UESPWiki:Community Portal/Archive 57

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.

IG and OOG Sources

I'd like to propose that we handle IG and OOG content in a similar way to how the Star Wars wiki (https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page) does it with "Canon" and "Legends".

Have a normal copy of a lore page with just in-game references, then also have a link that links to a copy that also includes UOL references/topics with a disclaimer. This would allow for those who disagree with UOL to not have to view it, and those that want to see it could then see it. This should satisfy both sides of this constant debate. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 09:59, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Oppose; the two are not comparable. We have userspace for fanfiction and we allow UOL sources to be used in lorespace when clearly marked. Having two versions of the same article, one with rampant use of unofficial sources and one with valuable information stripped away, will lead to a duplication of effort and two low quality pages. To me, this proposal would represent a very serious split due to a failure to compromise, when we should instead be looking to produce a single, consensus-based article. —⁠Legoless (talk) 10:54, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Legoless. This "solution" would simply create more problems than it would solve. Editors would have to ensure that changes were made to both versions of the page, it would be confusing to readers not well-versed in the subject, and it would inevitably lead to debates over which version of the page is the "correct" one. — Wolfborn↝^(Howl) 11:07, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Oppose, per what Lego said. --Jimeee (talk) 17:04, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

While I really respect the principle of it, I think the method of addressing how sources are handled should be done differently from this, though I do very much understand the perspective. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 01:40, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Defining what is and what isn't original research a lot better.

Its hard to tell what is or isn't, not everyone has the brain iqs to understand what it exactly is or isn't. The concern I have is its not defined with clear examples of what is or isn't Original research. Or what types of examples could be exceptions or anything. What I see as original research others do not, and what I don't consider to be original research others see as being that. It makes it hard to tell and I'm sure that I'm not the only one that has had this issu.. I'm hoping what can be done is a guide for the does in don'ts, So like a Tutorial of what you can and cannot do. This will also allow me to know how to spot original research and try and help fix it if I'm able, and I'm sure others would love to have a guide as well so they can avoid it and maybe do the same.TheVampKnight (talk) 03:38, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

The current guidelines already define what "original research" means and how to go about bringing up something you feel should be an exception.

"Even if a series of statements can logically be put together to reach a conclusion, that conclusion does not belong on UESP unless it has already been stated elsewhere (in valid source material).

A core goal of the UESP wiki is to summarize what's already known, like any encyclopedia, rather than to come up with new information.

Exceptions to this rule may be possible, but those exceptions need to be discussed on the talk page beforehand."

Seeing occasional OR on the wiki that's been vetted isn't an inconsistency, it's an example of going through the process. If you think there's an obvious logical throughline a page isn't utilizing, ask on the talk page. If you can get some consensus, then you can put it on the page freely. Otherwise, OR will tend to always lead to an edit war. - Jacksol (talk) 03:47, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

The problem is the original research policy is so widely misconstrued that just about any statement that isn't a baseball bat to the face of exposition can be deemed "original research" under the current guidelines. I've seen far too many cases where valid info is called by some as unreliable to the point where its basically McCarthyism. The policy should probably just be done away with and rewritten from the ground up because too many editors use it as a way to avoid having info they simply don't like put onto a page, its a policy that is exploited far too often and is barely cited anymore in the correct context. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 04:08, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

That's a fair point. I'll be honest and say I was partially basing my response off of already knowing exactly why this was being posted thanks to discord. In general, though, you're right. Having examples for what does and doesn't constitute original research would be pretty nice and would limit the removal of perfectly valid assumptions (and would have also made merging Naahfalaar a lot easier than it was). Jacksol (talk) 04:12, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Maybe rather than redefining original research, we need to redefine how it's used. The baseline is essentially "no unsourced inferences", so if we follow the guidelines to first have a discussion, any inferences can be footnoted with a direct link to the discussion, which would explain for everyone else how that inference has been reached. --Enodoc (talk) 09:47, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Different Stance needed for Documentation of Creation Club Lore Errors

Let's not make this a thread to argue about Creation Club's canonicity. That was already addressed by Cartogriffi, the Community Content Manager at Bethesda Game Studios.

I am not an official arbiter of Bethesda lore, but I hope you don’t mind if I chime in. Creations are official releases, but it’s also understandable that a site like UESP or the Imperial Library would take CC with a grain of salt. We do consider lore implications when reviewing proposals, particularly something trying to heavily enmesh itself into the world. Connections to the world are great, but we also want to avoid anything being too impactful. That is, we want things to fit into the game world, but we’re also not looking to greatly expand the lore of the game. With historic items, like artifacts, simply existing can have implications for the lore. Although artifacts in Tamriel do have a habit of disappearing and re-materializing in other places. I believe this was even noted in the description of Chrysamere in Daggerfall.

Now that said, I do want us to acknowledge thaat Creation Club screws up some times, and we should take a note on when NOT to document, or rather, taking a note of the obvious contridictions.

Divine Crusader

Pelinal Whitestrake’s relics have a mechanic added to them by the gods. You see this in action in Oblivion when you raise in infamy. An evil act will cause the message

“Beware! The gods have taken note of your crimes! Do not continue down this path or you will be unfit to wield the Crusader's Relics."

Another act will strip you of your ability to use the relics, and give you the message

"Your crimes have made you unfit to wield the Crusader's Relics. Walk the Pilgrim's Way to repent of your sins and once again seek the favor of the gods."

In the Divine Crusader creation, we see bandits wearing the crusader relics, throwing that mechanic out the window. Cartogriffi has made a statement saying, acknowledging that the Creation didn’t retcon it, it was just a mistake.

"We are aware that in Oblivion, the crusader relics would be unequipped if you committed sufficient crimes. While they function differently in TES V, they are still divine relics. The bandits wearing them are not intended to be proper recipients of this equipment.. "

The wiki handeled this well, in that it mentions the fact that the bandits had them, but not the obvious mistake of them being worn.

Spell Knight Armor

The Beldama Wyrd is the focus of this Creation, but they seem to have been confused with the Glenmoril Wyrd. The Beldama Wyrd are known worshippers of Jephre, Not Hircine like the Glenmoril Wyrd.

Jephre is important to the Beldama because they trace their origins to him, and believe they are descendants to the Ehlnofey. Jephre represents the first of the Earth Bones, which represents the Laws of Nature. Among these laws was His Naming, which gave the formless beings of Nirn their shape during the Dawn Era.

Prior to its (Accidental?) removal from ESO's live server during the Delve revamps, A book explored Hircine as the anti-thesis to Jephre’s order of established forms, and describes Lycanthropy as a means to reject the tyranny of the established shape. One ancient Khajiiti tale even credits the formless beings prior to being given shape by Jephre as being Hircine’s children.

The creation has an npc of the coven named Beldama Ward Mother, which is a Hagraven, creatures of decay which are known to be into dark magic and cruel against nature, which is definitely not Jephre's domain. The creation also tells of the Beldama coven doing the Briarheart ritual on a victim. The Briarheart ritual is something that involves communing with Hircine, not Jephre. Aside from texts that support Hircine's involvement with the Briarheart ritual, a quest in ESO deals with a Reachmen trying to earn the right of the Briarheart from Hircine himself.

Lastly, the Glenmoril Wyrd already have established relations with the Reachfolk, though it varies depending on which branch within the Glenmoril Wyrd covens we are talking about. So it makes sense for a branch of them to be associated with the Forsworn like the creation portrays Wyrds do. Theres also the issue of proximity. The Beldama Wyrd in both Daggerfall and ESO are located in close proximity to the city of Daggerfall. It makes more sense for the Glenmoril to make it to the Reach, as they are already spread throughout Tamriel.

Whoever pitched the idea to make the creation clearly just assumed that all Wyrds were into the same thing, not knowing that the Beldama have seperate beliefs from the Glenmoril.

Arms of Chaos

The Creation centers around trying to create artifacts that mimic the Staff of Chaos power. This book made a mistake.

“Master Ellane said the Staff of Chaos was crafted by Loreth, and passed on through the generations until it was stolen by Jagar Tharn, before being shattered into pieces by the Eternal Champion.”

In Arena, we see this is not the case. It was Jagar Tharn that was the one that broke the staff into pieces, and the Eternal Champion had to recover the pieces individually. The reason why Jagar Tharn shattered the staff was because, as Ria Silamane says,

"He knew that the Staff of Chaos was nigh indestructible, having been made from the essence of the Land itself. But in that he found the key. As the land is split, so did he shatter the Staff into eight perfectly formed pieces. These he scattered across the realm."

Now if the staff being shattered by the Eternal Champion is intended to be in the context of after the story, there is a line that may support this, but UESP notes that it is missing from the 1.06 version of Arena (and possibly other versions), and we can only speculate that it is either a bug or intentionally removed because it contradicts Ria’s earlier claims that the staff was indestructible.

“This is the Jewel of Fire, and the crucible of Tharn's life force. It is also the thing in which Tharn has suffused all of the energy of the Staff. If you can touch the Staff to this Jewel, the release of that combined energy may be enough to destroy the Staff of Chaos and open the gate between worlds. If you are successful, Tharn will no doubt be destroyed as well.“

This statement in Arena however specifies that it would be destroyed, not split, which is a difference Ria made in the first quote about Jagar Tharn having to resort to doing because it couldn’t be destroyed. Additionally, people have reported the Staff still being in their inventory after completing the Main Quest. So therefore, the Staff of Chaos wasn't destroyed or split at the end of the Main Quest, so the book can only be accurate if you make the assumption that the Hero split the Staff themselves after the events of Arena. The book can be an example of an in-universe mistake though, but ...

"The original Staff of Chaos, or Balac-thurm, was a relic of untold power, shattered into pieces and lost to time. In the years since, mages have sought to recreate its magic, traveling to worlds beyond the realms of mortal men. Follow the path of the mages as you obtain an ancient ring and restore the artifacts of chaos, including two new staves and an enchanted amulet!"

As you can see, the official marketing for it suggests otherwise. — Unsigned comment by Zebendal (talk • contribs) at 23:42 on 28 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't really get why any of this should be treated different than other continuity errors/ambiguous statements between games? Also, within 200 years a lot can change. The Beldama Wyrd could have make deals with other Deadric Princes in the meantime, or they strayed off their path, or got tricked, or they just forgot their original worship, or they were absorbed by another Wyrd while keeping their name, etc etc. The wiki is to document info and not to judge what exactly are errors. Note the differences on the page in the note section if you feel like the changes are significant. --Ilaro (talk) 14:44, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

I'd agree that the errors are all very much there, and should be noted (though not removed, similar to how we handle other inconsistencies and errors) The Rim of the Sky (talk) 01:40, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Documentation of Morrowind non-relevant NPCs

I'd like to propose that people be allowed to convert NPCs that have been deemed "non-relevant" into actual pages if they're willing to put the work in to do so. There is no detrimental value to this being done as more info/documentation and an image for these NPCs is beneficial to those interested in that NPC. There has been plenty of times where I've searched for NPCs in Morrowind and the UESP hasn't popped up on Google because the name only exists on a list somewhere.

