UESPWiki:Community Portal/Archive 44

Gender Parameter on ESO Creature Pages

There's been a lot of   in the ESO creature summary boxes lately. Is there a reason for them? If not, is it okay to remove them for consistency? Creatures in the other namespaces don't have the parameter in their summary boxes.      19:38, 3 May 2014 (GMT)
:Basically, they were all created without knowing what they were by a bot. So if it is a creature, they can have the gender param removed. The bot didn't know if it was a creature or an NPC when it created the pages. Jeancey (talk) 19:50, 3 May 2014 (GMT)

Proposal: Splitting up easter eggs pages

A recent discussion on the Skyrim easter eggs page got me thinking about how difficult it is to distinguish pop culture references from easter eggs. The Skyrim eggs page probably won't see a lot more traffic, but over the last few years I've involved myself pretty heavily in the goings-on there, and one of the most frequent patterns I've noticed is that our criteria for inclusion are pretty vague. On the one hand, our definition of easter egg is a pretty stark contrast to traditional definitions, which has been a problem on several occasions. On the other, it creates the difficulty of forcing us to omit cultural inspirations (such as Sleipnir or Vegvisir in Skyrim) from the page because there's not enough to establish a clear reference.

On the Oblivion eggs page, cultural influences are kept separate from pop culture references, a practice which seems to have largely disappeared on the eggs pages for the more recent games. I feel that a return to the format of the Oblivion eggs page would solve a lot of the issues and vagueness we experienced with the Skyrim eggs page, which would make things much easier when dealing with eggs pages for future games. Since this affects multiple pages going forward, I would like to propose that we adopt a policy of distinguishing cultural influences from cultural references on all easter eggs pages. This would allow for clear distinctions between references and hidden gags or cultural influences while still keeping all the information in one article.

Of course, we'll continue to encounter issues with people proposing things without any clear connection, and we have to have standards to prevent the page from being filled with questionable suggestions (the guidelines for inclusion on the Skyrim page, while a bit idiosyncratic, have been enormously helpful in that regard). We would have to continue to judge references and potential cultural influences based on the strength of a connection (i.e., whether there's enough of an argument for a reasonable person to be certain beyond a doubt that the in-game event could only be referring to/influenced by a single real-world thing). As long as we can maintain those standards though, I think splitting up the page into sections would be easier for everyone. What does everyone think? ThuumofReason (talk) 16:24, 6 May 2014 (GMT)

:Having worked significantly on the Oblivion Easter Egg revamp, my opinion will probably come as no surprise: yes please! I also wouldn't be opposed to finding a more encompassing name. I sort of tried to do that with the Oblivion Easter Egg page split back in 2008, but the very broad definition of "Easter Egg" is still with us. The possibility exists that by finding a broader term, people will be inclined to put even more tangentially related info on the page, but I think if we have clear sections on the page (or separate pages, whichever), that can probably be minimized.  &ndash;       17:56, 6 May 2014 (GMT)

::Easter Eggs for good or bad is what people invariably call things, even our "historical references". While a more accurate term may be found I don't think there is any point moving the pages because as we see for each game, the pages see a lot of traffic.      18:07, 6 May 2014 (GMT)

::: I don't see a problem with adding sections. A bit of categorisation never hurts.  —Legoless (talk) 18:20, 6 May 2014 (GMT)

:::: I agree with adding categories to existing pages rather than revamping into several distinct pages, as I would imagine most people go to the easter egg pages to see if something they spotted has been noted previously or to see how many easter eggs that others have noted they've picked up on. Either way most people won't want move between pages to achieve this. Biffa (talk) 18:58, 6 May 2014 (GMT)
::::: I wouldn't oppose adding categories (splitting it into two pages would be too confusing and annoying, imo), but I don't see how that would clear up the difficulty of societal references. Unless our standards are going to change, we will have the same arguments over references, the references will simply be going in a different section. --AN&#124;L (talk) 19:14, 6 May 2014 (GMT)
::::::To cite another example, one of the entries on the Dragonborn eggs page refers to a "love nest" in Benkongerike. Judging by the criteria used for the Skyrim eggs page (at the time of this post), this shouldn't have been added because it wasn't referring to anything in particular. It could be considered an easter egg in the more traditional sense, in that it's something funny that's hidden for people to find rather than a reference to something. Adding a section for traditional easter eggs would give this information a spot to be noted on the wiki without making it conflict with the judging criteria for reference-based suggestions. For the Skyrim eggs page, a section for cultural influences would give us a spot to list things like Vegvisir and the various names of NPCs based on Norse folk heroes, which would allow us to make note of the influences without requiring a clear reason for putting it there.

::::::It's true that we might still encounter arguments about what influenced what, and as I said in my initial post, we would need to have a set of stringent criteria for inclusion in order to prevent the page from being flooded by nonsense. But separating the page into multiple sections would help us to evaluate what a proposal was classified as, and that would make it easier to determine whether or not it merited inclusion than if we were just lumping everything together. ThuumofReason (talk) 19:45, 6 May 2014 (GMT)

 It would also allow for different levels of criteria to be required for differing classifications. Biffa (talk) 22:17, 6 May 2014 (GMT)
:Right, that's the beauty of it. Different criteria would be put in place for the different classifications so they wouldn't be mixed up. ThuumofReason (talk) 00:31, 7 May 2014 (GMT)
::So here's what I'm thinking for defining each of the three proposed sections (easter eggs, pop culture references, and cultural influences):

::Easter eggs are secrets that the developers put in the game to give people a laugh when they find them; they differ from in-game references in that they have been intentionally hidden from the player and are unusual with regards to their surroundings.

::Pop culture references are objects, characters, or events in the game that refer to a specific real-world event or work of fiction outside the Elder Scrolls series; they differ from easter eggs in that they are usually integrated into the game world, and strong parallels can be drawn between the in-game event and the specific work being referenced.

::Cultural influences are objects or characters within the game that are inspired by specific elements of real-world culture. Unlike pop culture references, cultural influences are not usually integrated into the game world.

::The idea is that references refer to a specific thing and that similarities exist between the in-game event and the object of reference to suggest a connection beyond a coincidental level, whereas influences are clearly inspired by the object of reference (such as the vegvisir or characters named after Norse folk heroes), but don't necessarily have any significance within the game's story other than just being there. Does anybody have any comments/suggestions on these definitions? ThuumofReason (talk) 14:59, 14 May 2014 (GMT)

:::Seems sensible to me, but there would have to be detailed headers explaining what should be put in what category. and it would need close monitoring initially. Either that or it could be done as a proposal, with someone requesting it to be added to a category and then it being confirmed to that or a different category or declined if there are strong objections. Biffa (talk) 15:09, 14 May 2014 (GMT)
::::I agree, my intention was to put these at the top of each section. Proposals would operate the same as always, with people taking it to the talk page first and then adding it to the proper section if consensus for inclusion is reached. They could specify which section it was for if they wanted, but if it was more suited to another section, we could judge it for inclusion in the appropriate section rather than the proposed one. ThuumofReason (talk) 17:31, 14 May 2014 (GMT)
:::::It's been a while since we've had any input, and since we all seem to be leaning towards separate sections, I'd like to put it to a formal vote. I'd be prepared to start work on this immediately if the consensus supports the change. ThuumofReason (talk) 10:35, 18 May 2014 (GMT)

Separate Sections for Easter Eggs, Pop Culture References, and Cultural Influences
Support: As proposer. ThuumofReason (talk) 10:35, 18 May 2014 (GMT)
Support: Definitely brings some needed clarity and definition to what we're included on the page. -- Hargrimm  15:07, 18 May 2014 (GMT)
Support: As per my comments above, allows for a greater range of items to be included, not previously allowable due to existing rules. Biffa (talk) 15:50, 18 May 2014 (GMT)
Support: As long as I'm not the one doing it. :P        22:37, 18 May 2014 (GMT)
Oppose: The different sections seem too confusing to me, and I think it will be too annoying to figure out what easter eggs belong in what sections. We can expand the definition of Easter Eggs without adding new sections. --AN&#124;L (talk) 21:23, 27 May 2014 (GMT)
Comment: That's kind of why I asked for feedback on the definitions and/or categories. I'd be open to revising the definitions for clarity's sake (in fact, I fully expect that to happen), but expanding the definition without adding categories would be worse than doing nothing at all, as it would only make it more difficult to judge whether or not something belongs on the page. ThuumofReason (talk) 21:37, 27 May 2014 (GMT)
Comment: Okay. I think it might be better to get rid of the Cultural References category and just have Easter Eggs (funny things) and Pop Culture References (out of game references). Particularly since we want to continue keep out very broad cultural parallels (skyrim influenced by norse mythology, dragonborn influenced by the works of lovecraft, etc.) --AN&#124;L (talk) 15:27, 28 May 2014 (GMT)
Comment: I think we should stick with the "Cultural References" section, and included pop culture in it as well. There are a few references in Skyrim to mythology, etc. —Legoless (talk) 20:45, 28 May 2014 (GMT)
Comment: That's what I meant. Not deleting or ignoring cultural references, but simply combining the two. --AN&#124;L (talk) 21:44, 28 May 2014 (GMT)

 
:So since we're (more or less) in agreement about this, I'll start working on the changes for the Skyrim page shortly. As I said, we may need some revisions to the definitions for clarity's sake, so everyone feel free to toss some ideas or suggestions around. ThuumofReason (talk) 22:35, 28 May 2014 (GMT)
::I went ahead and split the pages into categories. Based on Anil's and Legoless's feedback, I came up with a definition of "references" that includes both pop culture references and cultural references. Does anybody have any concerns/suggestions about the phrasing of the definitions? ThuumofReason (talk) 13:00, 30 May 2014 (GMT)
:::Why not just split the 3 big categories like the Oblivion page (Easter Eggs, Pop Culture References and Societal References--Jimeee (talk) 13:19, 30 May 2014 (GMT)
::::That's doable, although it may or may not be necessary. Legoless and Anil brought up good points about the merits of combining the two into one section rather than making a third, less-comprehensible category. By expanding the definition of the second section to include allusions to elements of real world culture, rather than just references that have to make sense in the context of the game, we allow for the inclusion of clear references that may not otherwise meet the criteria for inclusion. We could organize them into sub-sections based on whether they're real or pop culture, but if the definition encompasses both, is it really necessary?

::::It's also worth considering that Skyrim is more heavily influenced by cultural elements than the other games, so a third section might create more problems than anything when trying to create a system of categorizing eggs pages for multiple games. Skyrim has a number of clear references to Norse mythology that could probably be noted in a single section. Something along the lines of "Several NPCs are named after Norse folk heroes", and then giving one or two examples. It wouldn't be necessary to list every single one of them, just as long as we note that it happens. ThuumofReason (talk) 14:25, 30 May 2014 (GMT)

:::::Only issue I have is on the Easter Egg definition, you've amended it to: Easter Eggs are secrets that the developers put in the game to give people a laugh when they find them. I think this would be better written as: Easter Eggs are secrets that developers put in games to give people a laugh when they find them. as it isn't a phenomena exclusive to this game, The Elder Scrolls games or Beth. Biffa (talk) 14:35, 30 May 2014 (GMT)
::::::I figured a singular tense would be more appropriate than plural, since each page refers specifically to the contents of one game. ThuumofReason (talk) 14:46, 30 May 2014 (GMT)
  Looks good to me. My question now is, are we just going to have this rule going forward or do we want to go back and rehash some of the eggs we rejected before the rules were changed? Off the top of my head, I can think of several (aforementioned Nord names in Skyrim, man inside a mammoth, old salty in dragonborn) that would probably qualify under the new rules. I'd be in favor of reviewing a limited number that seem likely to be added.  --AN&#124;L (talk) 16:06, 30 May 2014 (GMT)
:I was planning on doing that for a few of them myself. Now that we've got some new categories (and unless there are any more objections), I think the last step is to review selected proposals that would work under the new guidelines. ThuumofReason (talk) 17:34, 30 May 2014 (GMT)
::One word: Vegvisir --Jimeee (talk) 17:42, 30 May 2014 (GMT)

::I know each refers to a single game, however the definition refers to Easter Eggs in general, which is an industry wide name given for all games. It would be different if it wasn't the generic name used by everyone regardless of game for the same thing. Biffa (talk) 17:49, 30 May 2014 (GMT)

::: A similar argument was brought up with . We included the term's general definition in the notes section. —Legoless (talk) 18:00, 30 May 2014 (GMT)

::::Which notes section? We now have some game's Easter egg pages showing "the game" and some still with the original "games" all in the same header format. The way it is phrased and as the first line of the page is resolutely defining Easter egg in general, but then applying it to a single game. Biffa (talk) 18:21, 30 May 2014 (GMT)

Time to start thinking about SRPRP?

