UESPWiki:Community Portal/Archive 49

Elder Scrolls: Legends template(s)

Hey! With the new information about Elder Scrolls: Legends, I've been thinking about what exactly we need from the template. As I see it, we need these parameters:
Name
Race
Class
Image
Cost
Attack
Defense
Ability/Effect
Type
Flavor Text
Prophecy

Can anyone else think of any parameters I may have missed? There might also be special cards that do not fall into these categories, or that do not use all of these categories. I'm looking forward to this! Jeancey (talk) 18:27, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
:Also, just as a reminder, all of this information should be sourced solely from officially released information and public conventions. Any closed beta info will be covered by an NDA and should be deleted from the wiki as soon as possible :) Jeancey (talk) 18:48, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

:: Might want a parameter for how to obtain the card, for special cases like the Adoring Fan. Are we gonna transfer card data to the wiki right away or should be wait for release? —Legoless (talk) 19:08, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
:::As long as it is from the official release video, I see no reason to wait. Everything should have the prerelease tag of course. Maybe add an NDA section to the pre-release template? Jeancey (talk) 19:11, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

::::If it came out of an official source, I'd see no reason not to share it, however, there's no telling how (if at all) the information would change in the future. I'm more of one of those "wait and see" people though, and I personally would wait until the NDA was over and we were closer to release to start sharing data like that, just in case it changes. And, although I know we'd be vigilant and keep NDA'd information from being shown on the site, what if sharing large amounts of card information and stuff looks more like an encouragement to do more? Unless it was shared to a Pre-release page that was explicitly for such information, but wasn't posted elsewhere as unique articles or the like. -      &hearts;    19:16, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

:::::Purely from a template-design perspective, my questions would be whether we're envisioning a single page with a table for all the cards, or one card per page. If it's one per page, then which of those parameters might we want to cross-reference on other pages (similar to quest or location summaries, for example)? Also if it's one per page, what else would we fill the page with besides the template? I guess a bit of Lore-like info would be appropriate, but I can potentially see individual pages being fairly bare.  &ndash;       19:51, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

:::::: From the looks of things, individual card articles could actually be pretty beefy. Summary tables will definitely be needed as well though, so we might want to use something like   to transclude the basic data. —Legoless (talk) 19:56, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

  Great example, Lego. I wasn't thinking of what all could go on such a page.  &ndash;       20:23, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

:Which parameter would things like "Uses: 3" or "Ongoing" go under? Or is that one you've missed? Also, what are the "flavor text" and "prophecy" parameters? I don't see anything like that on the images of the cards.  &ndash;       20:53, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
::In the Lanes article they talk about how some cards are prophecy cards. It was separate from the ability, so I figured there was something special about them. Flavor Text is just from experience with trading card games, there is flavor text usually on cards. Sometimes just on cards without abilities, other times on every card. I figure that they'll have some sort of flavor text, but it's not a given. Jeancey (talk) 20:56, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
:::Okay, based on the above discussion, I've generated a quick template. Feel free to throw some parameters at it and see how it looks (cuz I haven't beyond a basic test). My design skills   are unimaginative, and even looking at the test, I can see that we'll probably want to make some changes, so feel free to suggest any you might have or play in my sandbox yourselves. Also, I'm not intending this to be a comment on whether we should put it to use right away or if we should wait. I just figured I'd get something done while I was in a "templatey" kind of mood.  &ndash;       21:33, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
::::As another example of ideas for a card's page, here is an example of a card's page on a wiki for a game I used to play before they shut it down. This one focused more on the numbers: how strong a card would be if you leveled/evolved it different ways, and cost-vs-atk/def ratios. The cardlist might be good to look at too to see how they organize the full list of cards in the game (if you can get it to load, that is - seems to be very slow and iffy lately. The owner of that wiki's stopped doing any work on it due to Rage of Bahamut shutting down, and will take down his wiki before long.)  ~     02:01, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

  Ok, I've tried out the card template and been working on some pages as well. I'm not familiar with templates, but have suggestions:
Maybe "Magicka Cost" instead of just "Cost"?
I think the attack/defense would look better as two columns on the same row
I'd say rename "class" to "attributes", since a card can be a single attribute (i.e. Strength). Or maybe have it display as "class/attribute".  
Maybe color the template based on which attribute the card represents? The colors they're using are red (Strength), yellow (Willpower), blue (Intelligence), green (Agility), purple (Endurance), and dark gray (Neutral).  There are also cards that are half-and-half, and I'd assume we'd name them by their class name (for example a red/blue card would be a Battlemage card) - is it possible for the template to look half-and-half (whether it can do a gradient or fill it half-and-half, or maybe use one color for the part that's currently "lighter" in the template and the other color in the parts that are "darker"?
Add a field for rarity (that's what the bottom diamond on the card indicates). Maybe change text color based on what it is? Fans who've been to PAX East are saying that the rarities are Basic (white/gray), Common (blue), Unique (purple), Legendary (yellow).
For "Ability", maybe center-align the text, like it appears on the card? Also, "ability" covers all the prophecy/what the card does/etc, right?
(By the way, here is an album of most of the revealed cards if you want to look at how the cards vary.)  
Two more questions:
Is it possible to add the Dire Wolf licensing to the dropdown, so that it's a bit easier and people don't have to copy-paste the text each time? 
Regarding image categories, should the images revealed so far be considered concept art? So far I've started to put them in Concept Art, but I'm considering a "card art" category instead since we know some of them are card images (and not, like, the avatar images). Maybe put them in Concept until we know that they're card art for sure and then move it?
~     06:50, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
: Okay, I've made all the template changes mentioned above. For now, colour choices are very primitive named HTML colours, so they're fairly off, but I figured it was the easiest way to start and then once the design is closer to final, we can tweak the colours to be something more reasonable. To implement the colour gradients, I'd need a full list of classes and the colours they're associated with. Class and attribute are currently both available and overlap in function, but using "class=" will display "Class", while using "attribute=" will display "Attribute". Also, we're probably going to want to re-think the abilities to some extent, as "Prophecy" isn't the only ability, it looks like. I'm just noticing cards like Tyr (7th panel down in the linked thread), where the abilities appear to be all of Prophecy, Breakthrough, Guard. I'm assuming we'd want to categorize all of those separately.

: I've added the new license. It looked okay in the preview, but I didn't actually upload anything, so let me know if there's anything wrong there.

: Finally, for the categories, I'd personally be tempted to follow your suggestion of putting them in concept art until we're sure, but I can see an argument for just putting them in "card art" to begin with so that there's no additional work to be done later on, and we can just delete any that turn out to be not the final image.  &ndash;       19:57, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

:: Thanks! The licensing works fine.  Here's a list of the classes (ordered as they appear on the cards itself, as far as I can see):
::*Archer - Red/Green
::*Assassin - Blue/Green
::*Battlemage - Red/Blue
::*Crusader - Red/Yellow
::*Mage - Blue/Yellow
::*Monk - Yellow/Green
::*Scout - Green/Purple
::*Sorcerer - Blue/Purple
::*Spellsword - Yellow/Purple
::*Warrior - Red/Purple
::Was rarity added?
::As far as ability, maybe just change that to "text" and just type it as it appears on the card, bolding the actual abilities when we type it?  I can, however, see the possible need for an extra field for "Ongoing", which appears as a gold bar above the normal text.  For attack/defense, can you put those on the same line?  It would look a little more like the card that way with atk on the left and def on the right, and be more distinct from cost.  It's starting to shape up pretty well!  I'm eager to start getting those pages up and running once we've got it all sorted out. :)  ~     02:34, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

:::Regarding colours, I would suggest we do something similar to what was done for ESO; take the hex colours that appear in the relevant material, use that as a "dark" colour for highlights and text, and extrapolate a "light" colour from those for the infobox. Here are the colours as pulled directly from the website:
:::* ,  
:::* ,  
:::* ,  
:::* ,  
:::* ,  
:::If Neutral is just grey, then that could simply be  ,  
:::--Enodoc (talk) 09:37, 26 April 2016 (UTC)
::::Thanks for all the info, guys! The template's been updated with all of the above, I think: ongoing field was added, colours were changed, gradient was changed to be left-to-right now that I've actually spotted an example :), prophecy-specific code was removed and everything can just go in "abilities" for now, and attack/defense are on one line. Let me know if I missed anything. For now, rarity is just a plain text field, since colouring the text based on that would have made the text difficult to read in a lot of cases. It should be easy enough to change that, though. For example, we could use only a coloured diamond, if someone wants to capture images of them, or we could use both the diamond and the text. I've updated the example to include the rarity, so we can see how it looks if we make changes. I also added a second example to show the gradient effect (though it's the wrong image, since we didn't have one of Merric yet). And back on the subject of text colour, I reset all of them to white text for the darker background, and black text for the lighter background; we can tweak that as necessary if there are unreadable colour combos, but I figured it gave us a fairly uniform scheme to start with.

::::Noticeably, the "type" parameter isn't being used currently. What was that supposed to be?

::::Lastly, while scanning through the captured card images, I noticed a couple of additional things. Some cards have a gold circle on them at the top center (e.g., Merric-at-Aswala in the 7th panel) while others have a green triangle/arrow-shaped icon at the top right (e.g., Starved Hunger in the 4th panel). Do we know what those are supposed to be?  &ndash;       20:10, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

:::::That template is looking great!  I love how the gradient looks. I'll see if I can crop out the diamonds and upload 'em. For attribute, not sure if "neutral" or "colorless" is actually the correct term for the gray ones - I've heard both. We might have to change that eventually.  Nobody seems to be sure what those other icons mean - one guess was evolved/evolve-able, but nothing confirmed.
:::::Now, what sort of pages should we have for listing cards? My idea was to have an overall page with a sortable table, like this example for another game I played. (Is that feasible for us to do with apparently 400+ cards? Not sure how exactly their page works), and then pages for each attribute/class so that they can more easily find what they're looking for (though whether this should be another sortable table, or show the card thumbnails, or what, not sure - any opinions?)  ~     08:01, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

  So is the template good to go with regards to creating card pages? —Legoless (talk) 00:10, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

:I think so. The only issue is that apparently the rarities are wrong, but the person who told me wasn't at liberty to say more than that because of the NDA. We agreed that the best solution was just to not put rarity for the time being so that we don't have confusing or incorrect information.  &ndash;       01:11, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

:: Alright, I've gone live with the template and set up the first couple card pages. I'm using the rarity color for now until we get a public source for the official terms. —Legoless (talk) 16:35, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

:::Great solution to the problem—I hadn't thought of that. That'll make it very easy for either the template to handle or the bot to change once we have official details.  &ndash;       17:31, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

:::: The template will also need to be able to toggle off some of those rows if the field is left blank. At the minute, it doesn't really support Action, Support, or Item cards (see here and here). Some Support cards also seem to need separate parameters for "Uses (number)" and "Ongoing (y/n)" (example). —Legoless (talk) 17:53, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

