General talk:Michael Kirkbride's Posts

Repeated Information/New Unsourced Quotes/Unimportant Quotes

Some of the recent additions to this page are essentially repeats of previous answers, some lack sourcing, and some are inconsequential. For examples of repeated information, we have three different responses to who wrote Sermon 37 here, and two different responses to how to pronounce CHIM.

There are also a number of new unsourced additions to this page since its original creation. These make verifying the quote in question very difficult, and likely should all be pruned until they have a source.

Finally, some of these responses just are not worth documenting. There's no real value in us recording that MK does not remember who created a specific thing. Or him responding "lol" to a player-created map. Or him saying Ted Peterson wrote A Dance in Fire (a fact that we have an existing better source for, and no contradictions between the information). --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 12:20, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

These are such trivial complaints. None of the quotes were ever sourced to begin with, sourcing them is a courtesy, not a requirement. A lot are from websites that no longer exist so its not exactly a simple task. They're sourced whenever possible, removing them for not having any would do no good.

Repeated information is just a byproduct of how the page works. The 37th stuff is present because its an incredibly popular question in the fandom and each mention should be documented. While some repeat info they can have additional info that the others don't. If you make us pick one, then its just a debate of which one takes "priority", which is a violation of how archiving is meant to be done so no, we're not going to argue over which one we like the most.

The only one I partially agree with you on is responses not worth documenting, I added a few as a means to get them off the checklist and then delete them later after better reviewing what info they gave, I'll try to get around to it now. The Ted Peterson once is a terrible example, there's no harm in having two sources (see literally any article on the wiki that has multiple refs [1][2] for one piece of info) so deleting one improves literally nothing.

In conclusion the only thing that should be removed are comments that provide no info, like the "lol" example. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 20:23, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Rim is correct, the idea that we would see it as a problem to have multiple dev statements on the same subject rather than a good thing for source and encyclopedic purposes is laughable. Dcking20 (talk) 21:00, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Thinking about it more, it's definitely the least concern the ones that are duplicates of existing information. However, we definitely should be citing any new ones added to this page in any manner possible. It's different for the ones that came with the original version of this page as that wasn't the standard TIL had for it back then (although finding the source would be nice when/if possible), but new ones should be cited (which is true for the vast majority of new additions). --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 21:55, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

There has to be at least be a source we can point to. If we have several dev statements saying the same thing, but some of them don't have sources, we should remove those ones. We don't need them, and unsourced information is literally the opposite of what we do here and on every single online encyclopedia. There's no good reason to put unsourced information at all (to be honest, even if it's the only source for the statement, if we don't know where it was said, it's the exact same as if I just made something up off the top of my head and attributed it to a dev from "back in the day"). Jeancey (talk) 22:25, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

We sourced a majority of the ones we could, the rest came from TIL, which is a credible site. All the new additions to the page have been sourced too. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 22:43, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Unsure of how to source MK quote

I have a quote from MK on the Shonni-Etta, namely a summary of some events that would happen in it regarding Dibella and Vivec. It's from the Memospore IRC, but given how IRC's are, it's not really easy to source that, and since the text itself is also quite vulgar in it's description, I think you'd be more than fair to assume it's some sort of vandalism. Without having to resort to bothering MK on socials, how could I append this to the page while making sure it's proof as a source is valid? User:ElCyrodElCyrodUT 12th July 2023 17:17 (UTC)

If this is the one that mentions the Inner Sea, I can say I know exactly which one you're talking about. I haven't added it myself, but I'd be willing to "vouch" for it, as limited as my capacity to do so is; quite a few of the quotes on this page are impossible to source but are taken on "faith", so to speak, anyway. LudwigC (talk) 03:06, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

This particular quote was written at a time where MK was going through a severe painkiller addiction that he has reflected on saying made him unwell and made him say certain things that he regrets. Many find it better to avoid recording certain quotes, simply out of respect, as it is better off to not immortalize them and wouldn't benefit anyone. Its not about the veracity of the quote but more about respecting the author's wishes The Rim of the Sky (talk) 07:11, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I can agree with that. LudwigC (talk) 17:31, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm aware of that, but you can also argue that for a lot of lore he wrote in that time period (2012-2014), he was going through IRL troubles at the time. We shouldn't write off all the posts from that period off the record, as among them are still ideas he had been working on in the years past. I don't believe it would be offensive to document the Vivec and Dibella passage because of that. It is still part of his corpus of work, and adds to our understanding of the series as a whole.

I know there's the "panther love" post about Redguard he made that he said he regrets, but that's still documented here because it contributes to a reader's general knowledge. "Akavir says to the Otherkin: Get Out!" is on here too, and MK explicitly said that was just an attempt at trolling. But we include them because the UESP is an encyclopedia at heart, and we can't purposefully leave things out. The Shonni-Etta is a very elusive document, and I feel it's in the best interests of people who are curious about it to be able to read the few snippets we have of it.

