UESPWiki talk:Survey Results

Initial Thoughts

A few quick initial thoughts about the survey results:

• Generally positive feedback which is not particularly surprising but some useful "you could do X better" as well.
• A huge amount of comments (+12,000) which surprised me. I figured most people would just complete the survey quickly but a lot of people gave feedback. This is both good (for obvious reasons) and bad (will take a while to sort through).
• Things That are OK:

• Advertising - A lot of people block ads (not surprisingly) and the majority opinion is indifference or better.
• Speed - While there is always "faster" this matches my benchmarking and external tests.

• Areas That Need Improvement

• Search - A mix of good/bad feedback but definitely on the "could be better" side.
• Mobile Content
• Other Sites - Low use of the blog/forums/chatroom are partially due to people not knowing about them and some lack of content/integrated design.

• Things to Not Work On:

• Integration with social media
• Completely new site design (just improve the current one)

• Regarding a fan meetup or convention there was mixed results as mostly expected. This is something I'd like to look at setting up for next year.

I'll be going over the results more carefully and planning what I'll be focussing on at the beginning of next year. The survey won't completely dictate my plan but it will help shape it. -- Daveh (talk) 17:15, 9 December 2012 (GMT)

A very small minority said they prefer TIL over our Lore section, but others said they spent most or all of their time here reading the lore section (and applaud our "accuracy"). One person said he preferred TES wiki for lore, and there were other less absurd comments pointing out that the Lore is sometimes inaccurate or incomplete, so the more people who want to add to the lore section, the better. It seems to be a big draw of the site, but it's not as complete as it could be.

To address the numerous complaints about the lack of inter-connectivity between the gamespace pages and the lore pages, we could, perhaps, add an info box to the tops of the lore pages instead of having a "See Also" section at the bottom, so people can more easily navigate out of the lore section if they want to. And we could add a lore link parameter to gamespace info boxes. As one person put it, "Game articles should ALL have links to corresponding lore articles."

Can we get a "did you mean" feature put in to help solve misspellings? Like a thousand people requested it, and I might not be exaggerating.

As one person put it, "General understanding is needed before easy usage" of the site, and that's echoed in some form throughout the comments. It might help to have an explanation of the site's arrangement on the Main Page, or at least a prominent link to one. There were several recommendations to improve the Main Page, anyways, so we could kill two birds with one stone. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 21:30, 9 December 2012 (GMT)

Misspelling from searches can be fixed by moving to a better search system like Sphinx (used on content3 for testing) or Lucene. I'm not familiar with how Lucene does but Sphinx is pretty good at "guessing" what you meant when you misspell something. This is something I've been wanting to do for a while but this pushes its importance to something that should happen sooner (i.e., very early next year). -- Daveh (talk) 21:58, 9 December 2012 (GMT)

I also agree that when I first joined this site I did so mostly for Lore. While I enjoy TIL, UESP, for me has always been more or less up to date. Again not bashing TIL but I haven't seen any of the new Skyrim, Dawnguard, or Dragonborn stuff added to the articles. However, lore section on UESP could use some spit shine. I also commented (on the survey) perhaps having writers come on and write articles like TIL. (See Guide to Solstheim, Guide to Daedra, CHIM etc)I'm all for various views on particular subjects which give us a chance to hear folks thoughts and friendly debates. But I don't want UESP to feel like they are stepping on TIL toes but there are a variety of subjects not yet explored we can begin with. --Lore Master (talk) 22:08, 9 December 2012 (GMT)

Quite a few comments seeking expansion of lorespace. It's a shame we have so few editors to do it, as there's definitely work to be done. I also noticed a few people commenting on the ad banner at the top of the page (which I myself am not a big fan of), as well as "floating" ads which aren't supposed to be there. Upgrading the search function would be a great idea. —Legoless (talk) 22:31, 9 December 2012 (GMT)

I'd contribute more to Lore but I am terrible at grammar. I feel somewhat embarrassed I always have Alphabetface? Minor edits etc always trailing after me fixing my mistakes. I run an official fansite for an large MMORPG (Wizard101) and we specialize in genome data for pets within the game and so I know consistency and accuracy are key. I just don't feel like I am up for that task. I never even finished writing the summary for Lord of Souls.... --Lore Master (talk) 22:45, 9 December 2012 (GMT)