::::: The rows not disappearing was an artifact left over from testing in user space. I've added your example card to my sandbox, so you can see it looks okay. It's admittedly a bit odd to have  , so we may want to change the wording for that, perhaps that's what the   parameter was intended to be in the original list? And yeah, I'd noticed the different gold-bar texts, but wasn't sure whether we wanted to handle them separately, as you suggest, or just have a single parameter that we'd type the entire text into (e.g., "Uses: 1"). Either way is pretty easy to do.  &ndash;       18:52, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

:::::: Excellent. Yeah, I was thinking 'type' might be more appropriate, so as not to confuse it with the separate Race mechanic (which is entirely separate from Creature types). —Legoless (talk) 19:03, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

  I'd like to propose an edit to the template: rather than just having one "Type" and setting that as "High Elf", "Spriggan", etc, let's do "Type" (Creature/Action/Item/Support) and "Subtype" (race/animal type/etc).  I imagine most people, when building a deck, are going to want to be able to sort a table by type - Action/Creature/Item/Support so that they can see, for instance, what kind of creature cards are available in that color, and not have it sorted, say, Action/Breton/High Elf/Item/Nereid/Support/Troll.  If they want to see all the High Elves, they can sort by Subtype, but having a more generic type would allow them to see creatures altogether rather than mixing it all up like that. ~     17:19, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

: Might be better to simply add cards to the Creature category by default, unless they're one of the specified non-Creature types. —Legoless (talk) 23:09, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

:: Any other opinions on this?  Also, one thing that has occurred to me, is we should probably specify whether the card is obtainable or not: there's the cards that you actually get in your collection, NPC-only cards (such as Acolyte of Boethiah), and cards that can only be summoned by other cards (such as Young Wolf). There should probably be categories and something in the template that specifies which of these three a card is. ~     00:32, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

:::I agree with adding 'Unobtainable'. I think that it should be a parameter that is hidden by default and if used adds the card to a category of something like Legends-Unobtainable Cards or some such. -   ﴾TALK﴿ 06:12, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

:::: The word used for Hearthstone is "Uncollectible". I agree with adding a parameter for this. —Legoless (talk) 10:18, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

ESO Housing Task

Update 11 includes a lot of significant worldbuilding in preparation for next year's housing update. According to the devs, this has in some cases resulted in NPCs and buildings being moved or outright deleted. Here is a list of the changed locations from the PTS. Similar to Enodoc's request from the last update cycle, it would be beneficial for the wiki to have information and photos of the areas as they are on the live server. We have until the end of the month to document this, but it's a pretty large undertaking so I'd appreciate some help cataloguing the changes. —Legoless (talk) 20:41, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

:All done, just not uploaded yet ;) --Enodoc (talk) 21:30, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

:: Oh, really? Excellent! —Legoless (talk) 21:44, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

:::Uploaded and added to Player Housing (we can move them around later). --Enodoc (talk) 23:05, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

:::: So we only need details on Pojeel's Hut, Lemaitre Manor and Lenith House? —Legoless (talk) 15:57, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

::::: Yeah I think so. I've asked ZOS for a list of changes, so if they get back to me with that one in time then we'll have something definitive, but I couldn't find anything else that is being removed. --Enodoc (talk) 22:42, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

  Hey guys, I have an update from ZOS! (Thanks to Jessica Folsom for getting the details.) I sent them the list of changes we'd found, and here's the reply:



Here's the list which I sent them that they confirmed as correct:


So the things we ideally need before Monday are a full accounting of the three repurposed NPC homes, and full details of the six NPCs being removed: Veemarz and Am-Sakka in Pojeel's Hut, Rilos Lenith and Caretaker Beldros in Lenith House, and Madame Lemaitre and Khojifa in Lemaitre Manor. --Enodoc (talk) 09:38, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

:Perhaps I might be able to help with that. Is it ok if I put it all in my sandbox and you use it from there? Tib (talk) 10:52, 27 July 2016 (UTC)
::I've added some info on these now. Tib (talk) 12:27, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

:::Awesome, thanks! I think that's all the necessary things done now. --Enodoc (talk) 13:07, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

  There's a bunch more of these up on PTS now. —Legoless (talk) 21:07, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

: Righty ho, at least they've given a full breakdown in the patch notes this time! I hopefully should be able to work on getting screenshots for these over the next couple of weeks. --Enodoc (talk) 23:20, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

:: Pictures done, hopefully get them uploaded tomorrow. As before, we'll also need a full accounting of the repurposed NPC homes, and full details of the NPCs being removed. --Enodoc (talk) 22:30, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

::: I believe I've gathered all the data for this. Haven't compared it to the patch notes changes, but as long as only interior NPCs are being removed we should be set. —Legoless (talk) 09:16, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Citation tooltips?

I realize that fulfilling this request most likely isn't as simple as the push of a button, but I was wondering if it would be possible to implement citation tooltips (may or may not be the technical name of this feature). I've seen them in use in articles at Halopedia, and I've found them to be immensely helpful. When seeking a citation, instead of clicking on it and being taken to the bottom of a page to sift through a list of references, you can just scroll over the citation and it pops up right there, so you can examine it without losing your place in the article. Again, I have absolutely no idea how to do this or even if it's possible on this particular wiki, but the convenience of it, both for reading and editing, can't be understated. Croaker (talk) 22:30, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

: Reference Tooltips are available with MediaWiki and used by default on Wikipedia. —Legoless (talk) 22:44, 9 July 2016 (UTC)

ESO NPC Titles

The new dungeons in Update 11 have several bosses who have titles beneath their names. This space is normally used only for service NPCs; for example, Angier Stower has the title of "Banker". I can only think of one NPC who had a title despite not offering any services. However, ZOS have obviously now decided to use the title system for aesthetics. An example of this would be , whose article is currently misnamed. The NPC's name is "Adhazabi Aba-daro", while her title is "The Golden" (capitalised, unlike our article).

I think we can approach these titles in one of three ways:
Add them to the page name as was done with Adhazabi (with correct capitalisation this time), i.e. "Zatzu The Spine-Breaker".
Omit them from the page name like we have been doing. We wouldn't have an article called "Angier Stower Banker". Instead, we use the NPC name for the page name (i.e. "Zatzu") and note the title elsewhere on the article.
Add a comma, i.e. "Zatzu, The Spine-Breaker".

Personally I'd favour the second approach. Since this aesthetic title thing is becoming a trend, it would make sense to add a parameter to  . It could be similar to the   param which we already use for service titles, or it could be added to the   on a new line. If we modify the infobox title to display as it does in-game, it would also be an opportunity to add service titles in a similar manner.

Any suggestions? —Legoless (talk) 11:50, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

:I agree with the secong approach. I would rather we name the page using the NPC's actual name aka "Zatzu" and mention in the opening intro sentence the title. So something like "Zatzu, also known as The Spine-Breaker is a boss in...." To me the titles are more like nicknames especially when they're on these enemy NPCs. I don't think that they're significant enough to place in the info box especially when it serves no gameplay purpose. Contraptions (talk) 12:47, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

:: I was thinking something like this:
:: 
:: —Legoless (talk) 13:33, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

:::That looks nice, I think that would be the best way to present it. Never knew info boxes could do that. Contraptions (talk) 13:43, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

::::I'd prefer quotations marks around the title, but the placement looks good as it mimics the game.      13:45, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

::::: The infobox can actually already do that by simply using   and inserting a linebreak, so no additional functionality would necessarily be needed. The problem I see with adding our own commas or quotation marks is that it detracts from how the NPC is presented in-game. —Legoless (talk) 14:00, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

:::::: Definitely in favor of #2 as well. I agree with Legoless as far as not adding our own punctuation to it. Maybe italics at most, but I think the style as shown in the image above is fine. -- Hargrimm  14:27, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

::::::: I don't know what it looks like in game, but just to toss out another possibility for the page name, you could also have "Zatzu (The Spine Breaker)", which has the advantage that the pipe trick will generate just "Zatzu" as the name, but the disadvantage that when you actually do need disambiguation, page names get a bit ugly: "Zatzu (The Spine Breaker) (npc)". That said, #2 is probably easiest all around.  &ndash;       16:55, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

:::::::: It looks like this:

:::::::: 150px

:::::::: Using the title in parenthesis would certainly work if the name ever needed a disambig. I can't imagine it would go three levels deep though, since we could just use "Zatzu (quest)" or whatever if such a situation ever arose. —Legoless (talk) 18:19, 14 July 2016 (UTC)

  If there's no opposition to option #2, I'll move Adhazabi's page and place a bot request for the proposed infobox layout. —Legoless (talk) 23:08, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

: Just a quick suggestion on style; I wonder if using the console-style display might help to better visually separate the 'title' from the 'name' in the infobox. That would look like this (current PC-style on the left, proposed Console-style on the right):
:
: --Enodoc (talk) 13:22, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

:: I'm not a fan of excessive capitalisation, personally. At best it's a loss of info. We don't use it for items either, even though they're presented in block capitals half the time. —Legoless (talk) 15:21, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Books Categories

I have three proposals that require someone capable of altering templates (for at least two anyway). 
# Remove "notes" from Online namespace. A bot to remove the parameter from the 1200+ books with them. I know notes is our own invention anyway for categorising, but there are an awful lot of inconsitencies. #2 has more reasoning. An option to stop the paramater from working in ON is an idea but probably a waste of time, once the category is deleted any new 'notes' can be spotted and changed. 
# Add categorisation by collection for books (for ESO). There are currently 76 collections which split the books into neat bundles. An extra category for books without a collection would give us somewhere to put these books, and somewhere from which to work to check if they still exist within the game or have been suppressed. 
# Add a "Compilation" type. This will apply across all namespaces. It can then be used to keep these 'books' from generating 'false positives' for missing data categories. The compilations would be moved to a subcategory of books too. Compilations should also have their Collection removed seeing as they are not part of them. 
Thoughts, suggestions, and ideas are welcome.      20:51, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

:From a bot/template design perspective, I think this should all be straight-forward, although I'm a little unclear on what you want for the Compilation. Would it just be a new parameter, and then add a    to the page? Would the compilation appear anywhere besides in the category?  &ndash;       01:12, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

::[Online-Books-Compilations] and   I don't think its neccessary to show it in the summary, just something to take it out of the main books category. And then an   or two to remove them from such auto-cats as Online-Books-Needing an Icon. Also I think a book should be in both the books category and a collection category. The exact naming of the categories may require fine tuning, it could Books-Gold Coast Tomes or Books-Collections-Gold Coast Tomes. ++ Any compilations would need to also be exempt from the 'no collection' category.      02:00, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

:::Sounds good. We touched on Notes before but never got around to doing anything with them, and I agree on collection-based categorisation and the use of a "compilation" type. --Enodoc (talk) 06:30, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

::::Okay, I've made the template changes and saved them in a sandbox (immediately after which, I accidentally saved the template itself...yay, me!). You can test it if you want by changing   to  .

