recruit them to do something like that. We have a lot of active users and a lot more who would love to help out. If you are interested I could gladly gather some for you. Personally I love that idea! -- Avron the S'wit (talk) 00:36, 15 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) On a related note, a template for stopping forum style topics from continuing would be helpful. I muddled about and got this:

This topic is (now) unrelated to the content of the article, and more suited to the forums. Please feel free to continue the discussion there.
This topic is now closed.

What do you think? Anyone is free to edit it here. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 00:57, 15 January 2013 (GMT)

I think both of those ideas are super. We will run into just two issues, minor: 1) you'll need a forum account to post on the forums (although we are considering the possibility of opening up either game subforums or the wiki subforum to guests), 2) thread links will have to be updated or our "necropost" rule might have to be extended, since the forums don't allow posts in threads with no new posts in the last three months (although personally I'm all right with nixing that rule in most cases). But, again, minor hiccups that are easily fixable, I think. I'd love to go into this if the wiki is interested. -- Avron the S'wit (talk) 13:40, 15 January 2013 (GMT)

Skyrim Spell School Colors

So, the colors we've been using for spell schools for a while actually date back to Morrowind, and are based on the colors used for the effect icons back then. This was okay for Morrowind, and wasn't a problem for Oblivion, because there weren't really any colors associated with the schools in that game. However, there are colors used in Skyrim, and they're not the same ones. Just to show how this looks off, here's a table using Morrowind colored backgrounds with the Skyrim spell book icons:


   SR-icon-book-SpellTomeAlteration.png   
   SR-icon-book-SpellTomeConjuration.png   
   SR-icon-book-SpellTomeDestruction.png   
   SR-icon-book-SpellTomeIllusion.png   
   SR-icon-book-SpellTomeRestoration.png   

I'd like to propose that they be changed to something like the following:


   SR-icon-book-SpellTomeAlteration.png   
   SR-icon-book-SpellTomeConjuration.png   
   SR-icon-book-SpellTomeDestruction.png   
   SR-icon-book-SpellTomeIllusion.png   
   SR-icon-book-SpellTomeRestoration.png   

I think it should be possible to adjust the .css file to use those colors on Skyrim/Dragonborn pages and keep the original Morrowind colors elsewhere. What are people's thoughts on this - more trouble than it's worth or what? TheRealLurlock (talk) 05:07, 15 January 2013 (GMT)

I'm not a fan of the actual colour scheme, but it would be nice to have Skyrim-specific colours. —Legoless (talk) 17:14, 17 January 2013 (GMT)
Did you mean you don't like the existing colors, or my proposed change? I'm open to suggestions for improving it - possibly adding a little more purple to Conjuration to distinguish it better from Destruction's grey, also Alteration and Illusion are kind of similar, but that's true of the books as well. We could raise the saturation on all of them to maybe bring out the differences more obviously. At any rate, we'll need somebody with .css mastery to figure out how to make the change globally - I'm not feeling like doing it manually on every single page that uses them... TheRealLurlock (talk) 17:52, 17 January 2013 (GMT)
Currently the colors are usually provided by templates like {{RES}}, that set a class. Those could be set to a different class depending on namespace and Skyrim specific classes/colors defined at MediaWiki:Common.css. Basically we just need to agree on class names (SRMagicRes and so on?) and actual color values. --Alfwyn (talk) 18:08, 17 January 2013 (GMT)
I support having new colors for Skyrim, but I'm not a big fan of those particular colors. What about these colors?
Alteration Conjuration Destruction Illusion Restoration
SR-icon-book-SpellTomeAlteration.png SR-icon-book-SpellTomeConjuration.png SR-icon-book-SpellTomeDestruction.png SR-icon-book-SpellTomeIllusion.png SR-icon-book-SpellTomeRestoration.png
It's basically a less washed-out version, except Illusion is blue, because Illusion strikes me as being a blue :). Having it red means that we'd have red, orange, and yellow, which does not make for a varied color palette. Also, I support using those class names (SRMagicAlt, SRMagicRes, etc.) • JAT 18:57, 17 January 2013 (GMT)
Well if we're going to use a color that's not represented in the game (I don't really see any blue in the Illusion book), why not just stick with the green from Morrowind for that? Green also works as a complement to the red color on the book itself. I do think your more saturated ones are an improvement and easier to tell apart. Of course all of this begs the question of what we'll do on pages like Lore:Alteration, where the colors help you see which effects have moved to different schools. In those cases, we probably need to stick to one color scheme, even if it means the lore pages are inconsistent with some of the games. (And I recommend the existing Morrowind colors only because they're already set up that way, and Skyrim doesn't even have Mysticism. (Of course, Morrowind didn't have Thaumaturgy, so I arbitrarily chose orange for that because it was distinct from the colors already being used. (And I've nested my parentheses a little too much here...))). TheRealLurlock (talk) 02:39, 18 January 2013 (GMT)
Alteration Conjuration Destruction Illusion Restoration
SR-icon-book-SpellTomeAlteration.png SR-icon-book-SpellTomeConjuration.png SR-icon-book-SpellTomeDestruction.png SR-icon-book-SpellTomeIllusion.png SR-icon-book-SpellTomeRestoration.png
Okay, I modified JA's colors slightly - I sampled a green from the symbol on the Illusion book, and cranked up the hue and brightness to match the set. For Restoration, I made the yellow a little darker to distinguish it from the green and also make it not look like the color we use for generic table headers. And I made the Alteration color slightly darker for the same reason. Conjuration and Destruction are the same. What do we think of this? TheRealLurlock (talk) 21:51, 18 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) Looks good to me, TRL. I'll put my vote down on your set. Snowmane(talk) 22:47, 18 January 2013 (GMT)

I like the third colour scheme as well. —Legoless (talk) 23:02, 18 January 2013 (GMT)
So, since there seems to be something like consensus on the colors themselves, what do we do about where they're used? Obviously Morrowind colors for Morrowind/Tribunal/Bloodmoon and Skyrim colors for Skyrim/Dragonborn, but what about Oblivion? And Lore pages, which might cover multiple games? My vote is to leave Oblivion and Lore pages using the old colors, only because that's the least disruptive thing to do, and there's really no "right" colors for those cases. To be clear, I think we should leave the existing spell school classes in place, and only add new ones, so as to not break any existing pages. And in addition to "what", we've got a few "how" questions. Changing the {{RES}} etc. templates and adding some .css classes is easy enough, but that's not the only place they're used. I know at least the {{Effect Summary}} and {{Spell Summary}} will need updating. (Spell Summary being used exclusively for Skyrim at the moment, it shouldn't be too hard. Might not ever be used for the older games since the spells were more generic then and didn't really need their own pages.) It's possible we'll need to manually change pages which list spells or effects. TheRealLurlock (talk) 14:06, 19 January 2013 (GMT)
Alright, I think I got them all. If we want to tweak the colors any more, it can be easily done in the .css file, although the footer templates still have to be done manually. (Not sure if there's a way to get them to use the .css colors. Would really be preferable if that were possible.) TheRealLurlock (talk) 14:37, 19 January 2013 (GMT)
Luckily, that's already built into the Navbox template. For example, on {{Skyrim Destruction Effects}}, replace 
|basestyle = background:#DDCCCC;
with 
|bodyclass = SRMagicDes
and it will pull the color from common.css. Elliot (talk) 02:27, 23 January 2013 (GMT)
Nice! Went ahead and changed them all so the colors are now as far as I know exclusively defined in the .css. Heck, that means even if you happen to disagree with the color choices, you should be able to just change them on your own .css without affecting everybody else, not that I expect anyone to do that kind of thing, but at least if you do, it'll all be consistent now... TheRealLurlock (talk) 04:10, 23 January 2013 (GMT)

Thoughts on Expanding What The UESP Is

According to the Survey Results Mods, Reviews and Downloads are the third most greatly desired change to the site as a whole (behind More Content and a Mobile Site/App). I know I for one would love to see the UESP branch out from just a Wiki a Forum and a barely used blog. What are your thoughts on growing the site in directions as yet unseen? I know Dave would have the final say, but I would be interested to see what you think as individuals. -- Musicman247 (talk) 21:27, 17 January 2013 (GMT)

My opinion is that there are so many modding sites like the Nexus, Planet Elder Scrolls, etc, and they already have so many mods that it would take a great deal of luck to become reasonable competition for such largely established sites. If people want us to expand on our content some more or develop a mobile site or iPhone/Droid application, then I think those would be more worthwhile ventures than something further down the list and not quite so desirable. --Snowmane(talk) 21:36, 17 January 2013 (GMT)
I would also like to point out how expensive it is to host all those mods. Bandwidth costs money. Jeancey (talk) 21:40, 17 January 2013 (GMT)
We have enough going on right now that we don't need another topic like this at the moment, especially when it's more general about its subject then all the others. No one is going to get anything done if we start too many discussions of this nature at the same time. --AKB Talk Cont Mail 21:45, 17 January 2013 (GMT)
With all due respect, AKB, I think you should always look ahead at all possibilities before deciding on a plan of action, not focus on details without looking at the larger picture. Like Chess, we shouldn't be looking at this from a "move by move" basis, but at an entire strategy. That requires looking at the big picture of UESP as a whole and not just what the Wiki is doing or what the Forum is doing, or what the Blog is (or more often isn't) doing. Without vision nothing would ever reach its potential. -- Musicman247 (talk) 21:58, 17 January 2013 (GMT)
I think this kind of discussion should wait until we get the wiki top notch first. Musicman look around here, we still do not have Dragonborn, Dawnguard, or even base Skyrim content up to snuff. We have a lot of things to do without expanding on them to make even more problems. I think we should wait until Dave can get all the programming done, and we get all of the content done.--Br3admax (talk) 22:18, 17 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) This has nothing to do with chess or the larger picture or vision. We have a fairly good idea where the site is heading in the next year or so. This is based on the fact that after a certain number of discussions, the communities willingness to do anything reaches critical mass and almost everyone loses interest in actually doing anything. We've probably gone a ways past that point as it is. As this conversation doesn't really have much purpose, when we have some clear things we might or might want to do ahead, I'd prefer not to waste those topics for this one. --AKB Talk Cont Mail 22:22, 17 January 2013 (GMT)

The Elder Scrolls Online...Yes or No?

I'm not sure if you've had any discussions on this yet, but with The Elder Scrolls supposed to be coming out sometime in 2013, and it being an Elder Scrolls game, were you considering adding it to your list of games to be covered upon its launch? Or do you feel that, due to it being an "MMO", and therefore not a "traditional" Elder Scrolls game, it's not really worth adding to this wiki? Mostly curious, and i'm not even 100% sure i'm asking this in the proper place, so feel free to move this if you must; no complaints will be heard from me on that. VycDarkshadow (talk) 06:34, 21 January 2013 (GMT)

Right here. ES(talk•email) 06:36, 21 January 2013 (GMT)
Impressive. And thanks for the (very) fast reply! VycDarkshadow (talk) 06:54, 21 January 2013 (GMT)

NPC Voice Types

A bot request has been submitted suggesting that the NPC Voice Type be added to the NPC infobox, since many of the Voice Actors are flagged simply as, for example, doing all "MaleNord" voice types. Now, for something like "MaleNord", this is not particularly difficult to identify from the gender and class info, but it gets a bit trickier when you have something like "MaleEvenTonedAccented". Whose voices does that apply to? The obvious counter-argument to putting it in the NPC Infoboxes is that there's already a lot of information there, and while it's a bit more effort to get to, the information is available on CSList. This would be an easy enough job for the bot to do, so that shouldn't be a factor either way.

