General talk:Unofficial Lore

Todd Howard's Order of Priority

This is being posted here for future reference:

• 1. In-game events viewed through the eyes of the player
• 2. A book published in-universe that can be read inside the game
• 3. An official work published outside of the game (examples given include the game manual and the official cookbook)

Todd also said anything stated by a fan (an example given was fan theories) would not go on the list. This would imply fanfiction and other unofficial works are non-canon and not to be considered a part of The Elder Scrolls lore or canon.--Rezalon (talk) 07:05, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Didn't we already know that? Anything that wasn't released officially is not part of ES Lore. There is no "imply" at all, it just is. I don't feel like this is new information. Jeancey (talk) 15:20, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

There's nothing new here, it seems more like trying to blow something out of proportion. In the interview Todd said that fan theories and debates are to be encouraged. In a related but different answer he gives his "priority" list, which fits everything we already know about how lore is formed and treated by Bethesda. This doesn't diminish fan-fiction in any way, it's just basically confirming everything we already know but has never been officially stated, and this isn't an official statement either to be clear. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 15:46, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Did Todd specify exactly what priority is that? Priority in what? His knowledge of universe? His personal way in knowing the universe? Why should this bother us? Phoenix Neko (talk) 16:04, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

It is the priority of what is more important in Canon for the Elder Scrolls. So seeing something in a game takes precedence over descriptions of that thing in a book, if there are conflicts. Basically describes what we already do. Jeancey (talk) 16:15, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

He doesn't use the word 'canon' though. And he wasn't asked about canonicity at all. The header "Game Development, Canon, and Fan Theories" is deceiving. Phoenix Neko (talk) 16:45, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

(←) He mentions a panel at a London event. I'm fairly certain that panel involved canonicity. It's definitely what he was talking about. Jeancey (talk) 16:51, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

It's really hard to make conclusions without taking all context into account. Phoenix Neko (talk) 16:57, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

It's a moot point anyway, since even being about canonicity, we already do all this, and nothing he said changes how we approach things being canon or not. Jeancey (talk) 16:58, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

UOL vs CC?

I was looking at the activity on Lore:Bestiary G and noticed that CC (Cut Content - not Creation Club!) is apparently treated differently from typical Unofficial Lore. I was surprised by this, as I have always used them as the same, especially considering that they use the same tag in references: (UOL). The detail in question on the Bestiary page was a single word, 'hardy', cited with some cut content songs from Daggerfall. I'm left with many questions from this: is this sitewide, or relegated to entry pages like the Bestiary? - if so, why?, is CC not supposed to be cited anywhere? If that's the case, I've seen it in a ton of places, there'd be a lot of work to do. Mindtrait0r (talk) 18:17, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Cut Content is cited on a case-by-case basis. It can be used if something in the final product of the game gets more elaboration from cut content, such as what certain Daggerfall deities are the lords of, or noting that Divad had a daughter named Cinsel. It can't be cited for something that contradicts the games entirely, such as cut content of an early quest where King Ranser was murdered in 2E 582 and you had to investigate King Sebastien (a Duke in the final game) for it. However, even then, you can cite stuff like this in the notes as being an early idea in development; you can see Lore:Naryu Virian#Notes or Lore:Uriel V#Notes for good examples. A site-wide purge is not a good idea. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 18:25, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Oh yeah. Sorry if I gave off the wrong impression, I'm certainly not advocating for a purge. What of entry pages, though, such as the aforementioned pages? Do they play by other rules? They don't have notes sections to fall back on. Mindtrait0r (talk) 18:31, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

All good! The general rule of thumb is that if something works better within the body it should be written there, and if not, it can be moved to the notes. Entries are less strict because they don't have much content in the first place, so you can put it in as long as its relevant. When it comes to the Gnome thing, the cut content only talks about how they're mentioned in songs, and not about what gnomes are (ie how they look), so its not particularly relevant. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 18:42, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

Developer Mods

I've recently seen a lot of Dev Mod pages being added to this page. I disagree with this, we haven't counted Dev Mod lore as as UOL in the past, its viewed as unusable for citations. This contrasts with the page's clarification statement to sitewide usage. UESP tentatively allows Unofficial Lore to be used as footnote citations in lore articles, with caveats. If mod lore isn't considered suitable for citations, then by this line, it isn't unofficial lore and shouldn't be listed here. Mindtrait0r (talk) 07:29, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

A lot of the new stuff seems to be Goodall lore books from his mods. If we are at the point of citing off-hand reddit posts by MK and Schick, by extension a proper lorebook from a past dev falls into the same category. Goodall's lorebooks align more into the category of MK texts.