There might be users who take pleasure in correcting such errors. I, for example, don't have too much time, and I definitely don't have time to write full articles. However, e.g. I'd like to contribute, and I was thinking about doing such things (and will try during the holidays). None of us is perfect, but IMHO together we can work wonders¹. If one writes articles with the best intent, one should not be embarassed with grammar, as others who are good with it can help. Expanding the knowledge base of the site may well worth a few grammatic errors. Also, I agree that expanding the lore space a bit like suggested would be a good idea (maybe an "extended lore" or such feature on the lore page). It took me quite a time e.g. to understand the whole picture behind the gods (and them being plane(t)s... it's still a bit scrambled), and TIL helped me a lot here. (¹from Hermaeus Mora) Dmartinkovics (talk) 18:22, 11 December 2012 (GMT)

(←) A large majority of the lore information is already basically there, either in the form of gamespace articles or in-game books. Putting it together into comprehensive lore articles really requires an in-depth understanding of the subject, as well as good grammar. I haven't a clue what you mean when you suggest "extended lore" - the stuff about plane(t)s is mostly from unofficial, out-of-game developer sources, which isn't strictly canon and as such doesn't get much coverage. TIL, on the other hand, has no such limitations. At this stage, if you can't find out about an element of canon lore on the wiki, you probably just aren't looking hard enough. There's no real rush to expand lorespace, but more editors would certainly help to spread the payload. —Legoless (talk) 19:49, 11 December 2012 (GMT)

You actually do have a clue, as you described my thoughts perfectly ("the stuff about plane(t)s...). I know this is not exactly canon, but sometimes helps understanding the more... I don't know.. difficult (?) parts. Maybe it's my mind that is limited in comprehension of some subjects. It, however, is also true that such subjects are already covered at TIL. Long story short, I agree with your point. Dmartinkovics (talk) 20:18, 11 December 2012 (GMT)

On grammar, spelling, writing style: Lore Master, please don't let that stop you. Dmartinkovics is right: There are many people who enjoy looking at grammar, writing style, etc., and working to improve it, and--as long as there's some useful material there--I think virtually everyone appreciates the initial contribution or a leap forward. Of course, if you are too busy, you are too busy. But if your knowledge is ok, please let someone work together with you on the language. If you want to do this before publishing, just ask one/some of us first. I particularly enjoy trying to write well and improve writing. There's an invitation on User:JR to freely ask me for help, and I enjoy doing it whether it's a little grammar question, or looking at a long article. --JR (talk) 05:45, 3 January 2013 (GMT)

Mobile enabled site

After reading through quite a few comments, I had quite a few toughts, and I had the luck to do a little research, and I would like to share the results altough this info might already be known - but words are quite free, and the followings may help, but definitely won't do any harm. I would like to state that the followings will only concern the technical aspects, not content. Also, I'm no programmer, so the feasibility of my ideas might be questionable. Also, I will not list actual products, as I only want to give a general approach on here. I personally read UESP from mobile devices when:

• using a PC/notebook is not feasible (while traveling, when in bed, when looking for data about quests, and too lazy to quit)
• to read lore. When near my PC, I will most likely invest time into actually playing the games, and only looking up information that is required (maps, quests, bugs, etc.)

Many of my friends, whom I have asked do the same, and throughout the comments, one can read similar things. I had the pleasure to test quite a few mobile platforms (iOS, Android, Nokia) and browsers, and have found a few things worth noting. I will try to go a pro-con way here to be fair and informative. Oh, and btw. sorry for the long post.

Many have mentioned the Wikia style, which however have a few issues. The collapsible menus of the Wikia style are VERY convenient and useful, when they work. When they do not, however, they are most annoying. Quite a few browsers have problems with these menues, and they are useless, unclickable in them. This results a nice table of content, with a bunch of disabled buttons. When one then loads the full site, it will be much slower, it will make more traffic, and the very annoying follow-the-screen ad is there too.

UESP's current layout is almost perfectly mobile enabled, except a few things. First of all, some browsers can't handle the layout, and scramble things up. On nearly every platform, I have tried, it is very hard to "right click" (and open in new tab) links with bigger fingers, as for most of the times, the browser will try to open the background image. Also, the ads may mess up things.

