UESPWiki:Community Portal/Archive 58

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.

Mer Names vs. Elf Names in Gamespace

There's been a lot of push lately on Discord to change the "-mer" names (Altmer, Bosmer, Dunmer) to their equivalent "Elf" (High Elf, Wood Elf, Dark Elf) names and move the pages appropriately. I thought we'd had the discussion on the wiki as well, and so I went ahead and moved them when someone asked, but I see now that the discussion never actually took place here. Sorry about that!

But, going on the "better late than never" premise, does anyone have any objections to using "Elf" names (and links) for the main landing pages (e.g., Skyrim:Wood Elf instead of Skyrim:Bosmer)? Yes, the pages are already moved, but if there's some overwhelming on-wiki push that we didn't come up with on Discord, I can always switch all the links back and revert the page changes, if needed.

In this particular case, we actually have a policy for using the "-mer" names, though I'm not sure where that policy came from. It can be found in the various race entries on our spelling page. I'm not quite sure why it was decided to use the "-mer" names when the menus all use "Elf", and I'm pretty sure that's consistent across all games from Morrowind forward. It may be that it's used more in dialogue, but I think even that's a bit mixed, especially if you look across all the games. I haven't confirmed that, though. Anyway, back to the original question: does anyone see any reason we should go back to using "-mer" names by default? – Robin Hood ^(talk) 00:46, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Both the Character Creation screens and Creation Kit/Set of the affected games use the "Elf" terminology. This does not mean that "mer" cannot be used in prose. But according to the data of the games themselves, that is what they are. This is not an issue of lore or spelling, but adequate representation of the videogames. -Dcsg (talk) 00:55, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

What Dcsg says is correct. There is no discussion to be had. LudwigC (talk) 01:08, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

While I much, much prefer the "mer" suffix names, unfortunately the "elf" suffix names is what the games use internally and on display. I guess an argument can be made that not all races are called what they're named internally, the Snow Elf (coded as High Elf) and Sheogorath race comes to mind and probably some others. The big issue is mainly how alphabetically things will now change (Altmer are no longer at the top, Wood elves are now at the bottom) and how these races are categorized with a space as opposed to without, since the "mer" suffix ones are all one word. That's the main reason I don't support this change, all of the other 7 races are still one word simplifying things, the only exceptions in general are Dark Seducers, Golden Saints, Pumpkin Spectres, and Sea Giants; none of which are playable.

Still, I guess gameplay function takes precedence over context, so there's not much that can be done. There's no discussion needed to debate whether to make the change, just a matter of how, since it affects literally tens of thousands of pages. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 04:50, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

I just noticed these moves and they make for a pleasant surprise. I am for the change. We need to go for in-game accuracy in gamespace, and that is what these moves achieve. I don't think there's much on-wiki discussion of the proposal, but in terms of precedent I changed the racial skill line names on {{Online Skills}} back in 2016 and there has never been any objection. Now at last the pages reflect those names.

I think it's a good idea to preserve the -mer names in lorespace. Gameplay accuracy is not a concern on those pages, so I don't think the wiki's existing consensus on preferred race names should be impacted. —⁠Legoless (talk) 08:28, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree with making them accurate for gamespace, but as legoless has said we should keep -mer in lorespace. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 08:52, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

(←) Further to this, I have also moved the Legends -mer pages back to their original article names. This change was made in 2016 but it's not what the cards say on them. A lot of pages such as Legends:Races already used the in-game names so much of the work is done. —⁠Legoless (talk) 16:47, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Would also like to add that with terms like Altmer, it was both singular and plural and could be used in sentences quite easily. With a term like High Elf you're stuck with the plural being High Elves or sometimes High Elven, and there's now the concern to look out for and correct the incorrect High Elfs. I think that Altmer should still be used in prose for the paragraph parts of articles so that it doesn't cause issues like that. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 22:05, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

"High Elfs" shouldn't be a concern. The bot only did selective changes to specific link text, and one of the criteria was that the wording had to be singular and in a phrase somewhat similar to "is a X-mer". Anything not fitting into that broad pattern was left to humans, and at least Dcsg is working on them now...I think maybe one or two others are helping. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 22:40, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

I like the idea of keeping the last part of -mer for elves, so how are the Snow Elf name helped? — Unsigned comment by Sllocsredle (talk • contribs) at 17:07 on 9 August 2022

Merchandise in Sidebar

Would anybody object to the addition of the Merchandise namespace to the sidebar? At the moment, it's only accessible to people who are aware of its existence. -MolagBallet (talk) 19:18, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Yeah it should definitely be there, I just don't think anyone got around to it yet. --Enodoc (talk) 19:35, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

"The" in Article Names

I object to the prospect of renaming "Lore:The Pale" to "Lore:Pale". Wikipedia's policy on the use of "the" in article titles is as follows: "Do not place definite or indefinite articles (the, a, and an) at the beginning of titles unless they are part of a proper name (e.g. The Old Man and the Sea) or otherwise change the meaning (e.g. The Crown)." "The Pale" is a proper noun; people don't refer to the region simply as "Pale". The same can be said for Lore:The Blight, Lore:The Radius, Lore:The Reach, Lore:The Pits, Lore:The Chain and Lore:The Rift.

For the Blight in particular, there is only one "Blight" people are looking for when they look for the article in question, and that it The Blight. It's not "a blight", it's The Blight: the one and only curse spread over the winds with an origin in Dagoth Ur's foul magics. Nobody says "I went to Rift", "I'm making a trek into Radius", "I'll be taking my caravan through Reach", "I'm sailing out to visit Chain", or "I'm going to be sent to Pits when I die"; "the" is part of these places' names.

Now, I'm certain there's a concept in Halo called "Reach", and if I have my videogame jargon right, that particular Reach doesn't need "the" in the name of an article covering that subject. To my knowledge, the way Halo's "Reach" and "The Reach" of the Elder Scrolls are referred to makes the case for why "the" deserves to stay in the titles I've listed. According to Halopedia, "Reach" is the proper name of a colonized planet. Somebody with more knowledge about Halo could attest to how characters in-universe talk about Reach, but The Reach of the Elder Scrolls is never referred to without the use of "the". It is The Reach.

"Green Lady" and "Scaled Court" are fine, they can be renamed. A Silvenar might say "I love my Green Lady", just as the Green Lady in ESO refers to her spouse as "my Silvenar". Someone who's opposing the Scaled Court might call one of the Courtlings "a Scaled Court wretch", or refer to "those Scaled Court bastards". Not so for The Pale and other locations.

One might use the logic for the Scaled Court to refute me, and they'd be right to challenge me. Again, I reiterate that the Blight in question is the only blight of historical note. "Blight" is only used without "the" in the case of "blighted monsters", "blight storms" or "blight diseases", but these are all things associated with the Blight. When people use these terms, they are not directly referring to the Blight itself, but instead talking about concepts and things that are derived from the Blight; blight storms carry The Blight, blight diseases are caused by coming into contact with The Blight, and blighted monsters are created when creatures are infected with blight diseases, which come from The Blight. The phenomenon itself is always referred to with "the". It is not just "a" blight. The Scaled Court is often referred to with "the", but not always, and if anybody needs in-game examples for anything that I have attempted to lay out in this post, they have only to ask, and I will provide.

In short: Lore:The Pale, Lore:The Blight, Lore:The Radius, Lore:The Reach, Lore:The Pits, Lore:The Chain and Lore:The Rift. These are the places/things' proper names, thus "The" should remain in the article's name. -MolagBallet (talk) 00:55, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

In Wikipedia's policy, there is no mention of "how the article title sounds when used without the article in prose." This is because you can place articles in the prose and still exclude it from the title, which many of our pages already do, which one doesn't even notice when it's done correctly. You also misconstrue the meaning of "proper name," which is intended to refer to things like publications, brand names, etc., which is a policy we already adhere to with our naming of books. The only argument to be made in favor of the mentioned pages including a "The" is that of genericness. Wikipedia might use the article in the title to differentiate from a different page. However, since as a wiki that does not seek to demystify real life, we should have no such issue naming articles with common words, which we also do already in many instances. -Dcsg (talk) 01:09, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

That same article's section on "other proper names" lists "The Bronx", a place, as a proper name that merits the use of "The" in the article's name. The Bahamas, a country, also uses "The" in its name; these are the names of places. The Pale, The Chain, The Rift, et al should follow the same convention. -MolagBallet (talk) 01:38, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree with MolagBallet, I also oppose getting rid of the in the names. Its because its what they are called, The Reach is what the Reach is called for the most part. So stuff like that needs to retain words like The in them. As that is what we know them as.TheVampKnight (talk) 01:42, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

There is indeed a small section which lists the exceptions, which don't make the rule. There are many other Wikipedia articles whose common use "always" include an article, such as the American Dream, the Netherlands, the Middle Ages, and many more. -Dcsg (talk) 01:45, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

I went digging because I got curious, and I've found several articles that aren't proper nouns that use "the" in the title of the article. Most noteworthy was "The arts", which was the subject of a proposed move in 2020, which did not pass for similar reasons that I've argued above. Additionally, the first condition listed on Wikipedia's page on article naming conventions is as follows:
If a term with a definite article has a different meaning with respect to the same term without the article, the term with the article can be used as the name of a Wikipedia article about that meaning, and the term without the article can be used as the name of a separate Wikipedia article.
Despite the fact that we aren't Wikipedia and don't have articles for every single concept in TES, no matter how mundane nor magical, I see no reason to move these pages. If Bethesda were to invent a more generic "blight" sans "the", we would have to move Lore:The Blight back to "The Blight" to disambiguate them anyways.
While we're on the subject of exceptions, I would point to "The Gabba", which refers to the Brisbane Cricket Ground, but is coloquially called "The Gabba". Wikipedia's article uses "The" in the title, despite there being no lone "Gabba" on site to warrant the disambiguation. Granted, Wikipedia's "Gabba" in itself is a disambiguation page that leads to several pages whose subject begins with "Gab", but they could have gone with "Brisbane Cricket Ground" and not popped up in my research. -MolagBallet (talk) 02:04, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Citing article-less Wikipedia titles could forever. The fact is that article-having titles are the exception, not the rule, and have good reason. Your first example, "The arts," has an article to distinguish itself from "Art". "The Bronx" and "The Bahamas" are the way they are due to legality in combination with prevailing use. The few people with a preappended "The" are due to overwhelming prevailing use, and there are only a handful of such titles on the whole of Wikipedia. I feel I must also restate that "how it sounds when written in prose" is not a criterion. These pages were created by people who weren't considering policies and we are simply rectifying the deviation that was made carelessly. If you have legitimate reasons which are acknowledged as valid by the policies, please bring it up. However, nothing you have said so far interacts with the actual intentions detailed by the policies. -Dcsg (talk) 02:17, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

(←) I won't comment much outside of Skyrim, since I'm not terribly familiar with any of those games, but within Skyrim, I think it's pretty easy. The Pale, The Reach, and The Rift are all named using the word "The" on the various maps that show region names as well as in books like The Holds of Skyrim. Thus, that's their official name and what we should be calling them in any wiki articles. To compare to the real world, the United Kingdom is only ever called "United Kingdom" in official sources while The Hague is referred to as "The Hague". Whether "the" is used colloquially is not relevant to the discussion unless you want to get into questions of how/when to capitalize "the" in those names, but that's a different discussion.

