User talk:Nephele/Archive-2012

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Oblivion:Spells navigation[edit]

Re this revert. The intention was not to decrease the distance from the top of the page to the first table. The idea was to make the entire page for more comfortably navigable. The narrower tables are absolutely no problem for anyone with a display width of 1280 or wider (i.e. the huge majority). Have you tried navigating the page with the floating TOC though? (oldid) Just wondering, since you stated no opinion on the merits of this intended function when you reverted. --87.78.6.227 10:21, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think a floating TOC is a good idea. People can always hit CTRL+↑ if they want to get to the top. elliot (talk) 15:16, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
If the intention was to make it float, it wasn't working in Safari. And on my iPad, the difference in width made a very noticeable difference in the table layout. --NepheleTalk 16:27, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
For my iceweasle, the floating TOC was working, but obstructing part of the table, regardless of broswer window width. --Alfwyn 16:41, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
It works (technically speaking) in Chrome, but looks an eyesore. I can still see all of the table, but can't read the table very easy since its still too squished (@Anon and thats on a widescreen monitor) --Kiz ·•· Talk ·•· Contribs ·•· Mail ·•· 16:51, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
Now that I've got my laptop open and can see how it looks in firefox, I have the same problem as Alfwyn. And that's likely to be a general, widespread problem: you can't count on the TOC to have a single, fixed width for all users in all browsers, since people use different fonts and have different preferred sizes for fonts. On the other hand, I fail to see how the TOCright is "even more inaccessible". We use TOCright on hundreds of UESP articles, and I wasn't aware of any problems introduced by it. --NepheleTalk 17:13, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
I fail to see how the TOCright is "even more inaccessible". -- I find TOCright doesn't help navigatation because text and esp. headings are on the left side of the screen. On a 1920px-wide monitor, that means having to turn my head looking from article body to TOC. So I prefer the TOC on the default left side, lined up with the headings.--87.78.138.80 18:18, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Ah well, nevermind then. I tried to make it work with Safari/IE, but it's true that varying font settings etc make a consistent and reliable look impossible. It looks great on my Firefox though, and I've replaced my bookmark to the page with a permlink to the floating TOC version. @Kiz: can't read the table very easy since its still too squished (@Anon and thats on a widescreen monitor) -- That's a bit strange to be honest. What screen resolution and font size do you use? --87.78.138.80 18:05, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

It's a 1366x768, which is a lot wider than might last one. Which was square, font size is whatever Chrome selects for me. Which is medium, which doesn't really help. Its mainly to do with the fact of how wide the TOC is in proportion to the table, it just looks - off. --Kiz ·•· Talk ·•· Contribs ·•· Mail ·•· 18:11, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
So which is it? The TOC is off or the table is too narrow? --87.78.138.80 18:18, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
A mixture of both, because of the width of the table in proportion it looks off. The TOC on it's own looks like any other, of course. But, I don't think that this it the right solution to the problem --Kiz ·•· Talk ·•· Contribs ·•· Mail ·•· 18:32, 1 January 2012 (UTC)
Not for general usage, no. I think it might be something to be considered for customized user interfaces though. In fact, I just stumbled upon this interesting bit with a couple of links to mediawiki interface projects. --87.78.237.174 08:26, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Immortal in DRAGON language[edit]

I just have one question as you can see from the HEADLINE I want to ask how you say IMMORTAL in dragon languange because I cant find it anywhere. — Unsigned comment by Iskojj4ttlu (talkcontribs) at 13:46 on 2 January 2012

The language probably hasn't been developed beyond what was absolutely essential to the game, but if anyone can help you, it would probably be one of the Draconic Translators on the site. Robin Hoodtalk 18:21, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

#listsaved[edit]

While I can see that there are some issues with using #listsaved in a lot of cases (e.g., there are exceptions that don't fit into a query), I'm surprised that we're not using this more on the site, and wanted to make sure there wasn't some really good reason that we're not using it. So FYI, I've just put it into use at Skyrim:Military Forts, since there were no exceptions to worry about there (and in fact, it picked up one location we'd missed). If there's some good reason not to use it, please feel free to revert.

Oh and speaking of exceptions, maybe for the next version, you can add in a method of including/excluding specific pages that would be incorrectly fetched/ignored by the query? Just a thought. Robin Hoodtalk 19:30, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Looking over what I was thinking when I first wrote up the code, there probably is some need to balance trade-offs with using #listsaved -- especially considering how huge the MetaTemplate database tables have become at this point. My guess is that any attempt to use use more than one variable (in addition to namespace) in the query would be a really bad idea -- best case is probably that the query fails, worst case is that the query eats up all of the database's memory and CPU. However, if #listsaved can be used with a single variable, as in the case of Military Forts, it may be more efficient database-wise than the manually-created list. --NepheleTalk 22:04, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Nightshade in the Blue Palace[edit]

Skyrim:Nightshade claims that there are 11 nightshade plants to be found in the Blue Palace. I was searching quite a bit, but I could not find a single one, and I can't seem to find any in the game data too. So maybe you can help me, in case I'm missing something here - it would be nice if you could give me a cell ID and reference ID for a plant there. --Alfwyn 20:16, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Looks like the description should say "in Solitude" instead of "in the Blue Palace". The plants are found in the cells SolitudeArch, SolitudeOrigin, and SolitudeRow. I'm associating them with the Blue Palace, because that's the map marker that's closest to their location (that's how I'm grouping all exterior items in the various location descriptions I've done). Although there's something a bit quirky going on, because the worldspace (i.e., Solitude) should take precedence over the map marker. I'll delve into my code a bit more to find the source of the quirkiness and see whether I can come up with a list of descriptions that need to be tweaked. --NepheleTalk 21:01, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, I could find the plants outside now (must have harvested them earlier or something, no nightshade on them). --Alfwyn 21:19, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

FavorItemRefType[edit]

There is some indication, that references with a XLRT of FavorItemRefType don't reference an existing item (it may be there just for the benefit of the favor quest). I and several other players had trouble finding the copy of Song of the Alchemists in Jorgen and Lami's House or of The Mirror in Castle Dour. In both cases the reference is in the cell of the quest giver. --Alfwyn 20:58, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, it does reference an existing item (it is a REFR record: 0x000940df for SotA, 0x000940e7 for Mirror), but by default the REFR record is disabled. I'm assuming that at some point the REFR is enabled, but I doubt I even have the ability yet to figure out when it becomes enabled. --NepheleTalk 21:11, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
One obvious guess would of course have been after returning the item doing the favor. But that doesn't seem to be the case. So maybe a broken mechanism too. --Alfwyn 21:19, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, looking around it's hard to guess at what was intended or what is a bug. Especially given problems with repeating quests such as the Helm of Winterhold (another XLRT item). Was the XLRT supposed to be enabled post-quest, which would then prevent the quest from repeating? Or was the XLRT left permanently disabled because enabling it caused glitches when the quest tried to repeat?
In any case, if the item isn't enabled even after the quest, it seems like the reality is that it's just being used as a dummy reference to seed the quest. So probably the location lists for those items should instead say something like "One copy is added in a random location by the quest Rare Gift". --NepheleTalk 21:46, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be so easy. Doing the quest again with an old save, I was just pointed to the Bards College version of Song of the Alchemists. Seems no additional version is added to the game. --Alfwyn 15:10, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Radiant Quests[edit]

How did you go about determining which quests were Radiant? Is this something I can readily tell from the CS List or game files? (And if you hadn't noticed the change to my user page, I actually have the game now, thanks to Dave.) Robin Hoodtalk 23:35, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

What I've done is probably inaccurate -- it was just part of a push to get pages set up for all the quests. Not to mention the basic question of "what is Radiant?".
As far as I'm concerned, "Radiant" is a different category than "Miscellaneous". I have no idea yet of how to identify which quests show up in the Miscellaneous section of your journal -- it's presumably a flag somewhere in the file, but I haven't tried to dig to find that single byte. We need to come up with a way to specifically identify the quests that show up in the Miscellaneous section.
Radiant, on the other hand, is a tag I started using with the intent of identifying all quests that have dynamic content. Many "true" quests (non-miscellaneous) are radiant, such as SR:Battle for Whiterun and the half-dozen different variations of CWSiegeObj. My script ending up identifying anything that contains the QuestGiver Alias ID as radiant -- but that then pulled in a lot of quests that arguably aren't radiant. I can't remember examples offhand, but there are some quests with a fixed quest giver and fixed quest target -- but they then have objectives that are set up radiantly (with variables that need to be dynamically replaced, even though the values are fixed). I don't know where to draw the line in the end. We probably need to come up with some type of criteria (possibly semi-subjective) for what is radiant, to make it actually be a useful category.
While I'm at it, another related question is whether or not a quest can be repeated. I don't know whether all miscellaneous quests can always be repeated -- but probably not. It may be another flag in the game data. In any case, it's another important piece of information that we need to add to all the relevant quest pages. --NepheleTalk 23:53, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Inns[edit]

I just formatted the Skyrim:Inns page, whilst working from the Cat. I noticed an oddity, as far as i'm aware thats how your bot chucked it at, it for some reason appears to have marked the SR:Falkreath Barracks as an inn. I'm unsure exactly what Barracks should be marked as - Skyrim:Windhelm Barracks - Cave, Skyrim:Dawnstar Barracks - Home, Skyrim:Guard_Barracks - Camp (Although I think this is supposed to be Whiterun). Is this how they're marked on the map, or do they want being something like "Barracks"? --Kiz ·•· Talk ·•· Contribs ·•· Mail ·•· 09:18, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks - Spell Absorption[edit]

Thank you for giving "Official Help" to the Spell Absorption issue! (if this clutters up your page, you can delete it, I won't be offended, I just wanted to say thanks!) --Amsuko 04:14, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Just read the "Don't give me a todo list" comment on your page. So I'm letting you know that I am going to fix this as I think is best: The original source about Magic Absorption was never updated to say Spell Resistance. I am removing details (which can be found on the respective page) but keeping the basic comparison. Magic_Overview#Magic_Resistance_and_Magic_Absorption --Amsuko 21:09, 17 January 2012 (UTC)

Guard Dialogue[edit]

I've been playing on the 360, if you have a file of the guard dialogue and are able to email or share it online I don't mind sorting through the copious amounts of data on it.--Bwross 06:40, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

NPC dialogue[edit]

As you know I have been adding dialogue for npcs and I was wondering should I just write their dialogue on it's own like: When you ask X about Y he will respond with Z or should I include their feelings and thoughts and put a little bit more description into their dialogue such as this? Thanks. RIM 18:01, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

I like what you've done with Nepos' dialogue; it makes the section flow better. Thanks for all the work you've been doing on fleshing out the NPC pages! --NepheleTalk 20:19, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
I have thought about the same thing and, in terms of dialogue, it seems like we have more or less the same amount as they put in Shivering Isles. However, for now I think the amount of dialogue you put on a page like Nepos is fitting - and describes the character more than his countless greetings and farewells will ever do. Plenty of time for a redesign project later on. That being said, if you have the time, never hesitate to put unique dialogue on the pages - we can always use the content. Good work, by the way! --Krusty 20:51, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
Ok thanks, I'll keep adding dialogue wherever I can but I go back to school tomorrow (yay) so I might have a little less time. Thanks.RIM 21:01, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
Me again. I added pretty much all the dialogue to Madanach and I was thinking of adding dialogue to other major/important NPCs. The problem is that people like Ulfric stormcloak, Gen. Tullius etc. have got hundreds of lines of dialogue for lots of different situations. Any suggestions or should I just leave it for now? Thanks. RIM 21:08, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

Patrolling question[edit]

Is it okay for me to patrol the edits I made before I was a patroller? Minor Edits 02:22, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

If you don't, I will. :) I already got most or all of your Lore ones about a week ago, since they were a good chunk of the Lore edits all on their own. Robin Hoodtalk 02:45, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
If you're able to do it, you're free to -- but if I recall correctly, the wiki software has a restriction preventing users from manually patrolling their own edits (mainly for the sake of wikis with more wide-open patrolling systems).--NepheleTalk 02:53, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
It seems to be working; I've been combing through my old lore talk edits since Robin responded and they show up as patrolled for me after I've marked them. Minor Edits 03:03, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Imperial[edit]

[1]

Nephele: "there are no quotes about the Dominion anywhere in the guard dialogue"

Akhon: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/109/screenshot3t.png/

Freshly uploaded. --Arkhon 05:42, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not in the Guard dialogue. It's a quote only made by people who are members of both the Imperial Legion and the CWDialogueSoldierFaction -- your image shows an Imperial Soldier. So it doesn't belong on a page specifically devoted to describing Guard dialogue. That page is already going to be long enough without throwing in every piece of dialogue made by anyone in the game who wears armor. --NepheleTalk 06:15, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
I placed it in the Imperial category, not the random Gurads. This dialogue is specific only to the Imperial Legion so how it doesn't fit in the Imeprial Legion quotes?! --Arkhon 15:04, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
The entire page is only about city guards -- see the name of the page, and read the introduction to the page. The section titled Imperial is still all dialogue used by city guards, but only after that specific city has been taken over by the imperials. --NepheleTalk 15:23, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Unnamed NPCs with a name?[edit]

Hey Nephele. I thought about posting this on the AN but figured I’d notify you first, as I merely did “bad” as an example. I just created a page for Leifnarr who is in fact an unnamed Nord (one of the corpses referred to as “Nord”). I think this is an oversight from the developers, due to his FFHM01LeifnarrTreasCorpse-ID. I have absolutely no idea if we have any similar corpses out there, but this one was causing a red link and a confusing story on Flight or Fight so a regular NPC page was created. I just wanted your opinion because maybe this is the way to go if we find any similar cases? --Krusty 16:48, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

that guy[edit]

i know hes essential in my opinion the bug is that he doesnt get unessential as soon as you join the legion. 87.175.88.152 19:03, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

I assume you're talking about Thorygg Sun-Killer? It would indeed be considered a bug if all of the other commanders for the enemy became non-essential after you chose a side, but all of them remain entirely essential. While I think this is stupid personally, it's in no way a bug. --AKB Talk Cont Mail 19:20, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Tes5Mod Space Not Showing Correctly in Searches[edit]

The heading says it all, really. Even when it's selected as a search location, Tes5Mod isn't showing up properly in search results. It's odd, though, as it seems to be capturing talk page text, just not titles and the like. Take, for example, a search for "actor value indices", only in Tes5Mod space, which should return the page Skyrim Mod:Actor Value Indices but doesn't. If you allow talk page searching, however, it will find it, but only because the text can be found within the body of that talk page. Robin Hoodtalk 00:25, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

After an hour of frustration, I've realized the problem has nothing to do with Tes5Mod. The problem is with the search for "Actor Value Indices". If you just search for "Actor Indices" it works fine. The database probably thinks that "Value" is such a common word that it excludes it from indexing. And I don't think I have any way of controlling that. --NepheleTalk 02:46, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
Not something I would've thought of, but once you pointed me in the right direction, it was easy enough to find. For future reference, here's a list of all the words that won't be searched: MySQL Full-Text Stopwords. Based on what I see there, I think you're right - there's probably no way short of recompiling the relevant portion(s) of MySQL. Robin Hoodtalk 03:09, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
Yep, that's the stopword list I was thinking of.
Another minor detail is that MySQL is indexing the word "values" -- which is why the full-text search finds a match on the talk page. One basic fix to do to deal with this specific page is to just copy the intro text from the Tes4Mod page, so that the full-text search finds a match on the article. It's also worth noting that "go" will still work (as long as Tes5Mod is selected for searching in your preferences) -- it does matching directly on the page title instead of going through the database search index. --NepheleTalk 04:07, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

An Idea on the sidebar for Skyrim's Places[edit]

In nearly every "Place" in Skyrim I have looked at, I have seen that a great ammount of time and effort has been put towards the "Ores" located in the area and the count of them. This is a wonderful help because many TES5 players want to smith their own armor or sell the ores.

