UESPWiki:Community Portal/Archive 29

Effect Images

I recently took up notice that the Skyrim effects have oblivion images. I went through some disussing untill I finally was brought here. Skyrim effects are animations and cannot be used, unless a still picture is taken... but the black background would look out of place. I beleve that the generic school image is more fitting. Does anyone agree?--Cole1 14:35, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

:The previous discussion can be found at . I think the animation can probably be used if prepared properly. Anyway, we still use Oblivion icons at various places and I don't think it is an urgent matter to replace them. Specifically I think the Oblivion icons should stay unless a clearly superior replacement is found. --Alfwyn 14:41, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

:: Agreed with Alfwyn. If anybody wants to take on the fairly tricky task of doing animations, that'd be great - but please make sure they'll work with our background colours. Ideally, using a transparent background for the animated GIF would be best. rpeh  14:47, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

::: I tried making a gif of a spell animation. If you guys like it I could make them for the other effects too. EpicSpam 16:08, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

:::: It's great, except on a black background it wouldn't work very well on UESP - that's why I suggested a transparent background right away. It's also very big at 1.5MB. If we were serving those from UESP they'd drain the site's available bandwidth really quickly. If you can get a sample at around 64px square on a transparent background and make sure the file isn't too large, that'd be great. Otherwise we might have to go with snapshots rather than animations. rpeh  16:25, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

:::::I made an 64px version which is ~200kb.  Transparency is however the hardest part. The problem is that the background isn't actually black... It's the floor texture of the inn I happened to stand in. If someone knew a place in Skyrim that is (nearly) pure black I would probably be able to make a version with a transparent background.EpicSpam 18:52, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Try Blackreach.--Cole1 18:54, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

:Is there any way to extract the animation directly from the game files? That might be the way we have to go if we're going to use animations. Just a thought.  &ndash; Robin Hood    19:00, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

::I hoped so but I just took a look and I think the answer is "no". The game files tend to contain textures for solid objects and these effects are just lights and so work in a different way. I hope someone can prove me wrong.
::As for taking the shots in a dark area, I'm not sure that'll work. Since many areas of the effect are translucent, we'll end up with the black showing through. EpicSpam, I'm very grateful for your efforts on this but I have a bad feeling they may ultimately prove to be in vain.rpeh  19:44, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

:::Okay, so failing that, what about just using a static grab of a single frame of the animation? Even if we have to put up with black backgrounds for the time being, I think that's preferable than using the Oblivion icons. Alternatively, someone else in the original discussion suggested just using the school icon for everything in that school.  &ndash; Robin Hood    20:24, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

::::I think school logos would work well. We already have those images. We could do versions with or without that fancy borders.Chris3145 05:49, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

:::::I made a simple sample of the fire animation.  The background isn't 100% transparent yet but this one should give you guys some idea of what should be possible to create. EpicSpam 13:56, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

::::::Great work! If you can just get those transparent backgrounds going, then that would be amazing. Seriously, keep it up! :)elliot   15:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

 I managed to get the transparency fixed. This however caused a bit of black bordering. EpicSpam 15:36, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

:Hm, the last two images have the same issue as some Daggerfall images. They blink in and out of existence for me (Iceweasel 3.5.16 on debian). Not sure what causes this and if other users experience that problem too. --Alfwyn 15:51, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

::For me they appear perfectly fine. Also, the black bordering looks ok too. Good work with the images!RIM 15:55, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

:::Yeah, after a bit of searching it seems to be a firefox 3.* problem, and is fixed by firefox 4. Animated transparent gifs show only the first frame and go completely transparent for the other frames with firefox 3 it seems. --Alfwyn 16:01, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

Made 2 version of BoundWeapon.  EpicSpam 18:04, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

:I have made about 10 spell gifs so far. I don't want to flood this page with images so I put them up on my userpage. Could I upload these gifs directly to the wiki? It is annoying to use photobucket to host these gifs. EpicSpam 12:53, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
::Not to take away from the considerable amount of work you've done on these, but I'm not a fan of these animations.  The transparency causes the visual border of the animated objects to change constantly, creating a lot of visual noise.  The black bordered versions above don't suffer from this because the entire animation is contained.  It's much easier to visually filter out the bordered versions than these transparent versions.  As an example, consider the ads at the bottom of the page.  Some of them are animated, but it doesn't draw the eyes like the transparent versions of these animations because the entire animation is in a solid-colored static container. --Fluff 16:22, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
:::I agree. The transparency doesn't look very good, for the reasons stated above. The animations seem to lose considerable detail when the background is transparent. I'm curious, how to the animations look on the same color background as the wiki? The color is #fbefd5. Jak Atackka 00:01, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

::::It should be possible to make them with the wiki color as background. However as the gifs might be placed in an infobox this color might still be incorrect. EpicSpam 21:50, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
:::::You can use the color of the background of the infobox for these: Alteration #FFBBFF, Conjuration, #FFFFCC, Destruction #FFCCCC, Illusion#CCFFCC, Restoration #CCCCFF. elliot   02:46, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
::::::Note that if you match the background colors of the image and whatever the image is going to be placed on, then it will look exactly the same as if it had a transparent background.  In my opinion, the animations need to have a different background than whatever they're going to be placed on so that there is less visual noise due to the constantly changing transition area.  --Fluff 03:02, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

  I doubt that, mostly because the process of making the background translucent takes away the detail of the image. Look below and you can see specifically what I mean:
  Where I say alpha, I mean alpha within the main animation. The detail is gone when you change all pixels to either solid or transparent. Jak Atackka 06:09, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

:: Sadly the effect itself and the skyrim menu darken the background a lot. This test image was recorded on a   background. EpicSpam 11:21, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
:::
:::Yep, the background is pretty noticeable. The table background (which I imagine we'd be using) is #FDF5E6. EpicSpam, the image looks much better. The background color is different yet you can still see nearly all the detail. BTW, I hope you don't mind that I slightly edited your above post - I couldn't read "Alteration Color" at all. Jak Atackka 02:28, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

:::: What if you record the animation over the specified color, but then put a thin frame or border at the edge of the animation? The color will be somewhat close to the infobox color, and the frame will make ut so it doesn't look terrible when the colors aren't a perfect match.Chris3145 16:58, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

  Chris, I think what is in your sandbox works the best for right now. I really hate seeing the OB icons used. elliot   05:18, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

:Should we have pages use school icons like in my sandbox for now, until we can sort out the animations? Another thing I realized: there are effects like Resist Fire or Absorb Magicka that are available using staves, equipment, passive abilities, or potions, but are not available as spells. There is no animation to use for these - unless we give all of them the generic blue animation that goes with a lot of greater powers. Chris3145 18:56, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Alchemy Applications

I'm posting this here rather than the Alchemy page because I think it should have the response of the widest possible audience.

In the past, we have typically firmly discouraged posting links to mods and external apps unless they were pre-approved by the community at large. As I understand it, there are two main reasons for this: 1) because it may imply favouritism, and 2) because these things quickly turn into link farms. The External Resources section of the Alchemy page has now become just that, with a total of 16 applications listed so far. By comparison, Oblivion's Alchemy page has only one such app listed in the body of the text, and that's because we're hosting it.

