UESPWiki:Community Portal

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This is the main discussion forum used for community-wide discussions about UESP's operations, policies, design, and improvement.

All members of the community are welcome to contribute to this page. Please sign and date your post by typing ~~~~ or clicking the signature icon in the edit toolbar. If you would like to start a new inquiry, please place it at the bottom of the page with a two-tier (==) heading.

Other pages for community-wide or general questions include:

In addition, past discussions from the Community Portal can be found at:

  • CP Archives lists all of the past discussions from the Community Portal page, including major discussions and chronlogical archives.
  • Archive is a general archive for organizing all past community-wide discussions.


Active Discussions

Many discussions of community-wide interest are held on pages other than the community portal. Discussions about specific policies belong on the policy talk pages, for example. The following table lists other discussions that are currently in progress on other talk pages. If you start a discussion on another talk page, please add it to this list.

[edit] {{tl}} Template

Do we already have a template similar to the {{tl}} template they have at Wikipedia? If not, would anybody mind if I created it (albeit with much simpler documentation)? It's quite useful and saves a lot of nowiki tags everywhere. :) --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 03:03, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

Whoa, I'm shocked I haven't seen that one. I think we should use it! –Elliot talk 03:06, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
We may also want {{tlx}} and {{tlp}}, which would be especially useful on the Help:Templates page, if nowhere else. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 03:07, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Okay, I've re-created the {{tl}} template. Could one of you template-y types have a look at both it and the docs and see if I've done everything correctly? It probably needs categories, but I don't do much in the way of page/tempate creation, so I honestly haven't looked at how to do categories and I wouldn't know which one(s) to put it in anyway.
Next question: should I import tl2, tlp, and tlx, or should I try to combine tl/tl2 and tlp/tlx, or should I even try to combine all four? Tl and tl2 are probably good just for the fact that they're small, but I'm not sure if it's necessary to separate them and the tlp/tlx pair just for a font change. I don't know if the monospaced font can be put as a parameter, but I suspect that should be doable, if challenging for me, given my current knowledge of template creation. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 02:37, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
Okay, at long last, all four templates are now done. I didn't rip them straight from Wikipedia, instead opting to combine the styles from each of them on Wikipedia (they're drastically different, there) and harmonize them. I also opted to keep all four under the same names as Wikipedia uses, just to make the knowledge-transfer from one to the other a little easier. Can someone have a look over them when they have a chance, just to make sure I didn't do anything massively wrong? Thanks! —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 20:00, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Legitimate Mod Linking

Most mods are uploaded by their authors to large download sites, where users usually have to sign up in some way in order to download from them. Usually the signup is a pretty minor requirement (e.g. equivalent to signing up for a UESP wiki account), but sometimes the signup is rather more complicated (user has to signup for a specific forum and request download from there). The latter type of signup is a bit controversial -- many players avoid downloading mods with overly complicated requirements; however, even so, the right of the authors to impose such requirements is widely respected.

I've been on the wiki since the beginning and I've never seen this be an issue before. We're not primarily a mod listing site (though we do have a number of notable an important pages), and the sites that we link to (usually TesNexus, PES or Elric) have trivial signup requirements. Since it hasn't come up before, we've never had a formal policy stated.

Anyway, the issue came up on Tes3Mod:Better Bodies today, and I have accordingly reverted the links. As it turns out, the editor adding the problem links was blocked for "language issues" anyway, so I doubt this will be an issue outside of this particular editor. Still, I wanted to drop a note regarding what has been an informal policy up to this point. --Wrye 04:28, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Improvement to User IRC userbox

Just to let everybody know, I've made some small improvements to the {{User IRC}} userbox. Namely, you can now specify something instead of "frequently" in the text (though it will keep "frequently" by default to ensure backwards compatibility with existing {{User IRC}} transclusions). I also added proper documentation to it. There's one minor concern, pointed out by Timenn a while back, in that people can do something like specify "never" and it will still include them in the "Users Who Frequent the IRC chatroom" category, but rather than try to account for all forms of silliness, I simply noted it in the docs. —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 20:07, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Syntax tweak for preformatted text.