My qestion is, Why can't we create a new portion of the sidebar that lists all ingredients at a given place and the number of those ingredients? I'm quite new and therefor don't quite know how to do it myself. And as a Alchemist I love to know exactly what lies within a cave that might be of use to me. If you could somehow change the template to allow another section to be added where I could place the types and numbers of collectable ingredients for a place, I would very much appriciate it.

Please note that I am not a PC player that means that, yes, my count may be off by one or two. However, I believe that my proposed changes are easy to do and would greatly benifit the local Alchemists (such as myself). Thank you for your time (as you are undoubtably busy). Azure_King 21:11, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

I think the information belongs in the text of the article rather than the infobox. In most cases, a place only has one type of ore. However, most places have multiple types of ingredients and flora -- dozens or more. Listing them all in the infobox would overwhelm the infobox. For Oblivion places, we just listed that information within the text, along with all the other loot information. I'm assuming we're going to use the same approach for Skyrim places. If you want to start adding that information to articles, you're free to do so, but eventually auto-generated content is probably going to be added, which will then replace any manually-added information. --NepheleTalk 19:53, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
Sounds Good. Thanks for taking the time to respond to my question. Just FYI: I have desided to create a Link to my Flora sandbox. But I will only be updating it once a week (to reduce spaming of the recent changes). Please feel free to take a look and give me any and all general tips you have. Azure_King 06:45, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Catpagetemplate[edit]

On Category:Archive-Major_Discussions and Category:Archive-Content Policy, I've been experimenting with catepagetemplate trying to learn it a little more (while still being productive). I was just worried that something a long the lines of what I used was too complex. I used this:

<catpagetemplate>
{{#define:catgroup|{{#switch:{{#explode:{{PAGENAME0}}|/|0}}
|Archive=
 {{#switch:{{#explode:{{#explode:{{PAGENAME0}}|/|1}}| |0}}
  |AN=Administrator Noticeboard
  |CP=Community Portal
 }}
|Community Portal=Community Portal
}}
}}
{{#define:catlabel|{{#sortable:
{{#switch:{{#explode:{{PAGENAME0}}|/|0}}
 |Archive={{#sub:{{#explode:{{PAGENAME0}}|/|1}}|3}}
 |Community Portal={{#explode:{{PAGENAME0}}|/|1}}
}}
}}}}
</catpagetemplate>

I don't know how to check or confirm the wiki processing, but I was wanting to double check to make sure this won't cause any problems. Thanks! elliot (talk) 19:56, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Categorized Redirects?[edit]

Hey Neph. Just a quick question. I was going to start fixing layout on all dungeon pages and noticed that all dungeon sub-zones has redirects with categories – which makes all zones appear on category pages such as this one. Any reason for that, or can we clean up the redirects and remove the (e.g.) Nordic Ruin categories for easier access? --Krusty 20:24, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

I added categories primarily so that search engines would have a chance of indexing the alternative names for the places. In particular when the bot was first generating the redirects and I wasn't sure that the bot was choosing the correct place to be the primary place page, I wanted to increase the chances that users googling for the location would be able to find it on UESP. Ultimately we need to fix categories so that search engines can index them properly, but I'm not sure what's the best short term solution. --NepheleTalk 19:44, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
I'd just like to say I spotted this too, (I was in IRC when it was discussed but that has no relevance) would one solution be to have a bot change the categories on the redirects from Category:Skyrim-Places-Nordic Ruins to Category:Skyrim-Places-Nordic Ruins-Zones And make it a sub-category? --kiz talkemail 20:07, 20 January 2012 (UTC)
One option is to keep them in their categories but add the following to MediaWiki:Common.css:
.redirect-in-category, .allpagesredirect {
   font-style: italic;
}
The "zones" are easily differentiated from the main places. elliot (talk) 20:08, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
We already have italic redirects enabled for Special:Allpages, extending this to categories would be generally useful. And it might be enough to find the real articles in those place categories. --Alfwyn 14:16, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Search Engine[edit]

I was wondering if you could install the extension Lucene-search, which would expand the search function. It also lets us use an input table with set prefixes, which is soemthing I want to try on some of the crazy long talk pages (e.g. Skyrim talk:Easter Eggs). Would it be compatible? elliot (talk) 07:29, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not going to happen anytime soon because UESP-specific customizations would need to be done to make it work properly with the site's namespaces. --NepheleTalk 19:40, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Image Naming[edit]

Hello Nephele. I've been uploading a ton of images recently and have noticed a trend. If a top image of a page is not named exactly the same, including underscores capitalization, as the file itself it will cause the image to not display after a new version is uploaded. Once the page is edited or even edited with no changes the image will correctly display. Additionally images that where categorized into the non-4:3 image category will remain in the category even after the correct 4:3 version is uploaded. The same process is required to cause them to drop from the page. I'm not sure that there is anything that can be done to remedy this, however I thought I should let you know of my observation. Thuraya Salaris 09:14, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

Roggvir[edit]

He's listed as a Misc Quest giver, which I'm sure is technically true, but he has a scripted death that guarantees the quest will never be available. The page is so transcluded that I can't find the "real" copy to remove the quest from (or at least note it), so if you could take care of it sometime that would be good. Thanks. Aliana 13:35, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

If you're referring to the listing on the Misc Quests page, you can find the actual table at Skyrim:Miscellaneous Quests/Solitude. Robin Hoodtalk 20:16, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. I think it's probably better just deleted entirely, but for now I left the quest there and added a note. Aliana 20:27, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, it's probably better to err on the side of caution until we finally have the CK and can verify these sorts of things. Having a note there doesn't leave the user wondering why it's not documented, and if it turns out there's a fix later on, it'll be that much easier to deal with. Robin Hoodtalk 21:52, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks![edit]

Gold Star.png
You have been given a gold star!

Thanks for getting the faction pages going. Life got a little busy lately, so I was unable to complete them. Awesome job! elliot (talk) 05:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you and sorry[edit]

I had implied that I'd be able to do roughly a 50/50 job on bot stuff but since we're now heading for at least a 99/1 NepheleBot/RoBoT split it's time I apologised for my failure to follow through. Blah, blah, change of circumstances, blah.... It doesn't matter. You've done a better job than I would have done anyway. Thank you for sorting it all out. I'll try to do better from now on. rpeh •TCE 21:09, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Ragged Flagon Redirects[edit]

A couple of people are confused by the redirects to the Ragged Flagon page from other pages (first two topics on Skyrim talk:The Ragged Flagon). Since you and/or NepheleBot were involved in making them redirects, I thought you might want to look into it further and/or respond. I haven't had time yet to really play the game and form an opinion. Robin Hoodtalk 04:30, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Cleanspace bug, I think[edit]

Can you have a look at the code that generates the following two lines and tell me if this is intentional cleanspace behaviour or not, please? I've never really been clear on when cleanspace strips space and when it doesn't, so it may just be my misunderstanding. Is it seeing the variable as a tag to strip the space from afterwards?

+500Investor
+500 Investor

Thanks! Robin Hoodtalk 21:30, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I looked into this at the time and then forgot to ever post something. It's semi-intentional behaviour, although perhaps it needs to be tweaked. Cleanspace is trying to strip all whitespace between tags, and assumes that <{[ are the characters used for tags. Specifically, the regexp is:
       preg_replace( '/([\]\}\>])\s+([\<\{\[])/s', '$1$2', trim( $input ) );

Perhaps [ shouldn't be in that list, but I'd want to look through how/where it's being used to be sure of that before making a change. --NepheleTalk 22:50, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm going to guess that was put in there so that it would clean spaces between categories. In most other cases that can think of, except maybe images, the space is probably desirable. Robin Hoodtalk 01:11, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Community Portal Broken[edit]

I'm just posting on your and Dave's pages to draw attention to this issue. This almost certainly requires some kind of server-side fix, as it looks like there's a bug/data corruption coming into play here. Robin Hoodtalk 00:18, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Broken thumbnail[edit]

Just wanted to point this file [2] out to you because it is a particularly interesting case of unknown event. I'm not sure what happened but something went wrong for sure. Thuraya Salaris 22:55, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Primary Skills: Class or Personal?[edit]

Hello! I am wondering about Primary Skills part of the NPC table. For example for Belyn Hlaalu: his primary skills listed on the page are the skills of his class Farmer. On the other hand, if I look at his Stats in the Creation Kit his primary skill is... Destruction! It is 25 while everything else is less. Enchanting and Smithing are 19, for instance, even though they are primary skills for the class Farmer. How to proceed? :) Thanks, --Shuryard 17:05, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

To be sure, you'll need to check in-game and see what values are actually being used. However, typically in autocalc cases any default values are overridden. So the values shown in the CS/CK for his stats are most likely default values that have no real meaning. For information on other ways in which raw CS/CK data is meaningless and/or misleading, see Oblivion:Construction Set#CS Discrepancies (a similar list will need to be made for Skyrim, but my experience so far is that those discrepancies apply equally to Skyrim and Oblivion). --NepheleTalk 17:14, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
I was searching for something like this and could not find it. Thanks! --Shuryard 20:13, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Vivienne Westwood[edit]

This isn't the first time we've seen this URL used in spam. It might be worthwhile to add that to the Spam Blacklist. Oh and feel free to remove it from this message if you want...I just provided it for reference so you wouldn't have to go hunting. Robin Hoodtalk 20:38, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Done... and I removed the link to prevent it from getting used by google to boost the site's rank. --NepheleTalk 22:47, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Quest Stages[edit]

Hi Neph, I just wanted to bring this issue to your attention, as I thought it might indicate a wider problem with the quest stage data. Based on how quests were re-jigged, I think I understand what happened, but NepheleBot probably understands it even better than I do. Robin Hoodtalk 22:33, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Page Search Function[edit]

Hey Neph. I was hoping to add a "search archives" feature to {{Archive Table}}, but it doesn't seem to be working. I've tried adding "prefix:<parent page>" in the search bar, and I've tried manipulating the URL to include a prefix= parameter there, as is done in some other WP templates, and that didn't work either. Looking in the MW 1.14 code, it looks like the prefix parameter is supported. Is it something about our setup? I know we're both busy, so no rush here. It'd be a "nice to have" if we can get it working, but hardly critical. Robin Hoodtalk 20:57, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

We're using a custom-tweaked version of the search function, so wikipedia-based examples probably won't work. Any prefix ("prefix:<parent page>") is assumed to be a namespace. I'd have to pull up the code for more details, though. --NepheleTalk 22:31, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
I actually suggested that above, RH. I guess it would be the same problem that Neph mentioned up there. elliot (talk) 08:37, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
The basic prefix functionality is already built in to MW. I never really looked at what Lucene would add to it after Neph said it wasn't possible, but looking now, it looks like it's probably a little more than we would really need just for that kind of searching. Robin Hoodtalk 10:11, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
Are you sure? I tested it extensively and nothing worked. Plus, the extension page so it's needed for the prefix. elliot (talk) 10:20, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
You may be right—I didn't look into it that deeply. There's code in MW that looks for parameters like Prefix and Fullsearch, but I didn't look any further than seeing they were checked for. Perhaps they don't work as expected? I've tried on a fairly straight-forward MW 1.16 wiki and they don't seem to do anything as far as I can tell, but that of course makes me question why they're there in a base MW install in the first place. Robin Hoodtalk 21:52, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

You Have Mail![edit]

Just wanted to let you know you have mail, in case you don't check it that often. I've actually sent you a few e-mails over the last couple of days as I try to wrap my head around this whole process. It's coming to me slowly, so you can probably mostly ignore earlier e-mails. :) But now I'm hitting what's probably the dumbest road block and it's driving me batty! Thanks for your patience. Robin Hoodtalk 04:40, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Beggar move[edit]

Looks like you've already addressed what Alfwyn and I were just discussing. :) I did think of it before my edit, reasoning that the change from book to disambig might be important to preserve in the page history, which is why I copied & pasted. Alfwyn quite correctly pointed out that it might be desirable to see changes to parameters and such in the page history, so it made sense to move it. On consideration, I agreed with him, but we didn't think it was worth worrying about. Apparently, you did! :) Thanks for moving it. Robin Hoodtalk 00:05, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

When I looked at the history, there were more than a few edits, most of which were book-specific -- in particular, edits related to where the book is found. If people have questions in the future about why someone claimed that a book is in a given location, it seems easier to track that information if the edit history is kept with the book. So I went ahead and did the move. --NepheleTalk 00:09, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, you two were right, definitely. Sorry you had to take the trouble. Robin Hoodtalk 00:11, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Something wrong with my account[edit]

Hi. Whenever I am logged in it constantly says that I have new messages. However, I have checked it many times and the only new message is from Robin Hood, to which I replied. If I click on last change it brings me to the edit history and shows the response that I gave but in the page history of my talk page my response doesn't show up even though you can see it at the bottom of the page. On top of that, my edit didn't show up in the recent changes and I also can't patrol edits- it says "this edit has been marked as patrolled" but in the recent changes it still has a red (!) beside it. It still says that I have new messages as I'm typing this. Any ideas? Thanks. RIM 10:32, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

While I do not get the new messages banner, the other problems are widespread and this post might shed some light on it. Either way, it's not just you RIM. Wolok gro-Barok 12:21, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks Wolok. RIM 13:33, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Formatting Issue![edit]

Hey Neph! Sorry to interrupt, but I think this is odd. For a bit of inspiration, I just looked through some OPRP-fixed OB-pages and noticed something. A strange formatting issue seems to have emerged somewhere along the line, as all the maps are now “stuck” to the images underneath them. Check out Sancre Tor for a good example. There has always been a small space between two images when placed on top of each other, but now something sticks them together – and it looks bad. It also breaks the layout of zone 6 for whatever reason. I even noticed the change on my own user page. Do you know what is going on with that? --Krusty 19:12, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