Making an app would be good of course, but there are quite a few platforms, and it might be hard to support older devices, whose owners would read UESP on mobile devices, if they could. However, maybe a standalone map app would be nice, as the current map system is not perfect on mobile phones, but can be invaluable, especially for Morrowind.

All in all, I would say that less might be more in this case. More than 1/3 of the answers requested a mobile enabled site, and as such, the broadest compatibility would be the best, even if it is not as fancy as some other sites. Easy readability, low data rates and fast response on older systems would be desirable (but I'm sure this is quite common sense). Also, if it is possible at all, make ads selectable (at least for registered users). If one does not have an unlimited data plan, one would most likely wish to spend the data on valuable content. On the other hand, when one has an unlimited data plan, one might as well support the site with ads enabled (but here it would be invaluable, if the ad didn't have a big performance impact), and I think this theory is supported by the graphs. Dmartinkovics (talk) 18:04, 11 December 2012 (GMT)

Ease of access and ease of navigation on as wide an array of platforms as possible. A lot of users (and contributors/editors) are tech people. --JR (talk) 08:53, 3 January 2013 (GMT)

I have tested the mobile site on Nokia (C7-00), Android (Samsung Galaxy Mini II) and IOS (Iphone 4S) platforms. It performs VERY well. Absolutely well done with the work! It also works well on PC (as I have, somewhere, stated it before, Hungary do not have many data-limit free mobile internet services, and when one travels and uses laptop from mobile internet, this is a major issue - and feature of UESP. Thank you for implementing such a usefull desing! Dmartinkovics (talk) 11:26, 12 January 2013 (GMT)

Embedded Media

I'm not sure if it was a very widely requested feature, but I'm pretty sure nobody was against including videos or video walkthroughs on pages. How easily could this be implemented in wikimedia?

There would need to be restrictions to only a few of the major sites, or to just YouTube. It would need to be in a special page list so people could check for external changes to videos. I don't want to allow a good walkthrough to later find it was changed to include spam ads or something. Lukish (talk) 22:48, 2 January 2013 (GMT)

I am against the inclusion of video walk-throughs on UESP, unless we can nominate a specific few people who would be in charge of it all for quality control (which I am also against, as it would effectively make it a thing that nobody could do besides those few, which is counter to our open editing philosophy), since in my experience on other gaming wikis, most of the videos are low quality, and just anybody can put whatever they want up, and it is usually of low quality or can stray off topic.

However, if this proposal were to pass consensus and be accepted, the way I would want it to work was that we set up a UESP YouTube channel or something, and we have strict quality control, and we have a team who can record high quality, concise videos that are to the point, or would be able to accept submissions of videos while enforcing strict guidelines on what is acceptable for inclusion on the wiki, since I don't want to see subpar videos being scattered around the wiki like there are on the millions of incredibly crappy wikis spread across the internet. Snowmane^{(talk•email)} 23:27, 2 January 2013 (GMT)

Quality can't be maintained with video, which goes against the entire point of a wiki. I'm with Snowmane in opposing video walkthroughs. In exceptional cases, links to videos are allowed (e.g. Skyrim:Pre-Release Content), but it shouldn't be a regular thing. —Legoless (talk) 23:43, 2 January 2013 (GMT)

First let me say that I've been a fan of the notion of video guides for a while. A decent video can show a guide to a tricky quest or area then a text guide can. While simply linking or embedding videos should be simple enough, it's another matter making sure the videos are of good quality. Videos can be edited for quality, but it is much harder than fixing a typographical error. Right away, I can say that any effort would have to be done by UESP editors with the sole purpose of any videos created is using them as video guides for the UESP. As in, we can't just accept a video guide made by anyone who happened to create a video guide. The video, its content, and its use would have to be firmly controlled for video inclusion to be manageable.

This proposal really requires extremely dedicated and involved editors working on and monitoring the entire process to make sure the video is of the best possible quality before release, along with editors who have beefy enough rigs and the time to meticulously walk through areas and quests to cover what's relevant. Between capturing and editing (completely ignoring that we would only be able to truly include videos on our most completed articles, as otherwise we'll likely miss details), this will be a rather time consuming project that will only have limited uses throughout the wiki for the longest time even with a dedicated effort behind it. The alternative (allowing any video offered onto the site), just isn't the desirable. I don't want to see some fuzzy video with an incomprehensible voice over loaded with advertisements for the creator's video channel on the site, I want to see well done authoritative video guides for the UESP, by the UESP.

