Lore talk:Loremaster's Archive

Meet the Character

The two texts that have appeared in the official Meet the Character series will possibly appear in-game once IC is released, ala Jorunn the Skald-King. If that turns out not to be the case, naturally they should be listed here, but I've commented them out until we know for sure. There's no reason to jump to conclusions when the two texts could get a regular book article instead. —Legoless (talk) 14:08, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

IF they are to be included in game. Until then these texts should be absent from UESP for what, months? IF they really will go in game sooner or later, then and only then we'll move them into Books namespace. But there's no reason to jump to conclusion that they are going to be included in game or when it would happen. Phoenix Neko (talk) 14:16, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Imperial City is due for release in about three weeks. The two texts are correctly placed in the Lore namespace, but treating them as website extracts rather than books seems hasty. If the Meet the Character series really does turn into a regular source of out-of-game texts, it might even be worth creating a separate hub page for them similar to this, but that discussion will have to wait until we flesh out the new in-game book collections I think. —Legoless (talk) 14:24, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

"but treating them as website extracts rather than books seems hasty" - for now, they are exactly that: website extracts and not in-game books. If they will move into the game after three weeks, we will move links to these articles into Library, I don't see any problem in doing that. For about the whole series' destiny I don't think it has something to do with current discussion, at least for now. So, back to the texts, I would prefer make them available already (with links on page where they belong to at this moment) instead of waiting three weeks or more (if ZOS would release IC later) for no reason. Phoenix Neko (talk) 14:41, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

If it helps reach a decision, the text of those articles appears nowhere in the Imperial City en.lang text file as of 2.1.0. --Enodoc (talk) 15:34, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

That does help actually, thanks for checking! Lorespace has policies against using pre-release info, but I kind of doubt they'll be adding any more books during PTS testing. I think we can bend the rules a little here; I'll unhide the links, but it might be best to hold off on a separate hub page until we see an Orsinium character or some other sign of consistency. Thoughts? —Legoless (talk) 16:45, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

First, they say "Check back with us next week for an introduction to Father Egnatius", so they're going to make more iterations of series, and I doubt there will be only three of them. Second, I still don't understand if there is a problem to redo anything if situation changes in future. Being flexible, that's it. Third, about separate hub - is it really needed now when we have only two (well, three) issues? It fits perfectly under "Other texts from the official ESO website" section. So I propose to wait without a hub until wild Orsinium character appears. Phoenix Neko (talk) 18:34, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Well, we know now that Orsinium DLC will be anticipated by a similar pack of "Meet the character, Orsinium edition" series. So, is a hub needed now or shall it wait for Orsinium? Phoenix Neko (talk) 08:07, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Looks like it. I've made the new hub here. —Legoless (talk) 16:27, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Men'Do's Travel Stories & Advice Column

ZOS's newest website segment certainly seems to deal with lore-related topics similar to the Loremaster's Archive Q&A, but it's written entirely by a reddit user. Do we consider this canon or even worth documenting? I would say no - it seems more like a community outreach program to embrace the ESO subreddit rather than something approved by Bethesda's lore guys. —Legoless (talk) 16:27, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't consider it canon or documentable in Lorespace until proven otherwise. They even call it a "community column". -- Hargrimm^(T) 17:19, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

They have a disclaimer which explicitly says: "(This is a fan-written column that we will publish every couple weeks on elderscrollsonline.com)". So it's more like a fan-fiction similar to their Tamriel Chronicle series, and by no means canon. It's not a devs text, it's not an in-game text, it's not an interview, so it doesn't belong to UESP. Although it was very fun to read. Phoenix Neko (talk) 11:52, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

New Layout

I've changed the layout by combining the Books and Q&A sections into a single table. A bit of an eyesore, but it allows us to list the article names and link to all the books rather than just the ones unique to the website (which is dwindling down to nothing as fewer are published and more are integrated in ESO). I think the new layout puts more of an emphasis on the Q&As, which has really been the focus of the series since Tamriel Unlimited's release. It also helps keep track of chronology, and actually led to me finding an error in our previous order. It's open to suggestions and/or beautification of course. —Legoless (talk) 16:43, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Could add a date column. I was never really sure why we listed them in reverse chronological order in the first place, and that would let them be sorted either way. Also seems redundant with every single Q&A ending with "Answers Your Questions". Could we crop that part off for readability? Or just get rid of that column entirely and simply put a link next to the Interviewee name, like: "Lyranth the Foolkiller (Q&A)". -- Hargrimm^(T) 04:07, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

A date column is a good idea, but I wasn't sure how to make it sortable. I thought about adding plain links to the Q&As, but found that using the full page names was more visually appealing. I'd actually rather remove the interviewee column if space is an issue, since the Q&As are really the main focus of this series now. —Legoless (talk) 09:12, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

I'd say I preferred the prior layout as it gave a clearer separation of books and Q&A and showed the book description, but that's probably me being biased :P. I saw this layout first on mobile the other day and it seemed a bit cramped and wall of text-ish, but on desktop it seems fine. I like the addition of "Article Name", and a date column would be a great idea too. The interviewee column has benefit, so I would not cut it out, maybe remove some of the titles - mainly the ones that come after the name (Sapiarch of Indoctrination, etc) - and leave just the name to save space?--Jimeee (talk) 09:37, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

I added the titles based on what appeared in the texts, although I agree there's no real need for them. Losing the book descriptions isn't ideal but it freed up space to list the 'additional readings', and they can't all have descriptions. The mobile layout seemed okay for me but I suppose it depends on screen width - always gonna be an issue with wiki tables though. —Legoless (talk) 10:02, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

A few more points. The date sorting should work if we just use the system used on the official site (MM/DD/YYYY). Even if the year sorting is a bit wonky, its not a huge deal. If we can think of a way to shorten "High King Emeric and Chancellor Regina Troivois", then we can save even more width. Also, we should have a small icon or descriptor appear next to the LA exclusive books. Nothing huge, but it would be good to see what is in-game or not at a glance. I'll sandbox a few of these ideas in a bit and see what happens. --Jimeee (talk) 12:54, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Ok, so here is a quick test of the above ideas. Date sorting works. Thoughts? User:Jimeee/Sandbox10 --Jimeee (talk) 13:27, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Looks good to me! —Legoless (talk) 16:35, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Nice! But shouldn't the date format be MM/DD/YYYY instead of MM.DD.YYYY? For now it is confusing. Phoenix Neko (talk) 19:59, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

(←) Adding to that, the Americans are the only ones in the whole world using month ahead of day without also placing year ahead of the month. —MortenOSlash (talk) 04:17, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

I suppose YYYY/MM/DD would make it even more accurate for sorting purposes but really I just copied the format from the site, including the decimals rather than the slashes.--Jimeee (talk) 14:40, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

YYYY/MM/DD may look better to a wider audience as well. --Enodoc (talk) 19:43, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Finally got around to implementing the YYYY/MM/DD format. —Legoless (talk) 16:14, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

Split by Author

I've undone the change to this page which split the table in three according to author. This information can be documented much more succinctly by simply adding an additional column to the existing table. —⁠Legoless (talk) 15:05, 27 December 2023 (UTC)