One thing that occurred to me for the Blight was to compare it to the Great Plague. Both of them are commonly written with a lower-case "the", which strongly suggests that "the" is not part of their official name, and Wikipedia confirms this. I don't know enough to have a strong opinion there, but I thought it made for a good point of comparison. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 03:38, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

I'm with Molag and Robin when it comes to "The Reach" etc. I think this boils down if "The" is an "official" part of its name. And judging from their names on the map, this seems the be the case. "Netherlands" has no official "The" in its name (and it can't even be used in that way in its own language, but that's another topic). Places like The Gambia or The Hague are used with "The" by their own ministries and administrations, which does not seem the case for countries like the Netherlands and the UK. However, we can't really reach out to any governing body of Skyrim, so I believe we can only infer it from the sources we see in-game (like the aforementioned maps) to base our policies on. --Ilaro (talk) 07:29, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

I will concede that "the Blight" should probably be moved over, Robin has a point with the Great Plague. -MolagBallet (talk) 16:43, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

Using Wikipedia as a basis of standards on a wiki that covers very different topics is a very risky move that always needs to be looked at if its a needed change at all, cause in a lot of cases we don't need Wikipedia's way of doing things. I'm not a fan of mass standardizing; yes it makes things straight forward, but in this case its a bit much, we don't need to have an all-or-nothing "one way or the other" rule on putting "The" in article titles. I think we should keep things the way they are and use "The" on a case-by-case basis; hell Wikipedia does this too. I don't see a need for a mass change. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 22:05, 11 September 2021 (UTC)

It's not about "mass change," though - it's about a few, specific names. (Which is also the point, I think.) I agree with Molag and RH, we've had a similar discussion before regarding a zone name, possibly The Rift. It's a little complicated topic though: more so for all non-native speakers (including me!). It's also more complicated by the fact that the TES writer team doesn't always follow the proper naming rules ;)

The one argument which I think is relevant here, is that omitting the "The" makes the name sound generic and unspecific. "Pale" is a rather generic word - if we remove the article, then it could mean what... an adjective? A historic person who was called Pale? A magic spell? It could be anything! Including the definite article tells the reader straight away that this is something specific, it is a unique name not belonging to anything else but that subject. Tib (talk) 09:27, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

All the "Deadlands" in ESO - please help with naming the pages

With the upcoming DLC, at least three pages need to be titled "Deadlands," so I'd like to hear if we can figure out how to sort this out. We've got:

• Deadlands (DLC) - the upcoming DLC
• Deadlands (dungeon) - the public dungeon released with Blackwood chapter
• Deadlands (zone) - the zone for the upcoming DLC

Would it work to create a disambiguation page called "Deadlands," which then links to the three above-mentioned ones? I'm asking because the new DLC will be on test servers tonight, so it would be great to figure this out before all the editing starts :) Tib (talk) 09:40, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

We would generally give precedence to the zone, as in the case of Online:Summerset and Online:Summerset (chapter). An {{about}} at the top could link to the public dungeon and the DLC? —⁠Legoless (talk) 10:11, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Need to check for accuracy first - the dungeon is called The Deadlands, not Deadlands, so if the zone is called Deadlands the disambig and hatnote would have a different purpose. --Enodoc (talk) 16:50, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

I have moved the extant pages to ON:The Deadlands (dungeon) and ON:The Deadlands (DLC). Assuming the zone has the same name, we can now decide what to do with ON:The Deadlands, i.e. zone page or disambig. —⁠Legoless (talk) 19:08, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

I'd go with zone page, personally. that's gonna be the "bigger" page, by far. Jeancey (talk) 19:13, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

(←) Sounds good! I wonder whether Fargrave might need its own page, similarly to Artaeum vs Summerset in summerset chapter. Tib (talk) 15:42, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Per this edit and WP:NAMB, I note that the hatnotes have been removed from the dungeon and DLC pages. I think these should be restored as a navigation aid for readers, given the confusion highlighted by this discussion. —⁠Legoless (talk) 09:41, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

That's an interesting one. I don't think our common practice generally follows WP:NAMB and I'm not sure I agree with its premise. If the title of an article has a disambiguator, then the title by definition is ambiguous, and hatnotes should be used throughout. --Enodoc (talk) 16:36, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

We do generally follow NAMB when it regards hatnotes. There may be some exceptions, and I think this COULD be one of them, but I'm not convinced that The Deadlands (DLC) is really going to be confused with the dungeon, but people could be confused the other way around?

To Enodoc's point, by adding the disambiguator, it becomes no longer ambiguous. If there are two NPCs with the same name, say Kyle, and one is Khajiit and the other Altmer, if you land on Online:Kyle you don't know from the name which is which, so the hatnote exists. If you land on Online:Kyle (Altmer) there's no way you are confusing the page URL with that of Online:Kyle (Khajiit). That's the point of ambiguity, NOT the ambiguity of the pagename sans disambiguator. Jeancey (talk) 16:49, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I have no issues discarding NAMB in favour of our own guidelines, whatever those may end up being. The one thing we might want to consider here is precedent. In theory, whatever we apply to Deadlands pages should also apply to pages like Dawnguard, possibly Dragonborn, several Creation Club add-ons, not to mention Oblivion's various add-ons as well. They're all basically in the same boat of having the add-on named the same as an item or area. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 18:38, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

I do have an issue discarding NAMB overall. I would rather have specific exceptions that follow consensus rather than scrapping it all together. People aren't sitting on a quest page being like "It says (quest) in the name, I thought this was a DLC".... I think people are smart enough to realize "hey, maybe this page is for the quest, and not for the DLC. Jeancey (talk) 18:52, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Imperial City DLC Canon Chronology

Currently on the Wiki, we have the stance taken that ALL Imperial City content takes place before the end of the original storyline. I feel this is partially incorrect, as we have insight for what the canonical timeline for this dlc is from the The Future of ESO - QuakeCon 2014 stream.

At the 6:50 mark, the devs call this :"Molag Bal's Last ditch effort" where he is using the huge anchor at the White Gold Tower.

Starting at around the 12 minute mark, the Devs say this official statement.

"The Temple District, this is the Temple of the One of you played Oblivion, but Tiber Septim didn’t exist around now so its way way back in time. This is actually where they are trying to kickstart the planemeld. If you played the game, you know that in the beginning, you actually get sacrificed and get sent to Coldharbour. So they are starting to do that over again underneath the Temple District and you get to go in there and get to stop that from happening as opposed to getting sacrificed this time."

Additionally, in-game, the Xivkyn Flagellant say :""The Planemeld begins anew!"

Why would Molag Bal try making another Planemeld if his hasn't failed?

What follows is the opposition's stance. Lyranth's plotline in the Imperial City Prison involves freeing her Foolkiller clanspeople from their banishment. Because of this, this particular quest has to take place before the end of the original Coldharbour storyline. After completing the Coldharbour quest The Citadel Must Fall, Lyranth appears with her freed Foolkillers clansmen who were previously banished who we freed in the Imperial City Prison. This is further supported by the statements

"You proved very useful and earned the assistance I provided you.
But I wouldn't recommend lingering in my territory, little mortal. I cannot vouch for the patience or control of my newly awakened kyn."

and

So, now you're the Valkynaz of the Citadel?

"What possible interest could that be to you, little mortal? Let me guess. You're worried that now I will order my kyn to destroy you.
I assure you, a change in leadership can be a time of confusion. No harm will come to you or yours—for now."

So I propose the following stance we should take for documenting the DLC's story on the Wiki. It is clear that the Imperial City Prison takes place before the end of the original Coldharbour storyline, and so we should keep the mention of those specific events in that time period to coincide with Lyranth's statements, but as per the dev statements, the Imperial City DLC ends after the original main quest storyline does. It seems like the Imperial City's plot is overall intended to coincide with the assaults on Coldharbour, as well as the later parts intended to be in response to Planemeld being destroyed. The White Gold Tower seems to be the end of the Imperial City DLC as the anchor gets destroyed and the Planemeld Obverse is stopped.