Just remembering the talk a few weeks ago about starting a Skyrim Places Redesign Project this summer, after the ESO rollout. Seems the ESO is going swimmingly after month? Or is more fallout expected? Should we begin thinking about thinking about this?--Beezer1029 (talk) 19:55, 7 May 2014 (GMT)
:Not even close. We haven't even gotten to the console release which is going to be an entire wave all over again. On top of that, summer is coming around (at least in the northern hemisphere and I believe the majority of our users) which will keep traffic up still. It probably won't be until late August-September before this project can begin to be organized.        20:19, 7 May 2014 (GMT)
:: The ESO console release is potentially just a month away, and I think that will bring increased activity. And when Zenimax finally listens to reason and makes it free to play (likely before the holidays, if not sooner), that will bring a new flood, I'm sure. And due to the nature of the game, our data collecting and thus our editing has proven to be much less efficient, meaning it's going to take us a lot longer to bring the ESO namespace up to UESP standards. I wouldn't start a new project on an older namespace for a while. I'd reassess in the fall.      20:27, 7 May 2014 (GMT)
:::Will do - Thanks for the input!--Beezer1029 (talk) 20:34, 7 May 2014 (GMT)

Loremaster's Archive

With the new lore post on the ESO website, I think we need to consider how we want to handle official out-of-game content. The new book, Unhallowed Legions, already has a lore entry. Should we categorise these somehow? Perhaps make a small page in the General namespace to use as a source, where we explain the book's origins? From the looks of it, there will be more to come. This discussion should also apply to the texts found on the ESO website's map, which I'm not sure if we currently host yet. This isn't the first time we've archived website info. —Legoless (talk) 17:10, 11 May 2014 (GMT)
:I think a non-book note on the lore page would suffice, unless there's something I'm missing. Although this issue does highlight that we should probably amend the lore guidelines to speak in terms of official and unofficial lore rather than in-game and out-of-game lore, since the former is the distinction we've been applying in practice.      17:52, 11 May 2014 (GMT)
::Pretty much all the notes and such from the interactive map were uploaded as soon as they became available into the Online namespace with no notation ( , see history for origin from the map). I'm not really sure about the namespace issue since those texts don't in any way appear within the game Elder Scrolls Online, but I do agree they should be included on the site since they were posted officially by Zenimax and intended as canon. Also agreed that the real differentiator is official/unofficial from the perspective of Zeni/Bethesda, rather than in/out of game per say. -- Hargrimm  19:57, 11 May 2014 (GMT)

::: So we do have them, great. I think we should definitely move them out of the ESO namespace if they don't appear in the game. A general page dedicated to the online map's contents might be nice. —Legoless (talk) 20:05, 11 May 2014 (GMT)
::::I agree, they shouldn't really be in the namespace if they don't appear in game. Jeancey (talk) 20:28, 11 May 2014 (GMT)

:::::  Makes sense.      20:41, 11 May 2014 (GMT)

::::::Yes I agree that these types of pages should live in the lore namespace. @Legoless - its funny you mention a dedicated page for online map's contents as just the other day I was working on a sandbox to organize the interactive map stuff and I was planning on bringing this up at some point. My main concern was making the origins of each text clear. I think an effective way to do this would be to have a new field in the Book Summary temple that describes this (something like "ESO Interactive Map" or "ESO Loremaster's Archive" and link it to an overview page (like ESO collections has). Thoughts? --Jimeee (talk) 10:05, 12 May 2014 (GMT)

  An option for 'other' as to where it appeared would seem like a solution, then manually adding a link to either where it appeared or just the general site name. The books are meant to be taken as canon so they belong in lore, and there are some other things that are used as sources but not included on the site, such as the eso background story on facebook. These sources have the potential to be unsupported at some point and I'd like to see more of them copied somewhere here. While we're at it there are some other changes I'd like to see to book categorization. The overview or compilation book pages (e.g. 2920, The Last Year of the First Era aren't 'books' per se and I'd like to see them moved out of that category somehow. And an idea for those would that like to see the books by game lists, an auto-cat per game entry; so SR=Yes would add a link and a cat under the  .      11:30, 12 May 2014 (GMT)

: That overview page looks great. Having one for the Loremaster's Archive might be a good idea too, but I think we should wait and see if it becomes a regular thing first. —Legoless (talk) 18:46, 14 May 2014 (GMT)

::So, just to be clear, how are we cataloging the website stuff? My first instinct is to add them to the book lists, but it seems like you're talking about listing them on an overview page instead and, what linking to it at Lore:Library?      19:29, 21 June 2014 (GMT)

Etymology

Velyanthe user is currently inactive and user WoahBro does not give me to edit etymology because it is in sandbox, so could we transfer etymology somewhere else with notice that everyone could edit it?  

:No current user showed any sign of wanting to take over this page when it was brought up recently, and the main reason it got deleted was because everyone added every etymology under the sun, so that idea doesn't work. If you wish to make an account and make your own sandbox I'm sure Velyanthe will agree, and he's only just gone inactive so he may still be around to reply to a talk page message.      11:12, 12 May 2014 (GMT)

::I will take over the project, so can I transfer it to my sandbox because Velyanthe is not active anymore? Xand (talk) 12:23, 12 May 2014 (GMT)

:::Leave Vely a message on his talk page and wait for his response before you copy anything over. There's been issues in the past of users copying other users' work from sandboxes in an apparent race to finish before the other. So just make sure that it's all good before you begin! P.S. if you cannot get ahold of Vely via his talk page, try shooting him an e-mail (it should be somewhere around his user page).        12:27, 12 May 2014 (GMT)
::::Since Vely has declared himself as inactive, I don't see any reason to ask permission before taking over a project he has abandoned. The needs of the wiki outweigh the needs of the one. --Xyzzy     14:08, 12 May 2014 (GMT)

:::::The wikidiction is very strong here, and as he's only declared it 10 days ago there's a good chance of a response. A few days wait won't do any harm.      14:14, 12 May 2014 (GMT)

::::::I asked Velyanthe on his talk page for permission to copy but I also plan to be inactive user except for adding etymology.I made first etymology on this wiki as anonymous user and on UESP forums as Xand but I didn't decide to register because I only made few edits since then.

::::::

::::::  Xand (talk) 15:13, 12 May 2014 (GMT)

:Velyanthe answered yes on his talk page talk page. Xand (talk) 05:36, 14 May 2014 (GMT)

::I was unsuccessful at creating sandbox etymology with notice that it is spamming and action is blocked, it says to contact administrator.Note that first large post is spamming and adding many links is spamming, so please help. Xand (talk) 06:04, 14 May 2014 (GMT)

:::Taken care of (per reply on Vely's talk page).  &ndash;       06:32, 14 May 2014 (GMT)

For whoever is more comfortable writing wiki news than I am

A Craglorn release has been announced. It will be live tomorrow following downtime to perform the update to incorporate Craglorn and Update 1.  I've updated Twitter and Facebook to reflect this aready. -      &hearts;    18:56, 21 May 2014 (GMT)

:Done with aplomb (if I say so myself).      19:14, 21 May 2014 (GMT)

Weird Skyrim Map Icon Issue

I happened across  and was immediately drawn to a few red links for map icons. It appears that for whatever reason, the icons are named Skyrim-mapicon-Nordic Ruins.png instead of SR-mapicon-Nordic Ruins.png, hence the red links. Frankly, I really don't know how/where to fix it to where the icon is using the correct file name, so I wanted to bring this to the attention of someone who might be able to. Oh, and I also noticed that this same red link appears on , so it might be elsewhere too.        04:31, 22 May 2014 (GMT)

:Well, that's just bizarre! Purging alone got a few of them, but in some cases, I had to edit, preview (but not actually save), then purge to get it to pick up the correct name. I'll have a quick look around, but I suspect that's just some weird caching anomaly or something along those lines.  &ndash;       06:04, 22 May 2014 (GMT)

::Just for the record, this has been happening occasionally with ON- files as well, particularly those in the Place Link template. --Enodoc (talk) 08:04, 22 May 2014 (GMT)

  Online Maps

Just a bit of an opinion poll, a while back I was going to add a small version of our proper online maps to each page, I really only finished Auridons map. Now, I am a fan of the idea but it looks overly cluttered. I included Skyshards and Lorebook (and planned to add Treasure Maps as well) but are they really needed. Or should I keep it as just places on them, Wayshrines, Caves and the like so it can be used as a quick reference for people? -- Kiz  15:58, 23 May 2014 (GMT)

:I don't mind all the locations, but reducing them all to a simple pog would vastly reduced the cluttered feel imo. Is this meant to apply to Online space or Skyrim too?      17:29, 23 May 2014 (GMT)

::That looks great! I don't mind the icons at all actually, you can still make out the outlines of the map - and at a glance it really helps if you are looking for something specific, like all lorebooks. --Jimeee (talk) 18:09, 23 May 2014 (GMT)


:::It was mainly about Online Maps, but I had been looking back to see what we'd done for the Skyrim maps, and we only actually labelled doors for the city maps, and there aren't many (or if there are I can't find any) Skyrim dungeon map images that are tagged up. I like the Icons over pogs as it can be used with the in game map/compass without looking for names and the like. I'll add them all in then, unless someone objects between now and Sunday (work 6 - 6 tomorrow so free time is at a zero again) unless someone else wants to tackle one? ;) -- Kiz  20:12, 23 May 2014 (GMT)

Combine Guard Pages

I was thinking that we should combine the pages on guards. All of them are stubs and I feel that we couldn't find enough information about guards from each hold. If it doesn't work, I would try my best to find more information on guards. Please voice your opinions. Tandil, Master of Restoration (talk) 22:38, 28 May 2014 (GMT)
:That makes sense. There's not really much to say about them, the only difference is the color of their armor and the designs on their shields, so I would be okay with that. ThuumofReason (talk) 01:07, 29 May 2014 (GMT)
::I agree with thuumofreason not much difference between the guards. Lorenut (talk) 01:23, 29 May 2014 (GMT)

:::Lack of a lot of information isn't a reason to not have a page. A page can be complete and have very little information. Each hold has an independent crime system, and the guards have different dialogue (especially for marking out locations to you). I vote no to this merge as it is not in the interests of having complete information for each guard type.      01:24, 29 May 2014 (GMT)
::::Each hold may have a different crime system, but couldn't we just add all that info to one page? Lorenut (talk) 01:28, 29 May 2014 (GMT)
:::::It is true that some of the guards' dialogue differs, but they share from a pretty large pool of common responses, don't they? There's dialogue that differs by region, sure, but we probably could document all their dialogue in one big honkin' table if we had to. ThuumofReason (talk) 03:08, 29 May 2014 (GMT)
:::::: I thought we could. They do share a lot of common dialogue with a few unique to each hold. Tandil, Master of Restoration (talk) 03:16, 29 May 2014 (GMT)
 Maybe when someone gets around completing the info for each hold's guards, there can be a section detailing any guards info that is true across all holds linked in someway (I don't know the correct name for this, maybe transcluded?) so that if additional info is found or required then only a single source needs to be updated for it to show on each individual guard page. With the unique info being be shown separately on the same pages. Biffa (talk) 03:28, 29 May 2014 (GMT)
:Since you mention holds, I assume you're talking about Skyrim. Looking at Whiterun Guard, there seems to be enough there that a page of its own is good. If every guard page could be extended to this length, they wouldn't need to be combined. Also, we already have a big honkin' table of guard dialogue. --Enodoc (talk) 08:08, 29 May 2014 (GMT)
::I was looking at Enodoc and Silencers responses and I'm actually going to change my stance partially on this subject. If we can get close to the whiterun example, I think it would be fine to have separate pages, but if whiterun is going to continue to be the only guard page with that amount of info, then I think it would be better to just put them all together. Lorenut (talk) 08:21, 29 May 2014 (GMT)
:::Looking at the history for the other guard pages, it's not a case of that's all the info there is, it's purely a case that these pages haven't yet received the attention that the Whiterun Guards page has received, until they've been worked on surely they need to stay as they are with the stub category, like all other pages that also need fleshing out? I don't see that a case for merging can be made on pages until the relevant info has been gathered. Once that has happened if there appears to be mostly identical info on each page then an argument can be made to merge them and have subheadings with the differences laid out, I'm in no way advocating merging even then though. Biffa (talk) 08:47, 29 May 2014 (GMT)
:::: I can see how we should probably keep them separate at least for now. I want to start looking for the rest of the information needed on the pages. Tandil, Master of Restoration (talk) 13:12, 29 May 2014 (GMT)