::::Using  as an example, it would now show up in "Online-Books-Collections-Tales of Tamriel" if left untouched, but if you added   to it, it would instead show up under "Category:Online-Books-Compilations", but be removed from "Category:Online-Books-Needing an Icon". ESO books that are not part of any collection would show up under "Category:Online-Books-No Collection". Does that all sound right?  &ndash;       21:28, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
:::::That sounds good to me. I was going to do that after I set up the Books needing an Icon thing, but I forgot :P Jeancey (talk) 21:30, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

::::::I inserted the compilation paramater on one new page, but misspelled it. It works good, exactly what I wanted, now we wait to see if there are an objections. There'll be overlap between no-icons and no-collection, but not all in no collection will need icons.      21:46, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

  So the notes are merged with books, yes? Should we then change the wording on the individual collections page (for example, Gold Coast Tomes) where we have a sentence "X is a collection of Y books, letters and notes", which is linking to "Letters and notes" page, and simply write "X is a collection of Y books"? Or should we write "X is a collection of Y books, letters and notes" but omit the link? Just wondering! I guess the link has to go either way. Tib (talk) 10:14, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

: As long as the link is gone I don't think the wording matters too much. If there are actually texts written as letters and notes in the collection, might be helpful to keep that line. —Legoless (talk) 12:30, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

:: There is a distinction in-game, just in the graphics used to show the book/note.  There seem to be as far as I can tell 4 different graphics used for readable items in ESO: regular book, old book (the ones with dark pages and lighter text), note (includes letters, scrolls, etc.), and engraving.  I'm not sure if there's more than just the two book graphics, those are just the most obvious.  There may be note/letter/scroll variations as well, but they all look kind of similar.  Books and notes also make a different sound when you read them.  Whether this difference is particularly noteworthy is up for debate, but there definitely is a difference. — TheRealLurlock (talk) 17:00, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

::: That's interesting. Talk about being observant! I think I'll keep the wording the same, just remove the link then. (It was the creation of new collection Library of Incunabula that made me wonder) Tib (talk) 10:20, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

::::Books, letters, notes, and etchings/engravings. The distinction in category was based almost entirely on the icon used, but the recent updates have left a huge number of them without icons using instead the Question Mark icon for missing data. A split by collection (biggest is 121) is more useful and manageable than the current split. We also have a slight complication. There is a category for Skill Books which is auto-generated when a skill is added to a book page, which there are 11 documented extra books outside the skill books collection. The page for Skill Books documents books that are not in the collection because of this overlap. Making the page "Skill Books (collection)" can either be used just a redirect for the template and category, or we can split the collection there and leave the skill books page for all skill books, perhaps merging the tables. I'm in favour of a full split page.      09:52, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

:::::Tib: Yes, notes and books are now merged. Since there was already an agreement to do so, as Silencer linked to, I just went ahead and did the bot run shortly after this was posted.

:::::Silencer: Are the missing icons the result of a template/bot issue, or was it just something due to updates in general? If it's a template/bot thing, can you provide a couple of examples, please, so I can see what needs to be fixed? Thanks.

:::::All: I don't see any disagreement with Silencer's suggestions. Shall I put the new template in place?  &ndash;       22:08, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

::::::By "missing icons" books, I mean those that use the question mark on the wiki; they use the question mark in the game as they lack an icon due to not belonging to a collection at the start, but now they are. Huge number is a bit of an exaggeration, I count about 10 using the icon. There are 175 books needing an icon if the QM isn't counted, but a number of them are compilations, maybe only 20-30 there are properly needing an icon.      22:47, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

:::::::Ah, okay, thanks for the clarification.  &ndash;       23:12, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

 I think that's long enough for objections to the remaining points. A full page split at  and another tweak to the other skill books page too.      00:57, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

:Okay, I updated the template and fixed a couple of bugs I'd introduced. Everything looks good now, so it's just a matter of waiting for categories to get updated properly, then we can go from there.  &ndash;       08:19, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Policy regarding datamined info

Do we have any policy regarding the addition of datamined info to the wiki? I ask this since there has been talk going around of Vvardenfell and housing as well as future motifs/events (which I have already added some info regarding). So is it ok to add something once it appears in the game files (like Vvardenfell)? Or should we wait till it appears on say, the PTS before we start pages about it (like housing)? Contraptions (talk) 23:45, 15 July 2016 (UTC)

: Feel free to make a page about Vvardenfell, there's plenty of datamined info here and elsewhere.  already exists and we have a quest page for the Halloween event, so you can make additions there. As for motifs, I've been holding off adding info to  and  since some of it won't be coming out until October, but it's probably safe to add Update 11 motifs at least - the icons are already uploaded.

: As a general rule, I'd advise caution when adding datamined info to pre-existing articles, but creating pages for the data is fine and matches what we've been doing with pre-release info for years. —Legoless (talk) 02:43, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

:: Datamining as a source of info is generally fine, it just needs to be marked with the   template. The only other thing is that there could be a lot of datamined stuff that never turns up; old versions of the Main Quest, Thieves Guild and a zone questline on mainland Summerset can also be datamined, but they are unlikely to ever appear. If it doesn't appear, then it needs to be deleted at some point. --Enodoc (talk) 06:30, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

::: I would have preferred that some sort of Vvardenfell announcement actually took place before creating any pages. Still, if you clearly state that it contains unannounced, purely datamined bits of information (ie the latest edit made to the page :p), then it's okay. But what if the announcement/development is delayed.. and no official news released about it? I mean, then it's gonna end up like Clockwork City and Murkmire. Tib (talk) 22:35, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

:::: I think we need to set a timeout. Most datamined stuff has been announced within a reasonable time-frame of it first appearing in the data, so we should set a date after which we consider Vvardenfell as no longer in development, and the info about it voided. --Enodoc (talk) 23:12, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

::::: Even if something is no longer in production, having a single article talking about it is still probably worthwhile, similar to . I think we can use common sense in determining if something isn't coming; having an arbitrary cutoff point of so many years doesn't make too much sense to me. For example, we know the Main Quest and the Summerset content was cut before release, we know the Cybiades stuff won't be appearing because TG was released without it, and we know spellmaking has been scrapped because of the developer departure. Stuff like Murkmire and Clockwork City is confirmed to still be on the release schedule in some form or another.

::::: There's no doubt Vvardenfell will be coming at some point unless something goes terribly wrong for ZOS, since the datamining "leaks" from each new patch have been on a pretty regular schedule since the ESOTU release, i.e. only added to live patches a couple cycles before release. The exception to this is the Crown Store offerings which were mined months ago and never arrived. For example there's no sign of the skeletal mounts and it's been like a year, so if they were on any articles (like the "Coming Soon" section of the Crown Store page) they'd have to have been removed by now. This is why we should be cautious with propagating info on any sort of pre-release, unconfirmed content to regular articles. I therefore think we should take the Crown Store approach for things like Vvardenfell: creating self-contained articles is fine and keeps us ahead of the curve, but we shouldn't assume imminent release.

::::: Let's revisit this discussion in a year's time if Vvardenfell still isn't released, or maybe if ZOS slow down the quarterly content updates. Like I said, eventually we'll probably want articles on scrapped content like Summerset and spellmaking (or at least notes somewhere), so it will probably be a question of how best to handle unreleased info rather than when to delete in. There was limited discussion here on this possible reality. —Legoless (talk) 23:42, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

 I think that there shouldn't be a set time limit to remove datamined content per se. Only when we can agree that that content will never appear, such as when it's been officially scrapped (like PVP justice) or replaced (like Cybiades) should we shift it to a central "unfinished" page of some sort and delete the main page. Of course if that content does appear in some repurposed way in the future we can always shift it back out and create a page for it again. Contraptions (talk) 08:38, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

: I'd be happy to start on an Unreleased Content page, but how far would we go? It's not like single player games where you can get the entire quest and all its connections from the CS/CK; the best we can do for some things is infer from what we've got, and inference is tantamount to speculation. For example, here's a list of a bunch of unreleased content, all from datamining: an alternative Main Quest ending involving Balfiera and the Zero Stone; a questline on Summerset involving the Maormer; Justice System Phase 2; the Thieves Guild involving Cybiades and the Violet Lamp; Spellcrafting; over 100 unused quests, with names and initial journal entries only; AvA grapple hooks; and an earlier iteration of Imperial City. How much of that would we include? --Enodoc (talk) 22:47, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

::Due to the nature of Unreleased content we can never truly confirm anything, so some speculation is inevitable. I feel as long as what we don't go into baseless speculation (ie. everything we put on that page should be supported with some in game data be it text or icons or images etc.) and that we keep our statements reasonable it should be fine. Contraptions (talk) 20:51, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Weekly FA and FI

I believe that we should be to cycle onto a new FA or FI within a week, versus the current standard month or two weeks. The reasons for this are numerous:

It is extremely easy to forget about FA and FI due to the time gap between entries, twelve FAs a year make it extremely easy to just be forgotten. I do not think it is a matter of there only being twelve articles a year of featurable quality, but because there is such a large bottleneck on how many we can currently feature the FA and FI system fall into disuse.
It will allow us to show off more work, on a more regular basis, one of the biggest issues with the front page is that of the four items on it, we control the frequency of updates to the three of them, yet we decide to make updates a bit rare.
In the past, including this year even, FA and FI have fallen into inactivity. So with this change made, I would also like to add the note that it is accepted as being fine if we do NOT have a followup right away, we accept it may lapse from time to time. Ideally, it doesn't, but we openly accept it may. 
It may encourage people to work towards getting more featured work by providing more opportunities to get it featured. If someone wants to work an article towards it getting a gold star, then they have a fairly legitimate chance of seeing it happen in the course of a month, versus the current system where if we have any backlog for featured articles, you couldn't see your article up for literally months.
It gives social media more to do, as we could have more regular featured work.
It could give us more positive community building consensuses to make, as ultimately low stake towards the overall future, but designed to be frequent, decisions that any editor can take part in. 
It would ultimately just be more fun then basically having these on the wayside.