Does anybody have any thoughts on whether we should or shouldn't add the voice types? – Robin Hood  (talk) 19:16, 24 January 2013 (GMT)

I think that at the very least, we should add a VoiceType parameter to {{NPC Summary}} and have the template add a category. I would support adding it to the Summary itself (perhaps on a new line, just below the RefID and BaseID), but if we feel that the template is getting to be too big, then simply having it add a category would be good enough for me. • JAT 19:20, 24 January 2013 (GMT)
For reference, this has been brought up in the past, here. Having the categories for voice types could be useful for several reasons, including cleaning up the Voice Actors page. I wouldn't mind having at least the categories, though I'm pretty indifferent when it comes to actually displaying the information in the infobox. — ABCface◥ 19:30, 24 January 2013 (GMT)
What about having the RefID or the BaseID appear as links to CSList. That way it wouldn't be hard to look it up. Jeancey (talk) 19:32, 24 January 2013 (GMT)
Adding a category seems like a clever compromise. This doesn't have to be through the NPC summary, but it may be clearer/easier that way. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 19:42, 24 January 2013 (GMT)
I agree with the category option. I hadn't even thought of just doing that. The originator of the request has also suggested that would be a good way to go. Jeancey: linking to CSList somehow or another is probably a good idea, but it might take some thinking or bot-work. The main problem is that sometimes we put in only one ID, where others we have several IDs. Side-tracking a bit, I think something's been done along those lines to get the IDs into the header already, but the less processing we do in templates, the better, and listing the IDs at the top is redundant anyway, so returning to the main point, I think the whole ID system needs to be cleaned up a bit, and during that clean-up, we can probably introduce links to CSList. – Robin Hood  (talk) 20:02, 24 January 2013 (GMT)
Thanks for taking in under advisement, folks! From my user-level perspective, just having a category page, however implemented, would be a sufficient resource for visitors in conjunction with CSList. Regarding that list, I did not know about it until Robin pointed me to it yesterday, despite having looked for that type of resource onsite, and online, over the course of several months. It has never shown up in my searches, for voice or anything else, although it would have answered bunches of my questions in that time. So, anything you could do to subtly improve the search profile of CSlist would be a good thing. Lottery Discountz (talk) 13:03, 25 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) Is this something Skyrim specific or across all gamespaces with dialogue (Read: also Oblivion :p). While it's needed even more with Skyrim's large number of voice actors, I feel that this kind of sorting could find uses for Oblivion too. Maybe not so much Morrowind, as there are a grand total of 3 voices, it seems at times, but it's a good thing to use universally, IMO. As for whether or not it's on the infobox itself, what's one more tiny RandomNordVoice1 right under the ID going to hurt? I wouldn't complain if it was posted in the box proper. ES(talk•email) 20:30, 24 January 2013 (GMT)

When it comes to Oblivion, the voices are set for each race, some for a couple of races, but that's it, so info on the voices should be added to the race page in that case. For Skyrim, I agree that info on the voice should be included, probably even in the infobox ~ Dwarfmp (talk) 20:44, 24 January 2013 (GMT)
I think directly linking to CSList is a bad idea. CSList is a tool for editors. It is not user friendly and it doesn't aim to be, unlike the wiki it cannot be changed by users if they spot something wrong. It will never be really subject to wiki concensus. And linking to it would give it an authority it really doesn't have. It is not the ultimate truth, just a very useful tool in some situations.
Back to the topic: I'm a bit indifferent about adding it to the displayed infobox (I see no problem adding it as a category). Sure, individually a single bit of added information doesn't hurt, but why not combat style too, and keywords, and deathitems, and perks, and face paintings? Then again voice type may be one of the more directly interesting things (unlike factions, that only have indirect effects that are documented elsewhere anyway if they are important (possible quest giver)). --Alfwyn (talk) 20:51, 24 January 2013 (GMT)
This might sound like a stupid sarcastic comment, I'll admit, but I am genuinely unaware and curious... There is a "style" to all the Nords with iron battleaxes that rush me each time my Bosmer breathes wrong? Sorry for asking for a link in an unrelated place, but I am extraordinarily forgetful, so I wanted to ask on the spot. :p ES(talk•email) 21:10, 24 January 2013 (GMT)
Indeed there's dozens of them - look in the CK under Miscellaneous/Combat Style. I'd be hard pressed to explain how any of that actually works, but it's in there... TheRealLurlock (talk) 22:01, 24 January 2013 (GMT)

Persistent Items Article or Section or whatever?

There were persistent items found in Skyrim, but I do not know how (or even if) they could be incorporated into uesp. Like, where to plug them in as a section, or create an article, or maybe just forget about them as insignificant? Info is in my sandbox here http://www.uesp.net/wiki/User:Sergio_Morozov/Sandbox_Persistent_Items
Sergio Morozov (talk) 14:53, 25 January 2013 (GMT)

To avoid confusion, could we maybe use different terminology? Like instead of "Type 1 Persistent" and "Type 2 Persistent", how about just "Permanent" and "Persistent", respectively? That also gets across the point that Type 1 is more persistent than Type 2, without people having to remember which number is which. TheRealLurlock (talk) 15:28, 25 January 2013 (GMT)
Maybe it will be better. Even better would be to know how they are identified inside the game, in the CK. I know in Oblivion there was a "reference persists" flag (which did not actually give persistent properties to items)Sergio Morozov (talk) 16:06, 25 January 2013 (GMT)
Problem is, we need a more reliable way of figuring out what is persistent/permanent or whatever. It's not listed in the item data where it's easy to find. (Otherwise ALL Whiterun Guard armor would be persistent, not just the ones on Mirmulnir - they use the same FormID, so you can't just run down all the item lists.) Testing it by simply selling all your items and seeing what sticks around is not the best way of doing things - especially when you won't necessarily remember where you got everything. It would probably require parsing the data in every single location, as well as all leveled lists and creature/NPC inventories and containers, along with items added by scripts, etc. The "reference persists" flag doesn't seem to exist per se, but what has replaced it I'm not sure. TheRealLurlock (talk) 17:45, 25 January 2013 (GMT)
After some testing it looks like that type1/permanent is indicated by the 0x400 flag in the form headers of the reference. I can't see this flag in the CK, but CSList shows this as "quest item". Most of the references with that flag are markers or static objects that can't be picked up. But more or less randomly some items have that flag too. For example a Banded Iron Shield hanging on the wall at Fort Fellhammer doesn't lose it's refid after picking up and dropping. A quick and dirty search shows 30 armor objects and 304 weapon objects with the flag in Skyrim.esm - the count is inexact, but should give a rough idea about how common the phenomenon is. --Alfwyn (talk) 17:50, 25 January 2013 (GMT)
Huh, I checked that shield, and it indeed is permanent. Also I have found, that despite Zephyr keeps its refID when dropped, it does not persist.
However, I still ask for opinions on how, where and if information on persistent items should be included into the uesp. Because they have particular use - in Dead thrall corpse preservation, so not completely useless. ^_^ Sergio Morozov (talk) 11:43, 26 January 2013 (GMT)
Turns out, that shield is Type 2 persistent - if dropped, it keeps its refID, but if sold subsequently, it disappears.
Anyway, seems like I've cracked it. Looks like so:
Type 1 persistent items are those filling an Alias in quest system (but maybe some other too).
Type 2 persistent items are those, which do not currently fill an Alias in quest system, but have some mysterious flags on them. These flags may be obtained by references when they are made filling an Alias, and are not always removed when the references are removed from Alias, but are removed when a non-filling item is dropped into the world.
If a item keeps its refID on dropping, its Alias, if any, is displayed by ShowVariables / SV command.
I think I need to write an article about this. Sergio Morozov (talk) 18:33, 26 January 2013 (GMT)

Modifying {{NPC Summary}}

At the Silencer's request, I modified {{NPC Summary}} so that in the Skyrim space, it would do the following things:

  • If essential and protected are both defined, put them on the same line
  • If marry and follower are both defined, put them on the same line

I was going to go ahead and implement this, but some people on the IRC felt that this was controversial and needed to be discussed first. Since this change needs to be discussed in detail, I will outline exactly what needs to be done in order to do this.

The performance impact of this is negligible. As it is, {{NPC Summary}} is incredibly complex; this change adds a grand total of 6 {{#if}} statements. I've tested this out and everything lines up as it should. To demonstrate the differences, look below:

Old Version
Current Version
Stamina 80-214
Primary Skills Heavy Armor, One-handed, Archery, Block
Class Details CombatWarrior1H
Moral. Any Crime Aggress. Aggressive
Essential Yes Protected Yes
Marry Yes Follower Yes
StewardHF Yes

This works with any number of combinations, such as protected but not essential, follower but not marry, etc. In cases where it is more than a simple "Yes" and the template would default to giving it a smaller cell, you can define the nocombine parameter, which will force the template not to combine those cells.

So what are your thoughts on this? I think that this would be just fine. • JAT 20:43, 29 January 2013 (GMT)

Ummm... Yes? Si? Oui? Si (this time in Italian)? What you said made absolutely no sense to this template illiterate user, so I'm going to go on faith, assume that whatever foreign language that is is a good one you're speaking, and then I"ll agree on good faith that you wouldn't care enough to screw around unless it was important. Snowmane(talk•email) 20:49, 29 January 2013 (GMT)
Looks great to me, Jak! Better use of space with negligible performance impact = win. ⇠eshetalk 20:54, 29 January 2013 (GMT)
Just chiming in to confirm that I like it, and that your babies will be templating before they walk. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 21:00, 29 January 2013 (GMT)
Well the importance of the change should be obvious without technical knowledge, the information is displayed more compactly. One problem already briefly mentioned with that is, that we would need to change all the pages that have more than a simple Yes filled in (or complicate the template even more). And the usage will get more complex if I have to remember to set an extra parameter (just a global one, or one for every possible combination?) once I add a condition to the Yes.
Another thing is, that the things combined is a bit random. If only essential, marry and steward are set, the change does nothing. So it will make things more compact only in certain special cases. --Alfwyn (talk) 21:21, 29 January 2013 (GMT)
Messed around with a couple tables using showpreview to see what it would look like with the nocombine parameter, and it looks great to me. It will mean editing many NPC pages after the change is made, but the end result would be beneficial in terms of how the infobox is displayed. I don't know enough about templates to know if the performance impact is minimal or not, but if other templaters think this will work fine, then I don't see any issue with implementing it.
Also, steward won't ever be set if follower isn't, since you can only assign followers to be stewards. I guess combining Follower/Steward could work, but I don't have a strong feeling about it either way. — ABCface◥ 21:29, 29 January 2013 (GMT)
While we're at it, I'd like to propose adding an "Adopt" field for children that are adoptable with Hearthfire. It can take the place of the "Marry" field - there should be zero overlap between the two. (Only children can be adopted, and only adults can be married. Only weird cases would be people like Babette, but she can't be either, so it's a non-issue.) Although since no children can be followers, having it on the same line with that might be unnecessary. It could just take the whole row then. (And then you could include info on whose death(s) will make the child adoptable.) TheRealLurlock (talk) 00:03, 30 January 2013 (GMT)
If we are going to minimize parts of the NPC summary, we could add game data defined relationships, since that effects a few radiant quests, as well as the adoption issue. Jeancey (talk) 00:13, 30 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) Perhaps slightly off-topic, but I've dumped a list of any Skyrim NPC Summary that had anything but a simple "Yes" for any of those parameters into User:RobinHood70/Zain, if that's helpful to anybody. Note that the data I used is actually from January 8 because I had that handy. I didn't think it was likely much would've changed in those parameters since then. – Robin Hood  (talk) 03:22, 30 January 2013 (GMT)

I added a adopt parameter, which takes the place of marry if the cells are combined and gets it's own row above Steward if the cells are not combined.
The reason I chose to merge the cells that I did is because they are closely related to each other. Essential and Protected both concern the NPC's ability to die in combat, and in some cases both are defined, so it makes sense. Marry and Follower seemed the next most logical thing to merge, because both concern your general interactions with them. I could have other cells combine (or have a dynamic template combine the cells into pairs), but then we'd run into cross-page inconsistency due to different cells merging together. • JAT 19:18, 31 January 2013 (GMT)
I will take the lack of objections as approval and implement the change. • JAT 01:57, 11 February 2013 (GMT)
Change implemented. It appears to be successful, but tell me if you see anything broken. • JAT 02:06, 11 February 2013 (GMT)