If the ESO namespace can achieve what it has so far regarding the 1000s of NPCs it has, I don't see how it's a lot of work to do this as due to the nature of these NPCs, it's actually a lot faster to make the pages compared to NPCs with unique dialogue, quests, etc, as they only need a screenshot taken and info from the CS regarding what they wear, carry and can cast, as the data values for everything else are already on the redirects. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 05:36, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

I support this proposal. Enacting it will make these NPCs much more searchable and will only be an addition, as it won't necessitate the destruxion of the current list format. And, of course, as Imperialbattlespire says, this will bring the Morrowind space more in line with namespaces of more modern games like ESO's. — J. J. Fullerton _﴾talk﴿ 05:38, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

There's absolutely no good reason to restrict anyone from doing this. It was a mistake 20 years ago, and one we don't have to keep making. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 05:43, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

100% this needs to be done, its very important to have every npc listed even if they are thought not important. Its been a huge pet peeve as a user not having any pages for these npcs. Even if they are not important to some they are very important for another user and all of them should be listed and have pages, made so we know what they look like and where they are. A prime example of pages needed is every vampire with a unique name its been a huge pet peeve not having that or any dialogue they might say. There have been cases where an npc isn't listed that has something important to say or is an important part of something I need to look up that I'd have to go to Fandom to even find and even then I can't find it at times but othertimes I get what I need from there. Generic or not, its important that these npcs get added in. Being a user myself and from that prospective I'd expect every named npc to have a respective page for them. TheVampKnight (talk) 05:45, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't see an urgent need for this to be done, but I also don't see a reason why we should continue to prevent people from creating pages as they see fit. What I don't want to see is a mass bot job to make them all stubs, and then no one doing anything else for most of the NPCs. They should each remain non-relevant until someone decides to turn that particular page into a full page, as ImpBat did with the page that sparked this discussion. Jeancey (talk) 06:08, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

I can help with taking the screenshots, but I cannot help with the templates as I have trouble with them. Assuming this passes, make sure you all make a custom Nighteye spell of 65-100 points to use as morrowind is a naturally dark game and you will need it so the images don't come out too dark.Zebendal (talk) 06:30, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

I support this motion. We already have all of their stats; all we need to do is get their inventory, etc. -MolagBallet (talk) 19:36, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

(←) Just as a note, this discussion hasn't been closed yet, so I'll be rolling back any additional changes regarding this topic until this discussion is officially closed. Jeancey (talk) 02:29, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Don't worry, we are patient. You only delay the inevitable. I have plenty of NPC images ready that I plan to upload as soon as this discussion is declared settled. Why are you against this? That other wiki has us beat on this part. As AKB said, this was a mistake made 20 years ago. Zebendal (talk) 02:40, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

My comment is unrelated to the eventual outcome of this proposal. This is entirely a process issue, and nothing to do with the specific proposal. On this wiki, we wait until discussions finish before implementing the proposals, not before. Jeancey (talk) 02:46, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't have an issue with non-relevant NPC pages being created if someone wants to put the work in. —⁠Legoless (talk) 02:54, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

I have to say that I fundamentally disagree with Jeancey about not making the stub pages. If we're all in agreement that this is something that should have been done 20 years ago, as AKB said, then we should have the bot create the individuals pages. A stub page is infinitely more effective than just passively letting people make the page if they want to, as it literally shows that the information is missing to any potential editors. I don't see any reason we wouldn't do this aside from not trusting Morrowind fanatics enough to eventually finish filling in the pages, in which case I just need to point out, have you met Morrowind fanatics? Jacksol (talk) 03:06, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Morroboomers are indeed pretty fanatical. Any missing information they would be willing to fill out as they have a huge passion for the game.Zebendal (talk) 03:08, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

While I have no objection to a bot job, I'm not sure I see much point to running one, either. You can literally just remove the redirect and rename the Non-Relevant template to NPC Summary, and you've just done everything the bot would do. Sure, the bot could add a Stub to the page as well, but then you'd just be trading Morrowind-Non Relevant NPCs for a new Morrowind-Stubs-NPCs or the slightly broader Morrowind-Stubs. No real benefit there. In the meantime, however, you will have lost any information on the location page, like info about the location itself, as well as the comment beside the one-liner for the NPC.

I didn't read through the whole discussion on Discord, cuz it was...large...and I'm not having a good day today, but I did notice a call for snowballing the discussion so people can get to work on the pages. If there are no objections, I'm willing to make that call, since the conversion to templates is the only real point of debate here, and despite my comments above, I don't particularly see that as a major issue, either way. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 04:21, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

(←) Okay, in the absence of any objections, I'm gonna go ahead and call this snowballed in favour of changing non-relevant NPCs to regular ones as time permits. There's still some discussion of whether a bot (Dillon's bot, in this case) should be involved, but whether or not that happens shouldn't affect the overall decision of changing them over. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 20:02, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't know how to work with templates that much, so a bot creating the pages and filling them would be awesome. I have been uploading NPC screenshots. Zebendal (talk) 03:28, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

There currently isn't support for using a bot. All the pages already exist, there is no page creation for NPCs. Jeancey (talk) 18:52, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Arena Artifact Dialogue

Currently, all artifact citations for Arena boil down to "Events of Arena", which is a pretty bad citation and is something that we should avoid all together. We have the Artifact Quests page, but it is pretty bare. I was wonder if either we should just link to the similar page on Imperial Library https://www.imperial-library.info/content/artifact-dialog , or if someone with authority here could ask someone from the Imperial Library itself like Lady N or Benefactor for permission to host the dialogue here with a note that the dialogue was originally archived there. Wouldn't help to try since we have a friendly relationship with them, and this could benefit both wikis and help spread obscure arena dialogue more.Zebendal (talk) 09:08, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

We should just try to get them from the game instead of hosting them from another website. There is a lot of dialogue from Arena that's still not documented on the wiki. --Ilaro (talk) 18:46, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

This dialogue is not difficult to datamine, it's stored in plain text in the Arena directory. We should copypaste it somewhere as most of that info is missing from the wiki. —⁠Legoless (talk) 21:47, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

I have no idea how to datamine, so you all would have to handle that on your own. Zebendal (talk) 02:39, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

On Quotes and Quote Boxes

The use of centered/text-aligned quotes and quote boxes at the top of a section has long since irked me. The placement of a quote before even setting up the premise of the article, like this particularly egregious double quote on Lore:Wild Hunt, strikes me as incredibly unencyclopedic. The content that is being shifted down will likely be the MOST important on the entire page/section. Not only do quote boxes like these overshadow the critical information, they often don't serve to further the user's understanding of the subject in any capacity.

Take, for instance, the quote on Lore:Lysandus, the very first thing the user will read. Is it really more important that the user know that the ghost of Lysandus once uttered "vengeance" than the fact that Lysandus was the king of Daggerfall? It's not just the beginnings of articles, it's a problem for sections too. Quotes like the one in the "History" section of Lore:Khajiit suffer from the same problem. Before a user can learn about khajiiti history, they must first read a lengthy quote that only establishes that "there is khajiiti history", a conclusion that the user already came to upon seeing the existence of a section labeled "History".

This is not to say that quotes are unsightly and inherently detrimental to wiki articles. I think that quote boxes that are used in the exact same manner as image thumbnails are a great way to spice up the visual appeal of a page and make it more fun.

Just like images, I think quotes need to be seen as decoration and treated as such. For instance, I think that the use of quotes on Lore:Warp in the West is great; it compensates for the lack of images. It does seem like this philosophy is built into the default CSS of the quote box template, but it is frequently being overwritten via its style parameter in ill-advised situations. The quote box on Dawnstar:Dawnstar is, in my opinion, one of the few examples where forcing a quote box to occupy the full width seems appropriate.

My suggestion is to outlaw positioning a quote "before" the first word of a page or section, except for extreme circumstances. This ensures that the informative content is given priority and reinforces the decoration-mindedness that I believe is necessary for handling quotes. -Dcsg (talk) 01:32, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

I completely agree, and have tried to make use of quote boxes only where they fit, and when they're relevant. An oversaturation of quote boxes, just like with images, can make a page unsightly. -MolagBallet (talk) 02:24, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

I addressed the issue with Wild Hunt page and made it look better while I was doing it and even added an image at the top and used one quote that was most fitting for it. The others I just got rid of. The way it was, before I edited it looked so terribly bad it was not even funny, so I fixed the issue with that page. Quote boxes are fine but, not in the way it was done on the Wild Hunt page as that was just plain cringe.TheVampKnight (talk) 02:26, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

I definitely agree that that was an improvement to the page, but the argument I made about prioritization still stands even after those changes. -Dcsg (talk) 02:44, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

My initial opinion was they are trashy, but people are fond of them in general so I wasn't going to oppose them unless they were truly bad ("Meme Quotes" like the poor quality one that was added to the top of Lore:Svargrim). That said, the way Lore:Warp in the West uses them is actually great. Using a quote when we are short on images is a great way to keep the page content dense while also being visually pleasing. I support a new guideline being adopted. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 03:13, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

I think quotes can be nice to have on a page sometimes, but per the Svargrim edit I don't think every lore page benefits from one or needs to have one. —⁠Legoless (talk) 09:07, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

I disagree with a complete ban on top quotes. Take the quote on Nahfahlaar's page for example, "While my brothers were slain or locked away, I have been free. I know when to fight, when to fly, when to look for allies. And so I stand before you, nikrent. Unbroken." It tells a lot about his character and how he differs from his brothers.- Zebendal (talk) 22:55, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

A reader who doesn't know anything about the topic of the article would glean FAR less information from a cryptic quote than the first actual, encyclopedic sentence "Nahfahlaar (also known as Nafaalilargus, sometimes spelled Nafalilargus or N'falilaargas) was a red dragon who often allied with mortals for his own protection." The philosophy on the UESP of prioritizing content over style has existed since 2006. Objectively, there is no such quote that will ever give more context in an encyclopedic manner than the authors of this wiki are capable of. Hence, it ought to be treated as style, and as style, should take a backseat to content. -Dcsg (talk) 23:16, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

I disagree with the removal of relevant, well placed top page quotes and I disagree with prejudice the retroactive application of this to older articles regardless of the decision made.Dcking20 (talk) 23:39, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Regardless of the conclusion we come to, there's no avoiding a "retroactive application" of this concept to older articles. If a policy is put in place for something, everything under the namespace it applies to is affected. This isn't suggesting that we ban the use of relevant quotes. Well-placed quotes aren't going anywhere, ill-fitting and ugly top page quotes are. Bottom line is if something is ugly, useless or ill-fitting, then it's ugly/useless/ill-fitting. -MolagBallet (talk) 00:21, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I provided a very non open ended disapproval for the proposal. What about my comment warranted you playing the “that’s not how this works” card followed by giving your very subjective rundown of opinions on the nature of these top page quotes like those opinions could somehow be projected onto myself? I’m not interested in games, I’m only interested in giving my word of dissatisfaction on the record. Also why did you speak of these top page quotes “going away” in a factual manner like it’s already said and done and this isn’t a one day old discussion with about equal parts agreement, equal parts dissent, and equal parts in between???Dcking20 (talk) 02:20, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the removal of quotes at the top of the page before any other information in the article and similarly at the top of particular sections within the page as per the example of the Khajiit history section. While I can only speak for myself, whenever I read an article that has such a quote at the very top I automatically skip over because I want to read the information on the page. Trying to think of this from a new user's perspective, I cannot imagine that such top page quotes are particularly useful without further context that they would obtain later in the article. Especially if it's a meme quote like what was on Svargrim or what is on Lysandus' page. I do like the example of the Warp in the West page and I agree that it is a great usage of quotes to style them in similar placement to that of images.