I feel these are sufficient reasons to implement this policy change. --AKB   13:40, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

: I disagree, the activity level isn't able to support that and I can't see this rapidfire approach being sustained for long. It was moved from two weeks to a month based on the number of nominations we receive, and based on my experience handling the procedure, a month is still currently where we're at activity-wise. Forcing through more nominations to keep up with a seven-day schedule would diminish the value of the star, I feel. There's plenty of cool wiki content to publish on social media, it doesn't have to be restricted to featured items. —Legoless (talk) 13:55, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

::I think what is really diminishing from the value of the star are the huge gaps between entries, many times of which are simply because no one bothered to nominate anything. I don't think , regardless of how good it is, deserved a spot on the front page for a third of a year. If I had to worry about nominations more than once a month at the least, I do believe the system would have more activity, and we wouldn't forgot it for as long stretches.
::Right now, I do not believe FA and FI is that special because it is something that is mostly done out of necessity. I have nominated more articles for FA for the sole reason that there was not something to follow up the current choice than any other reason, and no one else had bothered. I'm sure people thought some articles were great during this time, but it is so far out of peoples minds due to the intense time gaps, it simply doesn't matter, it isn't special, it's an award given due to our eleventh hour decision making.
::As it stands, the history of FA and FI speak for themselves. The current policy does not work for keeping it updated. I want to try something different, because it is about time we tried anything different after this being a problem for almost a decade (next month is one decade).
::Which, actually, gives me another reason to tack on. We are a much larger website than what we were a decade ago. Our policies towards FA and FI should reflect this by giving more articles a chance to be featured. Twelve a year may had made more sense then, but we are simply much larger and have much more to show off. --AKB   14:12, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

::: I mean I wouldn't be opposed to a trial run to see if engagement picks up, but two weeks still seems like a more sustainable rotation. —Legoless (talk) 14:51, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

:::: Hm, I'm on Legoless with this one, and I'd prefer monthly > biweekly rotation. I would likely protest against weekly one. If the activity picks up, it will do so regardless the rotation length, because it is in my opinion more tied to the amount of people working on the site than the structural problems. Encouraging nominations and people to participate in the votes is always a good idea, but I'm not sure how to push for that on a site like UESP. AKB, I absolutely understand that the site is getting bigger, and so, but if we take a look at the ESO namespace that has great potential of providing FAs and FIs, then we see that many articles and even images still need work :p This reminds me that we need to do something about the Statue of Sithis! Tib (talk) 16:00, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

:::::Got distracted from this due to vacation, sorry. I will agree on both just being biweekly (for now, ideally they would both be weekly in the future), but monthly is still just absurdly long. --AKB   20:25, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

::::::I'd say biweekly as well. We just don't usually get enough nominations to do it more frequently than that, but a month IS a long time to have an article up. ~     02:41, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

NPC Images

There has been some discussion on the Featured Images page of possibly changing the image requirements for ESO due to the unique difficulties of capturing images there. A couple of people suggested bringing up a CP discussion, but I don't see one here, so I figured I'd start one. Based on the FI comments, I can see a few possible changes that we might want to consider: 

Simply change the standard for ESO images to not require a full-body shot, provided the image identifies clearly who the person is.
Similar to the above, allow for images not to be full-body shots, with the proviso that the image must not only identify who the person is, but also include identifiable elements of their normal surroundings. Shop-keepers would have parts of their shop showing, quest-related NPCs would be shown with quest-related backgrounds, etc.
Allow for the idea of primary and secondary images, where the primary image must fit whatever restrictions we already have—or decide on here—but secondary shots can include beauty shots and the like that don't necessarily fit any strict criteria. Secondary images would still be FI-nominatable (Is that a word?), even if they don't fit primary image criteria.

These are just the ideas I've come up with, but by all means, propose others or shoot the idea down entirely if you wish. I just wanted to get the discussion started.  &ndash;       17:26, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

:Here are my thoughts I posted on the nomination in question. After considering this for a few days myself, I don't have any additional thoughts to add at present, so I'll just copy/paste my words exactly so that they are on the record here.

:''"The intent behind it is good and well-meaning, wanting the NPC's primary image to be indicative of them in their natural environment with a good look at their appearance, and I definitely feel like that should remain the primary standard, even for ESO. This image is lit up well and looks really damn good, don't get me wrong, but as Aranias' primary image, it's so close-up that it's not capturing her in her natural habitat particularly well. We have no real indication of her environment, nor do we have an accurate depiction of her whole appearance, which is what the point of the primary image for an NPC is to show. Because ESO is inherently different when it comes to framing up and capturing images of things in-game, there's always small hiccups to be expected, but that doesn't mean that the standard should be changed entirely. Where practical, I am absolutely behind the first-choice image being as full as possible to give the best appearance for an NPC that can be given, although at the same time as an MMO there should be enough flex to accommodate circumstances where it just isn't practical to get a full image, whatever the case-by-case circumstances may be. But the rule as it is is fine, I think, and the rule should always be the first thing attempted to follow when looking to frame up and take images of NPCs in the game. At least in my opinion."''

:Edit: Actually, on second thought, I do have an additional opinion: I am against the idea of primary and secondary images. Additional images to supplement an article is fine on its own when it helps the article as a whole (i.e. quest images, relevant location images, etc that supplement the written content).

:The point of the images is to supplement the articles, and I don't see beauty shots for the sake of being beauty shots as supplementary. And, secondary images with lax rules that could exist as beauty shots, yet be FI-eligible, would defeat the purpose of the FI standards, which exist to prevent random non-Standard images from being created simply as beauty shots designed to steal the limelight from legitimate purposeful images. -      &hearts;    18:54, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

::RobinHood, thanks for starting the discussion! Damon, I do understand your reasoning, but there are certain NPCs where you cannot take a good full body image, plus that the dialogue window image has undoubtedly better quality. It's most obvious when the NPCs are hidden behind a desk or similar. Another example could be that the room or place has very poor lighting so the full body shot has a worse quality than the dialogue window shot would have. Same with the angle, sometimes there is no good angle for a nice shot. Some people are also moving, but forcing a dialogue makes them static and easier to take an image. (I know you now wonder whether comfortability should be an argument here, in which case I will say - with thousands of NPCs needing an image, perhaps it should be :p) Regarding the background/habitat, well the dialogue window does provide a hint of the surroundings. The Aranias' image is actually showing some background! A full body shot is not a guarantee that you would have a recognizable habitat in the background. I think I'd probably support suggestion 1 or 2. Well, that's about all I have in mind right now. Tib (talk) 21:56, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

:::Regarding the standards in general, since that is what I said was flawed:
:::A full body shot of an NPC is a "wide shot". Wide shots are establishing shots, used for setting the scene. Medium shots by comparison are "subject shots", providing emphasis to the subject while still keeping the background in context. These are also the "everyday perception" of people. Medium shots would be more appropriate for NPC pages, as the subject of the page should be the focus of the image. With a 1:1 wide shot, more than 2/3 of the image does not cover the subject of the article. Sure it's good to present NPCs in context, but for the primary image of the NPC, the focus should be primarily on the NPC, not the surroundings. Because of that, I would say that an "everyday perception" medium shot, where the NPC covers about half of the image, is more appropriate. That gets more of the NPC in the picture, closer to the camera so they are more easily identified. For example, compare these two NPC pictures; the left is the picture of Aranias, the right is an NPC with what is intended to be similar lighting.
::: These are forced to the default thumbnail size of 200px. Aranias' face can be easily seen in the top third of the picture, and fills a ninth of the entire frame, while the other NPC's face is barely visible as it only takes up the top fifth, filling in about 1/25 of the whole picture. As I said above, context is great, but when it comes at the cost of making the NPC identifiable, identifiability should take precedence in what is the NPC's identifying image. Since medium shots are the everyday perception of people, that also would suggest they are the most appropriate for use as the image of a person. --Enodoc (talk) 16:35, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

 
  I believe the full-body shots became standard to avoid poor-quality crops or Oblivion-style facecam images. ESO's dialogue screen is usually an alright depiction of the NPC and also adds lighting. I don't have a problem with using them for NPC images, but the problem is that they're often off-centre. We've been using full-body and dialogue images interchangeably in the Online namespace for the last few years and I think modifying our image guidelines to match would be appropriate at this point. There's even been cases of NPCs having both perspectives on their page, which is admittedly a bit excessive.

I think ultimately we need to balance several factors when trying to determine the best primary image: (i) clear depiction of the subject; (ii) depiction of the whole subject; (iii) image quality/lighting/detail. As long as the image is of a certain standard, I don't think we need to fret too much about whether the NPC's footwear is included or not. That said, I still wouldn't consider that Aranias image FI material even under these new guidelines. —Legoless (talk) 16:50, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

:Thank you.  I've been saying for years that the combination of requiring 1:1 aspect ratio and requiring full body shots was a poor choice, since you invariably wind up with the subject taking up less than 1/3rd of the image and can barely see their face.  (Perhaps in earlier games this was an advantage - Morrowind faces were pretty hideous.)  But in more recent games, especially ESO, since a medium-range, waist-up shot is exactly what you see in-game whenever talking to most NPCs (and this is in fact the best way to get a good screenshot of a character, since we don't have the option of a free-moving camera that we did in the earlier single-player games for obvious reasons), it just doesn't make sense to continue enforcing this rule.  I wholeheartedly support relaxing the framing restrictions on NPC images. — TheRealLurlock (talk) 17:11, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

::Identifiable does not mean knowing what an NPCs face looks like so you'd learn their face and be able to recognise them if that's all you could see. An NPCs image is to identify them from a distance, which in almost all cases just needs what clothes they wear, and identify where to find them. On at least 75% of all NPC pages there will only ever be one image, as extra images are only added to put some colour into walls of text that most NPCs will never justify. Now the problem with ESO is that many NPCs will never stop in good image locations, nor can you freeze the game, so you can't get a clear picture of them looking at the camera, and there are even NPCs whose faces you will never see without talking to them, which only allows you to see their upper torso and face. In the first case I see no problem with taking a picture as best can be done, because as I've said, the main purpose of the image is not to show just their face. In the second case we apply discretion and allow exemptions. Following rules to the letter never helped anyone, and in this case I would expect anyone who has played the game would already know that it simply isn't possible to have every image conform to our strict standards. However I would oppose a change to the standards because they are not rules which must be strictly adhered to else the image would be deleted. Also I oppose the idea of allowing 'beauty shots' as secondary images, this would open the door to images being taken simply to gain FI; all images must have a proper purpose for being on a page.      18:33, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

:I think the idea of a primary (full body) and secondary image can be considered. The unique situation in ESO makes it hard to take full body pics of NPCs and creatures. On the FI subject, however, I do think now that they should be showing most of the image, or is a action shot. I checked out some of the old FIs, and there have been good ESO full-body images. There have been FIs where the NPC's bodies are partly obscured (such as  and  but those are close action shots taken with the console that would be impossible to take in ESO. Featured NPC images mostly rely on the characters pose or some kind of contrast that makes the character stand out(I use "mostly" here loosely, please don't take it too seriously). Many FIs of NPCs are some kind of action shot, but it's going to be hard to take a picture like that and keep the characters large, which means that cropping out parts of the NPC might be nessesary to "allow clear and easy visual identification of the NPC". In that case (action shots, hostile NPCs), I believe it is okay to put an image in FI even if it doesn't show the entire NPC. As for facial identification, I do not believe that the thumbnail has to clearly show a NPC's face to identify them.
:In short, I believe that the "should show as much of the NPC as possible" rule can give in to the technical difficulties of showing the characters "performing some kind of action". As long as the characters are identifiable, I think that insisting that the picture show the whole NPC is not necessary. I don't believe we need to change the guidelines for FI though.
:Regarding the image that sparked this discussion ( I do believe (now) that it's not FI material, but just because the picture isn't that interesting. (This honestly doesn't have much to do with this discussion, but I guess I want to state my view on this now that the nomination is closed.) Phacteria (talk) 03:59, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