It's a CSS change that I made a few months back in response to a huge debate about using a new image template (that doesn't support thumbnail default sizes) just to get rid of that small space between two images. I've noticed a few other places where the change has caused small oddities. And personally I've never thought that having a small space between images was a problem. So I'd be in favour of completely undoing the CSS change... but thinking about the picture, I probably need to instead come up with a different, more flexible solution, because clearly other editors think that it's important to be able to display grouped images without any space. I'll try to think about it, but, honestly, it's hard for me promise that it will be a high priority. --NepheleTalk 20:19, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
If it is only {{Multiple images}}, setting a unique class there and tweaking the change so it affects only that class should work I think. --Alfwyn 20:21, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
As I gather from this discussion I don't think the template is much good to begin with, I think we need a way (maybe a template, or some way in the [[File:]] itself?) to call the change when we want it? Otherwise, just remove it, it seems to break more than it fixes. --kiz talkemail 20:25, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for digging up the original discussion, Kiz. As Kiz says, the MultipleImage templates is the problem template, and personally I don't think we should be using that template at all. There is no way (short of adding some PHP code hooks just for the purpose) to make that template respect user's thumbnail size preferences. And if I'm going to write some PHP code hooks, I'd rather do it so that you can just add some type of option to a standard [[File:]] tag. That's the type of approach I was going to look into -- whether an option could be used to add some type of extra class to the div containing the thumbnail, and then css could be added for that class that would override the standard spacing. (So you'd end up doing something like [[File:image.jpg|thumb|class=no_vspace]]). I haven't even gotten as far as looking to see whether there are any existing File/thumbnail abilities that could be used to accomplish this, though. --NepheleTalk 20:39, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
The tweak breaks several pages to "fix" a single one, I'm in favor of removing it. --Alfwyn 21:42, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Seconded. I totally forgot about that discussion, but the tweak seems to affect too many pages to be worth it – better to make separate changes to the pages as we go along. --Krusty 22:22, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

OK, CSS change has been undone. Instead you now need to manually add |class=no_vspace any time you want the vertical space above an image to be removed, as demonstrated at Oblivion:The Path of Dawn#Cracking the Code. You may need to do ctrl-F5 or the equivalent to force your browser to load the new css. --NepheleTalk 23:41, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm just seeing this issue for the first time, so forgive me if I'm missing something, but I think with some work, the existing template could be modified to use a style like the following, which will follow your chosen thumbnail sizes while eliminating as much space as we need, both horizontally and vertically, if desired. (Obviously some of the formatting needs tweaked to be more like a proper thumbnail, this is just proof-of-concept.)
SI-place-Gates of Madness.jpg
The Gates of Madness, as seen from the Shivering Isles proper
SI-quest-Rebuilding the Gatekeeper 02.jpg
Relmyna creates a new Gatekeeper
SI-place-Gates of Madness.jpg
The Gates of Madness, as seen from the Shivering Isles proper
SI-quest-Rebuilding the Gatekeeper 02.jpg
Relmyna creates a new Gatekeeper
Does this actually do all we need it to, at least in concept? Robin Hoodtalk 00:00, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I definitely would prefer to see tables used in place of MultipleImage, but the frameless-ness is a bit distracting (although I realize that's part of what you're saying could be improved with some work). My main concern is that (IIRC) the whole reason I added clear= options to images a couple years back was anti-table feedback. In part editors finding tables overly-complex to implement on a regular basis, and also some limitations of tables (for example, when the first image on the page is coming from a Place_Summary template, and you then want to add a second image to the page). Nevertheless, we probably also need to keep in mind that there will always be some types of image layouts/configurations that need to be handled by tables -- we can't expect templates and/or css classes to have the flexibility to handle absolutely any arbitrary layout.
On the other hand, now that I've added the ability to add any class to a thumbnail, it opens up a lot of options (at least as long as an admin is available to make changes to common.css). While walking the dogs I realized that even with my first examples I wasn't taking full advantage of the new capability, so I've now added two new classes, multi_vert and multi_horiz (hopefully making no_vspace, etc., obsolete). The new classes eliminate the need to understand what "clear" means or use different codes on the left and right sides. Just add |class=multi_vert to any thumbnail to group it vertically with the previous thumbnail; add |class=multi_horiz to group it horizontally with the previous thumbnail.
The Gates of Madness, as seen from the Shivering Isles proper
Relmyna creates a new Gatekeeper
The Gates of Madness, as seen from the Shivering Isles proper
Relmyna creates a new Gatekeeper
As demonstrated here using the same example as RH. There is one tiny bit of oddness with some missing frame in the left-hand example, which could probably be eliminated with some more css fiddling. Nevertheless, I think it's already closer appearance-wise to where we want to get and (IMO) easier to implement.
(Aside for anyone who wants to fiddle with the css to fix the missing frame: simply eliminating the margin-bottom as part of multi_horiz is probably not the right fix, because then there won't be proper spacing under the images when it is taller than the first image. Rather the fix would be to remove the left-hand border from the second image, which probably requires tweaking using a div.multi_horiz.tleft thumbinner css-selector.)
Before implementing any of these ideas any more widely, however, feedback would be useful. Including even feedback on little details, such as do "multi_horiz" and "multi_vert" work as relatively-easy-to-remember class names? --NepheleTalk 01:43, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
I definitely like your solution a lot better than mine, Neph! Poking around in Chrome, it looks like the missing section of border is due to the images having bottom borders of 0.8em. Maybe if you tweaked the borders down to 1px (or nothing?) and increased the bottom margin to match, it might work? Just a thought. Robin Hoodtalk 03:24, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Copy Page with History?[edit]

I'm about 99% sure this isn't possible, but can you copy a page and preserve its history? I'd like to do that for Template:Oblivion Wealth Notes, since it should in fact be Prodded, but I want to keep it. (I've apparently suggested to myself that I use that as a template for other Notes templates, but at this point, I have no idea what I was talking about and will undoubtedly have to study what I did when the time comes.) Assuming that's not possible, any other suggestions? I was thinking maybe Prodding it, but in the Prod note, just ask the Admin to move it into my userspace instead of actually deleting it. I can think of several other possibilities, but none of them are terribly pretty. Thoughts? Robin Hoodtalk 06:47, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

I've just noincluded it and added a note for now...I think that's probably the best way to ensure it doesn't get deleted, but that the category hits are removed. Don't know if I've explained this clearly enough, but if not, basically you can ignore the above. :) Robin Hoodtalk 07:04, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Why can't you just move the template to your userspace and then prod the redirect? Redirects work for templates, so until you add a prod tag to the redirect, the template should continue to function.
I also doubt it's possible to copy the history -- and even wonder whether we'd want to if we could, for something like this. Copying the history would mean that all the editors would now have duplicate entries in their contribution history, for example. Not a big deal, but still likely to cause some confusion or minor strangeness. --NepheleTalk 07:09, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
That's a really good question...why can't I just do that? :P I figured I was probably missing something obvious! Robin Hoodtalk 07:37, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Login Issues Revisited[edit]

It seems HotnBOThered can't log in, either me doing it via a browser or the bot actually doing it itself. Any thoughts? Robin Hoodtalk 05:06, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Okay, after not being able to get in for the longest time, I just got back in. Did you just fix the issue that quickly, or is this some leftover oddity from the name change? Robin Hoodtalk 05:12, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
That edit-conflicted my only suggestion which was to clear your cookies. I haven't made any more changes since my last update to UESPWiki:Upgrade_History -- and last change that would have had any effect on logins was actually even one edit earlier in the upgrade history. It's remotely possible that it took the servers a few minutes to get back in sync after the change, but I made a point of doing each of the two session-altering edits near-simultaneously on all servers. --NepheleTalk 05:19, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
I tried on different browsers, just to be sure, and the bot itself doesn't maintain cookies other than session cookies, so I'm guessing the problem was on UESP's end, whatever it was. It's working for now, though, so I'm content to leave it at that unless something else happens. Robin Hoodtalk 05:30, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Creature summary template[edit]

Sorry, but your recent addition of the soul category to Template:Creature Summary broke both the Morrowind soul categories and the categories for leveled souls in Oblivion. It resulted in a host of missing Morrowind categories for the different soul values: [[Morrowind-Soul-10]] and so on, rather than assigning the existing categories [[Morrowind-Soul-Petty]] and the like. In addition, it completely broke the [[Oblivion-Soul-Leveled]] categorisation due to the way that the 'soul' property is defined. I've edited the template, after testing using a copy at User:Gaebrial/Creatures and verifying that it appears to work correctly with creatures in Morrowind, Tribunal, Bloodmoon, Oblivion (leveled and non-leveled souls) and Skyrim. Having said that, I may have made it excessively complicated - more than it needs to be - and I've had to use #pos to detect leveled souls (there may be a better way I'm not aware of). --Gaebrial 09:46, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Just so there's no duplication of effort, I'm running HnB to get a better feel for the possible parameter values, then I'll be simplifying the template a bit. Your approach isn't excessively complicated at all, Gaebrial—it's pretty much what I'd use for a generic template—but MetaTemplate will allow it to be simplified a bit further. I just need to be sure of what I'm dealing with first. Robin Hoodtalk 22:36, 24 February 2012 (UTC)
Okay, new code is in place. Let me know if there are any problems anywhere. Robin Hoodtalk 01:07, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Minor Mystery[edit]

Elliot just pointed out to me that there's an unknown file sitting in UncategorizedFiles. Looking at the page source, it's an empty gallery, so no help there. When you have a moment, can you run the following query (modified version of the one found in SpecialUncategorizedimages.php) on the database and see what pops up?

SELECT page_title
FROM  `page` 
LEFT JOIN categorylinks ON page_id = cl_from
WHERE cl_from IS NULL 
AND page_namespace =6
AND page_is_redirect =0

I have a funny feeling it might be TOWN06.GIF, which was recently undeleted, as that shows up when I look at Uncategorized Files on Content3, but not on Content1/2. Not sure what to do about it, though, if it is. I tried a null edit of that file on individual servers as well as just www, and nothing changed. Robin Hoodtalk 05:43, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually, this has been like that before that image popped up. Part of me wants to say File:UespPages.png is the culprit, but I have no way to verify that. elliot (talk) 05:58, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
Skyrim-Lost_Echo_Cave_Entrance.jpg. --NepheleTalk 10:04, 25 February 2012 (UTC)
Okay, it was a file page that was prodded, but the template was messed up. Plus, the redirect was messed up, so there was no way for the image to be read. I went ahead and fixed it. Thanks to both of you! :) elliot (talk) 19:06, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Map Link[edit]

First off, I could've sworn I'd addressed the UNIQ thing for places at some point, but obviously if you had to correct it, I hadn't. If ever there's a need, you can use {{#sub:<cleanspace>...</cleanspace>|1}} and similar such parsing tricks to filter out cleanspace when the output needs to be "clean". It's been a while since I've played with it, but I think that works with #save as well.

Second, I know rpeh and I tossed around the idea of getting rid of the maplink save in {{Place Summary}} (I think the idea was to just save mapx and mapy, then implement similar logic in {{Place Link}} to what's already in Place Summary). It's not something I'd want to really play with right now in any event, but maybe something to give some more thought to in the future. Robin Hoodtalk 03:25, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

The place where I noticed the issue wasn't related to Place Summary, but instead in Book Summary, since I'd been explicitly adding a ton of Map Links to the book locations, so I'm not sure whether any previous tweaks you've made would have looked at that situation.
In any case, when I looked at what was going on in these cases, the only problem was the unwanted UNIQ-QINU string -- the rest of the value (in particular the link to the map) was coming through perfectly fine. Which made me realize that the contents of the cleanspace tags don't need to be #saved. As far as the final parsed version of the text is concerned, the cleanspace contents is a completely empty string. The initialization stuff being done in cleanspace isn't needed any more once the HTML has been generated. So if #save just deletes the ugly text, the problem is all fixed. Which is what the code now does. It might take a bit of time for the change to propagate through all of the places where UNIQ is currently appearing, but once the job queue is finished I think everything should look good. --NepheleTalk 03:57, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

edit troubles[edit]

Hi, Nephele. Is there some sort of block on my IP or account? Half the edits I make don't show up at all, and I get a 'session data lost' error every time I try to edit lore:Akatosh.Temple-Zero 22:14, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

No, there's no type of restriction on your account or IP address. There have been some issues lately with the server (see More Odd Site Behavior, for example), although I wouldn't have expected session data errors within the last day (the changes made that affected session data were made more than two days ago). --NepheleTalk 00:39, 27 February 2012 (UTC)

Citation Target[edit]

I was thinking we should add a color to the target of the different notes with {{note}} and {{intnote}}. Something such as:

span.citation:target { 
    background-color: #COLOR;
}

On Skyrim:Markarth People, it might help to point out exactly which note you are linking to; however, I have no idea what color would be best. elliot (talk) 22:24, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

My first reaction is that I'm not sure that adding colors would help much, and it seems that it's so different from what we're otherwise doing on the site that it would really over-emphasize the notes. However, it might be that once seeing how an example really looks my impression would change. --NepheleTalk 22:31, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
It's equivalent to this. elliot (talk) 22:35, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Hmmm, in that example it just makes me wonder what is so special about that one citation. I also noticed one minor problem, which is that once you click on the citation, the background color goes away. --NepheleTalk 22:40, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
That's what happens when you click the citation link that goes to the note. It highlights it so it can be distinguished from the others. It only happens when the link is clicked. It's the whole #cite_ref-1 anchor on the url. It's the same anchor that is ues, but, for examples, #intnote_dieToD is anchored. Whenever it is targeted, the link will be highlighted. elliot (talk) 22:48, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Ah, OK, now I understand! Ignore my earlier cluelessness :) Now that I get the concept, I do indeed see how it would be helpful.
So after wasting half an hour of your time, back to the question you actually asked in the first place, which was what color to use.... Perhaps just because the wikipedia example is stuck in my mind, but blue does perhaps make sense, given that links themselves are blue. Let me take a few minutes to do a few more experiments in preview mode to see what some options actually look like against our brown theme, then I'll get back to you. --NepheleTalk 23:17, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Having played with it briefly using my own CSS file, I'd be tempted to use something in the brown theme, but I understand the argument for a blue one as well. If we put that in place, I'd suggest moving the note text inside the template call (third parameter is already there for this) so that the whole thing gets highlighted. While we're on the topic, do we want to add in an automatic <br> or convert it to a <table> call? The latter would allow the note to wrap nicely if it gets long (and unlike normal citations, we don't support multiple backlinks I don't think, so the left cell of the table would never get inordinately large). Robin Hoodtalk 23:39, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
What do you think about style="background-color:#EEEEFF"? In my experiments, anything in our usual range of browns/whites just didn't show up enough... unless I went to table-header #F5DEB3, at which point it looked like there was supposed to be some connection between the text and the table headers. So I went back to blue/gray shades. It might also need to be a div instead of a span, as you can see from this example of a case that stretches to multiple lines. --NepheleTalk 23:41, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
Yes, using the note inside the template makes sense if we're going this route. And I could see adding some extra formatting such as table/br, too -- plus having a table cell would fix the issue of multiple-line spans. --NepheleTalk 23:46, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