Blog's "News" posting category

Can we review the use of the "News" category on UESP's blog? While I am all for sharing of news-type items on the blog, I am noticing that over the last good while SMP followers and people in IRC channels, like the forums (I remember their IRC having this opinion, that the way the "News" category is used -with another M.E. post), for instance with Minor Edits' recent blog postings about ESO, give the impression to our viewers that these opinions are indicative of the opinion of UESP as a whole, rather than the individual users, and this is clearly viewed as an issue. (the feedback from UESP's twitter post from the blog, for instance)

While I have no problem with Minor Edits tagging his posts as he fancies -within reason - the users on IRC and on Twitter, for instance, do have a fair point, and I'd like to review our process (or lack of) that covers what is or isn't "news" in an official or unofficial sense, and then find a way to reaffirm that blog posts are the opinions of editor writing them and not official for the site as a whole, with the "official" news being located on the main page? Or, as an easy fix, scrap the "News" category and note somewhere on the blog that the posts from the blog are the opinions of the editor and not of the site? -      &hearts;    18:58, 10 June 2014 (GMT)
:Maybe have every opinion blog post have a little disclaimer at the bottom that the opinions belong only to the writer? That seems like an easy solution to me that the readers would see and wouldn't require realigning or changing anything else. --AN&#124;L (talk) 19:06, 10 June 2014 (GMT)
::Sorry, didn't mean to cause of fuss. If we want the News tags limited to "just the facts", that's easily done. I had felt no need to write like an automaton on a blog, but I'm perfectly fine with doing that moving forward. The posts until now I can recategorize as "rants". But let's be real; the issue isn't really tag categorization. That's incidental. Now, I can refrain from expressing my own opinion in any "News" blog posts, but I can't change the news itself. I had thought that the UESP Blog would be a place for any newsworthy items related to TES, but it seems at least some people would prefer that we filter out anything which has negative implications for the games. Is this the majority opinion?      05:52, 14 June 2014 (GMT)
:::I guess I didn't mean don't say bad news, but rather don't post your own personal opinion in the news section. I wasn't really clear and I apologize. You can simply state the facts and not take a side, if it is truly a negative news piece, and let the viewers decide what that means, if it is categorized as news. Jeancey (talk) 06:02, 14 June 2014 (GMT)

Daggerfall Pages on Elder Scrolls Wikia

I was doing some searching through Google, and I noticed something interesting about the Elder Scrolls Wiki's article on the Thieves Guild in Daggerfall. Specifically, while the article itself is pretty bare-bones, most of the content that the page does have is directly copied from our own article. A brief look at the edit histories of the two pages (see here and here) makes it pretty obvious that the article was copied from our own site.

How should we go about this? I want to place a notice on the page asking them to either attribute it to us or remove the content, but I'm hesitant to rush into this, since the last time a major plagiarism issue arose, one of our admins had his rights removed. Any suggestions as to how we should approach this? ThuumofReason (talk) 16:37, 14 June 2014 (GMT)

:I would say just contact an administrator over there privately and inform them of the plagiarism. That is normal for dealing with any kind of copyright issues. ~     16:44, 14 June 2014 (GMT)

:: Yep, the wikia admins have usually been helpful in removing plagiarised content in the past. —Legoless (talk) 16:56, 14 June 2014 (GMT)

:::And that's where I come in. I'll deal with this. --Jimeee (talk) 20:51, 14 June 2014 (GMT)

::::Thanks, Jimeee!  &ndash;       21:06, 14 June 2014 (GMT)

:::::I hate to hijack this topic, but plagiarism is such a frequent issue that we should create a policy page on it, instead of just mentioning it on . I can draft this and present it here for community feedback if we want this. It will certainly make dealing with this issue easier since we'll have a clear page to point to in the future. --AKB   22:58, 14 June 2014 (GMT)

::::::It's not a common issue here, but it would allow somewhere to lay out a process for dealing with it.      23:01, 14 June 2014 (GMT)

 We should make a guideline on dealing with pages that plagiarise from us as well. I think contacting an admin would be enough (once they copied Fildgor's page, somebody tagged the issue, and it was taken care of), but a clear guideline would prevent confusion on what action we should take.      01:21, 15 June 2014 (GMT)

:^And we get to avoid the same CP conversations again and again in the future.        01:47, 15 June 2014 (GMT)
::Yeah, that works. And thanks, Jimeee, I forgot you were an admin over there. ThuumofReason (talk) 02:33, 15 June 2014 (GMT)

Necroposting Guideline/Policy
:For reference, the current necroposting policy can be found at the bottom of this section.
As per the differing opinions on DimeCadmium's page, I am moving this here to get a resolution. The current necroposting guideline is very vague and opinionated which has led to conflicting edits. I propose that we create a new guideline/policy that is less vague in order to stop more discussions like this one. ~     16:38, 17 June 2014 (GMT)
:To provide some context here, I noticed that an editor had on several occasions marked necroposts as unsigned, and I told him that in the future it would be okay to just remove them if they didn't provide important new information on an unresolved issue. From there, it kind of got into me continually trying to explain the policy on why we remove posts that don't provide important new information on a particularly pressing issue that hasn't been resolved. It was never intended to be a discussion, but several people took issue with how I explained it, and it got a bit messy from there. I would support adding this information to the policy page to prevent further confusion on the issue. ThuumofReason (talk) 16:37, 17 June 2014 (GMT)

:: To be honest, I see no reason to allow necroposting at all. 99% of the necroposts I see are entirely irrelevant to the wiki and simply create more work for patrollers. The few necroposts that have actually brought new information to light could have just as easily been posted as a new discussion under a new header. -- RNM&#124;T 16:40, 17 June 2014 (GMT)

::: I'm the editor in question. I completely understand the policy as Thuum sees it, and need no explanation, nor have I needed explanation. That is not at issue here (for me, anyway). My thoughts on this are that the comment should not be simply deleted. My thoughts:
:::* If it adds no new information at all (i.e. only confirms what has been stated previously), it should be deleted. This is regardless of the "worth" of new information, except that it should be fit for inclusion in UESP under normal guidelines.
:::* If it adds information, questions, etc. it should be kept. Where "kept" means either leave it as it is, or move it to a new section.
:::I also think that if necroposting is deleted "on sight", whoever deletes it should be responsible for integrating the substance of it into other material (if needed). Also, I'm not saying necroposting should be allowed. Disallowing something, however, does not stop it from happening, and ignoring any information provided by a necropost degrades the content of UESP as a whole. Guiding new editors is one thing; ignoring their content because the submitted it improperly is another.  DimeCadmium  16:44, 17 June 2014 (GMT)

:::: Sounds good, it'll settle the issue. I still support reposting helpful/new info necroposts under a new section, though I guess it's rare enough that our general response should be to just undo it.      16:46, 17 June 2014 (GMT)

:::::I have to agree with DimeCadmium here. If we delete improperly submitted information on sight, we are just harming the wiki. Perfection isn't required and yet, we are expecting new editors to perfectly submit their information when the guideline that governs their submission is difficult to find. I do not think that makes sense. ~     16:50, 17 June 2014 (GMT)
 I think if it adds something important to the discussion it warrants its own section. if it doesn't I have no problem with it being deleted. I think a new policy is in order, this isn't just a black or white issue. It needs to be examined on a case by case basis like Jimeee said on Dimes talk page.Lorenut (talk) 16:55, 17 June 2014 (GMT)

:To give some context to my comments, here's the removal that got me to bring this up.  DimeCadmium  17:00, 17 June 2014 (GMT)

::I'm not sure I understand why this is such a big deal. This isn't an issue of the policy as I understand it; this is how it has always been. Editors shouldn't be forced to take on extra responsibilities for doing what they're supposed to do. We have a policy against necroposting for several reasons: First, this isn't a forum. Talk pages are intended for formal discussion of things that improve the article; that's why we delete forumlike posts, they add nothing to improving the article. Second, if we allow finished discussions to be revived at any time, the whole process of consensus is undermined. That's why we create NEW discussions. It's true that nobody's perfect, but that isn't an excuse to lower the standards that people have come to expect from us. ThuumofReason (talk) 17:01, 17 June 2014 (GMT)

:::I agree that if a user post under a solved issue on a talk page, then I see no problem in deleting it only if nothing new is learned. Nobody is defending forum-like posts either. However (under the current system) I have seen older open and unanswered questions get replies that are somewhat relevant, only for them to be deleted as necroposts. For example, a user might suggest an improvement to a page under an older suggestion. Had they made a new section on the talk page with the exact same text, it would have not been deleted. In this case it's not an issue of never reaching a consensus. Don't forget that some people visit talk pages months and even years after the initial question is asked and they might have some insight on the matter that no one else did at the time. To delete a relevant but belated reply is a waste.

:::I'm not a huge fan of the term "necropost" either, as it's wiki jargon that isn't widely known. When its solely given as a summary for the deletion of their post, most people won't understand what they did wrong - and this I fear is what might drive people away from contributing. At the very least, a link to the policy should be in the summary so people can know what they did wrong. Often anons don't know the policies of talk pages and are just doing what they can to help - we don't want to drive them away with policy mumbo jumbo. When faced with deletion just because they posted it in the wrong section is off to me.

:::Secondly I mentioned responsibility of updating the page if new info is presented in a "necropost". I agree with Dime - whoever deletes it should be responsible for integrating the substance of it into other material (if needed). People's relevant contributions can't just be deleted on a policy technicality. --Jimeee (talk) 17:07, 17 June 2014 (GMT)
::::Thuum that's why I said if it adds something important to the discussion just make it a new section, that way it wont be reviving a dead conversation. I agree that forum like posts should be deleted but not everything is a forum like post.Lorenut (talk) 17:13, 17 June 2014 (GMT)
:::::The thing is, just deleting content is lowering the quality far more than re-integrating the content would. And it's not any "extra responsibilities"; editors on a wiki (especially patrollers) are generally encouraged to fix other editors' mistakes. If they had posted the info in a new section on the talkpage, who would've ended up integrating it to the article? A patroller. (Or someone else who stalks RC.) Why is it different because they posted it on an old section?  DimeCadmium  17:17, 17 June 2014 (GMT)

::::::I really don't want to get too involved in this, but I think you need to learn what a patroller does and doesn't do. It isn't our responsibility in the least to integrate talk page information from another editor into articles. That's the job of anyone and everyone. And yes, taking the time to determine if a post is relevant, moving it to the bottom of a talk page, and (if necessary) adding an unsigned template is extra work for the patrollers.        17:38, 17 June 2014 (GMT)

 I think he was saying that patrollers integrate the information because most if not all watch the RC. While it does take more time and is slightly more difficult, it also has the upside of getting more information into the wiki. If we deleted every improperly formatted edit, we would have a handful of pages. Thus, we need to, rather than delete on sight, review the "necropost" and determine if it could have any relevancy. If it does, we can either leave it or move it, whichever the reviewer decides is appropriate. ~     17:46, 17 June 2014 (GMT)

:Woahbro I agree with you that moving things like that is the job of everyone. I think Dime is right whoever removes it should add it somewere else if its important. I would also say that removing peoples edits because its in the wrong section, could make them not want to help out in the future. I don't think everyone in this site wants that to happen.Lorenut (talk) 17:53, 17 June 2014 (GMT)

::Necroposting is never useful, that's what it means. Contributing useful information to an old discussion is not in and itself a necropost. This makes it almost impossible to create a workable policy as what is useful cannot be defined to any reasonable degree. All this nonsense seems to be concluding is that Patrollers should do there job, so what don't we just leave things for at least a few hours before anything regrettable is said.      17:57, 17 June 2014 (GMT)

:::WoahBro, as the policy you linked states, "Patrollers are a subset of editors who regularly monitor the Recent Changes page to ensure that new edits meet the site's style guidelines.". So do you just revert any changes made improperly? Or do you correct the mistakes and guide the editors so it doesn't happen again. I would assume it's the latter, which means that's a responsibility you already have. (By the way, I never said that it was ONLY the patrollers' responsibilities. In fact, I said: "(Or someone else who stalks RC.)". I stalk RC for a good 7 hours a day, if not more. But patrollers have explicitly volunteered for the duty of patrolling, while other editors have not.)
:::My entire point with this was that the policy needs to be clarified one way or the other, because multiple times I've seen edited be reverted because they were "necroposts" when in fact they added new content to a discussion. The new content was simply ignored, simply because it was posted on an old section. See, for example, the diff I provided for context. (And it has been done by other people than Thuum, I'm not saying this is "all his/her fault" by any means). And because multiple people have differing viewpoints, we need to decide what it means before we can clarify it.  DimeCadmium  18:09, 17 June 2014 (GMT)
::::As Silencer says, it's not a necropost if new and useful information is provided. On several occasions, I've seen people posting in old discussions, but I've decided to let them stay because their comments weren't so lacking in substance that it justified removing them outright. On other occasions, such as the one that seems to have sparked all of this, the comment was added to a three-year old discussion, and was already listed on the appropriate page anyway, meaning it was not providing new or useful information, and was therefore a necropost, which I removed. ThuumofReason (talk) 18:11, 17 June 2014 (GMT)

::::: I haven't reviewed the events leading up to this conversation, but the fundamental question when judging a talk page contribution is "Will this help the page?" The talk pages are all about utility, and that's what the policy should illustrate. Yeah, we should be amenable to helping contributors with legitimate issues present their concerns in the proper format. Merit should always trump procedure, and we should give conversations appropriate lee-way. But I think that removing a contribution for "necroposting" is oftentimes just a politer euphemism for removing for irrelevancy. It's saying, "This conversation ended a while ago" instead of "You're not helping." This is something we've had previous conversations about. You let a forum topic fester on the talk page, it will just draw more forum-like posts, and give contributors the wrong idea about what the talk page is for, which will just end up aggravating more people.