About Template

I just want to get clarification on the use of the {{About}} template, which adds a standardized note at the top of a page about its use, and where to go if you actually wanted something else. Wikipedia's policy is that due to the large number of possibilities, only those pages such as the main usage of the word get the hatnote. As we have a much smaller possible usage of a word, with the chances of finding the wrong page further decreased by our use of namespaces, we should add hatnotes to most pages even if they have a disambiguated title, e.g. Thief (book). I don't think all pages need a hatnote, but perhaps they do. For example, the SR:Thief (NPC) page has very few links, but people looking for SR:Thief (Thieves Guild) may come across this page first. A hatnote quickly and simply tells them to go to the SR:Thief disambig page, which has a direct link, and an explanation of what each link is. Most hatnotes will link directly to the alternate page, this is just a heavily used title (5 links), one of heaviest in fact. The main reason behind this is that we usually hide our disambig titles in links, so all a person knows is that they are clicking a link for thief, not a particular one. So in summing up, I feel we should use it generously, but not everywhere. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 23:08, 31 January 2013 (GMT)

The rationale against it is, that a user doesn't end up on "title (creature)" in the first place if he is looking for the quest "title (quest)" - he can see the title clearly if searching, and all the articles link to the correct thing (hopefully) anyway. Every hatnote adds text a reader is forced to read through before reading what he came for - they should be used as sparingly as possible, and as brief as possible. --Alfwyn (talk) 23:28, 31 January 2013 (GMT)
Yes every link should link to where it was planned on going, but the disambig part is hidden when not editing. Not everyone looks to see if they are on the right page by looking to the title of the page, they usually assume the link was what they wanted, not what the person who placed the link wanted. Searching for a particular article precludes the need for a hatnote at all. The template was designed to help those who are on the wrong page from a link. Look at my example of the Thief (NPC) page, people searching my come across that first, while instead looking for Thief (Thieves Guild), or even Thief (wilderness), and providing direct links rather than forcing them to search again is only beneficial. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 23:36, 31 January 2013 (GMT)
That's not the primary reason I see. It is for when the user ended up on "title" because a search did automatically put him there when searching for that term, but he was looking for "title (somethingelse)". Of course our search function currently doesn't do that if the page is in a namespace, but the goal is, to fix that. And yes, a hatnote may be helpful, if the disambiguation title isn't really clear about what the page is about - that is, when it is difficult to decide the right page even when seeing all possible disambig titles. --Alfwyn (talk) 23:51, 31 January 2013 (GMT)

Bot Proposal - Wabbajak

I have been working on a bot for some time now, and after a successful full-scale run last night, I feel that it's time to officially propose Wabbajak. I made it for the primary purpose of renaming images to conform with our site's image naming policy. There are currently over 26,000 uploaded files on the wiki, but because we've only decided on (and followed) image naming standards in the last couple of years, the vast majority of non-Skyrim images do not conform to our naming conventions (I'd estimate that it's well above 15,000 images, maybe even 20,000 images). However, I've designed the bot to be easily expanded upon, so it could perform a wide variety of other tasks, like HotnBOThered.

Note that this robot is not yet complete. I have a number of changes to implement, which are listed on Wabbajak's to do list. I'm proposing the bot now while it's still in the design phase so that way, if there is any controversy over its purpose, design, or even existence, that can be taken care of now.

Currently the bot is heavily supervised by me. Right now, in order for it to run, I feed it two lists - one with the files to rename, and one with what to rename them to. It generates a large index of what pages link to those files, moves the files, and then goes through each page and updates the files. Every step of its operation is watched over by me, and I am in the IRC whenever it runs, so that way if someone notices something unusual they can contact me directly (or they can edit Wabbajak's talk page to stop the program).

I feel that this should be fairly straightforward, as Wabbajak's purpose is unobtrusive, and it has been shown that he works well. • JAT 20:12, 1 February 2013 (GMT)

First, for anyone who's wondering, yes there's a Bot Proposals section on the Bots page, but that's a proposed policy, not a fully implemented one, and honestly, I'd rather see bot proposals on the Community Portal anyway, where everyone will notice and have the ability to comment. At least two out of the three current bots were discussed on CP prior to their implementation. I didn't see anything for RoBoT in the CP archives off-hand, but there was a request on DaveH's talk page, which half the wiki probably monitors anyway. :)
Now on to the actual proposal: I'd be happy to see another bot in operation, and I believe that Jak has demonstrated that he's aware of the bot's errors when they're made, and works to fix them. Renaming images is a great place to start, as it's relatively straight-forward, but not "too" straight-forward, as Jak has already discovered based on conversations elsewhere. (And I should note that HotnBOThered went through almost the exact same trials and tribulations when I gave it the ability to rename images.) He's obviously already thinking ahead to functionality that differs from HotnBOThered's, and I look forward to seeing where Wabbajak will go. – Robin Hood  (talk) 21:39, 1 February 2013 (GMT)
I guess the bot will need some things ironed out over the next time, but I believe Jak will take care of that, as his todo list shows. Meanwhile Wabbajak can do useful stuff without flooding the RC. And it will be good to have a tested backup bot, just in case. --Alfwyn (talk) 22:22, 1 February 2013 (GMT)
As I said on Jak's talk page earlier, I'm looking at this with great interest, both to see how well it does and in consideration for creating my own bot at some point (something I probably should've considered doing a while ago, given how much bot-like stuff I've found myself doing by hand.) Not sure whether I'd want to base mine off of HotnBOThered's code or Wabbajak's, but I'd like to at some point see both to decide which is easier to work with, if that's alright with you guys. Any rate, getting sidetracked - short of it is Wabbajak has my full support, as we definitely could benefit from another bot or two around here, given that both of the other bot-users aren't around these days. TheRealLurlock (talk) 00:09, 2 February 2013 (GMT)
I support it only through what I've read above and seen on the IRC. That Jak seeks input and is open to advice from people like Alfwyn and RH, TRL, other smart and experienced people, I can confidently say I support it myself. And thanks for all your great stuff, Jak. --JR (talk) 07:01, 13 February 2013 (GMT)
Consensus: Support. Since this proposal has now been up for two weeks without objection, I've called it and asked Dave to add Wabbajak to the bot group. – Robin Hood  (talk) 20:41, 15 February 2013 (GMT)

Bloodmoon check - "Bloodskal" or "Blodskaal"?

I'm noticing a spelling inconsistency on the site. While most references spell the word "Bloodskal", there are 4 pages (not counting a talk page and an archive of one of the other pages) which spell it "Blodskaal". Is this simply an error? Or is it actually spelled that way in some places in Bloodmoon? I don't have Morrowind or Bloodmoon installed on my current computer and have sadly lost the discs, so somebody else needs to check this. If there is an inconsistency, it should be noted on UESPWiki:Spelling. If not, we should fix those 4 pages to use the proper spelling. TheRealLurlock (talk) 13:31, 9 February 2013 (GMT)

Bloodskaal is wrong, there is nothing for that in the Skyrim or Morrowind cs'. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 13:35, 9 February 2013 (GMT)
That's not the spelling I used - there's only one 'o'. You can see the links here. TheRealLurlock (talk) 13:58, 9 February 2013 (GMT)
I just saw the difference in "a's". Anyway with that, there are 27 entries for Blodskaal, and 10 for Bloodskal in Morrowind, but only Bloodskal is used in the Dragonborn DLC. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 14:07, 9 February 2013 (GMT)
Ah, so it is an official spelling, though inconsistent even within Bloodmoon. I'll make a note on the spelling page. TheRealLurlock (talk) 14:17, 9 February 2013 (GMT)
To clarify: Blodskaal is a friend of the Skaal, Bloodskal is a sword/clan/barrow. Please don't make any changes, since the usage is probably correct. —Legoless (talk) 16:52, 9 February 2013 (GMT)
Actually, we probably should still clarify it somewhere - the spellings are similar enough that people are likely to confuse them, or assume that one of them is wrong. There's precedence for this kind of clarification - "venin" on that list is a perfectly valid word (and don't let anyone tell you otherwise), but we list it because people might think it's supposed to be spelled "venom", which is a different, but related concept. TheRealLurlock (talk) 13:08, 10 February 2013 (GMT)
I mentioned it here. Adding a similar note to other related pages might be a good idea. —Legoless (talk) 16:18, 10 February 2013 (GMT)

Official Plug-ins > Official Add-ons

I want to propose changing "Official Plug-ins", which we use for a few different articles on the wiki, to "Official Add-ons". It's a clearer and more broadly understood term, and even Bethesda uses it. Just seems a little less jargon-like to me. --Dorsal Axe (talk) 13:54, 9 February 2013 (GMT)

The only change I'd be happy with is to "Official DLC". Anything else is jargony, including add-on. DLC means what it says and does what it means, but even then they can still be bought via a disc, and they will be included in any future "Game of the Year" or final versions of the game. So DLC isn't even all that accurate. Plus add-on is only used by Bethesda for Skyrim, Oblivion is DLC, and Morrowind is expansions. So they aren't even consistent themselves, so we can't go by what Bethesda calls them. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 14:13, 9 February 2013 (GMT)
To be fair, the term "DLC" hadn't been invented when Morrowind's expansions came out, and it wouldn't have been accurate anyhow, given that you couldn't download them (at least legally). They were only available on disc. For Oblivion, DLC is most accurate, since most of them (except for KotN and Shivering Isles) could only be downloaded. Skyrim followed that model with some of the smaller mods (Fall of the Space Core, texture pack, and Hearthfire) only available as DLCs. I forget where Dawnguard fits in with this, but Dragonborn at least does exist in box-form in stores. Anyhow, we've had this discussion before (I forget where, don't feel like searching), and the reason we're using "plug-in" is it's the only term that is equally valid (if not ideal) for all games, since the official terminology has been inconsistent. TheRealLurlock (talk) 14:46, 9 February 2013 (GMT)
Technically, Dragonborn is the only Skyrim DLC so far that's an actual expansion, but it's still a plug-in, DLC, add-on, whatever you want to call it. When it comes right down to it, add-ons, plugins, and DLC are synonyms for the same concept, so I don't see the point in changing it. I mean, yeah, it wouldn't make it WORSE per se, but it wouldn't make it better either. If someone else wants to spend the time making that change, I'm fine with it I guess, but I personally don't want to bother with it. ThuumofReason (talk) 16:07, 9 February 2013 (GMT)
I brought up making this change before. I think it would be a good idea to change Oblivion/Skyrim to "DLC", but Morrowind should be left as "plug-ins". I don't see any reason to name Oblivion DLC "add-ons", or certain Skyrim DLC "expansions", etc. —Legoless (talk) 16:51, 9 February 2013 (GMT)
I agree with Legoless. As was brought up last time we discussed this, the term "plug-in" is not widely used and potentially misleading; case in point, I'd never even heard the term until after being on this site for a few months. I've only used "add-on", "expansion", or more generally "DLC", and if personal experience counts, I've never heard anyone use the term "plug-in" either. I understand that this is simply a carry-over from Morrowind, in which they were actually called "plug-ins", but for Oblivion and Skyrim, the term is not accurate. "DLC" is much more widely used, and widely understood to refer to any content that is usually downloaded that expands the base game's content. We can also create a slew of redirects for each possible term (game:Add-ons, game:Addons, game:Official Add-ons, game:Official Addons...) to alleviate any possible confusion. • JAT 19:43, 9 February 2013 (GMT)
Ditto to Legoless and Jak Atackka. I'd agree with moving the Oblivion and Skyrim Official Plug-ins pages to Official DLC or Official Downloadable Content (and whatever redirects are not already in place, should be put in place for convenience and easier navigation). — ABCface◥ 19:51, 9 February 2013 (GMT)
(edit conflict) Redirects are a great idea. They could possibly be created right away. —Legoless (talk) 19:52, 9 February 2013 (GMT)