() Yes, if we don't convert it to a table, a div would be a much better choice. As for colour, I'm not crazy about the blue-grey, but I can live with it. What about something more like the pre colour? Robin Hoodtalk 23:46, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that looks good (the blue). I think div would be better if it encases the note in a box. The line by line look is a little odd. elliot (talk) 23:56, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
I looked at the pre color, but when done on a single line without a border around it, I thought it just wasn't noticeable... it looked more like a smudge than a highlight (although perhaps the fact that I never clean my monitor makes me more prone than most to overlook anything that might just be a dog-nose-print on the screen). --NepheleTalk 00:02, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
LOL! The dog can't reach mine, so I only get cat paw/nose prints. :) The table conversion is done, as are all the instances where Note was being used (except Elliot's sandbox), so once the Common.css changes are made, we should be good to go. A word of warning: do not try to use "* {{Note...}}". The results were...special. ;) Robin Hoodtalk 00:15, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Actually, the * is a very important part in the structure of the templates. There has to be a way to include it; if not, then we should use span. elliot (talk) 00:19, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
Realizing that RH was probably trying to hint that it was my turn to do something, I've added the CSS -- assuming we're sticking with table instead of span. Usual hard-refresh drill to see the new css.
Off-hand I doubt that span would handle embedded notes using * any better -- I'm pretty sure the span is forced to end at the first line break. --NepheleTalk 00:30, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
It's only when the Note follows a bullet directly, and even then, it only seems to be a problem in specific instances. Embedded bullets work fine. Put a bullet in front of the first Agronak note on Oblivion:Arena (faction) and you'll see what I mean. Damned if I can figure out what's causing it, but I'll play around a bit and see if I can figure anything out. Robin Hoodtalk 03:01, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

New Interwiki Link[edit]

I believe you need server access to edit the Interwiki links, so I'm coming straight to you. Can I suggest an Interwiki entry ("CK" perhaps) to http://www.creationkit.com/. Robin Hoodtalk 07:17, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I set it up as "CKWiki" instead of just CK -- seems like we should perhaps reserve two-letter abbreviations for our own future namespaces. As a test: CKWiki:AddSpell. --NepheleTalk 01:17, 17 March 2012 (UTC)
Good idea. Bethesda would name a future game something like Cyrodiil's Knights just to throw a wrench in the works, wouldn't they! ;) Robin Hoodtalk 03:27, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Help with my 3D Book Reader[edit]

As you may or may not be aware, I'm working on a side project, because apparently I can't sustain my WikiBreak. What I'm trying to do is make a flashy, user-friendly, and above all accurate book reader (I call it 3D because it has 3D visual effects, not because it uses a 3D rendering engine (God it would suck to make that)). Anyways, on the link you can see an incomplete list of features that need to be added at one point or another. It's currently written in Javascript. This is actually my first Javascript program ever, so I'm sure there are a few basic things I should know that I don't :)

I do need your help. I hear you're well-versed in JS, and I could use some help, if not right now then very soon. I'm pretty much at the end of what I can do without advanced experience with JS. I still need to incorporate page-flipping. At the very least I'm going to need 2 GIFs (next page and previous page) for it, which will be a laborious task. I also need the font used in printed books. I have the handwritten font, but they created a custom font for use in books and there is no alternative for it besides something very different. I need the sound effects for page flipping (assuming JS can play them - I have no idea if it can). All of these require the PC version, which I don't have. Above all, though, I really need some expert help, if not from you then from someone equally experienced. Thanks! ?• JATalk 07:25, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure I can help too much with the things you're talking about -- GIFs, fonts, sound effects, etc. I'm assuming you're talking about getting those from the game data, but that's a part of the game data (the game resource files) that I really haven't spent any time working with. I might be able to help if you come across some specific javascript questions. --NepheleTalk 01:25, 17 March 2012 (UTC)

Minor UespCustomCode glitch...I think[edit]

I'm just working on some new bot stuff and I was double-checking that my internal {{NS_whatever}} equivalents matched with the output from the wiki functions. In doing so, I noticed that there seems to be a minor hiccup in {{NS_FULL:MAIN}} and, probably by extension of that, also in {{NS_MAINPAGE:MAIN}}. Compare, for example:

(and just out of curiosity, this next line is subst'd to see how it turns out when saved)

  • Subst Main: "
", [[
Main Page]]

I'm not sure if this is entirely a UespCustomCode issue, though, since {{#rpos:{{NS_FULL:MAIN}}|:}} returns -1, indicating that it thinks there's a colon as the first character and similarly, the #len function returns 1, meaning it's the only character. It's just formatting that colon whether you like it or not much like it would on a line starting with a semicolon. Robin Hoodtalk 03:18, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

My investigation so far shows that it's not my code doing it. It's the Mediawiki code (in Parser.php), forcibly adding an extra line break in front of my parser function's text, and the comment for the section says:
# Bug 529: if the template begins with a table or block-level
# element, it should be treated as beginning a new line.
# This behaviour is somewhat controversial.
So we're hitting the "somewhat controversial" aspect of the code. The leading colon needs to be there, because otherwise [[Main Page]] will get expanded (on this page) to [[User:Main Page|Main Page]]. I haven't looked to see yet whether later versions of the Mediawiki code have come up with better ways of handling this (and/or whether there are options that allow me to suppress this behaviour). But short of that, I don't know that there's much in the way of options for fixing it other than hacking the Mediawiki code. --NepheleTalk 16:51, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
I wondered if it might be something like that, given that your code was returning the right values. I don't think this'll really affect anything on the wiki anyway, since we hardly ever put anything in Main space to begin with. :) Robin Hoodtalk 00:47, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Suppress Redirect[edit]

I'm about to embark on some image renaming, would it be possible to give me the suppress redirect ability to save mine (and the Admin doing the deletion) some time? Just a bit of a pain prodding images that no one will be bothered about. --kiz talkemail 18:43, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

I would be against this, considering it's a version of speedy deletion. And if the community decides it is necessary, I believe an administrator should be the one to do it. elliot (talk) 01:37, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
For what it's worth, deletions are something I don't at all mind doing. It's a good way to kill some minutes in between very boring tasks at work. So as far as worrying about somebody's time, well...don't ;). –Eshetalk 02:32, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
There isn't really any practical way to do what you're asking, kiz. To give a permission, I have to give that permission to all users in a given group -- meaning, for example, I'd have to give it to all patrollers. The permission is also a global permission -- it can be used anywhere on the site, not just in the image namespace. Any such change should first go through a community-wide discussion.
On top of which, I don't even know whether we want to be suppressing redirects on all images when they are renamed. Suppressing the redirect temporarily breaks any pages that display the image -- and there's the potential for pages to be broken much longer than intended (just to give one worst-case-type scenario, what if your internet connection dies in the middle of your edits?) A redirect is the only way to do the move without ever breaking a page. Furthermore, if an image has been on the site for months, there may be external links to the image (and as I've said many times, our 'check for external links' is basically useless, since we are completely unable to check for links on the official forums, and that's our single biggest user). We can't guarantee that we'll catch all problems in the proposed deletion process, but it gives us a much better chance of catching them than if we skip the step entirely. --NepheleTalk 04:41, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
I agree that we're better off just following the normal process here, even if that means a little extra work, but to address Nephele's point of how it could be done easily if we ever wanted to, you could always temporarily make the user a bot. It's a hack, but hey, it'd work. :) Robin Hoodtalk 06:47, 16 March 2012 (UTC)
Well, it was just a thought. Just to make life easier, if its hard to set up then there would be no point in the first place. As for the community-wide discussion, this request was about the technical aspect of such a request to see if it was possible at all. As to comment on the 'what if your internet dies' bit, wouldn't this be true for any Admins then as well? Said problem would take as long to fix? Anyhow, consensus here seems against, just a thought :)--kiz talkemail 20:56, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

NPC inventory[edit]

Just to let you know. The information you just reverted belongs on that page, at least until we figure out how to deal with the content of NPC pockets. I have added the exact same information to over 40 NPC pages and it should be mentioned somehow. It could be a link to a page where we list the different types of pocket contents, but reverting it with that summary is just wrong. As a general rule, each and every little detail about the NPC should be listed, and right now, it seems like an iron dagger is all he has, which is untrue. --Krusty 18:28, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

But saying that he always carries a lockpick and a high value ring/necklace is equally untrue. None of those items is guaranteed, and we shouldn't be putting false information on pages. --NepheleTalk 19:00, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps since it's not always true that he carries those items, state that "he has a small chance of carrying the following items: a lockpick, high value ring / necklace." That way, it shows the possibility of the items being in his inventory, without completely saying that they are there 100% of the time, or not. Helenaannevalentine 19:04, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
The LootCitizenPocketsCommon list (used by many NPCs) includes: 6-23 gold; 75% chance of ale/nord mead/wine; 75% chance of 1 lockpick; 75% chance of one ring (20% chance of being enchanted); 25% chance of a second ring (20% chance of being enchanted); 25% chance of one necklace (20% chance of being enchanted); 25% chance of a low to medium value gem; 1 piece of food. I don't know whether NPCs in Skyrim eat their food -- in which case the food and beverage may not be there. If you want to find some way to summarize that information and include it on NPC pages, by all means do. I was just trying to quickly deal with one mistake that I noticed while patrolling -- and didn't want to get sidetracked by coming up with some general fix for every NPC page on the site, because there are a few other things already on my wiki todo list for the day. --NepheleTalk 19:19, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, sorry – I just read the edit more closely, and it is correct. I usually use the term “a chance of some random items like…”, which is more correct but still takes up an awfully lot of space. ;) Would it be possible to extract all the lootpocketvariants quickly? No rush or anything, but I can’t figure out how to do it and it would be great to have them all on the same page, to avoid writing the same thing on all NPC pages. Don't worry about the layout, I'll figure something out - probably similar to the leveled boss chests or something. --Krusty 19:27, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
It crossed my mind to do a quick rewrite and add in something like "has a chance of carrying", but then I started worrying about all the other items that also should be added in that case, and opted for the quickest solution. I can easily give you the names of the different lists: LootCitizenPocketsPoor, LootCitizenPocketsCommon, LootCitizenPocketsRich, and LootCitizenPocketsChild (and I'm not sure the child one needs to be summarized, given that there's absolutely no way to get those items off of the child). Trying to auto-summarize what's in each list is less easy, however ;) --NepheleTalk 19:33, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
We do have the Leveled Lists page, which is pretty much unused at this point. What about adding the possibilities there (or perhaps a similar or subpage, as I'm sure we don't want thousands of entries on that one page) and then linking to it in the description with something like "...carries an iron dagger as well as some random items." Robin Hoodtalk 21:24, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

() Good idea, and that page seem perfect for this kind of thing. Maybe just go with the ‘old’ categories like “lower-class”, “middle-class” and “upper-class”-headers? In any case, RH, you’re good with the percentages – maybe you could give it a shot? ☺ --Krusty 22:49, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I took a first stab at it. I'm sure if I could remember my Grade 13 algebra on permutations and combinations better, I could've calculated more specific chances for each item and gone into all kinds of detail, but a) I can't rembember said algebra, and b) I can't think of a good way to put that information in there without becoming needlessly complex, so I tried to just write mini-summaries. Feel free to change the format or whatever...as you know, formatting's never been my forté. About the only thing I did was to try to sort the items in the same order between one list and the next, where in the CK, they're in seemingly random order. Oh and I don't know if the side-by-side format will work out well or not. I think it looks nicer, but if you're linking to it, you're just going to be brought to the same section no matter what. If we word it something like "poor items", it won't be a problem, but I'm not sure how that'll work out in the end. Anyway, the info is there, which gives us a starting point. Robin Hoodtalk 04:12, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
That looks really good! I think we may have to place them on top of each other (just to be able to make a difference between a beggar and Maven Black-Briar through links), with the usual linkable entries, but otherwise, this is a really good and informative solution. --Krusty 08:00, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
I figured that might be the case. It's easy enough to remove, so I'll go do that. I've also made the titles linkable entries with both the displayed word and the leveled item list's name from the CK so that jumping to the right one will be easier if we start to get other sections/entries with "Poor", "Common", etc. Robin Hoodtalk 08:28, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
Just made a quick test edit and the LE's works perfectly. Good job - so nice to get these lists down in one place! :) --Krusty 08:54, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Namespace Template Replacement[edit]

As an exercise in getting my bot more functional, I've made my own version of RoBoT's namespace template replacer (i.e., the one that converts templates like {{SR}} into <sup>[[Skyrim:Skyrim|Skyrim]]</sup>). It still needs a little more functionality, but the basic logic is in place, and as I'm testing, I'm noticing that his never seems to have replaced {{TR3}} and {{TR4}}. Can you think of any reason I shouldn't? There are several thousand pages on which these templates are used. It seems unlikely at this point that we'll be moving them around, and the only other reason I can think of is that the links are tidier with the template...but the same could be said of all the templates. Robin Hoodtalk 20:09, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Your ideas are the first ones that came to mind for me, too. I noticed a brief mention at Template_talk:TR3 of "just in case we ever decide to move to a full namespace for those games". It seems like such a move would be pretty nightmarish at this point -- and would no matter what involve a massive amount of bot-editing. On the other hand, those page are relatively low priority -- given how much less often they are viewed or edited than other namespaces, any performance issues related to the templates aren't going to have much of an overall effect on the servers.
And thanks for looking into creating a new namespace template replacer bot. It would be nice to starting cleaning those up. --NepheleTalk 03:13, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
Okay, well, I gave it an acid test of everything I could think to throw at it, and on the last try, it came through perfectly (though I've since limited the number of namespaces it'll list...that was a little ridiculous! lol). For now, what I'll do is set it up to replace TR3 and TR4 links if it finds them on pages already in its queue, but it won't actually load the What Links Here for those pages, so I suspect it won't find many. I'll let it run now and watch it like a hawk. :) Robin Hoodtalk 03:32, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
Hmmm...double-whammy there! Whammy #1: The bot framework should've excluded edits to Main space automatically, which it appears not to have done, and Whammy #2: Since when do our bots have the protect right? Robin Hoodtalk 03:52, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

Another minor mystery[edit]

This one, I don't know if you can help me with at all, but I thought I'd run it past you in case it rang any bells. I'm running into a small problem with the bot, both times on pages that ended in "..." (Tes3Mod:Tamriel Rebuilt/Redguards, Their History... and Tes3Mod:Tamriel Rebuilt/A Dubious Tale...), which makes me suspicious. As you can see on those pages, the bot does its edits and correctly saves the pages, but then it gets a 404 error returned. You're more familiar with the MediaWiki software...does this sound at all familiar to you? I tried looking in Bugzilla, but I didn't find anything relevant. It didn't seem to want to search on "404", though, so I searched on "not found" and then went from there.