Other possible viewpoints on the Imperial City DLC are appreciated. Even if this fails to pass, atleast we will have something to link to for why we took the stance.— Zebendal (talk) 23:31, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

At the very least, we need to stop actively pushing a timeline we have to speculate on - Even under the current 'any order' rationale that ZOS currently employs, there's no reason to conspicuously list the dlc events out of order of release in this singular instance. The fact that its unclear whether it came before or after shows that we shouldn't be actively assuming. Jacksol (talk) 23:57, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I do not think it is ęxactly speculation this time given that in fact it is quite openly stated that parts Imperial City events do happen after the main quest of the basegame since they refer to its evens as second Planemeld that happens after first one failed. Tyrvarion (talk) 00:23, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

This level of detail is probably unnecessary, but if we are going to speculate, then logically the DLC takes place after Breaking the Shackle (where you stop the original Planemeld), and before God of Schemes (where you defeat Molag Bal). He won't be trying another Planemeld before his original plan has failed, and he definitely won't be trying anything after his power is drained. So I think assuming general concurrency with the Coldharbour storyline without being specific works fine. --Enodoc (talk) 16:26, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Molag Bal is drained, yes, but he doesn't directly manifest in the imperial city aside from the Simulacrum of Molag Bal, but that isn't his full power. He primarily uses his minions to do his work here. However, Enodoc's stance doesn't necessarily contradict Imperial City, as he is using his minions and only a minor manifestation of him appears. So using logic and Legoless' stance, Imperial City Prison takes place before Lyranth appears in Coldharbour and her quest The Citadel Must Fall, with the rest of the DLC being after Breaking the Shackle.— Zebendal (talk) 16:44, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

I concur with Enodoc. This is the sequence we are already using in lorespace. —⁠Legoless (talk) 17:21, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Anyways, I support either viewpoint. Using logic, I am more in favor of the original planemeld ending at the Breaking the Shackle quest, and ICP taking place before The Citadel Must Fall, and the Dev's statements coincides with Molag Bal's last ditch effort and his efforts in trying to kickstart another Planemeld (the Planemeld Obverse) is after the Great Shackle is destroyed. Imperial City DLC ends after Planemeld Obverse and the Drake of Blades becomes the host for the Sublime Brazier, and Molag Bal is finally defeated in the base game God of Schemes quest.Zebendal (talk) 17:30, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

(←) Just by way of update, myself and Zebendal have made changes to Online:Imperial City (DLC), Lore:Planemeld, and Lore:Second Era to reflect the consensus here. It would be great to get a page set up for the QuakeCon 2014 presentation, since this isn't the only notable information that should be documented from it. —⁠Legoless (talk) 09:51, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

Isn't the issue here that ordering it in such a way is requiring speculation to bend our own opinions around dev comments? I agree with Enodoc that this level of detail is unnecessary - unless we're told otherwise, we should just be having IC coming ambiguously after rather than speculating and adding our own headcanons on the ordering - I definitely don't think the right solution is to remove ambiguity like we just did by definitively shoving "The Planemeld Obverse and the Sublime Brazier" between "Tamrielic Invasion of Coldharbour" and "Banishment of Molag Bal". Jacksol (talk) 18:17, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

The current page versions are as vaguely worded as I can possibly make them. There's no easy way to document these events chronologically when we don't know the exact order, but the new note on Online:Imperial City (DLC) explains the position. —⁠Legoless (talk) 08:29, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Skyrim Boardgame

Has anyone heard anything about it like release date? Also what would its namespace be, and the ancronym for said namespace? Any thoughts? --Hazak (talk) 21:04, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

It depends on just how extensive it is. If it's relatively simple (i.e. really just rules and stuff, not a lot of unique locations) then it'll probably end up in the Merchandise namespace, with links to the location pages elsewhere on the wiki... As to release date, the funding campaign doesn't seem to start until November 2nd, so we likely won't know a release date for a while (unless I'm just misunderstanding how that website works, and the game is released on November 2nd.... which seems unlikely....) Jeancey (talk) 21:16, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Closing voting without a clear consensus

In the interest of some general clean-up, I noticed the Featured Article and Featured Image pages both are loaded up with nominations, some of which are well over a year old and most of which have less than the requisite 5 votes needed to traditionally call a consensus and close them. I was thinking, is there any reason not to close a vote off after some arbitrary length of time that is agreed upon by the community? Example: After 6 months. In my proposal to add a termination point for instances like the above where there aren't enough votes to traditionally close off a vote the appropriate closing response should be "No Clear Consensus". This would be the most appropriate reason to close the vote because lacking the requisite 5 votes precedent and policy dictates, it's inappropriate in my opinion to close the vote as either "Pass" or "Fail". This suggestion would apply to more than just FA/FI votes, but is a proposal for any instance where a discussion has died off and voting has stalled.

In the case of a discussion like a Deletion Review, of which we have one about to celebrate its two year anniversary in the DR process, the appropriate action would be to default to "Keep" lacking the consensus to delete content from the UESP.

In the case of major votes proposed on the Administrator's Noticeboard or Community Portal, those would have to come down to an administrator's best judgement on what the most appropriate action would be that maintains the status quo coming from the lack of consensus.

Thoughts? -Damon ^{talk ♥ edits} 01:23, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't have a problem leaving the FA and FI nominations open as long as needed to get the requisite 5 votes. They are not serious nominations and we do eventually reach a consensus on most of them. The reason many languish at the nomination stage is probably due to inactivity or lack of interest rather than any flaw with the system.

For that deletion review you mentioned, it looks like it was archived without ever actually being closed. I've closed it now, and I agree that "Keep" seems to be the consensus. —⁠Legoless (talk) 12:13, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Is the Creation Club canon?

At the moment, UESP considers the content of the Creation Club to be a canon based on the words Cartogriffi. I asked the official Russian community manager and she told me that the Creativity Club is not a canon. Recently, on the official Russian channel of Bethesda, a video was released in honor of the new edition, which says that the Creation Club should be treated like ordinary mods. I clarified whether this text was officially approved, or whether it was an initiative of the Russian department, to which I was answered that the video was officially approved. I brought the words of Cartogriffi to the Russian community manager, to which I again received an answer about the non-canonical nature of the Creation Club. Since no one from the chapter of Bethesda told us how it should be about the content of the Creation Club, can these arguments be used to question the canonicity of the Creation Club? OktaviySchalidol (talk) 12:41, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I think there may be an internal miscommunication here. Bethesda's official corporate line is that Creation Club are official releases, and for our purposes (namely lorespace guidelines) that's good enough to warrant documentation and inclusion on lore articles. Personally I would not put much weight behind this definition of TES canon coming from a Russian language community manager, given that the game developers have generally shied away from such concepts. We can make a note of the Russian video somewhere on the wiki maybe, but to me this is not grounds to call Creation Club into question on every page it's mentioned. —⁠Legoless (talk) 12:47, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

ESO Furnishings Bot Job

At long last, I'm about to run a bot job that will move all the ESO {{Online Furnishing Summary}} data off the file pages and create individual pages for each, just like everything else on the wiki works. This will create disruptions to some of the furnishing-related lists and templates for the next little while, as there will be at least two separate bot runs and adjustments will be needed to several templates as well. I'll aim to do as much of the work as possible tonight, while the bot runs, but there will likely be cases where we've missed things or where I just can't get as much done as I'd like. Templaters, feel free to do whatever needs to be done if I'm not around, as this job may not be done before I go offline tonight.

Also, we're aware that the new item pages aren't quite what we'll want in their final form. Namely, even the body content is part of a single, monolithic template right now. But getting everything ported from the file pages to Online space is a requisite first step. We can discuss what needs changed once the basic structure is in place. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 04:54, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

I'm on board with this. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 05:00, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Okay, the bot job appears to be done and all the templates should be done. Thanks to Erorah for helping with that part! I'm taking the rest of the night off, but I'll be around for a couple of hours if there are any urgent problems. For anything that can wait, I'll have a look at it tomorrow. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 06:51, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Category and File Naming

It seems like we have two standards on the wiki right now. In Category space, we regularly start the names with the full namespace name (e.g., Category:Online-High Elf). In File space, however, we regularly use the short version of the namespace (e.g., File:ON-skill-Pounce.jpg). Within each space, this name seems to be very consistent, but it makes things very confusing for people unfamiliar with the conventions. While I don't propose any mass renaming projects any time in the near future, I think we should make some kind of guideline that covers both and start to use that.

While it's ever so marginally easier for newbies to figure out the long form, I don't think that's justification enough to use that. I'd suggest that we use the short form in both spaces, converting Category over to the short form as opportunities present themselves (like the ESO furnishing update currently underway). Does anyone else have any thoughts about this?

(Note: I could swear we've had a post about within the last year or two, but if we have I can't find it. I think it may have come up in the context of some other project rather than being brought up directly as its own thing. If anyone remembers/finds anything about this topic, please link it!) – Robin Hood ^(talk) 19:17, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

I personally don't see an issue. Category Names, generally, appear in fewer locations, thus the longer name doesn't really matter. The File names use the shortened version because depending on the namespace, this name could be very very long. Imagine an image "File:Skyrim Very Special Edition-misc-whatever.jpg" compared to "File:VSE-misc-whatever.jpg". In addition, this generally hasn't been confusing for newer users who really fall into two groups: Those that see the existing naming scheme and name their images accordingly, and those that don't understand it at all and omit the beginning part entirely. Changing to have images use the longer name wouldn't help that group of new users who don't understand any part of the system, so it really just creates more confusion for those newer users who already use the existing system.

In terms of categories, new users don't make them. It really just doesn't happen. So only established users are created the categories and they understand the system and there doesn't seem to be a problem....