UESP Constantly Not Quite Refreshing

While browsing UESP recently after removing all my extensions and updating my web browser to do some unrelated troubleshooting I noticed all of a sudden editing pages to became a total nightmare.  Miraculously it only did it for a few seconds on this edit page while I was entering the in Subject/Headline. 
Oh, it's back nevermind.  The page isn't refreshing but the little refresh button is sporadically flickering between the circular refresh image and the PLEASE STAHP X image.  I can supply a gif if you really want me to. 
This also results in unpredictable mouse behavior (it stops responding during the flickers on this web page), laggy keyboard responses (I type for three or four words before anything shows up and you can imagine how that works for backspace to correct typos), and generally makes me uneasy about browsing this website without my extensions that block scripts and ads. 
Since the only addons for my browser that I had were a script blocker and an ad blocker and the only change on the page I can see between when the issues occur and when they don't occur is the ads at the bottom... there is either something wrong with the stupid video ads (who watches those anyway) that are loading at the bottom of the page or with the way they are built into the web site.  Reinstalling my blocker add-ons now and forget I ever wanted to contribute to your operating costs...
Ah, I think I found it.  The ads have just now caused my Shockwave Flash to crash (I don't usually spend more than a couple minutes on the site).  Just updated Shockwave and restarted my browser and it is still unsurprisingly doing it.  This is especially disturbing as trying to use any in-game overlay's browser that supports Flash but is not equipped with a ad blocker can cause CTD if it stops responding during gameplay.  Suddenly so many CTD I couldn't find a reason for are solved... Vainamoinen - Talk -    18:34, 24 July 2016 (UTC) 
P.S. It also prevents me from actually refreshing a page 90% of the time because of this. Vainamoinen - Talk -    19:08, 24 July 2016 (UTC) 
Going through all the scripts and plugins I don't come across any issues until I turn on comedysec-a.akamaihd.net script.  And that's when the spamming refresh begins and my editing ability tanks Vainamoinen - Talk -    19:17, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

ESO: AvA Towns

With Update 11, three towns in Cyrodiil (Bruma, Vlastarus and Cropsford) are becoming AvA objectives with capture points. As such, they will cease to be Explorable Locations using the Towns icon style, and will require a new place type. Does anyone have any suggestions on what the name of that type could be? The new in-game icon, which we used previously to name the place types, is still called Town. Here are some suggestions, in no particular order: Occupied Towns; Controlled Towns; Captured Towns; AvA Towns; Alliance War Towns; Towns (AvA); Towns (Alliance War). --Enodoc (talk) 16:43, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Oh, and before you ask, I have all necessary before and after screenshots of the flag locations and respawn points        :)       --Enodoc (talk) 21:30, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

: AvA Towns or Alliance War Towns makes the most sense to me. —Legoless (talk) 22:02, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

:: OK cool. I wasn't sure if we wanted something that "made sense" with the game world, or something that is purely descriptive. "Occupied Town" and "Controlled Town" are based on the concept of military occupation, "Captured Town" stems from the official name of the feature (Cyrodiil Town Capture), while the rest indicate towns with a functional connection to the gameplay of the Alliance War. If we were to name the page entirely by technical accuracy, I would favour Towns (Alliance War); conversely, if we were to consider the lore of the world, Occupied Towns would be most accurate. And yet AvA Towns works quite well for quick reference (hence the title of this section) and categorization purposes (since it's quite short).
:: Of course, we don't have to use the same name in the infobox and on the page; AvA Town or Occupied Town in the summary box could link to the Towns (Alliance War) list page, for example. Just some food for thought! --Enodoc (talk) 22:05, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

::: Captured or Capturable would work just as well, per the official term for the feature. I'd be most inclined towards Alliance War Towns personally, since it seems the most straightforward name for something we're essentially making up. I'd shy away from a disambiguated Town type though; otherwise we'd end up with a trail that says "Cyrodiil / Towns / Towns". —Legoless (talk) 15:28, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

:::: Will we be keeping the style type in the trail? I suggested the dabbed titles because I assumed we wouldn't be. The other AvA locations (Keeps, Districts, Scroll Temples etc) don't have one, and I would have thought the same would apply here. --Enodoc (talk) 15:45, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

::::: I mean if they're using the Town icon they should probably continue to be listed on , right? Although this goes against how we treat the Imperial Districts, now that I think about it. It's hard to call either way; they're quite obviously towns, but they don't function like the PvE hubs or explorables anymore. —Legoless (talk) 16:15, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

:::::: They're not using the existing Town icon any more, they're using a new icon, but that icon is also labelled Town in the map key. --Enodoc (talk) 17:26, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

::::::: Ah, that complicates things then. Is it this? That icon is labelled "avatown" in the game data. —Legoless (talk) 17:45, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

:::::::: Yeah that's the one. AvA Towns may well be the way to go. --Enodoc (talk) 12:10, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Legends NDA Lifted

It's been confirmed by jurassica on the closed beta forums that the NDA for Legends has now been lifted. This means that as of today, all content from version 1.57.2.2284 and later can be made public. Please note that it's been requested that we do not publish information from the period in which the NDA was in place. Unless a change can be corroborated by officially-released material (such as this image, which shows that "Nahkriin, Dragon Priest" was originally called "Dragon Priest"), please do not add anything to the wiki from previous patches. This includes NDA screenshots, especially ones which show unfinished art assets. I'd also like to point out that info from Legends should not yet be added to lorespace until the official release; if anyone wants to help work on the new story info, please feel free to do so in userspace instead. —Legoless (talk) 16:46, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Error 500

I'm getting an error 500 when trying to view  using the   domain (  works fine). It's happened before but usually self-rectifies. —Legoless (talk) 19:26, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

:Probably related to a few updates I've been doing on the site today. If you happened to have hit that page at the "wrong" time you may have cached the error page. For some reason Squid is not smart enough to ignore the error page and re-request a good page on subsequent loads. I've changed Squid to just not cache all Special:... pages on the site which should fix all such future issues as well as this one (it fixed it for me anyways). -- Daveh   19:39, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

:: Seems to be fixed! —Legoless (talk) 20:38, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

:::I've not experienced it in a little while myself, but earlier I wasn't trying to access my watchlist, I was getting the error just trying to access the UESP main page from my bookmarks bar, and I experienced it again on some other random page I was trying to view that I can't think of off-hand. Since it's not happened recently to me, I'm assuming you've fixed it everywhere, but it seems like a problem for more than just the Special paged. -      &hearts;    20:49, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Search Updated

Just for anyone who's looking for it, the search option to "List Redirects" has been removed from the search. In updating the search to add Legends, I discovered that that particular search feature was removed from MediaWiki altogether as of version 1.23. Since checking/unchecking it no longer did anything, I removed it.  &ndash;       20:08, 28 July 2016 (UTC)

Reorganization of Template:Provinces and Template:Lore Oblivion Realms

Originally, I intended to tweak the layout of Template:Provinces to identify which of the miscellaneous islands were located in the Eltheric and Padomaic Oceans. Gradually, I realized that the final grouping of the template didn't really fit subject-wise. Most locations are found on Nirn, and then there's the abrupt inclusion of cosmic dimensions. My attempt to rectify this grew into a substantial revamp of another template plus title changes for both, so I thought it best to run the whole project by everyone before I pulled the trigger. I propose the following:

1. Template:Provinces will be renamed "Template:Nirn", and be restructured into this:

 

2. Template:Lore Oblivion Realms will be renamed "Template:Aurbis", and be restructured into this:

 

While I'm satisfied with the layout of the first template, the second may need some work. Are there planes/realms/dimensions/whatnot I missed and need adding? Should all Oblivion realms be under one group or stay as is? Should the existing Oblivion realms template be left alone and a third template (or more) created to cover the remaining cosmic locations? Is there a better way to note which realm is tied to which Daedric Prince? Are we particularly attached to the pink color? Croaker (talk) 08:14, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

:Personally I think what you've done is good, and that it doesn't need further changes. I personally think that the pink color's fine, but you can change it if you think it'll be better. But maybe you could try using   to note the connection between Daedra and Plane? -   ﴾TALK﴿ 09:26, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

::Looks pretty good to me. Regarding what you may have missed, that depends on whether you want to include any of the attendant Aedric plane(t)s within Mundus, or any of the other Mundial planes like the Revenant or the Den of Lorkhaj.  lists all(?) of the realms that are known (and perhaps would be a better destination link for   over ). Displaying the Daedric Princes like they are already is fine with me (I'm trying to encourage moving away from  , since mobile devices don't support it). I have no problems with the pink colour, but I do wonder where it came from originally (presumably to indicate Lorespace, or Places, or something). --Enodoc (talk) 10:08, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

:::Added more Mundus planes (the ones with their own articles, at least, Den of Lorkhaj and Five Finger Dance lack lore articles at present), and changed the header link. Thanks for pointing out Planes of Existence. Croaker (talk) 22:49, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

::::Now that I've got a spare moment and there aren't any other suggestions, I'll go ahead and carry out these changes. Croaker (talk) 05:35, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Images for Skyrim: Legendary Edition

Skyrim: Legendary Edition is coming out at the end of October, bringing with it some   This leads us to a unique situation for the wiki: what should our policy be in terms of images from the two? At one extreme, we could say that we have to replace all existing images with new ones; at the other extreme, we could say that no images should be replaced, except from the original game. Neither of those seem particularly useful as policies, so I'd like to hear some thoughts on how we're going to approach this. Do we do it completely haphazardly, allowing people to replace original versions with SLE versions whenever they want? Should we try and limit it to outdoor images, which are probably the most affected? Do we want to have an SLE image replacement project?

I have no concrete thoughts on our approach myself, other than not going to any extremes, but talking with one of the other admins, we both felt that we should at least open the topic for discussion, so we know what we're doing the day SLE comes out.  &ndash;       03:11, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

:I think that replacing the outdoor images should be a high priority, and that indoors images should be a do-as-we-go job. -   ﴾TALK﴿ 03:22, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

::If someone took it upon themselves to upgrade the images to the new version or add images we just don't have, I wouldn't say no or turn them down, but I don't see the replacement of images for the sake of replacing them as something that should be given any sort of priority or urgency as a task. The existing images are already representative of what the game is and I believe that they are sufficient for the job. -      &hearts;    04:00, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

:::   We don't insist that Skyrim screenshots should use the highest graphics settings or utilise the High Resolution Texture Pack, so I don't think we should impose any kind of policy requiring screenshots to use the new Special Edition filters. As long as an image's quality is serviceable, there's no strict need to replace it. Obviously in a lot of cases a screenshot from the Special Edition will be of an objectively higher quality than whatever it's replacing so there's unlikely to be any harm in doing so, but I don't think we need to prioritise it or encourage the replacement of well-angled or well-positioned existing shots just for the sake of some nicer lighting or whatever. —Legoless (talk) 04:04, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Elder Scrolls Legends

Now that ESL is "out", I do believe its time we rip the game open and take her for everything she has. There are a lot of assets from the game that we could use on the wiki, like lane symbols, descriptions, the cards themselves. Each card also seems to have at least one unique line attached to it, so it may be worth it to us to host the dialogue, since there is so little of it. If this is impossible, it would still help us write it out if we could extract the dialogue. This is mostly directed towards Daveh and Robin (you two have the best track history for this on the site), but if anyone else feels like they can take a crack at this, it would greatly benefit our efforts for setting up the pages.

Another thing that should be discussed is deck building, we've had character designers, spell and alchemy calculators before, and this is up that alley. While we could allow for manual write-ups of people's favorite deck builds (which there is no issue using user space for that, obviously), I think this is one of the more expected features for a site in our position. 