I'd like to propose to the MediaWiki syntax, if easily implemented. Basically it comes down to the removal of the parsing rule that converts a leading space to preformatted text. If I would type the following text with a leading space you would get:

preformatted text.

Now regular editors have no problem avoiding this, as they are aware a leading space results to this. A new user is not aware of this, as many will have seen, and may be confused what part of his/her text is causing the preformatted text to appear. A leading space is not so obvious as, for exampe, four dashes ('-') resulting in a horizontal line.

Preformatted text can still be created with the <pre> and </pre> tags, and since likely all instances of this are coded this way I don't think there is going to be any additional editing necessary. All it would do is making editing easier for new users. Thoughts? --Timenn-<talk> 12:57, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

My concern with this is that those who are already familiar with Wiki syntax could have difficulty figuring out that we allow <pre>, but not a leading space. I know I figured out the leading space style long before I discovered a pre tag, and I wouldn't be surprised if others were in the same position. It might be especially confusing if we only change the parser, since people might look at the existing code and see that it was done using leading spaces and then wonder why theirs isn't working. Or on the flip side, if we eliminate the syntax altogether, then we have to change every last instance of it on the site. —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 21:58, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Oblivion:Useful_Items

Could someone make this page? I was thinking of a list of the really useful items in Oblivion, such as the Skeleton Key, Umbra/ Goldbrand, and others. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 99.242.160.8 (talk • contribs).

The problem with pages like this is that they're largely (if not entirely) based on personal opinion, which is something we try to avoid as much as possible. There's no problem with creating such a list in user space, which I believe several other people have done, but I don't think it would be appropriate for an actual article. –Eshetalk 19:14, 19 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Oblivion Apparel and Magic Effects Organizing... (among other things)

I know that some people just go here looking for certain apparel with certain effects, and it's difficult to find. There is: "Generic Magic Apparel", "Artifacts", "Leveled Items", "Unique Items", "Knights of the Nine New Items", "Dunbarrow Cove Items", "Deepscorn Hollow Items", "Battlehorn Castle Items", "Specialty Gear", "Shivering:Unique Clothing", "Shivering:Armor". 11 different places you have to look for one effect (if you say have all the plug-ins). Say you want your character to have +100 personality. It takes a long time to find such an item, and if you do not have a lot of grand soul gems or access to an altar of enchanting, you will not know how much of a bonus for your personality you can get without hunting it down. If you have a character that has everything except for a good shield, you would probably try to look up "Shields". That takes you, understandably, to the "Shield" effect page for oblivion, and at the bottom it has links to 2 more categories: "Oblivion-Armor-Shields Light", "Category:Oblivion-Armor-Shields Heavy". Each one is separated into 53 and 68 different links respectively. That is bound to slow down your computer if you open them all at once to try to compare them, or even one by one it would take absolutely forever. Same with gauntlets or anything else.

Fixes to those 2 problems: 1: In every page for a magical effect (such as "Fire Shield"), list the amounts you can get from custom enchantments and/or sigil stones, and list all apparel (ALL) that gives any sort of a bonus for it, making sure to make it be a table rather than just links to each one. >_> 2: Create a section for each slot (Shields, Head, Hands, etc) that will have on it a list of everything that covers it, be it enchanted or unenchanted. If something is a Raiment or like that, Create a Raiment (Hands, Feet, Upper Body, Legs), or something a Robe (Upper Body, Legs) section. This will include everything from all DLC or plug-ins, making sure to put a tinynotething next to it such as is done right now. SI for Shivering Isles, etc. 3: There will be an "Apparel" section that will link to every magical effect that is used and every slot that is used for all apparel, including armor.

If anyone has any objections, I will do this. I just want permission to do this.