TLDR: We already HAVE guidelines that we follow. Categories use the full name, images use the shortened name. I see zero benefit from changing this and significant downside in tying up time and resources for something with zero benefit (plus the downside of confusing those users who DO understand the system and use it). Jeancey (talk) 19:23, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Rebuttal to one of your points: I'm an established user and until looking into it when writing the above message, even I didn't know that each space was self-consistent. Or, if I had known that at one point, I didn't remember it. I thought it was generally a mishmash. I know of at least one other user who was confused by it, since we've talked about it recently. That was actually what got me thinking of the fact that we're being inconsistent. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 19:41, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

As far as I know, we are 100% consistent between these two points. There shouldn't be any categories that use shortened names, and there shouldn't be ANY images that have, like, Online-misc-whatever instead of ON-misc-whatever. If any of those exist, they should be fixed, or there may have been a specific discussion to allow it (Off the top of my head, I can imagine such a discussion for the Very Special Edition if there are any categories for that). Jeancey (talk) 19:44, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

I spotted a couple of instances of File:long namespace in a quick check, like File:Morrowind-Map-Issue.jpg, but the ones I spotted were all one-offs like that—none of them are part of any templates or anything else notable. I still think it's really bizarre that we use one naming convention in one namespace and a different one in a different namespace, but I suppose you have a point about it being a lot of effort for little gain beyond the consistency of it. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 03:50, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Edit Request

I received the following note on my talk page a while ago concerning a {{Needs Image}} tag I added to an article back in the summer:

== Image for Oblivion traps page is available on Discord ==

Hello!

You added the "needs image" tag to the "Broken Grate" entry on the Oblivion traps page, back in August 2021, after I created the entry for that trap.

There are a couple of images for that trap available on the Discord.  Probably only one of them needs to be added to the wiki; I just took two screenshots so there would be a choice.  I'm not sure if you are on the Discord, but if you are, https://discord.com/channels/261544750044282883/666710678492413982/903887768038539304 should take you to the post with the screenshots.  If you're not on the Discord, one of the other "name" wiki editors should be able to access that link.

I am dedicated to editing from an IP, so I won't be able to upload the images to the wiki myself.

Thanks!

73.3.58.200 09:52, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

I am not currently on Discord and have very limited time at the moment to dedicate to editing the wiki due to other projects. If one of the other kind editors here has a chance to take a look at this and add the appropriate image to the article in question it would be very much appreciated. Thanks! — Wolfborn^(Howl) 06:33, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

I have uploaded one of the images and added it to the article. For any future image requests, I would strongly advise this user to create a wiki account for upload permissions. —⁠Legoless (talk) 09:31, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Achievement pages

So on the Veteran Dungeon Achievements page, in the survivor challenges, I notice that all of those pages serve as redirects to the main dungeon pages. I also notice that other dungeons, mostly the more-recent DLC dungeons do not serve as redirects. Similar pages, like the Assassin achievements, are not redirects. What exactly is the standard here? Redirects or no? Oath2order (talk) 18:51, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

News Page

for the moment, the ability to add proposed news to the News page is limited to administrators due to changes in MediaWiki 1.28 breaking our ability to protect specific sections of a page. It's possible we might be able to reimplement that feature, but realistically, we've hardly ever used it and I think most of our newer patrollers (and possibly admins) don't even know it exists.

Since we obviously won't want to leave Proposed News totally locked in the long term, I think that the easiest work around is to have Proposed News be a separate page which is editable by everyone. If we do that, then it makes sense to me to remove the "Proposed News" section from the page and put a link to the new page in a banner at the top...something to the effect of "To propose a new news article, add it to this page." I almost never edit or add to the news page, though, so I don't want to implement that without feedback from those who do use it. How does that sound to the news editors? – Robin Hood ^(talk) 23:57, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

That's fine. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 03:08, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Okay, I've gone ahead and made the changes. If there's anything that needs changed, let an admin know. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 07:03, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

(←) Coming back to this, AKB and I were just chatting about this. The current page doesn't show the "Proposed News" as a section anymore. Is that desirable? Or should we reinstate the section to be more like it used to be. It didn't occur to me at the time, but I believe that should still be possible. I think this is mostly down to AKB and Legoless, since I'm told that they're the ones mostly adding proposed news, but since we had an ongoing topic on it, I thought I'd ask here. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 15:59, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

While reinstating the section as it was would be nice if possible, having a dedicated section explaining where to go is a decent solution for now, to allow for the possibility that other users may get interested in writing news in the future. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 16:03, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

The one slight difference would be that the section itself wouldn't be editable...you'd still have to click over to the unprotected page in order to propose news. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 17:01, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

I archived 2021 and/or bumped it to past news. I also made some formatting changes and re-added the Proposed News section. Let me know if there's anything wrong with any of it. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 17:35, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

Revocation of featured status for Skyrim:Thonar Silver-Blood

• Thonar Silver-Blood

I believe that this article should have its featured status revoked as I don't believe it matches our standards of quality, little to anything on this page has to do with the NPC directly, and it reads more like a quest page or a lore page than a gamespace NPC page. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 14:10, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. - Dcsg (talk) 15:02, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Deserves to be looked over and improved. -Zebendal (talk) 15:22, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Maybe revoked temporarily if anything; if the page's dialogue is reformatted to a proper standard instead of the absolute jumbled mess it is right now it could remain a good article. A cleanup tag is needed. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 19:19, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose: I agree with reworking the article to meet current site standards, but I don't see any need to revoke FA status. The article is still a high-quality Skyrim NPC article, and the inclusion of unrelated dialogue on the page is a carry-over from the 'Rumors' inclusion criteria for OBNPCRP. I'm not aware of any formal consensus to remove this info from Skyrim pages, so I certainly don't think it's grounds to strip FA status —⁠Legoless (talk) 22:01, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Morrowind maps for bodies of water

I have restored four old Bloodmoon map images that were proposed for deletion in 2011 (1, 2, 3, 4). The reason for their deletion at the time was due to the low quality of the maps and their redundancy due to our interactive map. However, this is inconsistent with our approach in the Morrowind namespace, where the same map images are still displayed to this day (see e.g. Morrowind:Nabia River). I think we need a consistent approach on this. Do we want these "overview" maps on individual pages for MW and BM bodies of water, or should they all be deleted? Personally I think it's useful to have a bird's eye view of these rivers without having to open the interactive map. —⁠Legoless (talk) 10:37, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

The interactive map is not mobile friendly and often cumbersome to use (especially pan and zoom), so I'll always support standard images of maps. I don't see them as redundant. --Jimeee (talk) 12:20, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Concur with Jimeee The Rim of the Sky (talk) 17:00, 7 April 2022 (UTC)

Concur as well. — Wolfborn^(Howl) 04:30, 8 April 2022 (UTC)

(←) Okay, I've restored the maps to their respective BM pages. —⁠Legoless (talk) 09:35, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Disambiguating article names that are not ambiguous

Its unclear whether the wiki follows the NAMB, a lot of older pages do but some newer pages are trying to. I don't see the need to follow this policy; while it makes sense for Wikipedia, which has about 20 articles under any given identical word, this wiki only tends to have around 2 to 3 bracketed pages at most. It would be a lot more convenient for readers to see "For the zone, see High Isle" on Online:High Isle (Chapter), otherwise they have to take the extra steps of figuring out exactly which page they're looking at and then manually search it up. I see no need to inconvenience readers over standardizing a superfluous policy copied from a much bigger wiki that functions differently. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 21:11, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Most of the older ones do because I follow it and tried to make sure that they follow the wikipedia policy. I don't see a reason why we shouldn't. There could easily be some terms that are used a bunch, and it wouldn't make sense to follow it sometimes and not others. I don't support changing our stance on this, overall. If a specific page needs it, then a discussion on that page specifically can happen. Jeancey (talk) 21:18, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

Dead-End Redirects

Just thought I'd throw a heads-up out there: Taking a look at the Double Redirects page I noticed a number of redirects which currently point to themselves, thus leading nowhere. I'm not familiar enough with the Online namespace to know where these redirects are supposed to be pointing; could someone who's familiar with these point them in the right direction so users who click on the links don't end up in limbo? Thanks. — Wolfborn^(Howl) 01:28, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Those were all the result of a bot job run yesterday. The bot was expecting full-fledged pages at each one of those, but I never considered the possibility that they could be redirects instead. Since it found what it thought was a legitimate article, it updated the link to point to the new location...which ended up being itself. The only thing that needed to be done for those was to undo the bot's edit, which I've done. Thanks for mentioning it! – Robin Hood ^(talk) 01:45, 20 April 2022 (UTC)

Lore Links and Future Links

AKB and I were DMing earlier and he brought up a question of what, exactly, {{Future Link}} was to be used for as compares to {{Lore Link}}. It seems there's a lot of confusion about this, to the point that we feel it might need a new mini-project involving a few bot jobs.

First, to (hopefully) reduce the confusion, I've expanded the existing documentation and hopefully clarified it a bit. You can see that on its own here and it's also shown in the docs for both Lore Link and Future Link. If there's anything unclear, or you'd like more concrete examples, please feel free to edit it or make suggestions on how it could be improved. Besides that, we're proposing doing a couple of things:

Future Link

• Run a bot job for any that correctly resolve to an existing page and convert them to hard links. That's always been the plan—I just hadn't gotten around to it.
• In Lore space only, convert all Future Links to hard links. Using Future Link in Lore space is telling the wiki to search two or three times for the exact same page and if it fails, to display text, which subverts the entire purpose of having Wanted Pages. That's not only silly, it's mildly detrimental to the wiki.
• Consider deleting Future Link altogether. This was brought up, but it was pointed out that ESO makes good use of that template when the designers seem to be teasing future mods. This can happen years in advance, so it makes sense to use a Future Link there in the likelihood that it will change to an actual link if an article is later created.
• Possibly remove the fallback to Lore space altogether and just have it link to the current/parent namespace or show plain text. While this still bypasses the Wanted Pages feature, if properly used, that could be considered a good thing, much as in the ESO scenario, above, where a page is reasonably expected to be created in the future.
• Another suggestion was to convert Future Links below a certain use count into hard (mostly red) links. This will make typos and such stand out, while one-off links to pages that are unlikely to ever be created will also become red links.