I can code around the issue, of course, I'm just curious to figure out why it's happening in the first place. Robin Hoodtalk 06:40, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

It's not ringing any bells at the moment. If I come across anything, I'll let you know. --NepheleTalk 16:16, 23 March 2012 (UTC)
I'll do some more testing of my own as well, either doing null saves to those pages and creating a "Sandbox..." page. It's possible it was just a coincidence, but the few other times I've gotten 404 errors, I've just been able to retry and they went through. In both those cases, it consistently failed even after repeated retries. Robin Hoodtalk 19:21, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Quest Givers for Kill the Forsworn Leader (Jarl)[edit]

In the Kill the Forsworn Leader (Jarl) quest, you've got Igmund and Thongvor Silver-Blood as potential quest givers (and on the talk page, someone's reported Raerek as well), but in the CK, it looks like the person has to belong to the Favor151QuestGiver faction, which contains only Igmund. Is this something that's changed since the original release, or is there soemthing I'm not understanding? Robin Hoodtalk 07:18, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Looks like it's just a mistake by the script that automatically created those pages -- it only kept track of one required faction. As for the talk page comment, my guess is it's someone commenting a different quest that also has "Kill the leader" as an objective. --NepheleTalk 16:14, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Little-b blockers[edit]

Just something to do whenever you're creating the proposed new autopatrolled group (assuming we do)... I'm not sure why the group was created, but we have a blockers group as well as a Blockers/blockuser group. The one with the lower-case b can be deleted, as it has no members and only has skipcaptcha rights, no blocking rights. Robin Hoodtalk 23:28, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

It was a double-typo that was meant to give Blockers skipcaptcha (not skipcapctcha) rights. Doubly fixed. --NepheleTalk 03:27, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Minor Bot Update[edit]

Just FYI, I've started work on being able to read the game files in my "spare time" (lol). So far, I can read basic groups, records, and fields, and that's about it, but hey, it's a start. Mostly, I'm playing around with the best way to model this right now, but I wanted to let you know that, with any luck, it won't be long before I can have the bot actually contribute when it comes to game data, instead of just wiki data. Robin Hoodtalk 06:50, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Trusted Users[edit]

You've probably already seen it on the AN, but just in case you're only popping by quickly at some point, the consensus seems to be there to create some form of autopatrolled group. A few people have used wording similar to "Trusted Users" for the group name, so that's probably a good choice but simply "Autopatrolled" seems to have some support. We're still hammering out the details of how these users will be selected, but we don't need that in place to create the group, so whenever you have time, that part can go ahead at least. Thanks! Robin Hoodtalk 08:28, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

The Sandbox is ready for this group and can be created whenever the group is ready. Thanks, Nephele!! —SkoomaManiac TalkContribs 02:20, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
Done and done. --NepheleTalk 03:28, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
Apparently my edits are still showing up as unpatrolled. elliot (talk) 18:45, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
How about now? Unfortunately, there are a few complications with how userpatroller and autopatrolled groups interact. Unless I get into coding modifications (and adding a separate set of perms specifically to handle the autopatrolled group), a significant restriction that has to be applied to all autopatrolled editors is that they can not be userpatrollers. --NepheleTalk 19:09, 14 April 2012 (UTC)
That's fine. And it does work, based on the logs. elliot (talk) 19:10, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Blockuser[edit]

I am wondering if I might qualify for Blockuser rights. I believe I have been judicious in my warnings and reverts concerning spam, nonsense, etc. There are times when some Ips and accounts deserve blocking until an admin can deal with them. I am mostly concerned with the 12am to 3am (UK time) period, when there seems to be little/sporadic activity from admins, though they may just be watching, and believe I can contribute to the site in this way. If I don't meet the requirements then no harm done, this is just an enquiry. The Silencer has spoken 18:49, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Blockuser rights are generally only given to patrollers, and also the general rule-of-thumb is that two admins need to agree on the rights -- at least in the case of permanent Blockusers, as opposed to short-term rights given when there's an immediate need for someone to help out. So if there is a current need for more Blockusers, I'd be more comfortable identifying one or more existing patrollers who are active during the times you mentioned. --NepheleTalk 04:16, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Bot Categories[edit]

I was wondering if Category:Skyrim-Books that already existed in Lore space, Category:Skyrim-Places that already existed when the bot ran, and Category:Skyrim-Quests that already existed when the bot ran currently serve a useful purpose. I know they definitely did once Skyrim cam out. I was just wanting to run this by you before I prodded them. Thanks. elliot (talk) 17:32, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

The pages listed in those categories need to be checked to make sure that RoBoT didn't do anything unusual on those pages -- in most cases, RoBoT would simply append the information to an existing page, which isn't necessarily what needed to be done when a page already existed. It's likely that most of the pages have been cleaned up as necessary since then, but I'd prefer to wait until someone has the time to check that before simply deleting the categories. --NepheleTalk 17:39, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Okay, I'll run through them to make sure they are all good to go. elliot (talk) 17:40, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
So, I finished the two smaller categories. Those pages are okay. But, would you rather have NepheleBot remove the categories from the Book pages? I'm willing to do it, but it would involve a lot of edits and flooding the RC. elliot (talk) 17:57, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
I'd prefer to have a person check them rather than just bot-removing them. In particular, I think in this case the intent was to flag that the Skyrim text and Lore text need to be compared, and a decision made about whether the Skyrim book can be turned into a transclusion of the Lore book. Again, most of that work has already been done, but it's possible some were missed. Plus the bot isn't immediately ready to do it, and the bot could easily mess it up, given that two-thirds of the pages don't actually contain the category tag (it's coming from the transclusion). --NepheleTalk 18:03, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Okay, not a problem. I'll try to get another editor to join in on the fun to make this quick. Thanks, Neph. elliot (talk) 18:11, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
As you might guess from my edits, I'm going through at least the unpatrolled edits Elliot just did to the books and comparing the content of those pages to what's in the CK/CS4/CS3. So far, there have been no major changes other than the graphical letters, and if anybody else has patrolled the category removals, I'll miss those, but it's a start. I'm thinking at some point, I may write something up to do a better comparison of CK book text to Lore text...depends how good I get at parsing game data. Robin Hoodtalk 05:56, 8 April 2012 (UTC)
I did check the content of the books, but I did not check it in a detailed manner. elliot (talk) 05:58, 8 April 2012 (UTC)

Arcadia's Cauldron[edit]

Hey Neph! Just wanted to ask you something. On Ahlam’s page, it seems like she was supposed to take over Arcadia’s Cauldron should Arcadia die. Problem is, she doesn’t. I have tested it several times, and Ahlam just keeps her regular schedule. Do you know why? --Krusty 19:15, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

On first look, no -- the basic faction memberships are all in place. But I can dig in some other places later.
In general, all the merchant replacement info really needs to be checked, because there are so many factors that come into play. I've been considering going on a killing spree (and also getting the bounty-related achievement while I'm at it) to systematically test all the merchants, but perhaps there's some way to start keeping track of which ones have been tested so we don't duplicate efforts. --NepheleTalk 19:29, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, it seems complex -and we also have some missing info here and there (Like Greta will take over Addvar's store), so let me know if you need anything tested. A quick killing spree is always fun! :) --Krusty 19:51, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
OK, I just checked through all of the factors that I'm aware of, including some new ones (such as the SwapAliasOnDeath script which looks like the script that does the actual job of switching faction ranks). My best guess is that Ahlam actually is given the ability to sell Arcadia's merchandise, but the problem is that her schedule never tells her to enter the store. She never normally goes there, and there are no extra schedule entries that kick in when Arcadia dies. I don't know whether it would be possible to trick her into entering the store (e.g., by getting her to start talking you right outside the door, then enter while she's talking), in which case it might be able to test it on the PS3.
By contrast, Addvar has the SwapAliasOnDeath script pointing to Greta, and then Greta has a SolitudeBackupFishmongerWork6x14 schedule that kicks in when Addvar dies. Do you know offhand whether Greta is actually able to sell the same merchandise as Addvar? Because if so, that means that the script is able to add Greta to the correct Services faction regardless of whether or not she was initially set up as a faction member. And also in turn means that the primary info I've used so far to identify these backup merchants is far less meaningful than I'd assumed.
Now that I've discovered the SwapAliasOnDeath script, I'll see whether I can take advantage of that to identify other missing cases such as Greta and Addvar, and in general confirm more of the backup merchants. --NepheleTalk 21:46, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
One more little twist I just noticed is that I think packages can be added to an NPC's schedule as part of the SwapAliasOnDeath script -- but only if that package is included in the alias. So, for example, Brill doesn't normally have any packages that send him into Dragonsreach. But if he is turned into Steward, he inherits a half-dozen steward-specific schedule items and therefore can be found in Dragonsreach. However, the Apothecary alias for Whiterun (in the DialogueWhiterun quest) doesn't have any such packages set up as part of the alias, so Ahlam's schedule isn't changed when she's given the alias. --NepheleTalk 22:03, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

() Per your question about trainers, Arcadia is an Alchemy trainer and can be killed. The Silencer has spoken 22:28, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

Aha, thanks! Saves me the trouble of trying to kill every trainer I meet, too. But still leaves the question of what script is making Wuunferth essential... although perhaps before digging too much more I should double check that I've got patch 1.5 in the CK as well as in-game. --NepheleTalk 22:36, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
CS shows him to be ElderRace like the Greybeards and that race is essential. The Silencer has spoken 22:48, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Good point! Thanks again. --NepheleTalk 22:52, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Except... all Elders are not essential: I just killed Nils. So there must be some other factor. --NepheleTalk 23:08, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Could be the court wizard faction, only Farengar can be killed after a few main quests and the whispering door. The Silencer has spoken 23:19, 7 April 2012 (UTC)
Wuunferth is "essentialized" in MS11PreEssentializing. It starts the game enabled, and the Alias there marks him as essential. Robin Hoodtalk 23:29, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

User talk:108.194.56.253 / IP block[edit]

I have never edited this wiki, but received this message as i was browsing. I can only assume that the IP is reused. 66.158.155.117 13:09, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

I just purged the page with should stop it happening on this page, I think. Nephele will know more about it. --kiz talkemail 13:18, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Text -> Textures[edit]

Hello Nephele, I have a question. I know that with Word Walls, it has the main texture then dynamically loads the text, converts it into a texture, then places it on the wall. That way, you learn a new word every time and see a new transcription. Well, I'm curious where that text would be saved. I'm actually interested in Calcelmo's Stone and the Dragonstone, the former of which I am fairly certain uses the same mechanism. Where would I find this data saved in the CK (I'm using CSList because I'm on the 360).

Thanks in advance! • JATalk 01:27, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

As far as I know, the textures are not being dynamically generated -- the game data contains fixed textures for each of the word walls that were manually created by the developers and then linked to the appropriate word walls. The developers probably created those textures starting with the text and transcribing it into dragon font, but they chose to save the final product as a NIF texture/image (probably because they needed to be sure that the word of power was in a fixed location, so that the overlaid effects such as the glowing word and swirling transference could be fixed to the correct coordinates).
Similarly, I don't think the text for Calcelmo's Stone or the Dragonstone is saved in a text-format anywhere in the game data. There's just a manually created, fixed texture containing an image. --NepheleTalk 19:03, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Broken template?[edit]

I saw that you made the Artifact Summary template, and it turns out there's an issue with it. The template doesn't show armor rating for Morrowind's armor artifacts, but everything else works fine and it shows the rating for Oblivion artifacts. It shows up fine when I preview the summary on an Oblivion page, so I assume it's just a template restriction. If you (or anyone else reading this) would be able to fix that, that'd be awesome. Vely►Talk►Email 17:06, 10 April 2012 (UTC)

Okay, I think I've fixed it (e.g., Auriel's Shield). Technically it'll also allow the Damage parameter to be specified in Morrowind space, which should never be allowed, but I don't think that's a big deal. The template is rather complex and would probably benefit from a revamp, but that's for later. :) Robin Hoodtalk 23:18, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Awesome. Hm, it shows up on the specific pages but not the main armor artifact page. Vely►Talk►Email 23:32, 10 April 2012 (UTC)
Try a hard refresh...assuming you mean the one you linked to in your initial post, it looks fine for me. Robin Hoodtalk 00:39, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Ah, now it shows up. Didn't need to refresh, oddly. Thanks. Vely►Talk►Email 00:41, 11 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks RH for that. Yeah, Vely, that would be my doing... I did a pretty crazy revamp and that slid through the cracks. Thanks for catching that one! elliot (talk) 01:38, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Question[edit]

Your bot changed the class of the Imperial Field Legate in this edit from Dremora to Soldier. His class in the CK is EncClassDremoraMelee, making him a Dremora; the CSList also says that his class is Dremora. Was there any particular reason behind the change? Vely►Talk►Email 20:19, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

For NPC records that use a template, the class frequently gets overwritten by the template's class. In these cases, Dremora normally appears in the original character data but it's a meaningless default / placeholder value. Specifically in the case of the Imperial Field Legate, you can see in the CK that it uses the template CWSoldierImperial and that the flag "Use Stats" is selected under Template Data. Therefore all of the stats are copied from CWSoldierImperial; the stats page is disabled because any info that appears there is meaningless.
For any character that had a template and had dremora as the class, NepheleBot scanned recursively through the template(s) to determine whether the templates provided a unique class, in which case that class was filled in on the NPC page. In cases where the template linked (directly or indirectly) back to a leveled list, and that leveled list contained a mix of different possible classes, the bot put "Radiant" in as the class. However, the bot's scan was done purely on the assumption that "dremora" as the class meant that it was overridden -- the bot was not checking on the "Use Stats" flag because this was before the CK was released and before I had any way of figuring out what flags might control how template data was being used. At some point the info may need to be rechecked, but in a handful of cases that I've looked at, the flags correspond to what was assumed originally.
Also, similar template replacements can happen for race (which is why NepheleBot replaced most instances of "Fox" as a race), gender, and various other characteristics. There was a Community Portal discussion about some of this stuff.--NepheleTalk 18:48, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
I somewhat understand that now, thanks for replying! Vely►Talk►Email 18:56, 13 April 2012 (UTC)
If you do any programming, think of base classes and derived classes and that might help you figure it all out. Of course, if you don't, that'll be gibberish. :) One thing I should note is that the CK tries to fill in accurate data when it's a simple case of one actor being derived from another actor, it just utterly fails when it hits a leveled list. Apparently, they needed Nephele to design their stats form for them to get it right. ;) Robin Hoodtalk 19:40, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Unknown CW quests?[edit]