(←) Redirects for what Bethesda decides to call them each time would be useful. This will not be the last discussion on this topic no matter the outcome. It is likely that the next game will not have disc releases for the extra content, except when included on Game of the Year/Platinum versions. Also with the future looking like games being played via the "cloud", new and different terms will come to the fore. A compromise would be to simply name the page "Additional Content" and be done with it (redirects aside), the term is unambiguous and covers any form of release that may be developed, as it will always be additional content. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 20:20, 9 February 2013 (GMT)

That's kinda why I proposed the term "add-on", since it's a sort of short form of that. It's a simple and generic term, that simply means content that is "added on" to the game. But I support "additional content" as well. I don't favour have a differently named page for each game. I'd rather stick with "plug-in" if it means we can be consistent across the wiki.--Dorsal Axe (talk) 09:56, 10 February 2013 (GMT)
I don't think consistency is important between Morrowind and Oblivion/Skyrim, since they have different concepts of "additional content". DLC is by far the most recognisable term in regards to Oblivion and Skyrim, but Morrowind's plug-ins are not what would be generally classified as DLC. —Legoless (talk) 16:21, 10 February 2013 (GMT)
Wait, are we talking about things like the Entertainers mod and the Helm of Tohan? Or are we referring to Tribunal and Bloodmoon? The latter two are definitely comparable to the expansions in the later games (particularly Bloodmoon, given the obvious connection with Dragonborn). Those smaller ones have more in common with things like Horse Armor or the various house mods for Oblivion, or the Fall of the Space Core for Skyrim. Official, sure, but orders of magnitude smaller than the full-on expansions. TheRealLurlock (talk) 17:18, 10 February 2013 (GMT)
Expansions are entirely separate. I was talking about the downloads like the Helm of Tohan. —Legoless (talk) 17:33, 10 February 2013 (GMT)
I just created redirects for the official terms only by Bethesda, ie MW:Expansions, OB:DLC, and Skyrim:Add-ons. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 20:39, 20 February 2013 (GMT)

Pages for Skyrim/Dragonborn Powers?

So, we've got all the Shouts on their own pages, and most of the Spells. (I'm still trying to decide whether the last few need pages, since they'd mostly duplicate their respective Effect pages, but that's another discussion.) So now I'm thinking we should do the same treatment for Powers, both Greater and Lesser. (Not Abilities, those are mostly too generic and are pretty much all just passive bonuses anyhow.) It might be possible to modify the Spell Summary template to work with powers as well. (Just set the "diff" parameter to "Greater Power" or "Lesser Power", and it should be able to figure out the rest.) Alternatively, a new template could be created, but it would do mostly the same thing, so combining them would be nice if possible. It'd have to change how it creates the categories and such, but that's trivial. Obviously all the stuff about bartering and spell tomes is irrelevant, but that's already optional in the existing template. There's enough to say about these that the little blurb they get on the Race pages and Powers seems insufficient. The Dragonborn powers in particular are very interesting and could use some more in-depth discussion. Icons are not an issue - they all use the same icons as spells, so they already exist. (A few of the DB powers used an icon which didn't exist before, but it does now.) Anyone have any objections/suggestions about this? TheRealLurlock (talk) 21:16, 10 February 2013 (GMT)

Seems like a good idea to me. —Legoless (talk) 21:33, 10 February 2013 (GMT)

Thumbnail Issues

The thumbnail issues some people are experiencing are due to a lack of space in the tmp directory. ImageMagick seems to be leaving a bunch of large files just lying around. I've notified Dave. – Robin Hood  (talk) 03:19, 12 February 2013 (GMT)

Some people are also having trouble uploading new files because of this. —Legoless (talk) 03:29, 12 February 2013 (GMT)

New IRC Client

As an avid user of our IRC chatroom, I greatly enjoy being a part of the little community that we have there, and it's always wonderful to help out anonymous users that poke their heads in for instant help - something that our talk pages can't always offer. However, accessibility is a BIG issue. Our current client, PJIRC, requires Java, which most browsers (and therefore most users) don't have preinstalled, and nobody is going to go out of their way to download a plugin just to chat. On top of that, it pops up with two security warnings, which you have to answer as "Yes" "No", in that order. This is incredibly inconvenient. On top of that, the chat client is rather bulky and not very intuitive. I've been looking at a few other web clients, and I've found a number of possibilities:

  1. Extension:Chat Adds a "chat" button to the top of every article. It looks like this. This can be set to link to a single chat room. If we later set up an IRC server on this website, we can have it point to that.
  2. Extension:WebChat Adds a new page, at Special:WebChat, which users can go to and instantly join a chat room. It looks like this. The advantage of this is that we can link to it from around the wiki.
  3. Making a new extension with qwebirc. I know that RobinHood70 was able to make an extension, JobQueue, so it's not impossible. The client looks like this. The code would likely look something like this. qwebirc is free to use, so all we'd have to do is install it on our server and link to it.

There are other options out there, but these three were the main three options that stuck out to me (besides sticking with what we have, but that I'd rather not do). Thoughts? • JAT 05:40, 13 February 2013 (GMT)

A nicer-looking, more easily accessible client would be wonderful. I know I was scared away a few times by the security popups to start with. A chat button on every article would be very convenient as well, I think. I don't have a preference out of the three possibilities listed, but almost anything would be better than what we have now. Currently very few anons visit, which I find almost disappointing. Vely►t►e 05:47, 13 February 2013 (GMT)
I must admit, whenever I have tried using the UESP webchat, I get this error message...
Unable to connect : java.security.AccessControlException : access denied (java.net.SocketPermission irc.chatspike.net resolve)
...so I don't use it. I use Mibbit instead, which is basically the second option suggested above by Jak, but I don't use it enclosed in a wiki page, I have Mibbit open in its own tab in my browser. – Daric↝talk 06:10, 13 February 2013 (GMT)
This new guy will speak for the inaccessibility of your chatrooms. I decided to take Jeancey's suggestion to join the channel, and no matter what I did, I couldn't get the current client to work. As for which one is used, I can't speak for the technical standpoint of what is best, but number one is looking good, for me anyways, since that button at the top is rather easy to find and always accessible. Jo'Sakhar (talk) 00:06, 14 February 2013 (GMT)
I don't think a chat tab at the top of each page would be desirable. The quality of visitors would likely decrease. —Legoless (talk) 00:39, 14 February 2013 (GMT)

(←) Perhaps. But, on the other hand, the really fast questions can be received in IRC and be over with, rather than talk page discussions. For example, my work: Rather than millions of talk page edits saying "Hey someone read this for me" (most of which were ignored, though that's a different story), I would be able to pop in to directly ask any regulars of the channel or Jeancey himself (I assume he's there, considering he was who mentioned IRC), since he appears to be the one in charge of the Morrowind namespace, given his work in it and his guidance in cleaning it up. And, of course, the people who just want to chat would know where the channel is, rather than the link at the very bottom of the page that is all but invisible, in my opinion. I don't assume my opinion holds weight, being a new guy, I just wanted to give my explanation for why such an easy to access chatroom would in fact be completely desirable. Jo'Sakhar➚talk to me 03:00, 14 February 2013 (GMT)

"The quality of visitors would likely decrease." Over the last month or so, we have probably had under 10 new visitors. A few have stayed and become regulars or semi-regulars. A few have popped in a couple times or not returned after their first visit. Let's take a guess of 10 anonymous/new visitors this month, whether they stuck around or not. Compare that to the number of editors on our wiki, anons or accounts, that have edited in the past month. The IRC is very empty. At a given time there are perhaps 3-5 people chatting, with perhaps 15-20 somewhat-active chatters. The quality of [new] visitors can hardly decrease when there are practically no [new] visitors.
Let's look at the amount of talk page edits on articles made by anonymous or new users. There's a lot. Now, for those who can't patrol, let's say that I see about half of those edits are patrolled. If we say that half of that half was a new question, that makes 25% of those edits already-answered questions. What I'm looking at is just the past couple of days. If that 25% popped into the IRC channel, questions could be answered quickly, anons wouldn't have to watch the pages, the pages wouldn't get cluttered with repeat questions, etc. It would save a lot of trouble if they popped into IRC instead of posting on a talk page, not to mention how frequently talk page edits need to be altered for formatting or signatures.
Personally, I would love some more IRC traffic. It would make it more interesting, clear up talk pages (and the RC), and stir up some TES chatter. I love the idea of the tab at the top. Vely►t►e 03:29, 14 February 2013 (GMT)
I would also love to see a chat tab on each page. There were many comments from the Site Survey about how people didn't even know that UESP had a chatroom, forums, or a blog. This would help in that regard, and also help to minimize the minor and/or repeated questions people have that would otherwise go on a talk page. Most hours of the day, there are active editors from the wiki on IRC, and if they can't answer questions people may have, they can direct them to the right place to find the information needed. I think we should have a little faith in the people who would use this feature, and in those who monitor the channel-- having new visitors is a good thing, and in the event that a new visitor causes issues, I think we're capable of keeping control and maintaining the channel.
That said, my top choice would be the first option. If we end up deciding not to use that one, I'd prefer the second option. It looks nicer than the last. — ABCface◥ 03:53, 14 February 2013 (GMT)
After looking into it a bit more, here is some information I've found:
  1. Extension:Chat is a fully self-contained extension. Not only does it have the client, but it also includes a chat server that would run on the wiki. However, this is NOT an IRC server, meaning that users with IRC clients would not be able to connect to our server. This extension does have some of the features that IRC has (including a few more), but the fact that it's not IRC and that the extension is not under active development (aka, if we upgrade, we might lose the extension) is dealbreaking for me.
  2. Extension:WebChat is just the chat client. It connects to any IRC server, so we can continue using ChatSpike (or Xertion, or our own server if we ever get one). However, what I don't like about this is the Mibbit client that it uses; specifically, the client has advertisements. Because all this extension does is create a new Special page and embed an IRC client, we could replace Mibbit with qwebirc (which is ad-free and has a better interface IMO).
  3. Making a new extension with qwebirc would be an inordinate amount of work when compared to the other two options. I'd only use this as a last resort.
In light of this information, I'm against the first option. We can always just modify the wiki itself to include a "chat" tab at the top of every page that links to Special:WebChat. • JAT 18:00, 14 February 2013 (GMT)

(←) Update: I created a new extension using qwebirc, and the new chat client can be found at Special:WebChat. It works on every browser that I've tested, and it looks a lot nicer than Mibbit did. Please, try it out! You'll find that it's a whole lot nicer than the old chat client. There are a couple of things that need to be done:

  • Recolor it. You can color it by clicking on the icon at the top left and selecting "Options". After trying out a few, I didn't find any good colors that matched the wiki, but if you find a better color, then by all means share it. The closest I've gotten is a little too light and has a pinkish hue to it.
  • Add the "chat" tab. Do we still want to do this? If so, this should be a fairly easy modification, but I want to make sure that everyone still likes that idea before I implement it.