Lore Link
Lore Link has been widely misunderstood for years and many people think it's just the normal way to link to a Lore page, which is almost the exact opposite of what it's supposed to be used for. In 99% of cases, maybe even 100%, you should never use Lore Link outside of Lore space itself. The idea with Lore Link is that on pages that are transcluded from Lore space into other spaces (like books), you will be taken to the most relevant page—the one in the current namespace. For the most part (about 3/4 of the time) this has been used correctly, but that still leaves some 20,000 uses spanning 5,000 pages where using it is probably incorrect. We've come up with a couple of ideas to fix that:

• Create a banner, much as is done with other projects, and add it to all the pages in gamespace (thus excluding templates and sandboxes). Like other project banners, it could be removed once Lore Links were fixed or confirmed as correct.
• To discourage future "convenience" uses outside Lore space, rename the template to something longer, like {{Lore Transclusion Link}}, to make people more reluctant to type it.
• Alternatively, or in conjunction with the above, we could take it a step further and have a standard Lore Link display an error if it's used outside of Lore space. Users could then override it to normal behaviour by confirming that the non-Lore usage was intentional. Maybe |confirmed=1.

Any thoughts on any of this? – Robin Hood ^(talk) 02:02, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Oh, one other option that I'd thought of for both templates is that instead of falling back to text as the last resort, they would fall back to red links (Future link in the current space, Lore Link in Lore space), thus highlighting pages that need to be created. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 02:15, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

Wasn't the whole purpose of Future Link to *not* create a redlink? -- SarthesArai ^Talk 23:35, 5 June 2022 (UTC)

It is, and I think that's still something it can be used for (like with future ESO mods), but it has the unfortunate side-effect of masking typos and slowing down page loads where there are a lot of Future/Lore links that are highly unlikely to ever resolve to anything. Future Links can make sense to hide red links, even in Lore space, if the links they're suppressing are for things that are almost certain to be created in the future...but masking the fact that a page is wanted makes it less likely that that will actually occur.

For now, I've modified both templates so that they can be made to show red links by setting a #local at the top of the page, but their default behaviour hasn't changed. I think, this way, it can help us to track down mistakes and such. I'll be documenting that on both pages shortly. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 05:59, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

While all of these good options are working solutions for Future Link, my preferred solution would be deleting it after converting any successful usage to a hard link (and after a review of all the failed resolve attempts has happened). While reviewing its usage, it seemed like for every time it was useful, it was used in a detrimental manner 1,000 times. Whatever the intention behind it, it seems some editors decided to use it effectively as "Lore Link except everywhere". So they would attempt to use it in the Skyrim namespace to link to an article called "Nords", and they don't notice the error since it resolves that with plain text. I think just accepting there might be red links on article every now and then is a better way of going about things than this method, which may have stopped people from making needed pages.

I'm in favor of all of the options to help stop the misuse of Lore Link. Correcting the incorrect usages will be a lengthy process, but those steps will hopefully stop more incorrect usage from happening. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 14:51, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. Future Links should be replaced with local redlinks, Lore Links should be fixed up (again) such that they are only used in books (which should be the only pages that are transcluded from Lorespace at all these days). --Enodoc (talk) 15:29, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

(←) It's a lot later than I had thought, but I've finally got the bot working on this. I've been conservative about what it converts, so the vast majority of the conversions will be for pages that already exist, with the sole exception of Future Links in Lore space, which should all be converted, even if that means they're red links. Even being conservative, this will be converting huge swaths of the two link templates into hard links. Then, once it's done, we can look at what's left and go from there. Hopefully, there won't be anything significant that was incorrectly converted, but if so, I'll put the bot on those in future runs as well. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 04:53, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

I coulda sworn I commented on this but looks like I didn't. Anyway, I find Future Link to be very useful in ESO space pages, as an ever updating game tends to have a lot of them. Usually a topic will be mentioned a couple times and then actually added to the game many years later, so I think we should keep using it there in certain cases. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 22:04, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Possible Solution

I'm just working on the bot job to convert the last of the links that we want converted and I had an idea that might well resolve all the issues for whatever's left. Instead of having Future Link and Lore Link fall back to Lore space, instead have them display a red link to the page in the current namespace, but then add a superscripted [Lore] link if the Lore page exists. For example, Online:Antiquity Furnishings currently has a Lore Link to House Moorcroft, which doesn't exist in Online space but does in Lore space. So, the results of {{Lore Link|House Moorcroft}} would look like this: House Moorcroft ^[Lore]. That leaves the Lore page readily accessible while still notifying users that a House Moorcroft page is wanted in Online space.

The red link will inherently encourage people to create a page for it, or if they think that there's a better approach, they can remove the Lore Link in favour of whatever they think best, like a direct link to House Moorcroft in Lore space. Conceivably, we could continue having black text as a fallback, since the superscripted Lore link would make it obvious that the page was wanted, but I kind of think a red link would be the better choice, since it's a lot more noticeable. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 06:44, 23 September 2022 (UTC)

The bot has now gone through and done the remaining links, at least the ones that it was able to resolve. If anyone spots any issues, please let me know. What's left should be mostly (entirely?) links that the bot couldn't resolve, so a human should look them over to see if there are typos or page names that are singular instead of plural or whatever else. Tomorrow, I'll have another look at the templates and see what we can do to warn users if they're using the templates incorrectly, or to discourage casual use. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 08:29, 24 September 2022 (UTC)

MetaTemplate Viewer

For those of you who do a lot of template work, or those who like to know how things work behind the scenes, I created a gadget yesterday that will allow you to see all the MetaTemplate variables saved on any given page. Those are the ones that templates #save and #load, along with those that you can use with #listsaved. To enable it, just go into the Gadgets section of your preferences and it's currently the last one in the Interface Gadgets section. As the description suggests, the gadget will put a link in the tools section of your sidebar that will take you to the list of MetaTemplate variables saved on that page, if any. Enjoy!

There is one minor flaw in the tool in that, sometimes, you can't page forward from where you are now. That's a limit of the MediaWiki design for special pages. To work around it, increase the number of values returned. In most cases, that should work. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 18:09, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Riven

Handled by Riven: {{#arg}}, <cleanspace>, <cleantable>, {{#explodeargs}}, {{#findfirst}} {{#ifexistx}}, {{#include}}, {{#pickfrom}}, {{#rand}}, {{SKINNAME}}, {{#splitargs}}, {{#trimlinks}}

Known Issues

• #findfirst causes an exception on empty parameters.
• For manually created HTML tables, cleantable expects the full <table><tr><td/th> structure with no parts omitted. Results are unpredictable without the full structure.
• Splitargs is showing blanks when it should be skipping them by default.
• Splitargs is misbehaving when nested tables or templates are involved.
• Cleantable cleans certain rows that shouldn't be.

As many of you already know, I've been working in upgrades and replacements for some of our oldest custom wiki code. The first of these, Riven, is now live on our wiki. It replaces, and in many cases adds features to, the old MetaTemplate versions of the following: {{#arg}}, {{#explodeargs}}, {{#ifexistx}}, {{#include}}, {{#pickfrom}}, {{#rand}}, {{#skin}} (now called {{SKINNAME}}), {{#splitargs}}, {{#trimlinks}}, <cleanspace>, and <cleantable>. It also adds one new feature, {{#findfirst}}, which will replace most of the code in {{Future Link}} and {{Lore Link}}.

Most of these are not mission critical, but between them, they're probably found on most pages of the wiki in some form or another. So, if you notice anything that seems different or just plain broken, please let me know so that I can investigate. If you're curious to know what the new features are or how they work, see the documentation or ask me for clarification. Also, please feel free to edit the documentation as needed. I make no pretense of being good with layout. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 00:19, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Just a quick note: I ran into a couple of relatively minor bugs, but one of them was crashing the wiki when loading certain pages, so I disabled Riven until I could track down the problem. I've finally found and fixed the bug that was causing the problem, but I'll leave Riven disabled for now, as I'll be out of the house until late-afternoon (Eastern) tomorrow. It's still running on both dev and content3 if anyone wants to check it out. Just be sure not to make any changes to pages/templates based on the new features except in sandboxes. Thanks! – Robin Hood ^(talk) 03:56, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

After a nightmare of MediaWiki bugs and my own errors, Riven is finally installed! Most of you should see little or no difference, but if anything seems out of place, please post here or ping me on Discord and I'll have a look at it. Templaters, enjoy the new features! – Robin Hood ^(talk) 03:58, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

It seems our job queue is being quite slow all of a sudden. I don't think this is directly a Riven problem but more an issue of how many jobs there are to do right now. Nevertheless, I'll be slowly transferring a few functions back to MetaTemplate out of an abundance of caution, just to see if anything changes. Most of this will be done on a server that's not in the main cluster of servers that drive the wiki, but you may still see a few visual glitches and such throughout the day. Purging will likely resolve most issues, but we've seen before that sometimes, caching can interfere, despite any purges. I'll be starting with cleanspace and cleantable, since they're the most widely used. That'll likely be followed by #splitargs and #explodeargs, which drive a number of template features on our wiki.

I apologize for the disruption, but the unfortunate reality is that when Nephele designed MetaTemplate, it was new, and bugs were easy to spot and fix as needed. Now, we have these features integrated deeply into the wiki, so even a minor error can cause disruption over tens of thousands of pages. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 15:31, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Dave found the source of the problem, which appears to have been a momentary blip, possibly while uploading or testing Riven, that was just enough to stop the job queue scripts. All job queues have been re-started and are clearing out the jobs as normal once again. Due to the various issues, I'll be rolling things out more slowly (which I'd originally considered and now wish I'd done), only transferring functions from MetaTemplate to Riven one or two at a time so that any impact to the wiki is minimized and it's easier to pinpoint any issues. I'll start later tonight with #trimlinks, since that's mostly using built-in code. I'll post quick updates any time I transfer another function over. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 01:22, 5 July 2022 (UTC)

(←) The last update for Riven has now been uploaded and everything looks good. I'll hold off a day or two before integrating the new features into our templates, just to make sure everything's working before we start taking advantage of the new features. If anyone notices any issues, please let me know!

