UESPWiki:Community Portal/Quest Item Redirects

Quest Item Redirects

I'm wondering whether we should change the redirects for quest-specific items so they point to the quest page instead of to the  page.

As an example, I've set up  to demonstrate how we ultimately might want the pages to be organized.  So the proposal is that "Amren's Family Sword" would be a redirect pointing to Amren's Family Sword instead of Amren's Family Sword.  One reason to do this is that if someone is searching for Amren's Family Sword, the chances are that they're really searching for information about the quest, rather than stats on the sword.  Secondly, there's more than enough space on the quest page to provide the line of item stats and thus create a single page with all the information about the sword (including background such as why Amren cares about it).  However, it doesn't really make much sense to add more information to the Quest Items page.

I'm not proposing that the Quest Items page itself be changed -- it can still provide a table summarizing all the item stats, and can contain general information about the items -- such as their non-weight, tips on how to get rid of them, etc.  I'm also not suggesting that artifacts with their own dedicated pages (e.g.,  be changed.  I'm just thinking about redirects for items, and where the most useful place is to point those redirects. --Nephele  20:06, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

:I agree - the redirects are not nearly as useful redirecting to  as they are redirecting to the quest itself. A direct transclusion from the Quest Items page would probably work just fine for this. I wonder if we should do a similar thing with some of the items on . Jak Atackka 01:28, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

::As long as the redirect points to a place giving all the information about an item, that's fine. But I'm not sure that duplicating the information is really a good idea. Most of the information like weight, value or upgrade possibilities are irrrelevant in the context of the quest anyway, a link to the quest item page would suffice. For quest items that can be found before the quest is started, the searching argument is a good one, but otherwise having quest information on the quest page and the item information on an item page seems more logical to me. --Alfwyn 12:50, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

:::I don't like this. It seems to break up the flow of the walkthrough and make it table overload. I think linking to the quest from the quest items page would be sufficient enough, and vice-versa. elliot   17:50, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
::::I'm not a fan of this either. All of the information presented in the table can already be found on the quest items page, which should be enough. Like Elliot said, linking to the quest page from the quest items page and the other way around is sufficient for any editor to find the information they are looking for. Wolok gro-Barok 18:20, 8 January 2012 (UTC)


 To provide a bit more background/justification.

The primary reason I'm suggesting this in response to the most widespread complaints that I'm seeing about UESP.  A lot of readers have posted negative comments that boil down to complaints about the fact that searches on UESP tend to lead to large, anonymous tables of data, such as those at .  Many people also seem to still think that UESP doesn't have much content, and I suspect that redirects such as Amren's Family Sword are one major reason for that belief.  It seems to me that readers who are not familiar with UESP do not like how the existing redirects work.

Like it or not, the majority of our readers are coming here from google or other search indexes.  And if you google Amren's Family Sword, every other page you pull up is more useful than UESP's.  (It also doesn't help that for some reason, google doesn't even index our redirect, and instead just sends people to the top of ).  I know from my own personal experience, when I'm googling a topic I tend to look at quickly glance at the page I'm shown to see whether it looks at all relevant, then simply close it and move on to the next site if I don't see what I'm looking for -- meaning that I would skip UESP right now if I was googling Amren's Family Sword.  Most readers are unlikely to bother to click the quest link, even if it's right there in front of them.

Another major factor here is that Skyrim's miscellaneous quests do not have proper names.  So someone who stumbles across a Dungeon Delving quest and wants more information is never going to be searching for the quest using the name "Dungeon Delving".  The most likely searches are for "Amren" or "Amren's Family Sword".  I'd bet that 90% of the readers who search on Amren's Family Sword are more interested in the quest than in the sword itself.  In which case, having google take you to a page of FormIDs and numbers is going to make UESP look even less useful.

As for the duplication of content, I think it's a small price to pay in order to have a single, unified page with all of the information.  In particular, duplicating item statistics doesn't cause long term problems, because statistics don't change.  Duplication becomes a problem when it's descriptive information that is constantly going to be tweaked/expanded/improved.

Finally, the redirect for Amren's Family Sword should take you to a place that has all the information about the sword and has the ability to be expanded to include new information that editors may want to add.  The quest page contains information about the sword -- specifically Amren's dialogue is as relevant to the sword as it is to the quest.  Unless that dialogue gets copied over to the Quest Items page (which would be the "bad" type of duplication), the Quest Items page no longer contains complete information about the sword.  Furthermore, if someone wants to upload an image of the sword, that image is going to be put on the quest page.  There's just no ability for the Quest Items page to realistically include more than the single line of stats for each item.