With that said, I won't say we shouldn't have video guides, just not now (unless several people are ready to go forward with it this moment). --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 00:18, 3 January 2013 (GMT)

It sounds like you three agree that quality in both video rendering and in topic presentation are big factors. And it's suggested that we even have some sort of official video channel. I am of the mind that if anyone wants to upload a 3 second clip of a cliff racer idling, then they should have that opportunity. If it's terrible, we have the option of reverting it, just like every submission. I sympathise with your desire to keep things in the family and only let through quality content from trusted sources, but that is really an elitist stance which discounts a great number of casual editors who would otherwise contribute in this way. There's a reason we don't block anonymous edits to this site, the wiki philosophy has been very kind to us; we allow any passerby to become a great editor if they see a typo or a bug in the wiki, I don't see video contribution as any different than those edits.

For walkthroughs, perhaps we should set guidelines for zero narration, and skipping/fast-forwarding through unimportant fights. There's nothing wrong with making policy to back up our quality standards. I disagree that we need video guides from extremely dedicated editors. Although example videos would be a valuable asset, we don't need them right away.

Like many who commented in the survey, I just feel that the site is missing a feature. It feels to me like the site is stagnant and dying without the ability to embed video. If you are looking for a quest walkthrough, 9 times out of 10 it will be quicker to get the answers you need by searching youtube rather than coming here. You mention that the other wikis have a ton of junk videos; well that's true, but there are also very helpful videos which couldn't be replicated in text or screenshots, and our editors would handle the junk unlike those other sites. It surprises me greatly that there are people against this, I thought the only reason we didn't have video was because nobody wanted to install the plugin or some technical problem that needed sorting out. Lukish (talk) 03:42, 3 January 2013 (GMT)

I would be against video walkthroughs. A video walkthrough just isn't very professional in a wiki setting. One of the things I hate about Wikia is that they tend to have video walkthroughs instead of text, and end up relying on videos for a majority of their walkthroughs. I don't see any reason why they would be needed, or why our current walkthroughs aren't enough. Jeancey (talk) 03:45, 3 January 2013 (GMT)

I'm indifferent to whether we have it or not. However, creating a new channel with special guidelines will not work, in my opinion. Unless there's enough interest, people won't make the videos. We would need to make sure we had a group of people dedicated enough to create the videos following the guidelines, which I strongly doubt will happen. Embedding the videos into the articles could increase the loading time for pages, which I don't think would work well, but it would be cleaner than an alternative of creating pages with lists of videos (like how Skyrim:Quests is a list of quest types, which split into lists of quests, etc., or we could do something like modspace for them). If we included links to videos, it's not necessarily as clean as embedding, but it won't increase the loading time of the page.

Mostly it falls down to "how will we get the videos", I think. I don't think they're required unless something is particularly confusing and I would not use them.

On the other hand, we could add a link to each quest/dungeon article that would automatically take the user to a youtube search page (such as "Skyrim Diplomatic Immunity" for the page Skyrim:Diplomatic Immunity). Or add something to the sidebar to automatically do that, if possible.

The whole thing just seems a bit messy to me. Vely^►t►e 03:59, 3 January 2013 (GMT)

I wouldn't be against links to videos, especially in a separate "External Links" section at the bottom as is done on Wikipedia, but I don't like the idea of actual embedded videos. On a site like this, it breaks the style too much, in my opinion. If we do decide to use them, I would want to impose several limitations. First, the quality should be good, as just about everybody has mentioned. Second, nothing that auto-plays on page load...ever. Third, the descriptions should tell you what you're getting. If it's a narrated quest, the description should say so. If it's a 10-second blurb on "here's where to find the super-secret ultra-mega-everything-killer", it should say that, etc. A user should never click on a video player or link and think "that's not at all what I was looking for"; they should know beforehand. Fourth, if anything seems especially spammy, either for advertising someone's personal site or having embedded ads or whatever, it's gone. Hard to avoid in some instances, like YouTube, but that would be my ideal. – Robin Hood  (talk) 06:41, 3 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) I'm entirely against the suggestion of automatically linking to other website's search engines. We're supposed to be giving these people information, not giving them links to other sites with information. As for Robin's suggestions, I basically agree with all of them except for the bit about making them external. It just seems wrong to ever link to other websites on our articles, even if it is to a video we made. Should we do this, it would probably be best to keep the videos hidden by default, to help with page loading times. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 11:00, 3 January 2013 (GMT)