Hey Nephele! Recently you made a series of really good edits to the Reunification of Skyrim/Liberation of Skyrim pages – but the edits also made me a bit concerned about the whole confusing quest line, due to my time-consuming sandbox pages for Legate Rikke and Galmar. On Reunification… we now have a few red links and I’m very interested in them. My bet is that these “unknown” quests only pops up due to the (even more confusing) peace treaty at Season Unending, and I’d be willing to test it – problem is, I don’t really have any saves that fits the peace treaty and the CW quests, so I just wanted to make sure if it is worth it? --Krusty 07:50, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I have a few saves that fit the bill, if you want help. The Silencer has spoken 13:37, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
I haven't seen either of those quests myself, but I'm pretty sure they must exist.
If you do Season Unending on the Imperial side, you will always be forced to give away Markarth/The Reach (based on three separate playthroughs of that quest on the Imperial side). On one playthrough I was also asked to give up Morthal/Hjaalmarch (after having Elenwen stay at the negotiations, and taking Riften in exchange for Markarth; also for whatever reason I had no massacre/compensation option on that side). Therefore I can confirm that it is possible to start the Civil War on the Imperial side without owning either The Reach or Hjaalmarch. In that case, you are required to conquer those two holds for the Imperial Legion.
Based on several playthroughs of the Stormcloak side of the Civil War, any "extra" holds that you have to conquer (any other than the three you own if you don't do Season Unending) are conquered simply by doing a "Battle at <Fort>" quest -- that seems to be the default way of completing any "Conquer/Regain <Hold>" objective. Therefore to conquer The Reach there needs to be an Imperial version of "The Battle for Fort Sungard"; and, in Hjaalmarch an Imperial version of "The Battle for Fort Snowhawk". Based on the old version of Liberation of Skyrim page, players have indeed seen The Battle for Fort Sungard when playing as an Imperial, but that version of the page pointed to Skyrim:The Battle for Fort Sungard (Stormcloaks) which is completely written from the Stormcloak point of view.
If you're looking for tests to confirm that those quests exist I should be able to dig up one of the saves I made during my Season Unending tests and see what happens if I continue the Imperial Legion questline from there. On the other hand, I seriously doubt that there's anything notable about the quests -- I'm willing to bet they are just generic carbon-copy versions of every other "Battle at <Fort>" quest.
Which has led to me wonder whether the best way to tackle the current red-links is to just merge all the "Battle at <Fort>" quests (all versions of CWFortSiegeFort) into a single quest page. Having played through nearly a dozen versions of the quest by now, it seems like all the noteworthy information about the quests is the same every time. Most of the info on the current quest pages is just being copied-pasted between all the pages -- that a percentage counter shows your progress, that bodies disappear immediately, that new enemies respawn repeatedly, that the wooden barricades can be destroyed by hitting them with a weapon, etc≥, etc.
There's some extra info about rewards that varies between quests -- but I'm pretty sure that's not tied to the specific Battle quest, but rather to where you are overall in Reunification/Liberation. However, I ran out of steam before working out the quest reward details, so I'm not sure. If the reward does vary, it seems like another argument in favour of merging the Battle quests into one.
Clearly I haven't pursued the merged-battle-quest idea yet, so I'm not entirely sure whether it makes sense. In addition, I'm not sure what name to give to the quest page, and I'm not sure whether it would make sense to just have a single version of the page, or whether it would be better to have one Stormcloak version and one Imperial version. Just throwing the idea out there since your question prompted me to think about the quests again. --NepheleTalk 20:02, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
Whoah, it’s so confusing – we may have to cooperate on this one as I too have played through Season Unending numerous times and always end up more confused than we I started. I have Stormcloak saves right before the peace treaty, full quest line completed. So, basically, if I load my save right before Battle for Solitude and give an awful lot of land to the Imperials, I should be able to make some Stormcloak quests re-appear?
As for merging all the Fort quests, I’m all for it – but maybe it is easier to wait until we have the entire thing figured out?
Lastly, we have a few quests marked as ‘radiant’, but I’m not really sure how radiant they are. We have the same note plastered all over four different pages (e.g. fourth note here) and they all seem pretty fixed and non-radiant to me. Looking at this list even more quests are marked as radiant. Is this correct? --Krusty 22:20, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
Re: Season Unending. Using saves from late in the Stormcloak quest-line, your options in Season Unending will be very limited. If you load a save right before taking Solitude you won't even be able to do Season Unending any more. If you load a save from before you finish capturing Hjaalmarch (i.e., only Hjaalmarch and Haafingar are still Imperial-controlled), you'll give Riften to the Imperials (so you'll be able to do Skyrim:The Battle for Fort Greenwall (Stormcloaks)), but that's all -- you can't volunteer to give up more land. The treaty already favors the Imperials, and the final rounds of negotiation will only give you options that make the treaty less uneven, i.e., options that favor the Stormcloaks.
To do all the possible Stormcloak quests I think you'd have to use one save from before the Stormcloaks have taken any holds (other than Whiterun), and then use another save from before you've joined either side (IIRC correctly, that's the only way to do Skyrim:The Battle for Fort Kastav).
As for my saves, I just checked and I can't make any quick progress. In the one where I'm Imperial and gave up Morthal and Markarth, I haven't done the Whiterun battle yet and it looks like any progress in the Civil War is therefore completely on hold until I finish the entire main quest. I played through to after releasing Odahving, and that wasn't enough to let the Message to Whiterun dialogue options return. At that point it's probably faster for me to go back to The Jagged Crown and do more Civil War before starting Season Unending.... which isn't going to happen in the next few hours.
Re: Radiant. I'd like to keep that note on The Battle for Whiterun -- mainly because it explains why four different quest pages have the same quest ID (CWSeigeObj), and explains why more than half of the quest stages have been deleted from the table. Maybe change the wording if "radiant" is causing confusion. Also, I think the CWSeigeObj quests (Battles for Whiterun/Windhelm/Solitude) probably should continue to each have a separate page, because the four versions are more different from each other (it's less obvious that you're just doing the same thing over and over, there's a bit more that's customized each time through -- including custom speeches before/after the battlees).
However, my gut feeling is that if we have four separate quest pages, then those pages shouldn't be labelled as radiant in the quest summary -- each individual quest page is no longer radiant, because that page now only covers a single quest option, with a single quest destination, single quest giver, etc. Every link to the quest shouldn't be flagged with "(radiant)" because the quest links aren't taking you to a multi-option page; we're no longer treating it as a radiant quest. So for CWFortSiegeFort, that means I think either we continue with ten or more separate pages, none of which are labeled as radiant OR we merge them all into one and then label that single page as radiant (because now it is a radiant-style quest page, with multiple destinations, etc.). If that makes any sense.... --NepheleTalk 23:50, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
I meant to ask you about the radiant option. They were listed as radiant, but as you explained, they aren't radiant in the normal sense. I agree with removing it from the quest header. elliot (talk) 23:55, 15 April 2012 (UTC)
Hello again! After a break, I’m back investigating the civil war quests and, based on a lot of playthroughs of Season Unending, I think we should merge all the “Battle for”-quests on one page – and, if there’s more than one, all the “Rescue from”-quests on another page. Two pages for each questline, I guess – as of now, it is overly complex with separate pages (and I’m still not sure if there are “fort”-quests for all nine holds), so basically, I take my previous statement back – merging the pages will make the entire, complex system easier to explain. My only problem now is that I’m unsure about possible quest names and their locations. Looking through Rikke’s dialogue, she has “Your objective is”-dialogue for Fort Sungard, Snowhawk, Greymoor, Neugrad, Dunstad, Kastav and Greenwall. Any ideas how to sort this? --Krusty 16:04, 9 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't really have any good answers. The CK names for the quests are "The Battle for <Alias=Fort>" and "Rescue from <Alias=AttackPoint>". So those are the first possible names that come to mind for merged pages, but I don't know whether they're necessarily the best names.
As for where they can happen, my best guesses are summarized on Liberation of Skyrim and Reunification of Skyrim. That's based upon my best understanding of the possible Season Unending options, plus everything I can work out in terms of how the battle quests are assigned -- taking into account some CK data, but mostly my experiences from testing this in-game, plus what other editors have posted about their experiences.
One uncertainty is whether you ever have to capture Falkreath Hold as an Imperial. I haven't been able to see any way to make it happen during Season Unending, and the fact that nobody has ever posted anything about "The Battle for Fort Neugrad" also makes it seem unlikely. However, I did notice one edit somewhere in which anonymous editor altered that information. I'm inclined to think it might be a case of someone using console commands or third party mods to change gameplay. In any case, without any information on how/why it happened, I'm not ready to change what's posted on the articles.
So in your list from Rikke, Fort Neugrad is probably not possible, and I don't think Fort Greymoor will ever happen. I'd guess the developers felt safest getting that one line of dialogue recorded just in case they tweaked the quests later, not necessarily because they knew it was going to be used. --NepheleTalk 18:25, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

() Have one possible for The Battle for Fort Neugrad, if take Falkreath Hold I give for stormcloaks. — Unsigned comment by 187.36.233.160 (talk) at 18:39 on 6 July 2012

Anise's Cabin Respawning[edit]

Can you have a look at this comment. I can confirm that what Amsuko says is correct—the only cell in AnisesCabinZone is the cellar. I'm just not sure of the best way to handle it. Maybe just put "Never in cellar"? I'm hoping you've come across instances like this before and have some magic solution. ;) Robin Hoodtalk 05:29, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

As it says at Respawning: "[The never-respawns] setting only applies to interior areas; any exterior areas associated with a never-respawning dungeon will respawn after 10 days." It's universally true, so I'm reluctant to get into having to add the information to every place page in the game. But if you have any ideas for how to handle it, go ahead. --NepheleTalk 05:46, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, Neph. I hadn't clued in that it was a cellar for an exterior rather than an interior, though that makes sense given what I was looking at...I just didn't fully process what I was looking at. :) That said, I do agree with the poster that it's somewhat misleading. Do you know if we have other areas like that where they're not clearly dungeons or what have you and you might instinctively think the tag applied to everything? If Anise's Cabin is a one-off, then I think having the note is sufficient for the exception to the rule; if this is a common issue, I'll give it some more thought and see if I can figure out something that'll be more intuitive for those areas...maybe as simple as adding "indoors only" as a generic text...not sure. Robin Hoodtalk 05:56, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Maintenance Script Request[edit]

When you have a moment (or Daveh if he reads this), can you please run updateRestrictions.php to update Special:ProtectedPages. The older pages like UESPWiki:Site Support/Summary 2007 don't show as protected due to a design change at some point along the way (as you'll see in the comments of the script itself, if you open it). Thanks! Robin Hoodtalk 18:59, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Done! -- Daveh 20:51, 22 April 2012 (UTC)
Hey Neph. For whatever reason, the above script didn't update the protected pages list. If you're going to be around for a while, I'd like to run a bot script that's just going to take the list of pages that have old-style protection and reprotect them, hopefully updating Special:ProtectedPages in the process. I'm not sure if I'll have to unprotect and reprotect, though, and I'll want to ensure that the protected pages list is actually being updated, so this may take a try or two before it runs fully automatedly. I don't want to do this without an Admin around in case anything goes wrong, plus I'd rather that if the bot's taking admin-like actions (even if in this case, the changes are superficial), that it only do so while there's an Admin around to...errr...babysit, so I don't have to manually log into the bot's account to fix anything (which, given recent events, would probably look less than ideal). If you're curious to see the list, expand the collapsed section here. Robin Hoodtalk 06:02, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
No, I don't have any time right now to pay attention to another bot. Especially after just wasting 15 minutes logging out and logging back in to get NepheleBot restarted twice over. --NepheleTalk 06:24, 24 April 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, I clued in that you were very actively monitoring your own bot just after I posted to NepheleBot's page. Sorry to have interrupted it. Robin Hoodtalk 06:30, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Non-urgent Metatemplate Feature Request[edit]

Next time you're working on Metatemplate, it would be handy to have #listsaved be able to filter by an ns_parent special variable (as compares to the namespace variable it already supports). The reason for this is to handle the {{Ingredients By Effect}} template lists correctly. For now, I'm manually adding an nsparent variable in the {{Ingredient Summary}} to achieve the same effect. Robin Hoodtalk 06:47, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Oof, thanks![edit]

Thanks for catching that note, Neph. Repairing my brain with a caffeine injection in three...two... eshetalk 15:31, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

My first reaction was to just undo, too, but then I happened to correctly guess at the revision that had somehow been used as the starting point for the edit, making it easy to see what the editor had been trying todo. --NepheleTalk 15:37, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Tiny NepheleBot suggestion[edit]

Hey Neph! Just spotted a minor wording problem with NepheleBot: "Current task was" should probably read something like "Last task was" when it's inactive. Robin Hoodtalk 19:29, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

The Rueful Axe[edit]

I don't think you should have taken the Rueful Axe from the artifacts page. After all, it's a reward for the daedric quest for Calvicus Vile, therefore, it is a daedric artifact. SlyKhajiit 11:23, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

It is most definitely not a Daedric Artifact, because it does not qualify towards the Daedric Artifact achievements. The Daedric Artifact reward for that quest is the Masque of Clavicus Vile. There are guidelines on the Artifacts page about what is necessary to qualify as an artifact, and a stamina damage enchantment that is shared with nearly 50 other generic magic weapons definitely does not qualify. --NepheleTalk 15:27, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
Fair enough, sorry to bother you about it. SlyKhajiit 11:30, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Radiant Quests[edit]

Could you make an adapted Radiant Quest Note for NPCs. Namely for use in Comapanions Quests such as Hired Muscle and Rescue Mission. Thanks. The Silencer has spokenTalk 05:18, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

If I understand what you're asking for, it has already been set up; just use npc=1. So {{Skyrim:Radiant Quest Note|npc=1}} produces:
See for example Skyrim:Iona. --NepheleTalk 09:10, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
Thankyou. The Silencer has spokenTalk 09:12, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
Talking of templates, is there a possibility of a new one for Home Town, instead of the Home City one in the NPC summarys? SryFrBthrgY The Silencer has spokenTalk 09:32, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Cookie![edit]

Choco chip cookie.png
You have been given a cookie!

Your dedication and diligence to the wiki has not gone unnoticed. A user has seen the progress you've made, and has given you a cookie because of it. Good work! The user had the following to say:

You must be getting the munchies by now. Thanks for putting up with my inane babbling. The Silencer has spokenTalk 16:33, 29 April 2012 (UTC)
You're welcome :) I'm guessing that might mean that you've already noticed that I added a town= option for the NPC summaries... if not, see Skyrim:Azzada Lylvieve for an example of it being used. --NepheleTalk 16:37, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Plus Sign Vandal Range Block[edit]

I just noticed that we still have the range block in place from the plus sign vandal five years ago. Can I suggest that we tentatively unblock the range and see if the vandalism restarts. It seems unlikely after all this time, and we can always reinstate it if we need to. Robin Hoodtalk 09:28, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out. I've removed it. --NepheleTalk 21:47, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Fit for a Jarl[edit]

Hey, I noticed that the Fit for a Jarl quest is marked as radiant, and that you created the page back in November, so I was wondering if you could explain what makes the quest radiant. After completing the quest a few times and reading the article page, I can't figure out which component of the quest might vary. Is there something I'm not seeing, or can we go ahead and remove the 'radiant options' and radiant trail from that quest page? ABCface 15:50, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, it seems another user removed the radiant info from the page just after I posted this, so I guess as long as that's correct, nevermind. :) ABCface 04:17, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Template Transclusions[edit]

This is just an idea for later, if you find yourself with the urge to expand MediaWiki's functionality. It'd be stupendously helpful to have a method of retrieving only direct links to a page instead of all links to a page. Mostly, I'd see this being used for templates, but it's probably got other uses as well. One example would be {{Page Icon}}. Right now, I'm searching through every last page that has a {{Protection}} template on it because Protection transcludes Page Icon. I really don't need to search through every last one—I just need to know that Protection uses it. In an ideal world, this would be a simple parameter that I could add to the URL for Special:WhatLinksHere, like maybe &directlinks=1.

It looks like even 1.19 doesn't support this, though, so maybe it's not possible? I haven't looked at the database structure to figure out how this is stored. Robin Hoodtalk 19:52, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

CSList Updates[edit]

...or rather a lack of. It looks like it was last updated on February 8th, meaning the latest version it covers is 1.4.21.0.4. This is actually a two-fold question.