Since several long-time contributors have edited the page without ever removing the section, I'm reluctant to just wholesale delete it without hearing others' opinions, but my general feeling here is: we've never allowed this sort of thing in the past, at least not without a clear community consensus, so unless we can get one as part of this discussion, I think that section should go.  &ndash; Robin Hood    04:32, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

:I agree with removing the entire External Resources section. If they really need to find an Alchemy Calculator, they can just Google it. Personally, I just cross-check ingredients with effects on both the Ingredients and Alchemy Effects pages; any more would be cheating :). When can we expect a Skyrim alc-calc to be created? I'd offer to do it myself, but I have zero Javascript skills. •          06:20, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

::While the arguments for exclusion are many and on point, I don't believe it will hurt the readers by including them. Having said that, sixteen is too many. I think it would be best to go through and find a few that are comparable to what we used for Oblivion; we should keep those–and only those–until we are able to host one on the site. Also, it might not occur to some people that these things even exist, so including a few could also spur further and individual research. elliot   06:37, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

:::Filtering external sources via community consensus seems appropriate. Minor Edits 06:58, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

::::I find Alchemy to be a nightmare without my phone app. I think that the Alchemy page needs to have at least some external links, even if the number of links is capped or something. Maybe make that section non-editable or something.  
:::::So remove the ones that haven't been approved by the community on the talk page or wherever. If we're going to keep any, there shouldn't be more than 2 or 3. ThuumofReason 19:21, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

  Okay, so here are my thoughts on each one:

;Online Resources
Darren Maurer & MonarchResearch.ca - Skyrim Alchemy Mentor
:Confusing, not really good for beginners.
Skyrim Potion Generator
:Gets the information to you quick, but there are some major problems: I am still having some problems with the 2nd effect option. If you choose a 2nd effect and your potion only has one ingredient, then only one ingredient in the game has the two combined effects and no potions can be created. I will fix this soon.
::* ALL BUGS HAVE BEEN FIXED, this is the third time today I have had to change this bad info.  If anyone is going to post comments about these links please make sure that they are accurate.  
skyrim-alchemy.com - Skyrim Alchemy Tool
:Pretty good. The interface is a little odd, but it serves it's purpose and tells you what you need to know. Comes with a how-to guide. However, it was meant as a leveling guide, so the potion builder is secondary.
AlchemyPlanner.com
:Uses our information, but it's more getting gold out of alchemy rather than effects. 
;Skyrim Ingredients Selector
:Definitely simple and let's you know what effects you can make with what you have. 
Potion Helper - Input your ingredients, output the most valuable potions to earn XP and gold
:Kind of confusing. Gives you advice on what other ingredients would help, but mainly focused on gold.
;Darliandor's Alchemy Lab - Alchemy Laboratory Wizard
:Does exactly what you want it to if you are looking to find effects. There isn't anything better out there.
Skyrim Alchemy Helper
:Pretty good. You start with one ingredient and go from there. Gives you a list of 1, 2, 3, and 4 effect potions possible with said ingredient.
Skyrim Alchemy Wizard
:It works, but it is kind of confusing and the layout is a little weird. Helps you find other ingredients that can be mixed. 
;Skyrim Online Alchemy Tool
:This essentially takes our information and it expands it to help filter out information. Definitely recommended.
Skyrim alchemy recipe generator with filters
:Confusing, not really worth the time.
;Skyrim: The Giant's Toe Anomaly - online calculator
:This one is another "throw your inventory in and see what you can get out of it", but it is great.
Skyrim Alchemy Calculator and Planning with Saving
:Good. Lists the information but not really interactive.
SkyrimAlchemist.com: Story and Tools Blog

;Phone Apps
;Skyrim Alchemist - app for iPhone or iPad
:Looks good and definitely good to have right next to you while you are playing.
Skyrim Herbarium - app for Windows Phone 7
:Wasn't able to view, but I think we should only have one phone app listed. 

So, that basically sums it up. The ones I bolded are the ones that should go into the article.elliot   06:08, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
:I agree with that assessment. Minor Edits 19:50, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
::I agree also, but Skyrim Ingredients Selector (bolded above) - says "This tool is outdated" right on the  page. I would leave that one out. --Acaveman 21:21, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
:::That's fine. It still works, but it won't hurt to leave out. elliot   21:27, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
::::If we're going to keep a list, then for phone apps, I'd say it's reasonable to have one per platform, so both could stay.  &ndash; Robin Hood    22:15, 22 January 2012 (UTC)
Per Request, discussing edit adding link

I'd like to see SOME place for open community contribution and information about such tools.  I know when I went looking for a wide collection of such tools, this was the first place I came.   From what I've seen, each tends to take a different approach and highlights different information.  Maybe a link to the discussion page, so people can, you know, discuss (ir, review) them?  Google is not much good for such things, for several reasons.  First, without any links to the tool (like the ones you mention here as "link farming"), they won't show up on google.  Second, without lots of meaningful text, pages rank low on google.  Good interface designs tend to minimize the amount of text displayed. Anyhow, since this is where I was directed after my link was removed a couple times, I figured I'd ask people to review my own.  I don't even have a DNS registrar yet, so direct linking is the ONLY way anybody would ever find it.   SW 12:34, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Trainer icons

(moved from )
So I went ahead and created File:SR-icon-Master Trainer.jpg, so we can start getting some Skyrim images more... Skyrimy... I forgot about the jpeg transparency issue and I don't have time to fix it right now, but you get the gist. If you have any issues/concerns, feel free to put them here. There are still some minor problems, but most things can be fixed. (A green one and blue one will be made here soon as well.)elliot   07:37, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
:I think that looks good but the red colour is a little bit too dark, a lighter red might be better if you can change it without to much hassle. On the other hand though, I think that it won't really be a big deal. The green and blue ones should look fine as well. They look better than the Oblivion symbols in any case:)RIM 12:12, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
::Okay so I went ahead and made   . They have the required transparency, and now the white allows the details to be seen easier. Thoughts?elliot   00:08, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
:::For some reason the green one makes me think that it means "recyclable".  Not much you can do if that's what it actually looks like in-game, though... --TheRealLurlock   03:21, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
::::Is it okay to start putting these on pages now, or should we await further discussion? Chris3145 18:02, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
:::::TRL, some subliminal messages? Haha And I forgot to mention, but I only altered   in order to make it work. Nothing fancy or new. And Chris, I would wait a few more days to let others add an opinion.elliot   03:21, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
::::::Okay. Once we're sure of the general look we want we could probably put them on pages while we sort out any details. I think they look good, but I never use trainers so I can't compare it to the in-game icons. Chris3145 15:45, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
:::::::Looks good to me, good work elliot.RIM 22:56, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
 They look okay to me. --AKB   20:01, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
:They look good to me... I have to confess I haven't been paying attention enough to know where those icons come from. rpeh  20:08, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
::Looks fine to me. Did the icons come from the game, or are they just ones that you created? Either one, they're good. •          21:11, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
:::I take it there aren't any existing Skyrim trainer icons in-game? If you used an official Skyrim icon to make it look like a trainer icon, well then that should definitely work as well as an official icon. Clever. They look good, well done ~ Dwarfmp 01:24, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
::::They come from the  . I didn't do much, just made them a little different.elliot   02:27, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
:::::So they do. Yup, definitely good. rpeh  06:10, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
::::::Just changed the page that lists Trainers to use this icon, as well as the one that lists people you canmarry. If you guys like how it looks, I'll change over the rest of the icons. •          06:35, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
  I'm going to assume that no response means you like it. To make the task easier, I created a template, {&#123; }}. It has a shortcut, {&#123; }}. I'm going to get the trainer icons on the actual trainer pages changed over now. •          05:17, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