I think this is a whole lot nicer than the old client; all that's left to be done are a few minor tweaks to advertise it. • JAT 22:04, 23 February 2013 (GMT)

I'm all for this. I just tested the new client and I think it's a fantastic improvement over the one we currently use. Having spoken with Jak about the color issue, it appears we got the same color when experimenting, and I think it's close enough to matching the wiki, personally. As for the chat tab, I expressed my views already, but to repeat the important part- many comments from the Site Survey mentioned how people didn't even know that UESP had a chatroom. This would really help with that. — ABCface◥ 22:21, 23 February 2013 (GMT)
I altered the extension, to match the client's colors with the wiki and add a new "chat" tab to the top of every page. You can see what the new "chat" tab looks like on content3, but I'm waiting on Daveh to update this on the rest of the wiki because I don't have the permissions necessary to do so myself. • JAT 05:11, 25 February 2013 (GMT)
Hmm, just took a look and the color is still the default blue. Am I missing something? — ABCface◥ 05:23, 25 February 2013 (GMT)
The tab links to www, which hasn't received the change yet. You can see the new colors at content3. • JAT 06:39, 25 February 2013 (GMT)
Ah, okay. Got it. Looks good then. :) — ABCface◥ 06:47, 25 February 2013 (GMT)
Looks good. Minor things: When clicking a nickname "query" isn't really obvious to me ("tell", "message", "talk" ?). "Slap" - do we really want this? Finally "whois" gives away the complete IP address, not sure it's a problem though, just something I noticed. --Alfwyn (talk) 14:09, 25 February 2013 (GMT)
Thanks for bringing those up. I'll see if I can replace "query" with "message" and disable "slap". As for the IP address, the one that is shown if you do /whois on a webchat user displays uesp.net's IP address, but I'll see if I can change that. • JAT 15:14, 25 February 2013 (GMT)

Help:Images Now Mentions "Image Requests" Page

I made the change here, assuming it noncontroversial. If I'm wrong, please revert and/or discuss here or (better) on the article's talk page. --JR (talk) 06:48, 13 February 2013 (GMT)

Image categories--how do they work?

Let's look at an example. One way to do it: "This category lists all the images used on the Skyrim creature pages." Another way to do it: "This category lists all images of Skyrim creatures."

The simple question:

  • Do we want to categorize images by what pages they appear on?
    • This would put images into multiple categories.
    • This is how the description has been for a long time.
    • However, this is not how most images have been categorized thus far.
      • Could additionally categorize the image based on what it is as well.
      • Example: SR-flora-Canticle Tree.jpg would be in the quest category, and could additionally be placed in the flora category.
  • Or, do we want to categorize images based on what they are?
    • This would put images into just one category.
    • This would change the long-standing description.
    • This is how most images have been categorized thus far.

My personal preference is number one, categorizing images by what pages they are on, but I am not very invested in the matter. Additionally, adding a Help:Categories page or adding categorization rules to Categories could help immensely. I'm just looking for opinions and consensus to solve this problem, since there is some disagreement between the two models. What works best, what's most convenient, and what should we use? Vely►t►e 00:33, 15 February 2013 (GMT)

If option one is the case File:SR-npc-Legate Quentin Cipius 04.jpg, File:SR-npc-Dorthe 2.jpg are both Place images, simply because they appear on a place page. That doesn't make sense at all. If Person A has an image, it is named SR-npc-Person A.jpg. If Person A owns a house, then it is named SR-place-Person A's House.jpg. If Person A's house image appears on Person A's page, then Person A's House.jpg is suddenly an NPC image. Thus, a category isn't describing the IMAGES but the PAGES. That doesn't make sense. By that logic, File:SR-item-Cracked White Phial.jpg is NOT an item image. It is a quest image because it ONLY appears on a quest page. If option 1 is chosen, then any time an image gets added to a new type of page, it must be recategorized. If option 2 is chosen, it is only categorized ONCE and then done, no more changes ever. If an image doesn't make sense in the category in which it is named, then rename it. File:SR-quest-The Black Star 04.jpg is a quest image. It appears on a quest page. File:SR-item-The Black Star.jpg is an Item image of the exact same thing, on an item page. That's how it is now. We already upload different versions for different pages because of aspect ratio, and that apparently makes sense to everyone. They are categorized differently because the 4:3 image is ONLY used on the quest page. There are plenty of examples of images that could be on NPC pages, but are named quest images because they appear only on quest pages. We don't add them to the NPC category just because NPCs appear in them? So why should we put images in the Quest Images category just because they appear in a quest?
I changed the descriptions of the categories to more accurately describe how the categories currently work. Thus "This category lists all the images used on the Skyrim place pages." is changed to "This category lists all images of the exteriors of places in Skyrim." I specifically mention "exterior" because we have a category already called Category:Skyrim-Interior Images. Under option one, that entire category becomes redundant because they all appear on place pages and should therefore be put in Category:Skyrim-Place Images. There are no "interior" pages, so there shouldn't be any images in the Interior Images category.
I may have gotten off topic, but I feel very strongly about this. Option two makes the most sense, and would involve the least change from the way we are currently doing things. Option 1 would involve going through every page on the entire wiki and making sure that all of the images are in the correct categories. Option 2 only involved going through the categories and changing the descriptions, and then a quick look to makes sure that all the images in the category are correct. Also, if someone wanted to find an image of, say, Person B, who appears in quest B, would they look in the quest images category? No, they would look in the NPC images category. I can see no benefit to categorizing things based on which pages they appear. Jeancey (talk) 00:51, 15 February 2013 (GMT)
As was just pointed out to me, this is how we describe images for people wanting to upload images. "NPC images — These should show as much of the NPC as possible, preferably performing some kind of action, but the priority is to create an image that allows clear and easy visual identification of the NPC." That is option two. If option one is chosen, we must then change the entire way we deal with images across the wiki. The categorization under option one is directly opposed to our image standards that are currently set out. Jeancey (talk) 00:56, 15 February 2013 (GMT)
Let me be the first to ask what the point of this is, then offer an opinion. What is the point of all this, and please, use short paragraphs. Images are categorized by what they are used for, if this means an image has more than one cat, while a near identical image used in less places has only one cat, then so what. Keep it to what images are used for, not by name or subject, it works, it has worked, and because it isn't broken, it will continue to work. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 01:09, 15 February 2013 (GMT)
Silencer. Images are not currently categorized like that. Option 1 changes how images are categorized, Option 2 continues to categorize images the way they have been. All that changes is the descriptions of the categories to more accurately reflect what is already occuring. Jeancey (talk) 01:13, 15 February 2013 (GMT)
Why do we categorize anyway? I am reminded of an argument at University about taxonomy versus ontology. At that time I referred to an article by Clay Shirky, entitled Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags. This information is relevant to the discussion here about categorization on the UESP wiki. In summary, people see things from different perspectives, and one particular grouping of images may be logical to one person, but may be completely illogical to someone else. Neither is right. Neither is wrong. They are just different. The wiki software allows us to categorize things in different ways according to our own personal taste. Unless there is a back-end technical reason for needing conformity, I say we should just roll with it and categorize things the way we see fit. There will always be people who look for images (or other things on the wiki) in a different way, and the more categories we have, the more we will be helping people to find what they are looking for. – Daric↝talk 02:52, 15 February 2013 (GMT)

(←) Daric, we categorize for ease of finding things, and consistency makes it even easier. I don't think it's a big deal, but picking one of these to make the rules would prevent misunderstandings in the future. We can't categorize for everyone's personal taste because everyone sees the cats, and personal tastes differ (hence why this came up--people wanted different things). It's just a little thing to decide in order to clean up our guidelines. We've got to make it convenient for the most people possible. Vely►t►e 03:12, 15 February 2013 (GMT)

I don't know what categories are for. But they seem to work differently than the naming system. So what's the point of categories if they do the exact same thing as the naming system does? ~ Dwarfmp (talk) 03:15, 15 February 2013 (GMT)
For me, the naming systems is simply for easy of adding images to the article. You don't have to try and sort through the images that you already know exist to copy the exact names, you just add <game>-<category>-<name>.jpg to the image line, and presto. Also, for icons at least, there is a template that takes in the names for you so {{icon|i|Nirnroot}} gives you the nirnroot icon. That wouldn't be possible if the image isn't named SR-icon-ingredient-Nirnroot.png. That's why they are named consistently. Jeancey (talk) 03:20, 15 February 2013 (GMT)
Vely, I think you are disagreeing with me, but your argument only seems to strengthen my position. Conformity doesn't need to come from top-down policy makers. It should come from the contributing community. That is, after all, what a wiki is all about. Contributors add content. Contributors can also add categories to that content. Who exactly is this mysterious "we" that you mention, when you say '"We can't categorize for everyone's personal taste"? Are you referring to the administrators of the wiki? Are you thereby deciding that only the administrators / bureaucrats / blockers or some other designated group should be allowed to set or define categories? This would be a burdensome task, and it seems to be counterintuitive. – Daric↝talk 03:29, 15 February 2013 (GMT)
By "we", I mean the wiki or anyone who gives their opinion in making guidelines. We're not top-down policy makers--the CP is the Community Portal, so I'm asking the community's opinion, from anons to administrators, as all are equally valuable if the categories affect them. Please don't put words into my mouth.
I'm looking for people's opinions on policy so that a policy can be made, since there have been disagreements. Policy may always be changed in the future, but we can't simply have a wiki without guidelines by just making it a free-for-all. If everyone edited about to create the conformity, we'd have a mess of a wiki right now, with hundreds of different article formats. It's a little thing, sure, but I am asking the community's input because I want to avoid future confusion on the matter.
Having multiple categories with people adding and removing them to different things will cause friction between users. We don't want edit warring or arguments. So, guidelines. Vely►t►e 04:34, 15 February 2013 (GMT)
Vely is exactly right. This is the community's decision, as is every other policy decision made on the wiki. There is no bureaucracy at play here. The problem with letting people do as they please is that their interests will conflict - otherwise, this topic never would've come up :)
As for the topic at hand: I am inclined towards Option #2 - having the categories reflect upon the image itself, not where it is used. The current image categories provide a single list of all related images (like Skyrim ingredient icons). The naming standards just provide a standard for sorting names, and allow us to use them in templates - without a category, though, finding images of the same group is very difficult. More importantly, though, is the flexibility of images. They can be used anywhere on the wiki, regardless of their content. They are often used in articles that relate to the image; this is why you might find an ingredient image on a quest page, or a place image on an NPC page. The images on these pages come and go, so having to both set the categories for whatever style pages use them and maintain those categories would be impractical. An image's contents are separate from the types of pages that use it. The categories should reflect this. After all, the categories are meant to be an aid, not a hindrance. • JAT 06:53, 15 February 2013 (GMT)

(←) Agreed, this is being discussed in the CP and it is a community decision. The point I was trying to make was that, when Vely said above '"We can't categorize for everyone's personal taste", is that "we" don't need to. Such mass re-categorizing as was being attempted by Jeancey should not have been necessary in the first place. If Jeancey wants to add a category to those files to clarify which pages the files appear on, then Jeancey should have done so without removing the existing categories from the files, which obviously made sense to someone else. It doesn't have to be an either/or thing. There is room for both categories on the page! That is all I was trying to say. – Daric↝talk 07:22, 15 February 2013 (GMT)

I have received a few PM's on IRC about my perspective above. My thanks to those who contributed, and sorry that I was AFK at the time. I would like to reiterate that the article that I cited above may provide further relevant information, and perhaps I am not doing it justice in my feeble attempts to explain. One comment I received on IRC stated that consistency is required by a site as large as UESP. While I agree that much consistency is necessary to run such a site, you really need to "pick your battles". In the article I cited, the author gives the example of Delicious.com, a site many times larger than UESP, yet they give over the responsibility for categorization wholly to the user community, and don't try to restrain it. Sure, there will always be need for hierarchical taxonomies, such as for categories pertaining to the administration of the site itself. Another example is Wikipedia (yes, I know, it has been said before, UESP is not Wikipedia). They have a very well defined taxonomic structure for their categories, yet they are quite broad-minded about what is considered to be inappropriate categorization. There are also templates available to bring attention to categorization problems. Perhaps some of those could be implemented here.
Thank you for the opportunity to be a part of the democratic process here on the UESP wiki. This is the first time, I believe, that I have made such a contribution about policy issues here, and it is nice to see that everyone, no matter how long they have been a registered user (and, I assume, unregistered users as well) is encouraged to participate. – Daric↝talk 10:31, 15 February 2013 (GMT)

(←) As someone who has worked extensively with the categories over my time editing the wiki (couple years ago), I can say that your first proposition is right. We need to document images based on their content and place. However, that being said, we need to limit it to individual types. It can be a place, an NPC, etc. and it can be a quest image. But in response to Jeancey, I think it's fair to say that images such as File:SR-npc-Legate Quentin Cipius 04.jpg should be left to reasonable judgment. It's fairly obvious the image is not of a place. We can't have rules that have no room to bend; we can't codify each and every example of what type of images is on what page and where is it. Quest images and item images will be differentiated by context, really (although the Black Star example you give should be corrected).

