UESPWiki:Administrator Noticeboard/Archive 39

Getting redirected to mobile pages

After some debugging I've reached the conclusion that this is happening because of the Squid cache server you use: a user visits a page from his mobile phone, and the mobile version of the page gets cached in the Squid server. The next person who loads the page gets the mobile version, regardless of what platform he's browsing from, because that's what's saved in the Squid cache.

This only happens to unregistered users, since logged in users don't have their caches paged by Squid. If it happens to you, you can press Ctrl+Shift+R to ask Squid to bypass its own cache and serve you the current page. 

But, please, fix it. It is very annoying. --Sandbox (talk) 17:27, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

:Thanks for the note...this shouldn't be the case as the desktop and mobile versions of the page are different URLS (en.uesp.net and en.m.uesp.net) but a quick test seems to agree with you. I'll check it out further and see if it can be fixed. -- Daveh   17:55, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

::So I must have got really lucky with my quick tests as I can't recreate the issue in on other page or with the original page ( once I purge it. If you can give some more explicit examples of how you are testing it so we can replicate that would be great. Squid does cache using the full URL so it would seem that this is not the complete issue at the very least. -- Daveh   18:04, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

:::One of your assumptions is wrong. All users get the mobile theme from en.uesp.net, provided they have the user-agent of a mobile browser.
:::A quick way to reproduce this with a computer would be like this. Do all of this while logged off!
:::* Open Google Chrome and hit F12, this will open the developer tools toolbox. At the top-left side of this toolbox, the second icon next to the mouse cursor is a mobile and a tablet ("Toggle device toolbar"), click it. You'll see the current page has stretched; click the dropdown on top of it that says "Responsive" and switch it to some mobile phone, "Galaxy S5" is OK. Now, you're sending the user-agent of a Samsung mobile phone.
:::* Open  -- depending on who visited it the last time, it'll be the full or the mobile version.
:::* Press Ctrl+Shift+R to ask Chrome to reload the page, telling the web server to completely disregard the cache. This will make Squid destroy its own cache and ask MediaWiki for the webpage. You'll see the mobile version appear as it should: MediaWiki is being told you're a mobile phone, and therefore you're getting the wiki with the mobile theme.
:::* Open a new tab. This time, it's the normal browser; you're not pretending to be a mobile. Open  You'll get the mobile version of the wiki. This confirms it's cached in Squid like that because you just visited it from a mobile phone. Press Ctrl+Shift+R, this way Squid will destroy its cache and ask MediaWiki again for the webpage. You'll get the full version, because you have the user-agent of a computer.
:::* Switch back to the mobile tab. Click the URL field and press enter to reload the webpage making sure you're not bypassing the Squid cache. You'll get the full version of the page, because that's what you cached. If you press Ctrl+Shift+R again from here, you'll get the mobile version.
:::* And so on.
:::I hope you can reproduce it. --Sandbox (talk) 18:18, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

::::Ahh, that was it. For some reason the "autodetect" portion was still on. I turned that off and have to figure out how to auto-redirect mobile devices to the mobile site (which I thought it was doing). -- Daveh   15:40, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

:::::I made some changes which include a forced redirect to the mobile site to prevent the cache poisoning. Give it a go and see if that works for you now or not. It seems that MobileFrontEnd doesn't redirect itself and it is handled by another part of MediaWiki or the HTTP server in Wikipedia. -- Daveh   19:37, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

::::::tyvm. --Sandbox (talk) 09:45, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

::::::Well, I have just realised this keeps happening. The only difference now is that instead of the whole mobile page being cached, what's cached is the redirect to en.m.uesp.net, but the effect is the same. --Sandbox (talk) 11:04, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

::::::: Of course it does...:) I made a quick change to try and prevent Squid from caching the 302 redirect. Once again it "seems" to work in a few quick tests but if you find otherwise let me know! -- Daveh   19:13, 16 June 2017 (UTC)
::::::: Also had to make an unrelated change in order to get HTTPS to work for the mobile changes so the "en.m.uesp.net" mobile sites are no longer going through Squid which prevents them from being cached at all (at least for the moment until I can figure out multiple SSL certificates in Squid 2.x). -- Daveh   20:14, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

 Starting a new line - i have noticed that this has started happening again recently. (Like before, its fairly annoying, as it autochanges every time). Timeoin (talk) 21:55, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Testing New Ad Network

I happened to have a chat with some from Curse recently who mentioned that they run an ad network for gaming related sites which includes better vetting of ads to reduce/eliminate the number of "bad ads" (auto scrolling, auto playing, inappropriate content, etc...). I've signed up for a 2 month test run with them to supply all the ads on UESP during this time. I'm setting it up this week so except a bunch of changes from day to day. I'm hoping this give us roughly the same revenue to keep the site running and reduce user frustration with ads.

If you run into page errors or ad issues of any kind don't hesitate to let me know (Curse ads are not yet active). -- Daveh   14:15, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

:I'm sure a lot of people will be happy if it is an improvement. Some others will be happier with the new puns available (including the ability to Curse ads).      18:03, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

::In a confused second I found myself looking for the "Like" button to express my support. —MortenOSlash (talk) 20:26, 19 June 2017 (UTC)

:::I'm not sure if this is an error, but as of today, AdBlock blocks ads but leaves a blank space at the top where the ad was, instead of collapsing that blank space. I'm also seeing ads at the top when logged in (or a blank space if AdBlock is enabled), but I have not logged in for a while so I don't know if that is new or was intentionally changed.         14:49, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

::::I have the same blank space as Vely, however I don't see any ads at all and I don't even have an ad blocker.        15:18, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

:::::I'm not one to complain about blank spaces if they are caused by ad-blockers, but I've just tested with Chrome and Opera (as well as my use of Firefox) and the blank spaces at both the top and bottom are persisting when the inbuild blockers are active. The blank space can be rather off-putting and looks odd, so something should be done, whether removing it or putting one of those explanatory messages about why ads are needed. Feels odd to be cursing the lack of ads.      23:02, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

 I did not even know there was an inbuilt blocker in Chrome, and I have certainly not actively turned it on. (Where is the setting for that?) Still there are these blank spaces on the top and bottom of the articles where the ads were supposed to be. How can this ad network give any revenue if the more common browsers are blocking the ads by default? —MortenOSlash (talk) 08:49, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

:My mistake, Chrome is planning to add one (by next year), I thought they already had one. Without my installed one the ads appear, with it blank spaces.      11:50, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

::All the more an issue. The ads are not there on my Chrome. Just an empty space over the article and an empty space under it. And I have no known adblock software. The ads are there with Edge. —MortenOSlash (talk) 17:42, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

:::I have got the ads now, with no change in my settings. (Still Chrome on Win10) —MortenOSlash (talk) 05:40, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

  As a temporary workaround for the top ad taking up space when it shouldn't, I've added a means of suppressing that specific ad altogether. To do so, just add   to your common.css page  on a new line. See mine if you want an example. A few provisos: only logged-in users can do this, since IP users can't customize their CSS (at least, not via the wiki), and this may change or be removed at any point, since it's not an ideal long-term solution and it will obviously depend whether we want to keep the new ads in the long-run.  &ndash;       21:30, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

:Unless I'm missing something this isn't active wiki-wide nor have I touched my cs, yet the top space is gone. I've logged in and out, and on both Firefox and Opera the space is gone, though it remains on Chrome (no adblocker). Perhaps it just needed a purge with the new ads?      22:56, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

::Somehow, I'm not really surprised, even though nothing I did should have had that effect. There have been a lot of different reports of ads, space, or nothing, with no apparent rhyme or reason. Caching of some kind could well be part of the problem. At least for those who are just getting a big blank space, this'll let them get rid of it. I'm largely leaving the rest to Dave, though, because I don't actually know what all was involved with the new ads, and there's clearly things affecting them that I'm unaware of, so I didn't want to poke around too much.  &ndash;       23:14, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

:::Can we go back to the old ads please? Or at the very least block the ones with autoplaying videos. I've been getting those on every other page, and you'll probably go deaf if you dare open more than 2 tabs. There's no way to report them, and I don't think the Steam Overlay browser supports any adblockers. 98.18.163.16 00:22, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

::::I see all these postings about video ads, but I can not seem to have registered any of them myself. Are there wide variations on who gets them and not? —MortenOSlash (talk) 13:56, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Redirect Escaping Issue

This is probably a pretty specific issue, but when you search with the   bang on DuckDuckGo, it sends you to e.g.   which gets 301 redirected to the appropriate language subdomain such as  , but the search field seems to get double URL encoded in the process, so when it gets decoded after the redirect, colons show up as   in the search field and there's no results. This also happens with spaces, turning them into  , so the search is basically unusable via the DDG bang. Hopefully this can be fixed, as it would otherwise be super convenient! DuBistKomisch (talk) 15:36, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

:This appears to be a problem with their coding, as it also fails when using it to search wikipedias subnamespaces. It appears they are using hex codes when converting, rather than the standard html codes used on mediawikis.      17:41, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

beyondskyrim.uesp.net?

I'd like to bring up the issue of this new wiki and point editors towards this discussion. —Legoless (talk) 16:39, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

:Unless Dave has given his permission that wiki is infringing on our name and our site/servers. I don't believe it has permission seeing as it makes no sense to have a separate wiki on the same site, detracting from the main one, and it is duplicating the layout by wikipedia and not here. I can't see any links for contacting the site owners but if they are the same people as the ones editing here I suggest they either cease and desist or let it be known that they have dave's permission to use his servers. I've emailed Daveh, as others probably have too, to get this sorted.      16:59, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

:: It's hosted by us/Dave, apparently at the request of the mod authors. However, I also agree that it's damaging to our own Tes5Mod documentation to set up a competing wiki. If we're hosting it, it should be on our platform. —Legoless (talk) 17:04, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

::: First of all, there's definitely no infringement issues, as it was set up by Dave together with one of the Beyond Skyrim team leaders. I hope Dave doesn't mind me posting this, but here's the discussion between myself and him after the BS developers concluded that they wanted to ditch their unused wiki at Dark Creations:
 
:::Now personally, if Dave is happy with the concept, then so am I, and since the BS wiki itself is a product of the BS team, then I don't think the UESP wiki administration has any say on whether it actually exists or not. The alternative would be that it's just hosted somewhere else. --Enodoc (talk) 17:46, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

:::: The Tamriel Rebuilt content we host is in-depth and high-standard, and includes the Stirk Oblivion mod in addition to the main TES3 project which is still updated by members of the modding team and UESP editors alike. The Tamriel Rebuilt website mentioned in the conversation above is not a (public) wiki. This Beyond Skyrim website, on the other hand, is in direct competition with UESPWiki. As you said, its existence is a decision for the modding team, but I think we're shooting ourselves in the foot with regards to our own BS documentation if this goes ahead. —Legoless (talk) 18:00, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

:::::The logic of having a semi-competing public wiki hosted on the same server wasn't really the concern for me. My concern was whether it had permission to be there and if it does then that's fine. There's not really any notes about what the wiki is for, or how it intends to avoid duplicity with existing content here (unless of course it intends to duplicate sections of the main wiki). This may all be due to it being in its infancy, but someone must surely have anticipated the anxiety such a wiki would create upon its creation and sought to allay any concerns by being open and upfront about its existence. The users on this wiki have always been concerned about the use of our materials without proper attribution or permission, and with good cause, so to see a new wiki using our name with no apparent endorsement was very concerning.      19:08, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

::::::From the BS team's perspective, the draw for having a separate wiki over making use of Tes5Mod space was so that they had direct administrative control over it and were not bound by any of the UESP restrictions on what is actually allowed in modspace. The draw for them being hosted on the UESP server was intended to be to foster cross-cooperation between the two wikis; they get a spot on the server of a well-respected Elder Scrolls fansite, we get links from them for documentation of the primary Skyrim gameplay aspects, which they then don't need to duplicate as they are mostly unchanged, and it frees us from having to consider how to document Beyond Skyrim in the Depth over Breadth category because we know there's a dedicated wiki specifically for that purpose.

::::::For the end user, the result is essentially the same; if they're here looking for Beyond Skyrim, they'll start off at either  or a root page in Tes5Mod (yet to be created). From there, if we have all the content ourselves, they will either end up navigating through numerous subpages of that one Tes5Mod root page, or if we link to the BS wiki, they'll be navigating through the pages there. As long as they can find what they're looking for, I don't really think they'll care whether it says "UESPWiki" or "Beyond Skyrim Wiki" at the top. Beyond that, anyone who enters the BS wiki from other entry points, such as the official BS website, would see the close relationship with UESP and may then be inclined to visit us as well. If they were off on their own, that connection wouldn't be there. 

::::::Being labelled as the "official Beyond Skyrim Wiki" rather than hidden away as the n'th mod covered by UESP also allows them some legitimacy, as I have always believed that there is less support for the creation of unofficial wikis on a topic if a specific community has a designated official one. I would say therefore that the UESP being the hosts of the "official Beyond Skyrim Wiki" shouldn't really be considered a detriment to us. The fact that Beyond Skyrim even considered the option of having UESP host their official wiki should speak volumes about how much the wider Elder Scrolls community values us as an Elder Scrolls site, and the fact that UESP/Dave agreed to host their official wiki was certainly met with a very positive reception when it was announced to the Beyond Skyrim team.

::::::So with that in mind, I would like to suggest that we act like the gracious hosts that I thought we were, and we show support for the Beyond Skyrim team and their official wiki. Beyond Skyrim needs to be documented, and they have somewhere for that to be done. --Enodoc (talk) 22:42, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

::::::Edit: I keep forgetting to mention that the wiki's URL is broken, and beyondskyrim.uesp.net is not intended. For all technical domain purposes, it is supposed to be wiki.beyondskyrim.org, but the certification isn't ready. --Enodoc (talk) 22:55, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

  The initial talk page I linked to above has been deleted, so I suppose this discussion will have to happen UESP-side (as it should have from the start). —Legoless (talk) 22:59, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

: It might be worth mentioning that the uesp wiki will also have pages on us just like there are for Tamriel Rebuilt (our community was founded via Tamriel rebuilt members). The fact that the url for this new wiki contains uesp is temporary and because I haven't bought the certificates yet to use the wiki.beyondskyrim.org and devwiki.beyondskyrim.org url.  

:: So I've discussed the purpose of the public BS wiki with Meliodas at length and it doesn't appear to have very much overlap at all with our potential coverage. I'd therefore like to suggest that we limit our coverage to the released mods (currently only Bruma), which is exactly how we handle TR releases. The BS wiki is much larger in scope, and in hindsight I realise it was unfair to label it as competition since its focus is inherently different. Does this work for everyone? —Legoless (talk) 00:36, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

::: Sounds good to me! Seems I may have misinterpreted the purpose of the public BS wiki all along. Or perhaps its true purpose was yet to be decided, and with the hype of the Bruma release I was rushing to a conclusion that was not ready to be reached. --Enodoc (talk) 00:46, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

:::: Agreed! It seems we have come to a solution that is good for all involved parties. --Meliodas (talk) 01:08, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

ESO Horns of the Reach PTS

A little late on this update since I just got back from vacation...fortunately it is a smaller content DLC.

:* Files -- Uploaded!

-- Daveh   19:59, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

: Awesome! —Legoless (talk) 20:00, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Pseudo-Namespace Proposal

If we are to be documenting the content of Beyond Skyrim, starting with the release of Beyond Skyrim: Bruma which just came out, I think it would be beneficial to set up some pseudo-namespaces for that information, similar to what was done with Tamriel Rebuilt. A slight difference in format here is that each province is being developed as a separate mod, unlike TR3 where everything is part of the same one, so ideally we will need pseudo-namespaces for each one of those. Right now though, all that is released is Bruma, which is part of the Cyrodiil province. So following the layout of  (thanks for the link, RH), I would like to propose a namespace for Beyond Skyrim: Cyrodiil:

 

Thanks! --Enodoc (talk) 12:18, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

:I'm not sure we need to create pseudo-namespaces for every partial release of Beyond Skyrim, particularly if we are not going to document it to the same extent as Tamriel Rebuilt due to it having its own wiki for that level of detail. I don't see any reason not to set this up at least for at least Tes5Mod:Beyond Skyrim.      16:23, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

::I'm leaning towards Silencer's thinking at the moment, but a lot depends on just how much documentation you're expecting, and how you intend to organize it. It makes a lot of sense to have everything under a single pseudo-namespace of Tes5Mod:Beyond Skyrim, so you can have parent-project pages (e.g.,  ,  ) as well as sub-project pages (e.g.,  ). But if there really isn't a need for parent-project pages, then that's just going to lead to a page structure that's all sub-project pages anyway (e.g.,  ,  ), and having each different subspace defined might make more sense in the long run.  &ndash;       17:17, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

:::The province mods are completely separate, just like the games in the Elder Scrolls series itself. Beyond Skyrim is an umbrella, not a project in its own right, and each mod will have its own partial releases (which is why all links from BS: Bruma already go to pages under BS: Cyrodiil). I think that format would indeed all be double-sub pages, because there would be no need for a BS/Places (if it existed, it would be very long). The level of detail we should be documenting here is pretty much the same as what we have for Tamriel Rebuilt; quests, places, NPCs, and all gameplay stuff. Conversely, the Beyond Skyrim wiki is the equivalent of lorespace, not a gamespace, and that's the sort of stuff we don't have for TR, because the depths of TR lore are on their own website at the TR Handbook. For a parallel, if we were to ever document the Province: Cyrodiil mod for Morrowind, we would likely do that with a "Province: Cyrodiil" pseudospace, not a "Project Tamriel" pseudospace, because PC is a mod in its own right despite being under the PT banner. --Enodoc (talk) 20:35, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

:::: Enodoc's suggestion sounds sensible to me: separate mods, separate pseudo-namespaces. "Tes5Mod:Beyond Skyrim: Cyrodiil/Places" is a bit of a mouthful but it works. —Legoless (talk) 15:23, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

:::::Okay, that makes sense then. I just finished implementing it. Let me know if there are any issues.  &ndash;       19:21, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Spambot?

Not quite sure what to do with this IP. It added a corporate LinkedIn link but reverted it. —Legoless (talk) 05:06, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

:It's still spam, but perhaps a less severe penalty, maybe just a warning (something for future reference to know that IP has spammed before if the next move is done). Also remove the edits from public view as most spam and vandalism is these days.      11:31, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

::Following the link provided, this company is very obviously going to be aware of social media and how it works, so my feeling is that it's a sneaky type of advertising. They know the change will be looked at, even if it's reverted. For that reason alone, I'd suggest revision deletion, and otherwise treat it like any other spammer. If it's only a one-off occurrence, there's not much point in blocking the IP, but we should keep our eyes open for similar behaviour in the near future, whether from that IP or another IP/account.  &ndash;       16:09, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

Account Creation Spam

Recently, bots or users have been making it through our captcha check and creating numerous new user accounts. Over the course of the day today, I've tried tweaking the captcha several times, starting with minor changes to the algorithm, then getting a bit more elaborate this last time. Each time, it has been followed within moments by what appear to be new random accounts. This suggests that either there's human involvement in the creations or that the bot is very broad ranging and won't be deterred short of a major change in approach. I could change to a different style of question captcha, or a different captcha completely, but if it's an actual human creating these accounts, that would be a waste of time.

For those who are wondering, they're all coming from completely different IP addresses, and most are using different naming styles, so neither blocking nor title-blocking will be terribly effective. As someone pointed out on the wiki, it's possible that some of these are non-editing accounts that are intended only to use the ESO Build Editor or just to save settings, but I'm not sure that would account for the number of accounts we're seeing, and some of the names seem really spammy in nature. It's hard to say with absolute certainty, though.

In the short term, there's not much to be done that I haven't already. In the long term, however, there are a few potential options, though most have some kind of problem associated with them:
# Put up with it, knowing a vandal could use these accounts to launch a bot attack from multiple accounts at once or in quick succession, potentially becoming a distributed denial-of-service attack (which has never happened, so not likely a big threat). In terms of not locking out legitimate users, this is probably the safest option.
# Require patroller/admin creation of all new accounts. This has several issues, the biggest being that either a communal e-mail box would have to be maintained for these applications, or some other simple mechanism of applying would have to be created. It's also possible that spammer(s) would just continue a variation of what they're doing now, and simply flood the system with requests.
# Create an extension to delete the accounts if they go completely unused and aren't logged into for X days. MediaWiki wasn't really designed with the idea of deleting users, though it is possible. The danger is that a bug in the program could delete legitimate data. Plus, it would require Dave or I to program it in the first place, since I don't see any extension that would work on a large-scale basis. (The only one I found is intended to completely wipe a single user from the database within certain limitations.)
# Switch login/account creation systems completely. The current recommended method is OpenID, which has a MediaWiki extension available. That would limit a spammer's ability to create accounts based on having OpenID accounts available, but then it also requires that a real user have an OpenID account. Most do, mind you, whether they realize it or not, since it's linked with numerous common services like Google and Facebook. Of course, that's still potentially prone to abuse, depending on the spammer's ability to get around any given service's account-spam prevention. This would be entirely up to Dave to install, and may cost money...it wasn't entirely clear.

In the past, we've generally gone for option #1, but given the complaints on Discord about the wave of new user accounts, I thought I'd throw it out there for discussion again.  &ndash;       21:50, 8 August 2017 (UTC)

:Given the relative lack of vandalism or spam by new user accounts I would be very wary of escalating a problem that doesn't appear to exist. Besides today I have not seen a huge amount (certainly not above "normal" numbers) of new accounts that would be worrying, but I know that a significant percentage of these accounts are by spam-bots that are simply getting blocked by the abuse filter, so do not appear to be what they are. As far as I can tell, we are also one of the cleanest open wikis on the net, as we've always had diligent recent changes monitors. The recent extreme vandalism is also very very rare, and we won't see the like for a long time once we are past it, certainly not enough to make me think there was something wrong with our account making process (well besides not having blocked the username "Administrator" from use). I thought the whole think was rather contained in nature, with our new Blockers having a hand in stemming the abuse. Option 2 for me is a non-starter, I think the amount of requests would far outweigh the capability of looking at and deciding the merits of them all, plus it removes the idea that we have an "open" wiki, because even if you still didn't need to log in to edit, you would need our "permission" to "join". Option 3 should be left alone too. The reason mediawiki chooses not to allow deletion is because every edit is tied to an account/IP, and deleting them means that the edit no longer has verifiability. While this is not the intention of such a program, the possibility should be locked in a vat of toxic waste and tossed into the Sun. There are problems associated with mass-deletion of vandalism from the history of pages (namely proof of the vandalism), and there will be even more problems with deletion of accounts where there is no proof of maliciousness. I just don't like Option 4, as it ties us to another site/group. It also appears that Google, Facebook, and Yahoo have abandoned it, with the only major user being PayPal. I just don't like the idea of requiring someone to have an account on another site in order to join here, though perhaps we should think of allowing people on Facebook and Google+ to associate their accounts here, and/or have the choice to use them to log in here. 
:The last option still wants to improve our creation process, but it's hard to see how with any captcha as they are always vulnerable to bots. The latest method is two-factor authentication using a phone. This, as far as I can tell, requires human interaction. Required two-factor authentication either via email or phone, is one step that doesn't infringe on our openness, as the likelihood of a potential user not having one or the other is probably zero. If at all possible we could also incentivise it by reducing the time and/or amount of edits required before gaining full freedoms to edit. PS, no idea if that would affect account creation by logged in users, but obviously try to avoid it if possible.      00:35, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

::Just to clarify, for option #3, I was referring to accounts that have no edit history whatsoever, including any deleted edits or abuse history. Also, even though it isn't required to edit, e-mail verification is already being done by the bots in many cases.  &ndash;       05:15, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

ESO Horns of the Reach (Update 15) Release

The usual file/data updates for HOTR DLC will be posted below:

:* uespLog Addon -- Updated to v1.20!
:* Achievements -- Updated! 
:* Champion Points -- Updated!
:* Skills and Skill Coefficients -- Updated! and double-checked
:* Icons -- Updated!
:* Maps -- Nothing to update.
:* Files -- Uploaded!
:* Items -- Done!
:* API -- Done!
:* Books -- Done! (upload in files and updated database)

-- Daveh   13:58, 14 August 2017 (UTC)

Autopatrolled

Is there a process for requesting the   bit?  I do a lot of typo fixing and Style Guide compliance edits, and I think the minor edit stream is annoying to patrollers.     01:20, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
:The process is documented at . The short of it is: those with patroller permissions   notice that your edits are usually good, and nominate you to become autopatrolled.  &ndash;       04:38, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
::Noted.     21:44, 2 September 2017 (UTC)
:::Mine arent fully good yet, at least not until I learn all the differences in templates/procedure. (So apologies to the patrollers in the meantime. I tend to post a lot. Timeoin (talk) 11:10, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

Site issues

Noticing some major issues this morning - Did we upgrade the wiki software recently or something?  All of the sidebar stuff is gone, and I can no longer upload images - also the image upload page no longer lists the licenses in the licensing drop box.  In addition, the UESP-specific options that usually appear below the edit window are also gone.  Seems like all hidden site pages have been completely reset to defaults.  The site would not let me post edits due to "loss of session data", and suggested logging out and back in, and when I did so, it would not let me log back in, claiming I had cookies disabled, which I do not.  This occurs on both of my computers.  Is anyone else experiencing this problem? - TheRealLurlock (talk) 13:58, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

:Okay, not sure if somebody did something, but a couple hours later, it seems to be working again.  Not sure what was up with that... — TheRealLurlock (talk) 15:27, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

::The site was down two Saturdays ago (the 19th August) in the morning, but completely down, not just not displaying properly. Not sure if its relevant but the coincidental timing is there.      16:46, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

::: Daveh said on Discord it was due to memcached crashing every Saturday morning. —Legoless (talk) 17:09, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

ESO Clockwork City PTS

The usual update for another content release on the ESO PTS. This update may take longer for me since I'm dealing with a newborn most hours of the day so if you're looking for something in particular just let me know.

:* uespLog Addon -- Seems to be working fine on PTS so far.
:* Files Uploaded -- Done!
:* Maps - Done! I've added a link to Clockwork city from the base Mundus map but all other locations still need to be added.
:* Skills -- Done!
:* Skill Coefficients -- Done!
:* CPs -- Done!
:* Items -- Done!
:* Icons -- Uploaded!

-- Daveh   20:28, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

:Hey Dave, the uploaded icons.zip appears to be only about 2/3 complete. Some folders are missing and it's ~70MB instead of the usual ~90MB. Thanks! --Enodoc (talk) 00:18, 20 September 2017 (UTC)
::Thanks...fixed! -- Daveh   15:13, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

User Rename

Renamed Nephmir to Starkiller131 per their request. —Legoless (talk) 19:32, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Gift Brainstorming

Every year, usually around Christmas time, I like to give out an ES/UESP related gift to thank the site's contributors and fans. For example, last year we did the Tamriel map posters. In deciding what to do this and following years I'm looking for suggestions on what we could do. For now don't worry about the details too much and let your imaginations run wild. For some things there are potential issues like cost, shipping, and licensing issues but those can be dealt with once a gift project is actually chosen and started. 

Some of my ideas to start with:

:* Coins -- I had some coins made for a summer camp project a few years ago and they are relatively easy/cheap with many different construction options.
:* Maps -- I love maps although since we did one last year there's no rush in doing another one. If we ever do another map I'd like to commission an artist to have a custom one drawn up for us.
:* UESP Merchandise -- Take just about anything from VistaPrint or similar sites with a UESP logo.
:* Books -- A more work intensive project but might be nice to see some of the better UESP pages/lore/art in a actual bound book.
:* 3D Printing -- You can do a lot with 3D printing lately using models from games including character models or world spaces. Downside is that this is complex and relatively costly.
:* Replicas/Figurines -- The minimum order for a custom model is relatively low and within the realm of possibility. Licensing would be the main issue.
:* Posters -- You could make a poster of just about anything (ex: a nice game screenshot, lore articles, etc...).
:* Charity -- I like to give a little to charity each year when we can. Past recipients include World Vision, Charity: Water, and Child's Play. This would be in addition to the fan gift.