:::::Ninja'd. Useful information is what we're looking for, not new information. There are plenty of situations where someone could add new information to a talk page topic and yet not help the page itself at all.      18:17, 17 June 2014 (GMT)

::::::And that's fine, but there's also something to be said for the people who might be reading it. The current status of "is Arch-Mage's Quarters safe" is this:
::::::* The talkpage for College of Winterhold says something that is incorrect.
::::::* No reference at all to the issue in the article related to the talk page.
::::::* A page which the casual reader would likely not see (from the article and talkpage) is correct.
::::::Thus I'd say that the information added by the anonymous user was useful: it changed the status of that page for anyone who might view that page without going to a completely different article. But in either case, that's not my primary concern; the exact policy is not the big issue here.
::::::Again, the wording of the policy is my main concern. I also have an opinion as to what the policy should be, but that is an opinion, rather than the objective fact that the policy should be clarified (judging from the amount of confusion over it's meaning). The policy never says "it must be useful", nor "it must be new", only "if it's not of concern to anyone" it can be deleted.  DimeCadmium  19:03, 17 June 2014 (GMT)

:::::::It also allows removal when something is "completely off-topic". This equates to an addition which is of no utility. I could tolerate changes which may better elucidate these topics, so long as those changes really are only to the words, and not to the meaning.      21:41, 17 June 2014 (GMT)

Necroposting Edit Break 1
 What does everyone think of this:
  
 (Change "or of concern to anyone else" to "and does not provide any new information to the wiki".)
 I think that's accurate to the understanding of the policy expressed above, and does not change the substance of the written policy (other than clarifying). Thoughts?  DimeCadmium  18:05, 19 June 2014 (GMT)
:''"it's unlikely to be read by the poster"'' I don't think that should be relevant, as someone else at a later date could benefit from an answer provided to an open section. --Jimeee (talk) 18:12, 19 June 2014 (GMT)

:: I agree, the poster isn't relevant to article talk pages. —Legoless (talk) 18:16, 19 June 2014 (GMT)
:::I don't like the way this is worded. The way it is written makes it seem like most necroposts should not be deleted, when in fact it's the majority of them that should be and only a few that shouldn't. I think it should be more "A post so old should not be deleted on under XYZ" circumstances. --AN&#124;L (talk) 18:21, 19 June 2014 (GMT)

:::I think the new wording sounds good. As far as the bit about the poster, I see that as more of a judgement call. If a post is fairly specific to that person's game and a response comes two years later, it's probably not doing anybody any good. If it's more generic and someone else could benefit from the response, I see no problem with leaving it.  &ndash;       18:20, 19 June 2014 (GMT)

::::Disagree. As Anil points out, most necroposts should be deleted as they only very rarely add anything constructive.      18:26, 19 June 2014 (GMT)

::::: I don't understand the desire to delete by default. It's more effort for patrollers to revert than to simply leave a necropost be, and more often than not the comments are harmless. This isn't a forum; we're not concerned with bumps. I like DimeCadmium's wording, since it emphasises good faith and deters arbitrary deletions of possibly helpful content. —Legoless (talk) 18:38, 19 June 2014 (GMT)
::::::I also have to disagree for the reasons Silencer and Anil pointed out. If we remove the "old" part of the definition, we're changing the definition of a necropost altogether. Necroposts need to be deleted unless they provide some new information that couldn't have been added elsewhere, otherwise we'll just keep getting closed discussions re-opened. If a contribution has some worthwhile substance, it can be added to a new discussion. As Legoless said, this isn't a forum. Posts on talk pages are meant to be for discussing improvements to articles, so they're meant to be meaningful. I like Minor's suggestion of changing the wording to make the policy more clear without changing the content, but even so, it's impossible to create a catch-all definition because, as Silencer said, relevance depends on the situation. At some point we're going to have to accept that there are intricacies to our policies that can only be understood with experience. We can't list rules for EVERY conceivable situation, after all. ThuumofReason (talk) 18:55, 19 June 2014 (GMT)

:::::::I don't mean this to change the policy in any way. While I believe the policy should be changed, I also believe it would be better to get a concise, clear statement of the current policy, before discussing any changes to it. My "rewrite" is only meant to meet that goal, from what people have stated above as their understanding of the current policy. IMO, the most important part of a discussion about a policy change is "why should it be changed" - you can't do that without being able to delineate changes between current & proposed policy.  DimeCadmium  19:09, 19 June 2014 (GMT)
:::::::: Because one necropost leads to another which leads to another. I've seen topics with 3/4 posts each spaced years apart that don't add anything useful or constructive to the discussion. The default position has to be to not necropost because otherwise we would be leaving posts added to discussions that aren't even relevant to the current state of the page. Delete on sight is not the default position anyway, it is to evaluate each on it's own merits while taking into consideration the age of the topic. Anyone with a stance of delete on sight isn't following the proper procedures. You might also notice that our take on necroposts is a lot more lenient than wikipedia, where anything over 90 days since the last post is considered an archive, which cannot/should not be added to at all.      19:13, 19 June 2014 (GMT)

Namespace Books vs. Lore Books

Okay, I'll admit it: I'm confused. What's our current procedure in regards to books that only appear in one namespace? To the best of my knowledge, we only put those books in the namespace itself and not in Lore. But I see examples like Cicero's Journal, where the body appears in Lore and is then transcluded to Skyrim, whereas Agrius's Journal has the body entirely in Skyrim and there is no corresponding Lore page. Whu?  &ndash;       15:19, 19 June 2014 (GMT)

: All books go in lore. We usually only exclude scraps of paper, etc. that has no relevance to lore. —Legoless (talk) 15:30, 19 June 2014 (GMT)

::My recent work is based on this discussion where the website texts don't actually appear in ESO, so the lore namespace would be better suited to put them in. If in-game books (like Cicero's Journal) are "loreworthy", they appear in both the Lore and Skyrim namespaces. If they are not loreworthy (like letters/notes etc) then they only belong in the game namespace. Hope that helps.--Jimeee (talk) 15:32, 19 June 2014 (GMT)
:::I was also of the opinion that all lore-worthy books go into lore, and that anything not loreworthy is out. There are occasionally books that aren't loreworthy, and sometimes determining what is a note and what is a book can be tough. A Journal that is only a few lines long isn't technically a note, but it isn't really loreworthy either. Jeancey (talk) 17:12, 19 June 2014 (GMT)
::::Okay. I think my plan as far as deleting Online/Lore pages is going to be "shut up and do as I'm told", then, trusting the Lore people to know what they're doing. :)

::::Jimeee: I'm assuming you'll re-create appropriate Online versions of the books you've moved to Lore after the redirect is deleted?  &ndash;       17:28, 19 June 2014 (GMT)
:::::No, all the texts (listed in my sandbox8) are only to exist in the Lore namespace. These texts are somewhat an exception to the regular lore books which usually have game namespace counterparts. These texts are not in-game, as they are from the ESO website. The redirects should be deleted, and that's all.

:::::I was actually going to ask someone with template knowledge to modify/add a field in Book Summary template so we can show the source of these website texts. Maybe you can help? Please see here for the full details of what I mean. --Jimeee (talk) 17:39, 19 June 2014 (GMT)

::::::I think that's a mistaken foundation to all of this. It's true they aren't "in-game" in the strictest sense, but they were released as "part" of an ES game with the intention of becoming part of that game's universe (as well as the overall series). Would material included with physical copies of a game (for example) not be included in that game's namespace? (To clarify: I think they should be treated like "loreworthy" in-game books.)  DimeCadmium  17:45, 19 June 2014 (GMT)

:::::::This discussion might be of interest when it comes to current practices. —Legoless (talk) 17:47, 19 June 2014 (GMT)
::::::::Also of note is the entire set of Pocket Guide to the Empire 1 and 3, that were released with Redguard and Oblivion. They exist in the Lore namespace. --Jimeee (talk) 17:50, 19 June 2014 (GMT)

 Thanks for the clarification, Jimeee. Template changes have been made. At the moment, Source precludes having a "Seen in" section, since that's how I understand what's going on. If we need both, though, let me know and I can change it.  &ndash;       17:56, 19 June 2014 (GMT)

:I believe the source would no longer be needed if it appeared in a game.      18:01, 19 June 2014 (GMT)
::There is zero reason to include the interactive map books in the gamespace as none of the gamespace info would apply. They don't appear in-game in any way. There would ONLY be a link to the lore page, and that's it. That's why we decided to move them to lore entirely. There just isn't a reason to have them in the gamespace. Jeancey (talk) 20:56, 19 June 2014 (GMT)

ESO Neutral Territory

There are several areas in ESO, quest-specific or otherwise, which are common to all three alliances. We currently list these as 'Neutral' in the place summaries, but they are otherwise poorly/incorrectly categorized. Cheesemonger's Hollow is listed as a grove, Eyevea as a crafting site, Stirk as a zone, etc. etc. Several of the Main Quest areas a currently categorized as 'Strongholds'. I don't know where the name comes from, but I like the idea. I think we should group all of these miscellaneous areas into the one section, so they can be removed from inappropriate categories and easily listed here. —Legoless (talk) 02:36, 21 June 2014 (GMT)

:"Strongholds" as a name for the Main Quest locations was me, following a suggestion on IRC which nobody could improve upon, and was based on the loading screen of the Castle of the Worm and the fact that they don't fit neatly into any other type. I've got an (incomplete) list of unzoned locations which fall under this problem. What I've been doing so far (I think it's mainly just me) is assigning these locations the most-relevant of the existing types, which is why Cheesemonger's Hollow is a Grove (location with no buildings, or could equally call it a Ruin) and Glade of the Divines is an Estate (a building with a walled yard). (I didn't do Eyevea or Stirk, so I can't comment on those.) Currently I cannot think of any better types for these places, but what it may be worth doing is creating some categories which fudge the Zone parameter, say for example setting   and   or   so that they end up in an Online-Places-Mages Guild category. --Enodoc (talk) 22:41, 21 June 2014 (GMT)

:: I don't think assigning these places existing types is a good idea. Those pages should be reserved for zoned places that use the actual icon. —Legoless (talk) 23:02, 21 June 2014 (GMT)

::: Fair 'nuff. That's unfortunate for Abagarlas and Mzeneldt though, which are definitely Ayleid and Dwemer ruins, respectively. But could we extend it to any zoned places, including unmarked locations (ie, no icon)? Farwatch Tower is definitely a fort/tower/keep, Newgate and Oldgate are definitely gates, and Cave of Sorrows is definitely a cave, and assigning them something else I think would be inaccurate. --Enodoc (talk) 23:49, 21 June 2014 (GMT)