There are also the people who just go to an oblivion reference site such as this with no clue what they're going to make their character into, because they are either just starting out their game, or really really bored and know the game enough. For the latter, this helps. For people starting the game, some people just worry about having fun, and so they probably wont be checking here, and some people tend to worry about character creation, efficient leveling and such. Those that worry about character creation and being the best and owning, they want to know certain things, inlcuding: ways to increase attributes to their maximum (Felldew, Oghma Infinium, etc), ways to increase skills to their maximum (Free Skill Boosts, increasing skills, skill books) and want to know what it does (only Athletics and Acrobatics help to increase above 100, so maybe they just want their skills at exactly 100, they need to know they can go to jail to delevel a skill), maximum level cap, minimum level cap (both caps referring to including the Felldew glitch and such, in other words being the best), the best weapons (which weapon type to use), and the best equipment.

Fix: In the Character Creation page, it should include links to these places and/or information about them.

The above problem of things not being in organized places happens with weapons too. If you want blunt weapons, you should be able to see "Blunt" and have it organized by base damage, magic affect, whatever it may be, it would be organized by one hand or two hand, then by speed (In other words, by Mace or Hammer or etc). Same with Blade, Bows/Arrows, and Staffs. DLC items should also be included in this section. [I really cannot tackle this right now, can somebody else?]

Also, if an item is unobtainable by any means but through the construction set, then maybe it shouldn't be included in the main section for unique items. This includes items like "Veil of the Seer". (idk probably)

Bugs that are fixed by third-party patches probably maybe do not need to say "This bug is fixed by the Unofficial Oblivion Patch." every single time. Why not make an Unofficial Oblivian Patch page and put it there. (idk probably)

All of the unorganized "Categories" where you need to click on hundreds of different things in order to find something are really kinda annoying. I mean come on, this isn't Wikipedia. This is UESP. (This is my opinion)

A Great Idea

If on a table there are symbols for weight, base damage, etc, you should be able to click on it and have the table be organized in such a fashion by that. --Minimang 18:23, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