Looking forward to some of your ideas! -- Daveh   01:14, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

::The UESP Merchandise caught my eye, but its hard to see what would work. A mouse pad or t-shirt would not suit everyone, but perhaps a plate or glass or mug. I think my muffins would benefit in taste sitting on a plate with the logo. Another idea popped in my head when browsing vistaprint; a calendar. There are a couple of versions of the Tamriel calendar to pick from, and then pick 12 of our featured images to use for the months. You could keep it generic by leaving off the weekdays and just starting each on the first, or you could use next years dates to make it more usable.      18:32, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

:::Here is a collection of community comments I got on this:
:::*I like the idea of coins
:::*Ooh, what a really kind idea. I like the sound of coins too.
:::*I like coins
:::*Comission for a map would be really cool (I am still sad I didn't get one last time :frowning: )
:::*Illustrations and maps are neat
:::*Charity one is the best one
:::*I like the idea of posters, maps and figurines myself
:::*Coins or UESP merchandise. Seriously. I would LOVE a shirt with the UESP logo on it
:::*I also like the idea of coins
:::*I vote for shirts for the best idea now
:::*Maps are pretty gosh darn cool. You can put them on your wall and stuff. Coins are metal. It is harder to put them on walls. If this is a contest of wall-put-ability, I think maps win.
:::*I think artwork that feels like in-game product would be neat. Think a traveler's sketchbook with ink illustrations of creatures and whatnot
:::*Yeah kinda want one of those maps but maybe of all of Tamriel
:::*You know those life sized cardboard cut outs of LotR characters. Lets get those for Shadowscales. Scare the shit out of you whenever you enter your room and there is a shadow of an Argonian standing in the corner.
:::*3D Printing in-game models sounds awesome!
:::*I still like maps. Posters of iconic Vistas are cool too.
:::*As for charity. You go through TES able to kill the wildlife knowing that another will spawn... And another... And another... AND A-BLOODY-NOTHER!! Anyway, this isn't the case for the real world. Help give species a chance to up their spawn chances. As someone studying the animal sciences, I'd say the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, as they're responsible for saving more species than any other organisation and training people in doing likewise.
:::*i think a picture of all the main races with a chunk of the province they're from behind them could make for a cool poster
:::*I would enjoy having an actual leather bound copy of an Elder Scrolls book. I may have to make one some day.
:::*like the idea of a figurine, Pelinal Whitestrake maybe?
:::*Coins and/or other in-universe memorabilia gets my vote
:::*I would adore some Septims.
:::*i wanted a big ass tamriel map for my wall last year, and i didnt got one. i even wanted to buy something like this but... no luck. maybe this year i can. soooo.. i will go with the map thing. Some septims would be nice too, tho.
:::--AKB   20:04, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
::::I like the idea of UESP-branded wearables or coffee mugs. Wearables do have the issue of sizing and such that have to be accounted for, where mugs are fairly universal, so there's that to consider if you go for merchandise.  &ndash;       22:20, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
:::::*I love and adore the idea of coins. The various coins which Bethesda and/or ZOS have produced to promote the various games are now collectors' items. I think we should avoid maps, because we Did That Last Year. The UESP Discord logo would look great on one side of a coin, with... I dunno, the head of Martin Septim on the back :P (Or Hermaeus-Mora, as the Guardian of Knowledge?) Can you also get writing along the edge? If so, UNOFFICIAL ELDER SCROLLS PAGES 2017 should go there :)
:::::*I would also support the idea of UESP merchandise, but I think this should be for us to purchase ourselves, e.g. through Spreadshirt. This would not make any money for the UESP, but would at least break even. In this way, we could get them in custom colours, with our UESP affiliation on. e.g. "UESP Wiki Admin" / "UESP Wiki Editor" / "UESP Forums Moderator" / "UESP Discord Admin" / "UESP Guildmaster" / "UESP Guild Officer" / "UESP Guild Member", etc. People with multiple affiliations could either position all of the text using Spreadshirt's layout tool, or pick their favourite one.
:::::*Mugs are also great, but would be super-expensive to post, even within Canada. Again, I think they should be for users to purchase themselves. baratron (talk) 08:19, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Minor Issue (Resolved)

As Alarra recently corrected here, there as a circumstance whereby they were attributed as being the author of Message to Jena. (See: here). The problem was that not only was it wrong, its wrong nowhere else. Except right here. Timeoin (talk) 07:59, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
:An addendum, for clarity: there is little chance this was accidental. this was the date their page was created. The Maulborn Cultist, was not created until a year after. Timeoin (talk) 08:18, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
::While it's likely that you're correct, this particular instance seems trivial. A note will, after all, be pretty much the same from one wiki to the next. It isn't like they copied an entire dungeon walkthrough wholesale, or used our images or what have you, at least not in this instance. For more significant instances, I believe Dave said he prefers to handle these issues himself, so I'd suggest e-mailing him or flagging him down on Discord. That policy may be out of date, though. If he refers you back to us, Atvelonis and I have spoken on occasion, so I'm happy to bring any concerns up with him if needed.  &ndash;       09:03, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

::: Just to clarify Timeoin... you're complaining that Wikia copied the links of a UESP book page page on their own site's book page... back in 2015 (when you were still an admin over there and could have checked the page for plagiarism before you edited it). 

::: Is this really of note for the AN board? Exactly what are you looking to achieve?

::: What I find odd is that when we were both admins on Wikia, you very rarely spoke up about the vast amounts of actual UESP plagiarism that was taking place there. I don't recall you ever reverting UESP content. It was left to the other admins to deal with. So why is it a concern now? You speak to Atvelonis on Discord, would it not make more sense to take it up with him? 

::: I don't wish to start any drama, but you're clearly bitter about what happened to you over there. Which is why you're taking any opportunity get some sort of revenge. Be it the constant badmouthing, anonymous editing over there or threads like this. Its not healthy. Take it from someone who was in the same boat, but in a much worse position than you was - you need to move on. --Jimeee (talk) 09:07, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

::::Since I keeping getting pinged on Discord, here are my thoughts on the matter. Even if the UESP was the source of the mistake on Wikia, which is possible, I don't think that arguing over such a minuscule point is worth anyone's time. As others have stated above, it's just a link, and a pretty old one too. My inclination here would be to assume good faith: it's entirely possible that same authorial assumption was made independently by users on both sites. Users add plagiarized UESP content to Wikia all the time, and I make an effort to catch this early on, especially when it comes to images. If you find something that is genuinely worth reporting, by all means inform me of it, but I don't think that being this pedantic helps anyone. —Atvelonis (talk) 16:07, 5 October 2017 (UTC)
::::: I agree with Jimeeee. I apologise wholeheartedly. Also - I should not have pinged you, Atvelonis, and will not do so again. So ... yeah, please consider this closed? (Changed the header too - since that helps noone) Timeoin (talk) 17:09, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Move Request

Hello. Could an admin please move   to Captain Velya? Velya is the proper in-game name. (Evidence: ESO Log Data). Timeoin (talk) 06:53, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

:Could someone please also move   to Domihaus? They are the same page. Thanks :) Timeoin (talk) 10:52, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

::I've merged Timeoin's second request because I want to make a general request that an admin start merging and deleting some pages that have been marked so. These actions can only be done by an admin, and there are a lot of duplicate pages sitting idle, as well as merge requests that haven't been done yet. Not doing these things is starting to cause a serious backlog of follow up actions, links to the wrong duplicate page appearing, as well as the confusion that is given by having empty pages being filled in when the information already exists elsewhere. There are dozens more pages I have identified as needing deleted, and have put off marking them so as to make it easier for an admin to do each page properly without knowing there are over 100 more pages marked for deletion (which there are). :Category:Marked for Deletion, :Category:To Be Merged. PS A particular bugbear on merges for me is the Desolate Mine place and quest, marked for renaming by Legoless more than 2 years ago with no logical or given objection to it happening, yet no action taken.      00:11, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

:::Bugbear slain. I started on the pages marked for deletion the other day, but that'll definitely take some time.  &ndash;       18:47, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Username Usurping

There was an account called "Zenith" made in 2009, with no contributions, and I was wondering whether I could usurp that username for a UESP account.  
:Also worth noting is that this request was originally made on our Discord channel, where this user is already known as Zenith to the majority of the people on the server. Kitkat  00:58, 21 October 2017 (UTC)
::I confirmed that the user hasn't logged in since 2009 and has no edit history, so I've gone ahead and renamed them. You may now create an account as Zenith.  &ndash;       02:15, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

ESO Clockwork City (Update 16)

Another ESO DLC is out today and so the usual round of updates:

:* uespLog -- Updated to v1.31! (1.31 has bug fix for guild store purchase bug)
:* Achievements -- Updated! (new icons still need to be uploaded)
:* Skills -- Updated!
:* Skill Coeffients -- Done (and checked)
:* Champion Points -- Updated!
:* Icons -- Updated!
:* Files -- Uploaded!
:* Books -- Done! (book text uploaded and updated in database)
:* Maps -- Done! (4 maps updated, still working on adding all locations)
:* API -- Done!
:* Items -- Done!

-- Daveh   15:43, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Translating Team for Italy

My friends and me would love to start translating UESP in italian.
We're good at english and we can write in HTML. We're 5 or 6 at the moment, but we can recruit more people with our skills.
I'm opening this discussion for everyone who's willing to take part in our project.
Undriel (talk) 00:51, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

:Count on me! Daffodill (talk) 01:00, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

::I'd be happy to work on the italian translation LadyLigeia (talk) 01:04, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
:::It sounds interesting Fenerevar (talk) 10:58, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

::::I'm in. CurseMyName (talk) 11:35, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

  There are no official steps to creating a translation project (the Portuguese one was a test) but unless there are any objections from admins I'll set it up in a few days once I've done most of the ESO updates from the latest DLC. Is there one person who is willing/able to take the lead/admin position for the project? -- Daveh   14:45, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

:Thank you a lot. If the translation project will be approved I'll gladly take the admin position LadyLigeia (talk) 10:52, 31 October 2017 (UTC)LadyLigeia

  The Italian UESPWiki has been setup at it.uesp.net...hopefully you can forgive the delay as I was focussed on some ESO work backlog last week. I've imported the MediaWiki and Template namespaces but nothing else at the moment. If you run into any issues on the new site let me know here or poke me at [mailto:dave@uesp.net dave@uesp.net]. -- Daveh   20:15, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Request for revocation of account rights.

After thinking over my ultimate place in the universe for a long, hard while, I've decided that this evening I'm ready to return to the UESPWiki and work on some of Jeancey's Morrowind Overhaul Project and give some love to my favorite game. I've also decided to do it without the pressure that I've always felt by being an active and regular member of staff, and I want to get back to just editing and enjoying myself.

After many long months of thinking about it on a self-imposed break, I've decided that I want to voluntarily relinquish all elevated user rights currently on my account, including my patroller rights, blocker rights, and any others that may exist that I've forgotten exist.

I am aware that, should I want them, I'll have to be renominated and be put up to a community vote again, but for the foreseeable future, I'm not at all interested in anything to do with them and I ask that an administrator handle this request at their first convenient moment, in accordance with my wishes.

Many thanks, -      &hearts;    18:14, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

:Given that Damon has already qualified as a Patroller, I'd suggest that in conjunction with this request, we grant him autopatrolled status.  &ndash;       19:02, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

:: I've removed your Patroller and Blocker rights, Damon. I would support autopatrolled status if someone wants to make the nomination. —Legoless (talk) 14:38, 29 October 2017 (UTC)
:::I'll go ahead and do that, if Damon doesn't object.      22:48, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

2018 Fan Gift

Christmas and the new year is quickly coming and I've been thinking about what to do for the UESP fan gift this year. I like the suggestion of a calendar made in the previous gift suggestion topic and am leaning strongly in that direction.

:* 2018 Year Calender
:* Can use Tamriel names for months and weekdays (or perhaps in addition to real names?)
:* Include both real and Tamriel holidays (make it obvious which is which?)
:* Artwork Could Be:
::* Fan Created
::* Screenshots
::* Composite (made up of Bethesda copyrighted images and others)
:: I'd rather stay away from using Bethesda original artwork to avoid the legal issues and would prefer the first 2 if we had the option.

Assuming people think this is a good idea I'd like to get started on choosing the 13 pieces of artwork for the calendar (12 months + title page) and the calendar details. Note that assuming we do a 10x17" wall calendar the artwork would have to be of reasonable size/quality. 

Time flies so if we could decide on everything by the end of November that would permit printing by the start of December and hopefully shipping before Christmas. -- Daveh   19:08, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

:What if the images were a selection of the UESP's Featured Images, where possible? We can throw together a quick vote of which ones look cooler for any particular month or season to match the feel of that time. Or move on to not-FI images if needed. Throw something like this in for October and Halloween, for instance? Also, I would want the calendar to be completely Tamrielic, no Earthly times on it! -      &hearts;    04:36, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

::Yes, that's a good idea. I assume most (all?) of the Featured Images are screenshots correct? -- Daveh   16:30, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

::Another quick thought...it may be a good idea to have several images per month composited together, especially if some of them are lower resolution. For example, we could group 3/4/5 Halloween related images for the month of October. So more options for each month would be a good thing. -- Daveh   18:34, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

  I've gone through the FI's and picked some that I think a more identifiable with the seasons/events. This is not a comprehensive list, a lot of the pure NPC/creature ones I left out as they are focused on that subject alone. 

Winter 5: Frost Atronach being summoned, snow in a cave, snow on a house, ice wraith with the moon over snowy mountains, dragons fighting on a snowy mountain

Spring 10: sunrise over a lake, Solitude on a nice day,
sunny day (trees look autumny though), sunny and cloudy day, the misty mountains, a giant throwing a tantrum near some Orcs, colourful countryside, bright day over a lake, misty day over a lake, vivid trolls

Easter, only 1: the anti-Easter message (bears eat sheep)

Summer 5: the dust near Ghostfence, stone giant taking a nap, a sunny river, a fish with big teeth on a sunny day, A sunny day over Nchuleftingth

Autumn 5: windmill with moons between spokes, vampires with the aurora borealis, bandits with the aurora borealis and a moon, Azura's statue with the aurora borealis, Peryite's statue at night

Halloween 4: some eerie magical swirls, Sithis, werewolf with both moons, ash spawn crawling out of the ground in a tomb

A lot of the spring/summer ones could be one or the other. February could use a winter or a springy one. Halloween is the only event that has decent representation as the games lend themselves well to that "scary" theme. A Christmas or Easter one might need to be sourced from our other images.      20:01, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

240px|right
:Great! Another thought of image materials are the various high-quality screenshots that people take of Skyrim and ESO with various mods/graphical enhancements. These would require the permission of the screenshot owner. I'll see if I can track down some good ones and get permission.
: I've made a very quick/initial drawing of a calendar page as I envisioned it. It is still very rough but feedback is wanted sooner rather than later. -- Daveh   16:56, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

::That looks pretty good. I could advertise it on social media and add "Submit high quality screenshots to us to use in the calendar" to possibly get some nice ones sent to us. If we were to say, offer anyone we used an image from a copy of the calendar, we could probably get a few. Would you be okay with that? --AKB   17:32, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

:::I thought the license for screenshots gave the UESP the copyright, "the copyright for this particular composition is held by UESP", while giving Bethesda copyright on the components. Like any edit, images have always been treated as belonging to the wiki once uploaded, for us to use as and where we think suitable. Plus, even for Skyrim, a lot of image takers are no longer active. AKB's proposal seems good, at most you'd be giving out 12 images to non-UESP people, and all of them could be evaluated for use on the wiki itself even if they fail to get used in the calendar.      18:49, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

::::re: AKB's suggestion of getting screenshots from fans, I was thinking the same thing so go ahead and see what people can send us. Regarding the SS permission I was referring to images found outside of the UESP. -- Daveh   20:58, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

 

::::Another more refined sample: 240px|right
:::::* Tried to give it a more lore/medieval look with parchment background and imperfect grid lines.
:::::* Added site logo,
:::::* Originally I was thinking of having text box with the some text from the UESP's relevant article. Unsure if that is too much or better to go with just a title/page link or perhaps nothing at all.
:::: Keep the feedback, ideas, and more pictures coming! -- Daveh   21:46, 8 November 2017 (UTC)


 
::::: Dave, I like the parchment background with UESP logo, but with the white squares. I'd mock one up if I was on my Mac (which has Photoshop), but all I have on this PC is Paint. My reasoning is that I love the UESP "branding", however a lot of people need to write on their calendars and this is easier to do with a white background. Also, the imperfect grid lines will make a lot of us twitch! Thus I feel that parchment background with UESP logo but a white calendar grid section is the best compromise. I would like a title to each picture - including which game it is from - but I don't feel we need a huge box explaining what it is, let alone a wiki URL which is difficult to type. If the wiki's search function is working properly, people will be able to look up "Brelyna Maryon" and "Frost Atronach" easily enough :) baratron (talk) 22:50, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

:::::: A couple more image suggestions: 
::::::Spring: Skyrim birds, Shrine of Morwha (mother goddess)
::::::Autumn: Skingrad, Ayleid ruins
::::::Winter: Coldharbour 
::::::—Legoless (talk) 14:12, 11 November 2017 (UTC)


:::::::A more refined draft with some of the suggestions implemented. 240px|right
:::::::Barring any suggestions that require large changes I'd like to finalize the overall design and move to choosing the month images. There is also the question of exactly what holidays to include:
::::::::* All ES lore holidays
::::::::* Only Major ES lore holidays
::::::::* Real world American/Canadian holidays
::::::::* Other real world holidays
:::::::  -- Daveh   14:57, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
 
::::::::I'm against the inclusion of real-world holidays, since we don't knowfrom which country the winners will be. I like the style, however --        20:49, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
  I agree with Sarthes to exclude real world holidays. I still like a small lore explanation on the calender like in the second mock-up, but maybe that will distact too much from the image. --Ilaro (talk) 21:46, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

: The first draft of the calendar is available at  Please review it and put any comments here.
:* There were a lot of great images submitted and it was hard to pick and choose just 13 of them. If you feel an image doesn't fit well let me know and we can easily find another one.
:* Spelling, grammar and lore corrections are welcome (I've already spotted a couple myself).
:* Better or more accurate descriptions for some of the images would be good. I just guessed at some of the locations. In particular:
:::* January - Where is this?
:::* February - Where is this?
:::* April - Dragon names?
:::* July - Where is this?
:::* August - Where is this?
:::* September - Better caption?
:::* October - Where is this?
:Right now I'm aiming to print 250 of them and mail them out like the maps last year. Now is a good time for people to start thinking about how they wish to distribute them. The more I can get mailed out in December the better! I also don't want as many left over at the end as the maps last year...I still have about 100 maps that can be sent out if people want them. -- Daveh   21:18, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

::January and July look like Falkreath hold to me, and part of the same general area, but can't pin it down. The dragons in April look like Alduin at the Throat of the World. I'm going to stick my neck out and say that mods are involved there, as there are no dragons that white (the frost dragon is white but with large dark coloured parts), and it's breathing fire which a frost dragon shouldn't do. I don't think that means it should be excluded though, but I can see a red sword in the lower right sky. September, it looks indoors, so it could be a frustrated mage trying to light a hearth. October is Heartwood Mill in the Rift, from Skyrim.      23:22, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

:::January is somewhere near Evergreen Grove  . February is Razak's Wheel, I think. April is Alduin and Paarthurnax fighting at the Throat of the World. That red dagger is a result of a spell I created. If it looks out-of-place, it can be photoshopped away. July is Lake Ilinalta  . August is likely to be Volunidai's Manor (Grahtwood). I highly suspect October to be Half-Moon Mill. 
:::Are the Summoning Days really specific to the Daggerfall City-State? I always thought they were the same for all of Nirn. Also, the Gauntlet at Sun's Dusk 2nd is also Boethiah's Summoning Day. Hogithum at First Seed 21st is Azura's. --        14:02, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
::::Thanks! For the summoning days I believe they were only actually used in the Daggerfall game but like you say are probably Tamriel wide. We can either omit them entirely or I can add them as another type/color holiday to make it easier to fit in with the other holidays you mentioned (I might try that and see how it looks). -- Daveh   17:13, 24 November 2017 (UTC)
:::::With SarthesArai's help, I found the exact location January was taken from, and I can confirm that his description and coordinates are correct. July is also Ilinalta, though the coordinates given are a bit off. I used  . I also double-checked in the game and October is definitely Heartwood Mill, as Silencer suggested. Are there any other Skyrim locations that need double-checked?  &ndash;       17:53, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

  I've made all the suggested changes with the only outstanding location is February...I don't think it is Razak's Wheel as I went all over and couldn't find the view. I'm pretty sure it is a view to an unreachable location in a delve somewhere but I can't quite remember it. If I can verify the location in the next day or so I'll upload an updated draft of the calendar. -- Daveh   18:32, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

:Correction: It's Klathzgar, near the Skyshard, looking outside the playable area. Thanks to Vordur Steel-Hammer for actually finding it. --        19:20, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

::That's it! I asked on the ESO sub-reddit and someone answered pretty fast as well. I'll get an updated draft up tomorrow. -- Daveh   23:09, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

:::The latest calendar draft is up at  Unless there are other changes/corrections to make I'll be submitting it for printing in a few days. I'll post another topic regarding the distribution of calendars (it will be the same as the map poster last year). As a last minute update I added the birthsigns to each month (they can be easily removed if people think they don't fit well). -- Daveh   14:20, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

::::I like the birthsigns, but I think they might fit better with the month name, instead of on one of the calendar squares (and then they would be in the same spot for each month). --FioFioFio (talk) 17:37, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

:::::Another way would be to have the birthsign image as a background, though only as a faint outline, or even just the constellation. I don't think that would take too much away from the desired white background boxes for writing in. Faldar's Tooth doesn't really help place Heartwood Mill, "on the shore of Lake Honrich" or "near Riften" might be better.      19:04, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

:::::: Yah, I didn't like the location of the birthsigns either so I've tried moving them up to the title line which looks a lot better I think. See  for the latest. -- Daveh   18:10, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

  That looks better than I thought it could be up there. It has my vote as ready to go.      18:20, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

:I agree, this looks really nice! --Ilaro (talk) 19:26, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

::Barring any last second fixes I'd like to send the calendar to the printers tomorrow and get started on the various distribution methods. Ideally I'd like to start shipping at least some of them before Christmas. I'll start a new AN topic tomorrow regarding that. -- Daveh   20:43, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

:::Final calendar release is at  (or higher resolution at  if anyone would like to print it themselves). Note that I had to add 2 new images/pages at the end as the printer was only able to print 24 or 28 page sizes. Hopefully there are no obvious errors for those as the print job has already been started. -- Daveh   19:06, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

::::I was just wondering: where were those final two images taken? Or, if you don't know, do you have the links for them on the wiki? Thanks!  &ndash;       19:53, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

:::::The first one appears to have been taken from Dragon Bridge Overlook - checked in-game and you can get a very similar view from there - or perhaps somewhere nearby like Cliffside Retreat. The second is in Moss Mother Cavern.  (I play this game way too much.)   ~     03:26, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

::::::I was thinking the second one looked like Moss Mother Cavern, but I wasn't sure, and I couldn't find that exact image on the wiki, so I thought maybe I was wrong. Thanks, Alarra!  &ndash;       06:40, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

  Got mine in the mail yesterday and it looks fantastic in person! Just wanted to leave a quick thanks, Dave! Good work on the calendars this year! :) -      &hearts;    05:52, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Paarthurnax

The Blades demand for the removal of  has seen the page blanked 6 times since last December, with only one constructive edit in that time. I think it needs some additional protection for a while.      13:40, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
: Agreed. Delphine is such a tryhard. --Jimeee (talk) 13:43, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
::I've semi-protected it for a year, and we'll see how it fares after that.  &ndash;       18:46, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
:::Good god I can't believe people are still butthurt over this. I remember arguing with people on the official lore board about it back when Skyrim came out. Can you at least block anonymous edits to the page? --MarginWalker (talk) 22:54, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
::::That was just a joke, there's no way to guess what reason the page was blanked for as none was given. Semi-protection, which the page now has, does exactly that, as well as blocking brand new accounts.      23:04, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
:::::Some people were seriously apoplectic about the Blades/Paarthurnax thing, certainly enough to vandalize a wiki. I just figured they'd found something else to be mad about by now. --MarginWalker (talk) 23:40, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Inappropriate Username

Wanted to bring to the attention of Admins an inappropriate username creation.  link for easier viewing. User name begins with "Tom". Timeoin (talk) 05:52, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

:Done, thanks. --AKB   07:04, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
::Yeah, didnt wan't to say their name. Timeoin (talk)

Legends Card Data and Popup

People asked for this a while ago and I'm finally getting to working on it. This is just the first step of many so if you have suggestions/ideas on the existing implementation or where it goes from here don't hesitate to say something.

:* List of cards can be seen at . Hover over the card name for the popup and click the name for card details.
:* Linking to a specific card can be done using the custom       tag which looks like:  .
:* Card data has been initially populated with the saved MetaTemplate data on each card page and is not yet complete. 
:* Do we need a "missing card" image or is it fine to just display nothing?
:* Are the card popup images a good size? I've resized them from the wiki images to load faster.
:* An add/edit card data feature is planned in order to let editors manage updating existing card data and adding new ones.
:* Similarly, a card search feature is planned.
:* A deck builder is possible but is a much larger piece of work to be considered in the farther future as time permits. 

If you notice anything broken or not working as you think it should let me know as well...I haven't done much cross browser/platform testing yet. -- Daveh   15:59, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

:Oooh, this looks really nice Daveh! The size of the pop-up images are quite good, they aren't much different in-game. I am not sure if a "missing card" image is necessary. I think that the benefits are that it will make us sure the pop-up is not broken and it might give us some incentive to find the missing images faster. All in all, it looks great! --Ilaro (talk) 18:19, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

:: A bunch more changes today:
:::* All card data should be up to date so far as I know it.
:::* Added the edit and create forms. Currently wiki admins have access to this but I can give specific editors access if there's any active Legends users. There's the "Create Card" in the upper right of the main card table and an "Edit Card" in the upper right of each card details page.
:::* Added a simple  .
:: A reminder that I haven't played very much Legends myself so if there are obvious omissions in anything let me know. -- Daveh   01:30, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

:::I would like to get access to the Create/Edit option at the  page. I am one of the most active Legends contributors and I am also the one adding the new cards from the upcoming expansion. So it would be easiest if I can add the card to both places at once. --Ilaro (talk) 08:53, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

::::You should now have the ability to edit and create cards. If this doesn't work for you please let me know! -- Daveh   23:03, 18 November 2017 (UTC)
:::::It seems like the tag isn't properly processing template parameters.       , for example, produces:   .

:::::Ilaro also pointed out that the link should go to the card's wiki page rather than Special:LegendsCardData. I'm not sure if we'd have a need to link to the card data for any reason, so the link can probably just be changed directly, but you could perhaps have it as an option in case there is some such need in the future, if it's not too difficult.  &ndash;       20:01, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

::::::Both of these should now be fixed. Use the   parameter if you would like to link to the card data page, otherwise it links to the card article. Note that if there are other custom uesp tags that need template parameter parsing let me know (like    ). -- Daveh   16:12, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

:::::::I found another problem: cards like   or   are showing the right pop-up, but they are linked to the Archer/Crusader page instead of their card page. This also causes   to link to the not existing "Alik" page instead of .
:::::::Another problem are the Werewolf cards. Both   and   have a unknown card pop-up. These are, however, two separate 'entities' and should have their respective card image pop-up. On the other hand,   shows the werewolf card, which should not be the case, because it is the link to the disambiguation page. --Ilaro (talk) 09:16, 23 November 2017 (UTC)

::::::::Fixed both issues. For Aela it was due to me incorrectly importing just the one base card so I renamed that one and created the other one. Both should now have correct popups. The disambiguation popup is fixed however your local browser cache will likely still display the issue until you clear the cache or the image expires. Note that to fix both issues you just have to re-save any page that uses those cards. -- Daveh   17:35, 24 November 2017 (UTC)

  The fixes seem to work! However, I should have been more clear about the werewolves.  ,  ,  ,   and   suffer from the same problem as Aela. (that should be all of them) --Ilaro (talk) 10:57, 25 November 2017 (UTC)
:These should now be all fixed. -- Daveh   16:10, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
::Just when you thought you were done.... Cards with disambiguations in the name face a special challenge, in that the disambiguation needs to be both present and absent. Look, for example, at  . As it stands now, it links to  even though it gets its data from . I'm not sure how that magic works, but it should really link to . I can see three potential fixes for this:
::#Change the magic renaming to link to the same page it's getting the data from.
::#Change all the card names to use the exact same as the page names. If you go that route, though, you'd need to give us the ability to edit the name used in  , as well as the wiki link itself, in the edit page so we can update page names if they move around and fix any that don't currently follow this pattern.
::#Provide an actual   parameter. This is potentially more flexible, but personally, I think this would end up over-complicating a lot of things, both on your end and on the wiki end, so one of the first two is probably the better choice.
:: &ndash;       19:08, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

:::Today I added all new obtainable cards to the Card Database. However, I ran into two problems. Cards with an apostrophe in the name (for example:  ) do not link properly to the right image file. Secondly, there are two new creature types in the expansion, but I could only choose types from a dropdown list and not add a new one. You are probably busy, but I like to point out that the problem from RH (one post above this) is also still present. See whenever you have time/feel like to fix it. Thanks in advance! --Ilaro (talk) 21:26, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

::::I've added basic card filters to the card table display. Let me know if you need/want more filters and what specifically. Added the 2 new creature types...if any list is missing something just let me know. Explicitly listing  what items makes it much easier for me since I don't play Legends much and am not to familiar with it. Fixed the issue with single quotes in item names...let me know if you run into similar issues (just was due to various text escaping errors). Haven't fixed RobinHood's issue but will look at it and figure out the best course of action shortly. -- Daveh   22:10, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

  Regarding the card links for disambiguation pages I've decided to go with a 4th option at least for now. Part of the issue is that the card link code doesn't access the legends card database and I'd prefer to keep it that way. That means the first option won't work. The second option would work but it depends whether editors want to go that route (I can add name changing to the card edit code as needed). The third option would work fine but it really just pushes the problem onto the editor or makes the card link template that much more complicated.