Item, NPC, creature, and place images should focus on the subject, while quest images should focus on the story being told. I think we should avoid mixing the two type (as in, have one images on multiple pages). Quest images should be taken from the player character's angle (through their eyes, if you will), and the others should focus on what the image really is. This is why I hate articles like Skyrim:Legate Rikke. It's excessive (way too long for the typical reader), and it duplicates the quest articles (and images). I know certain people think it's a good idea to document that an NPC eats bread from 2am-6am, but that information is beyond pointless.

I know I've wondered a little off topic (typing slowly with a broken hand/cast), but I think it's a bigger problem than people have realized. It's part of the reason I don't really edit anymore. However, I hope the new generation of editors handles it better than the old. Elliot (talk) 11:17, 15 February 2013 (GMT)

I would just like to add that the current guidelines for images state that: "Quest images — These should show something unique from the quest. If this isn't possible, a place or NPC image may be used instead." So while the other images may be used, the image really should be unique, in which case it will be named SR-quest-name.jpg. I don't think it's that hard to come up with a unique image for quests, and if it isn't a unique image, then what is the point of classifying it as a quest image if no one would ever think to look for that image in the quest images category. Categories are there for ease of locating things. If you are looking for an image of an NPC, your first thought isn't to look in the Quest Images category, it would be to look in the NPC Images category. I was just wondering if there were any situations where it would even be useful to categorize an NPC Image as a Quest Image? In what situation does that help? This is an honest question (even though I know it sounds like I'm attacking, I'm really not, I'm just trying to understand position 1). Jeancey (talk) 14:13, 15 February 2013 (GMT)
My opinion is that when an image is uploaded, it should be named and initially categorized by content (i.e. NPC for images of NPCs). If it is then used in an article other than its initial category, such as an NPC image used in a quest article, it should then be additionally categorized according to that article, preferably by the editor who adds it to the article, or someone else who likes to do that sort of thing after the fact. It doesn't sound like having multiple cats for an image creates any difficulties, unless I'm missing something. --Xyzzy Talk 15:02, 15 February 2013 (GMT)
An issue is that we have different guidelines on different types of images. NPC, items, etc. have 1:1 resolutions while quests have 4:3 resolutions. I don't think you can reasonably ignore this while discussing the topic at hand. Elliot (talk) 21:00, 15 February 2013 (GMT)
My understanding is that the aspect ratio standard of images is applied based on the image name, not its category. The image name should reflect the subject and context of the image. If an NPC image is uploaded at the proper 1:1 ratio, and it is then used on a quest page, it is still an NPC image, and therefore can be added to the quest page with the 1:1 ratio. If this creates conflict or confusion, then maybe we need to be more flexible with image aspect ratio standards. --Xyzzy Talk 06:57, 16 February 2013 (GMT)

(←) I very much would like a "just roll with it and categorize things the way we see fit" approach, it is much how it did work in the past. But it stops to work the moment people find the need to mass-change things. Several of the image categories only work with the what's it used for approach (User Images, Talk Page Images) for others like Skyrim-Book Images the what is it used for concept worked very well in the past and was followed consistently. A quest image category is all about what it is used for, there are no quests on the images, but NPCs, places and items. But we can have what-they-are categories at the same time, there is no real conflict as long as they are additional or there is no used-for category for those images. --Alfwyn (talk) 00:23, 17 February 2013 (GMT)

Alfwyn makes a critical point about "mass-changes" potentially messing things up. But when there is division over how major things are done, I'm fairly strongly for creating or fleshing out policy/guidelines. It's important to remember that guidelines can (at least try) to specify when flexibility should itself be policy. Also: policies/guidelines can be changed as easily as they can be made.
I'd say categorize images based on their subject (with the understanding that defining the subject may be ... subjective). And I think the major problem is the way that the guidelines on Help:Images are written. It "feels" like: If the subject or main subject of an image is an NPC, then the image must be 1:1. This causes problems when: 1) An NPC page is comprehensive or relatively complete, and may show various images depicting the NPC. While the quest header pic should probably be standardized (within reason) "1:1; show all of the NPC, etc."; supplementary images will often look better or be able to "show more" with a 4:3 aspect ratio; 2) A quest or place page includes (as a supplementary image), a shot which can sensibly be seen as depicting an NPC as its subject. As things stand, I am then confronted with worrying about violating the "npc should be 1:1" guideline on one hand, which is avoided by calling it, say, a quest image after the type of page. or violating the idea that "images on quest pages should be quest images" because it's clear that the subject is an NPC (or could reasonably be so deemed).
Is it possible that some rewording: "Primary NPC images (those typically included in the header template) should be ....." Secondary images depicting NPCs, regardless of which type of page it's intended for, may vary from these guidelines as best suits the goal at hand.
A second question may be whether it serves a worthwhile purpose to try to add multiple categories to an image, when it's subject(s) can reasonably be seen as "this and/or that (and/or the other). But ultimately, I do think there should be a clear criterion: type of page or subject, and subject seems most useful to me in terms of looking for an image (including for the purpose mentioned by Jeancey above: "Should I name this xxx-yyyy or xxx-yyyy 04, etc.).
Silencer: There's a great value placed on brevity, and for many good reasons. But I am probably never going to write and revise several times when I'm (however feebly) providing an opinion on a complex issue on the CP, in the way I might do for a school paper or a business document. While there's no doubt that I prefer writing lengthy and rambling comments to reading them, I think many of us actually discover and create some of our opinions as we write. I'm against pushing for people to shorten comments. It seems easy enough to scan long comments for the meat (or to see if there is any). More importantly, I've read some long comments by people which have done a lot to educate me on being a better collaborator, or at least less of a problematic one. :p --JR (talk) 04:58, 8 March 2013 (GMT)

TES Online: To split or not to split?

There has been some talk in IRC of creating a separate wiki for the upcoming MMO, and I feel that it has gotten to the point where mentioning it on the CP would be a good idea.

Reasons why it may be a good idea:

  • No lore conflicts
    • Like who emperors are
      • I expect vandalism concerning this either way
  • Huge, huge influx of editors
    • More than Skyrim, probably
      • Wasn't that a mess when it came to patrolling and keeping the wiki clean? And don't we need more patrollers already?
    • They'll be from different backgrounds, also, which will mean more cleanup because they'll have a variety of formats they'll want
  • Search function
    • As long as ON is alive, people will come to the wiki and search for ON creatures. There will probably be some from each previous game integrated into it. Let's say they search for "assassin". The search tells them there's an "assassin" in various games. But what if the Morrowind and Skyrim namespaces confuse newcomers because they've found the plant/NPC/object in the Morrowind or Skyrim provinces?
    • Databases like this for other online games are all single-gamed, from what I've seen. Anyone who plays solely the MMO will have to shuffle through other games to find ON info unless they alter their preferences. This could be a lot of people who just want to stay anon.

Reasons why it may be a bad idea:

  • Keeps our data in two places
    • Anyone interested in keeping up both wikis would have to watch both.
    • User accounts would have to be synchronized.
  • Would it take extra server space?
  • Is it feasible?
    • Difficult or easy? Do the people who manage this stuff (mostly Daveh) want to work on this?

If it's not possible, then that's it. If it is, what do you think? What benefits and downsides does everyone else see? Personally, I'd prefer a second wiki to split the data, but that's just me. Either way it seems like the wiki will be a mess whenever it happens. Vely►t►e 18:16, 17 February 2013 (GMT)

No. Just no. The lore is 100% canon, that has already been confirmed, so that's not any reason. We can start adding data as soon as the NDA is lifted, not just when the game is released, we couldn't use any of our current templates to link to things in other areas, like lore, or references from other games, books, etc. WoWpedia, the main wiki for Warcraft related things, covers all the warcraft games, books, tabletop RPGs, etc perfectly fine. Needing more patrollers is something that's always true. Why don't we just teach some of the more active non patrollers the correct way to patrol? Chez, JR, Kalbintion and others could easily be patrollers with a little guidance. There just isn't enough reasons to justify splitting the wiki and not covering ESO on the UESP wiki. It just doesn't make sense. Jeancey (talk) 18:21, 17 February 2013 (GMT)
Just going to add some numbers in here. Guild Wars 2, which is quite popular, currently has 3 million copies sold. Not subscribers, but actual copies sold, about 4 months after its release. Star Wars:The Old Republic, which holds the world record for the fastest growing MMO ever, sold 1 million copies in its first 3 days. Skyrim sold 7 million copies in the first week of being released. MMOs just don't have the broad appeal that games like Skyrim have. There will not be nearly as many people playing ESO as played skyrim, and it won't come as fast. Guild Wars 2 had 2 million copies sold within 2 weeks, and it took 3.5 months to get another 1 million. If anything, it might be easier when ESO is released than it was when Skyrim was released. Jeancey (talk) 18:36, 17 February 2013 (GMT)
I hereby input my opinion that states that ESO, no matter how much unlike a single-player RPG it may, is still a TES game. And that is what this wiki is for, yes? To explore the lore made by Bethesda, and ruined by Zenimax Online? For if not a TES game, what is it? It is family. A part of the TES family, even if it happens to be the annoying little brother or ugly cousin. I say that we accept ESO into its rightful home at UESP. I love UESP because it collects all of the lore of the world, no matter what genre the game was, no matter who created it, and no matter if it conflicts with previous lore, and I can view it all whenever I please. We have the TES books here, yes? So I votes that we put ESO here, even if the ESO fanboys get mad because they don't know how UESP works.--Jobatett (talk) 18:50, 17 February 2013 (GMT)
(edit conflict) I don't really care what the opposition to the game thinks. It's a TES game, the UESP is a TES site. Our lore has already been tweaked with info verified data from the game (they are official sources of info, coming from the esonline site). The very simple way to prevent the influx of 1st-person perspective data is to simply lock page creation in the online namespace, sending people to the New Page Requests page. We will get people trying to add info that is only true for their game experience. The genericism of NPCs will come under scrutiny, but we all we need to do is create redirects for names to say "General Merchants" and have a list of the names and places of where they are. The idea that people will confuse the Morrowind namespace for the Morrowind portion of Online is unfounded, I see no evidence of the same thing having happened with Arena. In essence I believe separating Online from the rest of the wiki is tantamount to fundamentally undermining the UESP, and making it an untenable, unusable, site that says one thing and does another. Any conflicts of Lore sources are going to be documented, we already have conflicts from reliable sources, so Online will do nothing new in that regard (plus lore conflicts are purely speculation at this point. There has been nothing of substance to suggest that there will even be conflicts beyond wild fears of a new type of game). Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 18:59, 17 February 2013 (GMT)
I've already voiced my opinion on this in IRC, but I'll reiterate: creating a separate wiki for TESO is ridiculous. We already have a precedent of including everything on UESPWiki, despite possible "disadvantages" such as the search function, the influx of editors from new releases, etc. The point about vandalism in lorespace is equally absurd; we already have such problems with people adding their own characters and views on in-game events, but we have strict guidelines on how to deal with this and any true vandalism is rare. The argument about "lore conflicts" actually harms this proposal IMO, since it demonstrates the negative effects that splitting the wiki would have on integration into lorespace. I made the comparison between TESO and the TES Travels games yesterday, and how the above arguments could be applied to both. Readers looking for a Skyrim NPC in Dawnstar might get confusing results for Dawnstar:Character Creation. Similarly, the TES Travels namespaces aren't maintained and remain incomplete, which seems to be a big worry about TESO. Poor-quality TESO articles won't detract from the site half as much as excluding all mention of it would. The wiki is going to be a mess, just like it was last September. Exporting the problem to a shoddy second wiki is going to piss off both readers and editors, and the two wikis will take a big hit when their search relevance goes down and is overtaken by better-backed competition on Google. I really don't think this proposal deserves any kind of serious consideration. —Legoless (talk) 19:26, 17 February 2013 (GMT)

(←) I too am going to voice my vociferous opposition to this proposal. Silencer and Jobatett said it best - this website is a TES website, and we cover all aspects of the series, including the minor games that nobody cares about. Why? Because we are here to document not just the TES games, but the entire universe.