I see what are trying to accomplish and I agree that the current setup may need some improvement. I do not agree with all your points though. Our current categorisation is not setup as Wikipedia's, as the former is better organised with clear names. It's a dept-first search method I think works better than a very large list of generic items. You can specifically find an article that holds certain properties.
Currently I like option 1) the most, though I feel it needs some tweaks. Oblivion:Generic Magic Apparel has the most comprehensive list for items sorted by effect. Next to a link to that article we could add links to the various other items that have that effect (with a possible magnitude), but we have to see first how many that will be. The other options will create redundancy, and I don't think that is a good idea.
As for the UOP notes, I prefer the way they are setup now. The official home of the patch already have a large list of fixes. What we do is make the reader aware of every bug when the UOP fixes that. The approach is the reverse method of the long list of fixes. I think they work both well in unison. --Timenn-<talk> 09:14, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
K so instead of under each magical effect page, we list the unique items, we do it under generic magic apparel? I think that would be good if all items were included in the game, but for all those other randomly scattered items, how would it work? Maybe just include the non-generic items on the page for each magical effect, seeing as they all already have links to the generic magic apparel page. --Minimang
I would much rather set up categories to deal with this issue than continue creating pages with the same information sorted in different ways. Also I'd feel a lot better if we could stop creating more new pages until we get more input from the community.
Also, I agree with Timenn about the UOP notices. There's no sense replacing all the individual instances with a single page listing them all. For one thing, such a place already exists (as Timenn pointed out); also, this would mean players would have to check yet another page to find out whether the bug is fixed by the page, and that's just plain inconvenient. –Eshetalk 20:38, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Eshe. The categories are endlessly more beneficial and endlessly less redundant. Basically we should have two main categories: Oblivion-Enchanted Armor and Oblivion-Enchanted Apparel. Then, each effect is a stem off of that: Oblivion-Enchanted Armor-Fortify Magicka, for example. It doesn't seem difficult enough. And we would add a category for each effect that the item has, obviously. I don't think we need to separate the effects by the type of apparel, as that would be basically redundant. Then, we could provide links on the effects pages to help readers find the items. –Elliot talk 22:10, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
This type of issue has been discussed before, at some length (e.g., starting in Morrowind talk:Armor, by Body Area#The case for a plurality of armour views and continuing half-way down Morrowind talk:Armor, by Body Area#Redundancy). And I still don't think a wiki is suited to provide this type of information -- it's too much work, too much redundancy, and the end result is useful for too few people. Categories won't help most readers, who will want to see item details (magnitude of enchantment, armor rating, weapon damage, and all the other details) listed, not just item names. Individual pages listing items won't help most readers, because every reader will want a different list based on their individual preferences (just one example is that the new pages won't help players whose character is less than level 20).
This type of information needs a different type of web software, one that ties into a database of item statistics, and allows readers to filter/organize/sort the information in whichever way they prefer. I've done at least 75% of the work for such a utility (and it's set up to work for MW, OB, and probably any future TES games), although I have no idea when I'll be able to get back to it. On the other hand, it's a safe bet that I'll be able to finish it before any massive categorization effort gets done -- especially since, in my opinion, a bot (and we only have NepheleBot any more) is the only way to possibly attempt any categories. --NepheleTalk 00:05, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
Oblivion:Enchanted Apparel. Nephele I agree with you on the fact that people do not just want to see item names, and want to be able to sort through item effects, and that was the whole point I had of making these seemingly redundant pages. If you have a different type of software available, that would be absolutely perfect. All we need to do is address the reasons people would go onto a site, looking for apparel. 1 is that they have great everything but not a great shield or whatevs, and so they need to find a good item. 2 is that they are lookin for a certain effect, and don't know if anything is like better than a grand soul gem effect or sigil stone effect and want a better item. Those two effects I am addressing. 2B is that someone wants two or so effects out of one piece of apparel. 3 is that someone wants to find a good item for their level. Are there any other reasons?
And what do you mean that all these resources are not for a wiki? Is not a wiki a resource material that is a collaboration of all knowledge on a subject? Wanna know why Fallout 3 is such a successful wiki? Because, well first off their categories can all be very easily accessed from a navigation bar. Second off, though there is a page for every person, for every weapon and piece of equipment, the main and only real page you can find is one that is a collaboration. If you go to ammunition on that wiki, you will find a list of all ammunition, and under each one all the guns (including DLC only ones) that can shoot it its value, and a link to every page for both guns and ammo. Under weapons you will find every weapon, a bunch of relevant random data about each one including weight, value, rate of fire, health, and other information that might be nice to have. On that wiki, you find more useful information than what you hoped to find. There, under quests you find every quest from all DLC. Here, you need to look under each respective DLC category to find the quests given, and under quests here you find a list of all quests by location. It would be better if under Oblivion:Quests, you would find a link to every place, but better yet you would be able to scroll down and see every single quest in a list. The sheer redundancy of that wiki makes it so good. A similar problem is here. Over here, it is impossible to find a weapon, being the most powerful or not, due to the fact that it is all sorted by enchantments or whatever. If you want it all in hidden places, make a Blade, Blunt, Staff, Bows, and Arrows section, but under each at least list what is needed.
A wiki should simply list everything under every section. You should not have to say "Oh, did you know that you can get stunted magicka for as long as you hold the Fork of Horripilation?", "I didn't know that! Where did you find this? Under weapons, it does not list them!", "Oh, you have to go to Shivering, and then Items, and then click Weapons, and it's in the not-organized-alphabetically-or-by-anything Unique Items section of that. Good luck!". [1]. I go there, and right under the sidebar for Fallout 3, you're looking for weapons, so you scroll your mouse over items, but you see Bobbleheads. You don't know what they are, so you click it. At the beginning it tells you about some achievements you can get for finding these things, which are scattered around the world, 20 of them. Oblivion:Ammunition < should probably say at the beginning that arrows are the source of ammo for bows, which is increased by the marksman skill; Arrow X is the most damaging normal arrow, but not until level y, when it can be naturally found in the wild.
The best way to fix this problem is to eliminate the use of categories. These, though "organized", make finding things and seemingly basic information nearly impossible, seeing as you cannot easily go back from one category to the next by use of say mouse-scrolling (you need to press back, so it is impossible to see all information at once). We need everything on one page. For something like a magical effect page, under every offensive affect you should be able to see the weapons that deal it, for defensive effects the apparel that gives bonuses for it, and under all affects the ingredients that can be used to make a potion / poison of it. Under weapons, all weapons (and arrows) including ceremonial weapons and shivering isles weapons should be able to be found here. If you go to the Shivering isles page, though, it should also list all of the special items and whatever that the DLC gives you. This would have been the best way to organize this information, with a lot of it. Click on Oblivion, see the categories necessary, and make it work. I know this is a ****load of work to change now, but it is possible (maybe easier to start from scratch), and would make every new player that just needs to find a quick detail able to find it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Minimang (talk • contribs) on 02:36, 27 September 2009.