So option I've implemented for now is to hardcode a list of all cards that have disambiguation pages and check in that list whenever a card link is parsed. So far I just have 4 cards in that list:
:* Bandit Ambush => card
:* Chaurus => creature
:* Skeleton => card
:* Swims-at-Night => card
If there are more cards needed in this list, either now or in future sets, just let me know. -- Daveh   17:07, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

:Great! Some small notes: Chaurus (creature) has been changed some time ago to Chaurus (card) for consistency and the original is now a redirect. I also have some issue with        that it is still linking to the disambig page (see   ), while       is not (see  ). At last, is there any way to remove cards from LegendsCardData? Because this one is now split up into two cards  (the Nord and the Werewolf version). Thanks in advance for the help! --Ilaro (talk) 18:12, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

::Fixed the Chaurus card type for the disambiguation page, the MetaTemplate issue with disambiguation links and I've manually deleted the linked card. For now cards can only be deleted or renamed manually...no reason other than to limit the amount of data loss that could happen (can't just revert edits like with wiki pages). For now just let me know of any deletes/renames required and these features can be added in time if desired. -- Daveh   16:19, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

:::The following cards do also have disambig pages now:
:::*Skeever
:::*Gargoyle
:::*Mantikora
:::*College of Winterhold
:::*Sightless Pit
:::*Alfe Fyr
:::Furthermore, the "race" filter on Legends Card Data does not seem to work and, if possible, it would be nice to have a "unobtainable" filter. Also, there are "sandbox6" and "sandbox7" in the card list, which can be removed. Again thank you for all the help! --Ilaro (talk) 18:43, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

:::Besides my request above, is it also possible to add the new Forgotten Hero Collection to the Legends Card Data? i mean, I already added all the cards to the database, there just needs to be a option for the Forgotten Hero Collection to choose from in the drop down set menu.
:::Also (and I know this is a lot, so I don't expect this all to be implemented for some time) could there be some kind of checkbox to indicate if cards are "Unique"? This is a special property of some cards which indicates it can only be used once in a deck instead of the usual three.  --Ilaro (talk) 09:12, 5 February 2018 (UTC)
::::I'll just add more and more in this string, so you can fix it all at once when you have time. Arcaneum Librarian got renamed to Arcanaeum Librarian

::::: Should be all done:
:::::* Race filter fixed.
:::::* Obtainable filter added.
:::::* Unique field added.
:::::* Sandbox6/7 deleted.
:::::* Librarian card renamed.
:::::* Updated the disambiguation cards.
::::: I'll also look at adding a few features so you can do some/all of these actions yourself. -- Daveh   20:15, 8 March 2018 (UTC)

 Added a couple of new features so that card editors can do all of these actions themselves:
:* Cards can be renamed ("Rename" link at the top of the card's edit page).
:* Cards can be deleted ("Delete" link at the top of the card's edit page). Cards can be manually restored if needed (just let me know the card name and when it was deleted).
:* Set names can be edited ("Edit Sets" link at the top of the card list).
:* Disambiguation pages can be edited ("Edit Disambiguation" link at the top of the card list).
If there's any issue with the new features or additional features are needed let me know! -- Daveh   15:48, 9 March 2018 (UTC)

Image Undeletion

The image File:SkyrimEchmer.jpg was deleted on the 4th November, however, the Uutak Mythos is and has been linking it since 2nd September. The log doesn't say why it was deleted, so can someone look, and if possible, restore the image if it isn't too late, or if the reason it was deleted would see it deleted again (eg duplication), remove the links here and on that page. My apologies if it was me who marked it for deletion.      20:49, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

:You listed it for speedy deletion with the reason "duplicate file, other one is in the naming style of similar images" and AKB deleted it. I thought there was a way to view deleted images, but if there is, I can't find it, so I've restored the image for the time being. If you can find what it's a duplicate of, re-link it to the correct place and we can re-delete this one.  &ndash;       00:24, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

::Thanks. The duplicate image was autolinked from the file page, and has now been replaced on the Uutak Mythos page. I've removed the link above so it's clear to redelete.      00:41, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

:::Done. And thanks for looking into that. I was just on my way out to dinner, so I didn't have a lot of time.  &ndash;       06:39, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

UESP Fan Gift (2018 Calendar)

The calendar has been finished and sent off for printing so we can get started on figuring out who the lucky people are that get one. I've ordered 250 calendars so if we distribute them roughly the same as the map last year I shouldn't have any left over at the end. Like last year distribution will be grouped into a few categories:

:* Anyone who submitted an image used in the calendar (12 people).
:* All admins/mods/guild leaders of UESP (if you aren't sure if this includes you just [mailto:dave@uesp.net ask me]).
:* Random draw for everyone is open at Random Draw for UESP 2018 Calendar and a number of winners will be drawn on Dec 15th (so I can start mailing them before Christmas).
:* Any wiki editor in the 2017 year can submit their name at Random Draw for UESP 2018 Calendar for a different random draw on Dec 15th for just wiki editors.
:* Any other contest that might be run by our forums, social media sites, or ESO guilds. If you running a content let me know and we can figure out how many calendars we can reserve for you.
:* Special people in the Elder Scrolls universe (Bethesda, Zenimax Online, fan sites, etc...). [mailto:dave@uesp.net Let me know] if you have a suggestion here!

Calendar winners can use the Mailing Address Collection Form (2018 Calendar) to submit their address so I can mail the calendar to them.

I also still have about 100 maps from last year I can include for people as desired. -- Daveh   19:23, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
::If you can swing it, I would love to get another copy of the map - mine got damaged when I moved between states. --SCarverOrne (talk) 03:29, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

:At least the Morning Star, Sun's Dawn, First Seed, and Rain's Hand images were all submitted by me, but I do not need 4 calendars... xD --        13:09, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
::As an idea for the last point, maybe the creators of the most popular mods/addons? Like Arthmoor or the creator of FTC? Jeancey (talk) 15:32, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

:::I received the calendars last Friday and they look great! I'm mailing out the first batch of 22 calendars today/tomorrow to everyone who has filled out the mailing address form so far. Hopefully at least some of you will get them by Christmas! -- Daveh   18:52, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
::::Being just next door in Ottawa, I got mine today and it looks fantastic!  &ndash;       01:57, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

  I've performed the random draw just now with the 757 unique e-mails submitted from the form. 36 calendars went to wiki users and 25 went to random users. Everyone has been notified by e-mail to submit their mailing address on the collection form. After all calendars have been claimed from contests sometime in January I'll do another random draw to get rid of any left over calendars. -- Daveh   18:15, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

:Will send out another 70 or so calendars this afternoon and that will likely be the last batch shipped out before the New Year. An update on what charities we've supported this year (it's hard to choose as there's so many good organizations to give to). I've donated $750 to Charity Water and through Child's Play I've purchased $300 worth of toys for The Hospital for Sick Children here in Toronto. Note that if anyone is interested in running charitable events through Child's Play or a similar organization anytime just let me know! -- Daveh   16:39, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Skyrim Creation Club Purchases
Since Creation Club mods are "official" content (or close enough) the UESP's offer to purchase games for admins and active editors applies to them was well. At a minimum we should make sure that at least one admin/editor has a copy of each CC mod to make sure we can add/test content for the wiki. So far only Legoless has asked and received money for CC purchases and I don't know which mods he has purchased. 

If you are an admin or active editor and would like to be reiumbursed for CC purchases just [mailto:dave@uesp.net let me know]. Usually I just send money via Paypal unless there is a way to gift CC credits somehow. People how have CC mods should also post here so we know which content we have and what we might not. -- Daveh   20:42, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

:I'd be interested. I've dabbled with them but only taken the ones that were free on offer. If I decide to take up your offer I'll email you, as anyone should if they wish to keep anonymous. Also, should I do it, I will purchase all currently available ones that I haven't got. The numbers certainly don't appear to be high as there has been little activity on documenting them, so it would be good to know what creations everyone purchases.      21:58, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

::I'm also interested. I currently have Survival Mode, Arcane Accessories, Dwarven Armored Mudcrab, and Stendarr's Hammer (which I purchased with initial credits). Creation Club is easy content to document, so I'll certainly help out with those pages. &mdash;Dillonn241 (talk) 22:12, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

::: I have access to all CC mods to date and can verify as needed. Lots of information to add too, but it seems Fullerton may beat me to it! —Legoless (talk) 01:33, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

::::I now own all current CC content. I'm not playing Skyrim at the moment but I can now pop in and check/verify stuff if anyone needs.      00:09, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Ebony blade victims

I recently found out that the randomly encountered Stray dogs are valid targets for the Ebony blade which also uniquely respawn. I added the information to the Ebony blade victims page but my edit was revoked in good faith by another editor for not meeting the criteria. As far as I can tell there was no mention of such a unlimited (they respawn) target for the quest that also means no other named NPCs need to be disabled. What is the policy for adding the information to that page and how, if possible, can I rephrase or change the information so that it would meet the criteria on that page? With best regards, --SkyHiRider (talk) 20:06, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

:The best place to ask this is on the talk page of the article. Complaining to the admins because your edits were reverted and then subsequently explained is not how you go about understanding an article and its purpose.      20:11, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

::SkyHiRider, you might be better-advised to take it to the article's talk page, which more people will be watching and so will be a better place to expect a reply. The reason that the administrator noticeboard isn't the right place for this is because the AN's purpose is for Administrator-only actions, but the mistake was made due to being unaware so it's understandable and completely fine as long as the mistake isn't repeated. —Fullerton ﴾talk﴿ 10:52, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

::: Understood, will keep it to the article talk page. --SkyHiRider (talk) 23:48, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

Mobile ads issue

A couple times the past week, I've hit some kind of ad that redirects me to a giveaway/scam site. Example: Both the times it happened, I was on Safari for iOS, refreshing the Recent Changes page. --FioFioFio (talk) 15:43, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

: A user mentions having a similar problem on [ this forum post and manages to provide a link to the offending webpage. —Legoless (talk) 17:51, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

De-Rank Request: Fullerton

In light of Fullerton's recent actions on both our Discord server and another one, the Discord staff are suggesting a removal of his Patroller and Blocker roles on the wiki. There is precedent on both the wiki and forum for dealing with a user's actions from a different part of the UESP or from offsite.  As site staff in the form of patroller and blocker, he is representing the wiki elsewhere, and his recent behavior shows a lack of the type of responsibility needed to have these roles here.
He was previously staff on Discord due to us initially adding everyone who has roles elsewhere as UESP staff. He was removed on October 27 for sharing private staff conversations with other users. 
He has behaved in a somewhat inappropriate matter off and on, which has been addressed in a less-formal manner of staff talking to him or posting a reminder, such as racist comments, language such as the use of "retarded"/"mong", and other behavior which we do not consider okay there even as a joke. Earlier this week, on Tuesday, he was kicked from the server for spamming a bot command that was previously disabled (accidentally reenabled when the bot creator was working on it), being told to stop, and then moving the spam to our main channel (#general) instead, right around the time a prominent member of the ESO community joined. 
Yesterday, on another server (one with many banned members who have something of an anti-UESP sentiment), he doxxed Legoless (name hidden) by changing his username there to his actual real name, and did it in a racist manner, as Legoless is Irish. At this point, we gave him a role on our server that would remove access to all channels to him except the one called "#dungeon", which is used as a holding area while staff discuss what action to take. He claimed to not know it was Legoless's real name, but we found evidence to the contrary; two instances of him using Lego's first or last name on October 22 and November 13.
This morning, he left our server and rejoined to remove that role (essentially evading a soft ban), swearing at the moderation, and posted the contents of what had been said in the "#dungeon" channel (despite knowing it was against the rules, as he was staff when it was created).
Fullerton's editing on the wiki has been good, but we feel that with behavior like this it is not appropriate that he hold any type of staff role on the UESP.   ~     22:11, 6 January 2018 (UTC)

:Why are the Discord staff suggesting a removal of my patroller and blocker roles on-wiki? I do recall that recently there was an attempt to demarcate between Discord and on-wiki staves, and so it puzzles me to see that they're being treated as a single entity.
:If you will recall, these were demarcated because it placed people with insufficient experience in online chatrooms as moderators to have wikistaff become Discord staff, and I have been acting under the impression that one does not necessarily equal the other. I fully agree with my previous removal from Discord staff because quite frankly, my position as wiki staff should not in any way make me a staff member on the UESP Discord server. These distinctions are because Discord and the wiki are extremely different platforms. As a result, I did not feel that I had to act in my role as a wiki patroller when idly chatting in the UESP discord server and various other Discord servers, as the case may be. Now, the reason I failed to represent a wiki patroller in a Discord staff capacity is 'because' of this discrepancy, as I was thrust into a position of which I held no understanding. However, the patroller role on-wiki is something I signed onto fully aware of, and so there is far less possibility that I will misunderstand and forgo the duties which the role has assigned to me on here. As I said, they are different platforms and I signed on to be a Wiki patroller and fulfill the task, while I just so happened to be thrust into a position on the Discord pertaining to representing the wiki. 
:Especially prominent in the demarcation between UESP and the Discord Server belonging to it is the Discord Server's recent promotion of "Tea Party Moderators", who were chosen simply for being fit for the task.
:In the past (October 31st), I attempted to have the patroller role removed from my Discord account by leaving the server. However, it was simply re-added to my account because I expressed an ambivalence towards the role. I did not feel I was bound to remain in the role, and came only to see it as a different-colored nametag on the Discord server - hence I requested the colors when I rejoined the server from my (acknowledged to be unjust) kick.
:Additionally, there's no reason for Discord conflicts to suddenly occur on-wiki-this directly defies the reason given for the deletion  , which was that there is no need for the Discord to be that much on the wiki.
:I'd like to conclude by saying that this is an extension of the inconsistency in moderation styles on the UESP discord that has now spilled over onto the wiki, and that I doubt that allowing the confusion to continue will clear up any of the discrepancies on the UESP Discord server.
:—Fullerton ﴾talk﴿ 04:28, 7 January 2018 (UTC)
::(This response is just from me and not the Discord staff as a whole.) Again, part of the reason we are suggesting it here is that as patroller and blocker you are still site staff - not moderating that part of it doesn't change the roles you do have - and your actions therefore still represent the UESP. The demarcation of the site has nothing to do with it (in fact we've been treating the UESP less as separate communities and more of a single community ever since the Discord was founded, even if not everyone manages every aspect of it.) 
::(As an aside, the reason the Discord Bans page on the wiki was deleted was because we felt that the list had become incentive for people to try to behave badly in order to get banned and get their name on it, not because we felt the Discord and wiki should be kept separate. The reason you had the Blocker/Patroller roles on the Discord was to help you fulfill your duties on the wiki: to have access to the Patrolling channel to discuss edits a patroller isn't certain about, and for people to be able to notify you to block a vandal when needed (which is, in a way, still acting as site staff). You were aware that that was the purpose of the role, and in fact after you left in October and it missed being re-added, you yourself eventually pointed out that you were missing it so that it could be added and you could put it to that use.)
::But anyway, back to the topic at hand and the main part of my response: The other part of why we're suggesting it is because in the past we have taken action on parts of the UESP for behavior on a different part (and even offsite) if the behavior was severe enough, which I personally would vote is the case here: sharing another user's personal information without their consent is very serious, even without the rest of it. And regardless whether viewing you as a staff member or not, the examples I listed in the first post show poor judgement at best and some of them malicious behavior at worst (e.g. re-joining the server to shake off the dungeon role and swearing at the mods and posting the dungeon content), which is enough to raise concern about whether you are responsible enough for these roles.   ~     08:58, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

:::Instead of trying to dance around this, I'm just gonna say this. What you did could have put Legoless's personal safety at risk. Which raises the question, do you understand what doxing is, and why it is dangerous? Please answer if you understand what you did. --AKB   09:16, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

::::From my persepctive, doxxing a member of staff is not the way anyone should behave, let alone another member of staff. Furthermore, your actions on Discord of evading the soft ban by leaving and rejoining the server to leave the #dungeon channel, and then posting the content of the dungeon in a public channel, shows that you do not respect our moderation processes. Someone who does not respect our moderation processes should not be trusted with any moderation powers. --Enodoc (talk) 12:43, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

:::::There are so many side issues that are brought up by this discussion, it's hard to know where to start. On the one hand, I'm concerned about the cross-over of platforms. There's a certain level of behaviour that I would expect from staff, regardless of which UESP platform they're on, and to an extent, even on other sites. But on the other hand, there are also times when people feel the need to let loose. I've certainly said and done things on channels/servers/sites where I wasn't staff that I wouldn't do here, where I am.

:::::Doxxing someone (anyone! staff or not) is a serious charge, and one that might well warrant cross-platform discipline. That said, it really depends on how much of an issue it actually is for Legoless. I'd like to hear from him on that one. I'd also suggest that people consider the fact that some of us are more open about our real names, while others aren't, and it's very easy to forget who's who. A great many people know my real name, for instance, and it's not too terribly difficult to find out if you don't yet. A few clicks should bring you right to it. :) So, was Fullerton acting maliciously and deliberately sharing Legoless' real name? If so, then this is an easy decision, and I'd say yes, he should have rights removed here, since that type of behaviour is unacceptable for any staff member in any and every part of UESP. That becomes a bit more grey, however, if he was acting more out of negligence and just not thinking of the fact that only certain people know Legoless' real name, or even out of ignorance, not realizing that most people don't know it. As a gay man, I completely understand the latter. I've accidentally been outed to people in the past, and I have once accidentally outed someone else in complete ignorance, thinking that everyone knew. It sucks, but sometimes these things happen.

:::::As for the racism issue, that one's a bit more confusing. After all, Legoless' real name includes what is sometimes considered a racist (or at least ethnist) component to it, but is also just a normal name too, so unless there was something more there, I'm not sure that's necessarily racist on its own. Context, however, could make a big difference here, though I appreciate that it may be difficult to share that without inherently outing Legoless all over again!

:::::I think this brings up some larger issues, though, in that there has been a recent tendency to take things cross-platform, and I'm not sure it's always warranted. It strikes me that, to some extent, there have been vendettas going on from certain staff members against other users and an excessive adherence to rules. The fact that there are now two offshoots of the Discord channel for people who have either left or been banned from it is concerning in its own right. That one of them contains three current or ex-patrollers and a current admin is even more concerning. As popular as our Discord channel is, I think to an extent it has also become dysfunctional, and I have a tremendous concern that this cross-platform disciplinary action just continues that trend. TBH, when baratron recently suggested on my talk page that I return to the Discord channel, my immediate reaction was "Hell no!", though I worded it a bit more diplomatically there.  &ndash;       18:06, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

::::::I just did some research, and in a quick Google, I was able to find pages that linked Legoless to his real name. In my own inbox, I was able to find Legoless himself using the variant of his name that is presented as being racist. So, I think the concerns on that front are a lot less than they might seem.

::::::That said, I think evading a soft ban was inappropriate behaviour, but I can also see where locking someone away in a dungeon (quite literally in this case) gives them no chance to defend themselves publicly, and leaves them unaware of any public or admin-only discussion concerning them, where they should have the opportunity to raise a defence. Yes, they can do so afterwards, but from my experience, by that point, opinions have already largely been formed by the administrators who took an interest. I don't think a dungeon room is at all an appropriate way to handle discipline. All the worse that it's actually called that without seeing the stigma it creates.  &ndash;       20:24, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

::::::: @RobinHood: You may have missed a nuance of what Fullerton did. Let's say Legoless's name is Patrick Murphy (it isn't). Fullerton didn't just change Legoless's public name on the other server to "Paddy Murphy" (where "Paddy" is both a common Irish first name and also a derogatory term used for Irish people) - he changed it to "Paddy O'Murphy" - adding an extra O' as if Legoless's surname ''isn't Irish enough.

::::::: I am not sure what you mean by "The fact that there are now two offshoots of the Discord channel for people who have either left or been banned from it is concerning in its own right.''" I'm only aware of TJ's Discord server, which has plenty of current members. It's a place for people to "shitpost" (am I allowed to say that on the wiki?), which is posting lots of meme images and talking all in emojis - the sort of behaviour that we frown upon on the main UESP Discord server. This isn't necessarily bad behaviour, it just does not convey the professional image that we want on the UESP Discord, in case a Bethesda or Zenimax employee shows up. (Which they do - we have two currently that we know of.) 

::::::: We're also uncertain about "That one of them contains three current or ex-patrollers and a current admin is even more concerning". We're not sure of any current or ex-Patrollers who use TJ's server other than Fullerton and Legoless. Again, there is nothing sinister in them going to that site. Different Discord servers have different rules, and it doesn't mean that wiki staff are involved in some sort of plot against UESP because they happen to hang out there. Some people are on literally 50+ Discord servers at a time - I don't know how they keep up, I'm on 4 of which 2 are busy and multi-channeled, and the other 2 get on average of one message a day. But a lot of younger people apparently have the time and energy for it, *shrug*.

::::::: I take your point about the #dungeon channel, but it is intended for people to defend themselves. It's where they get to explain to the staff why they did whatever they did, and apologise if necessary. No one other than staff sees who is in there - other members do not even see the channel, and as far as they know, the user is simply offline. I don't agree that opinions have necessarily already been formed by the administrators who took an interest - sometimes they have, sometimes they haven't. Sometimes, the whole purpose of putting a person into that channel is to find out the details of an incident, rather than to punish people. The channel history is always wiped after use. Unfortunately, these discussions can't be public because every other Tom, Dick and Harry want to poke their nose into things which are none of their business. I agree that #dungeon is a bad name.

::::::: I understand that Fullerton was frustrated because he was "left in the dungeon for 6 hours", but this was an unfortunate side-effect of timezones. I went to bed at 6 am on Saturday morning due to staying up, dealing with this situation. For many people in the US, it was already 1 am and not everyone has as chaotic a sleep schedule as I do. I'm not sure how anything could have been dealt with any quicker. Also, Fullerton himself told us that he would be away from his computer for the day, which also gave an impression that it was not urgent enough for everyone to have to stay up way past their bedtimes. I do regret that this was apparently not the case. baratron (talk) 21:40, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

:::::::: I did catch the O'. To me, that was not tremendously relevant, but maybe that's an Aspie thing. I just don't attach the same level of importance to these sorts of things as some do. Since Legoless himself has said it was ancillary to the doxxing itself, I see it as a moot point in any event.

:::::::: My understanding of the purpose of TJ's channel may have been off, as I've never been there and have only heard bits and pieces about it. As far as the other server, I won't say too much for privacy reasons, but suffice it to say that I'm not the only person who found our Discord server sufficiently problematic as to either leave it or at least not visit often. A few of us happen to have found each other in what is otherwise an unrelated server, and on rare occasions, we have discussed what we see as some of the problems. "Offshoot" was not the best term, but I couldn't find another one readily that encompassed both TJ's server (which I understand has at least a few users who were banned from UESP's Discord) as well as the other one.

:::::::: As for the dungeon, as you've acknowledged, the name itself is problematic and adds bias to any discussion, as it automatically implies guilt. I think a better method would be to take such discussions to an ad-hoc private channels and ask the user to refrain from using the channels (which leaves you a certain leeway to make it an even softer ban, allowing use of certain channels if appropriate), or just take it to a group PM and kick/ban them from the Discord server, if necessary. Perhaps these are a bit more of a nuisance, but they're not as inherently biased. At the very least, a better name could be found. I get that it was meant as humorous, but I think it probably doesn't seem quite as funny to someone who finds themselves there.

:::::::: I wasn't really aware of the timing issue of Fullerton being left in the room for 6 hours, but as you say, even if it was frustrating, that's completely understandable, given that our users are from around the world.  &ndash;       22:10, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

::::::::: This conversation's moving a bit quickly for me to get a response in, and most of my points have been covered by various users, but I'll just add that Fullerton actually admitted that his intention with that particular name change was to be racist.  
::::::::: I agree that perhaps a better name can be found; it was indeed chosen to be humorous, but I understand your point about the implications the name might have. It certainly isn't our intent to imply that we've already formed opinions: as bara said, it's a place for the mods and the user to come to an understanding; we've given users another chance or found alternate solutions based on our discussions with them there, and it's not always used in cases of disciplinary action either. Even yesterday it was used voluntarily as a private place for a user who wanted to talk to the moderators. While I can understand the frustration of remaining there for hours, the reason we created it is to have time to let all moderators give input, discuss things thoroughly, and not make snap judgements.  ~     22:22, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

:::::::::: That screen-cap certainly provides a context I didn't have before. Thank you. As far as forming opinions in advance, that's not just limited to Discord, I've seen it happen in various staff discussions, and I'm as guilty of doing it as the next person. There are often two (or more) discussions on any given issue of misbehaviour, one that includes the affected user and one that doesn't. I think too often, the one that doesn't involve the user tends to jump ahead of the one that does, often without all the facts, and it leads to inappropriate conclusions. That's my main concern here. Usually by the time it's decided that someone belongs in the dungeon (or whatever you end up calling it), there's already been a discussion behind the scenes as to whether the user should be pulled in there. As I recall, putting them in there also removes them from all other channels, does it not? Assuming I'm right, that also adds a presumption of guilt, providing a punishment before a discussion with the user has even happened. I'd rather see the user involved first, before any decisions are made (not counting egregious behaviour, of course, where immediate actions are entirely appropriate). This is probably getting off-topic, however, as it's far more generalized of a concern than this specific instance.  &ndash;       22:54, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

::::::::::: Technically yes, there is a presumption of guilt when putting someone in the dungeon. That's why it exists and why it is named what it is – it is a punishment, a soft ban from the server, while the staff discuss privately, and also discuss with the person involved, whether their actions require a full ban. The alternative is that they get banned from the server straight away, and then the only way to contact them is via private messages, and then it is much more difficult to involve all the staff. --Enodoc (talk) 23:28, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

 This isn't about Discord staff versus website staff - this is about a person, who has been given the responsibility of representing the UESP in an official capacity, behaving in a manner that is unbecoming of an official representative of a 20+ year old website that is frequented by most of the TES community and by Bethesda and ZeniMax Online. 

UESP is not a random TES discord or Facebook group, it is the single oldest website dedicated to the series, and one of the most respected institutions in the fandom. You, as a representative of said website, are obligated to behave in a manner becoming of its mission and position in the community. Doxxing, using racist language, and making ableist remarks (not to mention defying a soft ban, talking publicly about private conversations, and repeatedly refusing to change aforementioned behaviours) is NOT OK for any regular member of a community, and it is especially not ok for someone that is supposed to represent the very best and most trustworthy of a community (i.e. the staff). 

When you use ableist or racist language, you're not just making yourself look bad, you're making UESP look bad. You're making people uncomfortable and less willing to contribute to the website and community, potentially driving away valuable contributors. You're eroding peoples' trust in the website and its staff.  You're encouraging bad behavior from members and making moderation more difficult, because if staff can act like assholes, why can't everyone? 

Staff should strive to be the best parts of any community. Your recent behaviour has been the opposite of that. Lady Nerevar (talk) 20:36, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

: I'm certainly not okay with my name being made public knowledge without my consent, which is the reason I brought this to the attention of staff to begin with. The fact that it was a racist version of my name is ancillary to the point as far as I'm concerned, and the specifics of that do not need to be addressed publicly.

: This is not a discussion of the demarcation between Discord and the wiki, and I don't find Fullerton's response above to be at all sufficient or even relevant. This discussion is about his continued rights on the wiki and therefore needs to be had on-wiki. Patroller and Blocker are trusted roles, and Fullerton broke that trust. That isn't the kind of behaviour I would expect from staff, regardless of whether it was off-site or not. In my view, the fact that it was done in a third party chatroom frequented by users who are outright hostile towards myself and UESP staff actually makes it worse. —Legoless (talk) 20:41, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

:: I apologize if I took the discussion a bit off-topic, but I do see the discontent among some users, myself among them, with the way the Discord channel is run as being at least somewhat relevant to this discussion. How it's run has a direct impact on how people behave, and more importantly, how they misbehave. That probably should be a separate discussion, however, if it needs to be had at all. At this point, I'm not sure I see much of a point. I agree with the above two posters that, wherever they are, staff on the wiki should try to behave appropriately when discussing the wiki. It's a fine line to draw for me, though, because people also need a place to vent.

:: What is important to me here is Legoless' comments. If he's not okay with his online name being linked to his real name publicly, then I'm not okay with it either. Even if the information is out there on the web, publicly presenting it is taking that a step further. Doing so in a room that's hostile towards him does indeed make it worse. Even if someone's venting, there's a time and a place for it, and a way to do it. That was not it.

:: So, while I think there are deeper issues, looking at this request in isolation, I'm not opposed to it.  &ndash;       21:25, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

::: I'm just really sad by the whole situation. @Fullerton, I feel as though 90% of the interactions I've had with you over the past year have been positive. Maybe 9% have been frivolous, and 1% annoying or rude enough that I've had to pull you up on the behaviour. I'm not familiar with New Zealand culture and it's possible that it's much more casually racist than the British culture I'm familiar with. Then again, it could also be that you're young and suffering from a lot of peer pressure from friends who dare you to say something dodgy.

::: But look - it's NOT okay to post someone's real name online without their consent. I know you go by your actual legal name online, and that's your choice to do so - but it's also other people's choices to not do so. Nor is it okay to be casually racist towards other people who aren't your close friends. (I'd argue that it isn't okay to be casually racist at all, but I guess there is some banter between friends which sounds awful to other people listening yet is meant in a friendly way.)

::: I actually '''don't''' believe you should lose your Patroller and Blocker roles on the wiki due to your behaviour on Discord, because your work on the wiki has been good. Apparently you have a few annoying editing quirks, but I bet everyone does until they've been here for many years. But you must understand - if you can't be trusted not to reveal someone's personal information on Discord, how do we know we can trust you not to deface wiki pages because you're angry? When you have the Patroller and Blocker roles, you have a lot more power to damage the wiki. UESP has been going for 22 years. As Lady N said, Bethesda use it to look up Lore they have forgotten, Zenimax use it to get ideas for Arena and Redguard places to revisit in ESO, and we know for a fact that Dire Wolf use it for reference from little oddities which have popped up in Legends. The wiki is more important than one person.