All done. I changed around the template quite a bit, but everything should be stable now. Now all of the Skyrim pages use this template and by extension all of Elliot's new icons. •          07:49, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

:I'm not sure that this template is really needed. The current template tries to be useful for Oblivion, but doesn't really match how the icons are used in the Oblivion namespace [1] [2]. For  having a hover text of "Block" for the top icons is just wrong, the other icons would better display the level instead of the skill in the hover text like they did before. The links under the icons are just broken. All in all, it seems to be simpler and more flexible to just write   instead of trying to do the same with a template, especially since we use similar non-trainer icons on pages like . --Alfwyn 15:41, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

::I included cross-namespace functionality as more of a passing thought. I don't care about changing over the ones in Oblivion, as they are fine the way they are. I agree, the hover text on Skyrim:Trainers should not say "Block", although I'm not sure I'd describe it as "just wrong". I debated what would be best for displaying as the hover text, and I think that you're right, displaying the same way as it's done in Oblivion is probably best. And you're right, the links are broken - expect a fix to all of these things in the next few minutes.
::I decided to create this template so that if we decided to change the trainer icons to something else, it could be done easily rather than manually (which I had the pleasure of doing last time). We need to start phasing out the Oblivion icons. Also, because the template has a big #switch that chooses the icons, if we wanted to revert them back to OB icons it wouldn't be a problem. What I don't understand is why you're judging this so harshly. The only pages that use this are , , and all of the trainer's pages. •          23:17, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
:::Sorry for coming across harsh. But I think that it is better to discuss such templates a bit before using them widly (granted it's only about 50 pages in this case, not severe, but not really few either). This may be a bit painful at times (see), but the template did get improved in the process. This is harder if the template is already in wide use. As for switching back to Oblivion icons (if we would want to do that), this could be achieved by uploading a new version to the Skyrim image names too, without the need of a template. --Alfwyn 23:38, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
::::It's ok. Yeah, I suppose I did go and wildly implement this template. I didn't discuss it because it was a very straightforward template that needed a namespace, a skill, a level, and an image. I have no problem discussing templates, and I usually do; I guess this was an exception. And you're right, a template for this wasn't strictly necessary, but if we ever want to go back and change the hover text or something like that, then it's in one place rather than 50 places. •          00:28, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

  It is absolutely not a big deal. His edits did nothing to alter any content on the site; his edits just altered what was going on underneath. He took what was already there and made it a template. An exhaustive discussion is not necessary for something so minor. Your initial argument called for the total scrapping of a template based on a technicality with the template, not necessarily the template itself.  Now, saying the template is unnecessary in itself doesn't really follow what we have been doing on the wiki for... a long time. We have14 templates that take an image and make it a template or some slight variation. It probably would have been best if he ironed out the wrinkles before implementing it, but all errors can be fixed (and have been for awhile now).elliot   05:44, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

:As Elliot said, all of the wrinkles have been ironed out now. If we want to just keep this within Skyrim, then project complete. If we want to also convert the trainer icons within Oblivion (which is definitely not necessary), then I'll have to modify the template a bit more and then convert the hundreds of pages that use the plain icons... I think we should leave OB alone for this one •          06:42, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

::In my view, the template is about as important as the skillbook template, which was shot down with "We really don't need a template for this". Only that in that case there was a discussion before the implementation. Here we have a discussion after the implementation, so it looks a bit like the template seems to stay just because it was implemented/used faster, not because it is more useful. Granted, not a big deal in the sense that we should go and revert all the changes. --Alfwyn 17:07, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

:::No, that template is completely different. As I stated before, the template changes the code not the content (unlike the skillbook template). The icon templates we have serve the exact same purpose as {&#123; }}. So, if we are going on similarities and precedence, it stays. elliot   22:43, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Word Wall Translations

Do we have all of these down already, or are the word walls still not translated? I've been taking images of the word walls and am curious if I should also be writing down what they actually say. It'll save me a lot of time if we already have them down. --AKB   17:55, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
:They are on the shout pages, and I think they may be complete. See pages like . Chris3145 18:20, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

::Thanks (though I did get pointed towards them earlier while I was asking around). Still, it's not exactly where I'd think to look for these.--AKB   02:16, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

:::We could list all of the word walls on , which is where you'd expect to look. However, that would be redundant. I do agree that listing the word walls on the shout pages isn't very intuitive. I could go either way on this issue. •          05:47, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

::::Word Walls are not location based. While the word wall at location X will always have a word for Aura Whisper, it won't always have the same word. You could put word walls on a shout page or a page for word walls, but make sure you don't put them on a location page.Chris3145 18:42, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

:::::Really? That's rather interesting. While I hate redundancy, these things are kind of out of the way right now. Besides adding the ones that are guaranteed to locations (I assume some, like the word wall at Bleak Falls Barrow, and the for Throw Voice are guaranteed to be the same), that would be a way to add some actual content to the Word Wall article. Anyone have more thoughts on this?--AKB   18:54, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

::::::Here's a test page I made: It's pretty long, but it does have all of the info. I have to thank Elliot for helping make the templates used on the test - it wouldn't have been possible without his help. •          05:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

:::::::I just want to voice my support for the word walls being put on the word wall page.  I believe that this was the original intention when we first started putting up the word wall texts but they somehow ended up on the shout pages which is a bit counter intuitive. If nothing is changed some links ought to be added to the word wall page that makes it clear where the texts are. Coronus 02:18, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
::::::::That information can be found on the shout page. But I think it would be best to include Linkable Entries so a TOC can be used to ease navigation. But everything else definitely looks good. elliot   02:21, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
  Made them linkable entries - [ new link. The individual sections aren't showing up within the TOC. I remember running into this before, but I don't remember how to get it working. •          06:33, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

:Linkable entries only mean you can link to the specific text - they don't add anything to the TOC. All headers are linkable entries, though, so to make them show in the TOC, you'd have to convert all the LEs to headers. For example:    &ndash;Robin Hood    06:39, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
:: *smacks forehead* Wow, why didn't I think of that? Derp. Ah well. Here's the new link.
::There are two minor details that I don't like about the page. The TOC intrudes rather strangely on the actual text, depending on your window size; moving the TOC or setting up a hiddentable will fix this. Also, at least for me (on Chrome), the two bullets under "Locations" aren't actually indenting as bullets. Reformatting can fix this. Other than that, though, the page works. •          07:51, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
:::The bullets are a known problem with floating tables. There's a trick to fixing that...and as soon as I remember what it is, I'll let you know. :-/ It looks different in different browsers. For real fun, try looking at your page in IE9—it looks like Call of Valor and Clear Skies are bulleted! I'm not sure about the text intruding on the TOC. I do see a tiny bit of overlap at the top, but that's easily fixable by altering the padding.  &ndash; Robin Hood   09:11, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
::::  Bah! It largely worked, but failed on the left menu, clipping the indented bullets down to one pixel wide. It's way past bed time for me...I'll play some more tomorrow if I can.  &ndash; Robin Hood    10:30, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