To be clear, while I agree with the removal of quotes being removed from the top position of pages I do not mean that quotes don't have a place. Were such a guideline laid out after this discussion I would say that pages with top quotes only need such quotes to be moved around on the page to allow for a more pleasing format. Once again, similar how the Warp in the West page handles them. Enderkingdev (talk) 03:22, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I wasn't going to wade in on this discussion, but tonight I came across another example of what people like Dcsg, Enderkingdev, and others are talking about. I went to this article to find out who this character is, only to find a completely meaningless quote at the top of the article: meaningless because without knowing the context, the only thing it does is leave you wondering what the hell it means. It did nothing for me but get in the way of the information I wanted to know and detracted from the article. I agree with many here that quotes can add to an article when used judiciously and wisely, but too many articles seem to have a quote at the top for no other reason than to have a quote at the top. If we're going to put quotes in articles, let's make sure they're relevant, informative, and located where they complement the information and enhance the quality of the article rather than just throwing a quote at the top of every page for the sake of having a quote at the top of every page. — Wolfborn↝^(Howl) 08:50, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I don't think there needs to be a policy as it will hinder the communities efforts to make the Uesp look and feel better. If there is a problem like there was clearly with the way the Wild Hunt page quotes were handled, that is where editors should work to address the issue. Like I did with the Wild Hunt page when I saw there was an issue. That way we can continue working on improving the Uesp. If there is stupid and not very fitting quotes those can be changed or removed by editors when its spotted by them. TheVampKnight (talk) 12:12, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree with the idea of generally removing top-of-page quotes and relocating them to somewhere more useful on the same page. "Top-of-section" quotes are less of an issue for style but equally as likely to be unnecessary. --Enodoc (talk) 15:39, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

(←) I don't see the big issue with having quotes at the top of pages, it's the same as all wikis I've seen in my experience, I just think its a case by case basis, I think https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Four-Score_War is a good example of a top quote working very well, maybe a quote section could be implemented into the character template or something? Imperialbattlespire (talk) 10:23, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

I think these quotes started here exactly because other (game)wikis do it. But just because others do it, doesn't mean we should too. I'm with Dcsg that they are usually not very informative and we should strife to always get the most important/concise info at the top of the page. Quotes can then take a backseat to provide a more rounded page where images are absent. --Ilaro (talk) 11:24, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

I think it is a mistake to be removing quote boxes entirely, as we would be removing an (imo) important avenue to display what in-universe characters think on certain subjects or characters. A good example of this is on the https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Ja%27darri page, the first thing a user sees is an analysis of her character by Nahfahlaar. You also have more lore-discoverability, as the curious user would wonder "who's Nahfahlaar?" and go to his page to find out more about him. As a user, you instantly get to know her character, in a way that "Ja'darri was an ancient Khajiiti hero" never could. If you removed that quote from the top of the page, and just used it as a cite for elsewhere on the page, it would just be dull and would make the page less interesting. Quotes displayed prominently like this allow the user to get a better picture of an event, or a character from the in-universe perspective, more than just normal wiki prose could.

I also disagree with the mindset "just because other wikis do it doesn't mean we should", because this is the same mindset that kept us in the past with things such as image resolutions and aspect ratios. Sometimes it is useful to analyse what other wiki's are doing and adapt (keyword being adapt, not necessarily take verbatim) that to our purposes.

That being said, there is room for improvement here, I would argue that instead of removing quotes, the policy on quotes on pages should be that they are relevant to the article and help explain the context for a new user. This means that we don't have meme quotes "The grey host is my true ally!" because they will become dated and meaningless several years down the line, and also doesn't actually tell you anything about the subject itself. Additionally, we should perhaps prefer quotes by other characters, instead of ones from the subject themselves, as they tend to be more informative, like the Ja'Darri example. Thal-J (talk) 15:08, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Removing quotes of any sort is a silly idea, its really just a matter of making sure the quotes are good rather than poorly chosen. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 22:26, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

I think you misinterpret my quote Thal-J. I agree that we can and even should look at what other wikis do and adapt from that. However, my point was that just because other wikis do it, doesn't mean their policies are necessarily good ideas for our wiki. And not sure why you're saying that that mindset is holding us back, as me being one of the people with that mindset and also always been a proponent for better resolutions of images, better dialogue formatting for older namespaces, etc since the start. Every policy change should have merit on its own regardless of what other wikis are doing. --Ilaro (talk) 15:32, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Ilaro, its not about adopting other wiki policies, its if quotes are appropriate. In this thread we have seen some great examples and some bad ones. Its down to how they are used.

Its not entirely true that these quotes started here exactly because other (game)wikis do it... I started using these rounded boxed quotes back in 2014 when I joined - we used basic italic quotes back then. However its true that the style is partially inspired by the article quote boxes I made when I was at wikia - but that's not the same as adopting other wiki policies - its adopting good ideas. I think the first page it was used on was Lore:Tyranny of the Sun. They became more common after that and eventually Robin created a template for it. --Jimeee (talk) 16:15, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Actually, the original post which started this whole discussion wasn't about whether quotes are appropriate, it was about the placement of quotes in articles.

From what I can see reading through this discussion, pretty much everyone who's posted here agrees that using quotes in articles is fine, yet this discussion seems to have become focused on whether quotes themselves are acceptable. Given that there seems to be a consensus on that point, perhaps we can all agree that using quotes in articles is fine, stop focusing on that issue, and re-focus this discussion on the original question of where the quotes in articles should be placed. Should banner quotes be allowed at the top of articles / sections, or should they be placed less obtrusively, off to the side the way images are used? Hopefully this capsule summary will help to move this discussion back on track. — Wolfborn↝^(Howl) 23:06, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

(←) I also feel like quotes at the top of articles are just completely unnecessary and often are detrimental to the flow of the article. As have previously been stated, I just skip over them entirely, and given they are without context, I don't see how they are beneficial in any way at the top of the article. There MAY be one or two where there is an exception to this, but I doubt it... It just isn't really a good place for these quotes, and just serves to distract from the article itself. Jeancey (talk) 18:18, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

A suggestion not to cover, the worst lore bloopers from the Creation Club Content on lore pages.

We have been talking about this of how bad it is with the whole Beldama Wyrd stuff the third party people did with that one Creation Club. Which doesn't make much sense given their lore and history. What I suggest we do is take it from a Grain of Salt. The Dev did state that Uesp or Imperial Library may take them as a grain of salt. That is what I think we should actually do with the creation club content. Most Creation club lore is fine, even Umbra can be explained because Daedra reform after death and each of the Daedric Artifacts could possibly be reformed as well. Even the Beldama Wyrd stuff could be explained but after reading some of the positions on it. I do think we need to vet this type of thing. For actual mistakes and not cover those mistakes. Anyone else feel we should do this? So the suggestion is to cover all the Creation Club stuff in the Skyrim section but not cover all of its lore if its breaks with the main theme of that lore on the respective lore pages.TheVampKnight (talk) 02:31, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

This is a really bad plan. As much as I dislike certain things from it, we can't say some aspects from Creation Club should be documented and not others, that's an extremely slippery slope that can only end up poorly. Jacksol (talk) 03:18, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

I feel that UESP's goal is to document the lore, not decide it. So, if Spell Knight Armor or whatever other CC creates discrepancies, then we should document those discrepancies. Ideally, that would be within the body of the Lore text itself, but if need be, it could be separated out into its own section, labelled "Discrepancies" or "Lore Conflicts" or whatever else, then mention there what the issues are. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 04:44, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Well I'm really of the opinion we should still document all of it, but I made this suggestion because, going by the devs statement, Uesp and Imperial libaray may take it as a Grain of Salt. So we could securitize the worst aspects of it and mistakes made and I don't think we need to cover those mistakes in the lore. I'm fine with what outcome comes from this discussion really. It would be preferable to me if we still keep that stuff in the lore page. I do agree with Robinhood. We could add in the discrepancies thing or warning and mention exactly why it conflicts. So I would personally prefer the lore conflicts mention and header as that would be the better solutionTheVampKnight (talk) 05:40, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

Right now, I worded the Beldama Wyrd page to say "Sometime in the Fourth Era, the Beldama seemingly abandoned Jephre, and instead took up traditions associated with Hircine, who is an antithesis to much of what Jephre represents." Thought that was neutral enough. Sucks that creation club authors confused the Beldama Wyrd with the Glenmoril Wyrd, shows that they don't take their time researching for their additions which can have negative lore implications. Zebendal (talk) 05:46, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

(←) About the Hircine Beldama thing, there's two things that should be kept in mind: the first is that wyrds are not monolithic entities. The Glenmoril Wyrd, supposedly dedicated to Hircine, also had covens that worshiped Molag Bal, Namira, or Mehrunes Dagon. And the Glenmoril covens who do worship Hircine do not share the same dogma about him, which translates to different attitudes wrt. the Reachmen and lycanthropy. So if there's this variety of faith in the Glenmoril Wyrd, why would the other Wyrds be entirely unanimous in their religious beliefs? Why couldn't there be a Beldama Coven that has come to essentially do a 180° turn compared to the mainline?

I suspect the author went with the Beldama mostly because the Glenmoril have been a tad overused already (Bloodmoon, Oblivion, Skyrim, Dragonborn) to the point that the others were at a risk of getting entirely forgotten. --Gez (talk) 11:42, 23 February 2021 (UTC)

At the end of the day this is a simple matter. This is official content in the games and should be documented. We should cover it in the most encyclopedic way, which may mean noting contradixions. There is little else to discuss on this matter. — J. J. Fullerton _﴾talk﴿ 05:15, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree 100% with Jacksol, RH and Fullerton. CC content is released as official Bethesda content. There's no reason to treat it any differently than any other official content which Bethesda releases for the ES series of games. — Wolfborn↝^(Howl) 05:40, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I already voiced my opinion on a similar topic from a couple of weeks ago and I reiterate that I also disagree with this proposal. --Ilaro (talk) 08:39, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

This proposal aims to exclude documentation of certain sources based on nothing more than personal distaste for lore inconsistencies. It should be clear that this runs counter to the wiki as an encyclopaedic project aimed at neutral documentation. I concur with Fullerton that there is little to discuss here; to me the existing standard seems absolutely fundamental. —⁠Legoless (talk) 11:50, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to remove autopatrolled status from patrollers

This is something I've been meaning to raise for a while. UESP grants patrollerships on the qualification of whether one can patrol others' edits, and not of whether one's own edits are patrollable. Using myself as an example, I was raised to patrollership despite extremely valid concerns over the standard to which I held mine own edits. This and other examples of the process by which patrollers are nominated and raised to the role suggest to me that it should be separated from being autpatrolled. I note this might require a spate of nominations of current patrollers to being autopatrolled, which may necessitate a review of all current autopatrolled users. That besides, I believe this to be a necessary step given how we as a wiki select patrollers. — J. J. Fullerton _﴾talk﴿ 05:15, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I see no harm in doing this. -Dcsg (talk) 05:55, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

No. I see active harm in doing this. This would result in about a 10,000 % increase in unpatrolled edits, and make it significantly harder to find and patrol the edits that really need patrolling. If someone has concerns as a patroller that mean they shouldn't have their edits patrolled, then they shouldn't be a patroller.