::: I'm sorry that it's come to this. You're intelligent and energetic, and there's no reason on Earth for you to have randomly attacked a wiki admin "for the lols". You could be using that intelligence and energy for good. I hope that you will continue to work on the wiki, so that over time people will feel able to trust you again. baratron (talk) 21:59, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Edit Break 1
I'm gonna ask any conversation about the running of the Discord server, or whether or not there is a precedent for cross-site or even off-site behavior is relevant to your standing on the wiki be shelved. The first is off topic, and the first one has a clear precedent from past incidents. If you would like to make suggestions for the running of the Discord, or the formalization or removal of the existing precedent relating to cross-site and off-site activity, please start a separate topic either here or on CP. 

As far as for the actual issue, I would like for Fullerton to respond to the topic. Particularly, I would like for him to confirm that he understands what doxing is, and why it spawned this conversation. Additionally, I'd like for him to be able to provide a response in relation to this issue, before any decision is made relating to it. --AKB   03:06, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

:As was stated, his real name has come up once or thrice and that led me to believe that he was alright with it being used. Quite honestly, I'm not entirely sure I understand what you mean by doxxing. —Fullerton ﴾talk﴿ 05:04, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

::Doxxing's a relatively new term, probably a few years old. It means deliberately/maliciously releasing someone's personal information (e.g., name, address, or phone number) when it wasn't generally known.  &ndash;       05:19, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

:::Robinhood is correct. With that said, if that is true why didn't you just say that before, instead of claiming ignorance to what his name was? Additionally, do you want to comment about the rest of your actions? --AKB   07:00, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

::::I didn't mention it because I assume it wouldn't help my case, that "ignorance is no excuse" would be invoked. In regards to my actions on the Discord server, attempting to evade the dungeon was untenable. However, I would like to say that I am not an ableist, and I object to being called one. —Fullerton ﴾talk﴿ 08:32, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

:::::But now it seems/looks like you have been lying to us. How can we still trust your word then? --Ilaro (talk) 15:11, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

::::::As someone that is in the aforementioned Discord server (which isn't as anti-UESP as portrayed and currently has only   two users who were banned from the UESP Discord server) and saw the immediate aftermath of Fullerton's actions, I will vouch for Fullerton in saying that he seemed genuinely surprised that the nickname he had set for Legoless was his actual name, so, while what could be considered as doxxing occurred, I do believe that it was completely unintentional on Fullerton's part, it might have been a lapse of memory and the specific name being subconsciously picked without conscious awareness that it was actually related to Legoless, but in any case, the intention was pretty clearly not malicious from everything I saw.

::::::Additionally, reading this discussion, it feels like Fullerton has been driven into a corner by you people, being forced to admit to things that don't necessarily correlate to the actual course of events, so either he is a masterful actor and played us all at TJ's server (which I highly doubt), or he's just bending over due to the pressure to try to find the easiest way out (this last paragraph being mostly directed at Ilaro's previous comment). Bryn (talk) 15:34, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

:::::::I do not agree at all. If anything, he did put himself into the corner, and depending on what he told you, playing the victim. We gave him more than enough time to explain himself and apologizing without any pressure, but he felt the need to insult the staff and evading the soft ban instead (see the first two links Alarra posted). I am mostly disappointed that he did not even apologize for the doxing (or the racism, which he clearly admitted was the intention). --Ilaro (talk) 17:35, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

:::::::: With all due respect, Brynjar, Fullerton lied to you and your friends in the other server. Legoless's real-life surname is uncommon - not only have I literally never heard it before, but it also doesn't appear in the Top 100 Irish surnames lists that I've found online (one from the 1890s, the other from the 1990s). In order to get it correct, Fullerton would have had to know it.

:::::::: If instead of lying after the event and trying to involve all of you in the lie, Fullerton had simply turned around and said, "I'm sorry, it was a joke, I didn't realise Legoless didn't want his real name revealed" we wouldn't be here now. Refusing to publicly acknowledge that he's made a mistake is the exact thing that is making us question Fullerton's judgement, and whether he can be trusted with important wiki permissions. baratron (talk) 19:58, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

  Let's all try to keep in mind that Fullerton is fifteen years old and on the autism spectrum. While it's not impossible, those don't generally go hand-in-hand with being a master manipulator. From what I've seen, he's doing his best to explain his actions but, being that age and not having a full comprehension of social interaction, he's not doing it in a way that neurotypical people would expect and want. And yeah, maybe like any teenager, he knows he's screwed up and just wants to figure out a way that'll get this over with the fastest, as opposed to something more appropriate, so he can move on and pretend this never happened. Being on the autism spectrum myself, I see quite clearly here the same types of mistakes I would have made at his age: not considering the effects of my actions on others and saying whatever was needed to make a problem go away, rather than having to interact with people in a negative way. That's autism!

The fact that he doesn't know how to respond in this situation may well be reason to go forward with the initial proposal, but let's also look at this from his perspective. How would you all have reacted when you were fifteen, caught doing something wrong, and everyone around you was older than you and yelling at you? It's not a fun position to be in. I'm not saying that should affect this decision, but it does give some important insight into Fullerton's responses to this conversation, I think.

Also, baratron raised an interesting point before the edit break. Does this mistake prevent him from patrolling or blocking in a responsible manner? The answer to that is clearly no from a purely logistical point of view. But we do have to consider the social and interpersonal ramifications of Fullerton's actions. Personally, I'm not convinced that removing him as a patroller and blocker will have any beneficial effect on the wiki, and I tend to think that Discord remedies should be sufficient for Discord problems in most cases. But, as I said above, I'm not opposed to the removal of rights, either. The simple fact is, an administrator here was affected because Fullerton didn't think his actions through, which is not really a desirable quality in someone with elevated rights.  &ndash;       20:11, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

:All right, I wasn't going to post, as I came back to the wiki/Discord right as this all happened and didn't see the build up to this (the "small" infractions e.g. the ableism), but I need to say something. Fullerton, your actions were inexcusable. It's not just the doxxing, or the admitted racism that went along with it. Your behavior has been deteriorating for a while. Even before I took my wikibreak, I had noticed that you seemed increasingly abrasive. And abrasive is not a good quality in a representative of the UESP. I was willing to overlook it, because you are young yet and have room to grow, but I cannot in good conscience allow this to continue. Even though I'm on the autism spectrum myself, I know to watch my words regarding other members of my community. Reclaiming words for yourself is one thing, but referring to other people that way without their knowledge or consent is, indeed, ableist. Just from that, I would have pushed for a time-out. As for the doxxing, I can't speak to the racism, but... Fullerton, you understand that doxxing is a violation, right?

:I believe what this boils down to is consent, and a lack of respect for it. And that's a basic skill that nothing but time and experience can teach you, if ever. Add to that your defense to this incident, which has been... lacking at best, and I must advocate for demotion. Which is a shame, but a necessary one. —          20:16, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

 

OB:Efficient Leveling

Efficient Leveling may require protection to keep some utter nonsense off it. I've attempted to end it by contacting the user directly, but given that the user has had over a week to do the basic maths involved in discovering why it should not be on the page (5+5+5 does not equal 5+3+3), I hold no hope that they will come to understand that their edit should not remain on the page and will attempt to replace it again. I'm already on my third revert of the edit, and have no wish to get punished for keeping nonsense off a page.      00:29, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

: I've fully protected it for a period of 2 weeks. This shouldn't be a problem considering the low levels of editing attention that page has received in recent years, but if it needs to be lifted before then just let an admin know. —Legoless (talk) 00:41, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

ESO Dragon Bones PTS Update

The usual update for another content release on the ESO PTS. 

:* uespLog Addon -- Turn custom stats off (/uespcustomstat off) to stop a bug in the custom stat display otherwise you'll get error messages in most UI screens.
:* Files Uploaded -- Done!
:* Maps -- Done!
:* Skills -- Done!
:* Skill Cooefficients -- Done (a couple of bad fits fixed)!
:* CPs -- Done!
:* Items -- Done!
:* Icons -- Updated!
:* Collectibles -- Updated to fix an issue with missing items from Live.
:* Set Indexes -- Updated!

-- Daveh   19:53, 9 January 2018 (UTC)
:As usual, thank you for all your hard work behind the scenes! Timeoin (talk) 16:16, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

::Hey Dave, there appears to be an issue with the icons.zip not having everything in it again (similar to last time). Could you have a look, please? Thanks! --Enodoc (talk) 17:22, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

:::Oops, missed this request. This is now fixed (unsure why the script I use doesn't correctly create that file). -- Daveh   16:35, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

UESP's Discord Server

As many of you no doubt noticed, I've recently referred to UESP's Discord chat as "dysfunctional". As the person on the wiki with the most rights next to Dave (out of the active users, at any rate), I am at all times aware that it's my duty to attempt to be professional and fair-minded in all things UESP related, so that is not a statement I make lightly. Administrators don't speak against administrators, generally, and when they do, it should be noted. That nobody chose to ask me why I felt so strongly is concerning. That nobody thought to ask why four different current- or ex-staff members are avoiding UESP's Discord is downright alarming, and only furthers my conviction that the chat is, indeed, dysfunctional. My concerns about how it's run are numerous, so I'll try to break them down into meaningful groups.
Foundership: Currently, AKB holds supreme rights on the Discord server and can be challenged by no one, not even Dave. During my time on the server, I saw numerous examples of questionable behaviour on his part, including lying, manipulating, interfering in matters outside our server, and outright paranoia that another administrator was out to get him, simply for calling him on some of his behaviours. While those incidents are long gone and not worth getting into at this point, particularly since I have no way of bringing forth evidence at the moment, I would call for AKB to hand over foundership to Dave, so that he is simply one admin among many, and that the server is ultimately managed by UESP's owner, as I feel it always should have been.
Staff: Many of the current Discord staff come from elected staff in other parts of the wiki. This made sense in the beginning. However, since then, many unelected staff have been added. This includes people like guild leaders, people who have notable roles in the Elder Scrolls universe, and people who are useful to have as staff in other ways. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but the concern is that nobody had any say in who was brought on as staff, apart from existing staff (if even that). Even if unintentional, this can lead to clique behaviour, since only those who tend to agree with existing staff will be invited to become future staff. There needs to be a facility for the general members of the Discord to suggest/elect new moderators and, in the worst case scenario, to propose demotion.
Accountability/Transparency: Continuing on from that last, far far too many discussions on the Discord take place in an echo chamber. Decisions are frequently made by staff members without ever discussing them with the public. When members complain, they then sound like trouble-makers. If the complaints escalate, they may even come to be trouble-makers, simply out of frustration. This needs to change. Discussions of any long-term import to the server should be public whenever possible, preferably in a permanent chatroom dedicated to such discussions, so that those who don't have an interest can ignore it, while those who do can join it. If the chatroom is cleared or deleted for any reason, chat logs should be kept and posted publicly, in order to ensure full transparency on any decisions. 
Also notable here is that most if not all staff members, myself included, were left-leaning or fairly far left, last time I checked. While I certainly don't propose we invite alt-right members to be staff, those with stronger political leanings need to be sure that they're shelving their own political views as much as possible when it comes to non-political discussions and/or rule-making. Even in political discussions, staff need to be certain that they're not being unnecessarily "twitchy" when it comes to deleting messages or moderating users. If any can be found, I think a few responsible, moderate right-wing people should be brought on as staff, to balance everyone else out and make sure the echo chamber phenomenon isn't perpetuated.
I understand that the "dungeon" channel has been renamed, and I thank you all for that. This still leaves the problem that the dungeon channel is cleared after any discussions, thus there's no accountability or transparency for staff. The person who is being disciplined is also isolated from everyone else and is thus unable to ask for help. In this configuration, staff have every advantage (numbers, increased rights, ability to discuss approach and strategy without the user's knowledge, to name a few), while the accused has none. That needs to be significantly altered. While private moderation is entirely appropriate when personal information is involved, if a user requests it, moderation discussions should take place in an ad-hoc, public chatroom (or permanent chatroom, dedicated to such discussions), where anyone who is interested can join and have their say because yes, sometimes every Tom, Dick, and Harry do have the right to have input on this sort of thing. If the room is to be cleared or deleted afterwards, chat logs should be maintained and published publicly for future reference. Similarly, even if the chat takes place in a private room, chat logs should be maintained in a private location, accessible to all staff in any part of UESP. This will not only help to ensure continued transparency and accountability, it will also allow staff from other parts of the site to be aware of any problem behaviour occurring elsewhere.
 At no time should any administrator ever delete any comment, theirs or anyone else's, from any discussion relating to rules or discipline. If you say something that came out wrong or was inaccurate or what have you, apologize and move forwards. If you say something that you realize could get you in trouble, well, guess what? You're an administrator...you're accountable for what you say and do! Deal with the consequences like a responsible admin.
Rules: In far too many cases, rules are developed on an ad-hoc basis. An example from Fullerton's discussion, above, would be not posting the contents of the moderation room to a public room. That's not a rule that was posted anywhere prior to that. From all accounts, it was made up on the fly. If Fullerton wasn't just doing it to spam channels or leak private information, he had every right to post the contents of a discussion about him to wherever he felt it appropriate to do so. After all, it's a discussion about him, and he maintains absolute control over that information. If administrators felt that they said or did something they didn't want public in that chat, well, maybe they shouldn't have done that thing in the first place! I don't know if that's the case here, but accountability is one of the places I feel our Discord server needs the most work, so I'm bringing it up again here as an example.
Similarly, all rules should be posted publicly to the wiki's Discord page, or a subpage, so that people can know what they are before joining, if they choose to look. This will also help maintain a record of when rules were enacted or changed.
Cross-platform Interactions: As a rule, what happens on the Discord server should stay on the Discord server. I'm not just referring to the recent issue with Fullerton, but rather, reminding everyone of a rule that has long been in place and has sometimes been ignored: no decisions made on the Discord server should be applied to the wiki, forums, or wherever else, without there being a full discussion on the relevant platform. You can always post chat logs, if needed. Bringing this back to Fullerton, however, I feel that much of what happened was probably blown out of all proportion, from what I've been able to tell in chats with those involved. At best, I feel that this was a borderline case as to whether it should have been brought to the wiki. So, I'm going to suggest that we use this as "the line". If it's less serious of an incident than Fullerton's, keep Discord discipline limited to Discord. We don't need to perpetuate drama across the entire site.  &ndash;       23:07, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

::Rob has hit all of the points I've had some concern about, and after telling me he was making the post, I wanted to throw in my agreement with each post. I also want to say that one of the things I used to like about the UESP IRC channel was that the atmosphere was a lot friendlier, even though it was a smaller group. There were those token AOPs and HOPs in case there was the odd troublemaker in, but for the most part everyone treated everyone else fairly and euqally. If there were any concerns, they could be brought up knowing it would be fairly handled either there or on our Administration Noticeboard. I feel like that's not the case at all in Discord, and when I was there, I had a handful of users DM me because they were upset that there was such a clear clique and pecking order established in the Discord. There's a lot more emphasis on authority and enforcement, rather than peaceful moderation, and it's affecting how comfortable people are - myself included - when using the Discord, hence my departure from it.

::Users shouldn't have to be concerned that what they say will be picked apart by a cabal (and I hate using this word) that seems to exist in the Discord where the staff are ganging up on people who can't adequately defend themselves. Like with Fullerton's case, as a topical example, where users who never use the wiki (or seldom do) were popping over to add to the consensus to affect a user on a platform that they don't use anyway and that should have no bearing on the wiki to begin with.

::I also agree with Rob's thoughts about how leadership is elected, and I feel like going forward there should be a clear election process or consensus to decide who is capable of being a staff member, because at present, I see questionable decisions on who should be staff, and I feel like there should be clear guidelines in place and a nomination process, not existing staff arbitrarily chosing people on their own, as I feel they've been prone to do. -      &hearts;    23:37, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

:::@RH While you are making some interesting points and some of them could definitely addressed, I still think you are way too exaggerating the problems on Discord. The dungeon channel, for example, is the alternative for outright banning. There is a reason that the person does not have access to the other channels, because it is (mostly) used a soft-ban. I will comment about the other points at another time, because I certainly believe some of them are (partly) right and some of the rules might be changed to reflect these concerns.
:::For now I want to point out this statement from Damon: "where users who never use the wiki (or seldom do) were popping over to add to the consensus to affect a user on a platform that they don't use anyway and that should have no bearing on the wiki to begin with." I have no idea why he said that, because everyone in that discussion is in the top 100 of most edits this year (and Damon, you are not there, but I do still think you have the right to pop-up into this conversation). I believe everyone has the right to have their say, because the wiki concerns a lot more people than only the editors. --Ilaro (talk) 00:49, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

::::I know I have not been an active user of Discord, having only used it about 3 times, but having read the post above, here and in the Fullerton case, my experience of basically being in charge of discipline on IRC (having kicked more people than the bot in charge of auto-kicking), and being one of the most active when I was there, I feel I can contribute/make observations from my experience there. 
::::Almost every case of discipline was public, warnings, discussion, actions. Only very rarely did something discipline-wise happen off-channel, usually in private messaging, and usually only to bring attention to something that would then lead back into the public room. This is almost the same as happens on the wiki for demotions, punishments, warnings, even disputes about certain edits, with only a few instances of discussions happening via email. This is a very important point for avoiding accusations of cliquishness, even if it can't stop it. It actually helped that being a "staff" member on the wiki auto-entitled you to IRC status, as the wiki had little knowledge of a persons social leanings if they hadn't been on IRC.
::::The description of the multiple channels reinforces the observation that the channel is not being run for social interaction anymore, given the abundance of rules regarding where you have to post certain things; why are you not allowed to have fun in the main channel. That is an indictment of the current running of the channel, and I would suggest that the aforementioned Bethesda and Zenimax visitors would find that rather sad that no-one is having fun in case they "spoil" whatever passes for enjoyment in that stale environment. The IRC had an unwritten rule that you could have fun until someone needed help or to discuss something wiki/series related, and again it was rarely broken; this also lead to having many people in the channel who knew little about the games but were there to talk socially, making the place more enjoyable. 
::::An overabundance of rules only tells people that you don't trust them to behave without them. I personally have probably broken every rule that wikipedia has cared to invent, yet respect most of them and enforce them when they are actually needed. Things thrive best when there are less rules, because the few that remain actually mean something. The current Discord wiki page is still not complete (a particular section is still linking back to the IRC page waiting for someone to adapt it for Discord). Nevertheless, it should not become full of rules as a result, and should continue the kind of informal style of the IRC page. I would also suggest that a complete rethink of all the rules be done, with some or many done away with, and also roll some of the off-shoot channels back into the main one, or merge some of the side ones together (less is so very much more). 
::::Finally, a persons behaviour is their behaviour. An admins actions on IRC was an admins actions on the wiki. Even a persons actions off-site when representing the site should be held against them. This can be traced as far back as rpeh's admin rights removal for his actions off-site. When you become a staff member particularly, you are even-more-so representing the site, a responsibility you accept when you request or accept a role. However, back to IRC, an off-hand remark would often be forgotten if an apology was made, given the real-time nature of the network, only more serious actions would have led to something as big as rights-removals on the wiki (this is not a comment on the above discussion). To state it again, if RobinHood70 were to go anywhere on the internet and start doing reprehensible things (like saying my grammar is awful), and we knew it was him, he should be held accountable on the wiki and any of its offshoots (eg twitter/facebook management).
::::Feel free to ignore any of my advice/experience given my utter lack of Discord experience, just as I will continue to avoid social interaction with every one of you for the foreseeable future, given my right-wing stance on treating people with dignity and respect.      01:11, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:::::First of all, I'd like to thank RobinHood for bringing this issue to the Noticeboard, and even more so with his resounding points, with which I agree in full in all cases.

:::::I have been one of the most active users in the UESP Discord server for close to an year or so (being on number 4 in the leaderboard - which is based roughly on the number of messages sent in the server - for quite a long period), until I voluntarily left a month ago due to my escalating issues with the moderation and administration of the server. My draft for this post got considerably long so I'll try to bullet point my issues and concerns to try for a more concise and cohesive post:

:::::* Moderation: any and all wiki (or subsidiaries) staff members are immediately given moderator privileges and responsibilities in the Discord server, whether they want it or are apt to do the job. As expressed by some staff members on the server itself, some of them do not even want to moderate and administer the server, and many others have no idea what they’re doing, which has led and will certainly lead to a series of bad and questionable decisions, even more so given the apparent top to bottom hierarchy and authority even among the staff members.

:::::* Divide between the staff and the community: while a difference between the wiki staff and the general public is certain to be expected, it has been made unhealthy by the server privileges given to the wiki staff, creating a sub community that most of the time seems to behave as if they were above the “regular” users, which shouldn’t be the case, given that the server is open to the public. Interactions between most staff members (with exceptions) and the rest of the community are also fairly limited, creating a big divide in the general interpretation of the actions to be taken, which are made exclusively by this more secluded and reserved group than by the biggest share of the active user base; and, as RH said, without consultation or open discussion with that part of the community.

:::::* Poor and inconsistent moderation/decision making: staff behaviour in regards to rule enforcement and problem-solving is completely inconsistent, while one staff might be strict, many others are extremely lax or never actually do anything, and even when the staff intervene, the actions taken vary absurdly from one to the next, and most of the time the staff board as a whole is extremely reactionary and ready to blow something minor and irrelevant out of proportion, making the many suffer for the sins of the one. It seems to me that the staff members lack a good guideline (if they have one at all) on how to treat the server, which ties in to the first point, of staff members not prepared to handle a chat server or unwilling to do so.

:::::Other than that, I would like to stress the points about Accountability and Cross-platforming that RH has made, which I believe are very important here. And despite what Ilaro has to say, all of these are very serious problems for the well-functioning of a chat server and the UESP server specifically, and all of the users I interact with on a more frequent basis, either on UESP or the other six TES servers I’m a part of, all notice and are bothered with most of the points raised here. Bryn (talk) 01:27, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

::::::  I didn't bring it up further because the discussion was about Fullerton's rights on the wiki, not your opinion on the Discord server. But I must say that I was rather put out by your comment that the server is "dysfunctional". And maybe it is, if that ideal of functionality is based on the functionality a wiki. But Discord is not a wiki, it's an instant messaging and VoIP service, which is an entirely different medium.
::::::Ownership: While I agree that technically it would be better if Dave was the server owner, I don't think he is active enough on Discord for that to actually be practical. A Discord server needs an active server owner so that they are available to deal with whatever issues crop up that only the server owner can deal with.
::::::Staff: The original assignment of Discord staff based on being elected staff elsewhere on UESP is untenable. It was mentioned to us numerous times that a number of staff elsewhere have been avoiding the Discord because they didn't want to be staff on Discord. Everyone who was initially appointed as Discord staff this way has, as far as I am aware, now been contacted though to see whether they actually want to remain Discord staff or not. So that whole thing actually didn't make sense at all, as it was putting people into a position they didn't want. When it comes to appointing new staff, it appears to work the same way that it does here. Someone is approached by current staff with the suggestion. I think it's a very rare occurrence for someone to actually put themselves forward for a staff position of their own volition, or even with encouragement from other users, without at least one of those other users being staff already.
::::::Accountability/Transparency: I actually don't understand the issue here. It is common practice for administration to be discussed in a private channel that is specifically for discussing administration. If that was done in a public channel, then effectively everyone is now an administrator. Although I do agree that anything that would have an effect on the entire userbase should be discussed with the entire userbase, I can't think of any examples right now where that has actually happened. (I'm sure you can though, otherwise you wouldn't have brought it up, so I'd be interested in having some examples.)
::::::There does appear to be an "anti-anything-remotely-right" bias, which I think may cause any staff members who are not left-leaning, if they do exist, to not make it obvious.
::::::Yes, the dungeon channel is now called "mediation". Whenever the channel is cleared, the contents are logged and are available to other staff on request. The isolation from the rest of the server is intentional - being put in the "dungeon", as was, is effectively banning someone from the rest of the server without actually kicking them from the server (you can't talk to them if they're kicked). It originally existed solely for this purpose; someone isn't banned if they can still access the other channels. This has been repurposed however, and I think can now serve as a "public" moderation chatroom, if such a thing would ever be required (but I can't think of any examples why it would be, as then it could just be discussed in #general).
::::::I'm not sure what your "deleting comments" sentence is getting at. Comments that violate the rules would of course be deleted, but I don't think that's what you mean...
::::::Rules: On that specific example, a rule that has existed since the initial staff overhaul in October is "Any conversation that is not normally available to users should be treated as confidential". Since that rule only applies to staff, only staff can see it, to avoid confusing the rest of the userbase. Fullerton was well aware of this rule, and anyone who is suspended to the moderation channel is informed of it as well.
::::::While conceptually similar to the IRC, I think the way Discord has grown means that "token AOPs and HOPs" is just not a viable moderation method. The (rather high) number of staff required to maintain a large server probably does make it seem like there's a clique, and I'd love to hear some suggestions on how we can try to avoid that, yet while still maintaining necessary server integrity.
::::::I do not see anyone who commented on Fullerton's case who is not a regular/active UESP wiki contributor, based on the active editors from the last 12 months. Although it would be up to whoever decides what "consensus" actually is to determine whether consensus can be reached based on the currently-involved participants.
::::::Regarding how staff are chosen, I have no idea how it works on the Forums, but however it works there is probably the best model to use as a base for what we do on Discord. A forum is much more similar to a chat server than a wiki. Having a two-week discussion to reach someone's arbitrary definition of "consensus" is not a viable basis.
::::::In conclusion however, if "what happens on the Discord server should stay on the Discord server", surely it is on the Discord server that this discussion should be being held, and if users (past or present) are not happy with the way it is being run, they should come to us with viable suggestions on how to change it, not just ''what's wrong with it'', and then be involved in the implementation process of actually making the thing better. "Fixing a broken system that we didn't realise was broken" is what I've been doing at work for the past three months, and the best progress towards a resolution always comes out of a discussion where a clear direction of what to do next is given.

::::::@Silencer: If there appears to be a "rule against fun" in the main channel on Discord, let me know where that seems to have stemmed from, as that's not something I would support (although given how active the main channel usually is, I don't actually see it). Also if there is a general feeling that there is an overabundance of rules, I'd be happy to discuss trying to cut them down, if we can work out what's not actually needed.

::::::@Bryn: Immediate moderation rights for staff was a concept that was based on trust. i.e., "if they're trusted to moderate elsewhere, they're trusted to moderate Discord too". But we realised this was not what many of the other staff wanted, and as such, this is no longer the case, and all who were initially appointed like this have (I think) been contacted to ask if they wish to continue. Anyone newly appointed to a staff position elsewhere on UESP retains that original concept of "trust" though, and by that reasoning, are still asked if they would be interested in moderating Discord based on that. Any suggestions for improving staff/community interaction would be welcome, but I maintain what I said before that server moderation cannot be a community activity. There is definitely inconsistency within staff behaviour, but I don't actually know how that can be improved, as everyone will have their own way of doing things. In terms of actual rule enforcement (i.e., moderation), there is no reason that shouldn't be consistent if the rules are the same for everyone. Again, if people who "are bothered" by this come forward with their problems and solutions, then there is no reason that we can't address these.
::::::--Enodoc (talk) 01:50, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:::::::@Eno: I appreciate the changes being made, and while I can see the reasoning for the trust factor, I think a competence qualification should also be looked for in a communication medium that works fundamentally different from what those people are used to moderate. I have proposed the following solution at least two times publicly on Discord and a few times directly to staff members, but it has so far been ignored. What I've always proposed is  a divorce between wiki staff and Discord staff; there should be specific roles and channels for wiki and forum and guild and what-have-you staff, for sure, so that they can discuss topics that concern their specific roles, but those people should not also be made or necessarily even asked to become moderators for the server, and this should instead be relegated to members picked for showing aptness to follow and enforce rules and integrity in chat, kinda like I hear the "Tea Party Moderators" were selected (although I think this current approach is still flawed). I didn't go at length with this suggestion in my previous comment because it was already too long as it was and I felt it was detracting myself from making the points I thought needed to be made. Bryn (talk) 02:09, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

::::::::  @Enodoc: I'll respond more fully later, as it'll take some time for me to really go through this point by point, but I did want to respond to one thing that may help clarify my attitude and actions here. Specifically, your suggestion that surely it is on the Discord server that this discussion should be being held, and if users (past or present) are not happy with the way it is being run, they should come to us with viable suggestions on how to change it, not just what's wrong with it.

::::::::The problem here is that in taking this discussion to the Discord server, we are stating that we're willing to rejoin the server in its current state. I, for one, am not. I do not want to be seen as supporting it in any way right now. Yes, I think it's actually that dysfunctional, or at least it was the last time I was there. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, if a discussion of the server takes place on the server, staff there are under absolutely no obligation to do anything whatsoever about the suggestions made and, unless we all go there together at the same time, any individual comments will be lost in the chatter of the general channel. The user could well be deemed a trouble-maker and have their comments deleted. Even if it did become a highly active discussion there, as you can see from some of the comments here, trust in some of the Discord staff is not high among some users. We simply have no confidence that any discussion held on the server wouldn't simply be deleted. By holding it here, on the wiki, it's not in Discord staff's hands, and a full, permanent record is available to any and all without requiring them to join UESP's Discord.  &ndash;       02:20, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

 I'll preface this by saying that I am one of the "current or former patrollers" mentioned above who has expressed dissatisfaction with the way that the UESPWiki Discord server is being run. Make of that what you will.

One of the most serious issues I attempted to raise during my (brief) time in the channel was the lack of transparency which seems to have become endemic since the move was made from IRC. This has manifested itself most notably in the deletion of the block logs page - Fullerton also attempted to address that, above. Frankly, I don't feel Alarra's argument that a public list of banned users would encourage misbehavior holds any water, and I'd appreciate some clarification of this claim, if she’d be so kind.