:::::My recommendation was kind of vague, so I went ahead and   a version of the page using  . I think it works, and it keeps the headers above the information, instead of to the right.elliot   22:56, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

::::::Looks good. I was thinking that having the TOC taking up the entire left side even after it was done was a waste of space. Your style takes care of that quite nicely.  &ndash; Robin Hood   00:11, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

:::::::Looks way better than mine. •          05:33, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Lots of unsigned contributions confusing the talk pages

Even if my profile here at the UESP Wiki is not very new I have only recently become active here, so I still feel quite a newbie. I am still experienced enough to be frustrated by the talk pages being filled with a lot of unsigned and poorly formatted guest user contributions (and sometimes from registered newbies too). Is it okay to help these contributors by adding a signature or some kind of signature substitute to their posting based on the information found under the history tab? If so, is there guidelines for how one should do it?--MortenOSlash 06:15, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

:There are indeed quite a lot of newbies who don't know the customary wiki formatting. Yes, it's okay to sign or format comments, and in fact, we appreciate all the help we can get! For guidelines, see the "Altering comments" section here. &ndash; Robin Hood    07:01, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

::Thank you! My contribution to formatting will not be very systematically, but I will see what I can do. --MortenOSlash07:10, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Cross-Gamespace Updates

Has there been any discussion or policy about updating information across gamespaces? For example,  has been updated to include Oblivion and Skyrim memebers of the Hlaalu family, with appropriate notes to indicate that they're not actually in Morrowind. I'm just wondering what we should be doing about these sorts of edits.  &ndash; Robin Hood    05:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
:I don't believe there has been a discussion or a policy in general about this subject, but the discussion about whether we should include Dunmer family members in a later game can be found here. Wolok gro-Barok 13:22, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
::What bothers me about such updates is, when it changes the perspective off the article. I think an article should always be written from a (time) point of view appropriate to the namespace. Referring to future events in a note section may work, but putting future events into the main text and declaring it the present time is just confusing. --Alfwyn 15:00, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
:::I agree with Alfwyn here. The way the page is currently does not work or make much sense. Thuraya Salaris 15:07, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
::::I'm also in agreement. If this sort of thing needs to be mentioned at all (which probably varies by the specific topic), I'd say it's in Lore space. I'm thinking the same for things like Artifacts and such as well...a link to a relevant Lore article in a See Also section is probably all that's necessary, rather than cluttering up each page with cross-references to all the others. That expands geometrically as new versions of the items come out, which isn't a good use of space.  &ndash; Robin Hood    23:00, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
:::::Ditto. Alfwyn has a good point about perspective, though the real crux of the matter for me is the expectation of the reader. Users browsing a game namespace are presumably not seeking information from an unrelated game. Minor Edits 23:15, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

User category issue

Really minor thing, but I was just looking at the :Category:Users_from_Known_Countries page, and I noticed a number of people who show up in the category directly, instead of just in the specific country categories which are sub-categories of this.  Mostly this seems to be the result of Cargo Cult Coding, where people copied the userbox templates verbatim rather than transcluding them properly on their pages.  We could fix this easily, but it would involve editing people's user pages, which is generally not kosher.  We could try leaving notes on people's talk pages explaining the proper usage, but some of these accounts have not been active in some time.  Or I suppose we could just ignore it and let that category be somewhat cluttered by these.  Doesn't really matter much, but I thought I'd see what other people had to say about it. --TheRealLurlock  05:06, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
:heh, I noticed the same thing when I was looking at that page earlier, but didn't know who/where/how to bring up the issue. Inconsistency on sites like this is an irk of mine, so it was bugging me already. I vote against the 'just ignore it' option. Alphabetface05:10, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
::I vote ignore, but put a notice on the userbox page. Really, it seems like too big of a project for us to tackle right now especially considering all the Skyrim nonsense that we're dealing with (LOL HURR DURR LET'S DELETE ENTIRE TABLES CUZ IT'S FUNNY). Maybe we can revisit it once traffic slows down? Just my vote. —SkoomaManiac 05:15, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
:::  Edits like that fall into "maintenance" that doesn't substantially alter the user's page are considered trivial edits and are allowable under Wikipedia policy, so I'd say we should just fix any issues we find.  &ndash; Robin Hood    05:17, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
::::Fair enough, but I don't think we should turn it into a big project. If we happen to see something, correct it, otherwise let the issue be. As they say, gentlemen, we have larger aquatic reptilians to cook in hot fat. —SkoomaManiac 05:21, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
:::::Turns out 5 out of the 12 were false alarms. I just did null-saves on those pages and they disappeared. That only leaves us with 7 to worry about.  &ndash; Robin Hood    05:23, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
::::::4 of them anyhow - Elliot fixed his own page just now... --TheRealLurlock  05:25, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
	
:::::::  I was doing that too, RH. Haha We should just remove the 7 and be done with that. It's not that big of a deal.elliot   05:26, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
  All done.  &ndash; Robin Hood    05:50, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

IRC

Since Chatspike had to be pulled and the users dropped to zero, I went ahead and made a new irc channel for the wiki. You can find all information at . Basically, it provides a better server and host for the channel (plus it is more reliable). I spent the last few hours making sure everything was good to go with the help ofFirebolt. The room has a new bot that reads wiki syntax and makes it easier to link other people to pages. The server staff is also extremely friendly and willing to help out. 

Firebolt and myself are also in the process of getting a RecentChanges feed to flow into the IRC (either with all edits or just suspicious ones). This will help for people who don't want to be going through each edit. This is still in the preliminary stages, so nothing is set in stone. 

Once Krusty gets in there, I'll transfer it to him, and we'll make sure all access levels are transferred over as people register.elliot   04:12, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

:Cool, found it and registered my name a moment ago.      • •   04:35, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
::A note, examples of what the RecentChanges feed for IRC will look like (assuming it's even possible to do -- this would require Daveh's help) can be seen [irc://irc.freenode.net/cvn-wikia here] and [irc://irc.xertion.org/TESWiki/CVN here]. Firebolt 05:25, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
:::We welcome you all to Xertion ;) 60.241.45.250 15:05, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Adding an Akaviri Hieroglyphics Lore Page?

Should we have one?  In the Alduin's wall quest line, one encounters five Akaviri hieroglyphic symbols.  Three are identified by Esbern.  Considering that this represents a new linguistic tradition would it not be appropriate to have a lore section for them in the appendices?Coronus 06:09, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

:I'm not sure if this was proposed before, when Oblivion was released, but if it was we never made a page, as you know. In Oblivion, we had thejournal of an Akaviri messenger that displayed the Tsaesci language (and it was the Tsaesci who invaded Tamriel, and thus they who built the wall). Though initially I don't think anyone thought it would be appropriate, and many, including myself, still don't, I suppose such a Lore page could provide some purpose. The only difficulty would be translating these symbols and hieroglyphics, or pictographs, or whatever you wish to call them. That's just my two cents, though.--Kalis Agea  23:29, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

::The problem with creating that page just for Oblivion was that A) There was only one example of it and B) That example is impossible to truly translate. The Akaviri appparently have a complex series of characters that represent entire sentences. The characters themselves obviously have Asian influences, but most of them just look like made-up symbols. They have an extremely intricate grammatical structure that can't be understood with a single translation. Because of that, an Oblivion page was not needed - we had no info on the language. I agree with Kalis Agea, though - if you feel it's necessary, then go ahead and make it. •          15:51, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