  1. When will the next update to the database be (if there is one), and
  2. How do we handle different patches?

For instance, although there are the patch notes, there are many minor things that are fixed that aren't noted. For those of us without access to the game files (aka console cavemen like myself,) we have to rely on CSList to confirm anything, and without an up-to-date version if there was a bug in 1.4 we have no way of knowing if it was patched in 1.5 if Bethesda forgot to note it in the patch notes. Thoughts? • JATalk 20:48, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

The short answer is that CSList will be updated shortly to incorporate a ton of stuff, including better patch-handling. Hopefully I'll get to it tonight -- although I should warn that CSList will have to be taken offline for a while to make some updates, and even once it's back online it'll probably be a couple hours before the patches are added, because there are other updates that need to be done first.
The longer answer is that this is something I've been working on for a few weeks now. I think I've worked through all the major issues now, including one particularly time-consuming bug that kept wiping out most of the database whenever I'd add the latest patch information. There are also a few strange things with the 1.5 patch that took some investigation. For example, the 1.5 patch is one-third the size of the 1.4 patch, even though it replaces the 1.4 patch (for the record, it's all because of three RNAM fields in WRLD records, that were added in 1.4 then removed in 1.5; since the RNAM field contents aren't even known, it has no effect on CSList); also, the 1.5 patch added new string files, which are IMO handled pretty strangely by Bethesda.
Once I get through making all the updates to content3, CSList will default to showing the patched versions of records, and will indicate whenever a record has been changed by a patch -- including any cases where a record has been patched multiple times. There are still a few more ideas that I have for adding new ways of looking up patch information, but what I've got so far should at least cover the basic needs. --NepheleTalk 21:45, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Good job updating the CSList! I have a couple of things, mostly minor, that would be convenient:
  1. Don't make the 0x in 0x000... required. That way, we can just search for 000bbda0 and get to this page.
  2. Don't make the searched IDs case-sensitive. All of the wiki's IDs are uppercase, but the CSList looks for lowercase.
  3. Looking at the scripts you've added, it looks like curly braces are being stripped (that, or they've got some bad-ass coders at BethSoft). Example: [3]
I don't know the ins and outs of this, but I imagine the first two could be easily done by modifying the search parameters before they go off to the main search function. All IDs start with 00, so if the searched parameter is eight characters long and starts with two zeroes, then lowercase the entire thing and tack a 0x to the beginning. No idea about the third bit, though.
Still, awesome job! I don't want to sound ungrateful by further burdening you with my nitpickings. • JATalk 05:38, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
Good to hear that people are starting to make use of the scripts that I added this week. In response to your questions:
  1. "0x" is required so that CSList can reliably identify formids. Depending upon the specific context, formids can be easily confused with internally-used ordids. Furthermore, IDs do not all start with 00. The first two numbers are set when an object comes from a mod, and indicate which mod created the item. Only a few such items have been added so far (by the patches), but Dawnguard will introduce thousands of cases. One example so far is Patch1_4_UpdateQuest. The specific number assigned to the first two digits is dependent upon a player's individual game, based on which mods the player has installed and the mod order. On the wiki we've generally just used "xx" as the first two digits to indicate that those numbers are variable. In CSList I've opted to instead give each mod a two-letter code ("SR" for the base game and its patches) so that each of the mods has a unique identifier; that's where "0xSR000803" even though it's not a true hex value.
  2. Searches are already non-case-sensitive, for FormIDs, editor IDs, and names. I'm not sure where you're encountering problems with case sensitivity -- if you can give more details of a specific search that's not working, I can investigate further
  3. Curly braces are not being stripped, they're not just particularly common in Papyrus scripting. Here's an example of a quest with curly braces, surrounding the comment "where to move player at end of quest".
--NepheleTalk 06:07, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
  1. Okay, that makes sense with "0x". Looks like your current solution works well.
  2. Yep, you're right. Looks like I've just been mistyping my searches.
  3. That's good to know about the curly braces. My experience is in Java and C++ (which depend on curly braces) and in TIBASIC (which doesn't use curly braces, but does use explicit "END" statements). So, cool. Yet another programming language to learn - fun!
Thanks for the quick response! Glad to know that you've got everything under control. • JATalk 06:33, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

(Non-) Radiant Quests[edit]

Hey, Nephele. I've gone through the radiant quests, and found others like Fit for a Jarl which I brought up in the section a few above this one. I've gone ahead and removed any relevant portions of the quest pages which mark the quests as radiant in some way or another (trail, Quest Header, 'Radiant Options' section, category, etc.), since I can't see anything which would make the quests in question considered radiant. Here is a list of the quests this applies to, just in case I'm wrong and they need to be reverted:

There are also a few that I am more unsure about, because of the quest names, and the way they are entered in CSlist. The Delivery favor quest is obviously radiant, as there are many components of the quest which vary. However, there is also the Delivery (Hillevi) quest (here in CSlist), and the Delivery (Sorex) quest (here in CSlist). They are entirely separate quests in CSlist, and I don't see any quest components which vary for these, but the similarity to the definitely-radiant "Delivery" quest makes me more uncertain on these. ABCface 16:49, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually, if you look at the journal entries, you may see something such as <Alias.ShortName=Target>. These entries essentially mean the quest is radiant; however, many have only 1 possible target for such radiant options. Part of me thinks it is still important to note these quests as radiant. elliot (talk) 19:20, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, I noticed the <Alias.blahblah> and also some other minor similarities in CSlist, but part of me (a big part) thinks if there are no quest components which actually vary, the radiant status is irrelevant on articles (except possibly in the Notes section). Basically, what I'm looking for here is confirmation that none of the quests in this list have quest components which are actually variable. ABCface 19:40, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
I still think something should be mentioned. We could easily just put a note in {{Skyrim Quest Stages Notes}} that we can set to show on such pages. elliot (talk) 20:02, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
All of the quest pages were mass-created in less than a day shortly after the game first came out, using a script to auto-generate the page content from the game data -- with the top priority being to simply get some type of quest pages created, and details of how to present the data being given relatively little thought. As mentioned above at Radiant Quests, the radiant information added at that point was preliminary. And specifically in that earlier discussion I mentioned that:
My script ending up identifying anything that contains the QuestGiver Alias ID as radiant -- but that then pulled in a lot of quests that arguably aren't radiant. I can't remember examples offhand, but there are some quests with a fixed quest giver and fixed quest target....
Which basically covers all of the quests you've been listing.
In other words, I don't think they should be radiant. As far as players are concerned, there is nothing dynamic about the quest-giver or quest location. The details of the mechanism used by the game to assign the quest-giver are irrelevant to players. It's only relevant to modders or people reading the game data -- and those people can check whether the quest uses an alias without having to rely on the wiki to tell them about the alias.
As far as the various Delivery quests, the Hillevi and Sorex variants of the quest are different quests, and those quests are not radiant. The only real similarity to the radiant quest is the quest name. In particular, some of the quirks of radiant quests -- such as that only one variant of the quest can be active at a time -- don't apply to Hillevi's or Sorex' quest. So --NepheleTalk 21:29, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

() Okay, thanks for the info. I've been going through and making a lot of other related changes as well, which is taking quite a while, but it's good to know I won't have to undo anything major related to the quests in this list. Thanks. ABCface 21:33, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that a note should be mentioned in the template I linked to above. We really aren't in the business of presuming what readers want and don't want. I know that if I think a note should be on there, there are some readers that will be wondering what the information is (and why such variables aren't listed). elliot (talk) 23:10, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
I think we're confusing two separate issues: (a) what constitutes a radiant quest and (b) the game mechanism used for storing quest information. As far as I'm concerned, a radiant quest is a quest that contains randomized elements. Those randomized elements are determined using conditions assigned to an alias -- but that doesn't mean that every quest that uses an alias is a radiant quest. The fact is that essentially every quest in Skyrim uses aliases. Aliases are an integral part of how quests are set up, and are used to handle all types of quest-handling that used to be done via scripts (e.g., making quest characters essential until a quest is done; making quest objects be quest objects; assigning packages to NPCs that are only active during a quest; etc.) Randomization is only one of the many features introduced by aliases, so we shouldn't treat quest aliases as being synonymous with radiant.
We may need to add more notes about the values assigned to aliases in certain situations (in particular when the alias appears in the quest objectives), but that's a separate issue from whether the quest is radiant. --NepheleTalk 23:29, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, I guess I switched subjects a little quick there. But I do agree now, these really shouldn't be classified as radiant. I think that would be confusing to readers as well. However, I know that I spoke with you a few months ago, and it was decided to put notes when an alias can only be one thing. I don't have access to the CK, so I am a little ignorant when it comes to how such information is portrayed etc. elliot (talk) 23:35, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Check Your Email[edit]

Thanks. --Legoless 12:24, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Shout Summary[edit]

The width for the effects was giving some tiffs, but I think I came up with a compromise. My main sticking point was reading it vertically. I think it should be horizontal. The rest can be whatever. You can see the code at User:Elliot/Sandbox/8. Do you think that's fair? elliot (talk) 18:57, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, that works better. SR:Storm Call is the one where the description column width is the most problematic. Adding the dragon version of the words (which did need to get added into the template) forced the Thu'um column to be overly wide, plus the effect descriptions on that call are so long. And I can see that having the words side-by-side makes it easier to read the words, especially the transliterations and translations.
I do, however, think that the locations need to be kept as a bulleted list instead of putting them all on one line. Especially once there are comments about the locations, it's much easier to read/scan the locations when they're bulleted (SR:Unrelenting Force is one that stood out as needing bullets).
Also, there's a bug in the recharge times somewhere in your template -- they're all showing up as 300. --NepheleTalk 19:12, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
Okay, I fixed those. The recharge bug was a stupid mistake by me. But, I think this version works well. I wish I could get the recharge column to be even smaller to accommodate the effect descriptions, but I didn't find an easy way to do that. elliot (talk) 19:19, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
I just fiddled with your sandbox (hope you don't mind!) to try to tweak the column widths even more. There's still a bit of weirdness with the borders between the Thu'ums (not extending the full height), but thought I'd save what I had to see whether it's worth pursuing more. --NepheleTalk 19:31, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't work with HTML too often, so I had to really dig this one up, but I used the border-collapse property to fix it. It seems to work, but I can't test it on other browsers to verify. elliot (talk) 19:52, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
Aha, thanks! I was starting to drive myself crazy, in particular because firebug was insisting that every border/margin/padding was 0, but yet was still saying that tbody was smaller than the table.... It works in Firefox, Safari, and IE6 -- and also means border-collapse should probably be added to the css for hiddentable. In any case, I'm pretty happy with how that looks. --NepheleTalk 20:04, 12 May 2012 (UTC)
Also, I just wanted to say that in retrospect I was a bit too quick to undo your original edit; sorry for that. At the time, all I had was the edit summary ("turning on its side, making it easier to read; removing unused space"), so I was assuming that was the only objective of the edits. When I looked at a couple of examples (such as Storm Call), the turned-on-its-side version wasn't easier to read. Furthermore, since it wasn't mentioned in your edit summary, and I didn't have a version of a shout page from before the template change, I had no idea that you'd also added the dragon-font version of the word in the edit... which was a very useful change and in turn increased the need for some further changes. --NepheleTalk 20:32, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

() That looks really good now, guys! I just checked in all five PC browsers and everything looks fine in terms of the table layout and borders. The one problem is that the <font> tag has been deprecated and Opera no longer respects it, so all the DragonFont text is showing up as plain text. Changing it over to CSS works fine, but there's still the font-size issue to deal with (which is markedly different in CSS vs. HTML), so I'm just checking the calls to the template now and I'll go from there. Robin Hoodtalk 00:53, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Redirects to Invalid Sections[edit]

I've been working with Category:Redirects to Invalid Sections today, and I have been trying to get the relevant information on the wiki. I just don't have access to the CK in order to accurately add it. Is there anything you can do to add it? I know your bot created them, so I figured you'd be the best one to bug. :) elliot (talk) 00:09, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

There's a good chance that some of them are abilities/items that don't appear in game, or are only used by NPCs. Abilities in particular were a set of redirects where I took a pretty blind stab at the full list of 250 abilities and guessed at which ones seemed likely to be relevant. I did a quick check on Surefoot in the CK, and its "Use Info" section is empty, meaning it doesn't appear in game. That's probably what needs to be manually done for each of them to figure out whether or not it's actually used -- and "Use Info" is something I'll never be able to properly replace in CSList given that I don't have access to the scripts, and therefore can't reliably get a complete list of uses. --NepheleTalk 00:20, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
Okay, I figured as much. The Arm Bandages don't appear either (for normal use). Should those be documented for inclusiveness? elliot (talk) 00:35, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
If you mean the text of the Papyrus scripts, those can all be found in the Data/Scripts/Source folder, then you just have to match them up with the names in the game data. Also, don't rely too heavily on Use Info and the like...the CK doesn't seem to search Papyrus scripts either, and I've seen a number of cases where an object is used in a script property and doesn't show up in Use Info because it's not an Alias (it's an Object Reference or whatever). In short, Bethesda's done their usual hack job on the CK. :) Robin Hoodtalk 01:56, 13 May 2012 (UTC)
Oh, wow, thank you!!! Those sneaky devs... from the timestamps on my computer, they clearly didn't distribute the source files for the scripts until after the CK was released. I'd previously scoured everything from the DVD looking for the source scripts, but could only find the compiled versions (the .pex files). I even seem to remember doing another search after the CK came out, but I was assuming they'd be in the resource files, like the .pex files.
Hmm, there's a bunch of other stuff I'd never previously noticed, such as a ton of xml files for the DialogueViews, which explains why I couldn't figure out how those were being generated.
Except now that means I've got a whole bunch of new work to do reading that all into CSList and making the info searchable/useable. So maybe I should be cursing you instead ;) --NepheleTalk 03:20, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Mass Image Upload[edit]

I've been discussing with Kiz and Legoless the many concept art images for Skyrim that would like to upload. I managed to get them all downloaded and used a script to resize them below 2MB. But there is about 700 of them, and I feel like this should be done with a bot. I don't know if your bot can upload images (I know RH's can), but I was wondering if you could have your bot upload them. I've emailed you the zip with all of the images, so you should have those now as well. Thanks Neph. elliot (talk) 20:27, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

Per your request on my talk page, yes, I could easily bulk upload them. I'd have to play a little to see exactly how to get the right licensing on them (which wasn't an issue last time, since I was just copying the source GIF page over the target PNG page right after), but other than a few little experiments like that, it shouldn't be much of a problem. Initial descriptions for each might be nice, but I can always just bulk upload with a generic description for all of them. Robin Hoodtalk 08:34, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
I don't think I've ever done file uploads using NepheleBot, and I've got more than enough on my plate that I'd rather not get into it if I don't need to. --NepheleTalk 15:58, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
Okay, I'll keep buggin' RH. ;) elliot (talk) 01:33, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Merging Places[edit]