Is there a precedent that's made you feel this way? Do you feel the same way about the block logs on the wiki? Should they be privatized on the basis that they might encourage infamy? I moderated the now defunct IRC channel for more than three years, and during that time the channel block log was maintained meticulously, because it was understood that the chat was simply an extension of the wiki, and so the same rules applied - including record keeping. I’m disturbed to see that this commitment to openness has fallen by the wayside so completely, and in such a short amount of time.

On the topic of record keeping, I find the accusation levelled against Fullerton that he "posted the contents of what had been said in the "#dungeon" channel (despite knowing it was against the rules, as he was staff when it was created)" really, really worrying, and actually symptomatic of a much larger culture of silence. If a user feels uncomfortable with the way that staff are treating them, and feels they're being dealt with unfairly, they shouldn't just be permitted to raise the issue elsewhere - they should be encouraged to do so.

"He was removed on October 27 for sharing private staff conversations with other users." Once again, where on the Discord guidelines page does it say that this is grounds for removal of role? Why is this grounds for punishment at all? Conversations with staff members are not top-secret information - if someone feels uncomfortable with the way a staff member has spoken to them, and feels that policy has been violated, they're within their rights to consult another user for a second opinion. A second set of eyes can offer valuable insight. Ordinarily, going to another, unbiased staff member would be preferable, but that's difficult if you feel there ''aren't any unbiased staff members. 

I’ll admit this part of the post struck a chord with me, personally. In the past, I was repeatedly bullied and called horrible names by a member of wiki staff, in a series of IRC private messages which began under the guise of a reprimand for misbehaviour. This bully had been on the site far longer than I had, and was a well-established member of the community; I was the same age at the time as Fullerton is now, and I had no idea how to react. I firmly hold that distributing the logs of those discussions was the right thing to do, even if it was a technical violation of the rules; it meant that others were able to tell me that yes, this was something inappropriate and no, I wasn’t at fault. People in authority are not above authority. The user in question was ultimately blocked, which should tell you all you need to know. Transparency of moderator behaviour is important to ensure fairness and equality.

"Someone who does not respect our moderation processes should not be trusted with any moderation powers." In other words, anyone who disagrees with the actions taken by the moderation staff - even if those actions have no written basis and are made up on the fly - should be blacklisted regardless of prior behaviour. Good to know.

"Unfortunately, these discussions can't be public because every other Tom, Dick and Harry want to poke their nose into things which are none of their business."'' This one speaks for itself, I think, as to the contempt some current staff members hold for the users they preside over, but I'd like to quote the page on Consensus anyway:

''"All editors' opinions should be given equal weight. In particular, administrators do not have inherently greater authority than other editors. Because of their greater experience with the UESPWiki, administrators may have more knowledge of how content is currently organized on the site, or be able to refer to similar examples on other wiki pages. Therefore, administrators (and experienced editors) may be able to provide more support for their position. Their reasoning, rather than their status, may therefore cause their opinion to influence a discussion." Ahem.

"The reason we created (the #dungeon) is to have time to let all moderators give input."'' Some of the moderators on the Discord server were not, in fact, elected by the wiki community at all. Yet they're being treated - and are behaving - as though they were not only administrators, but final arbiters of justice. Are staff who were given their positions with no input from the people they're supposed to be moderating really qualified to do so?

These quotes all illustrate a wider lack of accountability by the staff members to the community as a whole. Other examples of bad practice can be seen in instances where consensus is reached on Discord with no input from the wider editor base, the argument being made that anyone who wants to partake in discussions should simply use Discord, or in Dillon deciding to make significant changes to the guidelines by removing the part which said that all staff members were equal in the channel with absolutely no discussion at all. The fallout from that little change was the creation of a "non-staff patroller" role, once again without any discussion, which was allocated to certain blacklisted users. Unsurprisingly, no mention of this distinction is made on the page.

If we go further back, we can see   page, on the basis that it “serves no purpose.” I beg to differ in the strongest possible terms, and I know I’m not the only one. I was told in the channel that the reason for this decision was actually because it was inconvenient to keep it updated; judging by Alarra’s post above, that narrative has been amended retroactively.

Another problematic aspect of the channel was the consistent jeering, mocking and snide remarks by the staff about a specific, very active wiki editor, behind his back. Since I haven't preserved the logs of this bullying, and since it took place publicly only on occasion, with the majority of the vitriol being espoused in a private channel by the administrative staff, it doesn't particularly serve as evidence, but I certainly wasn't the only person to witness it. As far as I know the user who was the subject of these taunts is still unaware that this ever occurred, or that he was frequently the butt of the administration’s jokes.

I myself was also mocked, publicly, by an administrator after I left the UESPWiki server; several users I shared servers with told me separately that I had been “dissed” by someone who was supposedly a role model. That’s not on. As Lady N so succinctly put it, this is about people “who (have) been given the responsibility of representing the UESP in an official capacity, behaving in a manner that is unbecoming of an official representative of a 20+ year old website that is frequented by most of the TES community and by Bethesda and ZeniMax Online.”

Staff should strive to be the best parts of any community. The recent behaviour of some members has been the opposite of that. You’re there to serve the community, not to rule over it. Kitkat  02:36, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:Again I want to comment about the accusations that are held against Discord. There are so many points now that I have no time (now) to discuss them, but this link you shared @KitKat shows the contrary of what you are arguing. One: it was an edit that added a merge proposal. Two: it was brought to the wiki because it was something that should reach consensus here and not on Discord. It is impossible to keep all ideas and brainstorming on the wiki when there is another chat platform available and I don't see the problem with asking input and refining ideas before making edits (Most edits are already made without any pre-knowledge of other editors, only larger ideas and problems are brought to the talk pages and/or community portal and this is/should still be the case if Discord is used as a mediator). --Ilaro (talk) 03:00, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

::Because one of my edits was mentioned specifically, I'd like to respond to that. The edit to UESPWiki:Discord was simply to reflect the current setup of the roles and channels at that time. I did not intend to change any guidelines, and if I did it was a mistake. I can definitely understand having a discussion on the talk page first before making major changes to the staff roles on Discord. However, these changes were already decided (and not by me personally) when I made that edit so I was updating outdated information. &mdash;Dillonn241 (talk) 03:18, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:::Could you point me to the discussion held on the wiki (ie; on the talk page for the Discord server, the Admin Noticeboard, or the Community Portal) where it was decided unanimously that all staff members on the server were no longer equal to one another? Because that's the sentence you removed: "There are three staff roles with equal standing" was amended so that it no longer stated each staff role was equal. That's a significant departure from the previous content of the page; when was it decided that patrollers were no longer equal to admins? And for that matter, why was it decided that patrollers were no longer equal to admins? You haven't said in your edit summary. As a patroller myself, I had and have a vested interest in this discussion, but I wasn't invited to participate at all. Kitkat  03:29, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

::::I think you are misunderstanding the change. The staff-related permissions of Blocker, Patroller, Moderator, and Officer were merged into the Staff role. Patroller gives access to the #patrolling channel, but otherwise the roles serve only to identify ranks outside Discord. I removed the "equal standing" bit because the result was a single staff role and equal standing is redundant when you have one role. As for admins being above regular staff, the sentence was referring to the four previous staff roles, not admins and staff together. It was already the case that admins were above staff and my edit did not change that. &mdash;Dillonn241 (talk) 03:48, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:::::Yes, but some members who currently have the "Staff" role '''aren't actually blockers or patrollers'''. They have no elevated role on the wiki or the forums. They can't block people or patrol things, even if they want to. Having this multifaceted role denoting permissions which they don't, in reality, possess, is ridiculous and makes a mockery of the administration as a whole. It's also needlessly confusing.

:::::EDIT: You said that "these changes were already decided (and not by me personally)," yet you made the edit. At whose behest were these changes made, please, and why didn't they edit it themselves? Kitkat  04:00, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:::::: I'm rather tired since I have been working on UESP social media today, but there do seem to be a few misunderstandings in the above which I feel that I should comment on.
:::::: @RobinHood: "''That nobody chose to ask me why I felt so strongly is concerning. That nobody thought to ask why four different current- or ex-staff members are avoiding UESP's Discord is downright alarming''". I didn't ask because I already know why.
:::::: @RobinHood: "''Foundership: Currently, AKB holds supreme rights on the Discord server and can be challenged by no one, not even Dave." This is not entirely true. AKB is indeed the "Founder" of our Discord server, but of course Dave has the right to challenge him if he (Dave) feels that AKB is doing a bad job. I can see a long message from Dave on 28th February 2017 in the staff channel (#discord_business) where Dave was admonishing AKB.
:::::: @RobinHood: I would call for AKB to hand over foundership to Dave, so that he is simply one admin among many, and that the server is ultimately managed by UESP's owner, as I feel it always should have been. Many of us would not disagree. Certainly when Dave first showed up on Discord, AKB offered to pass server ownership onto him, but Dave said that it should remain in the hands of someone who is there every day. This can be revisited if necessary.
:::::: The question is really whether people have a specific objection to AKB, or whether any of the current staff would be acceptable provided that they were elected in some manner. Which leads me directly onto:
:::::: @RobinHood: Staff: Many of the current Discord staff come from elected staff in other parts of the wiki. This made sense in the beginning. However, since then, many unelected staff have been added. This includes people like guild leaders, [...] This is not necessarily a bad thing, but the concern is that nobody had any say in who was brought on as staff, apart from existing staff'' I'm a little confused about your point here. I agree that I was not elected to be the Guildmaster of the UESP Guild on the North American PC/Mac server, I was directly appointed by Dave. This was fully supported by all other Guild Officers at the time (2nd November 2014).
:::::: I'm confused because on the one hand you're saying that Dave should ultimately be in charge of the Discord server, and on the other hand suggesting that all staff should be elected by agreement with existing users. These two ideas seem to be in contradiction.
:::::: @RobinHood: ''Discussions of any long-term import to the server should be public whenever possible, preferably in a permanent chatroom dedicated to such discussions, so that those who don't have an interest can ignore it, while those who do can join it. This would be a wonderful idea if only everyone had the common sense and/or maturity to keep to the topic in hand. Real-time conversations end up with people posting meme images or attempting to talk entirely with emojis, and such like. The wiki or the forums are both better places for reasoned discussion due to their non-real-time nature, with Discord itself perhaps best purely for presenting the ideas for a vote.
:::::: @RobinHood: This still leaves the problem that the dungeon channel is cleared after any discussions, thus there's no accountability or transparency for staff. If the dungeon chatlog was not cleared, then the next person to enter the channel would be able to see the private conversation of the previous person. If a user has been "in trouble" and been dealt with, it seems very unfair for the next user to be able to see their entire conversation with staff.
:::::: @RobinHood: The person who is being disciplined is also isolated from everyone else and is thus unable to ask for help. Discord has a private messaging system and it is entirely possible for a person to send PMs to their friends explaining what is going on and asking for help. Indeed, if a user requested a friend to support them, that could easily be arranged. Discord admin are able to create custom roles to add any member to any channel if necessary.
:::::: @RobinHood: While private moderation is entirely appropriate when personal information is involved, if a user requests it, moderation discussions should take place in an ad-hoc, public chatroom (or permanent chatroom, dedicated to such discussions), where anyone who is interested can join and have their say because yes, sometimes every Tom, Dick, and Harry do have the right to have input on this sort of thing.'' See my previous comment about keeping to the topic at hand. While Fullerton was in the #dungeon (before it was renamed), other users in #apprentice_workshop (the channel for our more active regulars) were coming up with such genius comments as whether they could have Fullerton's EXP if he was banned. (As you know but others may not, there is a "level up" bot/game on the server.) Such comments would have been most unsuitable during a moderation discussion.
:::::: @Damon: I also want to say that one of the things I used to like about the UESP IRC channel was that the atmosphere was a lot friendlier, even though it was a smaller group. There were those token AOPs and HOPs in case there was the odd troublemaker in, but for the most part everyone treated everyone else fairly and euqally. IRC was orders of magnitude smaller than Discord. I believe #uespwiki had around 50-60 members at its peak, and #uespforums had 10-20 members. Discord, in comparison, has 1885 members right now. It is impossible to have the same "feel" with a community where literally everyone knows everyone else, compared to a much larger community. This is why most of us choose to hang out in the channels which most suit our interests. I read absolutely everything posted in #online, for example.
:::::: @Damon: ''Like with Fullerton's case, as a topical example, where users who never use the wiki (or seldom do) were popping over to add to the consensus to affect a user on a platform that they don't use anyway and that should have no bearing on the wiki to begin with.'' I'm still not sure what you mean by this. I'm sure everyone who commented uses the wiki at least several times per week.
:::::: @Brynjar: Moderation: any and all wiki (or subsidiaries) staff members are immediately given moderator privileges and responsibilities in the Discord server, whether they want it or are apt to do the job. As Enodoc pointed out, this is no longer the case. This is a change which I had been asking for since 14th December 2017 which finally went through on 28th December 2017.
:::::: To conclude, yes, there have been problems with the Discord server in the past. For example, there had been a problem with certain admin making unilateral decisions without consulting other staff. However, I feel that over the past month, we've really pulled together. It is definitely much more of a team effort now - especially in the couple of weeks since our new Tea Party Moderators came onboard. I'm sad that people are continuing to criticise the way that Discord is run based on how it was run several months ago, rather than how it is run now. 
:::::: This is really all I have time for, but I will answer any questions or comments. baratron (talk) 04:32, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

::::::: @Kitkat I'm sorry, there seems to be a misunderstanding. Previously we had Admin, then three classes of ordinary Staff: Wiki Patrollers, Forum Moderators, and Guild Officers. The abilities/privileges of the ordinary Staff were identical, but they were marked by a different colour - red for Patrollers, green for Forum Moderators, purple for Guild Officers. This was because we initially thought it would be useful for users to know which part of the UESP each person was responsible for. Patrollers also had access to the #patrolling channel, but I don't think the other two classes of Staff were forbidden from looking in there, it was just assumed they wouldn't want/need to.
  
::::::: As the server got larger, we decided that rather than wasting colours needlessly marking people based on which part of UESP they had come from, we would roll the three classes of ordinary Staff into one, and mark them all red. This is the change which Dillon made to UESPWiki:Discord. The decision was made on 27th-28th October 2017. It looks like the decision was made by Alarra, AKB, me, Dillon, Enodoc, and Ilaro, being all of the staff active during that period other than RobinHood, who actually resigned from Discord on 28th October, and Lady Nerevar, who said she had no opinion. Dillon made the wiki edit because he was available to do so.

::::::: To clarify further, it was never the case that Patrollers were "equal to" Admins. Discord Admin have access to additional commands, such as the ability to create custom roles for users, the ability to assign users to these roles, the ability to change the colours associated with the roles, the ability to change the 30 server emoji, etc. Mostly boring administrative things which don't need to be done very often. This is not to say that Admin are more important than Patrollers and the other ordinary server Staff, but it is a different role. baratron (talk) 04:56, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:::::::: I don't think I'd say it's so much a misunderstanding, as it is that you haven't answered my questions or addressed my concerns. 

::::::::"The decision was made on 27th-28th October 2017. It looks like the decision was made by Alarra, AKB, me, Dillon, Enodoc, and Ilaro, being all of the staff active during that period other than RobinHood, who actually resigned from Discord on 28th October, and Lady Nerevar, who said she had no opinion. Dillon made the wiki edit because he was available to do so." 

::::::::Yes, I was in the UESPWiki server at the time. I wasn't, however, permitted access to staff channels, which is obviously where all these decisions took place: behind closed doors, as per usual. I was a patroller in the channel at the time this change was made, and I'd like to know why it wasn't discussed anywhere on the wiki as it should have been, and I'd also like to know why myself and the other "non staff patrollers" weren't given the opportunity to participate in a discussion which affected us directly. 

::::::::Your response has actually bolstered exactly the point I'm trying to make, though: unilateral decisions are commonly made by a select few on a secret server with no input from the wider community. This is the root of the problem. It appears as though there is a deeply ingrained culture of holding discussions in secret because it minimizes the risk of potential dissent and disagreement, which is not only untenable, but absolutely antithetical to the fundamental principles of both a wiki and a community. Kitkat  06:04, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

  This is going to be my first and only post here seeing that I'm starting another semester in law school shortly and frankly don't have the time to constantly check replies here. So here goes;

@Robinhood: '''I would call for AKB to hand over foundership to Dave, so that he is simply one admin among many, and that the server is ultimately managed by UESP's owner, as I feel it always should have been.''' Although I agree with the sentiment that the founder of UESP should have control, I think you need to understand that we have over 2000 users on this discord server and when problems occur we need someone who can be here at a moment's notice, which I think would be unreasonable to ask of Dave. I think this could be better delegated to an Admin. In my nearly one year on the server I cannot think of a time where AKB's ownership of the server has been suspect.

@Robinhood: This includes people like guild leaders, people who have notable roles in the Elder Scrolls universe, and people who are useful to have as staff in other ways... Even if unintentional, this can lead to clique behaviour, since only those who tend to agree with existing staff will be invited to become future staff. There needs to be a facility for the general members of the Discord to suggest/elect new moderators and, in the worst case scenario, to propose demotion. I partially agree with you here. I won't lie I was surprised when I wasn't asked or suggested to become an actual staff member on the server, and not just a WikiPatroller that I currently am. Personally I suspect it to be because I get more involved into discussions and arguments than most. I would like to see more diversity in the staff however.

@Robinhood: Continuing on from that last, far far too many discussions on the Discord take place in an echo chamber. Decisions are frequently made by staff members without ever discussing them with the public. Once again I believe this ultimately has to do with the sheer size of the server. When discussion occurs and it's not even a remotely important topic chat can fly by and it can be difficult sometimes to follow the conversation. I think for the sake of being able to make decisions about the server and other issues having a 'quieter' place so to speak to be able to even make a consensus is important.

@Robinhood: '''Also notable here is that most if not all staff members, myself included, were left-leaning or fairly far left, last time I checked. While I certainly don't propose we invite alt-right members to be staff, those with stronger political leanings need to be sure that they're shelving their own political views as much as possible when it comes to non-political discussions and/or rule-making.''' While I agree that a majority of the staff and members are left leaning, I can't honestly say that I've seen a staff member use their political leanings to moderate people on the server. The only cases in which something like that has happened is when we get people who use nazi imagery and other alt-right memes and what not to troll the server. That has no purpose on the UESP discord server so I would hope that you'd agree with them being dealt with. Also all politics is banned from all channels except #off-topic, and even then the discussions that happen there are quite tame. I don't see anything wrong with how it's currently set up.

@Robinhood: I agree however that the rules should be posted in a very public place, they are posted on the #rules channel in the discord, but from what I know they aren't posted on the Wiki page for our Discord. I would also suggest that UESP hold a "constitutional convention" of sorts to codify the rules of the discord. I believe that we could pare down a lot of the stuff that we currently have to a much clearer and more concise version.

@Robinhood: I completely disagree that actions on the Discord Server should have no bearing on anything related to UESP. When one person is accepted to be a staff member, there is a level of trust that UESP gives each and every person. Now I'm not that read up on the regulations and what conduct that we should have. If a staff member is to be a paragon of the community, people that other people can look up to, then they should represent UESP as best as possible. In the case of Fullerton, who was known as a staff member on the discord, definitely represented himself in a way that I think UESP would not want to be connected to. In the case of my real-life job, I am a public worker. If I were to do something unbecoming in public and get myself in trouble, I without a doubt would be fired, regardless of it being related to my job. The same should apply here.

Overall, I generally agree with the statements that Baratron made. However I do think that discord is a unique case and not everything on the server can adhere 100% to what others are suggesting we do on the Server.

If there are any changes to be made to the Discord Server, I would suggest this;
All staff that are currently "staff" on the Discord Server should be evaluated, and in the case of the few that haven't been elected should be.
The Rules of the Discord server should be agreed on somewhere on the Wiki or the Discord Server, and be put up to a vote.
Any and all staff actions should be made in a public and viewable log on the Discord server (I Know this is possible, I have something like this on my own.)
Along with a clear and concise set of rules, we need a clear and concise pattern of moderation. To clarify what I mean, the rules need to have an explanation of the consequences of breaking the rules, and how the staff proceeds with rule-breakers. All staff on the discord server should have to follow the same pattern, unless in egregious and exigent circumstances. —JarlUlfric (talk) 06:07, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:On Discord, I proposed moving the majority of staff discussions to a public channel that is read-only for regular users. So far the idea has full support, and we're just waiting for other staff to respond. While this won't solve all of the problems listed above, I believe it will help address "Accountability/Transparency" from RobinHood's original post and the concerns Kitkat raises. This will hopefully help bridge the gap between staff and user, while also reducing the observed echo chamber effect and clique behavior.

:From there, I think the best next step is to tackle inconsistent moderation. We should write down any unwritten rules and have guidelines on how to enforce them in the #rules channel itself. These will be available to all members, just like the wiki's policy pages. They should of course appear on UESPWiki:Discord as well. &mdash;Dillonn241 (talk) 06:56, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

::Okay, so the conversation/my thoughts have been all over the place today and my computer also BSOD'd and corrupted my draft in the middle of writing this, so I apologize if I miss anything, if anything's incoherent, etc. Anyway, to start off with I'd like to bring up two things:
::* 1) The Discord is only a year old and ballooned in size very quickly, and hasn't had a decade+ to refine things like the forum/wiki have. It's still a fluid process and constantly changing, and there are growing pains as we discover what works and what doesn't.  We can, have, and will make mistakes, and do our best to try to learn from them. The best thing, as Enodoc said, is not just to point out what's wrong, but also to suggest solutions.
::* 2) The Discord is very much its own beast with its own format and challenges: way bigger in functionality and scope than the IRC (with hundreds of users online at any given time and constant activity in a number of channels, not to mention occasional voice chat), and the speed/volume of messages are in a completely different league from the wiki/forum. Moderating it isn't easy, and can get extremely draining, and could easily be a full-time job. It's something of a new frontier for us, and as mentioned in my first point, we're still figuring out what works: trying a variety of things from our wiki, forum and IRCs, as well as coming up with ideas of our own. 
::@Rob: "That nobody chose to ask me why I felt so strongly is concerning [...] only furthers my conviction that the chat is, indeed, dysfunctional" - I think we can agree that statement was concerning; however, as was mentioned in the Fullerton discussion, that conversation was neither the time nor the place, and I think we all needed a bit of a breather after that before starting another major discussion. Barely waiting one day after that was resolved seems a bit sudden to view the lack of response as an example of negligence. That said, I had intended to PM you about it once I got home from work tonight (or perhaps tomorrow; I was there 11 hours today). 
::Anyway, to try and address some of the major points everyone's brought up:
::* Foundership: I agree that Dave should have the highest role and full control over each part of the site: it's right as he is the site owner, he has the control in case of a rogue or inactive admin, and I think it keeps him informed on what's going on as far as staff changes, etc. I don't think there are too many features the owner role can change that another admin cannot (aside from giving users the admin role). However, it should be noted that AKB - as the owner of a server partnered with Discord itself - also is part of the private partners-only server which as I understand it has a direct line to Discord (able to inform us of discussions about the platform there and share our input); if Dave does not wish to do follow that, we should probably know if AKB can remain there if he no longer holds that role. 
::* Staff: Baratron pretty much summed it up: staff as it currently stands (as of about Oct 31) includes existing staff who were asked and decided they wanted to remain as Discord moderation, people who were made Recent Changes patrollers since then who were offered and accepted, and more recently our Tea Party Mods (active, mature role models from the Discord). For you, @Kitkat, as far as I can tell from searching the server you started chatting on October 15th, which was right in the midst of our discussing reorganizing the staff roles; you were also inactive on the wiki and didn't sound sure on the 17th how active you would be, and you left on the 29th which was within a day or two prior to us settling the staff thing. Had you stayed, you would have been offered the Discord Staff role. I'm also not sure what you mean about mocking/dissing; the only admin comment about you after you left aside from regret/surprise was one that didn't sound mocking to me: it was to members who hadn't known you before, to the effect that some users like you have had long periods of leaving and rejoining randomly later, and that he thought you'd show up again randomly after another such period and looked forward to seeing you again. 
:::On politics, I'm actually right-wing myself. I'm not sure who else is, but as Ulf said politics don't come into play in our moderation: everything generally falls under the general UESP wiki/forum rules (PG-13, be polite, etc. Could use some cleanup though as mentioned below). 
::* Accountability/Transparency: This is definitely been one of the messier parts where we've tried different things, moderators viewed it in different ways, etc. Thus far, we've had a bot to log deleted comments, bans, etc in a staff-only channel, and the #dungeon (aka #mediation) is logged by a staff member before clearing it. That channel itself has value for the rare occasions we've needed it: both as a soft-ban to discuss things rather than ban outright, and a private place for users to speak to us when they are not comfortable sharing something publicly. There are benefits and drawbacks to making decisions publicly vs privately (I agree with a lot of Enodoc and Ulf's points), but due to Discord's rapid-fire, high-volume format, I've viewed the way we've done it as adequate thus far. (On that note, @Kitkat, I was indeed surprised a couple years ago when I saw that the wiki kept a public list of IRC bans. I never agreed with the edit reason given for the deletion of the Discord bans page, since either way that's inaccurate - the fact that it was poorly updated might've played into it, I don't know; as far as I remember the reason was that after a couple of trolls started banhopping repeatedly we thought it was incentive for them. Can't find the original discussion atm and it's 4:30am, but there were indeed comments like that made when discussing reinstating it.) Anyway/TL;DR, to cut off my rambling, as Dillon mentioned this thread has spurred discussion on doing a public channel and how that might best be handled, so this is looking to change and address the concerns mentioned. 
::* Rules: We've been told by some that we're too strict, others that we're not strict enough, and others that we're just right and that this is the best TES server. But at any rate I absolutely admit that the Discord page on the wiki has long been woefully out-of-date, and the #rules channel on the server could use some cleanup/clarification (as well as #staffrules - rough draft of guidelines for staff - which has been around for a few months and should probably be added to the public lists). 
::* Cross-platform interactions: My personal view is that UESP staff should be recognized for their role across the board and also that they should conduct themselves as such, regardless whether they are staff on that particular part of it. If there is a case where we think the wiki or UESP as a whole is affected by something on the Discord - as we felt was the case with Fullerton - we bring it to the wiki. I absolutely agree that wiki-editing decisions should be made on-wiki, i.e. the examples Kitkat gave; this was something that people slipped up with on IRC sometimes too, but for the most part people try to keep it on-wiki. However, that goes both ways: while Discord isn't the best place to make wiki decisions due to not enough wiki editors seeing it, the wiki is not the best place for Discord decisions due to not enough Discord users seeing it (particularly if the decision is made by people who don't/rarely/have not recently used the Discord). I think we definitely need to keep the Discord page on the wiki updated better, however, and make sure that any changes are reflected there.  ~     10:51, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Edit Break: Discord 1
:''(Note: I was edit conflicted by at least Alarra's response, maybe more, and have not gone over the most recent post(s).)''
Okay, there's obviously quite a lot to cover here. Since a couple of different people mentioned that there have been changes in how the Discord is run over the last few months since I left, I'll start by saying that that may well be true, but I've heard negative comments about our Discord here and there since I left, but no positive ones. It was hearing those sorts of things that convinced me that there were still issues.

To explore those issues some more, after recent discussions, I decided to join Thalmor Justiciar's server to see what sorts of things went on there, get an idea of just how anti-UESP thing were, and just to be able to provide another pair of eyes in the event that another issue came up. I was welcomed by a couple of people, and outright told to "fuck off" by a couple of others, who wanted to know why I'd even been allowed on their server. While they didn't specifically say why at the time, they really only know me from one thing, and that's UESP's Discord server. Okay, that sounds like anti-UESP sentiment on the surface. Earlier today, after I decided that I needed to write my original post, I probed a little more and asked what they thought the problems were on UESP's Discord. While there were certainly some less than helpful comments, overall, I found some very thoughtful people there who had a fair bit to say on the matter, and their complaints were in line with other things that I'd heard elsewhere or seen myself. They weren't anti-UESP, they were anti-people-who-treated-them-unfairly. It said a lot to me that after I posted my original post and Silencer replied, they renamed their main channel in our honour. Humorous, but that showed me very clearly that they're not anti-UESP at all. They just want things to change, and they saw our two posts as finally starting that process. Several of them even said something specifically to that effect.

And it wasn't just on TJ's server. I got thanked for starting this discussion here, in PMs, and on other servers by both people who'd left and people who are still active in UESP's Discord. So, if things are changing, clearly, there's more that needs to be done. The fact that Bryn commented that he only left a month ago due to escalating issues with the management also says that there are ongoing issues.

Since raising this topic, I've also heard comments like "a lot of talk, but nothing's going to change", "the new staff channel will be used for propaganda, but things will still mostly be discussed behind closed doors", and "AKB will never voluntarily give up foundership". There is an incredible amount of distrust and resentment out there in some parts of the community, and there needs to be a lot of work put in to fix it. Some of it, I expect, will only go away with time and good, predictable moderation, as others have mentioned.

While we're on the topic of AKB, I'm sure some people think I'm gunning for his job, or that I hate him. Neither could be further from the truth. I have neither the energy nor the time to do his job, and I'm frankly amazed at his and Alarra's skill at managing most of our social media. While AKB and I have argued a lot over various aspects the Discord server, and there are times he's lost my respect in a certain area, I cannot say that I hate him. The worst that I would say about him is that I don't think he's right for the job of being the founder of our Discord server. If Dave won't/can't take the job (more on that later), then there are other people I'd love to see in that role, but we can discuss that more when the time comes.