:::: Well, the primary origin of those categories is the map icons in the first place. Inner Sea Armature is also unmistakably a Dwarven Ruin, but we categorise it as a Delve. Unmarked locations are a whole other issue and probably warrant a separate discussion, but I don't think we should be marking them with icon-based categories either. ESO places don't really fit with the style we've used for the previous three TES games, and I think accuracy in regards to game mechanics is preferable to common sense lumping. —Legoless (talk) 00:54, 22 June 2014 (GMT)

Site crashes make me sad

Why has the site been crashing so much lately, and so severely? Last week it was down for over twenty-four hours, and yesterday I couldn't get on all day. I had to sully myself by visiting another wiki to look something up. Should we expect this to keep happening?      20:46, 15 July 2014 (GMT)

:I had the same issue I couldn't login at all either. It happened to me last week as well. Lorenut (talk) 20:51, 15 July 2014 (GMT)

::Yeah, its happening to everyone. --AN&#124;L (talk) 20:52, 15 July 2014 (GMT)

:::It has something to do with the Squid servers (I think), but I really hope Dave can fix it. ~     20:55, 15 July 2014 (GMT)

::::That's my guess as well, though the symptoms are rather confusing. Unfortunately, this is beyond my ability to diagnose, much less fix, so only Dave can give us any idea.  &ndash;       22:23, 15 July 2014 (GMT)

Abandoned Sandboxes (take 2)

The previous discussion on this was archived with no ruling on it. In the absence of a decision, I've gone ahead and ruled on my own proposal (which I really dislike doing), since most users supported it in principle. To that end, I've created  , which I think sufficiently covers the need to politely notify the user about what's happened. I used Wikipedia's Inactive userpage blanked template as a guideline, but made ours sound less formal. Since there was no proposal to actually delete sandboxes, our policy doesn't quite match Wikipedia's stale draft policy, but I think it's close enough that we don't need our own specific policy. If anyone feels differently, say so and I'll be happy to write something up.  &ndash;       20:34, 16 July 2014 (GMT)

Daggerfall Notes

During the course of this discussion, the user brought to my attention that some information about the Numidium, used in the Numidium lore article, is contained on the  page in the form of the notes you receive. I was thinking that the notes should recieve their own book pages so that they can be cited into the article. While the first and third notes don't contain any useful information, the second note talks about Tiber Septim's purges with the Numidium, which doesn't appear anywhere else. --AN&#124;L (talk) 19:44, 17 July 2014 (GMT)
:Absolutely. If the letters have unique names that you can find I'd say go ahead and create pages for each of them. Otherwise we could just make a Lore page for 'Numidum Letters' or something and list them all there. -- Hargrimm  20:08, 17 July 2014 (GMT)

:: I don't think that's necessary. These notes are comparable to dialogue from more recent games. They contain important lore information, but they're not documents. —Legoless (talk) 20:17, 17 July 2014 (GMT)
:::That's true. Notes/Letters in Daggerfall are essentially text boxes, and many of them disappear once the related quest is complete, so I don't think they're in the same class as books.      01:38, 18 July 2014 (GMT)

Daedric Font

In theory, Daedric ( ) is now available as a webfont, just like the Dragon font ( ) already is. There should be no need to change anything, though if you have the Oblivion font installed locally, you can remove it now if you want. If anybody has any issues getting it to show up, please let me know. You may have to do a hard refresh to get it to display properly. I'll be removing the old   from the pages it's on shortly.

For the technically oriented, unlike with the Dragon font, I didn't add the SVG font support for Daedric, as it seemed to only work in Opera and in my Googling, I found a couple of things that said SVG font support is non-standard. All other browsers I tried supported one of the other recommended fonts, so it seemed redundant to have an SVG version in any event.  &ndash;       18:44, 18 July 2014 (GMT)

: Great! —Legoless (talk) 19:53, 18 July 2014 (GMT)

::Hmmm...it seems that in some cases, the Daedric font (both the webfont and the one we have available for download, since they're the same thing) use alternate letters instead of the ones used in the games. (See  for details.) Do we want to keep the various /Daedric pages that I just put up for deletion, just to offer versions that are as true to the games as possible, or is this something people consider minor enough not to worry about it?  &ndash;       19:58, 18 July 2014 (GMT)

Problems with Lore:Bestiary
I've been trying to contribute several times to the bestiary, but last time I've been confronted with lots of tiny issues that made me give up on trying. This has left me really frustrated and because there are no actual defined rules like there is in the Flora space. Jeancey (a used I have been discussing about this(often with disagreements)) suggested I open a discussion here, so I'll ask for a discussion on the following problems I found while editing the anything bestiary related:

1 - When should an entry be made?: I think any creature should be listed in the bestiary as long as they are a creature that exists in the lore, even if only as a name or object ingame. But not all agree and some think that those should not be listed, either because they are nameless even if we can easily identify them with creatures of our own universe(Sea Gull, Sea Star, etc...), or in some cases because there is not enough information on them(minor references like the lesser know werecreatures).

2 - Distinguishing between a creature listed as a variant or their own entry?: In my previous attempt I cleaned a lot of creatures entries and fused them into variants. But maybe I was rushed in doing this as all, where things like Rats and Zombies ended as mere mentions. Then there's horse were there are several kinds of horse breeds from oblivion listed as individual entries.

3 - What about Undead variants of living creatures?: Should these also be listed as an different entries or variations? The only apparent example of this is the Spectral creatures, like the Spectral Mud Crab and the Spectral Guardians in the Kyne's Sacred Trials quest of Skyrim

4 - What about creatures that only exist as one individual or a title?: The example would be Uderfryke, Gatekeeper of the Fringe, the Numidium, and Akhlukhan.

5 - '''When should an entry be developed into it's own article?''': I've recently done the  and , so I was assuming that more than two forms would be the requirement for an article, but Jeancey disagreed with me when I tried to make a  article, saying that it didn't fulfil the requirements for having their own page. When I asked what those requirements where I was given an unsatisfying answer that depended on content that people contributed to the wiki rather than actual content there was on the lore. The most problematic was a  article where we each gave good reasons for there to be or not a goblin page by itself.

6 - When should we have general creature articles?: There are some general articles for things like  and , but there doesn't seem to be for things like Undead, Ghost or Animal.

7 - How should we make the entries that have the same creature of different genders named differently?: In some cases this is easy as I removed Betty Netch and Bull Netch from the Bestiary/B page and posted it on the Bestiary/N page, but then we have problems like Ox and Cow, Deer and Elk, Goat and Sheep, Etc...

8 - How should we make entries with creatures named differently of different life stages?: They almost always have different starting letters. Netch calf was easy because of the gender change I made above. Dreugh should also be easy as it would only require moving the Land Dreugh into the article for the sea version. But then we have Grummites, Pollywogs and Ballywogs, which are different stages of life. Should we go with the name of the adult stage?

9 - How should we make entries for giant variants of other creatures?: Things like giant snake, giant rat, giant bat, giant scorpion, etc...

10 - How do we deal with making entries for creatures with different game throughout games?: Atronaches, elemental daedra and golems are an especially atrocious example of this. But the most notable that I want to bring to the forefront is the  which redirects to two other entries which says exactly the same.

I hope with these questions and examples we can have a good discussion that results in rules for the bestiary being clearly defined. Thanks!--Ashendant (talk) 00:14, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

:I believe that an entry should be made whenever we have official proof of the name of an animal, along with at the very least, a small definition. For your second question, I say base it off of how real world animals are categorized by genus (Species can be too specific for TES). Meaning, all bears are bears, not black brown white snow plague or anything other than a bear. Undead variants of living creatures should be considered different. For undead, I think we should consolidate them together into one page because it is very rare that we get enough information to warrant an individual page. In the bestiary, I would be inclined to leave entries to be like Ghost(Includes all kinds of ghosts), skeletons (All kind of skeletons) etc. Creatures that are a mere title should not be included. If they are unique individuals, then they are deserving of an entry at the very least. Entries being developed is a difficult thing to answer. Multiple different, but highly similar, types would be a valid indicator as to whether a new page should be made or not.  wouldn't have enough information to warrant a new page, so I think (Please do not quote me) Jeancey was trying to give you an answer that would be valid for other articles, rather than the "canned" response of "Not enough information". At this moment, I believe we only need a Lore:Undead article, rather than an animal article (That is accomplished by the bestiary). The daedra have their own article because (AFAIK) there are so many different kinds of daedra that are different, but still fall under the title "Daedra". Same with the Dwemer constructs. My apologies for this long post :) ~     01:26, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

::Making the post more readable was the reason why I numbered each question...
::1 - How do you define "definition"? I'm gonna assume you meant looks/aspect. Because then we have problem when creatures are referenced by name and given some lore but have no strict look(normally because they are already real life creatures). Or when real life creatures appear in game but are not named(precisely because they are real-life creatures).
::2 - We already have several entries for bear and wolves, because they take different forms ingames, but rats are still smashed up into a single entry even trough they have several different names troughout the games. So separating by genus might not be really feasible unless we fuse all those bear, wolf, fox, etc... variants into one. And to be honest it would be much easier if we fused all different forms of a creature into a single entry with a gallery
::3 - I asked about undead variants, because that would mean adding six more spectral creatures that appear in Kyne's sacred trial, in which it used the name of the guardian or called it the spectral version of the animal(Spectral Troll, Spectral Bear, etc...).
::4 - The problem with those four I mentioned is that two were titles given to creatures of type and given a special model because of that title(Gatekeeper/Uderfryke(noticed the gatekeeper was remove but not the troll)), Aklhukhana and Numidium were two giant robots, but one wasn't really fully built and the other became a god. I think all these four should be removed from the list because they don't denote a creature type, but really notable individuals.
::5 - I don't mind that there wasn't too much information for a Lore:Fox article. But the answers he gave me left me significantly more confused, because I rather not decide on whetever I should or not a article for a creature depend on whetever other people bother or not to make a disambiguation page on that namespace. Also his strict opposition to make a Lore:Goblin article , when I know there's loads of information there (probably a lot more than Rieklings). 
::6 - Animal was only really an example, of a general creature type. I was more specificly asking what of these general articles should we make? There is Dwemer Animunculi and Daedra, and like you said Undead should be made into one. I actually tried to compile a list here. Also note that I do not mean Animals as all animals defined scientificly. I meant animal as all non-intelligent animals.
::I remembered a few more questions(I'll also repost them above).
::* 7 - How should we make the entries that have the same creature of different genders named differently?: In some cases this is easy as I removed Betty Netch and Bull Netch from the Bestiary/B page and posted it on the Bestiary/N page, but then we have problems like Ox and Cow, Deer and Elk, Goat and Sheep, Etc...
::* 8 - How should we make entries with creatures named differently of different life stages?: They almost always have different starting letters. Netch calf was easy because of the gender change I made above. Dreugh should also be easy as it would only require moving the Land Dreugh into the article for the sea version. But then we have Grummites, Pollywogs and Ballywogs, which are different stages of life. Should we go with the name of the adult stage?
::* 9 - How should we make entries for giant variants of other creatures?: Things like giant snake, giant rat, giant bat, giant scorpion, etc...
::This is such a complex issue with so many problems.--Ashendant (talk) 02:12, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

:::Maybe I should've splitted the questions into different subsection...--Ashendant (talk) 02:14, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

::::I can't respond to all of them, cause I'm pretty drunk and can't focus, so I'll probably have to come back to this in the morning, but Betty and Bull Netch combining into netch, that makes sense, but the same can't be applied to the other creatures you mentioned. Ox and Cow, Deer and Elk, Goat and Sheep aren't the same animals, even in real life. Goat and Sheep are VASTLY different creatures, they aren't even that closely related afaik. Deer and elk and Ox and Cow are at least in the same family, but they still aren't the same species, simply different genders like betty and bull netch are. that's the only one i can really respond to now.... I'll respond more in the morning/while sober. Jeancey (talk) 04:02, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