:::I have been looking over the examples and have come to the conclusion that without a lot of work it would be impossible to make a worthwhile page since the only thing we know and can source is three symbols.  The page from Oblivion only complicates things and the lone sentence (or is it a paragraph?) in Skyrim, next to the blood seal, appears to have some meaning derived from not just the symbols but their geometric interrelationship.  I may try to decipher it all, make a sandbox of it, and present it here in the future but, for now, I will let the matter rest. Coronus 20:18, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

New template for marking up images

So I created a new template: CleanImage.  It is intended to replace the Cleanup template when used for images.  I was finding the Files Needing Cleanup category less than useful, because you have to click and load the images one at a time in order to see what's wrong with them.  This template will allow you to specify what the problem is, and will automatically categorize them so that other editors can easily see what needs fixing.  E.g. I don't have Skyrim, so taking new screenshots from the game is currently impossible for me, but I can easily fix things like color balance (and I have been doing so when I see it) without having access to the game.  I don't feel up to going through and changing all of them just now, but if anyone else wants to, it would be very much appreciated.  And it'd also help if people moved over to this template in the future, so that we can keep things organized.  And of course, if anyone can thing of improvements to the template, that'd be helpful as well.  I tried to make parameters for the most common problems I've seen, but there may be others I missed. --TheRealLurlock  06:10, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

:That'll be very useful. Good job!  &ndash;Robin Hood    06:23, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
::The aspect ratio tag really isn't needed as all images with incorrect aspect ratios automatically enter a hidden category. Other than that, I think this is a very useful idea! Thuraya Salaris 06:26, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
::::Category:Pages with Images in Non-Standard Aspect Ratios does exist, but it mainly only works with Summary templates.elliot   06:31, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
:::Looks good to me minus issues already brought up.      • •   06:36, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
::::Well, this template categorizes the image itself rather than the page it's used on, so it's not redundant with that category.  (So images used outside of a summary template can be marked as well.)  Mind you, I think that's a very minor problem anyhow.  If an image is 16:9 or something else similar instead of 4:3, it still looks fine.  It's only really a problem when people post portrait-oriented images and use them with templates. --TheRealLurlock   06:53, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Made a few improvements to the template.  It can now transclude the Rename template so you only need one markup template per page.  Also removed the general :Category:Files Needing Cleanup category unless you use the |other= parameter.  This makes it easy to see which files have and have not been tagged with this template.  All the categories it uses are sub-categories of that one anyhow, so you can still get to them all via the main category page.  It's just easier now to see what specifically needs to be fixed.  --TheRealLurlock   14:34, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

:Good ideas. Now the trick is getting people to remember to use it. :) Currently, we have 181 uses of Cleanup in File space, which isn't bad. I'm gonna suggest that we give it a month or so, then convert the (hopefully few) remaining ones over, just so we're being consistent.  &ndash; Robin Hood    18:21, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

::Okay, so I've gone and replaced all instances of   on image pages save one - SR-creature-The Pale Lady.jpg.  Having not played Skyrim I'm not really sure exactly what's wrong with this image.  Is that not what she's supposed to look like?  In most cases, I left the judgment of the original cleanup tagger alone, though there were a few cases where I disagreed.  In some cases, a reason for cleanup wasn't even given, so I had to kind of guess.  I also added a few of my own comments if they applied.  Hopefully the task of cleaning these up will be easier now that people can easily see what needs fixing.--TheRealLurlock   15:24, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Skyrim High Resolution Texture Pack (Official)/Creation Kit/Skyrim Workshop Released!

A bit of free dlc was released today, along with themod tools we've been waiting for, apparently. --AKB   18:21, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
:And Beth Blog dies... At least for me. --AKB   18:28, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
::One more update: All Bethesda products appear to be on sale through steam until the ninth, so that might deserve a mention. Finally Bethesda and Valve worked cooperatively to create a mod, it seems. link. --AKB   20:49, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Fall of the Space Core

As AKB mentioned above, Bethesda and Valve have created a mod called Fall of the Space Core, Vol. 1. Do we consider this official DLC? Should to be categorised in Skyrim or Skyrim Mod namespace? Will we cover it at all? If there's going to be a lot of Bethesda-endorsed mods, our coverage may end up being all-or-nothing. --Legoless 22:46, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

:I was going to assume that there would be very little official dlc, only one or two large expansion packs. However, considering the events of today, I think my initial assessment was dead wrong. We still need to detail what exactly the High Resolution Texture Pack does (which will be such a giant PITA as it's not clear what exactly has changed), as it's clearly marked as dlc. However, I think it would be fair to treat it as an "Unnoficial Official dlc". We should make note of it at [Skyrim:Official Plug-ins (which I made just now), but only as a note. Any article on it would probably fit in more at Tes5Mod. --AKB   23:44, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

::Do they make any attempt to make it lore compatible, or is it just an ES/Portal crossover? Having an "official" mod section in Tes5Mod: would work for me. --Alfwyn 23:49, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

:::No efforts were made to explain how this happened. Basically, the Space Core falls out of the sky (into a new ruined shack outside of the Western Watchtower), it shouts random lines about space, and you're free to pick it up. Besides a minor change to a location, all it does is add one item. --AKB   23:53, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
::::For those of you not familiar with portal 2. This was the corrupt core that spouted nonsense about space and later was actually sucked into space where it would have drifted to some unknown place. Thuraya Salaris 23:56, 7 February 2012 (UTC)
The ruined shack was there before the plug-in, but it does add the Space Core misc object, several lines of new dialogue, a pedestal to the Atronach Forge, a new helmet and some visual changes to the stats screen ;). Anyway, the description says "Valve and Bethesda have teamed up to bring you the Portal 2 Space Core mod". The plug-in file itself specifically states the creator as "Bethesda and Valve". So going by that, I would imagine it is indeed official. Even if BGS had little to do with creating the mod itself, both devs evidently want this to be seen as official content. I suggest we just whack it in the same list for now, and seperate by type/platform etc. later on when that becomes necessary.--Dorsal Axe 14:11, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Maps for place pages

I guess we will want to have maps for place pages like we have for Oblivion (example: [1]). The following are just some thoughts on the matter and we will need to find out how to organize the whole thing.

With the CK released, it is relatively easy to export maps like :File:SR-map-FortGreymoor02.jpg. Comparing it with the ingame local map, it is a bit rotated. This and the black background could be changed of course. Doors are not part of that map and we will want to add a legend referencing things like important treasure too. This could be done via the template   - it'll be slightly more work to set up instead of just editing the image, but it'll be easier to change later on. --Alfwyn 15:32, 8 February 2012 (UTC)
:Playing around with it a bit more, it looks like the CK generated maps may miss some parts the ingame one shows, this can be seen at the following map, which is "disconnected": :File:SR-map-FortGreymoor01.jpg. The alternative would be ingame screenshots of the local map, which has the problem that turning off "fog of war" with   doesn't work and the world map shining through a bit.--Alfwyn 22:32, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
::Teleportation FTW? But seriously, would it be possible to just layer the relevant maps, duplicating sections where necessary?  &ndash; Robin Hood    00:01, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
:::I took the freedom to include the local map topic at  to document/organize things a bit. Ingame screenshots are doable, but will need some work to clean up. See [1] for problems with a naive approach.--Alfwyn 17:34, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Patrollers Wanted
 

Okay, so ignoring the tacky 60s style of advertising, the message is genuine. We've added a lot of Patrollers since the release of Skyrim, but despite how many we've added, we've still only barely been holding even in terms of making sure that all the incoming information is checked to be sure it's not vandalism, and that it's as accurate as we can make it. And now that the Creation Kit is out, many of us will probably need to spend a lot more time on verifying accuracy. So we need a few more Patrollers, and I know I and the other Patrollers have seen several good editors out there who could really help us out.