(outdent) Actually, the beauty of categories is that they eliminate needless redundancy by allowing us to quickly organize things in different ways without having to create extra pages for them. (Do see the redundancy section of the Style Guide for some good reasons why we avoid it whenever possible). Additionally, the search function easily eliminates the extra steps of clicking "Shivering," then "Items," then "Weapons," because typing "Fork of Horripilation" into the search bar brings you to...the Fork of Horripilation.

I do think it could be useful to some players if we categorize some or all items based on their effects, but Nephele has a good point--everybody's going to want to see these items sorted in a different way, and it would be crazy to try and accommodate all of them. However, the idea of eliminating categories altogether is also completely impractical. These are simple pages that are great for giving people a quick overview of things they might need, such as different images, types of templates, or even different lists of NPCs. The reason we don't have all of the weapons with all of their specific details listed on one page is because we actually do have accessibility in mind. Many people would have problems loading a page of that size; instead, we provide easy links so people can find additional information on a topic. Many of these links, I'd like to point out, involve categories.

In the case of these effects categories, it would make perfect sense to simply link to them from the effect pages. Oblivion:Fortify Health, for example, could include a link to the category containing all the items with this effect. That way, if a player were seeking an item with the Fortify Health effect, all they would have to do is type it into the search bar and they would be led to all of the information they would need.

The thing we have to keep in mind is that different people look for information in different ways and with different goals. We do our best to accommodate these different needs, but we can't just eliminate everything we've already done because some other wiki has different standards. That doesn't mean we can't make changes, but we have to carefully consider how such changes would be made and if they would be useful for enough people. –Eshetalk 06:10, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