What I'm gathering from this is that perhaps Fullerton needs to have the patroller role removed. An inherent aspect of being a patroller is the trust and qualification that their OWN edits are good enough to not need to be patrolled. If they can't be trusted with their own edits, then they shouldn't be patrolling anyone else's. End of story. Jeancey (talk) 06:14, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

While I think Jeancey's comment to Fullerton was uncalled for, as he already got his patrollership removed, I do agree with the gist of his statement. Patrollers are expected to get the autopatroller role and thus should be rejected if they are expected to not adhere to those standards. --Ilaro (talk) 08:43, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Jeancey and Ilaro on this. The very job of patroller is about being accurate enough that your edits don't need to be patrolled and, in fact, that you're able to help correct other editors' mistakes. If you're not able to do the first part reliably, then by definition, you shouldn't be a patroller. Yes, conceivably we might catch a few mistakes by having patrollers' edits cross-patrolled, but these are supposed to be infrequent enough that it's better to focus on other things. As Jeancey said, not having patrollers' edits auto-patrolled would enormously magnify the workload for vanishingly little benefit.

Also, as I mentioned in Discord, I don't believe patrollers not being auto-patrolled is a common scenario, so I wouldn't necessarily trust it to work 100% reliably in MediaWiki to begin with, but there's the added concern of how that might interact with some of our customizations like Userpatroller. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 08:56, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

This suggestion makes no sense to me. I would not trust someone to patrol another's edits if their own could not be autopatrolled; it's the bare minimum required for the role. —⁠Legoless (talk) 09:29, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

After reading and seeing what it is by other people's descriptions of it. I see no reason to remove the Auto Patrol feature. Its a good quality to be very good at something and doing editing extremely well. If its a good thing, and makes quality of life easier why do away with it? I can fix stuff if I see it if its blatantly obvious but I can't fix grammar as I'm not the best with it and I wouldn't be patroller material I feel at least not right now or anytime soon. But those that do have those qualities and make the cut should have the tools they need to make it easier to do their jobs, and why take that away from them? TheVampKnight (talk) 09:51, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

This is about separating Patrollership from Autopatrollership, not removing patrolling altogether. From what it sounds, ideally nothing perceivable would even change, as (almost?) all patrollers would be granted autopatrol rights, so no aforementioned 10,000% increase in red exclamation points. I think what Fullerton is trying to bring to light is that having a keen eye for others' edits is a different muscle than having good edits yourself, and that one does not necessarily have both fully trained at once. I think there is validity to what Fullerton is saying, but lacking in displaying how such a change is needed. -Dcsg (talk) 17:39, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

(←) I hadn't picked up on that specific point in the OP, but even so, I really don't see the point of separating them. I don't agree that patrolling your own edits and others are different muscles, to use your wording. An edit is an edit is an edit, to my mind. If you can't be trusted to check your own edits, you can't be trusted to check others' and vice versa. And for the rare time that you do want someone else to look over your edit, we all know that we can just ask one another. Separating the two would just be an exercise in redundancy, as I suspect all current patrollers would be deemed to get both, while nobody new would be added with only one or the other. I can't ever see myself voting someone into patroller if their own edits couldn't be trusted, and I think from what I'm seeing here and in Discord, most others feel the same. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 18:05, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

This is an incredibly silly idea for the many aforementioned reasons people have given. Though you lost your role and I don't oppose you making suggestions due to your firsthand knowledge of this, it would just make it harder for the rest of us. The patrol status of edits isn't as big a deal as always made out to be as anyone can doublecheck any edit and see flaws if they wanted to. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 21:55, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

I'll note despite the comments on mine own patrollership that I'm not proposing this for mine own convenience; indeed, this proposal cannot affect me by its nature.

In every field of writing, editors are separated from the writers. Journalists submit their pieces to editors and subeditors to be proofread and checked; novel writers submit to editors or editing agencies. The simple fact of the matter is that being good at writing or being good at wiki-editing is not the same skillset as being able to proofread and very that someone else's wiki page edit meets stringent and high standards. They're completely different skills, and we shouldn't be treating them as such. — J. J. Fullerton _﴾talk﴿ 01:50, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Well the thing about this Fullerton, there are some areas I do agree with you on. I've seen Admin edits that don't match actual sourcing's, or have pure speculation in certain lore pages. While I do agree that Patrollers and Admins do have to have their work checked as they are not above mistakes or bending their own rules because they are in charge of everything. That does not mean we need to take away AutoPatrol. Don't need to be a patroller or admin to correct a mistake a admin or a patroller makes as it really isn't needed to make their jobs a lot harder. As the Uesp is all a community effort and that is what we do here. TheVampKnight (talk) 02:16, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Proposal for the inclusion of dialogue on quest pages

Currently, our standard is to document quest dialogue on NPC pages and entirely remove it from quest pages. A common argument for this is that dialogue will obscure the quest walkthrough, clogging up the page with irrelevant detail. However, the resultant paraphrasing of dialogue is arguably worse, including irrelevant detail that doesn't even reflect the game. However, these pages are not walkthroughs. The walkthroughs are sections on these pages which document quests, which is our goal as a wiki. The exclusion of dialogue is a failure to document. I'm proposing, therefore, a compromise. A third section on quest pages entitled "Full events" or similar, including NPC events and dialogue that change as the quest progresses. I'm not saying that all quests must be changed now to meet this new ideal; I merely propose that this becomes our new goal with quest documentation.

This would help users of the wiki massively. While us editors know full well that we can load up Online:Razum-dar after the requisite loading time, skip to the relevant quest, and read the dialogue, new users of UESP simply see the dialogue of the quest isn't on the page, and if they don't give up then they give up when they have to keep a half-dozen pages open to see the full events of the quest—especially if some are as lengthy and dense as Online:Razum-dar. This, quite frankly, is user-unfriendly and should change. We're doing an active disservice to readers hoping to catch up on quest dialogue by forcing them to keep dozens of pages at a time open, and it makes it harder to find dialogue on a common subject from several different NPCs despite quests being a very funxional method of separating by topic. Removing dialogue for the sake of removing dialogue makes it harder to follow the walkthrough if one isn't actively playing through a quest; without dialogue to anchor, it's almost impossible for a casual user to double back and see what just happened in a quest or, worse yet, what happened in a quest they played some time ago.

I'm also investigating the possibility that this proposal could involve saving dialogue and pulling it via #lst, thereby preventing duplication of information and automating NPC pages. DCSG has agreed to work on a mockup for this, and he'll soon have it ready as an example.

In the end, the aesthetics of having a dialogue-free quest page should be a minor concern next to the manifold benefits of including it. I'm not asking anybody as an individual to change all their own work to meet the new ideal. I'm not asking anybody to change all of the pages affected by this; I'm merely suggesting a new ideal model for quest pages. — J. J. Fullerton _﴾talk﴿ 01:48, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

This is something we desperately need. Whole-heartedly support. Correct on every level.

Omn (talk) 01:50, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Agree with this proposal, I don't see an issue with including it as a section on its own, that way people who don't want to see it all and just want to see a quick walkthrough can do so, but those who do want all dialogue, etc can scroll down and see it, it'll mostly just be a copy paste job from existing NPC pages anyways, so not like its a massive job for those who want to do it. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 01:53, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Heyo folks, Bryn here. I've discussed this topic with Fullerton a number of times in the past, so he told me he was formally making this proposal, and here I am to offer my support, not as an editor but as a regular user of the UESP. I check dialogue pretty constantly, in special for ESO, and it really is a hassle to be required to keep a number of tabs open and have to cycle through them repeatedly to get the information I want (and also keep running into repeated bits of dialogue shared between characters, thus making the argument about duplicating information pretty insidious). By keeping all the relevant dialogue on the relevant quest it would not only be easier to get this type of information, but, in my opinion, would also make actually writing the walkthrough and sequence of events much more objective and easier on the editors, by not having to write summaries of the exchanges that often tend to be biased in their interpretations.

On various occasions I had to turn to the TES Wikia to get bits of dialogue that I just couldn't find on the UESP because of this kind of policy.

Be it on a section of its own, or in collapsable tables in the body of the walkthrough, the inclusion of dialogue in the relevant quest pages would only benefit these articles and the experience of every user in the site. 191.177.21.129 02:10, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Our current set up is definitely fairly user unfriendly in terms of dialogue. In fact one of the most common complaints I get from non-UESP affiliated peers is that our ESO quest pages are severely lacking in many cases, this change would be a great way to bolster them. It’s fairly obvious we need to make changes with how we handle dialogue. Thankfully, from what it seems like, we would definitely have enough users willing to put in the work to make this change, I see no reason not to test it out. Naga007 (talk) 02:13, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Great idea. Support. Dcking20 (talk) 02:21, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Amazing suggestion, I wanted to bring this up before. I dislike having to open other tabs to look at associated dialogue. Would make "Events of Quest" citations better.Zebendal (talk) 02:25, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

The issue that I've been having is with two things, one not every bit of npc dialogue on the npcs page but can be found on the respective quest page. Another is npcs involved in quests not being able to be found on respective quest pages in terms of links. Like if I want to find an npcs dialogue from an Eso quest page, or want to look up a note or something with some type of lore stuff from that quest you have to go around to find all those npcs. I can't find it the important npcs or lore stuffs that easily. So what I suggest we do is keep Npc dialogue off quest pages and then link to the pages of all the npcs involved in said quest and even side characters, as well as all lore source material like books or notes. As that for sure has been an issue at least for me. A perfect example of this is this quest https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Online:Chasing_Shadows this has an npc that I wanted to look up but what the npc page does not the quest page itself have his journal so people can find it, which was important to me because I had to look up something the other day and I couldn't find the journal and had to go find it the hard way. So that is the problem I've had is important stuff that I need to look up can't be found as easily. TheVampKnight (talk) 02:31, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

(←) I agree with this as an editor and a user. I have completed aforementioned mockup, which can be seen on Online:Sandbox. It's not perfect, since it's using something that had elements of a walkthrough, but hopefully you can see how it would fit if those two subjects were split on a quest article. -Dcsg (talk) 03:05, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Vamp makes a very good point. In the current system, in order to gather all the dialogue from a specific quest, you have to go to each character involved with the quest, sift through their potential mountainous piles of dialogue in order to find what you’re looking for, and then once you’ve done that for each character, you have to piece together the sequence of dialogue yourself. From a user standpoint, that’s incredibly inefficient, tiresome, and inconvenient. As a wiki, our primary goal is to document, our secondary goal is to make the information accessible. With how we handle ESO quest dialogue in the current system, it is adequately documented; however, it is subpar in how it is readily accessed. A solution of some kind feels warranted. Naga007 (talk) 03:28, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

I just use Control F, and that wasn't what I was referring too, what I was referring to is the Skyrim stuff with the Dialogue not being all there on the Npc pages where I can find the dialogue. Then I was mentioning talking about the quest pages don't list all the related npcs in Eso Quests with a link to their respective pages on the Quest pages themselves, and it doesn't list any of the unique journals or notes written by certain npcs that can be found in those quests. Finding Dialogue isn't an issue with Ctrl F, what is a problem is finding the respective npc names or even books they may have that have important lore sourcing. What I care about is if the Npcs have all the dialogue they said on the respective game pages as well as any books or lore stuffs they written, in a place where I can find the links to those. Just by looking at the respective quests or npcs. To make it much easier to find stuff, so when I'm having a conversation then I can just look it up easier. Instead of having to go out of the way just to find something. TheVampKnight (talk) 05:43, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

I would like to point out the actual current standard states that dialogue SHOULD be on the quest page.