What do you have to do? All patrolling is really about is that when you're going through the Recent Changes list—which you're already doing anyway if you answered yes to the above—you mark edits as appropriate and accurate, or if they aren't, you take whatever action is needed to fix the problem. That's really all there is to it. For detailed information, have a look at the Patrollers page.

How do you become one? To become a Patroller, you can either nominate yourself on the Nominationspage, or if you're reluctant to do that, just approach any current Patroller or Administrator on their talk page or by e-mail and they can look over your edits and nominate you if they feel you're ready.  &ndash; Robin Hood    03:51, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

What belongs in Tes5Mod?

So in light of some recent edits, I was wondering what exactly belongs in the Tes5Mod namespace. Leviathan1753 has created pages for his mod  (with about 100 edits), which he also started awiki for. Now, I am not a big modder, so I can't really comment on the content of any mods, but is this necessary? Should we host this type of documentation for mods that are barely out there? And should we set up more define guidelines for inclusion? (I'm mainly looking to stir discussion because I can't really think of any specific path to head down.)elliot   07:17, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
:Well, if he has a wiki, then I think his content should either be removed from here or be moved to his userspace. It is not the UESP's job to be a "Mod Wiki". I can understand the inclusion of larger, more popular mods, like Wrye Bash or the Unofficial Patches, but it is pointless to include every small mod made.      • •   08:18, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
::This has already been discussed to death at , resulting in the guidelines placed on theOblivion Mod main page, and then copied to the Skyrim Mod main page.  If there's any need to rehash this, I don't think the discussion belongs on the admin noticeboard -- it's a decision that needs to be made by the community.  Similarly, any discussion of whether SkyProc meets those existing guidelines belongs on a Tes5Mod talk page.--Nephele  16:05, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
:::Well, I brought it up because I felt it needed to be addressed again (otherwise I wouldn't have brought it up). The current guideines are extremely vague (aka pointless). I think there should be some type of proposal for inclusion with a case by case basis. There is no way we can come up with an all inclusive guideline that will actually be helpful. elliot  03:47, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

::::Daveh pretty much addressed this, so it looks like we have our answer. elliot   04:10, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Lore Pages for Holds?

I brought this issue up on  and got conflicting opinions, and since I live in abject fear of getting reverted, I'm here to get more thoughts.

Do we make lore pages for holds, separate from their capital cities?

In Oblivion, we apparently only made lore pages for the cities. Few if any of those city pages speak of the surrounding area; some of them don't even acknowledge that they're county seats. Effectively, we did not make lore pages for the counties of Cyrodiil in Oblivion. I'm not sure when and by whom that decision was made, but it was likely sensible in that context. It would make sense for the city pages to expand their scope a little, but that's beside the point.

Daggerfall was somewhat reversed; there are lore pages for kingdoms, which naturally include the eponymous cities. There are lore pages for geographic regions in Morrowind, but counties never became an issue because the political landscape wasn't specifically mapped out in that game (to my knowledge).

The biggest discernible difference for Skyrim is that the names of many of the holds are different from the corresponding capital city, which seems important because it makes it harder to maintain the fiction that they're the same things. Accordingly, some editors have seen fit to create lore pages for those more distinct holds, such as  and .

Meanwhile, the pages where the region and city names are the same are still following the Oblivion scheme, such as  and. Giving one hold a lore page and denying it to another ultimately makes no sense to me, regardless of the name.

My inclination is to start making pages for the holds. I think at the very least, if we're going to combine the capital cities and the holds into single articles, we're gonna have to make a series of redirects anyways. Further, holds are likely deserving of snippets on multi-topic place pages, so it doesn't make much difference where the text will actually be entered there or if it's transcluded from a stub. 

Subsidiary Issues
I imagine titles should be "Falkreath Hold", "Whiterun Hold", etc. I don't think putting hold in parentheses is necessary since it's part of the proper names. It will look stupid for "Winterhold Hold", but that will look stupid with or without parentheses.

There's something else I'm forgetting ... oh, well.      •   03:22, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

:I would tend to agree that there should be separate lore pages for each hold, mostly because we already have pages for regions like and . --Halfstache 03:33, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
::I agree. Five of the holds already have lore pages and there is no reason why the other holds should be excluded. It's not like these holds are less important just because they share their name with the hold capital. As for Winterhold, I suppose the hold might be named Winterhold (region), to discern between the capital and the hold. This disambiguation is not necessary for the other holds since their names aren't exactly alike. I'm not sure what you mean with In Oblivion, we apparently only made lore pages for the cities. since every region has a lore page. They are often not more than single sentences,  but that's beside the point. Wolok gro-Barok 16:57, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

::: I assume Minor Edits is referring to the counties of Cyrodiil, rather than the geographical regions (e.g., County Bruma).--Legoless 17:10, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
::::Ah, that makes sense. Still, I think it's best to treat the holds in Skyrim like the regions in Oblivion. Wolok gro-Barok 17:57, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

  That pesky little issue I couldn't remember before was the images. I assume we're not going to continue using images of the Oblivion map for Skyrim content, but I can't find a really decent image of the general Skyrim map, let alone several that focus on or highlight the respective holds. For now, I'm simply including the symbols of the respective holds in lieu of a better image and citing to current where appropriate (see  and ). I couldn't get the banners to work well with the lore place template, plus I thought they were more likely to bear a connection with only the cities, not the hold in general. I think only "Winterhold (region)" remains to be created, which I'm working on right now.      •   01:32, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

New tables for smaller towns and settlements
Just a quick update on what is going on with the settlements. Honestly, all the residents tables were a bit odd-looking, especially compared to the nice tables we have on pages like Dawnstar. Kiz asked for a project, and I suggested he changed them all –so we can have good-looking, consistent pages for towns, both great and small. Hope that is okay with everybody. --Krusty 18:17, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
:First two done:  and . Thoughts? --          19:28, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
::I think the extra header is a tad redundant, but the rest of it looks good. •          20:54, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
:::Extra header, do you mean the caption? (the |+ part?) If so, I put it there so it made sense on pages like . Unless you want to make it hide itself on the proper page name. Or make it so that it (or a normal header) is put there manually on pages like SR:People? --          09:53, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
:::EDIT: More - I've made a tweak to Darkwater Crossing People, if you look there (and on Darkwater Crossing you see no Caption/Header. However, if you look here and look at Darkwater Crossing's entry (top on in the towns section) it has a header. I'll do this for ones in the towns and orcish stongholds lists, since they don't already have there own header. --          10:38, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
::::After looking through it a little more, it actually makes the page look awkward. I think it would be better to use a       level header (aka three =). It will keep everything even plus put it in the TOC.elliot   15:27, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
:::::Well, i've only got 4 or so more to do. I can change them if I know what they want changing to. --          18:32, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
::::::See . The page is messed up though because it uses h1 headers, which should be avoided if necessary.elliot   08:45, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
:::::::I've made what I believe are the last desired tweaks to the People page, anything else want changing? --          21:06, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Labyrinthian (quest)

I'm going through all of the   and cleaning out any that aren't blank and adding basic info to the ones I can. Anyways, I came across sr:Labyrinthian (quest) and I'm not sure if this is an actual quest or if it's supposed to be The Staff of Magnus. There is a quest ID,  , but no quest data. Is this even a real quest? •          01:39, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

:As near as I can tell at a quick glance, it looks to be associated with The Staff of Magnus, as you suspected. There's no quest data for it that's visible to the player - it seems to just be a convenient way to handle some of the programming. They've done that in one or two other cases that I've seen as well (but don't ask me when, I just remember noticing it at some point).