Okay, on to specific topics. I'll take these in reading order, so they'll probably jump around a lot:
Enforcement vs. friendly moderation: This is one that I meant to bring up and forgot. Time and time again, I've seen the enforcer admins, but I've rarely seen the friendly moderator admins. I remember one instance where someone was getting antsy about our language restrictions, and I believe it was a patroller or admin who said something to the effect of "these are the rules, follow them or be banned". It might not have been that harsh, but it certainly wasn't anything friendly and helpful, either, and the user seemed a bit taken aback. I came in behind them and explained that we have a lot of minors in the channel, and people who are just coming to the server, and so we try to maintain a friendly, welcoming place, with minimal swearing, especially in the main channel. All of a sudden, the user was perfectly understanding and happy to respect our rules. This is the sort of thing that I think we need to work on.
Moderation room (fka "dungeon"): Yes, I'm aware that it's the last step before a ban. From what I've seen of how it's used, however, people are completely isolated from all other help. Could they request that someone be brought in? Sure. But that ignores the concept of witnesses—people who might, for example, spontaneously comment ''"Oh, I didn't think it was a big issue." or "You're totally misreading this situation."'' if they were aware that there was a problem, but would likely have no opportunity to comment if the person were pulled into a private moderation room. In most cases, one would hope that these sorts of comments would occur before moderation was started, but things don't always work out that way. We've certainly seen something like that with the Fullerton/Legoless issue where some people mentioned the ethnicist first name that Legoless himself was sometimes known to use and the O', but then Legoless himself came along and said was ancillary to the doxxing itself. If that same scenario had played out in a slightly different way, with Legoless being a regular user, a twitchy admin could pull someone into the moderation room for being overtly racist, and the regular person who was supposedly the target would have no clue, and no chance to respond that this just wasn't an issue at all, or that they're actual RL friends and joke this way all the time, or whatever.
On a related topic, we need to provide them the ability to appeal a ruling, and make sure users are aware of how to do that if they're banned for anything that isn't a gross violation of our rules (so, likely anything that gets them into the moderation room in the first place). Right now, once they're banned, they're banned. They may not be able to track down other admins if they don't already have contact with those people, and of course, many don't even know who Daveh/Reorx is because they're not active on forums or the wiki.
I agree that a person who acts badly in one place is likely to act badly in another, and that certain issues warrant cross-platform discipline. I don't want to seem too black-and-white on that issue. However, I also think it behoves us to minimize drama overall and make sure that any disciplinary action is appropriate to the level of the infraction.
@Enodoc: this topic was, indeed, not entirely relevant to the discussion of Fullerton. When an admin makes a statement that strong, however, I would have expected someone to contact me on my talk page, by e-mail, or wherever else. I realize that I'm not always the paragon of calm, and that I can sometimes be grouchy and pedantic, but I would hope that people know I don't make that kind of statement without a lot of forethought. I was a bit surprised that absolutely nobody from the Discord did. As she alludes to, I had written Baratron privately, so she had some idea of the issues, but that really should have set off a lot more alarm bells than it appeared to. It's probably just as well that it played out this way, though, because it gave me time to realize that this really needed to be a public discussion, and to think about what I wanted to bring up. As far as Discord not being a wiki, you're absolutely right, and I acknowledge that things can't always work the same way there as they do here. However, that doesn't negate the community perceptions, the wildly fluctuating moderation, and most of the other issues that I and others have brought up in this discussion. These are not issues specific to any medium, they're just plain issues.
I touched on much of this in my intro text, but if Dave is an unsuitable choice, then elections can be held, or whatever other process we decide works best. There are certainly admins who are highly active who have reputations for being level-headed and fair who would be quite capable of the job. I'm curious, though, in what ways you see the need for someone who's more active and able to respond quickly that admins themselves can't fulfill. I fully admit, your knowledge of Discord far exceeds mine, but most of what I remember us having to ask AKB to do were not what I would consider urgent matters.
On the topic of staff, yes, indeed, existing staff generally approach potential new staff about whether they want to take on a position. Here on the wiki, however, and I believe on the forums, the general membership have a say, and they have the ability to propose new people in a formal setting. That facility doesn't currently exist on the wiki. If staff are the only ones who have a say in who is brought on, the current perception of cliquishness will only increase.
Transparency issues include things like new server rules, moderation decisions where there's any debate as to the correct action, or pretty much any other discussion whatsoever that doesn't involve personal information. I especially think that some of the forbidden words and memes would have benefitted from a wider discussion. They may well have ended up exactly the same, but I remember a few people having vastly different experiences of certain things, and I think involving more people would have been beneficial, rather than giving the perception that decisions are made, nobody except admins really understands why, and there is no recourse.
On the accountability issue, I have seen occasions of admins suppressing posts which, while they may have been dubious, were not outright breaches of any rules. Perhaps the admins were right to, perhaps they weren't, but again, where is the recourse for any disagreements? With the admins themselves. That screams cliquishness and unfairness.
On to deleting comments, I have a few times seen admins or others delete comments that would paint them in a bad light after the fact. This is particularly problematic for admins, since they can bully other users, then erase the tracks of their bullying, or even the entire discussion, casting themselves in a more favourable light after the fact than they did at the time. I've seen this happen myself, and I've had it reported to me by others. This is a huge accountability issue.
"Any conversation that is not normally available to users should be treated as confidential." That sounds good, in theory, but I think kitkat covered this fairly clearly: any user who feels they've been treated unfairly must have the ability to share their experience with whomever they feel they need to, and hold staff accountable for their actions. Another staff member, or Daveh, is obviously preferable, but if they don't feel that's an option, I think they should have the right to share information that is primarily about themselves, as long as they're not disclosing other people's personal information or grossly violating server rules in the process.
"Dave has the right to challenge him if he (Dave) feels that AKB is doing a bad job" Challenge, yes, but ultimately, he cannot actually remove AKB as founder. About the only recourse if it were decided that AKB should step down as founder and he chose not to would be to create an entirely new channel. Having gone through that with the IRC community many years ago, when it had maybe 40ish users all told, I'm not eager to see it happen with close to 2000. I personally don't think it would ever actually come to that, but as I said above, others clearly do.
As far as people having an objection specifically to AKB, yes, I would have to say that they do. Many people have complained about various administrators in the discussions I've had, some just griping, while others had more relevant points, but AKB's name has come up more than all others combined. (And I'm discounting here the one or two people whom I know were banned for cause...I'd kind of expect them to complain about the person that banned them.)
For the appointment of guild leaders, I wasn't aware of the specific process, though I can't say it surprises me. As noted, however, a lot of people feel that they should have had some say in who is moderating the Discord server, and that appointment process, even if by Dave, gave them no choice to voice their opinions. Just to be clear, though, I wasn't specifically singling out any specific user (or users) in my statement. People have complained about unelected moderators, so I brought up the examples I could think of.
On the topic of Dave vs. an elected founder, that does pose a contradiction. I consider Dave to be the exception to the rule for a couple of reasons, however. First and foremost, he is the owner of UESP, and his "election" is that people keep coming to his site. If he weren't competent and suitable for such a role, people wouldn't keep coming here. Second, he has a 20-year record of fair, arm's-length moderation, and in most parts of the site, he already has more rights than anyone.
For the moderation room, I agree that clearing it makes sense between users. I have no objections to that whatsoever! But, in the event that that user complains about what someone said or did, whether it's to another admin or to Dave, logs of that discussion should be available, or the admins end up being unaccountable for their actions.
Off-topic comments in the middle of serious discussions can indeed be a distraction. I consider that part of the job. Hopefully, when asked to do so in a channel geared towards moderation, people would quiet down and stop commenting with unhelpful things, but if they don't, there are other options, like muting or even kicking that can be employed as stronger measures if absolutely needed. Similarly, if a channel is named something like "Moderation" or "Policy Discussion", I think you'll find that even if it's open to the public, 1900 of those 2000 users previously mentioned won't be able to find the ignore button fast enough. That should substantially mitigate the amount of unrelated discussion on its own. Whether it's policy or moderation, though, I definitely ''don't'' propose holding these discussions in the general channel, or anything close to it. I'm not sure if it would be entirely feasible, but perhaps there could be some kind of invitation system, where a general call is put out in the main channel for people interested in discussing a certain topic to go to a specific room? That would cut down on side-chatter I think, but I'm not sure if that would be a practical way to go about things in terms of the Discord mechanics of it.

Okay, I think that covers everything I felt I could and/or needed to respond to. Sorry it's so big, but so is this discussion! :) If there's anything I missed, please ask. As a final note, I'm really happy with how this discussion has gone to this point, and I'm glad to hear that it has already prompted some changes.  &ndash;       10:54, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:OK. I’d been hesitant to respond here since I am one of the newest staff members, and a lot of issues that people are bringing up are behind-the-scenes things that I wasn’t around for. But there are a couple of things that I really need to address, based on my experience on IRC channels for another game.
:* Re: Leaking conversations: While I understand the argument some people are trying to make, that if someone is being insulted or thinks they are being mistreated, that they should be able to get a second opinion on the issue. That’s great, in theory. But I’ve also had plenty of experience with people taking information from private conversations, leaking it to other people, and using it to harass me. Any frustration I wanted to vent, any less-than-absolutely-positive opinion I might have about someone else, any personal detail I might share, could and often would be used against me. And it fucking sucks to have to be paranoid about any supposedly private interaction you have just because some people think that any conversation had on a chat server must be in full view of the public or not take place at all. People are going to disagree with each other. People are going to get frustrated about things and need to vent. And the staff are people too. We need a space where we can say things without constantly being under a microscope. I would like to believe that there’s a balance that can be reached between transparency and privacy, but judging by some of the previous comments on this thread, I’m not so sure.
:* @Robin ''Could they request that someone be brought in? Sure. But that ignores the concept of witnesses—people who might, for example, spontaneously comment “Oh, I didn't think it was a big issue.” or “You're totally misreading this situation.” You have a lot of faith in people to do or say the right/reasonable thing after a friend has acted up. And you seem to think that a witness saying something ‘’wasn’t that bad’’ should automatically be trusted. And frankly, a witness making comments like that is exactly why I think #mediation should not be public. You let the public in on every disciplinary discussion, and there will be people downplaying every offense. There are plenty of people out there that have no concept of what is too far. Letting them second-guess everything staff does is only going to create more dysfunction, not less. Again, there is probably a balance that can be found. But your ideas of transparency regardless of the practicality and encouraging absolute distrust in staff are not helpful.
:* @kitkat''' You brought up the crafting motif page merge, and completely missed the point. If people were acting unilaterally based on discussions on the discord, that merge would have happened. Instead, what happened was Enodoc ‘’proposing’’ the merge, and a discussion happening on the talk page. Which is exactly what should happen! We had an idea on Discord, then proposed it on the related wiki page. There was no actual action taken besides putting a banner on the page saying a merge was proposed. But it’s important to understand that Discord is a live chat, and that discussions like these will come up. Stifling us from discussing wiki pages on a discord server for the wiki is a ridiculous and untenable idea. --FioFioFio (talk) 16:47, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
:::I don't have time to respond to all the points in this discussion, but I did want to say one thing.
:::In all my years on the internet, I've never run across a community whose rules/moderation weren't seen as heavy handed, biased, unevenly applied, secretive, or otherwise just plain bad by some portion of the population. Yes, this absolutely does include UESP Wiki. No matter how democratically, transparently, and pleasantly done, controlling conversations will always result in someone thinking its gone too far. Furthermore, the the displeased portion of a community will always be more vocal than the pleased or unimpacted portion. 
:::None of that is to say that things shouldn't (or aren't) be done to improve the current situation. But there is no set of solutions that will make everyone happy all the time. Lady Nerevar (talk) 17:21, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

::::The absolutely unimpacted people are the 1750 people who don't talk in the server and have no realistic intention to ever do so. But, for the few dozen that do talk or participate, everything impacts them eventually. What happens in one case can create a precedent to allow the exact thing to happen again. You're absolutely correct that not everyone can be pleased all of the time, but if there's a large amount of people who aren't happy or have grievances with the way things are going, that means those in a position of power have a responsibility to find the changes needed to get as close to having as many people happy as it's possible to get, whether that be a policy change or just a change in their own personal conduct. Failure to do so is completely irresponsible and can disullion people and disencourage participation if they don't feel like their wants are not being completely met by the server, and that's the root of all problems right now. In the many months I've been there (and in the time I've not from second-hand accounts) the staff have a habbit of appearing to either not care about their fellow members or only caring just enough to appease them for 20 minutes until it goes away. It won't be fixed hiding behind closed doors talking amongst yourselves when there's a history of accounts of backstabbing or shit-slinging about users behind their backs. I genuinely believe the matters brought up in the introduction to this thread will not be fixed unless it's specifically called out here on the hub of all UESP activity in a public venue where there's no choice but to finally address any outstanding issues. Even if it's unpleasant to talk about, that's why I applaud Rob for finally being the one to speak up. -      &hearts;    17:51, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

::::: In response to FioFioFio. “You brought up the crafting motif page merge, and completely missed the point.”That’s interesting, considering that you missed every single other point I raised, including the one about the sustained mocking and jeering of a specific user without their knowledge, or my anecdote about how a bully used an expectation of privacy in chat logs to make me feel isolated and afraid. 

::::: Nevertheless, I’ll bite; the issue at hand is that the even preliminary stages of a discussion which directly impacts the wiki should be taking place on the wiki, so that every user has an opportunity to contribute from the get-go. When discussions are held on Discord, and only moved to the wiki as an afterthought, any user who isn’t active on the server is automatically put at a disadvantage, not only having to play catch up, but also missing nuances of what was said and by whom. That’s not how a community editing project should work; it alienates people who don’t wish, for whatever reason, to use Discord. It also frequently means that by the time the discussion is held, everyone from the Discord server has reached an agreement, and the sole user who wasn’t privy to the initial conversation is left as the lone dissenter. In all honesty, though, I think Silencer said it better than I ever could:

::::: “The collective wisdom of discord, as with any other off-site area, can be overridden by one anonymous editor on the wiki, purely for the fact that it is on the wiki. Those are our rules, which those on discord may wish to learn before deciding again that they have the authority to change the wiki when they do not.”

::::: Also: ''“No matter how much agreement you had on discord the only place that matters officially is the wiki. No decision taken on discord can over-ride or replace a decision taken on the wiki, and any amount of 'no disagreements' you can claim elsewhere is ignorable.”

::::: There’s also the issue that no conversation records from Discord are easily accessible on the wiki; if somebody wants to figure out why a decision was made in the future, and the entirety of the rationalization was made on Discord, that presents a serious informational gap.

::::: With regard to the other points that you raised, I’d like to know why you’re under the impression that the etiquette policies of the wiki don’t apply to the Staff channels. Per the guidelines for the Discord server, "All behavioral policies on the wiki are in effect in the channel." 

::::: “While I understand the argument some people are trying to make, that if someone is being insulted or thinks they are being mistreated, that they should be able to get a second opinion on the issue. That’s great, in theory.” Sorry, no. Regardless of the rest of what’s being discussed and mulled over, this is not a matter for debate. If someone feels they’re being insulted or mistreated by figures of authority, they must be able to get a second opinion on the issue. It’s imperative. 

::::: “But I’ve also had plenty of experience with people taking information from private conversations, leaking it to other people, and using it to harass me.” You’re being very vague. How private are these private conversations? One on one? A small, close knit group? What sort of information, and what sort of harassment? If you feel you’ve been mistreated, seek recourse.

::::: “And the staff are people too. We need a space where we can (s)ay things without constantly being under a microscope..” Are you saying that the Staff channels, which theoretically should be for discussing the running of the channel, were used to vent “any frustration” or “any less-than-absolutely-positive opinion” that you had about other users, behind their backs? Because that sounds incredibly toxic. I’ll reiterate that the policies of the wiki are supposed to be enforced on the Discord Server; this includes on the staff channels, ostensibly. If you’re insulting other users, the people you’re "venting" to are well within their rights to call you on it. Hell, Fullerton was removed from being a patroller for mistreating another user on Discord; according to the precedent set by that, “venting” about other users to the point of personally attacking them could actually be grounds for being given a warning on the wiki.

::::: “You have a lot of faith in people to do or say the right/reasonable thing after a friend has acted up.” Assume Good Faith is a core tenet of the wiki.

::::: “Encouraging absolute distrust in staff are not helpful.” RobinHood is not the one who has created an atmosphere where the staff are widely distrusted; in fact, attitudes like yours, that you can’t “let the public in on every disciplinary discussion”'' because God forbid they might disagree with the Staff, have done far more to create an atmosphere of hostility and distance between ordinary users and moderators. Kitkat  18:37, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:::::: I'll thank you not to quote "Assume Good Faith" at me when you are assuming that everyone disagreeing with you, including staff who have been added to the Discord after you left, are acting with the most malicious intent possible.

:::::: You’re being very vague. How private are these private conversations? One on one? A small, close knit group? What sort of information, and what sort of harassment? If you feel you’ve been mistreated, seek recourse. My comments were vague for a reason. The incidents I'm referring to happened on an IRC server for another game. But since you ask, it was a group of people harassing me, with I had assumed were private (both one-on-one and with small groups I thought I could trust) being used against me multiple times, and I had no recourse because while I was a moderator of some channels, so were some of the people harassing me (in the same channels).

:::::: Yes, I didn't address staff mocking a user in staff channels. Why? Because I only got added to those staff channels in the past couple weeks. I don't think it's my place to address that specific issue.

:::::: Back to the Crafting Motifs page, there's nothing in your latest comment worth addressing while you continue to assume no discussion about wiki content can happen on Discord and that wiki editors who also use Discord should have less weight in discussions than those who do not because (gasp!) we might have discussed the issue on Discord!

:::::: So, to sum up, I'll reiterate, don't quote "assume good faith" at me and then make a wall of text assuming bad faith in me. If you can't offer me that much respect, I have nothing else to say to you. --FioFioFio (talk) 19:34, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

::::::: If you’d like to read over my post again, you’d see that I wasn’t ordering you to Assume Good faith – I was pointing out that RobinHood was assuming good faith, and that you were questioning him on why he had done so. Far from believing that everyone disagreeing with me is acting “with the most malicious intent possible” - which is not something I’ve ever said or thought - I feel that the contributions of Enodoc, Alarra and Dillion to this discussion have gone a long way to explaining the decisions of staff members in certain situations.

::::::: ''“My comments were vague for a reason. The incidents I'm referring to happened on an IRC server for another game.” I was under the impression from the context of your first post that these incidents had taken place in a UESP affiliated channel. Given the rest of the discussion’s subject matter, I don’t feel I was unreasonable in thinking this.

::::::: “Wiki editors who also use Discord should have less weight in discussions than those who do not because (gasp!) we might have discussed the issue on Discord!” I actually said exactly the opposite of that; wiki editors who don’t use Discord should not have less weight in discussions as a result of being excluded from the initial parts of any given conversation. If something is affecting the wiki, it should be debated on the wiki, in the interests of fairness and inclusion of every user. Those who use Discord can also use talk pages. There’s nothing preventing them from doing so.

::::::: “There's nothing in your latest comment worth addressing”'' is honestly not very conducive to what’s intended to be a problem-solving discussion. You haven’t addressed any of the points I raised in significant detail, you’ve instead gone straight to taking umbrage at my tone and claiming you have nothing else to say to me. One could be forgiven for thinking that you didn’t actually have anything to add which would refute my arguments. I've acknowledged your points; you seem reluctant to give credence to mine. The conversation is now being derailed by attempts to personalize a disagreement on policies. FioFioFio, if you have an issue with me as opposed to with my arguments, feel free to take it up in a more appropriate forum and I’ll be happy to hear you out. For now, I’d prefer if we could stick to the matter at hand. Kitkat  20:42, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:::::::: I just have a quick comment on the issue of deleting the wiki's log of Discord bans. As far as I can remember, it was considered redundant (lit. "serves no purpose") because Discord automatically keeps a log of everyone who has been banned. Replicating that log somewhere else didn't seem necessary. Also thanks to everyone who's started to provide some suggestions to address these issues. I haven't been on Discord yet today but I am hoping some of these will have already started being considered. --Enodoc (talk) 20:20, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:(As always, I'm a few comments behind...discussion is moving too quickly.)
@Alarra: As much as my descriptions of UESP's Discord server may have been negative, I do understand that there will be growing pains. My ultimate goal here is not simply to complain, but to improve how things are done so that no one feels unwelcome on our server (apart from trolls and the like, obviously). In my original post, I tried as much as possible to suggest solutions like new chatrooms, different visibility on existing ones, etc., but, of course, a lot of the time I don't have a ready solution for something. It's still important to bring up those issues, though, in the hopes that someone else will have a suggestion or solution. A great example of that was the new staff channel Dillon suggested.

"Barely waiting one day after that was resolved seems a bit sudden to view the lack of response as an example of negligence." Okay, mea culpa on that one. Being on disability and being home all the time, I have to admit to a distorted sense of time sometimes, in the sense that I occasionally forget what day of the week it is and/or that other people have jobs and don't spend most of their time in front of a computer. My apologies to everyone for that.

I think most of the rest of what you've said doesn't really need comment, at least not from me. You raise some excellent points. The only other thing there that I do want to mention is that, for the Discord ban page, my recollection is that it was seen as largely redundant to the server logs at the time, and yes, there was at least a perception that it might be used as a high-score list. There were certainly a lot of trolls/vandals at around then, but obviously, it's hard to prove whether they were specifically aiming to "score" or simply being persistent. At the time, I may have even agreed with, or at least been neutral to, the deletion of the bans page. I certainly don't recall having any great objection to its deletion. However, in light of the concerns about transparency, I think it might not be a bad idea to re-create the page (using it from this point forward...trying to recreate historical info is probably impractical at best). That'll probably give users a bit more security that bans aren't being misused or overused.

@FioFioFio: I totally get the concept of venting and/or saying something less-than-flattering about someone because it's a private conversation. That's human nature, to some degree. Honestly, I may well have been one of the people who commented negatively about the user Kitkat has made reference to. Nevertheless, when staff are "officially" dealing with the users whom they manage, even in a private channel, there needs to be a high level of professionalism. If that breaks down, as it obviously did in Kitkat's case, I believe that privacy goes out the window in favour of preventing abuse. Not completely—like so many things, this isn't a black-and-white situation—but if something is needed to demonstrate the abuse, I feel that that's fair game.

As others have commented, I honestly feel that most disciplinary actions should be at least available to the general membership, if not including them (exceptions, as always, for discussions involving personal info/situations). It encourages a much higher level of professionalism and ensures that staff can justify their actions not just to themselves, but to everyone. Clearly, the general channel with hundreds of currently active users is inappropriate, but I don't see the problem with having a moderation-specific channel. Yes, people will insert a great many opinions, some of which will be annoying or irrelevant, and some will downplay any offence. Nevertheless, a lot of those opinions could be valuable, and could modify an otherwise excessive admin response. Yes, I do have a lot of faith in people to do the right thing. I'm not naive, people don't always do so, but for staff to specifically state that they don't have that faith, much less incorporate it into their rules and procedures, is to imply that they don't trust their users. How can there ever be a positive environment when in that sort of scenario?

''"I'll thank you not to quote "Assume Good Faith" at me when you are assuming that everyone disagreeing with you, including staff who have been added to the Discord after you left, are acting with the most malicious intent possible."'' If that's your read on this, then there's been a huge breakdown in communication somewhere along the way. This is intended to be a productive discussion of issues, and I have seen nothing notable from anyone here that suggests otherwise.  &ndash;       20:25, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:@kitkat, Go back and read the first line of my first post again. I made it perfectly clear what context I was talking in, while you went off and decided to doubt my experiences and attack me for not reading your whole post. I'll also quote the whole phrase that you're trying to take out of context, ''there's nothing in your latest comment worth addressing while you continue to assume no discussion about wiki content can happen on Discord''. You are fundamentally of the position that no discussion about wiki pages should happen on the wiki's Discord. I disagree. It's not worth debating that here. That's not actually a staff issue because at no point in that incident did someone misuse staff powers. When you can stop accusing me of ignoring your posts, calling my ideas toxic, and doubting the validity of my experiences, then we can talk about the issues.

:@Robin, you said yourself upthread that you have so little faith in the current staff that you don't want to talk to us on Discord. I don't know how else to interpret that.

:As far as actual solutions go, I think a read-only channel (i.e. the general public can read it, but only certain roles can post) for most disciplinary discussions could work. The question of who gets to talk there gets a bit squishier. Basing it on server level is one option, but it could be viewed as favoritism because most of the people who are high level are on pretty good terms with the staff. Putting the server rules on a wiki page (as well as what rules the staff are working under), and what kind of disciplinary actions the staff can use, is a good idea. I don't have much of an opinion about the block log or about server ownership at the moment. What other concrete actions would help improve things? --FioFioFio (talk) 21:26, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:: @RobinHood: There are members of Discord staff so stressed out and upset by this latest batch of posts that they barely slept last night and are in danger of becoming actively unwell. I don't know how you can say "This is intended to be a productive discussion of issues, and I have seen nothing notable from anyone here that suggests otherwise." There have been multiple personal attacks on individuals, both named (e.g. AKB) and by class of Staff member (e.g. Guild officers). The tone of this "discussion" has become increasingly angry.

:: I realise that I have no authority to ask this - I am not Dave, nor do I play him on TV - but I would really like everyone to take a few steps back. We need to pull out the issues which need to be changed immediately, the issues which require work over a longer term, and the things which would be "nice to have" once all of the other things have been resolved. Right now the Discord staff are reeling from the stressful situation which started on Friday - we didn't get any chance to catch our breath before you started this list of complaints. We are EXHAUSTED.

:: I am particularly worried and upset by the fact that we seem to have done some serious wrong to KitKat, and I have no idea when or how. My job for tonight is to review everything said while she was a member of our Discord server to try to figure out what on Earth happened. This is in addition to everything else I have to do for the UESP. As someone who doesn't play ESO, you are probably unaware of this, but right now is a very bad time for us to be trying to have difficult discussions about the Discord server. The new DLC was posted on the Public Test Server on Monday and I have been posting new information on Twitter, corresponding with ZOS employees via Twitter, making videos for UESP social media, and collecting information for the wiki.

:: KitKat, I want to apologise for whatever we did to hurt you so badly. I'm sorry that you still feel so angry several months later. But I just don't understand why you believe that the colour a person's name appears in is an important enough policy change that we should have brought it to the wiki for discussion? Please will you explain why this bothers you so much?

:: I'm going to eat my dinner and go through that Discord backlog. I'll be some time. baratron (talk) 21:49, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

::: What I said was that I was unwilling to join the server as I couldn't support it currently. I said nothing about the staff at that time. Yes, many of these issues are a result of staff decisions, but I genuinely believe that most if not all of what the staff have done were well-intended and simply turned south due to a lack of outside perspective.

::: As far as personal attacks, yes, there have been some, particularly in recent posts. That's unfortunate. What I've mentioned about AKB are not in any way intended as personal attacks, however, they're very legitimate concerns noted by multiple members of the community across multiple outside Discord servers and in private messages. It's not an attack to say that there are significant issues with someone that need to be dealt with.  &ndash;       22:07, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:::: JarlUlfric makes some good points and I'm supporting his post. Tib (talk) 22:30, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:::::I think it's safe to say at this point that the majority of people involved in this discussion agree that one of the steps that need to be taken in order to make moderation better is to have a clear set of guidelines for the moderators, in regards to how to proceed with rule breaking and general moderating action. And if those are made public along with the rules (including all the non-written ones), that'd be a big step towards transparency too. Bryn (talk) 22:55, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

Edit Break: Discord 2
It has come to my attention that there is a lot of misinformation and misperception out there, probably on both sides, and far more negative feelings than I was aware of. I've asked Dave to step in to help moderate the discussion on the wiki, and I believe someone else has probably done so as well. In the meantime, while I recognize that some of us are not in a place where we can have productive discussions right now, if anyone would like to try, I welcome any Discord PMs or e-mails. In the interests of full disclosure, I have now had discussions with two different Discord staff members. One went downhill very quickly, but the other was highly productive, and I believe it has at least started to address some of the issues that aren't being talked about here. I hope that others will do so as well, so we can put these negative feelings to bed.  &ndash;       23:32, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

:I just want to say my piece as someone with witness to what Robin is describing when he says that admins can be “twitchy" when it comes to political discussions. In my case it was AKB, so while many I'm guessing will call me a troublemaker or getting on the bandwagon, in reality I left the server eariler because I was afraid of being called just that by complaining about it sooner, but Robin's case gave me confidence in discussing it because I wouldn't be alone on this boat. Regardless, everyone is going to interpret it differently anyways, so feel free. Just hear me out: To begin, In off-topic I was having a discussion with in reply to IA190's article about a town condemning both Antifa and the Right-wing groups protesting in the town's area, and from that response came a discussion with Ulf. He stated that Antifa was a splintered group, and I disagreed and stated that Antifa was a terrorist organization. Immediately after that, AKB just wiped everything and said “we're done here”, with IA190's asking “did I do anything wrong?” and AKB simply replying “No, you're good”. I can't show you evidence of this discussion because it was wiped, but feel free to prove me wrong if you can find it in the discord server logs. This was roughly 2-3 months ago, but what was puzzling to me is that I didn't break any rules. I thought that maybe I had broken the rule of intentionally starting flame, but when I realized that we were having a civilized discussion about the matter, and even if AKB believed it was starting flame, does one admin's SPECTATING opinion of the discussion gave him the right to WIPE the entire discussion? What kind of message do you think that sends? From what I got, talking about Antifa in a negative light was a no-no, so It's not like I'll ever try that again.