Dialogue. Key quest-related dialogue should be quoted as part of the walkthrough. In particular, if there is information from an in-game dialogue that would otherwise need to be paraphrased as part of the walkthrough, it is generally preferable to quote the dialogue instead of paraphrasing it. However, the walkthrough should not attempt to include every piece of dialogue that you hear during the quest.

So those people who think that dialogue is somehow banned completely from quest pages, that's not really accurate at the moment. Jeancey (talk) 05:59, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Yeah Jeancey. I've not worked on many ESO quest pages, but for Dragonborn DLC I added tons on dialogue to quest pages no problem. There are definitely ESO quest pages with dialogue that exist (Online:Soul Shriven in Coldharbour, Online:Partners_in_Crime). Where did this idea come from that dialogue is banned from quest pages? --Jimeee (talk) 10:32, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

I believe that originated because, especially in ESO, it happened sometimes that only a big dialogue dump was added and nothing else which got some pushback. Anyway, yes I like this idea. Dcsg's plan to use #lst seems great to me, even when it raises the difficulty a little bit higher. I think we can easily lower that bar a bit by templating it. {{Section Begins|Queen Ayrenn}} (or whatever we want to name it, we can decide anything we want for easier implementation) looks a lot cleaner and easier to use than <section begin="Queen Ayrenn"/>.— Unsigned comment by Ilaro (talk • contribs) at 02:46 on February 28, 2021‎

The template for the sections may be a bit much, but I suppose there would be no harm in having it. What I did envision being templated would be the Quest-Related Events section of an NPC, where it would look something like {{Quest Events|Quest1|Quest2|etc...}} and it would automatically form all of the sections and use #lst for you. -Dcsg (talk) 17:31, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

I think a section for dialogue that's separate from the walkthrough is a good idea that addresses everyone's concerns - the walkthrough itself isn't overloaded, while the dialogue is still included. Perhaps "Dialogue Transcript" would be a reasonable name for the section? --Enodoc (talk) 20:26, 6 March 2021 (UTC)

Splitting up References

While the idea is good, because if a page has so many references it maybe good to split them off. I've noticed its very buggy, and doesn't always work to take you to the reference. Another big issue is Editors convivence. The new overhaul had information that, also is Orcish History lore, so I used that as part of the expansion or overhaul work on the Orc page. When I did that the issue I had, was I had to go through all those citations to fix them, to make it so it didn't error. Now I'm not saying we should do away from the idea, but it needs to be coded in a way. So that editors can transfer information to another page, when needed without having to go through all the references without causing such errors.TheVampKnight (talk) 10:51, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

I think the 2 main issues people have highlighted is the buggyness and also that reference sections might give undue prominence to certain types of sources. But going past all that - I need to ask the primary question of "What problem does this solve?". And if it does solve a problem, the next question is do we have evidence of this being a problem for enough people for it to warrant a solution. Its easy to fall into the trap of using what we as editors find problematic, and then believing that the wider UESP readership also have this problem, when they possible don't. Our personal annoyances shouldn't really be a basis for a design change that can effect the wider readership.

I suspect this change is an effort to organise the 100+ refs on articles into some order - So I ask if having an organised reference section is truly helpful to readers? I can only give my own experience (which of course is in no way representative of an average UESP reader), but I have never felt giant lists of refs needed to be broken down, either here or on wikipedia. To me, ref sections are not really sections that I would use to browse sources in the same way I would Lore:Library. I'm interested to hear other's opinions on why we should have this change - but at the same time we need to recognise that we editors are so far removed from the average UESP reader that our opinions on what they would like to see are possibly not as relevant as we think. Not without evidence. --Jimeee (talk) 15:36, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

I'd like to encourage discussion on the subject. Please do criticise the experiment. I have only separated the references on two pages: Lore:Molag Bal and Lore:Breton. Implementation on Lore:Molag Bal was done on a whim after one user said "wow that's a lot of references, it's kind of impressive", and another user said "reference groups are a thing if you ever feel like they should be separated". So I decided to see how it looked. The only reason Lore:Breton got the treatment is because somebody suggested it once while the project was still on my sandbox after they liked the ref groups on Lore:Molag Bal, and I implemented it for the sake of testing. Personally, I like organizing things, but I can see why people might consider the grouped citations unsightly or unnecessary. I have no qualms with eliminating the excess reference groups if people abhor them. -MolagBallet (talk) 19:28, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

I've previously raised some of these concerns on the UESP Discord Server, but they are as follows:

• Splitting a large mass of sources is good for readability but Wikipedia pages with dozens of dozens upon baker's dozens of baker's dozens of sources are often perfectly readable.
• The splits currently being trialed (book, dialogue, et cetera) aren't useful and don't group sources aside from presentation; they don't group by reliability or usefulness and so do not necessarily present useful groupings
• While a primary/secondary/tertiary set of groupings would present a more useful separation, it could lead to Original Research (e.g. arguing for placement in primary in cases of ambiguity; these issues could be resolved by creating "1.5ary" categories or resolving to use the lowest possible category)
• Similarly, a "by release" set of groupings could lead to negative results.

Therefore, I'd argue that we do not split and opt for returning to our Official/UnOfficial Lore separation. — J. J. Fullerton _﴾talk﴿ 21:13, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

I said what I could about this matter on Lore_talk:Molag_Bal#Reference_Groups, and for the most part I'm opposed to changing how references are presently handled. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 01:48, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Support for uploading file types apng, avif, and WebP ?

So far the upload page allows (according to the page): png, gif, jpg, jpeg, webp, ogg, zip, bmp, pcx, tga, svg, webm, ogv, oga, flac, opus, wav

But some of the newer image types are smaller, sharper, and have better color range such as: WebP, lossless WebP, apng, avif.

I noticed these apparent omissions when I tried to upload .ico files (MIME type image/x-icon) for Daggerfall and Arena. Fail.

This upload failed because as I subsequently found out:

• Who displays icons using <img> on a wiki or even <picture> on any web page?
• convert the .ico to a .png using an app.
• load and display the .png which will have the correct MIME
• have your user convert the .png to an .ico using an app.
• Easy - peasy. <HeadPlant.ico>

Kalevala (talk) 14:51, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

We are served well enough by PNG, JPEG, and GIF. Not sure why you mention WEBP since that seems to be included on the list of allowable uploads. After some brief testing it looks like Animated PNGs are also supported.

We can look at expanding the wiki's capabilities to host other filetypes, as was done recently with the addition of WEBM. However, I don't see a pressing need to move away from the existing standard web-friendly formats that are currently in use. —⁠Legoless (talk) 15:03, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Granted we are well served by them, and yes I missed the "webp". So if your testing shows we in fact support "apng", perhaps it should be included on the page's list?

I agree the need is not pressing. But adding more capability doesn't imply moving away. It just means that one allows the Darwinian processes of favored formats to proceed however it will while remaining ready for most outcomes. Darwinian one may ask. Yes, XBM and tiff are examples extinction.

Thanks for the testing! And thanks for moving the post here; I've bookmarked this page! Kalevala (talk) 15:48, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

For APNG you can upload them with PNG extension and the animation should work fine. Wouldn't be a bad idea to allow APNG extension as well though. —⁠Legoless (talk) 16:23, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

APNGs are now supported directly. I'll wait for the end of this discussion before adding any others. It's an easy thing to change; the only hard part is figuring out where exactly to add them in the list. And before anyone asks, I'm not sure if we can sort the full list, cuz I'm pretty sure there are a few different things modifying it. I'll look into that if I add more later. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 16:39, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

APNG extension seems to be working as intended!

—⁠Legoless (talk) 16:54, 30 March 2021 (UTC)

Usage of OB icons in other gamespaces

Today there was a discussion on the Discord in regards to the usage of Oblivion icons in other gamespaces such as Skyrim and Morrowind, and how they're outdated and do not convey a good idea of what they're representing. I'd like to propose that we replace these icons with text, as Jimeee pointed out, this would help our blind users, and that users should never need to stop and decipher an icon, abbreviation, or a shortened word.

An example of this icon usage is https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Golden_Saint where it's a mess of two OB icons and then "Sta." instead of an icon or just "Stamina". We could use FC for text to make Health red, Magicka blue, Stamina green, etc. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 18:28, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

This is something that has irked me since my very first time visit to this site. I think that icons in the gamespaces should be visually congruent with the design of the game, which shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who's seen my Blades templates. If Skyrim doesn't have an icon for the attributes, then we shouldn't assign them ones. The {{fc}} coloring is a good idea to make it more clear from a glance, and some icons will have sensible substitutes, like the gold item for the gold icon. -Dcsg (talk) 00:49, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, this is really something that should have been addressed ages ago. Icons should be game-specific. I also notice how on the Morrowind MWMap Oblivion icons are also used, since Morrowind has one type of map icon (a yellow square), and I feel it could be changed to eso icons if we were to pick map icons based off any other game. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 01:48, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm in agreement with the above. Usage of Oblivion icons should ideally be restricted to the Oblivion and Shivering namespaces, and they are not a substitute for text. There may be some cases where we don't have a choice, e.g. Dawnstar:NPCs which doesn't have its own game icons and which provides an icon legend to decipher the meanings. —⁠Legoless (talk) 00:43, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

I would like to point out that we should also always be using alt text for all of these images so that readers can verbalize them for blind or visually impaired users. Jeancey (talk) 17:53, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Concerning Morrowind map icons, we should use the ones that the Tamriel Rebuilt map is using. There are icons for things like Telvanni towers and Dwemer ruins. Oblivion is not appropriate, but ESO is even less appropriate considering the distance between games. —Dillonn241 (talk) 21:56, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

If they are fan made icons, we shouldn't be using them.... Jeancey (talk) 22:44, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Okay, well I fully oppose any switch to ESO icons. Oblivion is the closest game. I'd sooner support all yellow squares. —Dillonn241 (talk) 16:23, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

I have no objections to using text in place of icons. -MolagBallet (talk) 18:02, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Site Image Modernizations

Many of the image assets used on the site are, unfortunately, a bit dated. Many of them do not hold up on larger, modern screens or simply aren't making use of some of the great images that have already been created.