:In terms of what we should to about it, I think it's probably best to Prod that page, and should any related data actually need to be mentioned, it should be mentioned on The Staff of Magnus...perhaps under the Quest Stages table like we do when we note which quest stages were skipped?  &ndash; Robin Hood    01:49, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

::Okay, thanks. I have another question. Should  just redirect to ? A subsection with the data on her remains could be added, if it was necessary. •          03:20, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

:::Makes sense to me.  &ndash; Robin Hood   03:37, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

Skyrim Quest Rewards

 As it turns out, a great many Skyrim quests use standardized rewards. To make it easy to insert this data, I've created a table template called  . It takes one parameter which is the size of the reward: small, medium, large, or wow (see example at right). Don't blame me for that last name—that's what they use in the Creation Kit! At some point, I'll hunt down every last quest that uses the standardized rewards, but in the mean time, feel free to add the template to any quests you find that need it.  &ndash; Robin Hood   08:09, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
: Looks nice and consistent with the OB tables. Is it possible to add the tables using a bot? I ask because it is rather hard to determine the 'infected' quests, even using the game files, and it would take an awful lot of edits to get everything right - and it would clog up RC quite a bit. The bot would have to change all the rewards in to a Leveled gold-link to a header atop the Journal Entries. Is that even possible?--Krusty 10:55, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
:: Currently, none of my tools can read the reward information, so there's no way to automatically get the information needed by a bot.--Nephele  16:19, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
::: Ditto here. I'll need to look into it in more detail, hopefully today or tomorrow, but it looks like they're giving the rewards in at least two different ways, perhaps three, some of which are buried deep in the game data, and would be hard to mine out. I'm not even sure if some of them are relevant. If anyone with the CK is looking for a project, feel free to beat me to this, but if not, I'll get to it soon (I hope). You're looking for the leveled items that start with  , then go through all their Use Info. Normally, I wouldn't try to pawn this off on someone else, but there are still days where I don't have time to play because of all the patrolling and requests for information, etc.  &ndash; Robin Hood    20:03, 13 February 2012 (UTC)
 

Singular or Plural Page Titles?

This is one of these things I should've figured out by now (pretty sure I've asked this before, too), but should page titles generally be singular or plural? The titles on some namespace pages covering the same topic differ from each other. Examples: ,, , and . It makes it more difficult to transclude links. It's not an insurmountable problem, and I'm sure that moving either of these two example pages would already entail a great deal of link maintenance to do it right. But if we forgo the #ifeq or #switch templates every time we want to mention a hold, dragon, etc., in transcluded text, it will be easier in the long run. So, if I actually find the wherewithal to solve either the example pairs above before someone else cares enough to, should I make them singular, or plural?      •   00:14, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
:I've always felt that an article should refer to its subject in the singular form. To me, a page about a Hold should be dedicated first to defining what exactly a Hold is, not explaining the Holds themselves; in terms of definition, singular is usually best. That's just a personal opinion of mine, though. Hopefully that made enough sense to be intelligible. --Kalis Agea  00:19, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
::If there is to be a standard, then I think there is a strong base of precedence for singular titles in encyclopedias. Using "hold/s" as an example, if we look at Wikipedia or the Encyclopedia Britannica, for example, we will find "state", "county", "city", etc. We will find "dragon", "fox", etc. But we will also find that searches for the plural forms of the terms direct to the appropriate singularly-named pages. There may be some titles that make sense as plural entries, for example if the name of something is plural, and there may be cases where judgments might need to be made. "The Companions" comes to mind as something we might think of as the name of an entity that is plural, but in similar situations on the two encyclopedias I mentioned, they seem to go to great pains to make the official name of pages/entries singular. "The Freemasons" comes to mind as the name of a such an entity, and both encyclopedias use the official name "freemasonry". "Freemasons" appears only as the name of a page (Wikipedia) of a musical band so named. To match, I guess that the current "Companions" page should be titled "Companion", the idea being that a user might search for information with the question in mind, "What is a Companion?" If there is some clear net benefit to start systematically making changes, and someone proposes a policy or guideline which is adopted, I would be happy to help out. Or, less drastically, we could propose such a policy or guideline and then just create and change into singular forms gradually. I guess people concerned with issues like Minor Edits's or someone who does a lot of automated or batch process work might have more insight into whether it's worth trying to coordinate an effort to quickly bring everything into a standard.  --JR  02:39, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
:::Very thorough, JR. I agree that the article should refer to its subject in the singular form (e.g., Dragon over Dragons), but I think that names that are plural (e.g., The Companions) should be kept plural, largely because users will be interested in "The Companions", not "a Companion". That is just my opinion. •          03:35, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
::::I think it depends on the subject.  Certainly some page titles should definitely be plural, such as those containing lists.  It would be weird to think of a    page, for example.  Also, any group of entities which are usually considered in the plural (Companions, Stormcloaks, Divines, etc.) should be listed that way in the title.
::::As for Dragons, it might be worth having both - I'd expect a page entitled "Dragons" to contain a list of known Dragons, while a "Dragon" page would contain just general information about the species itself.  (Assuming there's enough info to fill two articles.)  It's possible that it could depend on namespace, though I'd think that our current arrangement might be somewhat backwards.  The Lore article being a more general description makes more sense in the singular, while the Skyrim page being an actual listing of dragons makes more sense as a plural, but we have them the other way 'round.  Granted, the Skyrim page contains a good deal more than just a list, which might mean that it could be split into two articles.  Keep the general info on "Dragon" and put the lists onto "Dragons".  (Link them to each other of course, with one of those disambig things on the top of the page as well as within the articles.)  Any thoughts on that idea? --TheRealLurlock  05:59, 14 February 2012 (UTC)
:::::A very good point regarding list pages. You've all convinced me that it actually is appropriate to have Lore:Hold be singular and Skyrim:Holds remain plural. I think Jak Atackka's right regarding Lore:Dragons, although I don't think it's worth changing at this point, as almost a hundred pages link to it and the site automatically redirects searches anyways. Anyways, what I'm taking away from this: Singular page titles unless it's a plural name or a list page. Thanks for the guidance.      •   04:03, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

More DLC Stuff

You may want to take a look at this story if you haven't already. Since Todd says most of this stuff may never see its way into the game (and I imagine the vast majority of it won't as most of these things wouldn't easily ship with anything else. They'd have to release this stuff as free DLC, I'd imagine.), there is no need for any kind of preview articles for any of this, but it is all quite interesting to see what Bethesda can do in a week. --AKB   21:05, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Adam Adamowicz Concept Art