There may be additional features in the future, some from UespCustomCode while others will be completely new things that I've thought of but didn't want to add before we had stable code covering existing features. If anyone has any ideas for things they'd like to see added, feel free to make suggestions here or on Discord. Things that are awkward or lengthy to do in templates will probably go to the front of the line, although now that we have LUA enabled, a lot of stuff can probably be switched to that (once some of us learn how to use it). The biggie that I've come up with is a {{#list:...}} keyword that would effectively replace the existing {{List}} template (and possibly some of its variants). That really is a horrible design for a wiki template, but it's simplicity itself to do it in PHP, so that'll be an early one. I've also thought of having a {{GAMESPACE}} variable to indicate if a page is in a game space or not, but that'll wait until I do the other namespace-related stuff. Any other suggestions? – Robin Hood ^(talk) 02:52, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Video

We can now embed videos in articles. I would like to establish a policy to allow videos on a few articles where this is clearly beneficial, such as the articles that make up General:Videos. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 20:52, 29 July 2022 (UTC)

Agreed Zebendal (talk) 17:10, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 17:28, 21 August 2022 (UTC)

Delves and Dungeon-esque Page

Is there a specific layout for how Delves, Public Dungeons, Group Dungeon pages are meant to be laid out in? Oath2order (talk) 12:16, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

You can refer to example pages for reference. Online:Sunspire, Online:City of Ash II, Online:Coral Aerie, Online:Inner Sea Armature should all give you an idea of the standard layouts. For Public Dungeons your best guide is our featured article, Online:Nchuthnkarst. —⁠Legoless (talk) 13:25, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Gotcha. I've been meaning to reorder other delve, dungeon, etc, pages to have a consistent layout (not actually removing anything). Is that a big enough project that it should be discussed before doing, or would I be good to go? Oath2order (talk) 13:29, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

That would be a great idea for a project if you want to set out and implement a standard layout. I would say go ahead and take the initiative, and others can then contribute or make suggestions on the layout. You can do it all yourself if you like, but implementing a project tag would ensure the pages remain consistent going forward. —⁠Legoless (talk) 13:51, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Redirect from Plural

I'd like for us to adopt Wikipedia's practice of creating redirects from plural and redirects from singular. There's been a few cases where we haven't stuck with singular form over the year, a recent example is Lore:Druids, to the point that I think this makes sense for that reason alone. Some of these pages are incredibly old that it would be bad to not maintain redirects due to potential external links, even if we were to standardize to singular form preferred only. Additionally, right now if you type in a search for a plural or singular form of something, you just get sent to search results. Clearly if you typed in Lore:Wolves you wanted Lore:Wolf, so we should make that a bit simpler and just allow Lore:Wolves to automatically redirect there. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 22:00, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Daggerfall Unity Mod Namespace

After noticing a recent edit to Daggerfall Mod:Daggerfall Unity/Mods/Daggerfall Enemy Expansion/Dragonling I think it might be worth creating a DFU Mod namespace. This will allow us to appeal more to the DFU community, and cut down the length of that name to something reasonable. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 15:37, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. There's no point having DFU mods in the Daggerfall Mod namespace when they aren't compatible with the original game, so a separate namespace seems best for documenting individual mods. —⁠Legoless (talk) 16:13, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

The new namespace has been created and the pages moved. It looks like I and/or the bot missed one or two things, like setting up the main page, but I'll leave that to you guys because it's past my bedtime. ;) Some links may need to be adjusted as well, as the bot still doesn't deal well with some of the less common situations like namespace/pseudospace moves. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 08:15, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Minor MetaTemplate Update

I've just made a minor update to MetaTemplate which should solve a long-standing issue where edits on a template's /Doc page produced different results than when you refreshed the main template page. This actually appears to have been an intentional feature, just one that didn't work to our benefit in the vast majority of cases. As a result of the change, it's possible that some templates may appear slightly differently than they used to on their /Doc page or the main template page itself. Pages where the template is actually called should be unaffected. While I think this change will always be to our benefit, if there's anything that strikes you as "not right", first try to purge the page, and if it still looks off, please let me know.

Technical details for the templaters: {{#local:...}} had limitations placed on it so that it wouldn't work if you were in Template space and not previewing. The idea behind this was that Template pages should show naked parameters on the template page itself instead of being evaluated (e.g., {{#local:title|{{PAGENAME}}}}{{{title}}}) would show {{{title}}} on the Template page instead of the template name). In reality, this was a detriment in many cases, such as trying to do something like {{#local:ns_base|Online}} directly on a Template page...which would be ignored and the code would still try to run in Template space. I've changed this so that #local will always take effect now, which means that in rare cases where we actually wanted the {{{title}}} (or whatever else) to be displayed, it no longer will. In most of those cases, though, we should probably just convert to using our standard doc style rather than built-in, and use <nowiki> or whatever is necessary to display naked parameter names when we want them. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 19:53, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

Adding Discord links alongside forum links on wiki

Hello all!

Suggestion: Add a link to the UESP Discord on the top-level page for each game or big expansion, near the current link to the UESP forums.

Motivations: As time goes by, people are more familiar with Discord than fourms. The Discord seems busier than the forums, which may help new users get answers more quickly.

The Discord link is always in the sidebar on desktop, but it may be less visible on mobile. Adding it to the main text of the page may help improve visibility.

It also happens that new users find the Discord on their own, and start asking questions in #general, only to be redirected to #online, #skyrim, etc. Referring to the specific channel for each game or expansion on the wiki might help direct new users to the right channel on the Discord.

I'm posting here because some of the top-level pages this change would apply to are protected, so changes need a "name" editor. Also, adding things to those pages should probably have a wide consensus.

Thanks! 73.185.239.90 03:47, 11 November 2022 (UTC)

New Map Beta

We've been working on improving our map system and have a version of the ESO map ready for beta testing: ESO Beta Map

A list of some improvements and changes are listed below along with what feedback we're looking for (post a reply to this topic).

General:

• Smooth scrolling and zooming
• Improved mobile experience (clean, mobile friendly UI)
• Hopefully better performance
• Map shows current location name in the browser tab

Search improvements:

• Search is now "live", typing will instantly begin to search, no pressing enter needed
• Icon searching "type:wayshrine", "type:chest" to search for that specific type of icon in a map (note: doesn't currently respect the "only search this map" setting)

Map Switcher:

• Made more intuitive
• Now automatically updates with new locations (previously was manual)
• The alphabetical list (ABC) will now scroll down to your current location in the list

Keyboard Shortcuts:

• Ctrl + F to bring up search
• Arrow keys to move the map around
• Shift + arrow key pan the map more
• Ctrl + clicking a location always opens a popup
• Shift + clicking a location will edit that location

Miscellaneous/Technical:

• Map tiles now load faster, no longer get "stuck"
• Locations that have a map associated with them now have an added icon on tooltips to indicate you can click into them (zones, dungeons)
• URL now updates automatically as you navigate the map, making it easier to share the exact location to someone
• Map client now supports all other UESP maps, in future will be able to change the game in the url "eso" > "mw" to go to that map
• ESO's map now uses a normalized coordinate scheme, (0.x .. 1.0) better representing the game

Feedback we're looking for (in addition to any bug reports):

1. Do you like the new interface? (anything you dislike?)
2. Does the map on mobile feel intuitive and easy to use? (is it an improvement over the old map?)
3. Does the new UI feel right on desktop?
4. Anything not working right or out of place? (if so, please screenshot and say what device and browser)
5. How is the performance of the new map compared to the old one? (how fast things are, any lag etc)

Thanks for all feedback and looking forward to more improvements to the map system in the future. -- Daveh ^(talk) 17:37, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

I just had a quick look around, and it looks really good! One small bug I spotted (I think) is that when I click on "Map Key" from the three dots menu, nothing changes. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 07:33, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm at work so I only took a minute poke around, but my immediate thought is, "I love it!!" I almost always have the ESO map open on a 2nd screen while playing and have never been happy with how slow and clunky the existing map is. This new map is so much smoother and feels much more user--friendly. I'll spend some time analyzing it over the next few days and see if I come across any issues or come up with any suggestions. --Xyzzy ^Talk 22:58, 28 November 2022 (UTC)

After using the new map for a week on PC I like it much, much better than the existing one. Here's some feedback:

1) The scrolling zoom is much smoother than the existing map, although it is still a bit jerky. It appears to minutely bounce around as I scroll in and out, causing a slightly unpleasant visual sensation for me. This effect was the same on Firefox, Chrome and Edge browsers.

2) In the existing map you can click on either a location's icon or its name to select it, while you have to click the icon on the beta map. I prefer being able to click on either.

3) In either map, searching for multiple items like skyshards or treasure maps brings up a list of search results, but when you select one result in the beta map it closes the search results, while they stay open in the existing map. I prefer that the results stay open since it makes it simpler to check multiple search items.

4) As Robin said the 3-dot menu isn't operating properly. The only option that functions for me is "Reset Map".

Overall, I think this new map is a huge improvement. Thanks for implementing it! --Xyzzy ^Talk 02:49, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Unban From Discord

Can I be unbanned from the Discord server? I feel it's been detrimental to the Wiki, and I hate having to try PMing people for questions. Sure, I can utilize talk pages, but if we are being honest, those are far less efficient and take more time. You are asking me to wait until April to rejoin the Discord. If you need someone to vouch for me, ask Legoless, as he views me favorably. I already told him that if needed, make a special role for me where I can only communicate within wiki discussion and wiki tech help, for I have no interest in interacting with your Discord community, but he told me yall rejected my proposal. Understandable, as a role just for me would be a bit much, but I apologize. The first line of the Discord's wiki page literally says "Discord provides a chatroom environment for real-time discussions with other UESP editors", yet how many of the discord moderators that were part of the vote to boot me actually edited for the wiki recently? There are far more problematic people on the Discord than I. - Zebendal (talk) 14:19, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

You know why you were banned from Discord. You were asked not to communicate using only the letter "E", because this is meaningless to other users. If you reply to someone else with "E", does it mean "yes", "no", "I agree", "I disagree", or "I am making a noise"?