::::: I should have organized my thoughts better, but I was in the middle of playing ESO and decided that sentence order was good enough. Looking back on it, it is very difficult to read and I do apologize to everyone who reads that.
:::::1: By definition, I meant something that could be used to resonantly describe the creature to any person in Tamriel, assuming they have never seen any creature of any sort. A real life creature that appears in game but is not named should not be listed, in my opinion. In lorespace, we must try to remove ourselves from our reality and see it through the reality that is Tamriel.
:::::2: When I said by genus, I meant that we should fuse all bear, rat, lich, goblin, skeleton, ghost, etc etc. entries together.
:::::3: For the creatures in Kyne's Trial, we should not mention those, except with maybe a small reference in the base creature's text.
:::::4: The Gatekeeper and   should be mentioned. I say that because the Gatekeeper is a creature created through a ritual (Or summoned?) in a way similar to atronachs. The Uderfryke is a troll that is, from what I have gathered on it, is in fact a different kind of creature than a normal troll. Neither robot should be mentioned. Numidium is a very peculiar thing, but it is not a creature. If anything, it is a weapon capable of moving.
:::::5: In most cases, we suggest editors not create new pages for so many things, just because it causes a ton of issues and confusion. That being said, very few creatures need their own page, except the ones that have disambiguation pages right now. If you believe a new page should be made, please make a sandbox with the information in it, then contact me or another user and have them review it. Should you disagree with what they have to say, you can ask for a second opinion, but please don't ask every user :)
:::::6: Hmm... While I do not fully understand what you mean by "non-intelligent animals", I do believe that since you would like to add creatures that only appear in lore, a new area should be set up for them. By that I mean we should have a page for creatures that only appear in Lore, but not in any game as a named creature. The birds in ESO (Unnamed) would remain in the Lore only creatures page even if they were officially named "Sea Bird" and given a perfect description. The reason behind that is it could just be a very similar animal that has evolved with mimicry in order to survive.
:::::7: I believe that, in the bestiary, having the different names for the genders is necessary, although I do not like it.
:::::8: Different life stages should be separated, unless the only difference is scale (Size). The Grummites example is perfect for ones that should stay separated. For one, I don't even think it is official what the stages of their lives are. Secondly, they are dramatically different. I wouldn't know it was a grummite if I saw a Ballywog lol :)
:::::9: Giant variants should not be listed separated, unless only the giant version appears in games while the regular version is referenced in lore.
:::::I hope my thoughts are clear enough and don't confuse this issue anymore than it already is. ~     04:21, 23 July 2014 (GMT)
: My 2 cents on these:
: 1. I agree with the "whenever something is named" answer. It should be pretty rare that any creature is going to be important enough story-wise to need a Lore page without being named. 
: 2. I think most variants should be fused into ones with the same common English name (pretty much the "genus" standard). The exception would be if there's some reason why two creatures are not actually related, e.g. if it turned out that there was something that looked exactly like a skeever, but was actually a species of Daedra. (I'm making up an example because I don't know if there's actually a good one yet.)
: 3. I think that undead should be combined somehow, either with the living variants or with similar kinds of undead, but I don't really have an opinion on which. E.g., should the Bonewolf be in the wolf, skeleton, or zombie entries?
: 4. I think that one-of-a-kind creatures that are the only member of their species should be mentioned (preferably by species name, if there is one, and not the individual's name). But not so for generic titles that could be applied to any member of the species. I actually think that the Numidium and Aklhukhana entries can be defended because of how general our definition of "creature" is, encompassing Dwemer constructs as well. I would think that they should be kept in the Bestiary unless we want to redefine "creature" and move all the Dwemer constructs to a different page. The counter-argument might be that Aklhukhana was never actually animate, and we don't really know whether the Numidium was ever capable of moving without an operator either.
: 5. Basically, when there's a lot of information that doesn't seem tied up in very game-specific details. If you can make a decent sandbox that has more information than you'd generally want to put in the Bestiary entry, then that by itself is probably the best argument for a separate page.
: 6. I think the general pages should exist when you can generalize about something in a way that's informative and not entirely based in real life. There are broad theories about undead and Daedra in the games, so it makes sense to discuss generalizations about them. There's not so much in-game generalization about animals. (In fact, even generalizations that apply in real life don't necessarily apply to corresponding Lore animals, e.g. animals that evolved gradually in real life may have been created instantly by magical transformation on Nirn.)
: 7. Different sexes of the same animal should be combined into one entry, but mention the names for each sex in that entry. That said, deer, elk, goat, and sheep are all different animals from one another, not sex-specific terms! (Also, "ox" is not always a sex-specific term in English; it can refer to a draft animal regardless of sex, and "wild ox" is an old generic term for the aurochs, an extinct species of cattle that was the ancestor of modern domesticates. "Cow" is often a general term for the species. So those are more reasons not to separate them, IMO.)
: 8. If they have different forms, i.e. many people wouldn't recognize that they are the same creature, separate, otherwise combine.
: 9. Combine variants (or don't mention at all if "giant" seems more like a exaggerated description than the species/subspecies name).
: Anyway, just my opinion. Hope it makes sense. Quantheory (talk) 06:27, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

::Maybe I should split these into subsections.
::1 - It seems everyone agrees that the answer to this question is "When a creature is named." Anyone disagrees?
::2 - It seems everyone wants to do it by "genus". I though about this and this is one problem with alphabetising things in english when the characteristic comes before the character (which is why when in my language we are taught english we are told to characterize things in reverse). I've seen some places using a comma to simplify alphabetization (ex: Bear, Black; Troll, Frost). Maybe we could use that idea, to fuse all articles about the same species if the second part of the name is shared. It would certainly make meatier entries instead of the few lines we have today. However it would bring problems with people that look for example, Snow fox in the S letter and not the F(we could create a simple redirect there). And the galleries would have to be added.
::3 - I think Bonewolf should stay as it is. I could put the examples under Bestiary G as Guardians of Skyrim but that would depend on whetever or not we deal with named creatures.
::4 - Yeah but they should be mentioned in their creature entry, not as their own individuals entries. Gatekeeper is just a slightly retooled Flesh Atronach. The Uderfrike is indeed a type of creature, I've only read the entry and not the article and it is kinda misleading. As it was pointed out Numidium is vehicle and not a creature, as it needs to be driven.
::5 - The problem is that I was being denied right at the bat, rather than letting me try to do one. I've archived the Lore:Fox page I made in case it was ever needed in the future. I will try to do a Lore:Goblin page in a sandbox.
::6 - That's actually a great idea Dominus, making a sort of gallery for creatures that remain unnamed but are shown or described. This could be done for other pages like the bestiary. Maybe it could be done by adding a ?(or unknown or unnamed) in front of the Z of the Bestiary trail. This would solve a lot of problems with people adding unnamed creatures/plants/artifacts/etc... in without having them be completly ignored by the lore section of the article. Would anybody oppose this?
::I will drop talking about a Lore:Animal. It seems that everyone agrees that a Lore:Undead page should be made similar to the Lore:Daedra. Anybody disagrees?
::7 - To be honest I got loads of terms confused. Consider Sheep and Goat dropped. But despite that there are other non-gender-related issues involving Oxes(which are not a species of animal, but in the game is treated as such), and elk which are a species of the deer family, and apparently there's deer in skyrim that does not appear in the deer entry... even trough they are different species. 
::I've also seen mention of Bulls but I think we should keep that into the cow page. I think we should only list them as different entries if there isn't a common name for them.
::8 - Dreugh would be easy to combine as all versions have Dreugh in the name, but grummites would be problematic because all life stages have different names. Maybe we should deal with this in the same way we decide gender-based entries "only list them as different entries if there isn't a common name for them".
::9 - It seems everyone wants to combine them. Any disagreement?
::I remembered another question:
::*10 - How do we deal with making entries for creatures with different game throughout games?: Atronaches, elemental daedra and golems are an especially atrocious example of this. But the most notable that I want to bring to the forefront is the  which redirects to two other entries which says exactly the same.--Ashendant (talk) 17:09, 23 July 2014 (GMT)
:::1 - I think you are mischaracterizing my comments. My issue wasn't with described creatures without names, I have an issue with named creatures without descriptions. If ALL we have is a name, that is to say we have ZERO description of what the creature actually is, it doesn't deserve an entry. This is because the entry would literally just have a name and a link to the book. That's it. No way to actually know what the creature is. THAT is what I'm saying shouldn't be in the bestiary (this would apply to the god-awful lycanthropes.... all we have is the name of the wereshark and a link to where it was mentioned... just put a list on the lycanthrope page and remove them from the bestiary.)
:::2 - We already do this. Look under many of the entries there is a list called "variations". We could easily just keep doing that. Fox: variations: Snow Fox. Done.
:::3 - Bonewolf can stay, there are multiple bonewolves. The guardians don't need entries, they are just unique named versions of other creatures. Ghost Mudcrab is just a Mudcrab ghost.... and unique to that. If there were ghost mudcrabs everywhere, there wouldn't be an issue here.
:::4 - I removed gatekeeper because it isn't its own species. It is a Flesh Atronach. We don't include Redguard Cave Ogres as a separate creature type because they aren't. The others are a different situation, they are distinct separate creatures.
:::5 - There shouldn't be a hard and fast list of rules for this. It is 100% a case-by-case basis. Lore:Fox is 100% useless because there just isn't enough lore and useful information to fill a whole page. An entry in the bestiary isn't going to contain any less information. Same with rat. A Cave Rat is just a rat in a cave, not a completely separate type of creature that needs to be explained. I don't see any of the different rat variations listed that would be different enough that rat needs a full page to describe that difference. Does that make sense? I can see a Lore:Goblin article if it was more of a collection and description of the different tribes than a whole article about the goblin species. 
:::6 - Lore:Undead would make sense, but it would include ghosts. Lore:Ghost wouldn't make sense, and Lore:Animal is so generic as to be useless. 
:::7 - I talked about this last night.
:::8 - Meh, if they have a different appearance and name, they should be different entries. We actually don't know that the grummites are the same as baliwog. The book makes it very clear that it is the authors opinion. There are also people who say they are young Scalons. And others who say they are their own species and never become the other two. This isn't a hard fact in lore it is up for scholarly debate in the game would. We shouldn't be combining them.
:::9 - Not everyone wants to combine them. Giant Snake and Snakes are COMPLETELY different. As are lions and mountain lions. They AREN'T all the same thing. The main difference is their hostility. Snakes, Bats and Scorpions aren't enemies in any of the games. They are critters who act completely differently from the giant versions. Giant Bats and Snakes, especially, gather in large numbers, while their normal sized versions tend to be lone critters, with no large groupings. They are quite different from each other.
:::10 - I believe you meant different name throughout games. This is also a case by case basis. Flame and Fire atronachs are the same. But Iron Golem and Iron Atronach are different. Just an example. Jeancey (talk) 17:36, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

::::Since I can't think of how to reply to every point, I will attempt to keep this concise. Ashendant: I do not believe that the lore only creatures should be in the bestiary. It should be a separate version of the bestiary that is very clearly labeled as only containing creatures that are from the lore alone. Jeancey: Just because the giant snakes and snakes are different in the games does not mean they aren't hostile in "real world" Tamriel. For all we know, the snakes act just like they do in real life (Attacking if you threaten them) but it was not implemented for design reasons. All in all, Ashendant, I think it would be best for you to make a sandbox detailing your ideas so we have something to look at and base our conclusions off of. Also, you were only being denied right off the bat because we could not see it how you see it. A sandbox would be perfect for you to demonstrate your ideas and to prevent you from being denied without an attempt. ~     19:53, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

:::::1 - I think we are getting a bit confused here, on some definitions. When Jeancey means description I assume he meant looks which rises the problem of when there is a name and lore on them(from ingame books) but no description. In this case not posting on the bestiary(which was purposely made to list creatures) just because they lack description of their look would be denying they and the lore around them does not exist. Jeancey example of Lycanthropes was not a good example because the book provides a general description(looks) for all therianthropes. When Dominus means lore only creature I assume you mean creatures that only appear as images in games (due to previous context). I think can easily arrange a gallery of those creatures.
:::::3 - The problem with spectral mud crabs is the same problem with the guardians they are unique spectral versions of creature. (from what I understand there is only one example of spectral mud crab in Oblivion and another in Skyrim as a Guardian)
:::::10 - Yes I mean that Jeancey. Atronach is a specially gregarious example, but so is the dwarven robot which lists all three versions as different versions of itself.
:::::Yeah this is getting hard to read but some conclusions could be taken:
:::::* Lore:Undead article should be made
:::::* Bestiary entries should be further grouped by "genus" like it was done before to previous entries. We should be careful with this since things like Mountain Lion and Fennec Fox are not the same genus as creatures they share their name with.
:::::* In life-stages, gender differences and giant it should be divided if it lacks a general name(Netch is an example with a general name). Jeancey disagrees on the giant.
:::::* Undead should be always split.
:::::* On named creatures: Uderfryke should remain. There is disagreement Numidium (because it might not count as a creature), Aklukhan (because it was never activated or fully built) and the Gatekeeper.(he is a minor variant of flesh atronach.)
:::::* I should make a sandbox for Lore:Goblins and Lore:Bestiary ?. And whetever a article deserves or not it s one article should depend on whetever an sandbox example can sustain itself.--Ashendant (talk) 20:39, 23 July 2014 (GMT)
::::::I don't think anyone but you has even talked about the Bestiary ?. If they don't have names at all, they shouldn't be in the bestiary. Just like with the Flora list, non-interactable creatures without names don't belong in lore. They simply don't. Lore isn't an exhaustive list of every aspect of all the games put together, it is a list of things that cross games into the lore of the game world itself. An unnamed bird that can't be interacted with and doesn't do anything isn't important enough for lore. There simply isn't any good reasons presented to include them. None. I can't stress this enough. In lore terms, they simply do not exist. That may not be the best way to characterize it, but it is a simple fact. Jeancey (talk) 20:55, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