Firstly the current favicon could be replaced with this icon, already in use on some of the UESP's social media. The current one isn't optimal, as it's unrecognizable, hard to read, and doesn't fit with the UESP aesthetic. The proposed replacement is exactly what I would expect a UESP icon to look like, hence why I think it's the only true candidate for site favicon.

Before and after (Logo and background changes)

In addition, current logo as seen on the left sidebar is pretty low-res and grainy. It can be replaced with one of the more recent high-res versions, particularly this one. Besides being just higher-res, it's cleaner and more well-defined, simply a plain improvement on the current one.

Lastly, the site's signature parchment background is in dire need of replacement. I created this concept from a creative commons image, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0. In a previous CP post, there were concerns about being able to fully satisfy the attribution requirement, however between being credited on its File page and CSS comments in the actual implementation, it should be possible to satisfy it.

I've been using these through the power of custom User CSS and I haven't looked back since. I think all of my proposed changes would help make the site more consistent and visually appealing for use on modern devices. -Dcsg (talk) 22:25, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Fully support these changes, I brought similar issues up quite a few months ago but it kinda got forgot about. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 07:19, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree with most of the suggestions, but I don't like the SVG logo as it's too blotchy. There's a higher-res PNG which I will find and upload later that I prefer. --Enodoc (talk) 09:00, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

These UESP site images are pretty pixelated, these changes are needed to bring them to modern standards. Zebendal (talk) 15:53, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Here we go - I recommend the slightly smaller high-res PNG (left) over the blotchy PNG'ified SVG (right). --Enodoc (talk) 18:07, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

The left one seems to have a lot less detail/more blurry and looks worse on my end (4K screen) Imperialbattlespire (talk) 19:06, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the left one is better. However, I think the optimal logo would have a few properties of the one on the right, namely: the hard shadow, the lack of text shading, and the increased clarity of the design on the page. -Dcsg (talk) 19:33, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

(←) I'm seeing the same thing ImpBat is...the left one looks sort of smudged or something, where the right one is crystal clear. I'm also confused by the fact that Enodoc said the left one was "smaller", but on my screen, the right one is smaller (despite both of them nominally being 512px). – Robin Hood ^(talk) 20:06, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

The colour gradients on the left one are overall smoother, and the right one is much harder/sharper; not just in the text, but also the shading. Essentially, the SVG is "flat" while the PNG isn't. When I say "smaller", the left one is 512px native, while the right one is 1678px native. If we can get a version of the SVG with smooth gradients in the parchment, it would be a better candidate. --Enodoc (talk) 20:59, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

The colour gradients on the left are definitely much better, but the shaded text looks dingy to me; I much prefer the pure white of the text on the right. Apart from that, I'm happy with all the proposed changes. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 21:14, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Agreed on all changes. The svg could use more blurring on the background smudges like Enodoc pointed out, but either is a major improvement. —Dillonn241 (talk) 01:22, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

If Dave has the original svg, we may be able to both properly blur the background like the png and keep the flat white text. --Enodoc (talk) 11:26, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

(←) Good stuff! This is one of those things that was done way back when and never revisited. Here's the changes I've made so far:

• Updated the background image (removed 2 small dark dots).
• Added 16-256 pixel PNG favicons in common sizes.
• Fixed the resizing of the upper-left site logo (was causing it to be a little blurred making it harder to judge replacements).

I do have the original SVG of the site logo so any number of tweaks can be made to the original as needed. I've tried 3 different tweaks based on the above comments (original and scaled up sizes shown):

• Removed the interior shading on the "Elder Scrolls" text.
• Made all text white color.
• Left image is with no text shadows.
• Center image is with original text shadows but just a bit lighter.
• Right image is sharper and lighter text shadows.

Preferred image and further tweak suggestions welcome...I prefer right one myself and might be able to play with text and outline sizes to make the texts a little clearer. -- Daveh ^(talk) 15:02, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

The one on the right looks good to me! The lettering in the new favicon isn't particularly readable but I'm not sure if that really matters. --Enodoc (talk) 15:52, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

For the 16 and 32 pixel favicon I'll try to manually add/highlight the text and see if that makes it a little better. -- Daveh ^(talk) 17:57, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

The new things look great! I like the rightmost large logo for sure. Also, the background image should be renamed and given proper categories, like Category:Site Images. The CSS should also be commented with the source; someone suggested that as a means to properly meet the CC attribution requirement. And, if we're able to create a favicon with a more visible "UESP", then that's great! -Dcsg (talk) 18:03, 16 April 2021 (UTC)

Agreed that the rightmost logo looks the best. I would change the shadow to be more "hard" as in the SVG. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 09:14, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

The rightmost one is the way to go. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 09:20, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

Go with the right. Its the best balance. Zebendal (talk) 14:17, 17 April 2021 (UTC)

(←) More changes:

• Made the text in the 16 and 32 pixel favicons more legible (may take a while to update, unsure the mechanism besides clearing your cache).
• Updated the upper-left logo. Looks great!
• Added attribution in the CSS to the background image.
• TODO -- Copy/move the background image to a new name and categorize.

-- Daveh ^(talk) 16:22, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

The side logo definitely looks better, but it still has the problem with resolution where the pixelation is quite noticeable. Also, it seems the favicon was replaced with another fairly soon after the initial change, and the newer one is harder to read, at least on my browser where the tabs are black. I think the white Magic Cards "UESP" with a thin black border would still be the best way to go. -Dcsg (talk) 03:40, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by "pixelation"...the image div is the exact size of the image itself so shouldn't be resized anymore. I can make it smoother/anti-aliased but then it would be more like the old logo which we were trying to move away from. There's limited things I can do with the favicon since its only 16x16 (unless you were talking about a different resolution). I can try white text versions with a black outer border or the same black text with a white outer border and see how that works. -- Daveh ^(talk) 15:10, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Merchandise Namespace

I wanted to post about this here so it gets at least a little bit of traction and I don't forget about it. I have created Merchandise:Main Page in an effort to kickstart the documentation of merchandise, and to keep me from putting off said documentation. I have a few concerns about the namespace.

For starters, what abbreviation should we use for file names? I'm thinking MER or MERCH would be appropriate. MER is shorter, so it might be more practical.

Also in regards to file names, I'd like to posit that image categories include things like jewelry, clothes, toys, etc. If I were to upload an image of an amulet, I'd name the file "MER-jewelry-(Amulet Name Here).jpg".

If anyone has ideas on how to document merchandise, what the pages should look like, etc., please contribute. I'd like to get some standards outlined. -MolagBallet (talk) 01:20, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

An addendum: I'd like to avoid just making the merchandise namespace a giant list. It would be ideal if we could give each piece of merchandise its own page. Perhaps we can come up with parameters for a Merchandise infobox template? -MolagBallet (talk) 01:25, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I think MERCH for the NS_ID makes the most sense. It could be shortened to three letters with something like MRC, but I think it gains very little from shaving off just two characters. Regarding parameters: date (ranges), title, sale price, type, and contains/bundle (listing the various objects in one mercantile unit) all immediately come to mind. -Dcsg (talk) 01:37, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I think the way Tes Wiki has been handling Merchandise pages for years now is ideal, an infobox is a requirement, and you should look at the other wiki for ideas on how to do it. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 01:48, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

I think MRC or MCH would be good for NS_ID, we should try and avoid going above 3 characters wherever possible. --Enodoc (talk) 21:03, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

Expanding Shortcut Templates

Over the years, we've developed a number of shortcut templates like {{Al}} and {{Icon}}, that make things easier to read and/or work with, but for any given parameter(s), resolve to very simple, straight-forward wiki text. {{Al|R}}, for example, will always spit out the HTML code to align something to the right, while all of the {{Icon}} templates will resolve to straight-up [[File:Whatever.jpg]] links. In small handfuls, there's nothing wrong with using these at all; it's far easier for most users to remember {{Al|R}}, for example, than it is to remember the specific code. In bulk, however, such as in large tables on frequently accessed pages or in frequently used templates, they can slow page loading down noticeably, despite the text itself being shorter, and present unnecessary workload for the wiki. For that reason, I've made some of these templates substitutable.

For those not familiar with it, that means that you can do {{subst:Icon|i|Wheat|20}}, for example and in Skyrim space, when you save the page, it would actually be saved directly as [[File:SR-icon-ingredient-Wheat.png|20px]]. This has the benefit that if you can't remember the code, you can use the template for ease-of-use, but produce the full code for the wiki's benefit.

So, first off, I wanted to let people know that that's an option, and that it's usually a good thing...please make use of this as often as you reasonably can.

More importantly, however, I think that for cases like these, it might be appropriate to create a bot job to automatically convert some or all of these calls to their substituted forms. I wanted to get the wiki's opinion on that before doing anything, though, since there's a performance vs. usability argument here. This was why, for example, we stopped converting namespace shortcuts like {{DB}} to their wikitext equivalents some years ago...the resultant text was distinctly less user-friendly. For Al, however, it's normally used in tables, which already involve advanced formatting. For Icon, I think there's an argument to be made about resolving to something everyone understands with code that's not that much longer than the original Icon call was to begin with. Plus, some people might prefer the straight-up file name to somewhat arcane shortcut codes. For examples of pages that would benefit significantly, see Morrowind:Potions and Online:Homespun Armor. So, what are your feelings on the matter? Does it make sense for the bot to convert these things en masse or not?

Lastly, while I've focussed on just Al and Icon here, are there other templates that people can think of that might benefit from being substitutable and/or automatically replaced by the bot? – Robin Hood ^(talk) 13:13, 21 April 2021 (UTC)

Thumbnails in File: don't seem to work correctly.

I have used the Update link (Update this file) on two pages:

File:SR-map-Brinewater Grotto.jpg

File:SR-map-Bloated Man's Grotto.jpg

The actual articles load the correct map, but the thumbnails in File: still refer to old pictures instead of the updated versions. I do not how to correct this. Kalevala (talk) 02:06, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

There was a problem we spotted this morning and Dave was able to fix, but it may have affected a few files that were uploaded recently, leaving the thumbnails broken or referring to older copies. Purging the file page should fix the issue. If that doesn't seem to do it, it may just be a caching issue, so wait a few minutes and if it's still occurring, please report it. I've looked at the two you mentioned and they appear fine now, so I suspect someone beat me to purging them. (Edit: your files were uploaded more recently than the problem, so shouldn't have been affected, but the same advice still applies...purging or hard-refreshing may resolve the issue.) – Robin Hood ^(talk) 02:37, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

Cleared the history and every thing worked like a charm! Thanks. Kalevala (talk) 03:30, 3 May 2021 (UTC)

4E 40

This reddit post was brought to my attention today. It outlines the issue with UESP's use of 4E 40 as the year in which the events of the Greg Keyes novels take place, and correctly surmises that it is an approximation based on the blurbs. This is correct; we went with 4E 40 based on the Lord of Souls blurb which states that the events take place forty years after the Oblivion Crisis.

