Lore talk:Elder Scrolls Online - Meet the Character

Pictures categorized inconsistently

The pictures included with Meet the Characters are all inconsistently categorized as render, misc, or nota categorized at all. What should they be as?Zebendal (talk) 20:25, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

RIP, images were reverted. Social media has higher quality images compare https://twitter.com/TESOnline/status/1169245004428185607 to https://en.uesp.net/wiki/File:ON-render-Selene.jpg, why are we purposely downgrading images?Zebendal (talk) 23:52, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Just left a message on your talk page about this. —⁠Legoless (talk) 23:59, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Proposed Changes

High res renders

The thumbnails for MtC articles is often very low res and blurry (1000x491). This appears to be due to a technical limitation with how thumbnails function on the eso website, as Zenimax basically almost always includes a high res (1920x1080) version on the forum post version anyway, and sometimes an even higher res elsewhere.

As all render variants are just different sizes of the same original photo we should aim to use the highest resolution version. From an archival standpoint, preserving the original photo doesn't do much good, as the forum posts deserve to have their version documented as they're posted concurrently with the news article version; we're effectively prioritizing the article over the forum post for little reason. We always try to include the highest available res images and avoid duplicates anyway for other eso news posts documented here. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 00:09, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Supplementary text

Often times MtC starts with text such as "Learn about Madam Whim, Fargrave’s most infamous information broker and merchant, in our latest Deadlands Meet the Character!" and ends with text reading "Whatever goods you might need in Tamriel or beyond, Madam Whim is ready to do business. Just be careful when doing a deal with a Daedra—you never know what you might be signing up for! Are you ready to explore the city of Fargrave and meet the enigmatic Madam Whim?", but it is omitted from our articles. This text greatly helps summarize and provide info on the subjects. I don't believe this text should be omitted.

I've heard the argument that it shouldn't be included because its "not in Generalspace" but this seems counterintuitive to the goal of just archiving the pages themselves; General and Lore are also whatever we want them to be considering they're substitutes to uesp not wanting to use the Mainspace in almost any capacity. Really I see no reason for why these should not be included.

I'd also argue that we should include the categories Zenimax uses for their articles (ie Deadlands, Gates of Oblivion for Madam Whim) as it helps make them easier to sort now that there's like 50, but I'm not married to the idea. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 00:09, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Links to ONspace

If an article exists in the ONspace and is mentioned on the MtC, but does not have a lore article, it is not linked whatsoever. This is really annoying since yea, not everything is going to be lore-"worthy" obviously, but this are all news posts made for eso, so its intended to have deep connections to the stuff that exists in game. The trivialities that comes from using different namespaces is quite annoying if it prevents us from linking the articles to each other, which helps no one.

Bottom line is if for example Hezehk gets mentioned in MtC, he's likely never going to be loreworthy, but he still very much exists and connects to the content of the article; nothing can change that, so it does no good to not have a link to him. We should link to ONspace in the articles if possible. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 00:09, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

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I would like to make proposals of my own regarding the state of MtC, however I wish to neither overshadow or be overshadowed, so I will post my thoughts separately.

What I perceive to be the problem is a mismatch of intentions. Some wish for documentation of ZOS' document, whereas others (or some of the same individuals) want documentation of the actual in-universe document. This problem sounds quite analogous to a problem we don't have regarding game books and lore books. Our solution to that problem is to transclude from Lore into gamespaces, reflecting differences and extra information differently between the versions of the article. I believe the exact same solution is in order: transclude MtC from lorespace into General.

This has many benefits. For one, we gain documentation of the opening blurbs. Additionally, General may link to the gamespaces OR lorespace, increasing site navigability. Lore can host the text of the document, to then be transcluded into General where all the extra out-of-universe goodies can still be found. Yes, that does mean the character images would no longer be present in lorespace, but that is optimal, as those images would not be found upon the in-universe papers those lore articles represent. Additionally, it would dictate that the General article use the low-res versions for documentation authenticity. However, {{Similar Images}} can (and should, regardless) be used on the image files for easy navigation to the "pretty" versions of the renders.

It has other implications, too, however. Lore:Elder Scrolls Online - Meet the Character would become a redirect to General:Meet the Character, as there is no in-universe connection between the documents represented by the lore articles. Instead, I propose a Lore:Unpublished Documents which lists these MtCs and perhaps other oft-linked gamespace "notes". They would need to be given descriptive names (however they may still be redirected from their "Meet the Character" lore articles where they currently reside) like "Sender to Receiver Regarding Topic". Additionally, a messagebox template can be used on such pages to notify the user that the given article name is simply descriptive.

To summarize my proposed changes in totality:

1. Move MtC Lore pages using a descriptive naming scheme.
2. Remove the renders from the Lore articles.
3. Move Lore:Elder Scrolls Online - Meet the Character to General:Meet the Character (update accordingly)
4. Create Lore:Unpublished Documents in Lore:Elder Scrolls Online - Meet the Character's stead.
5. Create new General pages for each MtC, including the blurbs, gamespace links, and the renders. Standard real publication procedure, besides the transclusion of the bulk of the text from Lore.
6. Add {{Similar Images}} to the renders in filespace.

I would be delighted to handle all associated moves and (foreseeably) template work. -Dcsg (talk) 01:59, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

@Rim - These pages were originally created in the lorespace to support lore articles with an easy reference. If these pages existed in General with the intent to document Elder Scrolls website articles, then I'd agree that the extra text should be there, but that's not why we create these.

Because they exist in the lorespace, it nonsensical to add out-of-universe text that adds nothing to the lore - for example the last one had "Are you excited to team up with the dashing scoundrel in the upcoming Ascending Tide DLC? Let us know via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook." Like most of these additions, they add nothing useful and its jarring to read in the lorespace, even if its outside the main text box.

Your points on Links to ONspace I agree with (for these pages only) - I'd support an exception to be made for MTC. If a lorepage doesn't exist, its ok to link to the ON space.

@Dcsg - I can see what you're getting at and its a good idea, but it seems a bit much to address a fairly small issue tbh. But I don't like the term "Unpublished Documents" because its unclear (in or out-of-universe?) and it can imply anything outside of this category is "Published", which of course isn't true (notes, journals, etc). --Jimeee (talk) 11:26, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

My proposal is the result of pondering I've been doing for quite some time, not simply to address the issues presented by Rim. I agree that "Unpublished Documents" is somewhat unsatisfactory, that particular idea came to me as I wrote my response. I think "Untitled" or "Unnamed" could work, or just simply "Letters". It has also been presented to me that not all MtCs are letters, so some would be sorted into the normal library, which is desirable. -Dcsg (talk) 20:20, 3 March 2022 (UTC)