:Dominus suggested something similiar. I made an example. It's not very complete because other creatures types aren't well documented, but Jeancey claimed that there are several creatures like this in previous games like Morrowin. My suggestion was making these ? pages for any Bestiary/Flora and stuff like that where it was necessary.
:That's a very game-exclusive view perception. And in my eyes a wrong one at that, because it diminishes the visual lore that the developers have created into the game to the redundancy of classing it has non-canon. You can claim that they aren't textually addressed in the lore, but they do exist in the lore. (Actually I could add Gulls since they are mentioned in various books...) There are currently 7 examples of these unnamed creatures documented in the wiki.--Ashendant (talk) 21:21, 23 July 2014 (GMT)
::What if I made the assertion that it wasn't a seastar, but simply a star shaped rock. There would be NOTHING to disprove that. It doesn't move, and you are relying WAY too much on real world information. Echnioderms don't exist in ESO, since that is a real world term that has never appeared in a game or book in the series. It doesn't move, you can't interact with it, it has no name, and is functionally no different than a rock. How is that useful in any way shape or form from a lore perspective. Not everything deserves a lore page. You must accept this. We have to have SOME standards and you are simply throwing standards out the window in favor of "screw it, let's just include whatever the heck we want because.... well just because." Jeancey (talk) 21:25, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

:::I have one point to make which I'm not sure has been addressed properly. If a creature has no official name it cannot be added to the bestiary, we do not use player-invented names. This applies mainly to the tropical bird and seashells from Online. Creatures like this from other games had names obtained from the data so they could be added.      21:28, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

::::I'm having to agree with Jeancey on this, how is the tiniest star-shaped object, that serves no purpose, that we can interact with, and has no Lore-worthy backstory making it noticeable unique. The only way I can even think it's similar too, would be to go around and categorize each individual type of tree in the games and the list them all alphabetically.
::::On the spectral versions, they should be noted as just that: versions, under the main creatures entry/page.
::::Lore is not a complete list of everything contained within the games, thats what we have gamespace for, and even in gamespace i'm not sure that they're particularly noteworthy then. And since the pagename we are discussing is Lore:Bestiary, how can it be anything but a Lore version. I think, that an opinion of some of the more heavy lore contributors might be appreciated as well. 
::::I'm pretty sure, but don't quote me on this, that what somebody had for breakfast is mentioned in text in one of the games. I just can't see how these are important, for me they full under "clutter" and we have never, ever, gone into any depth about clutter, especially in Lorespace. -- Kiz  21:30, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

::::: The Bestiary should be a compendium for all creatures of the TES-verse, and that means it should be comprehensive. They should all be represented in some way, even if all we have is the name (though, as others have said, a name is of paramount importance). Users should be able to trust that, somewhere, somehow, each and every known TES creature is being covered in the Bestiary.

:::::I don't see why the non-interactive nature of a creature in a game should preclude it from being listed. It seems to me that this is a game-specific limitation which is incongruent with the lore perspective, and leads to gap in our coverage. For instance, in the Flora section, we have an entry for Emperor Parasol Moss, but nothing for the Emperor Parasol, even though it is one of the most iconic living things in TES. We wouldn't even have an entry for Silt Striders if we excluded non-interactive creatures. That doesn't seem right to me at all.

:::::If people are concerned about having entries with a complete dearth of information, we could have a "Mentioned Creatures" section at Lore:Bestiary, similar to the "Mentioned Texts" section at .

:::::I think the multi-topic pages should remain as alphabetical listings regardless of whether a page for the genus/species exists. E.g.,  and . That will make it easy for users to find regardless of how they're searching through the site. However, one way or another, there must be consistent treatment for bestiary articles. For example,   and   are listed on the multi-topic pages, but Lore:Kwama is not. That seems wrong to me. I think it would make sense to exclude bestiary articles for more general topics from the alphabetical lists (horse, netch, kwama, etc.), and instead just link to them in the applicable specific entries. So, "Horse" wouldn't appear at , but would be an article which all the specific entries could link to.

:::::As with anywhere else in the lore section, developing an article for a creature would depend mostly on how much information is available. Formulating articles for types of creatures isn't a problem as long as the scope isn't overbroad. Lore:Undead sounds like a fine idea to me, but Lore:Animal would be like a second bestiary unto itself.

:::::If a creature reappears in a game with a new name, like the Bristleback, I'm fine with just listing it under the most recent name (as seems to be the current practice), so long as we're absolutely sure that it is the same creature. There's a lot of potential here for our subjective impressions of various creatures to influence how we categorize them, and that should be resisted as much as possible. If I had even the smallest inkling that the Tusked Bristleback of Bloodmoon was a different creature than the Bristleback of Dragonborn, I would insist on separate entries. Objectivity is our goal, and it's better to err on the side of caution.      21:31, 23 July 2014 (GMT)
 ME, the issue at had is different from Silt Strider, etc. Those have names, they are referenced by the other people in the game, and play a major role in the lore of the world. What we are talking about is creatures who are purely decorative. They cannot be interacted with, yes, but they are also not referenced, have no names at all, and generally don't do anything different from a random tree (less so, in fact, since a tree can block progress). There simply is no reason to include these creatures. Like I said before, you can't prove that is simply isn't a star shaped rock. Why does it HAVE to be a seastar. Nothing in game says seastar, nothing interacts with it. It is functionally the same as a rock. Jeancey (talk) 21:38, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

:::: I was suggesting a page for creatures without names by adding a gallery at a "Lore:Bestiary ?" article so they would be addressed and not ignored by the wiki and classified as "not existing" in the wiki. I still think they should be addressed in some way, but if its really opposed I will just drop it, as that's how a wiki works. Stating that they "do not exist" in the lore is not a good solution either.
::::Wouldn't using names extracted from data count as not really lore? Of the seven documented cases Whispering Wisps seems to be the only case where it is stated the name derives itself from data. Are ants, bats and the birds of skyrim extracted from the data too? Tropical birds and sea stars are the only real problematic ones(I assume it should be eventually possible to access them in the same WoW are), altrough Jeancey mentioned that Seastars appeared in Morrowind, so couldn't it be accessed in the same way as skyrim? Gulls apparently only appear in online unnammed and named in some books. Could this association of image and lore be made without connection because of real-life gull context?--Ashendant (talk) 21:49, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

:  I think a better argument could be made by comparing torchbugs to their real world equivalent, fireflies. We don't know that these creatures are called "seastars", so there's no lore basis for including them. They're clearly not rocks. (Also, on an unrelated note, I've been meaning to add an entry for Emperor Parasols for a while now.) —Legoless (talk) 21:52, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

:: :We shouldn't be picking and choosing what creatures play a "major role" in the lore of the world or what creatures are "purely decorative"; that's precisely the kind of implicit editorializing we should be avoiding. We have no reason to exclude such creatures. The only bar to being in the Bestiary should be a lack of a name. Obviously, we must not invent names. But if we know what a pig looks like, for example, and we see something that looks precisely like a pig, and we know from context or lore that the people of Tamriel would call it a pig, then excluding it simply because it wasn't labelled in a specific game is needlessly restrictive. Just because we should refrain from editorializing doesn't mean we shouldn't practice common sense. As for the seastar example, I know them as starfish. I would support excluding them only because it's unclear what they would call them in TES. A name is necessary. But if ESO made reference to "seastars", I think we could safely call this a seastar and make an entry for it.      21:59, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

: Mentioned creatures could probably be a good solution to address Jeancey concerns about named creatures
:Minor Edits, Could you please clarify this part?
:"I think the multi-topic pages should remain as alphabetical listings regardless of whether a page for the genus/species exists. E.g., Lore:Kwama and Lore:Bestiary K. That will make it easy for users to find regardless of how they're searching through the site. However, one way or another, there must be consistent treatment for bestiary articles. For example, Netch and Horse are listed on the multi-topic pages, but Lore:Kwama is not. That seems wrong to me. I think it would make sense to exclude bestiary articles for more general topics from the alphabetical lists (horse, netch, kwama, etc.), and instead just link to them in the applicable specific entries. So, "Horse" wouldn't appear at Lore:Bestiary H, but would be an article which all the specific entries could link to."
:I don't really understand what you're stating here. Sorry :/--Ashendant (talk) 22:01, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

::I would prefer, for example, that Lore:Bestiary K continue to list all the different types of Kwama, not just have one entry for Kwama. The various types of horses should all have entries on the multi-topic pages, not just one entry for "Horse" listing all the known variants. The goal is make browsing through the Bestiary as user-friendly as possible. Different users will browse the site in different ways, and I think this approach would cater to all of them.      22:07, 23 July 2014 (GMT)
Edit Break 1
I'm not a big user of the Beastiary so I can't speak to any particular expertise, but subjectively I think we should list creatures that we know a name for, like Minor Edits is suggesting above. Anything without a known ingame name runs the risk of being countermanded by it receiving an ingame name (rats=skeevers, for example). And it also avoids being too subjective as to what it is, after all in the real world there are numerous examples of animals that look like they are related but actually aren't --AN&#124;L (talk) 22:12, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

: That's an reasonable concern. Maybe we could turn them into redirects to the main article? But maybe that wouldn't be adequate solution... I think this is the main problem when more general articles aren't allowed like the Lore:Fox I tried to do. (which has slightly less content that the  page) Previously I had suggested in the Bestiary talk page, that if indeed there is a main article that it should have a more obvious link.(Jeancey told me to wait a week for answers before implementing this change)
:The problem with that is certain variants like rats. The Netch entries were fused because: there wasn't a Netch entry and all other entries listed different genders and life stages of Netch. Things like skeletons and goblins are little more obvious to fuse because they relied on class to differentiate between entires.--Ashendant (talk) 22:21, 23 July 2014 (GMT)

::Ok then three questions:
::* Should the information about dogs be posted in the . Dogs are now considered a subspecies of wolf.
::* Should we consider articles about diseases that alters the creature type an article about the disease solely or about the disease and the creature type too. In this case the  and .
::* There is an article about  and another about , but no article about Trolls and Giants. In my opinion these articles should be fused into more general articles about trolls and giants. Any opinions?
::Thanks!--Ashendant (talk) 21:23, 26 July 2014 (GMT)

:::I'm not entire sure where you get the idea that dogs are a subspecies of wolves. Dogs are separate than wolves, and they shouldn't be mentioned on the wolf page at all. Diseases are pages about diseases, not pages about the creature type. There may be subsections about the creatures, but it should be primarily about the disease. Uderfrykte isn't a troll, so that isn't a problem. I have no idea why frost giant has a page and giant doesn't. That one doesn't make sense. Jeancey (talk) 23:18, 26 July 2014 (GMT)

:::: Giants should have their own page, but they should not be fused with the frost giant article. I'm not entirely sure where the confusion comes from, but this is an issue that comes up frequently. There's nothing in lore to suggest the two creatures have anything to do with each other aside from the name. Trolls don't have a whole lot of information so I don't see a need for an individual article, but it wouldn't hurt. —Legoless (talk) 23:28, 26 July 2014 (GMT)

:::::"the domestic dog was reclassified in 1993 as Canis lupus familiaris, a subspecies of the gray wolf Canis lupus". I'm just asking if we should take the fact that wolves and dogs are the same species into the article itself.
:::::I was asking about diseases, because those specific disease produce creatures, and those creatures are often listed in those pages and all information related to those creatures is usually in those pages. So linking the bestiary section name to those pages that already provide all the information about that creature is not entirely unreasonable right?
:::::Uderfrykte isn't a troll?
:::::I could try to make a lore:troll page after I finish the lore:goblin page i'm currently making.
:::::I think the Lore:Giant page would be easy to make as the bestiary entry already contains loads of content.
:::::More Questions:
:::::* Should we put if the Numidium/Akhulahan stay on the list to vote, separately of course?
:::::* How do we distinguish between stuff that goes onto the bestiary page and stuff that doesn't go onto the bestiary because its considered a race?--Ashendant (talk) 23:55, 26 July 2014 (GMT)