However, user NientedeNada on reddit points out that Sul states "[Vuhon] vanished into Oblivion forty-three years ago". We know for a fact that the Red Year occurred in 4E 5, which is when Vuhon vanished. As such, the Umbriel Crisis occurred in 4E 48. This will also impact the date of birth of Attrebus Mede, who is 22 in the books.

I think the reddit poster is correct, but I also haven't read these books in many years. I'd like to bring it up here first and hear any opposing evidence which supports our current date. In the absence of that, I would suggest we request a bot run to find all instances of {{Year|4E 40}} and 4E 40 on the wiki for manual review, and possibly another to change all instances to 4E 48 if the results look good. Attrebus' birth year is only listed in a few places so shouldn't be an issue to change from 4E 18 to 4E 26. —⁠Legoless (talk) 08:59, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

I agree, but it seems like people already took the initiative to change it themselves on some pages.Zebendal (talk) 03:31, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Seems like an anonymous user has now taken care of all instances of this. —⁠Legoless (talk) 09:20, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Robber's Gorge Bandit Faction

Hey there!

I'm trying to figure out the best way to link the pages Skyrim:Robber's Gorge Bandit Faction and Skyrim:Robber's Gorge together.

Any ideas for how I should approach it? –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 02:06, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

I see your point—it doesn't really fit anywhere, and yet it should probably be in there somehow. The only thing I can think of is introducing a sentence along the lines of "NPCs at this location belong to the Robber's Gorge Bandit Faction." It's incredibly akward, but at least it introduces the information and then someone else will hopefully have a better idea of how to fit it in a little later.

Another alternative might be to ask this question on our Discord server. That'll likely get more eyes on it and maybe someone there can come up with a better way of doing it than I have. :) – Robin Hood ^(talk) 16:14, 27 June 2021 (UTC)

@RobinHood70: I've asked there. Thank you for your response at least! :D –MJL ‐Talk‐^☖ 02:03, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Personally, I think that sentence would fit very well in the Notes section of the article. — Wolfborn^(Howl) 02:30, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

Replace "Also appears in..." with "See Also"

While tidying up the Notes on Skyrim:Karstaag, I got thinking about the recurring note that reads something like:

This <whatever> also appeared in <other game>

Rather than trying to write out a rather clumsy sentence to explain that something has appeared in another game, I think we should just have a ==See Also== section with links for any relevant articles in other namespaces. Lore is probably less necessary since we already have Lore Page links in the Infobox, but this could also be useful for drawing more attention to modspace pages without them impacting on the rest of the content of the page.

I've implemented this as a proof-of-concept in Skyrim:Karstaag but styling is up for discussion if necessary, eg if we want to make it look a bit more like a Disambiguation page with a short description. Thoughts? --Enodoc (talk) 22:24, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Don't like this idea because it needless removes context for no apparent benefit. The original sentence "Karstaag first appears in Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion." is as clear and concise as possible and can be understood by any reader, regardless of background knowledge. Replacing it with Bloodmoon:Karstaag is much less descriptive. From a best practices and accessibility POV, links should always be descriptive. I know we don't always do this, but we should at least not remove examples that do. --Jimeee (talk) 13:01, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Agreed, I prefer the context that notes provide over a separate section with non-descriptive links. I know it's usually just "x also appears in y", but sometimes those notes allow for nuance. For example, see Legends:Mehrunes Dagon's Flayer#Notes. —⁠Legoless (talk) 13:52, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

As I said, very happy to consider a format which includes a descriptive note. My major concern is indeed around accessibility, and how linking the word "appears in" to a destination page is a considerably arbitrary and inconsistent place to apply a link. The link could just as easily go on the game title, and does exactly that in some other examples instead of linking the game article. There's also inconsistency between "appears in" and "appeared in". All of these would be resolved with a (descriptive) See Also section which would have consistency standards applied at the outset. --Enodoc (talk) 15:36, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

NPC pages: How much dialogue is enough to warrant a "dialogue" section?

In the Oblivion and Shivering spaces, I have been changing some of the NPC dialogue to the indented style, rather than in-line. Some NPCs apparently have enough dialogue to warrant creating a separate "dialogue" section on their page. 13 pieces of dialogue is apparently enough for this (see Oblivion:Andreas_Draconis), and so is four pieces and a large, pre-existing table for quest-related dialogue (see Shivering:Una_Armina). I was recently informed that there is "not much point" in doing it for two pieces of dialogue (see Oblivion:Carandial).

I didn't find anything that addressed this directly on UESPWiki:Oblivion_NPC_Redesign_Project; the talk page for that page has one entry which states that "For almost all NPCs, keeping things without headings is the way to go."

Is there any other guidance available on when to and when not to create a dialogue section? I could do a binary search between 13 and 2 and find out, but I figure asking here might be quicker.

(This is a different issue than including dialogue on quest pages, discussed above.)

Thanks! 73.3.58.200 01:27, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

In-line is the old style that was formulated under the auspices of the OBNPCRP. Shivering namespace in particular is very old and has some formatting issues compared to our current standards for dialogue layout.

There has been some talk of adopting ESO-style indented dialogue in these older namespaces—a format that was adopted for ONspace following this discussion. In fact, this has already been implemented on some Oblivion articles, and makes for much cleaner reading and referencing. It also allows for the inclusion of player dialogue, which was previously largely excluded from the wiki. We may need to look at formally codifying this shift in formatting, but if you want to work on cleaning up the walls of text resulting from Shivering Isles dialogue my advice is to be bold. —⁠Legoless (talk) 13:58, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

I went ahead and indented the dialogue for Jayred Ice-Veins: before and after. I didn't split it out into a "dialogue" section, though. I noticed two things: 1) If there's a picture at the left, the leading colon doesn't actually indent anything and 2) the indents break up the wall of text of each paragraph (IMHO good), but the indents also lose the spacing between paragraphs, which sort of leads to a wall of indented text. For someone like Shelden, who says things during several quests, adding sub-heads for each quest fixes the wall of indented text. Jayred mostly talks during a single quest, so that doesn't work as well for him. 73.3.58.200 03:49, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Regarding point (1), using {{ListFix}} will fix the indenting issues around left-aligned images. I've gone ahead and added it to the page, but the exact positioning of the closing brackets may need tweaking. There may also be other (i.e. better) ways to fix the indenting issue that I'm not aware of.

Regarding adopting ESO-style indented dialogue in older namespaces, I would be completely in support of that. The Morrowind namespace in particular is in desperate need of a dialogue-formatting standard; currently, it's a free-for-all mish-mash of at least three different "styles", one of which consists of nothing more than copy-pasting all the dialogue from the Construction Set in alphabetical order of topics into a completely context-less wall of text which tells the reader absolutely nothing about the circumstances under which the dialogue is "spoken" (see here for an example). It would be nice reformat that into meaningful information according to an established standard. — Wolfborn^(Howl) 04:56, 14 July 2021 (UTC)

Apologies for the late reply, but thought I'd chip in since I was responsible for the revert on the Carandial page referenced by the OP. I should also say upfront that from what I can see looking in my watchlist, you (OP) have made really superb edits across the board and I'd really encourage you to create an account, as you deserved to be recognised for them!

On the topic at hand - indented dialogue certainly has its advantages for breaking up quest-dialogue walls of text (a problem I'd personally fix by not including quest dialogue at all, but lost that battle years and years ago!) However, there's a point here about considering proportionality and making a bit of a judgement based on the feel of the page, even in the absence of a clear policy. By which I mean:

1. "Standard" dialogue (i.e. non-quest dialogue) is often what gives you an insight into the NPC's character and quirks, and therefore there's an advantage to keeping it in proximity of similar content (e.g. schedule, rumors, etc.) via the in-line formatting.
2. The point of the indent style is making big chunks of dialogue easier to read. If there are only a couple of lines of dialogue (particularly if short), I frankly can't see what value it adds.
3. Finally, I find keeping as much info into the main body of an article preferable to creating lots of sub-headings (admittedly more of a personal preference.)

Hope that clarifies my thinking behind the revert and gives a bit of food for thought/discussion. Thanks again for your edits, keep up the excellent work. --SerCenKing (talk) 11:11, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

Including dialogue in large paragraphs is just awful for readers in my opinion, even if an NPC only has two or three lines of dialogue, a dialogue section should be on the NPC page. Most of the Oblivion pages and quite a few Skyrim pages suffer because dialogue has just been shoved into horrendous "formatting". I have copied the ESO style of dialogue formatting for the Blades namespace as I have been responsible for the large majority of NPC pages in that namespace. The number one complaint I hear in the community regarding the UESP is the formatting of dialogue in the older namespaces, and how the Fandom wiki is preferable due to them using the ESO style we use. We should not maintain using this outdated and visually cluttered style that older pages use and I think that Carandial should be changed back to having its own dialogue section.

I also agree with Wolfborn in regards to Morrowind, I have been changing quite a few Morrowind NPC pages as I see them, as we are missing a lot of dialogue in general for that namespace. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 12:04, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't dispute any of that, but I'm afraid your argument doesn't quite follow in this specific case. The dialogue on Carandial's page simply isn't in "large paragraphs" at the moment. I do agree with going with the indent style when there's lots of text though - e.g. on the Jayred Ice-Veins page, where I've had a go at splitting into more headers for ease. --SerCenKing (talk) 13:50, 24 July 2021 (UTC)

I did the first part of Kiliban Nyrandil's page: before and after. The tip on ListFix helped me get it formatted correctly around the image. If the part I did seems OK, I'll do the rest of it.

I am following the SI main quest from the beginning and working on the NPCs involved in order of appearance, sort of. I skipped Sheogorath and Relmyna Verenim, because their pages seem to be much more elaborate than most other SI NPCs, with per-quest icons and more screenshots. I want to avoid editing those until I get a little more experience getting the formatting right, and until the desired new format is nailed down. 73.3.58.200 05:31, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

It appears to me that there is a lack of consensus among the long-time editors as to how dialogue pages should be formatted. Therefore, I am discontinuing any effort to reformat the dialogue for Shivering or Oblivion NPCs. I believe I was fairly consistent in using the phrase "Changed to indented quote style" in my edit summaries, so it should be easy for others to look at my edit history to determine what edits to revert. 73.3.58.200 07:40, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Don't quit on that, doing that is still very helpful, for editors and readers, even if some don't appreciate those efforts don't just quit because of that.TheVampKnight (talk) 07:52, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Online NPC Summary Template Information Order Change

With the NPC info box template, I'd like to suggest that the order of the "Drops" and "Other Information" be swapped. It came to mind after seeing the recent edits to the Vorenor Winterbourne where the unique drops were added, now I think adding these is a good idea, but with the order as it is it makes the Other Information section look disconnected from the rest of the information.--Talyyn (talk) 16:00, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Agreed. The summary box doesn't look appealing when Drops are above things like Condition. -MolagBallet (talk) 17:06, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

I just took a look at the template itself and Drops is the only case where a data field spans the entire row without having a title box off to the left, so regardless of how much info is in Drops vs. other fields, I think it's always going to look better towards the bottom. The change itself is trivial, but I asked Talyyn to check with the community first because there are something like 28,000 NPCs in Online space, so it's not something I wanted to do before making sure people were generally agreement. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 22:17, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Agree --Jimeee (talk) 08:45, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Talyyn reminded me of this today; it's been done now. Sorry for the delay. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 15:13, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Morrowind Generic Dialogue: Where to Document Expansion-Specific Content?