From a lore perspective, ESO is actually a blessing. It takes place during the Imperial Simulacrum; history concerning that time period is almost nonexistent. This game will flesh out a lot of the early lore that is simply missing. When this game was first announced, I was, along with most others, of the opinion that the game would be lore-breaking, but after escaping that group mentality, I realized that the game is actually nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be. Realize that the very little lore in this time period is incredibly biased, and in many places simply wrong. This game's lore will take precedence over the old lore, and not because of our site's policy. The game will provide whole new insights on the universe's history, and will be an invaluable resource to TES fans everywhere.

From an ideological perspective, this is a bad idea, because (as has been previously iterated,) we are an Elder Scrolls site. All of the beliefs I have on the subject have been stated above, so I won't restate them.

From a technological standpoint, as has also been stated above, the influx of new editors is vastly overrated. We can indeed split the wiki (technologically, it's entirely possible - we actually have half a dozen wikis on the site as it is), but the discrepancy and possible duplication of the lore sections would be unwieldy and require a large amount of maintenance. The search issues are largely overrated as well, because most people should be able to figure out fairly easily which articles go with which game.

In conclusion, this is a bad idea, from every possible aspect. • JAT 19:47, 17 February 2013 (GMT)

Just want to point out that anyone who'd get confused by the existence of Morrownd and Skyrim namespaces when looking for things found in Morrowind or Skyrim in ESO would hopefully quickly discover that there are no namespaces for any of the other provinces. It would be a weird rock you were living under if you were to play ESO without at least knowing about the existence of another game called Skyrim (maybe less the case with Morrowind because of its age). Likewise, we have namespaces for Dawnstar and Daggerfall, both of which will presumably be locations you can visit in ESO, but nobody looking at articles in those namespaces with more than two brain cells to rub together should confuse anything in them with ESO content. TheRealLurlock (talk) 20:15, 17 February 2013 (GMT)
I'm ambivalent as to whether it should go on a separate site or not from a user's standpoint. I can see both the benefits and drawbacks. To address some of the technical points, however:
  • Setting up a second wiki is easy. We've currently got a development wiki, and we've previously had testing wikis and the like as well, so no issues there.
  • The amount of extra server space would probably be negligible compared to the size of the wiki data itself.
  • Maintenance would be more of an issue. It wouldn't be a straight doubling of effort, but probably close enough. There would be two wikis to maintain in terms of upgrades, extensions, backing-up, permissions, user info/password issues, etc.
I can't speak for the other server admins, but that last is definitely a big detractor for me. Some of that stuff is entirely up to Daveh, though, so as Vely said, I think it's vital to have his input here as well. – Robin Hood  (talk) 20:32, 17 February 2013 (GMT)
While patrolling noseying around in other people's userspaces, I have often seen comments about how they probably won't be playing ESO when it comes out, as it isn't the same type of game as the former Elder Scrolls series. For myself, a one-off purchase of a new title or an add-on is very different financially to an ongoing commitment to an online game. My experience with WoW showed me that, if I wanted to be successful in the game, I needed to play it a lot, which took time, however, the more time I spent playing, the less time I spent working and earning the money to keep playing. When I focused more on real life, and earning the money that I needed to keep my WoW account going, then my rank in the game suffered. I don't play WoW any more, or any other similar online game. For this reason, I won't be getting into ESO when it comes out, either. However, I would be quite happy to help out with patrolling the wiki occasionally, if it were about the Elder Scrolls in general. Anything that is specifically related to ESO content, obviously, I wouldn't be able to help with. If a new wiki were established just for ESO, I probably wouldn't go there, as I probably couldn't contribute much to it. This is just my own opinion on the issue, and I don't know if it is representative at all. – Daric↝talk 00:45, 18 February 2013 (GMT)
I'm going to chime in in favor of keeping The Elder Scrolls Online on UESP. Just because people don't like the premise of it doesn't mean it shouldn't be documented. UESP's place is to document the series as it's supposed to be. It doesn't seem right to only pick and choose what we represent while saying we cover all things related to The Elder Scrolls. Jo'Sakhar➚talk to me 00:51, 18 February 2013 (GMT)
I think splitting is not the way to go. But there will be some things to consider on where to put a new type of content we don't have so far (well, a bit for roleplaying). In addition to content we are used to (quests, places, skills, NPCs, ..) there will be the history of the game and the player community. That is, there will be things like special events held and the results, player guilds, faction war progress and so on. It would be good to think about if, how and where to document those. Especially a place to document player guilds will probably be a wanted feature, but the Online: namespace among all the game features articles may not be a good place to do that. --Alfwyn (talk) 13:51, 18 February 2013 (GMT)

(←) We're clearly not doing this, just from the general reaction from our editors (and ignoring the actual issues with this idea). Quite frankly, I'm getting sick and tired of the notion that ESO will be so different that we need to treat it tremendously differently. It is still TES at the end of the day. While there will be some major changes to our modus operandi when handling ESO, it won't be so different that it can't be associated directly with the rest of our content.

The main issue will be style changes specific to ESO and the possible necessity of documenting content that we would see removed otherwise (examples include extremely famous or infamous players who draw media attention, as is a somewhat regular event for MMOs or with us running our own guild within the game (we are creating a guild, right?)), not with actually merging ESO content with everything else. We might also have to end up treating the game similarly to lore articles when the game eventually ends with the server going offline.

On a somewhat related note, we really do need to start talking about how we'll be handling ESO. We'll have to start seriously working on getting ESO articles into the best shape possible around the time this Summer rolls around (assuming that my current assumption that this will be a Q4 2013 game holds true), but there has been some other major topics we've neglected up to this point. The big one right now being the attention that we've largely ignored the attention they've been giving the fan sites. It's not a criticism of our treatment of the game, it's just an observation that we've likely missed out on more than one opportunity to put our name out there in the ES community already. Instead of hijacking this discussion to speak my thoughts, I wrote a blog entry about some actual changes we might have to make for ESO relating to content for those who are curious. --AKB Talk Cont Mail 17:48, 18 February 2013 (GMT)

First of all, this has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not we like the concept of an ESO game, nor has it to do with whether or not ESO belongs on the wiki. There’s absolutely no doubt that ESO belongs on the Wiki, so let’s not discuss that any further.
It is about the human aspect and if we can deal with it as a Community. As one of the few surviving (active) editors from 11.11.11, I clearly remember what it was like and it was, without any doubt, the most horrible time I have ever experienced online. Everyone who was there remembers what it was like, and that’s why RobinHood70’s post above is the only post to be taken seriously at this point. All the provocative ramblings about separate wiki’s for unfinished namespaces is worth absolutely nothing, especially from people who I predict will jump ship as soon as they see what chaos the wiki will face if we invite the LOLZ-infected, chatting, MMO-kids in here. We lost some of our very best editors when Skyrim arrived and, honestly, we never really recovered from that – is that what we want? I can easily go nasty on this discussion, but I see little point in doing that. All I’m asking is – are YOU ready to face 500-1000 edits an hour? Are you ready to maintain the wiki and not leave it behind, even if anyone else leaves? Or would YOU prefer a separate wiki for a limited time, just to make sure we don’t loose all the standards we have build up – and to keep the sanity of yourself and the community?
Look, it’s perfectly simple. From the editors who chimed in above, I see 1 or 2 editors that I know will be able to handle the pressure we faced when Skyrim arrived, the rest will be gone the moment the s**t hits then fan. I know this for a fact because I have seen it all before. It has nothing to do with server issues and namespaces – it has to do if you’re ready for a task that will take you months of frustration and arguing, endless bickering and a fatal drop of standards for months and months, not only the predictable lack of style/sense in the upcoming ESO-namespace, but all over the place. We made a ton of mistakes with SR – and all I see here is the same mistakes repeated. --Krusty (talk) 18:20, 18 February 2013 (GMT)
I agree that we should listen to, and give extra consideration to, the experiences of the editors who were active at Skyrim's release, but I strongly disagree that we shouldn't "take seriously" the opinions of newer editors like myself. If one of these senior editors has constructive suggestions for how to deal with the inevitable problems and conflicts that come with the release of a new ES title, please bring it up. This is the first suggestion that I've seen, and it appears that 2 of the senior editors are against it, with a third urging caution, while everyone else is opposed.
I could be considered one of the "LOLZ-infected, chatting, MMO-kids", albeit a 45-year-old one, as I continue to enjoy playing The Lord of the Rings Online. I have seen first-hand on LOTRO-based wikis some of the edits that are made by less-thoughtful editors, but I think we can rise to the challenge, just as we did for Skyrim. I agree that article quality will (temporarily) suffer, and the talk pages will once again become cluttered with "how do i killz teh mobz with my sord"-type questions, but neither of these have proven "fatal" to the wiki in the past. I for one plan on playing ESO on day one that it releases, and will continue to contribute to the quality of UESP as much as my schedule allows. That being said, I am strongly against splitting the wiki, for all the same reasons that others have stated. --Xyzzy Talk 20:20, 18 February 2013 (GMT)
I think AKB made a great point that oughtn't be left behind in the discussion: UESP has missed out on some great shout out opportunities. Every day I see a lot of fantastic links to amazing fan sites for TES material, particularly covering the Online discussions, and time and time again I'm disappointed to see that UESP is not getting the attention it rightfully ought to. I've complained about this on the forum and have even mentioned that I go to external sites to talk about TESO related material because UESP simply isn't pulling through for me. I'm not entirely sure how to help in this respect, but I certainly would love to. The forum staff has been mulling around on some possibilities, although it'd be nicer to have it under the site as a whole; so if I could ever be of assistance somehow I'd hope someone could point me in the direction for how.
As for traffic and temporary drops in quality, there isn't much you can do: it happens across the site any time a new game is released. We see it on the forums quite often as well and, yes, it is a bit headache inducing. As long as the staff works together and sticks it out, you'll at least be able to ride out the wave of new attention - and be able to benefit from it. It's a rough and rocky period but we'll be the better for it in the end, so long as people are patient, prepare ahead, put in the time required, and remember to work as a team through the craziness. Deep breath! -- Avron the S'wit (talk) 16:22, 19 February 2013 (GMT)

Default navbox colors

I just made a change to Common.css, changing the default colors used by the {{Navbox}} template to use colors more fitting with our general tan-colored theme on the site. (It was previously using Wikipedia-blue.) I don't think this will affect too many existing templates, as most uses of Navbox always override the defaults anyhow. But now you can use Navbox without changing the default style and it should match the overall style of the site. For an example, see: Skyrim Powers. If this has affected anything else I'm not aware of, please let me know and we can deal with it on a case by case basis, but as far as I know, nothing was using the default style for these anyhow. — TheRealLurlock (talk) 02:39, 20 February 2013 (GMT)

Looks good. I would just make the tan that is on every other line a little bit lighter. Elliot (talk) 02:50, 20 February 2013 (GMT)
Better? — TheRealLurlock (talk) 02:54, 20 February 2013 (GMT)
Yeah, looks great. Elliot (talk) 06:28, 20 February 2013 (GMT)

A guide in Skyrim's Steam community hub copies from UESP without giving credit

The guide in question is here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=127042351

Whole paragraphs are copypasted out of the UESP, including dead links et cetera. No Creative Commons notice. Plus I'm pretty sure putting anything from the UESP on Steam Guides is a violation of the CC-BY-SA license. Especially the SA part.

I reported the issue to Steam yesterday (there's a 'report' button on the right about halfway down the first page), but the only thing the Steam mods have done until now is deleting two comments outright asking the 'creator' where he copypasted this guide from.