--Nephele  19:58, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

:Google searches may be worth some investigations. But if google ignores redirects, that is no argument for changing the redirect. The  is found, because of the text page match, so that should suffice for the dungeon delving page too. --Alfwyn 20:20, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

::  I agree with redirecting to the quest page for the simple reason that Nephele brought up: people can't find the info. Seeing as the miscellaneous objectives in Skyrim don't have their quest titles displayed in game, people are going to look up the item they're searching for in hopes of finding a quest walkthrough. It's especially irritating that Google (apparently) remove the hash mark from the redirect, meaning readers coming from a search engine are faced with a great ugly table as opposed to a link to the quest page for the item. --Legoless 20:25, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

:::Google doesn't remove the hash mark from the redirect, there is no redirect from  Amren's Family Sword to Miscellaneous Quests. Google just seems to completely ignore redirects. --Alfwyn 20:41, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

::::Google doesn't ignore redirects.  I think in this case it's just concluding that the redirect is less relevant than Miscellaneous Quests.  There are hundreds more links to Miscellaneous Quests, plus Miscellaneous Quests includes multiple hits on the individual words such as 'Amren' and 'Sword'.  Google is basically just telling us that it doesn't think that a redirect to a table of data is terribly useful either. --Nephele  21:08, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

:::::Neph, are you sure Google doesn't ignore them? I tested a while back on another wiki, and our redirect never got indexed. I even tried using an   tag to force the issue. I think there's probably logic on Google's end to filter them out.

:::::As to the original topic, one way or another, UESP should be in the top couple of Google results for something like Armen's Family Sword, and we're not, and the UESP results that do get returned would appear to be only tangentially related. That to me says that something needs to change.  &ndash; Robin Hood    00:03, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

 You know what's interesting with Googling Amren's Family Sword? Not only is it the 13th hit (bad luck  ) but it actually chooses the "Find Shahvee's Amulet of Zenithar inside Cracked Tusk Keep" redirect. Oh Google! Jak Atackka 04:59, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

:I've placed some caffeine-inspired thoughts regarding the issues raised here on my talk page, thus sparing the intelligent (non-clicking) reader from wasting valuable time on a useless missive of naive ramblings. Still, isn't it possible that it contains the germ of an idea that will revolutionize the wiki and elevate the community to unimaginable heights of glory? Click (or don't) at your peril. --Jreynolds2  06:54, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

::Like Jak Atackka's example shows, google doesn't show the redirect, but the result of the redirect. That is . So changing the redirect could probably influence google searches somewhat.
::As for the current layout of the dungeon delving page, I think there are just too many tables on it. One-row tables are sub-optimal in my view. --Alfwyn 12:06, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

:::It makes sense to include the quest item's information on the actual quest page. However, I agree with Alfwyn; the one-row tables do look messy. What would be the best way to fix this? I'm thinking that using a template that fetches its info directly from the Quest Items page (the title would be one of the variables) and displays it in a prettier format would work well.
:::Also, a separate yet related question. Is it possible to transclude a section of a page rather than the whole thing? I was experimenting with transcluding Amren's Family Sword from the Quest Items page, buut it instead transcluded the entire Quest Items page. Jak Atackka 19:03, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

::::@Jak Atackka: Responding to your second question, yes, it's possible. I'll respond more fully on your talk page so as not to derail the thread.  &ndash; Robin Hood    19:08, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

:::::Google: The problem is that Google puts a lot of emphasis on a stat called "PageRank", and individual pages are rated based on the PageRank of pages it links to (as discussed here). Elderscrolls.wikia.com has a huge leg up, because each and every page has a top bar that links to 48 different wikis. It also links to wikia.com half a dozen times. This is completely independent of the amount of site traffic. Fixing this? Good luck. I'm afraid that we're at the mercy of Google on this one.
:::::Quest Pages: I went ahead and did a few mock up tables here. Despite the low appeal of one-row tables, we may be stuck with them. So, I tried to make better looking ones. As to getting the data for the tables... that might be a problem. As was discussed on my talk page and is being discussed here, transcluding the information directly from  might be a problem. If the info could be transcluded, a template could be set up to use that info, so if in the future we want to change it we only have to modify Quest Items and the template, instead of the dozens (if not hundreds) of Quest pages. Of course, if it came down to just copy-pasting off of Quest Items, then that ''shouldn't'' be a horrific task. Jak Atackka 23:03, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
::::::Update on Quest Pages: I finished the templates. On , every entry needs to be converted to the Quest Item Data template; click the link to see how. On the quest pages themselves, you use the much simpler Quest Item template; again, click the link to see how. I've pretty thoroughly tested everything, and as long as you enter the parameters correctly, it should work just fine. •          20:15, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