:I did contact AKB at the time who was currently busy but even though I was going to eventually get my say I made the mistake of ragequitting the server and forgetting about it entirely, which was the wrong attitude to have. That was a mess-up on my part. I should have discussed it earlier, and it's a failure on my part that I have to bring this up so late. Yeah, I'm weak.Ulfric stated in his opinion that there where no instances of Admins being twitchy when it came to political discussions. I challenge this with my witnessed account, and I will firmly speak my opinion in saying that AKB has a serious oversensitive bias in left-leaning discussion, although I won't state the others because I have had no issue with the other guys. Again, you can call me petty or a troublemaker for posting this, but I seriously feel as if there is a collectivist heirarchy in both opinions and attitudes when it comes to this server, and AKB is at the top. I'll say it because others won't, and because I believe it to be true. -Tea  

::Now I'm not AKB, so I'm not going to say I know what was going on with him at the time, but I can say confidently that what happened there was an isolated incident. In regards to arguments in general that occur on the discord, it is not uncommon to 'reset' the conversation so to speak in order to avoid any type of conflict occurring. I truly believe that you feel the way that you do, but I also believe that you're adding baggage to the idea that doesn't deserve to be there. It's not that the conversation was deleted because 'talking about Antifa in a negative light was a no-no' but because he saw that the conversation was going to go into a bad direction, which I recall it was going to. There is nothing wrong with preemptively killing a conversation before it can get heated. As you said yourself, no one was disciplined for the action, If there was a pattern of AKB using his position on the server to quell opposing ideas, wouldn't have something been done in your case? Surely if AKB was as bad as everyone says he is, you and IA190 would have been banned or disciplined for even bringing the subject up.

::Now I don't want to throw around accusations, but everything here that I have seen leads me to believe that this is a concentrated effort to remove AKB from ownership of the server, which in my opinion and from the facts that I know, is baseless and unnecessary. JarlUlfric (talk) 00:15, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

::: @Tea - I wasn't even sure what a "collectivist heirarchy" was before looking it up! It's definitely true that whatever AKB doesn't like gets banned. Pepe the frog memes. The word "kek". Anything remotely alt-right. In some cases, I have been in support of the ban. In other cases, less so. 

::: One problem is that it's been hard for us as staff to actually moderate Discord properly. It blew up into this massive server, many times the size of either of the previous irc servers, and no one has the time to read every channel. So we have had, by necessity, a few rather strict black-and-white rules. Now that we have the new Discord Community Moderators (or "Tea Party" Moderators, as they are currently called), which are people who do not have responsibility elsewhere on UESP, it's possible that we could have more active and nuanced moderation. With mods who actually have sufficient time to watch all of the channels, we could simply UN-ban things like Pepe and the K word, leaving the active mods to delete "bad" (racist, etc.) versions of them and warn the users concerned that we do not tolerate hate speech or images.

::: I am not necessarily proposing this. I am just pointing out that it might now be possible. baratron (talk) 00:31, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

::::@Ulf: Dude, please. This discussion is about trying to make the UESP server a better place, and only three people in this discussion have actually presented arguments against AKB, and one of them (Rob) has already clarified that he mentioned that in regards to multiple complaints he has heard about AKB's administration from other users (which include the other voices presenting their valid complaints). I and many others have no issue if AKB remains as server owner, and during the last weeks I was on the server, AKB was hardly ever present and barely interacted with everyone, so the issue I personally had was with the moderation as a whole, not one singular person, no matter how involved AKB is with the policies and directing of the moderation. No matter the direction a conversation is going, if it doesn't break any rules, there is no bearing in the rules to wiping it clean, and the simple fact that it might lead to a completely valid interpretation of political bias only makes it worse. When channels such as #lore get wiped because people were shitposting instead of having topical discussions, that is understandable, as it violates the intention of the channel, but when the channel meant to hold the political discussion in the server has a topical discussion wiped, that is something else. Had AKB just intervened and called for a subject drop, I don't think anyone would have an issue with that, but the borderline censorship that was used can and, as observed, has lead to misunderstandings and issues. All in all, this is just one of many cases of arbitrary moderation that have taken place in the server.

::::Although I will agree that if we all could drop personal charges against AKB for a while and focus on the various other points raised about issues users have perceived in the Discord server, that would be a huge benefit for the discussion - and that includes all the people focusing on the defence too. Bryn (talk) 00:34, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

::::: JarlUlfric, I don't want this to seem like it's an anti-AKB thread, because it's not specifically just an anti-AKB thread and there are larger issues at state, but AKB at times can be a key reason for things going wrong, and he does in fact have a history of deception and manipulation. I have privately held for months logs and DMs from two users which prove that AKB was attempting to deceive both of them into selling each other out instead of maturely handling the issue like an adult should. Don't get me wrong, the users in question were being talked to for a genuine screw-up they both did, but as an administrator, it's not up to AKB to be feeding two different stories to two different people to be forcing them to give the specific answers he wants to hear.

:::::I only make this post with both of their permission, and both users are remaining anonymous at their request, because this involves allegations of malpractic by the lead administrator for the Discord server and they have been put in an environment in the Discord server where they genuinely are concerned that there will be retribution. In light of this discussion, I've forwarded those logs to Daveh for review and to RobinHood70 as well as a second neutral admin. Those are the only two admins they are comfortable with the information being shared with, and it's up to them if they want to come forward, but I don't see it as likely given the situation.

:::::Again, this is hardly a usurp-AKB discussion, but AKB's also done a lot that needs to be answered for, and during a discussion about transparency and issues with existing staff is as good a time as any to bring it up. -      &hearts;    00:49, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

::::::  (Responding to Ulf) I suppose that depends on how you view the terms "concentrated effort" and "baseless and unnecessary". Saying that's it's a concentrated effort implies that there's some kind of conspiracy going on here. There isn't. AKB himself PM'ed me what he thought was proof of collusion, where Damon was saying that we'd been talking about the UESP's Discord server for months, off and on. What's missing from that discussion is any kind of context. The context is that this is a server that's been around for about a year now, and several friends are there, and we talk about all kinds of things. As I said somewhere in Fullerton's thing, I think, 99% of the discussion has nothing to do with Discord (barring the last 24 hours, naturally). We're just friends chatting with each other, talking about everything from dating to football to music. Over the course of the last few months, going back even before my departure, we were all increasingly dissatisfied with how things were going on the server, so naturally, we talked about it. And before anyone accuses us of not saying anything, we did. Over and over. AKB and I had arguments galore, and occasionally other administrators chimed in, but in the end, nothing was ever done. Largely, those of us on Damon's server just left things alone. We were unhappy, but honestly, it wasn't that big of a deal. We really didn't even talk about things all that much unless something new came to light and triggered a discussion. Fullerton's doxxing was one such discussion and, at least for me, it triggered a much stronger reaction for a variety of different reasons.

::::::So, this whole idea that there was some kind of collusion or plot is complete nonsense and paranoia. It's the worst possible interpretation put on innocuous comments, then combined with other unrelated, and generally innocuous facts and events to come up with a conspiracy made from whole cloth!

::::::Yes, we believe there are issues with AKB. As mentioned above, there were many debates and arguments brought up over the last year, between myself and AKB, and other administrators and AKB. The common thread here should be obvious. In reaching out to others whom we knew were discontent with the management of UESP's Discord server to find out what their issues were, we heard his name over and over. Legoless can confirm that I didn't specifically ask about AKB, and in truth, much of the discussion centered around the left-right political issues. Still, AKB's name came up several times, and we really had no choice but to believe that it wasn't just misunderstandings or clashing personalities among a few staff members, but that there was a serious problem there.

::::::So, I think "baseless and unnecessary" doesn't really describe where we're at with this, and "concentrated effort" really only applies because there are a lot of people who've had these concerns who've come together and stood up to it, rather than each of us being dismissed and ignored individually.  &ndash;       00:53, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

  A few general things on my mind regarding this:
:* If anyone is getting stressed out regarding this issue I would recommend just taking a break from UESP for a day, a week, or whatever you need. This is supposed be just a fun hobby and no one needs to be real life stressed out about it (not sure about everyone else but I have enough real life stress to deal with). If anyone feels they are being harassed or otherwise abused by another UESP member please [mailto:dave@uesp.net contact me]!
:* Correct me if I'm wrong but this all seems to have precipitated from a couple of minor questionably moderation decisions made on Discord over the past few months? I had been notified by people about some of them and thought at the time that they were minor issues and dealt with sufficiently. I'm sorry I didn't step in sooner to better mediate things before they blew up like this.
:* As I see it the Discord server has grown very fast the past year and along with size comes the usual issue of rules and how to enforce them. The Wiki/Forums grew more slowly and had the benefit of having time to discuss things as they arose. On Discord, however, there seems to have been little to no rules discussion as a community as a whole, there are no tools like on the wiki to help with group moderation, and enforcement has been solely up to AKB. 

I think the best path forward from here is to focus on discussing rules for the Discord server that can help prevent this sort of disagreement from spiraling out of control. This includes specific rules like what topics should be permitted and which words to ban along with ways for people to dispute actions taken and when deleting chat logs should be done or not. We can borrow rules from the server and prior chat rooms but modified to suit the Discord environment. We won't be able to anticipate every future possibility but the act of discussing them and writing them down should help in the future. -- Daveh   02:35, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

:Thank you for weighing in, Daveh. I believe this entire discussion has become very personal very fast (on multiple fronts), so I will stress two things first: one, '''let's remain civil human beings and two, wikibreaks are valid if you need/want them'''. Now, I have a couple points to put forth:
:*Firstly, regarding Kitkat's earlier suggestion: I don't think it is even possible to discuss wiki stuff only on the wiki. The Discord is, after all, a place for discussion of, among other things, the wiki. And I'm confused as to just how vital it is that every minor wiki edit is created from whole cloth on the talk pages, or why we need 'receipts' for such. Policy changes are a different matter, but I still don't see how/why the very first seed of an idea has to be documented. After all, often times (most of the time) ideas for change segue off of other topics. It's just how human conversation works. And, I should point out, the Discord and the wiki are not mutually exclusive. Many, many people who edit the wiki are there, and I'm confident that 99% of our membership at least consults the wiki on occasion and thus have a right to discuss it. However, major things involving the wiki should move wiki-side as soon as humanly possible.
:*Secondly, AKB's political leanings. While this appears to have been an isolated incident (and if anyone has further examples, I will happily reconsider that statement), I agree that deleting an entire conversation instead of, say, popping into the chat to say "let's not go there" or "change the subject" is a serious lapse in judgement. I say this as someone who absolutely disagrees with Tea's stated opinion (the one that was wiped). Nevertheless, the discussion should have been headed off at the pass verbally, not outright deleted with no warning. But let's consider that that may have been all it was, a lapse in judgement. While the description of the incident makes me pause, I have no other issues with AKB, as an admin, as head of Discord, or as a person, and would like to hear his side if at all possible. 
:*Thirdly, to RH: I apologize for not noting your discomfort with the Discord when you first mentioned it in Fullerton's deranking request. And I am sorry that any of these issues have piled up at all. I have been away, as you know, and sometimes I wonder if I could have helped at all had I been here. On multiple fronts. But I am here now, and I will do my best to be a voice of reason, such as it is.
:And with that said, my proposals (only the first two are in any kind of chronological order):
:*I’ve already discussed this on Discord, but would like to propose it here as well. I’m told one of Fullerton’s complaints about the server was that he felt abruptly thrust into a role that he had no interest in, i.e. moderating Discord, for being a Patroller here on wiki. I propose that each of the current staff members on Discord be contacted individually regarding their opinion, if any, on remaining staff and any other points they would like to make in a one-on-one setting. There are three staff members, at least, that I have never seen talk on Discord, for whatever reason. If they would like to remain, I have no objections, but they should be given the option.
:*After any changes to the staff list, we focus on the rules and staff_rules channels. They could be combined into one; this is something we should discuss as well. Just looking at both channels, they are disorganized, tangential, and lacking. The staff_rules channel even says it is still a work in progress, all these months later. Both channels have multiple posts by multiple users, mostly addendums. I would like to see it streamlined: one post by one user (probably AKB), with clear headers for each rule and the enforcement rules that need to be added.
:*We look into making a log of staff actions, e.g. comment deletions and bans. This will be a simple list that does not reveal the full content of any deleted comments, but does provide a reason. The log will be in the format of "(name) did (action) at (time) for (reason)". The reasons should be from a general category list if possible, and standardized. The log will be available upon request, for any reason. I don’t know how feasible it is to have a bot do it, but if it is necessary to do it by hand then each staff member will be responsible for their own logging of their own actions.
:*Make the new channel for discussion of staff issues re: Dillon’s proposal. Ideally, it will be read-only by non-staff, and non-staff will be able to (and be encouraged to) weigh in somewhere else. It will remain on-topic as much as humanly possible.
:*When choosing future staff, I actually kind of like Bryn’s suggestion waaay up there (in the first section before the first break). The responsibilities on-wiki and on Discord are dissimilar enough to warrant a rethinking. We should consider promoting people on Discord independently of the wiki. But, if someone does happen to be staff on both, their actions should be considered on both as grounds for deranking. I firmly believe that bad behavior is not isolated, does not exist in a vacuum. If someone is misbehaving enough to warrant a ban on Discord, that should be available as evidence in any wiki discussion.
:I welcome further discussion, and if I’m getting something wrong (I’ve been away a while), please feel free to correct me. I want both wiki side and Discord side to live in harmony, as it were. —          05:59, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
::Thank you for your understanding, Likelolwhat. That was admittedly poorly handled on my end as well, so I think we're better off just calling that one a mess and letting it go at that. :) I also wonder if more voices or different voices would have led us to somewhere different than where we are now, but what's done is done, and I think we need to figure out how to move forward from here. There are clearly a lot of hurt feelings and negative feelings in general, and it's going to take time to repair that. We've come back from worse than this in the past, though, and I have confidence that we can do so again here.

::For your first bullet, I don't think we need to discuss every single edit on the wiki every time, personally. Certainly, even back in IRC days, that's not what was done. As you say, policy changes are a clear case where everything needs to be done on the wiki, and major or controversial edits should also probably be discussed on the wiki as well. That said, I think it's not uncommon for them to start in chat. The thing to really avoid is where the changes are completely discussed in chat, then just kind of plopped here onto the wiki as a fait accompli, or close to it. There are, of course, going to be occasional exceptional situations, but better to just keep to the guideline that any wiki change that requires significant discussion should take place primarily on the wiki, then let IAR cover the rest.

::For the specific suggestions, I'll just bullet my responses in the same order:
::* I'm in the same boat as Fullerton, and I recall wanting to opt out of Discord administratorship in the beginning, and pretty much being told it wasn't possible, given the roles that had been decided on, so I accepted it without complaint. While the reasons I left Discord were numerous, not wanting to be a Discord administrator was certainly one of them. It simply wasn't something I had either the time or energy for, nor something I felt well-suited for. I gather that a separation of roles has largely or completely been accomplished now, though, so I don't think this would be a problem in the future, but yes, if there's anyone to whom that choice hasn't been offered, it definitely should be.
::* As Dave suggested, I think there probably needs to be a discussion of the rules that takes place at some point, and while you're doing a reorganization seems like an appropriate time (though I can see the possibility, depending how they look at the moment, that a quick reorg might be useful prior to any discussion). Also, as discussed way, way above somewhere, once any rules changes are finalized, they should also be posted here to the wiki.
::* This is an excellent idea. I certainly hope a bot could be found to do it. I know when I was last there, there was a bot that did most of that, but I remember there being things it couldn't do, or didn't do well, and in any event, I believe the log was only available to administrators, since it did contain unwanted information. I expect Enodoc will have more to say on this. :)
::* I've thanked Dillon for stealing that idea already in PMs, but I'll thank him again here as well. That's a great idea, and on its own will go a long way to resolving transparency issues. Of course, staff have to remember to use it for relevant discussions. We all know how discussions evolve, or start in the most bizarre and unrelated channels, but I expect that'll come more naturally as staff get used the idea of using it.
::* Agreed. It makes sense to me to have different wiki and Discord staff roles entirely, and promoting Discord users based on their behaviour there. That may often end up including the same people, since maturity is part of those roles as well to some degree, but better to treat them separately overall. As far as disciplinary actions go, I think lesser infractions can and should remain isolated to where they occur in most cases (e.g., if a warning is issued for mild personal attacks on the wiki, it may not make sense to do anything about it on Discord if the problem isn't occurring there), but it makes sense for any significant issues to be cross-platform. Certainly, anything ban-worthy would warrant discussion in both places.
::Thank you for your ideas and suggestions!  &ndash;       07:21, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
:::Just a quick note to add to this discussion: in either public or private chats, two prominent members of the current Discord staff have identified as right-of-centre. I can't speak for others who have identified left bias as a concern, but at least personally, this gives me a lot more confidence that we aren't (and weren't, since I fully include myself in this) living in a left-wing bubble with no right-wing voices.  &ndash;       21:58, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

::::Since the discussion has apparently died completely, I'm left to wonder if any of the suggestions and complaints raised here have actually been considered by the Discord server staff and if any changes or decisions have actually been made following this long discussion. The impression I have gotten from all of this is that the discussion deviated from its original intent and all of the points made in regards to the structure of the server were overlooked and instead the focus seemed to go towards ad-hominems and allegations of such as well as a meta discussion, rather than addressing the other points raised or any or very little discussion about those points and what would happen in the Discord server whatsoever, and what there was about those, mostly came from users that are not part of the server's staff team. If there has been discussion on the Discord itself, I believe that at least a brief summary of the choices made there would be in order to give the people involved in this thread some closure (and the wiki itself for record keeping). Bryn (talk) 18:40, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

:::::Hi Brynjar. I was planning to come back and update the AN, but this week has been hell. As I mentioned above, the PTS is out, so a lot of us have been extremely busy. I recorded a video on Monday and have spent hours editing it every day. I just uploaded it to the UESP YouTube channel this morning. I've also been taking screenshots and uploading them to the UESP Twitter. KriHavok, Lady Nerevar, JarlUlfric and Thalmor Justiciar have been working together on datamining new information from the PTS and putting together a post for the UESP Blog. Alarra spent several hours today uploading the new ESO soundtrack to our YouTube. And that's just the visible social media changes - a bunch of staff and regular members have been working on the wiki.

:::::So, we have a new #staff_discussion channel which is public, and readable by all members above rank 5 (Novice). There is a matching channel where they can feed back ideas, concerns, and criticisms to us, currently named #discord_discussion but likely to be changed imminently. #server_feedback is currently winning the vote with #staff_feedback second. This was based on Dillon's mention of the "halfway" channel from the Tamriel Rebuilt Discord, and it seems to be going well so far. Users are keeping it to serious business only, but also making good suggestions and being listened to. We have been using #staff_discussion for everything except for one brief issue regarding an individual's privacy, and one concern a staff member had about whether they acted correctly. We're currently trying to figure out the order of channels on the server so that #staff_discussion and the matching feedback channel can be next to each other.

:::::Enodoc is working on bot issues, such as a log of staff actions. He has made the Discord server's built-in Audit Log available to all staff members. This shows all staff actions, but also shows all user actions as well (every time a user changes rank or changes their name). It also does not show the contents of a deleted message. Our current Dyno bot log gives the contents of an new deleted message, or the message IDs of an older deleted message (Enodoc thinks "older" = 2 weeks), but does not show who made the deletion. Also sometimes the contents of newer deleted messages aren't available anyway. So we need to figure out some way of combining the two logs, and what is going on with the bot API. Personally, I would be fine with the built-in Audit Log going public, especially as most of what's in there is member activity. What I saw of staff activity were channel creations, deletions, renames, new topics, and changed permissions, as well as deleted messages. We are currently voting on whether the Audit Log should go public, at least until we have something better.

:::::We have deleted the unused #journeymans_lounge channel and renamed #apprentice_workshop to #apprentice_lounge. This is no longer the "talk to staff" channel and is a hangout space for all regular members, above rank 25 (Apprentice). I have suggested that this channel should have relaxed rules compared to the rest of the server. Obviously hate speech and imagery would still be banned, but there is no need for the channel to be PG-13. When I suggested this, users celebrated by posting a whole bunch of Pepe emoji, none of which look particularly racist, and no one has cleared them up yet. However, we still need to have a formal discussion among the staff about what the relaxed rules should be.

:::::We have designated next week for working on the rules. The #rules and #staff_rules channels will be merged into one, because normal users need to be able to see how the staff are supposed to behave. Currently users are making suggestions on formatting, based on other Discord servers that they go to. JarlUlfric is contributing a whole bunch of graphics. As far as I'm aware, the conversation will be held jointly on the wiki and on the Discord. I would prefer this to be on the Community Portal or the Discord talk page, but I'm not altogether sure what the wiki policy on this is.

:::::That's everything I can see in this edit break. If I missed anything, please let me know. baratron (talk) 20:11, 13 January 2018 (UTC)

Edit Break: Discord 3

Rules discussion, this way →  --FioFioFio (talk) 01:50, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Interaction Ban Request

After a frankly absurd number of personal attacks issued by RobinHood70, I would like to formally request an Interaction Ban between us. RobinHood70 has presented multiple attacks over the last few days, including that I am a liar, manipulative, paranoid, all of which he presented without any evidence to support any of it in a series of actions that go against Good Faith. Additionally, despite his apparent major issues with me, RobinHood70 has not made any contact with me, per the guidelines on Administrative Conflicts. Instead, he has deliberately blocked off communication, after my attempts to speak to him. Lastly, RobinHood70 has gone on a campaign of speaking poorly of me to users, which harms the image of the administrative team, and breeds user conflict. While I am tired of RobinHood70's actions, I also acknowledge his positive contributions to the site, and merely ask that any future interaction between us be strictly forbidden. Administrators may message me for related examples to my claims. 

Support: As proposer. --AKB   06:50, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
Partial Support: As nominee. There is much in the above that I would like to address, but this is not the time or place. I say "partial" support because the simple fact is that we're part of a small number of users on the wiki and we're both admins. I think we're bound to have to interact from time to time, however, I'm willing to keep our interactions entirely on a professional basis, and limit them to what is strictly necessary for proper functioning of the wiki. Off-wiki contact will not occur except as part of an all-admin discussion for whatever reason (which, honestly, I don't even remember the last time we had one). You are currently blocked on Discord, as you note, and I already gave Dave my reasons earlier today, which I believe he understood and agreed with. That was not intended to be permanent, but intended to give us both space and time. I hope that you and I will be able to discuss this civilly at some point, but I don't believe that will happen in the near future. I'm not sure what the mechanism might be to allow that to happen, but hopefully, we'll figure something out when the time is right.  &ndash;       07:38, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
Comment: An interaction ban is really only a ban on personal interaction, eg comments about each other, replies including comments about the other in a wider discussion, editing each others user pages, or undoing each others edits. It is perfectly feasible for both editors to comment in a wider discussion without breaking the ban by simply keeping it professional (per the policy page "make absolutely sure that the comments are on topic"). I would endorse this request, given that both of you have at least partially agreed, but I'm not an admin. The policy requires two admins, and it is unusual that both parties are that, and while another admin might be unnecessary, they would probably be needed so that someone can fully enforce the ban if such actions are needed. You two are fully capable admins, and have proven your worth to the wiki; it would be a shame to lose either one of you, which is why such a ban can be good by giving you time away from each other so that your relationship does not become irreparably damaged at this time (assuming it has not already). I also suggest that the ban on comments be applied to all UESP related areas (facebook, discord, etc), not just the wiki as per the policy (I am suggesting this change on the policy page now).      20:13, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
::That's my understanding of an interaction ban as well, although if I recall, one person isn't allowed to post to the same thread as the other for 24 hours, which can be a problem somewhere like here. You could read that ruling as simply not replying directly or indirectly to one another, though. If that's the interpretation, then I think that's workable. I also had the concern that I might need to post to AKB's talk page if there was a specific issue, but I suppose anything could just be posted to AN. In any event, if AKB and I are at least agreed with the spirit of non-interaction, we can figure out the more challenging situations as they arise, and go ahead and call this implemented. Does that work?  &ndash;       20:33, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

 

New Nonsense/Spam Bot

Over the last two days a new bot has revealed itself. Four similar pages were created, with 2/3 having exactly the same wording. We can cut this off at the head by taking a unique extract of the exact wording and putting it in the abuse filter. The three identical pages are MW:Assaba-Bentus and ON:Mzulft (deleted once and recreated), though because it was already deleted I'm not 100% sure of the wording it had.      15:19, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

:For now, I added "can I contact" as a trigger phrase and we'll see how that does. It might be too generic, though. If a few more show up, we'll have a better sense of the pattern.  &ndash;       01:55, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

::I think that's too generic and has legitimate uses on the wiki. I was thinking of the latter a-part of the sentence on the identical ones, the other one is just a little too different to try one phrase for all of them.      18:49, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

:::I changed it to "I have (an offer|a lot of new customers) for you", which are the only two phrases used so far (including a few new ones since I last posted).  &ndash;       19:05, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

ESO Dragon Bones Release (Update 17)

The usual file/data updates will be posted below:

:* uespLog Addon -- Updated to v1.40!
:* Achievements -- Updated! 
:* Champion Points -- Updated!
:* Skills and Skill Coefficients -- Updated! (double-checked for issues)
:* Icons -- Done!
:* Maps -- One map updated.
:* Files -- Uploaded! (icons should be fully there now)
:* Items -- Done!
:* Books -- Texts uploaded and database updated!

-- Daveh   19:57, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Localised names issue (PT-UESP)

Note: While this post has a PT translation to avoid misunderstandings, replies should be written in EN in order to communicate with all UESP editors.
  

PT

Antes de começar este post, gostaria de agradecer à excelente equipa do projecto de tradução da PT-UESP pelo seu trabalho árduo e dedicação. Nós (UESP) temos apenas respeito por todos vocês, e, por isso, queremos abordar a seguinte situação de uma maneira que seja tanto útil como benéfica para todos os envolvidos.

Dito isto, por favor, sintam-se livres de contribuir para esta thread e expor a vossa opinião.

Alguns de vocês poderão ter ouvido recentemente que foi criado no Discord da UESP um canal intitulado #uesp_portuguesa, onde a comunidade Portuguesa se pode juntar e discutir assuntos relativos à wiki, o projecto de tradução ou apenas relaxar um pouco. Foi aqui que, pela primeira vez, ouvimos falar de um problema relacionado com traduções na PT-UESP, em específico sobre nomes localizados.

Após conversar com alguns dos nossos membros regulares (editores na PT-UESP) e outros familiarizados com a situação, foi-nos comunicado (e confirmado) que:

Nomes localizados como Skyrim e Morrowind estão a ser traduzidos para termos fan made como “Arcéu” e “Brisavinda”;
Nem todos são a favor destas traduções; de facto, muitos leitores expressaram a sua opinião e foram ignorados pelos editores;
Existem inconsistências nas traduções: por exemplo, uma única página pode ter, ao mesmo tempo, nomes localizados traduzidos e a sua versão original em Inglês (ver: link )

Como estas traduções não são oficiais (fan made), causam alguns problemas, o mais óbvio sendo que vão contra guidelines da wiki: (ver: link ). O objectivo da UESP sempre foi documentar e fornecer à comunidade conteúdo fruto de um bom trabalho de investigação/análise e, tendo em conta políticas da wiki, é imperativo que a informação disponibilizada seja precisa. Assim, traduções que não são mencionadas pela Bethesda ou Zenimax em qualquer jogo ou série de livros de TES (independentemente do quão bem investigadas e justificadas), simplesmente não têm lugar numa wiki por não conterem qualquer peso factual e serem apenas mera especulação.

Traduções criadas por fãs levantam, também, outro obstáculo: são irreconhecíveis e confusas para novos leitores que não saberão os termos por que devem pesquisar. Desta forma, ao constarem da wiki, acabam por ser contraproducentes e até contradizer o objectivo final do próprio editor, ou seja, que novos leitores consigam alcançar as páginas da PT-UESP. Mais, o simples facto de estas traduções não serem oficiais torna-as problemáticas, visto que qualquer pessoa, a qualquer altura, pode decidir que não estão correctas (ou boas o suficiente) e convencer outros editores da necessidade de mudança deste ou outro nome por algo totalmente diferente. Isto é confuso e nada consistente.

Como a PT-UESP é uma extensão da UESP, esperamos que os editores compreendam a importância de cumprirem guidelines da wiki, visto ser esse o ponto essencial. Contudo, também compreendemos a frustração de passar horas a fio a traduzir algo que terá de ser revertido à sua forma original. Como tal, membros do staff sugeriram algumas alternativas que nos poderão ajudar a chegar a consenso se conjugadas, nomeadamente:

Usar o nome original e, se aplicável, a tradução oficial entre parêntesis;
Criar um template que permitisse aos leitores usar ou não traduções fan made. Assim seria claro qual o conteúdo oficial.

Uma última questão para debate seria: com múltiplas traduções em andamento, deveria a UESP ponderar em actualizar guidelines internos?

Por favor contribuam com a vossa opinião, sugestões, etc para esta thread, de forma a chegarmos a um consenso. O vosso input é valioso.

  
EN

Before starting this post in earnest, I would first like to thank the wonderful team at the PT-UESP project for their hard work and dedication. We (UESP) have nothing but respect for all of you, which is why we would like to approach the following situation in a way that is both helpful and beneficial to everyone involved.

Having said that, please feel free to contribute to this thread and voice your thoughts.