ESL is not the largest game in scope, I feel intentionally on their part, so it should be fairly easy for us to knock related projects out of the park, I feel. I think we can get the ESL section extremely well polished in just a short while, with just a little effort. Considering the ever increasing work load we have for ESO, and the giant that was Skyrim, I think we all deserve what is hopefully a simpler project in scope. --AKB   14:14, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

: A few days ago, I was tearing apart the game files. Most of them are in non-file formats; no extensions. Just files. Most of the ones that aren't are in .asset file format. After looking through, the most obvious extractable files were .ogvs of the intro videos. That is to say, not many files are extractable straight off the bat. There'll probably need to be something like the Dataminer. -   ﴾TALK﴿ 14:56, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

::I can take a look at things and see how far I get soon. I'm almost finished with the ESO item update from Shadows of the Hist DLC and once that is done I'll have some time available to work on it. Meanwhile if anyone finds out anything regarding the file formats they can post it here (or the relevant article in Legends:). -- Daveh   15:17, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

:::It seems I'm having problems with the Bethesda Launcher like some people...it refuses to let me log in using my user/password (tried reseting, no effect). I have an old copy of the files from ESL beta in April I'll use until then. Hopefully this will let me be able to at least figure out the file formats. -- Daveh   15:36, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

::::I had that issue. It fixed when it updated for me, but the prompt to update came up only after a little while. --AKB   15:43, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

:::::A few things I've found out so far:
:::::* The .asset files are Unity files and can be opened/extracted with UnityStudio. I tried a few other utilities but this seemed to be by the best/easiest one.
:::::* That utility does extract some files but there seems to be a lot missing. There is 800MB of asset file data but only 60MB is exported. 
:::::* Some texture files are exported as DDS but once you convert them to PNG they are almost all black or other solid colors. Unsure where all the artwork actually is.
:::::* There are a bunch of .FSB audio files. I tried a bunch of "FSB" conversion programs but none of them recognized the file format. 
::::: -- Daveh   16:42, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

::::::Unity Assets Explorer seemed to have better luck at finding things, but at least on the one file I tried, it crashed partway through extracting. I don't see card data anywhere, though, so I suspect that's either somewhere unexpected or it's not stored locally at all. If anyone comes across anything like it, let me know.  &ndash;       19:02, 5 August 2016 (UTC)

 I'm working on manually uploading the cards through image editting. If anyone wants to work on getting card pages setup while I do this, I wouldn't be upset. --AKB   15:55, 7 August 2016 (UTC)

:RH: I had tried that extractor previously but it does crash on multiple files. However, if I manually select files to extract I can get most files out of resources.asset. Unfortunately, all the .TEX converted to .DDS just seem to be blue squares so there's some issue in image conversion there. I'm still finishing up the ESO item dump but should be able to spend a little more time on this later in the week. -- Daveh   14:05, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

More template nesting shenanigans

I'm trying to figure out a way to get the   (and by extension ESO ArmorDye Icon) templates to work inside another template, such as an infobox.  See Master Monster Slayer as an example of what's not working.  I think it has something to do with nesting tables inside template parameters, which is always a huge headache.  If somebody else can figure that out, please fix it, I'm stumped. — TheRealLurlock (talk) 14:15, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

:Done.  &ndash;       15:55, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

::Nice, thanks.  Also allowed me to put the ESO ArmorDye Link template into the Online Achievement Summary template directly, so we only need to provide the name of the dye on those pages, not the whole link.  Was trying to do that before, but those templates did not like being used inside other templates. — TheRealLurlock (talk) 17:29, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

Dialogue formatting

Not sure if this is the best place for this, but I figure it is where it will get the most eyes. Basically, as far as I can tell we don't have any codified standards for how exactly dialogue should be laid out, particularly for ESO. The lack of clear documentation has been an issue with MWOP in the past, and I would like to head it off somewhat early with ESO so that we can start being consistent across the wiki. First, it seems uncontested that for a single line of unprompted dialogue, which the player can't respond to, it's just presented in-line, offset with a colon and quoted in italics, like so. But for larger blocks of dialogue, with player input and NPC responses, it seems there are three main styles: 
# Player choice in bold, NPC response immediately after, on the same line, in quoted italics. (Example)
# Player choice in bold, NPC response on the next line, in quoted italics. (Example)
# Player choice in bold, NPC response on the next line, in unquoted italics. (Example)
These are in varying proportions of use, with I think #2 being the most common by a small margin, and #3 the least. Basically, I think we need to answer mainly the question of whether or not to put the NPC response on a separate line. Then I would like to get an actual policy written up and posted on the Style Guide or somewhere so we can point to it in the future if any disputes come up. -- Hargrimm  21:35, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

: Number 2 seems like the best choice. The colons in example 1 are a little messy and the lack of quotation marks in example 3 make it seem like quoted text rather than dialogue. I think Chef Donolon is an ideal example of this layout in action. I certainly don't think we should go with the fourth, unmentioned example, which would be prose similar to Skyrim. ESO has a lot of important player dialogue and NPCs speak in paragraphs, so the sectional approach seems best. —Legoless (talk) 21:42, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

::None of those options should be adopted. Dialogue should be in prose, as it has been done in all fully developed articles preceding ESO and its lack of care and attention.      21:43, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

:::The #2 seems to be most common, although for me it does not matter what format it is, as long as one format is officially accepted. Tib (talk) 21:50, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

::::I would agree with Legoless that the prose style of Skyrim is not the best approach here. I would much rather have the actual text of the player's choices, in the interest of more data being better than less. Plus, converting everything to prose takes more time, leads to subjective 'quality' arguments about how the prose is rendered, and creates huge paragraphs that are very difficult to scan through. -- Hargrimm  21:53, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

:::::If we want to quote precedents either way, we have a Featured Article that precedes ESO that demonstrates effective use of dialogue in formatting that isn't just block paragraphs of prose. One set standard to follow is all fine and good, and I love set standards, but if dialogue can be shown in a different format that helps break up the article visually and look more attractive and readable than prose (and surely I'm not the only one who skims block text of dialogue or outright ignores it if I don't think it will provide helpful information to my query), then why not break off from the written standard here and there? I feel like something more interesting than basic indents could be done, but I'm also preferable to Option 2.

:::::If not showing something in prose affects the quality of delivering the information, then we should go for prose, because we should prioritise content over style, but we're talking about improving readability, and I don't think that indents or visual tricks to break walls of text are going to hurt anything at all or affect the accuracy of the information or how it's conveyed. -      &hearts;    22:13, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

::::::Hm, I like the Neloth-style... it could work well on NPCs that are involved in several quests and have more background. Besides that, two things come to my mind. Firstly, many ESO NPC's are, for a lack of better word, rather boring. Their activities are very limited, they do not have any schedules. Sometimes I even feel that the dialogue really is the only thing to write on the page. Well, for example Cleric Arvina. Apart from the quest-related dialogue we actually do not learn anything about him as a person. He is just standing in the Mages Guild! Secondly, unfortunately I'm not good writing in the Neloth article-style. (I can do it, but it takes so much time) It's a shame, but what can I do? Tib (talk) 22:59, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

  Just to comment as someone who admittedly doesn't know much about ESO, I was always under the impression that the only reason prose really wasn't used in the Morrowind namespace was because of the topic focused nature of Morrowind and how topics are handled in the in-game journal. So unless ESO has a similar situation to Morrowind in regards to dialogue, I don't see why any of the suggested forms of dialogue would seem superior to prose. The same argument about using the actual text of the player's choice could be applied to Oblivion and Skyrim but the standard in those namespaces has been to use prose for years. In situations where there are a lot of options, articles often will list player text and NPC responses like the ESO articles to break up the text and prevent overly wordy and technical paragraphs (like the example Damon provided), but I think prose should be used whenever the dialogue is linear and does not branch off. Commenting purely as a reader, I find the narratives some of our brilliant editors have written for Oblivion and Skyrim NPC pages to be more interesting than any of the ESO articles I have seen thus far, and it's not entirely due to the subject matter or to the lack of effort of editors working in this namespace who are all just as brilliant and as hard-working as anyone else on the site. I just think the narrative style will always be the most interesting way of documenting dialogue and the multitude of Oblivion and Skyrim NPC articles that have been featured tends to back that point up as well. Forfeit (talk) 22:18, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

: Dialogue in ESO is half topic-based, and even linear segments often contain branching. Oblivion went with prose because that game contained almost no player dialogue ("Tell Jauffre the Emperor's last words" springs to mind), and we stuck with it for Skyrim based on these OBNPCRP guidelines. ESO is a separate namespace and a very different game. In-line prose for anything other than short one-liners would be a nightmare to read, and like Hargrimm said would be an objective loss of data since player dialogue is actually important in ESO. —Legoless (talk) 22:27, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

 I think number 2 is nice and I agree that the "prose" style used for Skyrim pages may not be that suitable for Online pages since to me that style feels more like a description of the conversation than a record of the conversation. While I do appreciate the "human touch" that makes some of the featured articles in the other namespaces  a joy to read, the sheer volume of NPCs and conversations in ESO means that that approach may not be feasible. I feel adopting a simple basic standard template would be best. When standard templates are in place it's easy for editors to simply dump raw data in to create a readable, albeit boring looking article (as compared to it being blank).

As for why I like number 2, the use of levels of indenting also helps show the structure of the dialogue tree (like how branches are shown by increasing indents). Number 2 is also used in the Neloth article to good effect. I particularly like how tables are used to present alternate dialogue which only unlocks under certain circumstances (this is also present in ESO). And although this may be complicating things, I would also like to point out that even the "single line of unprompted dialogue" format is not consistent. 's is in the paragraph itself, 's is in its own paragraph without indenting, 's has its own paragraph with indenting. And a final question: how do we record the scripted dialogues between NPCs? (eg. the one heard in Daggerfall after the quest is completed "Some stranger saved King Casimir's life!" "I'd like to buy that hero an ale.") If we could agree on some standards that would be great. Contraptions (talk) 22:43, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

:I find #1 the most readable, personally, but that only works when there's a single topic matched with a single response. Contraptions' point about the indenting showing the tree structure is something I would see as important, personally, so failing a 1:1 ratio, I'd go with #2, as others have said. Of course, since I'm not terribly active in Online space, you can take my opinion for exactly what it's worth. :Þ  &ndash;       23:09, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

::  Yes, certainly one of the reasons I wanted to go with a non-prose style is that it makes it a much simpler task to add dialogue by transcription, rather than having to dust off one's creative writing talents to wrape a prose narrative around the conversation. It must be admitted that our ESO coverage is not really where it could be with regards to NPCs in particular, so I'm very strongly in favor of doing what we can to reduce barriers to contribution and make it a clear, simple process. As for the "single line" examples you show, the other two are formatted that way because there are multiple possible lines those NPCs might spout when you talk to them. So it only makes sense to list them out on unique lines, since they're not actually connected or part of a conversation or anything like that. The inter-NPC dialogue is, I think, fine as we did it for Skyrim, which was just a simple script-style line by line list of what's said, as done here or here. -- Hargrimm  23:16, 8 August 2016 (UTC)
:::I personally like #2 as well. Showing the branching paths seems like a good solution. My only concern is whether this might run into problems on particularly long branches, when the number of indents may run out. I don't play ESO, so I don't know if that's a possibility, but it's something to think about. Maybe a workaround involving tables for unique dialogue branches?      01:09, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