:::::::I'm not clear on what the purpose of the template is. If we change the redirect of an item to the quest page, it has to show all information there (it currently doesn't). If we don't change that redirect, there is really no need for detailed information and a link to the Quest Items page would be enough, no need for a table. Finally I think that the current layout of  just looks bad, too many small tables scattered throughout text with different indentations, styles and font sizes. In my opinion, we should make sure that there is a consensus about that layout style, before converting more pages/table entries. --Alfwyn 15:17, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
::::::::It's not required to show all of the info (even if so, it's not hard to do). If it shows minimal info, we can easily link the name to  for the rest of the information. However, I agree that we need to hold off on the implementation until something is 100% decided. elliot   18:14, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Quest Item templates
:This discussion was moved from  once its purpose merged into that of the above discussion.
Section transclusion is indeed possible thanks to an extension called Labeled Section Transclusion. The way I use most often simply transcludes an entire section of a page. Just use   . For example,   gets you this (putting it in a box so it's clear what's what):   
That's the easy way, and it requires no prior setup. The other way is to only transclude specific text from a page based on labeling the text you want to transclude (hence the name of the extension) on the page you're transcluding from, then using #lst or #lstx on the page you want to transclude to. That's a bit longer of a process, so I'd suggest just reading their docs (click on the link above) rather than me repeating their instructions when it's probably something we don't need right now anyway.  &ndash; Robin Hood    19:18, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
:If you're transcluding something from a table, that bit you transclude will contain code for something in the middle of a table, but it won't include the necessary code to start or end a table. You'll need to have a bit of code to start a table, then transclude the bit of the table, then have a bit of code to end the table. You can see how that works on the  page or on . Chris3145 19:25, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
::It seems a plain #lsth may not work. You can use that to transclude a section of a page (such as ), but you can't transclude something like  because Dravin's Bow does not have it's own heading. The task you want to undertake may be fairly complicated. Chris3145 19:40, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
:::You have a point there, Chris. I hadn't actually looked at Quest Items before posting. It does indeed require actual sections to work on, not just linkable entries. Transcluded section headings (e.g., ) also confuse it. So if we choose to use it at all, #lst or #lstx would be one way to go, or as I think Chris suggested somewhere else, possibly retrieving loaded info from the item pages.  &ndash; Robin Hood    20:21, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
::::It doesn't look like #lst or its sister functions will work here. It can only transclude actual sections, and there appears to be no way around that (besides having a massive TOC). Is it possible for the wiki itself to use Linkable Entries as reference points? Jak Atackka 21:21, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
:::::I suspect we could use #lst if we actually blocked off sections on the original page, but that's probably more effort than it's worth. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any other way of doing this except with a template that uses #load/#save, which we'd have to experiment with later when we have more time to set that all up. Or maybe we already have something in place? I'm a little rusty...I'll post on  and see if anybody can add to this discussion.  &ndash; Robin Hood    21:37, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
  Couldn't we just use something along the lines of:
 
  
|-
|  } 
The enchantments and notes need to be added but that's the general idea I assume you were going for? elliot   02:45, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

:Yes, that's exactly what I was going for. If we could set up a simple template that takes the data directly from the  page, that would be perfect. Something along the lines of  , which would get the info from . That way, modifications made to the Quest Items page would be reflected on the quest pages with no effort. However, I'm not so sure that is possible without littering the table with     tags and/or converting every row on Quest Items into a unified template whose data can be more easily accessed. Jak Atackka 05:32, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

::We can try using subsets with save. Let me dig around a little and see if I can come up with something. elliot   06:08, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
:::Okay, after a few little bumps, I have the general concept working, as you can see below. The tables are both pulling information from . The templates are rough at best now, but my main goal was just to know if it would work. The templates are {{tl|Quest Item Data}} and {{tl|Quest Item}}.
{{Quest Item|Alessandra's Dagger}}
{{Quest Item|Amren's Family Sword}}
:::I encourage people to fix any issues they see. Some remaining problems are mainly in the data template, in terms of tempering data and notes. elliot   07:28, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

::::That's a really good start. Do you have any docs on #load and #save? I can't seem to find any. ~      23:04, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

:::::See MetaTemplate. 23:38, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

{{od}}Thanks. I went ahead and improved your version in one of my sandboxes ({{deleted|User:Jak_Atackka/TemplateSandbox}}). Here's an example (transcluded from {{deleted|User:Jak_Atackka/SandboxTest|here}}):
{{deleted|tl=1|User:Jak_Atackka/SandboxTest}}
It autodetects everything for tempering, including if it requires Arcane Smithing. It now separately detects enchantment, quest, and notes, and missing one or two will display the others. Plus a few more things, but I've got to go. ~      00:35, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

:Yeah, that's good. Feel free to copy it over to the template. I think that should cover everything. However, there are different types of quest items, so we might want to address that here soon. elliot   02:25, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

::What exactly do you mean by different types? As in 1 Hand Sword versus 2 Hand Warhammer?   •          23:39, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