If it may help, we should include a disclaimer similar to the "panther love" post, saying MK may have regrets about the content of the posts, just to give the reader more context. User:ElCyrodElCyrodUT 12th July 2023 17:17 (UTC)

ElCyrodElCyrodUT is 100% correct. It's literally cherrypicking texts/lore that don't offend our moral sensibilities. Its unencyclopedic and absurd to omit texts on the basis of the author's feelings. I couldn't care less if he regrets writing it, in the same way I dont care he regrets writing the races as the "United Colours of Benetton". Why is this author given special treatment? It was written and is out there. OP made an excellent point that his other texts of that time period are not being expunged. Amusingly, MK himself would declare UESP is not the arbiter of what is considered "loreworthy" - so his own c0da worldview would forbid this omission. --Jimeee (talk) 17:18, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

So, am I allowed to append the passage to the page? I thought it might also be worth it to add it to the Shonni-Etta excerpts page proper, but given it's informal prose, I'm not sure if that would gel with the rest of it.ElCyrodElCyrodUT (talk) 10:01, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Congrats. You all have organized some mega internet logic. Logistically, storing it here gives off a terrible look. Per LadyN this was originally posted on a private forum with no intent to release publicly. It was leaked. Have a bit of common sense. There's being encyclopedic. And then there's being obtuse. We have arrived at obtusity. This is a bad idea. TheRockWithAMedicineCupOnHisHead (talk) 20:49, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Just to corroborate Rock's point, here is where LadyN talked about the image.--ErfXploded (talk) 21:06, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

The picture and text accompanying it have been shared around quite a bit recentely, to the point most people believe it to be MK's concept art for Mephala in Morrowind. I feel that making a deal of removing it is only going to drive more people into looking for it. I agree with removing the image as I did not know it was private, but the text itself had no such provisio as it was uploaded to the public Memospore IRC. I feel like removing it, and making a deal of doing so, is incurring the Streisand Effect. We'll only see more people looking for it if we keep removing it. I argue that we should still keep the text given it was publically posted, as doing so is, like Jimeee said, unencyclopediac and lets our personal feelings get in the way of scholarly work. We could also include a small note saying that a piece of art was originally included with said text, but has been excised from the UESP given Lady Nerevar relaying Kirkbride's words, as I feel correcting the misinformation about it being Mephala is imperative to our mission as an encyclopedia. ElCyrodElCyrodUT (talk) 21:36, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

If the image was posted along with the text paragraph, (which I do not think there is a confirmation of, by the way) then why would hosting the text, but not the image, be okay if "it was never supposed to spread beyond the people to whom it was originally given", as per LadyN. If you want to host the text itself, without the image context, then the issue is that it is not from a public source and not avaliable in the public, as far as I know. If you just want to host the image, without the text, then we again have the quote about it never being supposed to spread.

If you want to clarify that the image is not concept art from Morrowind, then making the file name LO-misc- is not the way to do it. Stuff that was made after MK left Bethesda or was not contracted to make should be labeled GEN, as lorespace itself implies an official nature of content, with UOL generally remaining in Notes. These files should also have a primary source, like you see on MK's gallery page (The fact that files in "Other artwork" are also labeled LO-misc is an oversight that I will fix). The lack of a source unfortunately stopped us from hosting even the seemingly-official High Elf Spellsword w/ Orc Mansteed concept art.

Additionally, we can't definitively claim that the art is NOT Mephala, considering there's nothing explicitly linking it to the Shonni-Etta bit, and LadyN did say that it is Mephala.--ErfXploded (talk) 17:52, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

My apologies, I was under the impression it was Vivec, since the image was shared alongside it to me with someone claiming it to be a depiction as such, leading to me believing that the two were shared together. I think now we can safely say the text was just posted by itself. And as for the text itself, the Memospore IRC is publically available and you're more than welcome to search it for the passage if needs be. Given that it's within the public sphere, I see no reason why we shouldn't archive it, as we have with MK's other posts. ElCyrodElCyrodUT (talk) 18:35, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Hold on. So is the text "difficult to source due to the nature of IRC" as per the first post of this section, or publically avaliable? I was under the impression that the IRC chats are private/unrecoverable. It'd be good to at least see a link to it then.--ErfXploded (talk) 18:46, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

It's both. IRC's are publically available, but there isn't really any way to link to a specific chat, like you can with say, Discord. You'd have to go to the Memospore IRC and look through the logs going back a good decade or so. MK would also go by multiple aliases, so that would only add more to the confusion. It's why I wanted to figure out how to source it in the first place, because you can't really say "go to this IRC channel and go trawling" since that's way too general of a pointer. ElCyrodElCyrodUT (talk) 20:29, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Well if there’s a way to see the logs, then theoretically we can at least see the date for it. But also uesp hasn’t hosted other IRC logs before, so we’d need to discuss that somewhere.--ErfXploded (talk) 21:19, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I believe some of the unsourced quotes on the page are from the IRC chats. For now, we'll leave it up to whatever arbitration process the UESP has. Again, sorry for any inconveniences to anyone here, I'm quite new to this whole wiki thing. ElCyrodElCyrodUT (talk) 22:12, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm fairly certain the IRC quotes that exist are legacy-brought from the Imperial Library MK forum page, which is acceptable iirc.--ErfXploded (talk) 22:37, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

If those IRC quotes are accepted by us, and posted onto a public space, then I think it stands to reason that if we include those, we can also include any other text posts made on the IRC, especially since it's a public forum. Having a double-standard with one particular post from one particular author just seems strange to me. ElCyrodElCyrodUT (talk) 10:52, 27 July 2023 (UTC)