You went on to inform us "I have come to announce that i do not appreciate being harassed over what i identify as. I am now E, Zeb is no more (at least for when I am) You can also refer to me as ekem, which is the fifth letter of the daedric alphabet". This raised several eyebrows among the moderating team.

On 2022-10-16, you posted a long screed in #server_discussion which included "Pl3ase confirm if it is ok to us3 the l3tt3r b3t33n D and F, I dont wanna b3 bann3d again. And if so, in what cont3xt can i do so th3n?".

You intentionally disobeyed a very simple moderator request - do not post "E" as if it's conversation - and now you are being punished for it. Remember: if we can't trust you to obey moderator requests, then we can't trust you to obey any of the other rules.

We are sorry that it is inconvenient for you to have to communicate solely through PMs and Talk pages, but as I hope you remember, the Discord is just for chatting. All binding discussion relating to the wiki must take place on the wiki in any case.

Perhaps you will remember this inconvenience when you return to the Discord, and do not break rules or your mediation agreement again? -- baratron (talk) 01:15, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Ok so are y'all letting me back in or not? I didn't realize the extent of power the letter E had over you all. I am sorry if I made anyone feel uncomfortable over using the letter E by itself, and will not abuse this power. Sometimes the letter E isn't E for everyone, you know? It's a shame, as I really was serious about identifying with the letter E, but for some reason, yall don't think I was being serious. The example you showed on October 16th is clearly me attempting to abide by your rules. - Zebendal (talk) 01:28, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

baratron's response makes it pretty clear that you won't be allowed back on until whenever the ban expires. The ban wasn't about any specific letter, but rather a pattern of behaviour—one that you appear to be continuing with your response here. Let it go. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 02:02, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Ditto to the above. I wasn't involved in the ban discussion but there needs to be some self-reflection done before it expires if you don't want to just get banned again for continuing to troll the Discord mods. —⁠Legoless (talk) 07:54, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Considering yall rejected my apology, why am I not allowed to be angry about it? This is pretty mild compared to other discord users. I said I am sorry, alright? Just make it a perma ban next time if you think im going to step out of line. Zebendal (talk) 08:03, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

It isn't mild, that's the thing. You weren't banned for spamming "E" in reply to conversation. That's just spam which we can clean up if it bothers us. You were banned for disobeying moderator requests and breaking your #mediation agreement.

If you can't understand how serious that is, then we have reached an impasse.

Also, your ban has nothing to do with other Discord users and their behaviour, so please stop claiming that there are "far more problematic people on the Discord". Anyone who ignores moderator requests and/or breaks the terms of their #mediation agreement is treated the same way. We don't have it in for you in particular. I certainly don't. --baratron (talk) 22:25, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't think the above post really constitutes an apology personally, but additions like this are a great way to negate any goodwill you may have earned. —⁠Legoless (talk) 15:11, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Standardized Table Icons

Some of you have probably noticed that I've just created templates for a bunch of our icons. Mostly, I did it to make these icons more accessible (i.e., {{Damage Icon}} as opposed to [[File:OBDamageIcon small.png|22px|Damage]]). This also gives us some ability to code things a little differently for mobile vs. desktop as well. Plus, it's a lot easier to change a single template than to have to run a bot job for any changes that may come up in the future. As much as I love working on the bot, I really don't feel the need to use it to change thousands of pages when updating a single template will work even better. If nothing else, we should probably rename some of the icons once the templates are fully in place, just to conform to the current site naming standard. Anyway, as part of templating those, coupled with a suggestion on Discord, I've tentatively changed the Value icon used in several of our templates to use a namespace-specific image. That's only intended as a bold, revert, discuss type of change to give an idea of what's doable for the sake of discussing whether we actually want to do it. There's an equally valid argument to standardize on the Oblivion icons, as I think we've always done, so that the images are easily identifiable site-wide. All the other templates are designed with either possibility in mind, but for now, they're all still using the Oblivion ones.

To see the changed icon, have a look at the Value icon on Oblivion:Azura's Star vs. Skyrim:Azura's Star, for example. The Oblivion icon is the icon used in Oblivion; the Skyrim icon is a coin from Skyrim. Is that something we want to do, or do we want to just stick with Oblivion as we've always done? The templates being designed the way they are, it's easy to change to suit whatever we decide, both now and in the future. The Blades icon () is quite a bit cleaner at larger resolutions, for instance, but at the current standard of 22 pixels, there's really nothing to recommend it over the Oblivion one (). It looks quite a bit worse, in fact. Personally, I feel like we should probably use something site wide, and that for now, the Oblivion ones are sufficient and what people are used to, but I think that in the not-too-distant future, the Oblivion ones are going to become too small/low-res for increasing screen resolutions, and we might want to go with something different. Any other opinions? – Robin Hood ^(talk) 05:15, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

This is a good change to use templates, although I'm not so sure I like the different icons. It's good in theory, but Morrowind's especially is hard to identify due to its darkness. Using Oblivion is also awkward and anachronistic both forward and backward, though it has the best looking icons with the widest range of applications. I think the best solution would be to have Elder Scrolls-style icons designed for general use for all games. Same way the home page has a generic sword and the UESP logo is a generic scroll. —Dillonn241 (talk) 07:34, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

As per the discussion in the Discord, I agree with the idea of using a template. Dillonn's idea of using our own general icons is quite a good idea in my opinion, I wouldn't have even thought of it, but it's a great idea. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 18:16, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with creating our own icons.Zebendal (talk) 20:41, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Wiki affiliation / Gaming Wiki Network

Throughout the last couple weeks, myself and a couple of other staff members have been in contact with other independent wikis such as the Fallout wiki, Halopedia, Combine OverWiki, Imperial Library, etc. (https://en.uesp.net/wiki/UESPWiki:Affiliates) These wikis are currently in the process of joining a network called the "Gaming Wiki Network" (https://gamingwikinetwork.org/members/) for independent wikis such as ourselves to be able to link to each other/support each other through discussion and social media posts. This network already has a few big names and seems to be increasing its group number.

It could also potentially increase our SEO effectiveness, with more links going to the UESP on other websites. I would like to ask other members of the UESP their thoughts on this path of action, there are numerous benefits with no negatives that I can see, if anyone has any potential issues with this, it would be useful to hear.

I would also like to ask if other members would see it as appropriate to add a box/section with links to other independent affiliates on the main page, like said wikis have done for linking to us. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 18:22, 29 December 2022 (UTC)

Merging DLC Namespaces

I would like to propose that we merge the DLC namespaces, such as Bloodmoon:, Tribunal: KOTN:, etc into their main gamespaces. This has already been done for Dragonborn:, it will benefit editors in terms of linking items, places, etc as it will streamline the process a bit. It will also allow item pages to be merged, giving easier access for users. These games are all also sold as bundles now too, so the majority of players will have these DLCs. We could do this in the same way we do ESO DLCs with the icon as a mod header. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 10:15, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

KotN doesn't have a separate namespace. I'm generally supportive of merging Bloodmoon, Tribunal, and Shivering namespaces into their parent games, but it was an awful lot of work for Dragonborn. —⁠Legoless (talk) 10:18, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I agree. It is time to merge them. Long overdue. Zebendal (talk) 10:28, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Just adding my voice that as a user it makes sense to merge - stuff like DLC items not being in Oblivion:Items is inconvenient. Thal-J (talk) 15:16, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

We would still probably want to maintain a degree of separation between item lists for expansions, as is already done for minor Oblivion DLCs. —⁠Legoless (talk) 16:04, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

It's been a long time coming. It's going to be difficult and take a while but that's no argument that we shouldn't start attacking the problem. -Dcsg (talk) 18:42, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

(←) I am somewhat in favor of the idea. As was done with the Dragonborn namespace, redirects should be maintained for all pages. I would also propose that only one be done at a time, to minimize the chance of unnoticed errors/problems during this process. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 18:53, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm very very opposed to merging them. At the moment, the only benefit to merging them is "it makes people feel better". There is zero ACTUAL benefit to merging the namespaces. The pages are still findable via search, there is no benefit to linking them, and more than likely the DLC pages that are being referenced above like item lists would just end up being Oblivion:Shivering Quest Items etc, due to the size of the pages we'd want to split them up anyway.

There are significant issues with merging older namespaces, including that for months the namespaces will be a mess as we work through the many issues caused by the merge, including dozens of template problems, duplicate pages that'll need parsing, category issues, none of which can be easily done by bot. In addition, the older namespaces are often linked to by pages outside the wiki, causing problems for people who have linked to us in guides and won't be updating those again. Thousands of images would need to be moved, which can be done by bot, but it also tends to wreck the job queue for a while, slowing things down.

I'm sure there are more issues with merging them than I'm thinking off just off the top of my head, but I really don't see any functional benefit to merging namespaces, other than some people want to do it. At least with dragonborn, there was an actual wiki based reason for merging, in that we were still getting new content that used both dragonborn and skyrim assets/dependencies, and it was getting hard to try and place the content in one namespace or another. We aren't getting new content for any of the older games, so that isn't a reason for a merge to exist.

As a side note, Some people just seem to not like the namespace style at all, and I wonder if some of this desire for merging comes from that. Namespaces are useful for separating content that is fully separated in game. Someone who doesn't own Shivering Isles or Bloodmoon is never going to run across that content in Oblivion or Morrowind. There were very distinct data based differences that lead to us creating the separate namespaces to begin with, and those differences still remain. Instead of focusing a large amount of time and effort merging namespaces for little to no actual gain, that effort could be redirected to filling out house pages for morrowind and its expansions that weren't created before, or filling out the existing dungeons and quests that aren't complete yet. It just seems counter productive to create a large amount of work that doesn't actually make the wiki better and delays any work that would make it better. A merge seems like several steps backwards for one step to the side.