I don't know the precise definition of "embedded" here: I guess embedded into article pages. I think there may be many different ways to "embed" and maybe to use video that is not "embedded." I do strongly support a lengthy and careful discussion about adding video to the site.

Some of the core ideas from the text by the logo on the main page: 1) building a collaborative source for all knowledge on the Elder Scrolls series of games 2) "we could use your help!"; 3) "This site's purpose is to provide information;...." I perceive a sense of a mission to grow (provide more/better content? reach/help/involve more people? both?). And a desire to serve by to providing information, comprehensive information (from the text: "all information"). It is clear that most of us share a commitment to high quality standards.

Here, we confront a question about adding a means, a communications channel, that can support all of these goals.

Doing so would be fraught with issues in the community, obviously: We already see some strong beliefs and feelings being expressed by sincere, smart people who care. I'm inclined to think about ways to let video content serve us, (all/essentially all of us). Video is taking a significant share of our users' eyes and minds, and I feel certain that it's significant. Google "dwemer cube" and the fifth result is a video. This would not have happened just 2-3 years ago. Google "the way of the voice" the fourth result will be a video. I hope we can serve users and grow our community of contributors in both number and diversity of talents. I think we can determine our own criteria for what kind of video we would host (and I assume that should be a high standard), and I believe we can find a way to control keeping standards high without all of us hating each other. It's one of the things we do. Maybe we can do it better, but we can and have been doing it with a high volume of inputs.

Adapt or die. Pre-teens and teenagers and young adults, in particular, are attracted to video, at least as an option, for receiving information, of all kinds. And this is a strong trend. We already have at least some people who could make some very useful high-quality videos, I think. And we can attract some very bright and enthusiastic new people with exciting skills that most of us might not have. But all of us, collectively, has a tremendous ability to make good decisions. This issue is so "big", that it's likely to offer some creative ideas for finding compromises that satisfy us, and often even please us.

Change or die! But change is hard. Anything this big should move slowly and deliberately. A decision to change policy should be made slowly, deliberately, and do absolutely everything reasonably possible to ensure that everyone is on-board. I think we should self-host, because of potential advertising revenue that could be put to some good use or other. If that includes a certain someone (maybe eventually multiple people somehow) being able to earn a living from it, well, how great is that. Let's experiment (make things or look at things) and discuss as we're ready to do so, and let's try to avoid leaving people behind or out of the discussion because they're busy for a month or whatever. --JR (talk) 11:14, 3 January 2013 (GMT)

While I can see the reasons people would want to add videos on the site, I don't know it is a good idea. First, I don't see what it would bring, even as a walkthrough; we already have a lot of details in the quests description and the loot is described for every place in the game. Second, it would mean watching several minutes of video to make sure nothing wrong is going on in the footage, unless we only authorize a few people to do it but then it would mean they'll have to spend hours recording the videos. As for the argument that it might be more appealing to teens, well for starters I don't know exactly how old people playing TES are, but I think most of them are above 18 and to be honest if someone really wants to watch a video walkthrough there are dozens of people already doing it. I'm not saying it would be a bad thing, but is it worth it? Elakyn (talk) 14:31, 3 January 2013 (GMT)

I'd amend my comments above to present myself as less "Let's do it" and more, "It's worth exploring ideas. Lots of information and idea exchange about it might be great, whether that best be sooner, later, or both. I'd be on the conservative side of making changes, but on the "open" side to generating ideas, and wondering if video can somehow be significantly (or hugely) valuable or useful. --JR (talk) 15:03, 3 January 2013 (GMT)

For some of the older games, third party walkthroughs are often vital to expanding obscure articles. Official videos are also worth documenting in some way. But for a game like Skyrim, I can't see how videos could be incorporated in any meaningful manner. Links to videos should be the exception, not the standard. —Legoless (talk) 15:35, 3 January 2013 (GMT)

(←) One of the many things that strikes me for being against video walkthroughs is the simple fact that these games are not designed to be linear. Unlike a game like Grand Theft Auto, where there is only one way to do the game, there are a large variety of ways to tackle each objective. Unless we presented a handful of videos for each page, there is no way we could adequately present how to do the quests, whereas in text, we could say what the route is, and then say "Alternatively, if you have <random skill proficiency> you would be have a fair shot of success going <random other direction>, circumventing <Problem in front of you>."