:::I mean Quest Weapons, Quest Apparel, Dragon Claws and Other Quest Items. The template can be adjusted to reflect it, it just needs to be expanded on. elliot   04:29, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

::::I see. I changed the template (about 20 times; so many curly braces!) and it now works. Read the doc to see how to use it. Link. •          06:01, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

::::Update: Finished the templates! They now work perfectly (or so I hope). I also updated the Quest Item template. Read the doc to see how to use it. •          20:08, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

:::::I am not sure I like {{tl|Quest Item}}. The template needs to be two rows, IMO. It also should be minimal. The notes aren't really necessary because that info is going to be included on the quest page. The ones in your sandbox were better in terms of style. elliot   22:43, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

{{od}}Yeah, you're right. I changed the tables to a much more minimalist format. I have a question: which of these tables are better?
{{Quest Item|Amren's Family Sword }}
{| class="wikitable"
|- style="background: #d0d0d0; text-align: center"
| Name || ID || width=22|Damage || Enchantment
|-
| {{Anchor|Amren's Family Sword}} || {{ID|000647ac}} ||style="text-align:center"| 7 ||style="text-align:center"| None
|}
I chose gray because it is an iron weapon, plus it provides a decent amount of distinction. •          06:02, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

:I don't think we should bother with color. People should be able to tell the difference by the description we give or the name. We might want to include info such as One-handed sword and so on. elliot   06:37, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

::Alright. I went ahead and added a "Type" column for weapons and apparel. •          06:44, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
:::Uhoh. For some reason the template is not working for Shahvee's Amulet of Zenithar. It's implemented in Nephele's example (here) and I can't figure out why it's acting up. •          06:51, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
::::It's not pulling information from . Everything but the first section isn't using {{tl|Quest Item Data}}. elliot   06:56, 15 January 2012 (UTC)
:::::How should I fix this? And what do you mean by "everything but the first section isn't using Quest Item Data"? •          07:07, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

{{od}} Right now, this is what it looks like:
 
...
!width=22|Value
!width=22|Damage
!Enchantment/Quest/Notes
|-
{{Quest Item Data|name=Alessandra's Dagger|id=00043e1e|type=1 Hand Dagger|temp=Not possible|weight=1|value=10|damage=5|quest=Pilgrimage}}
{{Quest Item Data|name=Amren's Family Sword|id=000647ac|type=1 Hand Sword|temp=Iron Ingot|weight=9|value=25|damage=7|quest=Dungeon Delving (Bandits)|questalt=Dungeon Delving}}
|-
| {{LE|Angi's Bow}} {{ID|(000cc392)}} || Bow
| Steel Ingot; 
The third entry just uses the table formatting, while the first two use the template. The others just need to be converted to the template. elliot   07:18, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

:Oh, that's what you mean. Yeah, I haven't had enough time to update all of those entries; I'll see if I can tomorrow. I did update a few sporadic entries, mostly as tests, namely the Helm of Winterhold, Shahvee's Amulet of Zenithar, Coral Dragon Claw, and Broken Azura's Star. •          07:28, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

::There seems to be another issue here in that it's not picking up the saved data for the amulet. From my minimal experimentation, it looks to be a problem with the name...perhaps the length of the name? I'm not really sure right now.  &ndash; Robin Hood    07:32, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

:::Also, I think most of this is technical and between just the three of us. I would suggest moving it back to Jak's page and just adding a new CP topic for the stylistic questions.  &ndash; Robin Hood    07:35, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

::::Actually, it's helpful to invite more users to the discussion. If they don't feel like contributing, then they can just read over the information to see what we are trying to do with the above consensus, whenever one is solidified. I will look into providing an alt name if you haven't already, but it should be an easy fix. elliot   18:00, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

{{od}}I believe that the templates are more or less done; additional features to {{Quest Item}} can be done at any time. Next on the list is converting all of the entries on  to the {{Quest Item Data}} template. The problem is, some of the entries on Quest Items are not in fact quest items. I'm going to go through and weed out any non-Quest Items and put them on  (and fix the redirects!), but I'm sure that I won't get them all. Feel free to look through and move anything that shouldn't be there. •          03:06, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
: Compiling a list of items to check. I'm pretty sure that they are either random finds or a person's unique item; however, I could not confirm them, so I'm going to list them here in case anyone has more info.

:   Both weapons and apparel in question are listed. •          05:34, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Restart
This mini-project has someone stalled lately, so I hope this will bring it to life. The quest items on the  still need to be transferred over. We also need to come up with a consistent style for the quest pages that we can implement. 

As of now, the quests are barely used on the quest pages, so that needs to be push here ASAP. If someone want's to go ahead and work towards that, I'll go ahead and finish the data templates with the quest items page. elliot   00:26, 27 February 2012 (UTC)