Bethesda has recently released over 1,100 images of Skyrim and Oblivion concept art by the late Adam Adamowicz. I haven't gone through all of them, but most of the art seems to be new. I was about to upload them myself before I saw the insane amount. I thought I should bring it up on the Community Portal, seeing as uploading them will be quite the project. I'm also looking for volunteers to help upload the images. If you're interested, please contact me on my talkpage or over IRC if I'm on. Once we have al the images up, we can decide how to organise them. If you have any concerns before this goes ahead, please voice them here. --Legoless 16:08, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Edit: I forgot to mention that the concept art can be seen here andhere. I've uploaded a few of the images to the site, which can be seen in the Shivering Isles concept art category. --Legoless 16:10, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Image aspect ratio policy

I'd like to propose a change to our site policy on image aspect ratios.  Currently, the rule is 1:1 for NPCs and 4:3 for pretty much everything else.  While I agree on the 1:1 rule for NPCs, I'm not so sure that 4:3 should be a requirement.  Certainly we should be encouraging landscape rather than portrait orientation of images, but any more than that seems somewhat draconian and unnecessary.  With the increase in users with wide-screen displays, it's likely that more and more of our screenshots are going to be in other aspect ratios, 16:9 being most common, and these quite honestly look fine.  Forcing people who may lack the technical skills or software to crop their images before posting, or marking such images as incorrect and forcing someone else to make the crop, just seems like it shouldn't be needed.  Looking at the number of images inImages with incorrect aspect ratio which are perfectly fine other than not meeting that 4:3 ratio, not to mention the likely hundreds of others which have not been tagged, it just seems wrong to try to shoehorn them all into a fixed standard shape.  For example, I just did a color correct on SR-place-Four_Skull_Lookout.jpg.  By all rights I should have cropped it down as well, but I couldn't bring myself to do it, as it would mean either losing that large rock on the left or the nice tree on the right, or chopping both in half, or squashing the image in order to keep the composition intact.  None of these seemed right to me, and I think the image is fine as is, even if it doesn't meet the site's policy on aspect ratio.  In short, I'd like to propose that we change the policy to say that images should be in landscape format, maybe somewhere between 1:1 and 2:1, so we can rule out the opposite extreme.  (Though I imagine you could get some really nice panoramas which would be even wider, but those would not be for general use.)  We'd remove the CleanImage tag for all images which meet these requirements, and only use that for images which are clearly problematic.  Any thoughts?  --TheRealLurlock   15:02, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Neutral: I have no idea whether there is a rationale for keeping a 4:3 requirement, but I would take a lot more screenshots if I didn't have to re-start my game every time I wanted to take one, besides the extra cropping step. My default is 16:9.--JR  16:51, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
:I changed my response to "neutral" instead of "support". It was not really appropriate for me to "officially" support a policy change because I am not aware of all the implications such may have. All three "oppose" reasons appear thoughtful and suggest that there are some good reasons on both sides. Actually, I don't have to restart my system to take 4:3 images. I was thinking about a slightly different issue. Thanks for raising the idea and soliciting feedback, anyway, Lurlock. --JR 03:26, 18 February 2012 (UTC) 
Oppose:While I agree that some 16:9 images loses quite a bit of info when cropped, it’s been a standard for so long, I honestly thin it’s too late to change policy now. Furthermore, 16:9 thumbs tends to be too small (on my settings anyway) and I find it hard to make good page layout with all these small letterboxes. I’ll have to vote ‘no’ – and I’ll even cross my fingers that this doesn't get changed.--Krusty 21:53, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Oppose for now. The main thing with images with a greater ratio than 4:3 is that as thumbnails, they get to be of poor quality. Also, it is a good thing to a keep a standard while having images so everything looks crisp. I don't see a reason to change the requirement right now or in the near future. elliot   01:57, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
Oppose: While it pains me to vote this way, as I'd love to upload 1920x1080, this choice should have been made before the game was released. We have far too many images already up that would need to be changed to the new standard. You're not just talking about place pictures but interior and quest images that have all been done in 4:3. Making this change now would mean that nearly all the image progress that has been made will be lost. If you take a look at the upload logs you'll see that not a whole lot of people are even uploading images. This would put the weight of the change on a small select few individuals. Furthermore to add some real numbers into the mix just between place and quest images there are currently 728 of which only 215 are not 4:3. This does not even include interior images that would no doubt bring the gap between correct and not correct even farther apart than it already is. Thuraya Salaris 02:28, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
Neutral: I'm also neutral on this. I agree that it would make picture uploads a lot easier for people, but the downside is that it breaks the consistency of having all similar types of pages have thumbnails that are the exact same size. On some pages, we'd have wider ones, on some, narrower. I don't really think it's a big deal by any stretch, but it is kind of nice to have things consistent.  &ndash; Robin Hood    04:20, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
:Comment: I think some people may have misunderstood the nature of this proposal.  I'm not saying we should change from 4:3 to 16:9, but instead saying that either would be acceptable.  There's no need to replace all the 4:3 images with 16:9 or anything else.  Basically what I'm saying is that the majority of the images (whether 4:3, 16:9, or any other landscape aspect ratio) are fine and there should be no reason to change them simply because they don't meet some arbitrary standard.  This is a matter of simply relaxing the standards to be more inclusive so that more editors can upload images without worrying that they'll be the wrong shape, not repeat NOT a matter of changing from one standard to another. --TheRealLurlock   06:24, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
:: Comment: I get it, but I still think we should stick to 4:3. A page like  is a prime example of how messy things can become if we stray away from consistent image standards. Some image sizes works as thumbs, others (like the Mudcrab) simply gets too small and you can hardly see what it is supposed to be. While I originally voted ‘yay’ for 16:9 images back in the day before SR, I’ve changed my mind, simply because of the way the Wiki handles 16:9 thumbs. And, as pointed out by Thuraya and RH70, there’s no real need to start over at this point in time. Consistency looks good. --Krusty 10:17, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
::: Comment: Honestly, the biggest problem on that page is obviously the bear, but I get your point in this context.  I'd say however that creature pictures should fall under the same rules as NPC pictures, which I'm not proposing a change to.  That page would be much better if everything were 1:1.  Where I think the current policy falls apart is when it applies to images which are pretty much only used by themselves on a single page, like quest images or place images.  Without all the other images nearby to compare against, they look prefectly fine on their own.  (In fact I think for places at least that wide screen format is even better than 4:3, because you get that nice panoramic view.)  I'm just suggesting that for images that are used on their own and not next to others, that we can relax the standards so as to avoid having to do a whole bunch of work cropping or reshooting hundreds of images which are really just fine the way they are, and save the effort for images which really are problematic (and I would include most of the images on the Creatures page you just mentioned among the list that do need replacement, but not most of the quest/place images).  --TheRealLurlock  14:19, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
:::Comment: That would be more of a guideline than a policy, and it's the reason I won't support this. The precise moment you lower your standards or slip away from them, chaos ensues. There is nothing wrong with the 4:3 ratio, so I see no reason to alter it.elliot   17:38, 18 February 2012 (UTC)
Oppose: I'm coming out and opposing this simply because of Elliot's point above: to echo him, there's no problem with the current ratio standard. I would prefer if it was left alone, and I can't see the merit behind having panoramic views for every second article.--Legoless 19:46, 18 February 2012 (UTC)