But as always - every single new UOL that is added to a page in lorespace needs to be talkpage'd before its added (there was a discussion about this a while back) because like all UOL, its case-by-case if it should be added. hose new refs that that aren't talkpaged can be freely removed. Side note, this page is getting messy so i'm gonna move all the big lists to their own dev-related page. --Jimeee (talk) 08:43, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Jimeee's reasoning. There's no reason to exclude developer lore texts just because they come from mods, and each one can be included on this page (or not) on a case-by-case basis. Citation of UOL texts elsewhere on the site is a separate discussion and not directly relevant to this page. —⁠Legoless (talk) 12:13, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

As far as I'm concerned, developer mods are perfectly fine to cite if they're from lore-friendly mods, which pretty much all mods the mods are aside from Loading Screens. By your Mom already are. I agree what Legoless said. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 16:08, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Restoring to Previous Version

Bringing this to the talk page first since I saw edits from multiple editors without any reversion of this before. I wish to propose this page be reverted back to its state in this edit. The recent edits moved the majority of the content behind other pages. I think the previous version of this page was better, as it was not very long (11,133 bytes vs just 4,860 bytes now), but still managed to keep all of the relevant content on this page. The recent changes does have the advantage of making this content easier to find if you know the author of it, but I think that is going to be unlikely in most cases. Instead, I would prefer these pages be turned into redirects to the author's sections on this page. A position in the middle would be to make it so these pages transclude their content to this page instead, although it's not my personally preferred solution for this particular situation. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 05:50, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

I was thinking of making these pages have includetags and just transcluding text to the dev and uol pages maybe--ErfXploded (talk) 10:53, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

I think the best way to keep it tight and easily finadable is name the section on this page "Texts and Posts". Put the links to the Dev posts back as I had it. Then move the "Council of Wisdom Posts" below it so everything is here. You can then delete the General:Developer Posts as its redundant. Right now the Posts can only be discovered if readers happens to look way at the bottom in the See Also section.--Jimeee (talk) 11:16, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

Mod Lore UOL Concerns

I'm concerned about the usage of dev-created mod UOL in lorespace, with Douglass Goodall creating a lot in recent years. I'm a bit worried about it because it might be misused in certain circumstances. Mindtrait0r mentioned about the possibility of using the language chart from General:AFFA's Chart of Tamrielic Language. Upon hearing that, I investigated it further. If you navigate to the "Archived Link" section and click on it, it will take you to the Project Tamriel mod discord. From the context of the discord, Goodall created that chart with Project Tamriel lore as a basis. You can see his interactions there in the High Rock lore section of that discord. It appears West, East, and South Bretic are created for their version of Breton's subcultures that were completely made up for their project. This is clearly an issue because this is taking mod lore into consideration, and mod communities, especially those of the Morrowind era, do not keep modern Elder Scrolls games, ESO especially, into consideration when they are making the lore.

Developers have also have admitted to using our wikis. I don't think they want to accidentally plagiarize content taken from fan modding projects.Analeah Oaksong (talk) 05:46, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

I belive using lorebook content from Devs own personally created mods is fine (AFFresh for example). But their collaborations with non-dev fan-mods like Tamriel Rebuilt probably shouldn't be used as UOL. Tarponpet (talk) 06:55, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Isn't Dev UOL conditional on them being current employees of Bethesda? Douglas Goodall's current mods wouldn't be valid anyway, because he's not currently a dev. If the "current employee" condition is removed, that makes C0DA valid as UOL. --Enodoc (talk) 13:02, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

UOL from former employees has long been a thing. Like half of Kirkbrides UOL was released when he wasn't working for the company. We don't use things like C0DA for other reasons.Tarponpet (talk) 15:38, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) That was never a condition the wiki had. Plenty of devs will publish things based off concepts they had during the time of game development years after they left, its incredibly arbitrary to split it up by that categorization. C0DA itself takes place in an alt future timeline and isn't a valid comparison to make. The distinction was always that developer-made unofficial lore can be used, while fan-made unofficial lore cannot.

As for Dev-created mod lore with fan involvement, context is always of key importance. There are three types scenarios that I have found:

• Dev mod with fan content: A mod that a developer has primarily made with some fan contributions. An example is The Mananaut's Message, where the writing is all by Goodall but the armor assets are by modder MelchiorDahrk, where Goodall's writing can be used as UOL but the images of Dahrk's armor/art cannot.
• Fan mod with Dev content within TES context: A mod made primarily by fans that includes content from developers that can work independently outside of it. An example is Bourn in Wood for Daggerfall Unity; if taken out of the setting of Unity, the book still works on its own, as it doesn't use any mod-only setting content and is based off the main setting of TES itself.
• Fan mod with Dev content within Mod context: A mod made primarily by fans that includes content from developers that works within the context of the Mod itself. An example would be the aforementioned Chart of Language, where the dev content is written with fan-made concepts used as a basis. Outside of the mod, the Chart cannot be used independently because it bases itself off the setting the Mod itself has created.

With the practice editors have had in documenting so far, the first two would be valid as Dev UOL, while the last one cannot. I would liken the third scenario to questions in Loremaster's Archive, where the answers are still valid but the questions themselves are not. Yes the official answers have often mentioned the players' names in them over the years, but we couldn't make lore articles for those mentioned players, as the info for them would come primarily from unofficial fan-made questions. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 15:41, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

I think Rim just provided a pretty good summary of it, as well as why we shouldn't be using this chart. Along with the existing layer of nuance editors are supposed to give any UOL source before its use, I think keeping Rim's guidelines there in mind will be a good starting point for what may be a more common scenario in the future of ex-devs getting involved in mods.

A somewhat related existing example of this on the wiki is General:Pocket Guide to the Empire, Second Edition. Where we have the whole thing in General-space, but we explicitly have indicators for the fan-made contributions, and even notes saying not to use anything from the sections that are purely fanmade sections. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 15:54, 28 June 2024 (UTC)