 We don't use real life to influence our lore section like that. It isn't an issue, in TES they aren't the same species. Uderfrykte is and Uderfrykte. It is a unique creature, both in lore, and in several of its in-game appearances. I agree with Legoless that trolls don't have enough info for a full page. I also have quite a few issues with the goblin page you are making, but that's a conversation for another time. Jeancey (talk) 00:44, 27 July 2014 (GMT)

:What TES lore states they aren't the same species?
:Uderfrykte are a type of legendary trolls spawned by a specific troll matron. That's what its lore page says.
:You don't know until we write it. Like I said before there are pages that are very short.
:Raise them on  (were I asked for help) and I will try to deal with your concerns. You are also free to edit it if you think you can contribute to it.--Ashendant (talk) 01:08, 27 July 2014 (GMT)

::The "you don't know until we write it" attitude has been an issue before on the wiki. If multiple senior editors say that the amount of information there is about something isn't enough for an article, then there probably isn't enough information about something to create an article. In the end, it will just be a waste of your own time when you could be doing something more productive.        01:19, 27 July 2014 (GMT)

:::What I mean by that is that the "aggregate of information on a creature might more than you think" because it wasn't compiled before. And in any case if the articles I make in my sandbox doesn't have enough information, I will archive it and see what parts of it can still be repurposed as an upgrade to the bestiary entries. Also i'm sorry but i'm not gonna be very productive in anything else because what interests me in the TES series is things like creatures. I mean if I see something I can add I will do it, but I won't actively work in those areas.
:::I still would like to know if I can put the Aklhukhan and Numidium thing to vote or not?--Ashendant (talk) 01:58, 27 July 2014 (GMT)

::::I would not be opposed to a gobin lore page. The info is somewhat comparable to Rieklings and they have a page. Plus it gives a home to all the images across games. Side note, im working on a Giant lore page revamp right now, so it would have its own page anyway.--Jimeee (talk) 11:58, 27 July 2014 (GMT)

Changing IRC Channel Names

I am proposing that we move both of our channels to a single server. I am also proposing that we eliminate the #uespforums channel, and replace it with a #uespsocial channel. That would remove the divide that I see between forum and wiki users. Since some users do not like less serious discussions, the UESPWiki channel would be primarily for discussions about the wiki, games, etc. while the UESPsocial channel would be for general conversing and less serious discussions. With the current system, I feel like we house two separate communities under one name which is a (In my opinion) horrible thing. ~     07:55, 26 July 2014 (GMT)

: Last time something like this was brought up, it was decided against. I say leave the channels as they are. They both have their regulars, and the current structure does no harm. —Legoless (talk) 18:52, 26 July 2014 (GMT)

::While the wiki channel has users that prefer a strictly business only approach, there is no rule banning informal discussions, only one that gives precedence to a discussion about the wiki over any ongoing informal discussions. Additionally I would be strongly opposed to any attempts to further limit the scope of any discussions. 
::As devil's advocate, why should the forums be forced to give up their channel name, surely they would still need one that would have the same scope as the proposed 'rules' for the wiki one. That of course would mean there would be three channels which is less streamlined than intended. 
::It is the social side of the irc that keeps it alive, if it were purely for business it would have died a long time ago. The only thing I would support is somehow getting them both on the same server making it easier to switch from one to the other on a webchat (it rarely affects clients as they can mostly support multiple servers at once). Splitting the current irc community would do more harm than good.      19:04, 26 July 2014 (GMT)

:::I'm not active on either the forum or IRC, so I don't have a stake in this, but I am puzzled about there being a #uespforums channel in the first place.
:::* It could be a channel for discussion about the forums, but it doesn't sound like that's actually what it is.
:::* It could be a channel for people that are primarily active on the forums, i.e. a statement that there is a separation between the two communities that you deliberately want to preserve using different channels. I guess that that makes sense on its own terms, but it's a little weird.
:::* It could be a channel for the sorts of things that happen more on the forums and not on the wiki. E.g. just goofing off, fan fiction, wild speculation, or whatever. That makes sense as a reason for having two channels (one more wiki focused and one more wild), but then the #uespsocial name would make more sense.
:::Anyway, just my random thoughts as something of an outsider. Quantheory (talk) 22:48, 26 July 2014 (GMT)

::::As it was stated, there can be issues with web-based clients being on multiple servers (not that I have that issue, I use a dedicated client), and if such issues were discovered, we should work to solve them. While there can be merits to having merged channels, like I used to advocate for as well, I'm leaning towards keeping status quo. The two separate channels hurt nothing and everyone is satisfied with the current arrangement, with no indication that such an opinion will change.

::::There isn't any particularly compelling reason to shake things up and displace or move people. After all, UESP is run entirely based on the wishes and wants of the community, and the people who are directly affected are content as things are, myself included. We shouldn't upset the IRCers by moving or displacing them against their wishes, nor should we burden those who don't care either way on the wiki or forum by putting such discussions up to discussion every few months to the same response, unless there is a change of heart and a mutual (from the uesp.net-only people and the people who IRC) wish to create such accommodations. That's my one cent (I had two, but someone nicked the other penny :/) -      &hearts;    02:15, 27 July 2014 (GMT)
:::::I only occasionally check IRC, but I think it's fine as is. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.      12:55, 27 July 2014 (GMT)
 *pockets Damon's other penny* I see no reason to change anything. Why fix what isn't broken? Besides, we'd come across the issue of deciding   server to move to, and that has been an issue in the past. -- RNM&#124;T 08:06, 28 July 2014 (GMT)

Massive Copyright Violation

 has clearly stolen the majority of the images from UESP along with portions of text from various articles (Mostly Lore). I am currently working with AKB to compile a list of the images and text and report them to Imgur. The Escapist magazine and Kotaku has also made an article about this, and I have contacted them informing them of the situation. If anyone finds other references to this Imgur gallery, please inform us here so we don't contact people twice about the same thing. Also, everyone please thank AKB a ton for having the courage and patience to shift through all the images and find the violations. He has been an amazing help in this (Plus he found it)! ~     18:29, 30 July 2014 (GMT)
:Please raise this with Daveh immediately through his talk page and through email.  He has asked that we go to him directly with any concerns of this nature.  Thanks, guys!          19:04, 30 July 2014 (GMT)

::This affair should be a good reminder that we desperately need to set up a page to explain what to do in case examples of our work are used without the proper licensing. We need to have a page created to explain to our editors (who all seem to be rather confused as to what to do when this comes up, whenever I have seen or talked about it with anyone here) what exactly they should do, and how. Incidentally, this list seems to have been stolen from an even earlier one on [ imgur. This whole affair is ridiculous, and this wasn't exactly how I intended to spend a few hours of my day while I'm still in my semi-active state. --AKB   19:14, 30 July 2014 (GMT)

::Edit: I have provided Dominus a list of the images that are taken from us, with that done, I'm gonna log off. --AKB   19:15, 30 July 2014 (GMT)

:::I have sent an email to Dave about this and explained the situation. ~     19:18, 30 July 2014 (GMT)

::::Yeah, it probably would be a good idea to update  with directions for things like this.  In any case, thanks for jumping on this, guys!  Hopefully Daveh can get it sorted out.          19:20, 30 July 2014 (GMT)

:::::Okay, so Dave told me "politely informing the offender about the nature of the copyrighted images and posting something on the UESP's AN ( to let other admins know of the situation (even if resolved) would be ideal." Can an admin post it on the Copyright and Ownership page so everyone knows? ~     16:30, 31 July 2014 (GMT)

::::::Done. I wanted to add wording to indicate that some random new user might not be the best choice, and that staff or long-term users should probably handle it, but I couldn't figure out a way to say that without it sounding massively offensive. Any suggestions? Or should we just leave it as is?  &ndash;       18:07, 1 August 2014 (GMT)

:::::::Just say something like, It would be a good idea to let more experienced users handle situations like these. Lorenut (talk) 19:39, 1 August 2014 (GMT)

 I would say that mentioning that it would be a good idea to let either administrators or senior editors handle it due to the legal nature of the claims. ~     19:45, 1 August 2014 (GMT)

:Good suggestions. I think that's got it.  &ndash;       21:11, 1 August 2014 (GMT)

::Glad I could be of some help Lorenut (talk) 21:26, 1 August 2014 (GMT)

instagram fanpage

Hey guys i have used your site alot and i'd like to ask you if i could use the UESP name for a elder scrolls fanpage on instagram. Thanks in advance The_Telvanni_Mouth  
:Hi there!  We're glad you enjoy the site and find it useful, but we already have people who run our social media accounts.  If there's going to be an account that uses our name, it doesn't really make sense unless one of our editors is actually the one running it ;).  Thanks for the suggestion, though!          11:22, 4 August 2014 (GMT)

New Special Pages for MetaTemplate

I've recently been working on a couple of new pages to help template designers and others by letting us see on the wiki what MetaTemplate is actually storing behind the scenes. I would like to think that they're ready to roll out now, but I'd appreciate some testing first while all the files are still in one place (as opposed to the six other places I have to roll them out to to get them on all our servers).

Can I get a couple of people to check out  and  please? Even if you don't really understand loaded and saved variables all that well (or at all), trying out the various options to make sure nothing looks massively broken would be great. If all goes well, I'll roll it out tomorrow or the next day.

One quick note on the first page: you'll notice as you go between pages of data on longer pages like Skyrim:Weapons that the subsets restart on each page. This is a limitation of the underlying MediaWiki software that I don't have the skill to work around, and I've decided it works well as a feature anyway, since it makes sure you always see an entire subset. If you specify a small enough page limit, especially by changing the URL, you'll end up just getting the same data over and over again. This is known and there's not much I can do about it. It was either that or it ignored the rest of the set entirely, never showing it to you at all on the next page.  &ndash;       18:33, 5 August 2014 (GMT)

:The second one seems to show displayname strangely. I would think that the displayname would be Crossbow rather than   Crossbow   . Though, that is just a preference thing and nothing is actually broken (I think) :P . Any reason it sorts alphabetically instead of going down the page? Is it possible to add more filters to the first link? Like ignore userspace or something?  

::It's showing exactly what's stored in the variable as it would be if you were to put the same thing in wiki text. If you were to go to the relevant page, you'd the same thing there when you edit the page. Also, some of the data on the development wiki won't match the main wiki stuff, since the development wiki's something like a year out of date at this point. As for sorting, there is nothing that would give a "down the page" type of sort. Sorting by the internal IDs or timestamps would probably come close, but even those would change over time, I believe, and no longer reflect any specific order. As for additional filters, I think you mean for the second link, but yes, it would be possible. On the other hand, I'd like to get most of our templates not saving in User space at all, ideally. :) I've already fixed a few, but there are obviously quite a lot more to deal with. A namespace dropdown should be easy enough, though. It would only allow you one namespace at a time, like most of the other Special pages do, but I don't imagine that'll be a big issue in most cases.  &ndash;       23:25, 5 August 2014 (GMT)

:::I poked around at it for a bit and everything seems to be sane. Should definitely be useful for debugging templates and the like. -- Hargrimm  02:23, 6 August 2014 (GMT)

::::I didn't get a chance to add the namespace filter—I'll probably do that tomorrow—but otherwise, everything is now available on all our servers.  &ndash;       22:15, 6 August 2014 (GMT)

:::::Okay, the namespace filter is now there. I've also added styles to some of the output. They can be overridden with your own custom CSS, as usual, or if a lot of people want different styles for things, we can change it globally as well.  &ndash;       22:27, 8 August 2014 (GMT)

::::::Why does it display old and now deleted namespaces (Dapel, Review, Tamold, and maybe a few others)? There is nothing on those pages because they don't exist. To me, they just add useless options that make it harder to find the one I want. ~     13:32, 9 August 2014 (GMT)

:::::::Because they're still there, technically. You'll see them in the Recent Changes namespace dropdown and others as well. It shouldn't be hard to limit it, though. I'll look into it later.  &ndash;       15:02, 9 August 2014 (GMT)

  The namespace box has now been limited to only those namespaces in which there's actual data saved. It's much smaller now, though perhaps a bit unexpected when you're used to seeing the full list. It will update dynamically as data changes.

  (Removed, as it wasn't reliable.)  &ndash;       02:27, 12 August 2014 (GMT)