TLDR; there are many downsides to a merge, and little to no upside, I just don't see why we would do this to ourselves... Jeancey (talk) 02:05, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

I believe that there are more benefits of the merging tha downsides. It may be long process, but just because it's not easy does not mean it's a project not worth pursuing. Namespaces in general are a great tool to keep info between games separate, and they are not being replacd nor the format of namespaces is being fundamentally changed. Tribunal is not separate from TES3, Shivering is not separate from TES 4. The Dragonborn merging was generally beneficial, and I believe that merging namespaces for TES 3 and TES 4 is going to be beneficial for the UESP in a long run. Tyrvarion (talk) 11:07, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Personally I never liked the concept of namespaces for expansions - having said that the cost vs. benefit is poor for doing a merge. This won't really benefit our readers in the larger scheme of things. Most of our readers don't care what namespace we use and I bet the Oblivion pages are low traffic too. If a bot can do the merge seamlessly, 100%, with no human interaction then sure, go for it - anything less is time better spent elsewhere. --Jimeee (talk) 11:19, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

From a user perspective. I think separated namespaces are gr8. Whenever I'm researching whatever, its so much easier to find the information I'm looking for when the DLC content is separated from base game content. Just having the DG or DB tag next to items or whatever makes it a scavenger hunt to find what you're looking for. Like what books did Dawnguard add to the game? time to ctrl+f for five minutes through a masterlist of "Skyrim" books to find out. It really obscures what was actually in the base game and what wasn't, which feels rather revisionistic... TheRockWithAMedicineCupOnHisHead (talk)

This isn't the case. You can find a full list of Dawnguard books in this category, which is linked to on the main Skyrim:Dawnguard Items article. Separation can definitely be maintained within a single namespace, with the added benefit of merged lists. —⁠Legoless (talk) 20:52, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Yeah you're right, I missed that because the first emboldened hyperlink there that says Books goes to the masterlist, which isn't a big issue. At the same time, the category pages don't show the item icon imagery or any info about the book outside of its name. I mean, it's not too annoying, but I definitely prefer things sorted separately ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (though with Skyrim its a lost cause atp) TheRockWithAMedicineCupOnHisHead (talk) 23:30, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

(←) My chief concern here is how much follow-up will be necessary vs. how many users are active in those spaces. The bot can do a lot of the heavy lifting, but the humans figuring out what all the bot needs to do are imperfect. The bot run I did yesterday is proof of that, where it wasn't obvious until after the run started that a lot of different issues hadn't been accounted for. Many of them I didn't even know were issues and nobody had thought to mention them or they assumed I knew. So, no, a non-trivial bot run will never be 100% perfect. Once we get to the point where the bot can't reasonably be used to fix anything else, humans have to figure out the rest. How many people are active in MW and OB spaces right now to even find problems and then, of course, to fix them?

There's also the question of time. I'm either currently working on, or want to work on, several different things. Being chronically ill, I have lots of time to do so, but a lot less stamina, so I'm not exactly working on this full time, and while there's a lot less content in those spaces than in Skyrim, there's some pretty intensive stuff that needs to be done. Don't get me wrong, if the ultimate decision is to go ahead with this and we have enough people involved in it and looking out for things that need attention, then I'm happy to do it, but it's going to be quite a while before I get to it...at least several weeks, possibly a couple of months. So, one way or another, there's definitely no rush to decide. :) – Robin Hood ^(talk) 23:41, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

It seems that nobody has mentioned that one of the functional reasons this is being suggested now is to do with the new map work that TJ and Dave are undertaking. Just wanted to clarify that this suggestion has not been made on a whim and has a functional basis; unfortunately I do not know the details to be able to explain why this would help the functionality of the new maps. --Enodoc (talk) 23:53, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Is this enough for this to pass?Zebendal (talk) 05:36, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

There does not appear to be consensus, no. Mostly this was talking about the different issues and benefits, and nothing was actually settled on. There are still significant concerns on what actual benefits this provides to counter the excessive downsides and work involved. Large work for little to no gain isn't really a good use of our limited resources at a time when we have more viewership than ever and fewer and fewer consistent editors. There is a significant amount of human effort involved in this, and without that effort, any sort of merge will result in a terrible site experience for users where nothing is usable and the quality of the information we provide is reduced. Dragonborn and Skyrim was the smallest merge and even that took a few months to settle out with significant effort on our part, due to the urgent time frame before the anniversary edition came out. Without that urgency, I fear that this will effectively make the former DLC namespaces destroyed with formatting, image and template issues that never get fixed with no easy way to "undo" the merge if it's clear that no one is able or willing to put the effort in to fix the issues. Jeancey (talk) 19:36, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Prefering to Use Legends art for Lore Pages

I feel like using in game screenshots is worse than official artwork due to the technological limitations of in engine imagery holding back the quality of a character's design.

E.g the main screenshot on dyus' lore page vs his legends image

In practically every single aspect the legends image is superior, even having an improved point of view.

I feel like it would make more sense to use these images as the primary image on lore pages when they are similarly superior to in-game screenshots. — Unsigned comment by 81.140.243.214 (talk) at 19:05 on 10 January 2023 (UTC)

We often do. I'm not sure what this suggestion is proposing—there's no policy against switching the main image on lore articles to a higher quality or more recent depiction. —⁠Legoless (talk) 20:47, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Yea there's not much policy on what is used as the main image. Generally, we just use what something looked like in its prime (ie Lore:Vlastarus has the vibrant town as main image, instead of the ruined fort). For Dyus, the Oblivion image and Legends image take place around the same time, but as the Legends image is much higher resolution and quality, we're better off using that between the two.

If you see any articles where you feel a Legends image would be better, feel free to replace them! I think many are missing them just cuz they're old articles. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 21:38, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Template:Online Sets Question

Hi,

I'm trying to get Armor of the Trainee to show up in Template:Online Sets, but I am unable to get it do so. Is the template unable to go past 32 groups, and if so, we really need to fix that soon before the new zone, otherwise the sets won't show up. Oath2order (talk) 07:15, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

I've expanded the number of groups to 48. Also, there were a couple of bugs with even/odd colouring on longer navboxes (21+ groups), so if anything was manually adjusted to work around the problem, it might need to be unadjusted. I didn't fully trace through the logic of the bug vs. what we're actually using on the wiki, so it's entirely possible that little or nothing has actually changed. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 19:31, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Thank you so much! The even/odd colouring seems to look fine. Oath2order (talk) 00:15, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Repeatable Quests question

So I was going through the category for ESO's repeatable quests to see what was still needed on the page for repeatable quests, and I had a few questions:

1. Is there a way to get the Repeatable Quest symbol next to the redirect quest pages, like for the Fighters Guild quests?
2. Is ON:Capture Farm a real quest, or is that just something that the bot made? Can it be a redirect, or deleted?
3. Can someone delete ON:Pledge: Blessed Crucible I and ON:Pledge: Direfrost Keep I? Clearly not actual quests. Oath2order (talk) 04:14, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

1. Almost certainly yes. You might need to be more specific about what you want and where you want it though.
2. It's in the database but is not in use. Might as well redirect to Capture Resource.
3. They can be redirects to Pledge: Blessed Crucible and Pledge: Direfrost Keep I think.

Enodoc (talk) 22:40, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

1. I want the symbol next to "Ancestor Wards in Deshaan" to be able to be next to "Madness in the Rift" (and whatever other quest needs it).
2. Is it possible to just delete the three instead of creating a redirect that isn't needed? I'll still do the redirect, but would prefer to just delete them. Oath2order (talk) 00:58, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Ah sure, I think you just need to pop {{Save Named Values|Repeatable|Daily}} on the relevant redirect pages. The only reason I suggest a redirect for the Pledges is just in case anything expects those pages to exist; if that's not likely, deleting should be fine. --Enodoc (talk) 01:23, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

That works perfectly, thank you! And a good point for the pledges, I notice that they were made by HoodBot in 2019 so it's probably best to keep them, it might make them again. HoodBot might try it up again. Thank you so much! Oath2order (talk) 02:04, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Okay, question again. Is there a way to get the DLC icon to show up on the page, after the name? Using Template:Save Named Values removes that (which used to show up by default). Oath2order (talk) 02:54, 2 February 2023 (UTC)

Bot Help

For those of you who haven't seen my posts on Discord, we could really use a second bot programmer to help out with at least a specific project and potentially more in the future, if anyone's interested. If designing a bot from the ground up seems a bit intimidating, using HoodBot (the program, not the account) itself is an option, though you'd need to be comfortable in C# and put up with the fact that I haven't documented a bloody thing. I'm more than willing to walk you through it all, of course. Please reply here or DM me on Discord if interested. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 17:07, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

SkyrimTAG namespace request

As I begin to gather and plan out information in my sandbox regarding Skyrim - The Adventure Game, I think giving it a namespace would be very beneficial. For example, there are hundreds of numbered cards, and users could easily visit SkyrimTAG:123 to see card 123. There is certainly enough information to warrant one, to document quests, characters, items, encounters, and the player character's mechanics. - Samantha Says (talk) 17:09, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

As long as there's more enough information, that's a good reason to have at least a pseudo-namespace (see MediaWiki:Uespnamespacelist for examples of pseudonamespaces vs. regular ones). However, someone raised the question on Discord as to whether we're allowed to host the cards or not. Since I'm not versed in that kind of thing myself, I'll wait until others have had the change to chip in. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 20:05, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

A separate namespace sounds reasonable. SkyrimVSE is a small namespace but makes use of one quite successfully. I think a redirect from Merchandise should remain, just to ensure it gets listed as a product in that namespace. —⁠Legoless (talk) 22:18, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Done! Sorry for the delay, it slipped my mind. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 05:07, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Page Move Request

Could someone with the requisite permissions please move Oblivion:Imperial City Palace back to its correct name of Oblivion:Green Emperor Way? The page was originally Green Emperor Way for a long time and was moved to its current location in error a couple of years ago; a discussion was held about moving it back without any objections. I can't move the page myself since the destination page already exists, hence this request. Thanks! — Wolfborn^(Howl) 07:47, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Done. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 08:38, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! — Wolfborn^(Howl) 09:11, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

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