::::I would say the prose style as used for Oblivion doesn't really work here. ESO's dialogue is much more conversational, and it's useful to see the alternation between player lines and NPC lines. Prose is good to lead into the dialogue though, and when there is no player response. Beyond that, I would also prefer Option 2, as I think it's the most common, and the one I've usually used when adding dialogue to quests. Regarding branching and indents, I would say that it is a nice idea to indent branches, but what happens when you have exhausted the branched section and are back to a linear conversation? There's no real need to indent each stage of linear dialogue. I agree with Hargrimm that inter-NPC dialogue presented line-by-line is fine, but it should be indented like Plague of Phaer rather than &lt;br&gt;oken like General Tullius. A good example of inter-NPC dialogue using this format and player conversation using Option 2 is Elemental Army (but I wrote it, so I'm biased). Similarly, a good example of why setting a single standard may be a bad idea can be seen at Soul Shriven in Coldharbour, which uses prose, Option 1 and Option 2 depending on the context of the dialogue, and looks no worse off for it. Prose is used when there is no player response and for a couple of linear conversations; Option 1 is used for dialogue choices and brances; and Option 2 is used for linear conversations when including the player dialogue.
::::That then could be seen as a case to use any and all of them (except 3, which is just a badly-formatted 2) depending on the context:
::::* Use prose for unprompted NPC dialogue and conversations when exact player dialogue is not important;
::::* Use Option 1 when there are numerous and branching dialogue choices, probably mostly in cases which do not advance the story;
::::* Use Option 2 for player-NPC conversations where the player dialogue should be documented too;
::::* Use indented line-by-line scripting for NPC conversations (essentially a version of Option 1).
::::Incidentally, this contextual setup also seems to be closest the the aforementioned Neloth-style. --Enodoc (talk) 08:36, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

 What do you think about the below examples? Seems we agree regarding many of these, but maybe some cases need clarifying or are missing.


Additionally, a few thoughts...
Unnecessary formatting? Many ESO NPC dialogue lines are presented in two small paragraphs-but there is often only one sentence in each. See Linear dialogue for example. Which way would you prefer?
The choices/conditions - any thoughts regarding these? We might have to discuss that a little, as I see tables being used in such cases.
Branched dialogue. There are a few examples of branched dialogue which I find a bit annoying to present. I don't have a good example written down here yet, but Mirabelle Motierre has some of that. Basically she changes a part of her answer depending what you choose, but another part remains same :P
Branched dialogue. Branched dialogue means you always backtrack to a couple linear questions, yes? But sometimes the wording of these questions changes - extremely slightly though. Example - Questions A, B and C each have a wording called D, E and F. But if you started with question B first, and trackback to A and C, then questions A and C suddenly have wordings G and H. And sometimes they even have three versions not two!! Things like this should be illegal! Tib (talk) 18:50, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

  The dialogue is very easy to miss on most pages due to italics being used and is not always clear. I've recently went through a few Oblivion pages and I did not notice the dialogue immediately. "" does indicate the dialogue but can be easily overlooked if one is just looking for the dialogue. I agree with the Neloth style and perhaps,it could be used for major NPCs? E.g. Jaffre in Oblivion gets Neloth Style due to him being involved throughout the entire main quest. I am aware that bold usually helps and i think, most articles do use it. Neloth Style is more organised and looks better. All the dialogue is in one easy to read template. Player Dialogue is always useful and I feel that if major NPCs had it, it would look better. --Thelastdovah (talk) 03:37, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

ESO Books in Lorespace

Following on from the related discussions ESO: Notes and Books and Books Categories, how should we be determining which books are included in Lorespace? According to the Library guidelines:
:The Lore Library is not meant for each and every scrap of paper in every game [...]; The Lore Library is for works of literature which substantially contribute to the goal of the Lore namespace: to provide an encyclopedia of accurate and verifiable information in The Elder Scrolls universe, separate from game-related details.
And yet, we have such insignificant trivialities as Aberrant Welkynd Stones, which certainly wouldn't be in lorespace under the standard guidelines of both historical relevance and in-game appearance (it's not a hard-cover book). Beyond that, there's discrepancies between the listings of Books by Subject, Books by Author, and the alphabetical lists, where some texts appear on one and not the others (I'm not sure if that's exclusive to ESO books or if it goes beyond those).

The simplest way I would propose to determine what should be in Lorespace and what shouldn't would be to base it on Collection, but the primary guidelines of relevance and appearance should probably take precedence.

Any comments or suggestions? --Enodoc (talk) 14:51, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

: We've usually been very lax when it comes to including books in lorespace. If it has any relevance to lore at all, it should have a Lore page. If the occasional irrelevant scrap of paper sneaks in, so be it. —Legoless (talk) 16:22, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

::The way I see it, if a book or even a scrap of paper contains lore that would improve a lorespace article, no matter now insignificant, it belongs in the lorespace. In terms of "Aberrant Welkynd Stones", I created that and my reasoning was most likely that the scrap gives us solid information about the properties of Welkynd Stones. They resist magic, cutting tools, and blunt force. That information is absolutely relevant to an Welkynd Stones lore article.

::As for the Books by Subject and Books by Author discrepancies - I had been updating these two pages regularly with ESO books a while back, to try and get everything documented and in order, but I've been busy lately. Both pages need updated so there are no discrepancies, but its a tedious and lengthy job. --Jimeee (talk) 17:03, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

:::Aberrant Welkynd Stones is detailing abnormal (definition of aberrant) properties of a specific set of Welkynd Stones found only inside Root Sunder. The only useful thing about Welkynd Stones that we can derive from that is that those properties aren't normal. That may be enough for a mention on the Welkynd Stones article, but under Game Specificity and Preclusion it would be more appropriate to reference out to the Online namespace, which would also preclude "if it has any relevance to lore at all".
:::I don't like lax guidelines. Laxity leads to inconsistency and inconsistency causes unnecessary discrepancy which could lead to conflict. --Enodoc (talk) 17:35, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

:::: We could always change it, but the laxity goes back years and would arguably involve deleting lore pages which don't fit certain guidelines. A lot of extra work for no real gain. —Legoless (talk) 17:45, 9 August 2016 (UTC)
:::: Edit: This discussion might also be relevant. —Legoless (talk) 17:55, 9 August 2016 (UTC)

ESO Projects

So I put this on a different page without thinking to come to the Community Portal. For anyone who sees this, how do people feel about this sort of thing starting? It's been out for two years, this might help a lot.   ( )  00:14, 19 June 2016 (UTC)
:Very good idea.. I recently had a thought about starting a project but was unsure if and how to do it. I'd definitely try to contribute. Tib (talk) 00:27, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

:: There are various large-scale tasks that need to be completed that might be suited to a project. Most of our quest walkthroughs are either low-quality or entirely absent. NPCs and creatures need various fields to be updated, such as reaction and pickpocket info. Plenty of pages need images. Things like Crown Store listings and collection pages need to be constantly maintained, and only a couple editors currently do so. Most city pages are lacking info on non-service buildings such as homes. A project would be a good way of organising those tasks and many others, if anyone wants to put one together. —Legoless (talk) 01:06, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

:::I'd say if we end up doing this, there would need to be multiple projects like we have for other games (e.g. NPCs, quests, locations, etc). One I can definitely get into would be sort of an "enemies" project, gathering data on various "trash mobs" and bosses, along with where they're found, their level and health (which would both have multiple values because of the various places they're found). With quests, we have information on their reward when done in Cadwell's Silver and Gold, but we don't do this for enemies (for example, there's three versions of the Auridon World Boss Anarume - one at level 15, one at Champion Rank 40, and one at Champion Rank 160, I see no reason why all levels and health values shouldn't be noted).   ( )  22:14, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

:::: It was decided not to note the Silver and Gold values for enemies and such (and I actually went through and removed the exceptions earlier today). Silver and Gold will be removed in autumn anyway, so there's no point. —Legoless (talk) 22:23, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

::::: I could keep working on the things I've done so far, maybe most importantly filling in quest pages - all information excluding detailed walkthroughs, possibly even try to write some walkthroughs. Hm, images. Book collections. Locations and NPC-s. I'd really appreciate input about what you think should be prioritized! And yes, breaking down the project into as many smaller tasks as possible is really needed, otherwise the amount of work feels overwhelming. Additionally, I think I will perhaps focus on the DLC content, this is where I have many stored screenshots and it's where I spend most of the time right now. Tib (talk) 09:45, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

  I would be willing to assist however I can if there is a project to be done, right now I am focusing more on miscellaneous documentation such as rewriting older/basic pages. The lack of NPC info is rather glaring and given that there have been so many system revamps in the past/coming up with OT I can understand why we have not touched on it much. There was also some form of discussion regarding how to present NPC info but unfortunately some cases could not be resolved properly and thus not much change has occurred. I think the skills pages have been getting some love recently which is good. Wish there was a template that auto updates items, sets and skills etc. whenever major changes happen. That would save us a lot of work. Contraptions (talk) 06:41, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

:Contraptions: Automatic updating is generally something for bots to do. The good news is: we have one, and I'm its creator. The bad news is: I'm slightly backlogged at the moment. Nevertheless, you should feel free to add any requests to the Bot Requests page. Even if I don't get to them immediately, I'll get to them at some point, and then it's a simple matter to re-run the bot job after each patch.

:When making requests, each should be under its own header and should outline exactly what needs to be done. A couple of caveats there, though: first, I don't play ESO; second, I'm chronically ill which affects my thinking to varying degrees at different times. In short, when requesting a job, "Explain like I'm five!" If you have a look at the ESO mined data request, Sarthes Arai's second message in that section is perfect. It tells me where to get the data, where it goes, and any changes that need to be made in each case.  &ndash;       07:18, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

::I'm very interested in getting involved in a project for the quests or anywhere else needed. Biffa (talk) 17:28, 21 June 2016 (UTC)

  That's great to see more people interested in participating - every pair of hands will be very much needed.   EDIT - Ok, the way projects are listed on the big project page makes it unnecessary for an umbrella project, I didn't see it at first, sorry. Secondly, does the project need to be outlined before creating the project page? And who should do that? Since Schiffy posted the initial suggestion, would you be interested in starting that? Tib (talk) 13:30, 24 June 2016 (UTC)

:I was certainly thinking of it, but I didn't want to jump and do anything, having no administrative authority on this site whatsoever, without some community discussion and the okay of someone who does.   ( )  12:32, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

::If you want, I can take a crack at it the next free chance I have. I created the morrowind MWOP, which was one project, but had separate sections and completely separate templates for NPC, quest, and location pages. A similar approach may work here, though I'm slightly hesitant to do it that way since all it would do is add a checklist to the page that someone would still have to mark off one by one. A better approach might be to organize it around the locations, and add sections for NPCs and quests at that location, with a catch-all template on zone pages for those quests and NPCs that don't fit neatly into a single location (the traveling merchants in zones come to mind). I'm not entirely sure how much information people want in this project. Most projects have been to bring mostly or partially done pages up to a single level of quality and completeness, whereas this project is dealing mainly with empty or mostly incomplete pages. A single page with a list of all quests, locations and factions might work, where people simply put their name next to the pages they intend to complete. 