When you have a sec, can you comment on this discussion on my talk page. The basic question is whether we should merge locations such as Salvius Farm and Salvius Farmhouse or Solitude Sawmill wood mill and Solitude Sawmill. I tend to think we should merge and redirect, but I wasn't sure if there might create bot headaches or if there are other good reasons to leave them separate. Robin Hoodtalk 08:30, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Shop Summary[edit]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the Merchant Services (Gold, Sells, Buys) in the summary table used to be smaller. If not, is it possible to decrease their size. The Silencer has spokenTalk 20:59, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I undid some edits made to one of the place summary templates that was producing the problem. It might take an hour or two for the change to propagate through to all of the affected pages, but once it does they should look better. --NepheleTalk 01:29, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
I agree with elliot that it could be changed to look better, but the recent change just caused more a difficulty. I posted a more thorough reply on the template page, but am totally lost on templating, so I can give you some ideas on what changes could be made (whether they can actually be done is another matter), but wouldn't be able to do any myself. The Silencer has spokenTalk 02:53, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

another question regarding radiant quests[edit]

I've noticed a few references to An Enemy's Gratitude on various pages, and before I edit them, I'd like to confirm that this quest is similar to some of the others listed in the 'Quest NPCs' section of the Radiant page. There are no radiant options or details listed on the quest page, so I can't be sure. I've looked at CSlist and have been able to figure out a handful of NPCs which don't fit the conditions required to be an assault victim or assigned target, but I don't know how to determine if there are enough that do fit the conditions to list it on the Radiant page. Can you shed some light on this? ABCface 03:56, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

OK, an hour of coding later I've finally figured out how "GetRelationshipRank" is calculated, meaning I can at last identify people with rank<0 and start to get some idea of how many people can pass that test. So before looking at the other conditions I'm coming up with 57 unfriendly relations -- meaning there are 114 NPCs whose death has any chance of triggering this quest. It'll take a bit more query-writing to throw the other conditions into the mix (i.e., I won't get to it before going to go bed), but I'd feel safe betting that the other conditions won't eliminate 75% of the first-cut candidates. So I think it probably belongs on the Radiant page. --NepheleTalk 06:29, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
Oops, except 114 includes a ton of duplicate-counts of the same NPC.... Maybe I should wait until morning when I have a better chance of thinking clearly ;( --NepheleTalk 06:34, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
Okay, thank you for taking the time to look into this. I will hold off on editing any related pages for now, until we know more details— which of course means until you figure those details out, because I surely don't know how! Thanks again. ABCface 20:42, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

() I took a long (and as-yet unfinished) detour into the question of "what does GetAllowWorldInteractions mean?" Bottom line is that right now I don't really know what to make of that condition, nor am I sure whether I'm going to make much progress on it over the next week. So I figured I should get back to you with what I have so far. Ignoring the GetAllowWorldInteractions condition, I'm coming up with 74 NPCs who can send you a letter for An enemy's gratitude. That's after taking care of double-counting and checking all the other conditions. My guess is that GetAllowWorldInteractions doesn't have much of an effect (my gut instinct says that it may have become semi-obsolete when the "Actors in this will never fill world interaction aliases" faction was introduced).

In case you're curious, here's the list of 74:

  • Addvar
  • Aia Arria
  • Alain Dufont
  • Aslfur
  • Avulstein Gray-Mane
  • Azzada Lylvieve
  • Beitild
  • Betrid Silver-Blood
  • Bjartur
  • Bolund
  • Borgakh the Steel Heart
  • Brond
  • Bryling
  • Captain Lonely-Gale
  • Chief Burguk
  • Chief Larak
  • Chief Mauhulakh
  • Dengeir of Stuhn
  • Edorfin
  • Elisif the Fair
  • Ennodius Papius
  • Erikur
  • Faendal
  • Faleen
  • Faralda
  • Giraud Gemane
  • Gisli
  • Gorm
  • Grelod the Kind
  • Hamal
  • Horgeir
  • Idolaf Battle-Born
  • Illdi
  • Inge Six Fingers
  • Irnskar Ironhand
  • Jala
  • Jervar
  • Jesper
  • Jorn
  • Kjeld
  • Kodrir
  • Korir
  • Kust
  • Legate Rikke
  • Leifur
  • Leigelf
  • Lemkil
  • Liesl
  • Lisette
  • Lod
  • Lodvar
  • Lurbuk
  • Melaran
  • Muiri
  • Mulush gro-Shugurz
  • Narri
  • Nelacar
  • Nepos the Nose
  • Nirya
  • Ogmund
  • Omluag
  • Runil
  • Siddgeir
  • Skulvar Sable-Hilt
  • Solaf
  • Sven
  • Talib
  • Tekla
  • Tormir
  • Urog
  • Valga Vinicia
  • Viarmo
  • Viola Giordano
  • Yngvar the Singer

--NepheleTalk 18:02, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the update. Since we don't know for sure yet, I'll leave the pages as they are until we do know. Thanks for looking into this! ABCface 18:13, 19 May 2012 (UTC)
Hey, I was just wondering if you have looked into this further. If you haven't, or don't wish to (totally understandable!), can we assume that this list is at least close to the complete list of possible NPCs? I would really like to add this quest to this section of the Radiant page, because I believe there's enough possibilities to warrant such a move, but I'd prefer to get your opinion before doing so— especially since I would then be making related changes on various pages across the namespace to clean up content which is related to that quest. Thanks in advance. ABCface 05:30, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

RefIDs of randomly-generated NPCs[edit]

If we are not going to put the randomly-assigned RefIDs in the template section on their page, what should go there? It doesn't seem right to just leave it blank. Should the RefID section be removed from the template for these types of NPCs? --Xyzzy 20:34, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what makes the most sense. But the randomly-assigned RefIDs are going to be wrong 99.999% of the time, so they definitely shouldn't be added. --NepheleTalk 04:13, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
Agreed. I will go ahead and pose the question on the community page. Thanks. --Xyzzy 03:09, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

A Favor?[edit]

Hey Neph! Just wanted to ask for a favor – I’m desperately trying to make an understandable NPC dialogue section for Legate Rikke’s involvement in Reunification of Skyrim, and I’m almost there. At least I think so, thanks to your additions to the quest pages and your responses above. I was hoping you could take a quick glance at this sandbox and tell me what you think – is it correct, based on our (current) theories? Is it understandable – or is it confusing? Any input is appreciated. Thanks in advance! ☺ --Krusty 23:55, 21 May 2012 (UTC)

One thing that I noticed is the statement: "Note that it is possible to regain the Reach and Hjaalmarch twice, provided you completed A False Front and Compelling Tribute before Season Unending - and only if you give the two holds back to the Stormcloaks as part of the peace treaty." As far as I know that's not the case... I put a comment like that onto an article at one point, but then realized a couple of days later that I'd misunderstood how a couple of things fit together. Of course, if you've experienced that yourself in game, then it means I need to go back and re-work some things. Although if it is the case, the holds need to be corrected -- the Rift and the Pale are more likely candidates than the Reach and Hjaalmarch.
Beyond that the only other question that crossed my mind is whether it makes more sense to add this type of dialogue onto the quest pages instead of Legate Rikke's page. It seems more likely that readers would look for the information on the quest pages, and the dialogue doesn't really tell you anything about Rikke or add to the picture of who she is. Probably the main speech that I really associate with Rikke is the one at the start of the Battle of Whiterun -- which I see you've already covered in Sandbox2. In any case, that's just my first impression, and I only brought it up since you asked for "any input". It's something I'm sure you've thought through in more detail than I have. --NepheleTalk 06:37, 22 May 2012 (UTC)
Gah, of course – it is the Reach and the Pale. That is exactly why I wanted an extra set of eyes on the page – it gets confusing after a while. Next thing will be to test if these two red links will actually trigger – so I’ll go through the entire quest line once again. As for your other comments, I’ve been ‘using’ Rikke to learn a thing or two about the CW quest line, and as a test on how ‘big’ a multiple-quest related NPC page would get in these Skyrim days. I still haven’t decided where to put everything, but the Reunification-thing was a bit of a follow-up investigation related to our old discussion about merging the Battle for..-pages into one article – to see how different Rikke would act and so on. As for the TONS of dialogue I've written – a lot of it would look great on a page like The Jagged Crown, but it also belongs on Rikke’s page as part of her interesting Nord personality (the characters are incredibly multi-layered in Skyrim) so for now, I’ll probably just go for regular OB-like NPC treatment (like GK used to say, it is easier to remove stuff than to add stuff), and then get all the quest pages up and running using some of her dialogue. In any case, thanks for the feedback! --Krusty 07:17, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Primary Skills (again)[edit]

Thanks to your updates the CS is a lot more understandable. I just want to clarify what counts as a primary skill. I'm thinking its any skill that shows a value of 25 or above. It's just there are a few discrepancies which might just be that they have not been updated yet, or is there something else I'm missing. The Silencer has spokenTalk 02:31, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

CS List Quest Scripts[edit]

I was just looking at MQ206 in the CS List, and I noticed that the script listed for stage 10 doesn't match the CK's script for the same stage. Thought you might want to know.

Also, now that we know that quest stages and quest objectives aren't directly linked, can I suggest separating the objectives out into their own list? Robin Hoodtalk 00:32, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Metatemplate #save bug[edit]

Hey Neph! Just thought I'd let you know there's a minor bug in #save. It seems that in rare cases, it's modifying the value it saves. You can see the problem with this version of Shout Summary if you move the #save:quote at the bottom back up with the main #save (look at the quote line in preview before and after the move...moving it back up, the link becomes broken). Robin Hoodtalk 15:10, 30 June 2012 (UTC)

Wrathman & Mist Man[edit]

Hey, I noticed the bot's been adding info for NPCs and creatures, and scanning the list, I happened to notice these two. I had created another two to fix redlinks a few days back, and I'm realizing now that they're probably the same. I wasn't sure if I should prod the two I made, or just change them to redirects, so I figured I'd ask before making any changes. Thanks! ABCface 18:49, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

The correct name for the one is Wrathman rather than Wraithman. I'd say turn Wraithman into a redirect since it's a mistake many readers are likely to make. As for mist, there's both a Mistman and a Mist Man in the game data. Mistman is more common (3 variants), but that's about all I can say from a quick glance at the data. All of the DG content is now available in CSList, so you might want to check there for more info. --NepheleTalk 18:55, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
Okay, thanks. And I just noticed the CSlist updates after posting that message, so I'm gonna have tons of fun looking into all the random info. On that note, thanks so much for updating CSlist with the new stuff! (I'm assuming it was you.) It'll make it much easier to patrol pages! ABCface 19:18, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
Slightly unrelated but, in the CSList the new Dawnguard ID's start DG, I have added afew like this but noticed your adding them starting with xx instead? am I suppose to use xx aswell, what is the difference? D: — Kimi the Elf (talk | contribs) 21:43, 1 July 2012 (UTC)
The DG prefix is a CSList-specific prefix, in an attempt to provide some type of unique prefix to identify every mod, etc. It has no real meaning anywhere except CSList
In reality the first two characters will be two hexadecimal digits, but the exact value will depend upon the mods that each individual player has installed and the load order used for those mods. "xx" is what was used in Oblivion in all such cases to signal that the numbers are not fixed. It's actually likely to be "02" for all players, assuming that Bethesda forces its mods to be loaded before anything else, but I'd rather stick with "xx" instead of adding info to all these pages that might end up being incorrect. --NepheleTalk 21:51, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Dawnguard Books[edit]

There are some books that need formatting:

As you are working on them I felt it best to leave these ones to you. The Silencer speaksTalk 21:52, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

I just tried to fix the ones that were illegible, but beyond that I'm unlikely to do anything. Unless I somehow miraculously make it through all the thousands of other DG items within the next couple hours ;) --NepheleTalk 21:55, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

Since you're on...[edit]

Is this spam? I've been seeing more of this recently (a brand-new account linking to a "pet project" on their user or user talk page), where it's a bit hard to tell if it's a spammer or a naive newcomer. But can I just mark stuff like this as spam at the risk of potentially alienating a newcomer? Minor EditsThreatsEvidence 04:44, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Definitely spam. I've seen at least five other userpages with the exact same sort of message. Wasn't sure on the first one, but when I saw the others, it made it pretty clear. ABCface 04:47, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) If the link is completely unrelated to Elder Scrolls and on top of that is a commonly-advertised item, I'd call it spam. That page also matches a pretty common spambot pattern lately, making it even more likely to be spam. But if the person makes some type of ES comment ("I joined this site because I'm playing Skyrim"), then caution is warranted. --NepheleTalk 04:50, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
I hadn't intended to mark it for deletion until I got an answer, but I accidentally saved the page I had prepared. But, noted; unless there's a clear pattern, err on the side of friendliness. Minor EditsThreatsEvidence 04:57, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

() Okay, I think I'll spend my Pester Points on you. Could you be so awesome as to get some Dawnguard maps? A map of the Soul Cairn would be really nice, and a map of Forgotten Vale would also be helpful. I figured I'd ask you, since you have the Dawnguard data (unless you used your wizardry to add the info to the CSList, o.O) • JATalk 06:25, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

Dawnguard Places Question[edit]

Hey, I just wanted to ask how to handle a number of places added by Dawnguard when it comes to article pages. The Forgotten Vale has five "portals" which take you to different areas. Two of them, Darkfall Grotto and Glacial Crevice have location entries in CSlist, while the three others (Forgotten Vale Forest, Forgotten Vale Overlook, and Inner Sanctum) do not. I wasn't sure if the places these portals take you to are considered interior zones of the Forgotten Vale itself, or exterior cells/locations by a different name, or what. I'm also unsure of how to deal with creating pages for these areas, since Darkfall Grotto exists as its own page (this one makes sense), a user already created a page for the forest (which doesn't have a location file by that name), and no page has been created for Glacial Crevice (which does have a location entry) or the others (which don't). I was going to try tackling the inconsistencies with page creations for these areas, but since I can't find the same type of entry for the different areas in CSlist, I'm unsure of how to handle it. Thoughts? ABCface 14:09, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

OK, start with the short and easy answers. Although I've only played about 5 minutes of Dawnguard, my guess from what you're saying is that we probably do want to have separate pages for each of these places. Inner Sanctum does have a cell and location in CSList; it's just that there's also an Inner Sanctum in vanilla Skyrim which confuses things, meaning we need to do something disambigish with SR:Inner Sanctum.
The forest and the overlook are both sites within Forgotten Vale. The doors for the portal exits are located here and here. So they are just at different x/y/z coordinates within the same Forgotten Vale cell. (FYI, x/y/z are where that particular item is located. Door rev id, door x, door y, and door z are all information for the other end of the door -- the end back at the Paragon Platform).
If you want to dig around some more, the portals themselves are in CSList at PortalGemDoorToDarkfall, PortalGemDoorToCrevice, PortalGemDoorToForest, PortalGemDoorToTemple, and PortalGemDoorToRiver. --NepheleTalk 18:18, 4 July 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, I just wasn't sure what I was looking at with the Cell entries I'd found, I guess. I'll go ahead and make pages for the ones that don't have their own yet, but the info will be really basic at first. At least it'll get rid of some of the wanted pages for now. Thanks, Nephele. -ABCface 12:12, 5 July 2012 (UTC)