The Morrowind namespace currently documents a large amount of generic dialogue found within the game. However, I have noticed that expansion-specific content is currently being included in the "Morrowind" namespace as well. For example, Generic Dialogue B contains entries for "Bears" and "Berserkers", two topics which are added by the Bloodmoon expansion and which are only accessible and applicable on the island of Solstheim. Given that we normally document expansion-specific content in its own namespace, should we not be doing the same for generic dialogue? (i.e. should we not create "Tribunal:Generic Dialogue" and "Bloodmoon:Generic Dialogue" pages and document their respective additions there?) — Wolfborn^(Howl) 03:39, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

I honestly don't see the point in doing so, as all three expansions come with the game now a days, and it would make things even more confounding doing it that way. I think it would be best to keep it all in one place, that is my personal opinion on the matter. I don't think we should be separating it. TheVampKnight (talk) 03:43, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Well, if we use that logic, then why keep the Tribunal and Bloodmoon namespaces at all? Why not just put everything into the Morrowind namespace, similar to what was done with the Dragonborn and Dawnguard expansions for Skyrim? (Hmmm... I may have just opened a bigger can of worms than I wanted to...) — Wolfborn^(Howl) 04:33, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

I feel the namespaces should be merged as well now since the GOTY edition is likely going to be the most common edition in the modern context. However, this will get a lot of pushback.Zebendal (talk) 04:36, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

I honestly think that would be a good idea doing this, and we should do this with Oblivion as well, I'm not opposed to that idea as its a great idea and there is no pushback from me on this.TheVampKnight (talk) 04:38, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

(←) Either solution works, although I think it makes the most sense to keep all generic dialogue in a single location and use {{BM}} or {{TR}} markers as needed. —⁠Legoless (talk) 08:36, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Just as a note: There are specific reasons why Dragonborn needed to be merged, and those reasons specifically involved the continual release of CC content that utilized things from both the main Skyrim namespace and the Dragonborn namespace. In addition, the changes with the Skyrim Special Edition (which is the one that has CC content and still gets updated) actually removed one of the criteria that we use for determining whether something gets a separate namespace, namely that the game data is distinct and separate from the main game, rather than being integrated. With the Skyrim Special Edition, they integrated the Dragonborn data directly to the Skyrim data. The Bloodmoon, Tribunal (and Shivering Isles) all still meet the main criteria for being separate namespaces, namely that they had separate releases (not released along with the main game initially), they have distinct separate landmasses that don't add significant content to the main game area (beyond things involved with getting to the new landmass, like the Shivering Isles portal, or the people involved in getting you to Solstheim and Mournhold), and they have distinctly separate data files (the BSAs) that aren't integrated with the base game files. Given those criteria, Bloodmoon, Tribunal and Shivering Isles still warrant separate namespaces. We never decided on what got a separate namespace based on how easy it was for editors or whether at some point in the future someone may want to merge them or not. Unless they re-release Morrowind or Oblivion with combined data files and then start releasing new content for those games on a regular basis, there is no real reason to merge them, especially since it is a fairly complicated process, not like a flick of a switch.

In addition to the above, the older a namespace is, the more places on the internet may link to specific pages and files. Given the age and standing of these games, that's probably more likely than for any random game. Merging these namespaces could cause dead links for stuff that currently directs some small amount of traffic to the site, and there just isn't the same benefits to merging these namespaces to override the negatives (as was discussed when we merged Dragonborn). There are likely other reasons not to do it as well that I'm not remembering right now Jeancey (talk) 22:53, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

In addition to Jeancey's points on merging, there's another good reason not to merge MW and OB spaces: it's really not a good time for me to take on that kind of bot project. I'm behind on a lot of coding projects, including re-writing MetaTemplate and UespCustomCode, as well as several bot things I'd like to work on (not to mention other non-programming projects I've been neglecting). Adapting the DB code for both MW and OB would require a bit of work, plus there were a lot of things I just did manually or semi-manually that I'd have to figure out again. I'm not saying "no", but right now, there'd have to be nearly universal insistence that we need to do it right away to get me to drop everything else. If there's really strong support for the idea, let's revisit it in 3-6 months, but if we aren't all 100% sure this needs to be done, I'd say let's not do it. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 01:05, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

To be clear, I was not advocating merging the Tribunal and Bloodmoon namespaces into Morrowind, I was merely pointing out the inevitable end-result of taking TheVampKnight's reasoning to its logical conclusion. Personally, I'm in agreement with Jeancey's stance on this; I don't see any particular reason or need to merge the namespaces at this time nor any particular benefit to doing so.

As to the original question, implementing Legoless's suggestion would be fine with me; it would serve to distinguish expansion-specific topics from those found in the base game. — Wolfborn^(Howl) 03:27, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

In addition to expansion-specific topics, there are also expansion-specific dialogue lines for existing topics. I would think the {{BM}} and {{TR}} tags should work fine to distinguish those as well. —⁠Legoless (talk) 08:58, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Do we also want redirects from Bloodmoon:Generic Dialogue A, Tribunal:Generic Dialogue M, etc to the morrowind pages? Jeancey (talk) 17:28, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Regional Lore articles

Something caught my eye, and I've seen these complaints major ones about how Bretons are treated, and the fact they didn't get any good stuff from the ESO Orsinium Dlc. Some claim they don't find Bretons interesting enough, but then I came across this dev statement on the matter. It made me realize the major impact of not having updated lore information and how that can effect the lore in serious ways. Now there are only so many contributors and those interested in doing certain things. But when you had a dev statement like this, for the place of Wrothgar, having very little informantion that he had to make stuff up and say that is the lore. Is very alarming as that means the actual lore of the region that hasn't been listed on a page like this one during the time frame of a development can have serious implications to the lore that contradicts other lore. I've had concerns about this even before reading into this today. It turns out my concerns are legit ones, as this in fact has impacted a ESO DLC and possibly other dlcs as well.

Here is the Dev statement, Lawrence: Yes we can because I actually love that stuff. A lot of the, actually 95% of my job is the little details of culture and the world and the people in it and the plants and the animals. So a lot of things like… for example when we started work on a new zone, as we said we started work on Orsinium and Wrothgar literally several years ago that’s how long it takes to do these things. Several years ago they started talking, “okay so we’re going to start making this zone, it’s a new biome it’s different environments - what lives there?” And so, you know, they said “okay so in lore what lives there Lawrence?” And of course I consulted the lore and it didn’t say very much so I made stuff up and then said that’s what the lore said.

This means that Bethesda/Zenimax if they don't have the right lore information say from articles like the Wrothagar Mountains and the main stuff that it talked about was Orsinium and Orcs, of course Bretons lived there. But had no mentions of Jehanna a city found within those mountions nor Farrun in these types of articles. Then that means Devs are missing out on crucial information and we do know for a fact the Devs used UESP.

Most of the poorly done articles are the regional and area ones. Sometimes they get updated and when they do its great that means its there for any dev to come and find information on. Which is why I brought this up here, I think that anyone that is willing to help out with these articles or were hesitant should know how serious this actually is, and most importantly how there needs to be more focus done on updating existing regional articles. Articles like Lore:Vvardenfell are so badly sited and missing so much information. The Hammerfell stuff especially if there is anything not updated needs serious updating as well. Given that is the most likely location of the next game, if we have devs that don't know what can be found in these regions how do you expect interesting lore cities or other interesting lore stuffs from past games like Daggerfall to make it into a future game?`TheVampKnight (talk) 02:35, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

It's not our job to be a source for devs, they should have their own internal sources. The history of Jehanna and Farrun wasn't on the Wrothgarian Mountains page for example because before ESO, the Wrothgarian Mountains were nowhere near Jehanna and Farrun. Their history was only on their own city pages as the region was unnamed - it's quite common for a game to invent region names that never existed previously, so regional page content can only come after the region is named in the game and the existing places we know from lore are then added to it. --Enodoc (talk) 10:46, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I agree we should try to create and improve any article we can, but as everyone is a volunteer, people will only work on the stuff they like to work on. While there are some things that have a higher priority, it doesn't mean it has the highest priority. Something like Blades is still very under documented and I would say is more important than some lore location pages. However, there are many people that would rather work on the location page than documenting Blades, and that's fine (every bit helps and otherwise neither will be worked on).

Besides all that, it still doesn't really do anything for devs. They might have a look at our lore pages for inspiration, but when they want to change things, they will do so. They would rather make an interesting story than to adhere strictly to some old lore we documented on an lore page. --Ilaro (talk) 11:07, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Lengthy Titles

I don't want to offend anyone, but can we please try to keep the titles on pages like this a little shorter? Using long titles causes the Table of Contents to dominate the top of the page, which I would imagine is particularly problematic on phones, but is unwieldy even on wide-screen computers. Ideally, try to use a noun phrase, short question, or similarly short title. The first paragraph of your post is where you should be expanding on the specifics of the topic. To pick a few of the longer examples on the page currently:

• Creation Club Lore Errors instead of
  Different Stance needed for Documentation of Creation Club Lore Errors
• Creation Club Content on Lore Pages instead of
  A suggestion not to cover, the worst lore bloopers from the Creation Club Content on lore pages
• Splitting up References instead of
  Splitting up References and the issues that are associated with it, along with should we be doing this?
• Regional Lore Articles instead of
  Regional Lore articles need serious updating and there is a serious reason why this needs to be done.

Thank you! – Robin Hood ^(talk) 09:45, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Question

I was wondering if there are any plans of what will happen to uesp if Daveh were to unexpectedly pass away as he runs the wiki,updates the wiki, and runs the finances.--Hazak (talk) 02:09, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Closing Off-Topic Talk Page Topics

Checking the Skyrim:Dark Brotherhood talk page recently I noticed a {{Closed Forum Topic}} banner which had been used to close a topic which had strayed into off-topic territory. This is the first and only time I have ever seen this banner on a talk page. Which led me to wondering:

1) Is this an appropriate banner to add to talk page topics which are better suited to the forums/Discord, and if so, why hasn't it been used more often?

2) If this is something we should be using, should the template be updated to include a mention of Discord?

Just wondering, because I've seen the odd off-topic talk page post (sometimes a necro) in the last while. — Wolfborn^(Howl) 00:43, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

I would encourage the use of this banner on discussions that were once on-topic, but have since spiraled into off topic/forum-like territory. I suppose it hasn't seen much use lately because people aren't aware of its existence, or the people who are aware of it haven't had a chance to patrol the pages that need it. -MolagBallet (talk) 01:35, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

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