::These are just a few ideas. I have some more, but I have to run to work, so I'll let people chat about these to see if I can get a better idea about what is really needed. We might also want to use this space as a way to brainstorm what requirements or information we actually want on pages in order to consider them complete. Jeancey (talk) 14:53, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

  I'm working on NPC dialogues - although I'm not always sure I'm doing it the best possible way (especially presenting multiple-choice dialogue), and would certainly appreciate a project guideline from someone who has some experience in it. --Cailin (talk) 21:48, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Edit Break 1
I'd like to keep this discussion going as I really want to push for starting an ESO project. Tib (talk) 14:58, 16 August 2016 (UTC)
:According to my opinion there are four types of tasks that could be relevant here:
:*Missing information, basically just filling in and checking the multum of pages.
:*More advanced & time-consuming edits like walkthroughs, or guides.
:*Maintenance, e.g. patches, crown store - making sure it's all up to date.
:*Reorganizing where needed or wanted. E.g. Dark Brotherhood Contracts, which gathered the quests' information on one page rather than creating single pages. A project can be a good place for discussing and deciding things like this, yes?

:Given the limited number of editors, I'm not sure what scope and goals would be realistic here. Thoughts? :) Tib (talk) 15:30, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

::I personally think the first two are the most important. I do a little bit of work in those, and they're severely lacking, though I'd probably try to help any ESO project. I'm not sure about other things, but I think that the quests goal should be something like "All main quests must be fully documented", "All Alliance quests should be fully documented", "All guild quests must be fully documented" and "Most misc quests should be documented" - which is a lot of work, but I believe that it's possible.? Concerning NPCs, I think that it'd be best to have all major NPCs fully documented, and minor NPCs documented to some degree, and generics a do-as-we-go sort of job. -   ﴾TALK﴿ 03:25, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Social Media: Doing Surprisingly Well Edition

As I have ended up in charge of all the social media buttons on the sidebar, I feel its appropriate that I give a general update as to "where we stand" on the Internet. The purpose of this topic is to firstly, be open about what's going on with them, because I believe that's important. Secondly, too discuss their future with the site, and how we should continue to develop them. Finally, this is also open to suggestions for them, in case their existence has slipped your mind.

Facebook -- Has broken 5000 likes and is growing at a healthy pace. It's become a bit of a "news dump", news that wouldn't make it to the front (albeit, in my opinion, more news then we allow could easily be allowed on the front), is talked about. We also have been doing the odd joke post, which seem to do very well. Additionally, we cover site news whenever we can. I am mostly happy with its growth, and can't complain. If you're well in touch with the ES Facebook community, I would like more help with this one still.
Twitter -- Has grown pretty well these last few months. It's been receiving news, fact, questions, and a few jokes. A definite healthy account. If anyone loves Tweeting, I wouldn't mind some backup. I do not want to be the person running this alone.
Google+ -- I do not know how to help this one, at all. Posts to this one tend to have the opposite effect we get on other social sites, whereas activity usually helps us there, it does not on Google+, it seems. A post will usually cause it to have someone unlike the page, but if its let sitting, I've noticed it grow without any interaction to it. If anyone is the slightest bit familiar as to how to use Google+, your input is desperately needed.
Tumblr -- We're redesigning a few things, and changing how the blog is ran. Already we've gotten some rather positive feedback. I can't wait to see where this one goes, but if we have any experienced Tumblr users, your help would be appreciated. I particularly say we need people able to answer questions, and create lore posts. Image compilations also do well.
Blog -- Our own blog needs love. We need people to write blog entries, and to provide comments to the blog. Alternatively, we should just get rid of the comments section, and use the forums for blog comments.  
Forums -- as one of the oldest parts of the site, I'm happy its still running as well. If you are a regular wiki user, but don't use the forum, I'd kindly request you make an account and make the odd post their while your on the wiki.
IRC -- Still alive. We could use wiki users in the IRCs more often, though.
Guild -- Considering how well these guilds actually are doing, we're doing them a disservice by being so hands off with them, I feel. 

For the second portion, let's talk about what we could do:
YouTube -- We've received a healthy number of suggestions for what to do with a YouTube account over the years, it may be finally time to try them out. I particularly like the idea of doing game guides, or a machinima series about the series. I wouldn't want to attempt it if we don't have someone with video making experience. 
Twitch -- It wouldn't exactly hurt the site if we tried streaming. If we have anyone who is currently a streamer, or is interested in trying their hands at it, this could be a viable side project for the site. We've also had users go out of their way to show interest in doing podcasts and the like, and this could be a good platform for that.

So if anyone has the talent to help, I would appreciate it. I tried to be specific for most of it, saying how you can help, but if you think you can volunteer in a way I didn't foresee, I am open to all suggestions. I'm mainly posting this because we're not in a terrible, "no one has written to the Facebook in a month" situation. That's not true, they're doing very well, mostly, in fact. I want to improve on what we are developing, and that requires getting stronger. --AKB   02:05, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

:AKB, I used to run Facebook, Twitter, and for the briefest while Tumblr, before I got my job last summer and had to throw that stuff to the side to focus for a while on real life, as you'd know. I still have somewhere my email with the Twitter pass that you gave me, so that's one I'd be able to log on to and resume working on in the near future, I would have to be re-added to Facebook, though I can do so as well. I can also work a bit on Tumblr as well, and my blog name is callsign-atlas (yes, I asked the daft Oreos question earlier! :p) if you wanted to add me back to Tumblr. You can review the posts from early 2015 to see what I was doing in 2015 when I was (to the best of my knowledge at least) the only person who had editing rights to the account that was posting, and I'd resume roughly the same things I was doing then. Those are platforms I'm comfortable with and use regularly enough that I'd be interested in resuming work on.

:For YouTube, I don't really see how game guides are practical. I remember saying years ago back when the social networking pages were in discussion and the proposal phase that I didn't see YouTube as viable. I still believe that today. TES games aren't linear like GTA games, to use the example I put forward, and there are so many ways to play the game that it'd be hard to document them all and it doesn't seem viable to document Elder Scrolls games.

:I don't have any particular ideas or thoughts related to the other sites at present. -      &hearts;    03:33, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

::It took me a few years, but I actually went out of my way to click the like button for our Facebook page...        03:38, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

::: It's good to have a YouTube page for the site in case we ever have need of video, but I don't think game guides are one of those needs. Machinima and livestreaming are the realm of personal creativity; sharing that kind of content is fine, but there's no need to officially endorse it.

::: There's no harm in keeping a comments section on the blog I don't think, unless spam is an issue? I've actually been having trouble using the web chat app for months now, I keep getting an error saying "server refused the connection".

::: The ESO guilds are doing well but most of the interaction happens in-game. There seems to be very little need or intention to conduct any of it through the wiki (although some events are organised on the forums, and cross-guild communication is usually through email). As long as things are chugging away in-game I don't think there's very much to do with them. The Blade of Woe competition might be a nice way of advertising their existence I suppose. —Legoless (talk) 04:15, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

::::I idle in the IRC channel, it is fairly... laid-back, let's say. I would definitely like to answer lore questions and the like on the Tumblr if that's possible. That and Twitter are the two platforms I use the most personally. My Tumblr username is the same as on here; I don't really know how multi-user blogs or whatnot work but I'm willing to pitch in on occasion. -- Hargrimm  07:40, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

:::::The Facebook page is looking awesome - well done to those posting there :) Legoless, yes we need the Blade of Woe competition!! IRC is not working for me, getting "unable to connect" messages :P Tib (talk) 14:00, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

 I'm having the same IRC problems as well. I wouldn't be opposed to writing a few more blog posts if something comes to mind, but I usually only write when I feel I have something of value to discuss. I would agree that the blog should remain open for comments though.      19:17, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

:I'm active on Tumblr and would absolutely be gung-ho to help maintain it. My username is @forthelulzy. (Also, I liked the Facebook page... finally.) —          20:31, 18 August 2016 (UTC)

::To all of those interested in helpign with the Tumblr, just email me with the email you have tied to Tumblr, and I will add you to it. --AKB   22:04, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

:::Regarding YouTube and "someone with video making experience"; everyone has to start somewhere, and I don't think that's a good reason alone to not attempt it. Collaboration can achieve a lot. --Enodoc (talk) 22:50, 21 August 2016 (UTC)

::::You know, you're right. I never used Facebook or Twitter or Google+ or Tumblr before UESP. So let me amend that, if you want to do any of these things for the site, and are truly passionate about trying it out, I'll support that as best I can. If you want to be a blogger, but haven't written much before, you can give it a shot here. Want to try your hand running a Tumblr blog, but didn't want to start from scratch, that's fine. Want to try running a social account, you can do so on G+, FB, or Twitter. And if anyone of us wants to try their hand at becoming a Youtuber, well, I don't see why this can't be your start here. --AKB   06:14, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Update 12 (Info from Gamescon, summarizing the Reddit posts)

There are two posts on Reddit, by Woeler and Tony1697, which I'm gonna summarize here:
: 
As most already know, One Tamriel means that all three alliances will now share PvE zones, also everything will be scaled.
There will be new skills/skill lines, which are gonna be discussed today aka Saturday 20th August.
Craglorn overhaul to suit for solo playing - I'm really interested about that one!
Dungeon overhaul, all will have a normal and vet mode. You will be able to do each dungeon quest in either normal or veteran mode (which sounds a bit weird, but I guess
All dungeons will now also drop monster sets and there's about 17 new monster sets - these have been datamined earlier so there's no super-big news there, but it's still cool.
Pledge system overhaul, but according to Woeler the details are secret as of now :D "All I can say is that people without dlc wont be missing out on pledges anymore."
Low level player scaling in dungeons is being redesigned, no specifics.
The random world drop sets will be distributed to alliance zones, and each zone will drop 3 of the sets, which will be scaled to your level.
AA and Hel Ra sets reintroduced to the game.
: 
All-DLC pack in Crown Store, which costs ~5500 Crowns and has 4 DLCs, but not SotH
Loot Crates/Boxes, for a couple hundred crowns, which contain a random cosmetic thingy. The pool is from existing/upcoming items, no exclusive items in there.
: 
Update 13 (Housing), there's a mention of training dummies near your house, but no open world ones

Edit: It's also mentioned that the update will be on PTS before the end of the month, which is quite crazy.

Edit2: According to a video, Matt Firor also mentions that there will be Witches Festival around Halloween and New Life around New Year. Tib (talk) 11:08, 20 August 2016 (UTC)

: A couple more points, as they've revealed themselves:

:* Loot crates will give you a new currency if you receive a duplicate collectible. This currency can be traded in for other premium items, although the catalogue will be separate from the regular Crown Store (probably fewer items, rotated periodically). You can't opt to receive the currency if you don't like the collectible you get, i.e. you're stuck with something if you didn't already own it.
:*Weapon skill lines will be receiving new ultimates.
:*The pledge changes will introduce a third NPC to give DLC-specific dailies, so base game players will no longer have to skip a day. The bronze/silver/gold system will also be removed; doing Veteran pledges will reward two keys instead of one. I assume we'll need to quickly gather Glirion the Redbeard's DLC dialogue if he'll no longer be the questgiver for them.

: —Legoless (talk) 21:27, 20 August 2016 (UTC)