That aside, logistically there is too much work to do to handle all the namespaces. After all, we would not document only Skyrim and its expansions. We would have to be consistent across all the namespaces for the maximum gain from this project, and that would involve anywhere from a small team of a few dedicated users taking many months out of their day to thoroughly document a game, upwards of a large team who can hit several games at once, guild by guild. Then, we have various system specs among users, including console players, so we don't necessarily have a large group that is capable of handling the job at the same HD level.

On to the question of hosting that has been brought up, I know it's against our open spirit, "elitist" as Lukish put it, but this is something that really has to be done in-house if it's going to work. I was thinking of a YouTube channel, but the others have raised good points about linking to external sites in anyway, and that got me thinking... What if we hosted our own videos in house? It's still more work that I care to see put into this project, but it would eliminate relying on the search engines and hosting of other sites to provide content, and we can assemble a team of a handful of users who have put up an application of sorts with a preview of their screen capture abilities so that we can ensure HD videos that are as clean and professional as we can get.

Then, if we wanted to make the project somewhat more open, we could simply provide a means to have a panel of users review video content that other users provide, looking at a few criteria such as:

1. At least 720p-- I don't know about you guys, but these are very detailed games, and I don't want to watch a 240p video that you can't really see.
2. Solid frame rates while recording HD video and playing at higher quality settings-- Again, all in the order of providing high quality content that is visually pleasing and watchable.
3. Concise-- These videos need to be to the point. The average user probably isn't going to be interested in each individual fight that happens in the dungeon, unless it was directly related to the mission at hand, and I know for a fact that at the very least, I am not a fan of watching random looting and wandering around. Loot is documented on the location pages, and has no place in a quest walkthrough.
4. No blatant advertisement-- And, the biggest thing, and would be the guaranteed deal breaker for me, was that if I was in charge of reviewing a video, I would throw it out, regardless of the other qualities of it, if it was posted for the sake of advertisement of a YouTube channel or some other project... Unless it was done in house, and we were directing users to pertinent content that we were hosting ourselves.
5. No narration--I am not a fan of narrated videos, since most people don't have the voice or the capture equipment to execute the job, and regardless of how good a video is visually, it would detract from the overall quality of the video if we had some wheezy teenager who mumbled off topic the whole way through the video. It would just be easier to not include a voice over of any kind.
6. If there was something critical to note that couldn't be listened to by in-game means, a brief caption ought to be employed in a subtle place that wouldn't hinder your ability to view the clip. For example, if I was watching a Morrowind walkthrough, with has the bare minimum in terms of in-game voices, I wouldn't want the video to spend 3 minutes slowly scrolling through the written text. For simplicity's sake, there should be a jump cut with a caption saying that the content was jumped over. After all, the videos aren't there to provide the entire story and substitute the game. They are supplementing it, and it doesn't seem efficient or desirable, at least in my opinion, to spend most of the video catching the story via dialogue, books, or whatever. The people making the videos would have presumably played the game before and could either outright bypass the dialogue, or could read it on their own, but do that jump cut like I mentioned.

Obviously, hosting our own videos would take a bit of effort on the technical side, but that aside, it would give us more freedom to manage the content and organize it to our unique requirements. And, of course, we would be able to guarantee quality without having to review hundreds of YouTube links that will be posted by other users on the logic that we are hosting videos on articles.

Do not take my suggestions at ways to do it as support for the project though. All in all, I am still against it, and I was simply exploring the different aspects of the project. Snowmane^{(talk•email)} 19:48, 3 January 2013 (GMT)

Many good points have been brought up, but two in particular are sticking in my mind. One is what Snowmane said (I'm paraphrasing here):

This is not a linear game. There are so many ways to complete a quest or clear a dungeon that it'd be infeasible to document them all with video.