-87.170.92.47 08:15, 22 February 2013 (GMT)

I don't know if this was there before, but the top part of that page says "credit goes to all sites where we got this information." I don't know much about copyright stuff, but this seems to imply that they need to be more specific than that. — ABCface◥ 08:35, 22 February 2013 (GMT)
I was wondering how long it would take after Valve released community guides for our content to find its way there. I would be more worried were it not for the fact that the service has proven to be rather unpopular so far. For clarification, our license requires anyone who would use our content to credit us (in our case, say it is from us and link the article the content was taken from), and license it under by-sa. As for Steam's policy, they require you to agree to this when you make a guide: "I am the original creator of this guide, or I have legal authorization from the guide's creator to post this". More clear policies specifically state "Do not post any content that contain the following: ... Posted copyright material such as magazine scans". --AKB Talk Cont Mail 22:33, 23 February 2013 (GMT)
From Daveh's talk page: "If you find UESP content used elsewhere with improper attribution a (friendly) notice to the site as well as notice to the admin board here is perfectly fine as a first step. If that doesn't work I would prefer handling any additional actions myself. -- Daveh (talk) 15:06, 17 February 2013 (GMT)
I have had good luck sending a very friendly and positive message to appropriate contacts where UESP content has been copied. If anyone wants an example of the wording I've used, please ask on my talk page or by email. --JR (talk) 23:13, 27 February 2013 (GMT)

Opinions Please

After seeing one of Jeancey's recent edits, it occurred to me to wonder whether it might be useful to note stub pages that haven't been further categorized, so I made a quick template change to have a look (since that's less resource intensive than running a bot job, plus everyone can see the results instead of just me). You can see the new categories starting to pop up in the Wanted Categories list now. I'm deliberately not creating the actual pages pending a decision to keep or remove the "uncategorized" categories. To me, it looks like some of the pages listed in these categories genuinely don't fit into any more specific categories, but some other pages probably should have specific categories added, making this a useful set of categories to keep. Any other opinions? – Robin Hood  (talk) 22:20, 23 February 2013 (GMT)

I think it is useful as long as there are actually subcategories for them. For instance, the Morrowind, Oblivion, Arena, and Daggerfall namespaces don't have any more specific stub categories, so every stub from the main category would also go in the uncategorized one. I can see it being useful, but for many namespaces it might be unnecessary. Jeancey (talk) 22:31, 23 February 2013 (GMT)
(edit conflict) The older games have very few stubs, hence there being no need to specify which type of stub they are. This applies to Oblivion too, where only 9 stubs are listed. While the specification may be useful at the start of a new namespace, the specification becomes less important the less stubs there are. I couldn't really propose a logical anti-argument, but I don't really see the need to spend time figuring out what type sub-stubs we have. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 22:36, 23 February 2013 (GMT)

Fiery Soul Trap Page

Moved from Soul Trap talk page

I'm working on an effect page for Fiery Soul Trap as it is quite different then normal soultrap in some of its quirks, and the way its enchanting stats are calculated. Got a draft going in my Sandbox for people to take a look at and discuss. Lord Eydvar Talk|Contribs 01:20, 25 February 2013 (GMT)

Update This effect has been given its own page as of this point, it can be found Here and has been added the Conjuration Effects, may also be added to the Destruction Effects due to its unique quick of technically being part of both schools. Lord Eydvar Talk|Contribs 05:56, 27 February 2013 (GMT)

A new Alchemy Ingredient/Effect cross-reference

I'm working on a new table for displaying ingredients that cross-references to effects, so that one can quickly find all effects an ingredient has or visa-versa. Ideally, it can be printed on one or two pages. However, I'm new to wiki templates and all of its associated issues. I have a working sample now at Skyrim:Sandbox/AlchemySpreadsheet that is ready enough to start getting feedback on. (Please note that it must be in the Skyrim namespace to function correctly). This is not intended to replace the table that currently exists in Skyrim:Ingredients, but rather as an alternate view, or even a printable utility view.

These are the current outstanding issues that I'm aware of now:

  • Rotation is hacky. My Vertical Cell template was made to work around problems with my browser and I'm not sure how wide-spread these problems are (like maybe it only exists in the minor version of my browser), so this needs to be explored further and flushed out. Hopefully, with a solution that makes it less ugly.
  • Page generation is horribly slow! In fact, I've had to truncate the ingredient list to get it to not be killed by the server.
  • It is missing alternate row/column coloration to make it easier to read. I'm thinking it would be best to use alternate coloring on the columns in this case. If not, perhaps some type of grouping of effect types (thicker boarders outlining each catagory perhaps?) to make it easier to read.

That's all I can think of for now. Feedback much appreciated! A goat on a boat (talk) 05:57, 27 February 2013 (GMT)

I don't know if this would make it faster to load or not, but have you considered using multiple {{Showhide}} sections to group the ingredients? You could thereby separate out the default ingredients from those added by add-ons. Just a thought. – Daric↝talk 07:35, 27 February 2013 (GMT)
Thanks, that's a good idea for userbility. It wont effect performance much, except perhaps with rendering. I think I've solved my (server) performance problem by consolidating templates. The result is a pretty huge ugly template (25k) but at least it generates quickly. Somebody in IRC also suggested using show/hide to allow hiding/expanding effects by their type (Damage, Fortify, etc.), so i'm going to look into that as well. A goat on a boat (talk) 07:44, 27 February 2013 (GMT)
Given that you're essentially making a spreadsheet, have you considered just using an actual spreadsheet program rather than trying to make wiki markup behave like a spreadsheet? You could then upload the .xls file and link to it to download. Or use Google-Docs or something like that. (I believe they have an online spreadsheet generator.) I wonder if there's even a plug-in that'll make a Google-Docs spreadsheet display in a wiki directly? Though that would require someone with server-access to install it. I just remember the last time I tried to do something like this - actually I still have the sandbox. (It's a grid-map of Morrowind.) It's ugly and requires too much scrolling to be very useful, but that's what happens when you try to make a wiki do stuff it wasn't designed for. — TheRealLurlock (talk) 13:04, 27 February 2013 (GMT)
Yeah, I actually have a spreadsheet of it, although I'm not terribly impressed with it. I think you're right. The other idea I've had is a more interactive online spreadsheet that makes heavy use of DHTML -- obviously not for a wiki, but it would allow users to explore alchemy combinations very quickly. Maybe even better would be a simple XML-fed DHTML page that lets you assemble recipes quickly and see the outcome, with each step, showing you what effects are present (even if by one ingredient) and what other ingredients have those effects. I don't yet have a good idea for how something like that should work and be laid out visually, but maybe I'll play with that and if I come up with something useful, try to find a home for it somewhere. In the mean time, I think I will clean up my spreadsheet and take your advice on that. Thanks for the feedback. A goat on a boat (talk) 17:22, 27 February 2013 (GMT)
It seems to me that you are intending to create a "Skyrimified" version of the existing Alchemy Calculator for Oblivion. I think this is a great idea. We already have a list of external sites that provide such a calculator for Skyrim, but there isn't anything that I can see on the UESP website itself that covers this, even though we have one for Oblivion. If UESP is to be "the place" to come to for Elder Scrolls knowledge, we should have a Skyrim Alchemy Calculator of our own, IMHO. As with the existing Oblivion one that takes the quality of the apparatus into consideration, perhaps we should make one that takes Skill Perks into consideration as well. Many of the existing external sites still don't include the ingredients added by Dragonborn. Just some things to consider as you move ahead with this project. – Daric↝talk 01:05, 28 February 2013 (GMT)

NewUESPLogo1.png

The original site logo in the upper-left was done by someone shortly after I changed the site to a Wiki format. I never had the original graphic files so modifications to it or making it larger have never been an option so I did a little work to remake it from scratch. It is almost identical to the original but a bit "cleaner" which I actually like but wanted feedback before I actually change it. The original is in a vector format now so most changes should relatively easy to make. -- Daveh (talk) 21:25, 27 February 2013 (GMT)

I think it looks great! Jeancey (talk) 21:31, 27 February 2013 (GMT)
I really like the new design. Looks cleaner, smoother. I'd like to see it implemented. Vely►t►e 21:32, 27 February 2013 (GMT)
Much snazziness, much applause. Make it so! ⇠eshetalk 21:34, 27 February 2013 (GMT)
Yes, please! This site is in desperate need of an aesthetic update, and a smooth, lossless logo would be a great start. --Dorsal Axe (talk) 21:47, 27 February 2013 (GMT)
I agree, it looks much cleaner. Nicely done. —Legoless (talk) 22:11, 27 February 2013 (GMT)
This is fantastic! We definitely need a cleaner version to use elsewhere. --Avron the S'wit (talk) 23:12, 27 February 2013 (GMT)
Big improvement. --Xyzzy Talk 23:41, 27 February 2013 (GMT)

Update -- I've changed to the new logo although it may take a browser reload for it to display. The original SVG vector file is at Media:UespLogo.svg if anyone needs it. I'll be updating all the various places the site logo is used in other places shortly (social sites, forum, blog, etc...). -- Daveh (talk) 00:27, 28 February 2013 (GMT)

Looks great here (Firefox 18.0.2), but have we tested it on all browsers people are likely to be on? I remember the argument against using SVGs before was that they didn't work at all in some versions of IE, and possibly some other less common ones like Opera or Safari, and then there's the mobile browsers to think about... Now I'd hope that current versions of IE and other browsers support it (though I haven't touched IE in years), but it's possible some people out there may still be using older ones. It might be a good idea if it's not too difficult to arrange it so that it uses the old image on antiquated browsers, though I'm not sure how old they'd have to be to cause problems. — TheRealLurlock (talk) 02:45, 28 February 2013 (GMT)
I'm not using the SVG file directly for that very reason. The original is in SVG format from which I can create the various sized PNG/JPEG versions. I've uploaded the SVG merely so it will be always available should I lose my copy of it. -- Daveh (talk) 03:14, 28 February 2013 (GMT)
Ah, <forehead-smack>, yes, I could have probably figured that out by mousing over the image in the upper-right corner of this very section. Carry on then. — TheRealLurlock (talk) 03:27, 28 February 2013 (GMT)

Social Media

It may have passed some of you by as there wasn't really a big deal made of it, but the UESP now has Google+, twitter, and Facebook pages/accounts. They are still in their infancy, so any suggestions as to how to improve them is appreciated. Plus you can help by liking/following them to spread the word. Silence is GoldenBreak the Silence 20:15, 1 March 2013 (GMT)

Only thing I could think of is people tweeting lore questions, and then someone tweeting back answers. Of course, news and stuff (such as ESO releasing details of the beta today). Who has access to the accounts, anyway? Jeancey (talk) 20:20, 1 March 2013 (GMT)
There are so many more possibilities than that, Jeancey: site news, updates, sharing things from Bethesda or Zenimax, reaching out to fans, offering competitions, sharing updates to the blog, podcasts, screenshots, Q&A, etc. etc. etc. The possibilities are endless! As for who has access, I am helping Dave right now along with The Silencer. I've been updating the Twitter and Google+ accounts. We're coordinating how to develop these and finding the voice, but naturally everyone's input is welcome. --Avron the S'wit (talk) 20:27, 1 March 2013 (GMT)
I was thinking more about twitter specifically, since that's the medium I don't really use, I had to actually think of uses :) I was specifically thinking of doing a lore thing anyway, be it a blog, tweet, what have you. I'm fascinated by the lore, and I like to think myself fairly knowledgeable about that. Also, anything to do with ESO, I have a fairly firm grasp on at the moment. Is there any way that I can help out? Jeancey (talk) 21:06, 1 March 2013 (GMT)
Yeah, Twitter can be kind of tough. :) You know, doing your own little segment with lore could be really cool, too, whether it's a podcast where you take questions or just a little block where you explain different things. There is unlimited possibility to share the knowledge of UESP as a community, and given the new fans to the series there's lots to explore and explain. There are definitely ways to help; it's all about being creative! --Avron the S'wit (talk) 22:26, 1 March 2013 (GMT)


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