Some of you may have heard that recently the UESP Discord server created a channel called #uesp_portuguesa where the Portuguese community can get together and discuss wiki related issues, the translation project or just relax for a bit. It was here that we first heard of a slight problem within the PT-UESP project regarding translations, more specifically of localised names.

After speaking to a few of our regulars (who are editors at the PT-UESP) and those who are more familiar with the situation, we have been told (and have had confirmed) that:

Localised names like Skyrim and Morrowind are being translated to unofficial terms like Arcéu and Brisavinda; 
Not everyone is in favour of these translations; in fact, many readers have voiced their opinions and they have been largely ignored by the editors;
There are inconsistencies in translations: for example, a single page may have both localised names translated and original EN terms (see: link).     

Now, as these are unofficial (fan) translations, they cause a few problems, the first being that it goes against wiki guidelines (see: link). UESP's goal has always been to document and provide well-researched content to the community and, as pertaining to wiki policy, it is imperative that the information present in any page is accurate. Thus, translations that are not mentioned by Bethesda or Zenimax in any of the TES games or books (no matter how well-researched and justified), simply have no place in a wiki due to bearing no actual weight and being mere speculation.

Fan translations also bring up another problem: they are unrecognisable and confusing to new readers who will not know what to look for. Thus, fan translations on a wiki end up being counterproductive to the editor's ultimate goal, which is to have people reach the PT-UESP. Plus, the simple fact that these translations are unofficial makes them somewhat dodgy, since anyone may, at any given time, decide that they're wrong (or not good enough) and convince other editors of the necessity to change this or that name to something else entirely. This is confusing and not at all consistent.

As PT-UESP is an extension of the UESP, we hope editors understand that it is paramount that they comply with wiki guidelines, as that is the main point here. However, we also understand how frustrating it must be to spend hours on end translating something that will have to be reversed. As such, some of the staff suggested a few alternatives that may help reach a middle-ground if combined, namely:

Use the original name and then, when applicable, use the official translation in brackets.
Create a template that would allow people to use or not use fan-made translations. This way it would be made clear what is and what isn't official.

A final question up for debate would be: with multiple translations ongoing, should UESP ponder on whether to update internal guidelines?

Please contribute to this thread with your opinion, make suggestions, etc so we can reach a consensus. Your input is valuable. MadameTortilla (talk) 00:02, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

: Names are very important. One of the things that's put me off switching my ESO game to French is the fact that all of the place names, many of the NPC names, and even the race names are different. I think it would improve my French greatly to read and listen to the stories of quests that I've done before in that language, but I simply can't handle the fact that the names will be different.

: For this reason, I feel that the names on the wiki should be the names which people will encounter in the game/s. When there is an official translation, I feel that both names should be used in the heading of the wiki page, so that users can easily find out what the English name is, and refer to sources written in English if necessary. So if Arcéu was the official translation, then the page heading could be "Lore: Arcéu (Skyrim)", or "Lore: Arcéu (EN: Skyrim)". Then the word "Arcéu" would be used throughout the page text.

: However, if there is no official translation, then I favour the idea of using only the English name in the heading, but with the fan-made name included once on the page so that people can understand the meaning. So the heading of the page would still be "Lore: Skyrim", but then in the first line of text, you could have "Skyrim (fan tradução Arcéu), a província ao norte de Tamriel". The word "Skyrim" would be used throughout the article.

: In this way, it would always be clear which names are official translations, and which are fan-made to help users understand the meanings. Does this seem like a reasonable compromise? baratron (talk) 01:05, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

::There are two slightly separate points to made. One is that the information in a game's namespace should be the exact information from that game, so if in the official Portuguese translation of the game Skyrim is Skyrim, then the page should be Skyrim. Secondly, there is absolutely no space for fan translations in lore, zero, kaput, nenhum. There is no need to put any official translations in the page title, just use the official name with any translations kept to the first line. Official names are extremely important for readers searching for information on items they have found in the game. A German looking for Tollkirsche in Oblivion needs that page, not Nachtschatten Blätter which is the direct translation, though in this case a redirect might exist given it is referred to as that in an important quest. Redirects can be made for corrected translations (spelling mistakes, non-direct translations as above, etc) to help reader navigation, but completely made-up names by fans should not be used at all. Just for example using a non-fictional word, if Bethesda had forgotten to translate apple, then the page should be Apple, not Maçã.      04:01, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

::: Fanmade translations of fictional words are unencyclopaedic and should not be used in any context. The purpose of a wiki is to document the material factually and accurately, and that means using the English version of fictional words where no official translation is provided. "Arcéu" and "Brisavinda" are not even accurate transliterations of the English names, so as far as I can tell they have no factual basis and no merit as translations.

::: I don't think English translations need to be included in page names where we have an official translation. It is sufficient to link to the English wiki, i.e. a page at pt:Oblivion:Maçã should contain      within the text of the article so that a link appears in the Other Languages section of the sidebar. That is the correct method of allowing Portuguese readers to "easily find out what the English name is, and refer to sources written in English", to quote baratron. Portuguese page names on a Portuguese wiki sounds like a perfectly good idea to me when those translations are official or uncontroversial. 

::: Ultimately I think a decision needs to be reached by the Portuguese UESP community since it is a separate wiki. Translators should be pointed to wiki policy such as WP:ENC so that they fully understand the nature of the project, but I think it's important to establish Portuguese consensus on this topic and to then enforce that consensus on the PT wiki. —Legoless (talk) 14:06, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

:::: I wanted to reply directly to Silencer's comment "if in the official Portuguese translation of the game Skyrim is Skyrim, then the page should be Skyrim". As far as I know, there is no official Portuguese translation of Skyrim (the game), and that is likely where the issue originates from. I would agree that if there was an official version, the official words should be used; but since there isn't, I think the most accurate way to document it would be to not translate any proper nouns. If there exists a single unofficial fan translation mod of Skyrim into PT, then the logical thing to do would be to include the translation used by that mod as baratron suggested. If there is no translation used by that mod either, then I don't think there's any basis for using a fan translation in documentation of content – UESP doesn't create new content, we document what already exists. --Enodoc (talk) 14:47, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

::::: Hello everyone, I'm the one who brought this subject up on the forums, so I'll give my humble opinion on the matter. You all did bring up very good points about how there is no place for made-up/fan-made/unofficial translations and localizations of nouns to wikis as UESP. Due to that, I'll try to approach the subject as readers point of view. As readers, we want reliable source of information, that's what wikis are for. Whenever I open pages like "Draconato", "Arcéu", "Brisavinda" and many other and I see translations that not provide a proper official source for the translated name, this reliability gets affect. Plus, this same reliability gets even more damage when the readers find out that the translation/localization is actually a fan-made translations. Secondly, it's very important to remember that the only game that is currently translated to portuguese is TES:Legends, and they don't translate names and places. Also, I don't agree that UESP should use mods and add-ons (ESO) as source of translations because, no matter how good they are, they are still fan-made work and, due to that, have no liability, no accountability nor entitlement. Reading the comments above, I see that there is a major agreement that UESP should not use fan-made translation/translation without proper source etc. Tho, one thing that worries me is that UESP PT is already severely compromissed by those. We are currently reaching a point of no turning back and I hope that a course of action is set up soon so that we can fix UESP PT. (I'm sorry if I did any editing mistake, I'm pretty new to this) —Milvann (talk) 12:06, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

:::::: I'm a Brazilian player (sorry for the English, I still have some difficulty writing - this is my first time here). I agree with the above opinions because I understand this question in the same way. While there is no official translation of The Elder Scrolls into the Portuguese language, one must use the terms in the original version, precisely to maintain the accuracy in the information provided (and not cause confusion for the readers). —RVFFVS (talk) 22:53, 4 March 2018 (UTC)

  On the one hand, the site is directly affiliated with the UESP as a sister wiki to the English-based one, so I feel like a desire for the majority of users, as is the case here, to protect the image and integrity of the encyclopedic information within the UESP completely understandable. On the other hand, I fully agree with Legoless's last point. I feel like consensus should be given weight on the Portuguese wiki, and it's up to the userbase that builds up around the Portuguese community to come up with their own consensus on what is acceptable and accessible to them in their own wiki resource. I don't speak a lick of Portuguese, and I reckon a lot of the responders here don't as well, so it feels unfair in a sense to come to some kind of consensus here that will directly affect their wiki experience and their own wiki.

I don't play the game in any language other than English and I have no intention to ever do so, so I haven't got the faintest idea what the localized translations of Tamrielic terms are. I do feel like weight has to be given to what is portrayed in-game over what translators come up with, because the UESP's reputation is built up around our accuracy of information, and that needs to be given significant consideration, but as I said, I don't consider this an appropriate venue to discuss the matter of translation, and the discussion should be moved to the Portuguese equivalent of the CP (if it's not already happened, I can't navigate the site at all since it's not English) for them to discuss it and be more involved, because I see a lot of English-language speakers here creating a consensus that doesn't directly affect them but will directly affect the Portuguese-speakers. -      &hearts;    02:02, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

:I really think this should be up to the people translating the wiki. The person who is actually making the edits should always come first in these kind of discussions. --AKB   04:16, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

::As a side note, I would like to say that the Russian translation of TES games is flawed as well. In fact, there is no common translation. Every game localized so far (TES3, 4, 5, and Legends) was translated by different people, so terms and names are different as well. The situation is getting even worse, as there are articles on the official Bethesda blog that add to the ambiguity. Now we have up to three or four variants spelling of some names, which all could be counted as 'official'. Most Russian fans do realize that the next localized game would only make the situation even worse.

::To conclude, I want to say that such problems look different in every non-English community, so it is definitely up to (in this case) the Portuguese team to decide what should they do, given that only they are fully aware of the context. Phoenix Neko (talk) 18:32, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

:::I believe I was the first person to mention using a template on Discord. I agree that it is not appropriate to use fan translations of proper nouns directly in an article, but I see the value in having a translated name as well. After all, they are translating the books and (I would guess) dialogue on NPC and quest pages. Because there is no official translation, these are also fan translations, but obviously necessary for a complete Portuguese wiki to work.

:::This template would contain all of the necessary translations and add brackets (possibly in the style of sic tags) after the word. The idea would be to use this on the first instance in a page of any proper nouns with translations. This usually coincides with where links are, so I would guess the default behavior would be to link the term unless another parameter is supplied like nolink=1.

:::From my understanding, the only words being translated are compound words like Hammerfell. There is definitely value in knowing that the two words within are "hammer" and "fell", which is ideally what the translation would accomplish. Just as a translated book has more value to Portuguese readers than an English one. As others have said, the translation should be decided on consensus if any conflicts arise. If it's decided that the translation should be changed, then it takes a single template edit. &mdash;Dillonn241 (talk) 19:33, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

::::Actually, translating non-compound words as if they were can create problems in translation. Hammerfell isn't a great example because it is named "for where the hammer fell", but it is still a singular word now, just as Skyrim is not Sky and rim. Problems can arise when those two individually translated words put together take on a different meaning. Anyway, we don't translate most nouns from other languages when we do things properly (ironically countries are one noun we do translate in real life). Try translating a sentence from a book; direct translations are confusing as hell because English has such garbled (and just plain different) grammar compared to other languages. Changes to a sentence are necessary to convey the sentence in a readable manner. These are not considered "fan creations" because they are not making up new words, simply translating existing words from one language to another. 
::::As Damon says, if they want to be considered a sister-site of here, they must abide by the same standards when it comes to fan-material in lore. The UESP has an extremely good standing in the ES community because we take such a hard line with our lore, they know if it is on our pages then it can be trusted (which has in the past led to some bad information being taken as truth simply because it was our page that said it). If they choose to go down such a route of making stuff up for their lore section, I, and many others, would not hesitate to take a vote to exclude them from exploiting the UESPs good standing to promote their own inventions (ie it won't be the UESPs Portuguese translation, it will be a fan-led translated wiki hosted on the UESP servers). It might be their choice, but I suggest they choose carefully.       19:59, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

:::::I feel like my comments were taken in a way I didn't intend for them to be taken, Silencer. I said I understood the argument, but I wasn't intending to say anything one way or another, other than that the English AN wasn't the appropriate venue to be making any discussion about the future of the Portuguese wiki. What happens there is up to the Portuguese or up to Daveh alone as the owner of the UESP network. Yes, as my own words were, they are a sister-site to the English-based UESPWiki, but that on its own doesn't make it feel like it's right to me or to anyone else to be able to make that call on whether or not it's a part of the community. It would be like me going onto the forum and telling Alarra that I don't like how she or the moderators and administrators run the site, so they should make changes. What's my word or yours worth to them when we don't do more than glance at it every so often, but we ourselves aren't a regular and active part of the community? -      &hearts;    21:39, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

 Since the project started, it was established that most of the TES related english terms were going to be localized to Portuguese, even if there's not source material to these terms. Otherwise, non-english speakers reading the articles wouldn't get the full meaning of them, for example, we would had a entire translated article on "Staff of Chaos", and still, non-english speakers wouldn't know what the name "Staff of Chaos" itself means. That's the purpose of a translation, making people understand what exactly each information means in their own language.
 
Although, many editors and readers claimed that they were already familiar with English terms, so we decided several changes in the way we edit articles: Since the start of the project, all pages with their original name redirects to pages that had their name translated. It was also created a "Glossary", with all the localized terms. Not long ago, it was added a "Mouse Over" template that reveals the original name of a localized term. Recently, it was created a Template that warns the reader that some official material content in a article was translated by editors, for there's no official translation for that particular material. Also, a link to the English version of a article can be added at the sidebar. 

We can and will work further on that matter, making sure that both versions of a name (Original and translated) are present in the wiki, as in some cases, they already  are. —Punheda (talk) 21:46, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

: "Staff" and "chaos" are not fictional words, so translating Staff of Chaos into Portuguese is a non-issue. The problem arises when translations are invented for fictional words such as Skyrim; per Silencer, it is not "sky" and "rim" but an entirely different word. How do you translate words like Grummite or Talos? —Legoless (talk) 22:07, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

::We would not translate "Grummite" and "Talos" because those words are in fictional language inside ES universe. The only words being localized are the ones that derives from the English language. The most reliable way to know that a word needs localization is checking the French version. For example, Skyrim was adapted to "Bordeciel", so there's a important meaning behind this word, that needs to be acknowledged by non-english speakers. —Punheda (talk) 22:23, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

:::First of all, I don't believe the translation team have been ignoring people. In fact, lots of terms have been recalled within complaints in UESP Portuguese Facebook page and The Elder Scrolls Brasil official group. There's even a fixed post about this in the group, asking for people to speak up about the translation. This way I've seen a lot of people joining in the translation of the pages.

:::The portuguese team shouldn't be blamed for trying to make the game understandable for non-english UESP readers. TES Legends brought up a lot of localized names and those (with other names) are on the Glossary, open for anyone and with a link on General tab. And yes, people really needed to know what they were reading and that's why the hover pop-up idea first came. That way, the terms were clarified with the original english term and whether it was an official or unofficial localization.

:::This is a huge setback for people in Brazil. The community is large and most of it can't understand the game or the UESP pages, since not everyone have the opportunity to learn english. —DoctorWhouse (talk) 23:07, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

::::Recovered some things I think were lost in a caching issue. --Enodoc (talk) 23:15, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

:::::I would like also suggest adding a "Translations" section to all articles, as pointed out by MadameTortilla in Discord. If we list all the localized terms in a article in that section, we wouldn't be necessarily be hurting the Wiki's guidelines.—Punheda (talk) 23:22, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

 Another possibility could be something akin wikipedia already uses. Look at this wiki page (just the first that came in mind). No English map would ever translate "Den Oever" as "The Shore", but they do at the start of the article in brackets so English readers understand the meaning of the name. This could also be implemented in a way for PT pages. This way, it will stay true to the official names, but also conveys the meaning of the name/word in PT. --Ilaro (talk) 00:23, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

::As a german, I know some of the official german translations, but they don't all line up. Skyrim, for example, is translated as "Himmelsrand", litterally "[the] Sky's rim". Wayrest is translated as "Wegesruh" in Morrowind, and "Wegrast" in Oblivion (no idea about ESO) - both acceptable translations of "Wayrest". Hammerfell is the same, for hammer is the same in both languages, and "fell" isn't the past of "to fall", but the ehlnofex word for city - deceiving! Nightshade is almost always translated as "Tollkirsche" (literally "mad cherry") in oblivion, except in one ocasion, where it is refered to in its literal translation of "Nachtschatten". You see, translations are tricky, even with "official" ones. --        16:45, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

:::Well, Pedro and I talked, and we decided that the best idea would be to create a new section at the bottom of articles with the localized names, as suggested by Tortilla. This way, guidelines and directives are met. We'll start editing the articles so they fit this. --Thales Alves (talk) 19:47, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

User Rename Request

I would like to request a user rename, please. I've thought a little about my current username and I don't like it that much, since it's inappropriate (it's a unfunny and immature joke in portuguese), and now that I have some account rights on PT-UESP, I would like to have a more serious and friendly approach to the Wiki. The username I would like to have from now on is my IRL name, if it's available for use: PedroCairo. I would really appreciate your help. —Punheda (talk) 20:45, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
:I'm on it. It should be done in a few minutes. I don't recall if I have to do it separately for PT, but I suspect so.  &ndash;       20:52, 10 March 2018 (UTC)
::Appreciated, thanks for the attention.—PedroCairo (talk) 22:01, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Username Change

I'd like my wiki name to be changed to "Fjorn The Dragonborn" I know it contains a normally blacklisted word due to overuse but I was hoping an exception could be made since I just want it to be consistent with my forum name

—Fjorn The Dragonb0rn

:Normally, with only one edit apart from this message, we'd advise just creating a new account. Since that's obviously not useful advice in this case, I've gone ahead and made the change.  &ndash;       07:35, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

::Thank you. It's appreciated. —Fjorn The Dragonborn

Move Over Redirect

 → 
 → 
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Thanks! --Enodoc (talk) 15:53, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

:On it.  &ndash;       20:15, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Blockuser Policy Change

Currently, our policy for Blockusers is that they're supposed to log every block they make to the Block Notifications page. Both when I was a blocker and now as an admin, I found that page more of a nuisance than anything, personally, and these days, blocks by non-admins are infrequent enough that I don't think a separate page is warranted. With the advent of Discord, I'd like to suggest changing our policy to blockusers having to notify   (or a specific admin, if one is active) on Discord or, in the absence of a response within a reasonable time, simply posting directly to AN rather than bothering with the subpage. Does that work?  &ndash;       19:17, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

:Even when I was a blocker, I didn't mind the page. In fact, I have a strong preference to keep the page, and I think it's necessary as an accountability thing. Blockers are not full administrators with the discretion to do whatever they want. They are still trustworthy users, but I still am preferential to having users log when they perform a block.

:In the dead period between major releases, traffic in general is a lot slower, so the page may seem superfluous right now, but if the monumental spike in traffic that Skyrim brought is anything to go on, then when the next big game comes out, and we need the extra staff, that page provides the opportunity to provide a detailed explanation by the user for who was blocked and why they felt it necessary, so that administrators and fellow interested users can see an account of what has been going on and why.

:Hell, if anything, I wish we archived those blocks to a readable table on a subpage of that instead of deleting them outright just so they're easier to find by whoever wants to read them if the need to do so arose. Regarding posting to Discord as a policy, I would prefer having a wiki-side log of something that happens on the wiki and not have to move it off-site for any reason where it can eventually fall into obscurity in miles of chat logs. Also, while it is popular, not everyone will want to be a regular Discord user, so making it a policy that blockers have to participate in Discord to notify administrators when it wasn't a policy to do so when IRC was in its prime feels out of place.

:Just my thoughts. -      &hearts;    22:36, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

::You have good points, and I'll let others decide which is the best way to go on them. I will respond to two things, though.

::First, if you look at the history for the Block Notifications page, the number of blocked users decreased significantly towards the end of 2012. That was the same time that we added the Abuse Filter to the site, and we've improved it since then. For the next major release, I don't think we'll see anywhere near as much blockable activity as we did after Skryim.

::Secondly, for Discord, my intent wasn't to force Discord use as part of the policy, but to suggest it as an option. AN is always an option, so if a blocker wasn't on Discord, then they would simply jump straight to AN. Discord is simply a convenient way to find an admin quickly. Of course, in theory, blockers are supposed to have already tried to flag an admin down before they block anyway, but I understand how sometimes the order is reversed when there's a prolific vandal/spammer becoming active.  &ndash;       23:10, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

:::I agree with Damon that we should have a log on the wiki, but  already serves that purpose, so I don't really see the benefit of additional manual logging at Block Notifications. The purpose of that page is specifically to notify admins, and already excludes itself from being a viable archive of Blockuser (even with page history) by saying ''you do not need to post here if you've already posted about it on the Administrator Noticeboard. I have no real opinion on whether the page should stay or not, but I do think the policy needs to be updated to match that statement, and if the AN is a valid alternative, as the page says, then maybe the subpage is unneessary anyway. However if the general intent is to notify admins, that can just as easily be done on Discord as on the AN, so I would say both should be an option, but neither should be preferred. --Enodoc (talk) 09:59, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

::::So maybe just change "Information about the block should be added to the Block Notifications page." to "Blockers must notify administrators of any blocks they make, either on the Administrator Noticeboard or on Discord."'' Does that sound good? Granted, any administrator who isn't on Discord could entirely miss the notification or even they are, they could have it lost in the clutter, but not all administrators need to be aware of every block. The point, as I understand it, is to have at least one administrator review the block to see if further action is needed, and Discord certainly has enough of us there within any given 6-hour window before the Blocer's block would expire.  &ndash;       18:36, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

ESO Summerset PTS Release

The Summerset Chapter is out on the ESO PTS server so here's the usual update. Note that I had a hard drive failure and lost the extraction scripts so I had to rewrite them...if there are any issues with the uploaded files just let me know.

:* uespLog -- There's a crash issue due to a removed API function. Easiest way to fix is to just add the following line somewhere at the top of the uespLog.lua file:
     ZO_CenterScreenAnnounce_GetHandlers = function() return {} end
:* File Uploads -- Done!
:* Champion Points -- Done!
:* Skills -- Done! Note that all rank 1-4 active/ultimate skills were merged into a single skill (the rank 1) and the rank 2-4 version deleted. Currently there is no easy way to mine all rank 1-4 versions of the skills and the current mined data will be a random mix of rank 1 and rank 4 skill data. 
::* Update -- Fixed the skill passives that only had one level and were not showing and the passive order.
::* Update -- Added ranks 2-4 of all active skills.
:* Skill Coefficients -- Done! Note that this will be a random mix of rank 1 and 4 skills and a couple skills have incorrect values. Not going to fix everything since this is only a PTS release.
::* Update -- Added ranks 2-4 of all active skills.
:* Items -- Done!
:* Icons -- Uploaded!
:* Maps -- Done (still have all locations to add and map names to tweak)! Added Jewelry Station and Psijic Portal icons.
:* Alchemy Calculator -- Updated with the 2 new reagents.
-- 22:55, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

User recovery Alpha Panda

Hey, a while back I made an account on UESPwiki because I wanted to work on Morrowind pages especially with the Morrowind Overhaul Project and all. Unfortunately I never connected this account with my e-mail and I forgot my password. As a result I have not been able to log-in for a while now, but would love to be able to do so again. 
To this end I wondered if an admin or moderator could send the password to my e-mail so that I can log in again and take measures to not end up in this situation again. I'll leave it here for a while and hope that this request can be granted (removed because resolved).

-Thank you  

:With no e-mail address on the account to verify it, I can't help you recover it, so you'll have to create a new account. If you're attached to the name Alpha Panda, however, we can usurp the original account. In essence, we treat you as two separate users, and rename the original to "Alpha Panda (Usurped)", while you start a brand new "Alpha Panda". Normally usurpation is only done for people with no significant edit history, but I consider being the same user as one of the special cases they talk about on that page.

:If that's what you want to do, just post a message to the current Alpha Panda's talk page informing them of your request to change their name. Assuming that's actually you, I'm pretty sure they won't object. :) If they don't, we can go ahead with the rename after a few days. Alternatively, since you can't get access to your original account anyway, you can take the opportunity to simply start a new account with a different name. Let us know how you'd like to proceed.  &ndash;       17:39, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

::Hey, thanks for your response. I understand your policy on this, but fortunately I can prove it is me. I've noticed that luckily I linked to my Bethesda Account on my profile here. As you can see on . Following that link brings you to a profile named 'Panda Claws' and this screenschot proves that that is indeed me: image in question.

::-Alpha Panda

:::Okay, that works. Just give me a few minutes to remind myself how to reset a password when there's no e-mail address and I'll e-mail you a temporary password.  &ndash;       23:29, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

::::Thank you very much for granting this request! --Alpha Panda (talk) 17:29, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

:::::Glad I could help!  &ndash;       19:39, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

ESO Summerset Release

The Summerset Chapter is out on the ESO live servers so here's the usual update. 

:* uespLog -- Updated to 1.51 (uespLogMonitor updated to 0.60).
:* File Uploads -- Done!
::* Fixed the update 18 and 18pts crown crate uploads.
:* Champion Points -- Done!
:* Skills -- Done! 
:* Skill Coefficients -- Done!
:* Items -- Done!
:* Icons -- Done!
:* Maps -- Done! Added images for 1 new map and a few that were updated.
:* Achievements -- Done!
:* Books -- Book texts updated!
:* Collectibles -- Done!
:* Misc Data -- Done!
:* API Data -- Done!

-- Daveh   15:26, 21 May 2018 (UTC)

Useless userbox

I don't see an equivalent of "Templates for deletion" on this wiki, so I guess this is the right venue.  I propose deleting  . There's no game-encyclopedic or editorial-collaboration purpose served by "This user has had his or her sexuality questioned by vandals."     20:53, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

:It's ten years old, in-use, and not doing anyone any harm. There's no encyclopedic or collaborative purpose to most userboxes – they exist to decorate user pages. --Enodoc (talk) 21:45, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

::I think you are forgetting a small but important aspect of wikis, namely to have fun. There is no encyclopedic or collaborative purpose in knowing a persons sexuality, religion, which god or factions they like in the game, or even their troll hunting abilities. You don't need to know a persons birthday, favourite musicians, or even that they are not a  . This userbox is used, which shows a clear desire for it, and lets people know they have been targeted by vandals/haters. When we allow users to create their own manually-written user boxes you can't delete them on the grounds that don't apply.      21:47, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

:::On the secondary topic: being a smaller wiki, we lump all our deletions together. To request deletion of a template here, you'd use the regular   or   templates, but put them in &lt;noinclude> tags (or, optionally, on the /Doc page, though your description should make it clear you intend it to apply to the template itself and not just the docs). Of course, if it's in-use, then discussion is probably appropriate first in any event, so either AN or CP would be fine for that.  &ndash;       21:58, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Main Page Protection

The new  page needs semi-protection as is standard for any page featured on the side-bar. I'm not sure if  should be protected at this stage, but it will become the Blades:Blades page when the game is released and the pages moved. Both pages already have the icon for semi-protection.      17:31, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

:Well, that took longer than it should have due to a few previously undiscovered bugs in the protection code, but the bot has now updated all the main game pages accordingly. I didn't opt to do anything with  at this point, but once it's actually on the side-bar or , then it can be protected.  &ndash;       22:48, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

User pages warnings
thumb|right
It might not be anything, but I wanted to contact an admin to let them know or to find out what I might have done to cause it, but I received the below warning message when saving changes to my user page which I've never seen before. It eludes to it being a new account and massive changes which neither is true because its not very new and I only deleted short description of two of my characters, but that was all that was there so I guess it was 100% :) After trying to figure out what was wrong and trying to save again it said it had determined the action was destructive and ignored it.
 
Like a World Boss (talk) 23:36, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

:As you can see on the warning, "new accounts" are accounts with less than 10 edits and less than 4 days old, and you only had 8 edits before today. I think that filter activates when "new" users try to blank a userpage, no matter the length, or it may just be that the size limit is smaller than I think (you page has 261 characters by my count). It also says "a large edit", as it can only check the size of an edit, not whether something is being added or taken away. An admin can look at the edit and the filter and confirm this, and if anything needs fixed it can be looked at. In the meantime you could try to remove the two lines one at a time, or leave a single character (e.g. a single letter) on the page instead of "blanking" it. Finally, it isn't intuitive, but  would be the place to report a false flagging.      00:19, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Cartographer privileges

Not sure if it's the right place for that, but I would like to request cartographer privileges. -- ( ) 20:04, 30 June 2018 (UTC)

:Yup, this is the right place, or flagging an admin down in Discord would've worked too. You now have cartographer privileges. Enjoy!  &ndash;       08:44, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

::Thanks! -- ( ) 08:51, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Ooh, speaking of Cartographer priveleges, can I also humbly request this, so I don't have to bug discord all the time? :) Timeoin (talk) 09:14, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

:Also done.  &ndash;       21:32, 1 July 2018 (UTC)
::Yay! Thank you kindly good sir. (And, also, happy Canada Day?) Timeoin (talk) 09:54, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

ESO Wolfhunter PTS Release

Just got back from vacation and and finally catching up to things....The Wolfhunter DLC Chapter is out on the ESO PTS server.

:* uespLog -- Seems to work fine as it is.
:* File Uploads -- Done!
:* Champion Points -- Done!
:* Skills -- Done! -- Not yet checked for issues.
:* Skill Coefficients -- Done! -- Not yet checked.
:* Items -- Done!
:* Icons -- Done!
:* Maps -- Uploaded and links to dungeons updated!
-- Daveh   14:41, 25 July 2018 (UTC)