The other one is a point that JR made:

Adapt or die.

I believe that videos (if we used them) should work very much the same way as images: they are supplementary, and their purpose is to aid in understanding the material. However, they are just that - aids. If we used videos, then we should not ever have them as complete walkthroughs. If people want to watch a squeaky teenager bumbling through a dungeon, looting everything and narrating incessantly while advertising their channel, then they can go to YouTube. However, if they just want to find out where that unique item is, or that place of interest, or that one loot chest, then that's where we can come in. Just like how an image can be used to describe something in more vivid detail than any words can, a video can be extremely helpful, being able to succinctly describe, say, the location of a loot chest, in ten seconds, instead of spending half a paragraph describing how it's hidden between a bunch of rocks. Puzzles are also perfect for videos, because you don't have to worry about misunderstanding the written solution (which happens to me all the time).

I wouldn't be opposed to using videos, but a very important distinction to make is between a complete walkthrough and an aid. Complete walkthroughs are a bad idea, for a multitude of reasons, mainly because Skyrim is a nonlinear game and any one dungeon can be completed many different ways. However, using a video as if it's an image - to describe something in more detail - would be a good idea. As far as guidelines for creating videos, I agree with most of the ones mentioned above - hi-definition, no narration, short and to the point, and no advertising. As far as where the videos themselves are, we can either have an official YouTube channel, let users contribute their own videos, or host the videos here on the wiki. The nice thing about having a YouTube channel is that we would have tight control on the quality and we wouldn't have to deal with hosting videos on our servers (I imagine streaming video is rather server-intensive, considering that a video can be hundreds of times larger than a web page). One added benefit would be that we'd start getting traffic on YouTube, because as it is tens of thousands of gamers already use YouTube to find walkthroughs. Finding enough people to actually record these videos and/or implementing a system where other users can contribute their own videos, though, would be a challenge. • JA^T 23:38, 3 January 2013 (GMT)

Embedded Media: Break 1

You raise an interesting point, Jak, but I am curious about one particular and would care for elaboration to help me understand it: How would we make a video as an aid, rather than a walkthrough? I genuinely can't see a use for video beyond a walkthrough. That's really the one use (that I amaware of anyways), and I went into the discussion under the assumption that we were talking about video walkthroughs of quests. Quests are really all I see videos being necessary for, whereas if we were just describing a random dungeon, the images and text detailing what you will find there really strikes me as all that is needed. Snowmane^{(talk•email)} 00:01, 4 January 2013 (GMT)

Describing the location of a loot chest, unique (or otherwise interesting) item, or a puzzle solution would all be good examples of when a video would be helpful. • JA^T 00:45, 4 January 2013 (GMT)

Loot chests wouldn't be worth noting, IMO, but I could see locations of unique items, artifacts, dragon puzzles, and the like being noteworthy, and I would approve of videos being made for those types of items if everyone else forces a consensus in favor of videos. However, in this hypothetical scenario, there are soooo many random chests around that marking loot chests wouldn't be all that worthwhile, and would come up to being tons of videos on clutter. Snowmane^{(talk•email)} 02:09, 4 January 2013 (GMT)

A kick to this discussion: I'd like to see someone show us an example of a video that MIGHT be (in theory) a good thing to have on the site. Maybe someone wants to make one. Maybe there is an example of something good online. At least we'd have something to talk about. When I wrote above, I said that typing skyrim and some keywords will generate video high in the results. I gave examples only to illustrate that point. I was not suggesting anything in those results for our site. I didn't even look at them. My point was just that video is capturing a growing portion of eyes and minds for content that falls under our purpose. Yes, of course, Google makes sure YouTube videos appear high in searches. If you want to "counter" me with that point, I'd ask, "Why does Google prioritize video so highly?" They are not stupid. --JR (talk) 10:15, 11 January 2013 (GMT)

Another bump. I recently had this discussion with Enodoc and Jeancey, regarding scaling the mountain peaks that were added by the Dragonborn DLC. I made the point there that following directions where there is an absence of clearly defined landmarks is difficult without some sort of visual representation. I trust that this would be a suitable example of "a video that MIGHT be (in theory) a good thing to have on the site." – Daric↝talk 03:49, 15 March 2013 (GMT)