"First, if a topic is discussed in detail on multiple different pages, then a reader has to read all of those pages to be sure that he has read all the information[...] Only information of interest to almost all readers should be included: 90% of the readers should not have to wade through uninteresting information just so that 10% of readers can find the information."
I don't think that every item should be described in detail on every page, just some easy tables for statistics. A problem here is that there is a lot of redundancy here, and it is very hard to find all the types of information. In Oblivion:Magic, you do not find every single bit of information on becoming a mage, IMO. It is scattered randomly. Eshe, if you're worrying about accessibility, see the biggest page in Oblivion, Oblivion:Generic Magic Apparel, and time how long it takes to load. For me, it took 4 seconds. I called a friend who has worse internet, and it took him 7 seconds. Big pages here are not that big, and are pretty easily accessible. Sections of a page are good IMO, but I just do not understand the fascination with categories! Categories do not list information, they sort information. Some basic information such as different weapons and different equipment should be repeated, because it is very useful. For Alchemy ingredients, under each magical effect you see the potions that make it, and you have a useful potions section, and everything is found under Oblivion:Alchemy, and it is very organized. Are there categories for it? Maybe, but that isn't very useful. If you are looking for information, then a category doesn't help because a category only assumes you already know what you are talking about. If it only has names listed, you will only find a single thing. You should be able to, when looking for the Oblivion:Bow of Embers, find out that the Oblivion:Bow of Scorching is more powerful, when a Category does not say that.
The only reason that you would need a category is if you have a specific item in mind, like say the Gray Cowl of Nocturnal, but even then, you can just use the search function. If on Fortify Health, you wanted a category for it, I think that would be really redundant, seeing as a lot of links is LESS accessible than a single big page listing all of the information, because you need to include more information linking to other categories on each category page. What needs to be done is more page merges. If we could merge most of the mage information onto one page, that would be great for everyone looking for information. When you say that people look for information in different ways, do you think that it would or would not be more convenient to have to look on many many different pages (one category to the next) to find what items give Fortify Health? It would be a useful reminder if you already knew the items on the list and the effects they gave, but when you need to compare them, you would need to open up every page in order to see every effect. If you wanted to see the item with the most Fortify Health, it would take a lot of effort, and Generic Magic Apparel does not list this on every item.
"90% of the readers should not have to wade through uninteresting information just so that 10% of readers can find the information." - Style Guide. This is only the case if all of the information is going by one line at a time, but in my honest opinion does not include tables. If you have a table, you do not have to wade through anything, because the number will just be on the side. You will not have to look at it. Over here, a PS3 or Xbox360 user will have to wade through some information that only applies to those using third party patches or the construction set, which neither of those people can access, but those users can survive. If any information is uninteresting, then it should not even be on this site. "[...]just so that 10% of readers can find the information." the information should all be relevant. 10% of users might look for the weight of an item, but people do not need to wade through that seeing as it's just there. There should be information included on an article that is not immediately relevant, that 90% of users should not look for or immediately care about, but that they WILL care about once they see what it effects. Oblivion:Mehrunes Razor and Shivering:Ruin's Edge are both items that have rare specials. For the former, it can instantly kill an opponent. For the latter, it has a small chance to paralyze an opponent for 15 seconds. Though someone may not be looking for the rate for these special attacks, they should still be able to see it on the page, because it is useful information after you play for a while, and realize that your 'stupid' weapon never 'freaking' paralyses an enemy, but then you can see special rates and realize that another weapon has a half as good effect but occurs twice as much, you might want to know that. Most people do not care about charge for a weapon, but if you are constantly worrying about refilling your weapon, you might want to be able to find a weaker weapon that you can use more.
My points are as follows. 1: (A big problem) Because there are SO many in depth articles, you never know if you have all the information. Less articles and less categories means less redundancy, and more accessibility overall. 2: Categories only help if you have already know an item name, because if you were going to search for a Fortify Health item, you would not already know which items give which effects, so you would not be able to compare and contrast. 3: Tables and a page sections are very easy ways to sort information so that people do not need to see any irrelevant-to-their-purpose information, even when they have a LOT of different statistics for everything. --Minimang
Okay, I can't believe I didn't notice this before, but Oblivion:Generic Magic Apparel already has exactly the kind of listing you're talking about. The simplest way to make these more accessible would be to add links on the individual effects pages, and perhaps come up with some clever redirects. There's absolutely no reason to recreate lists we already have.
Also, the "Enchanted [Body Part] Items" articles you've been creating should probably be userfied. If we ever did decide to sort these items by type in addition to effect, they should all be listed on one page (like Morrowind:Armor, by Body Area) and sorted by the names we use on the site and in-game, like "Boots" and "Shoes" intead of "Feet Items."
Given that we already have the listing you're looking for, I think the best solution would be to make that list easier to find rather than make additional pages. –Eshetalk 23:22, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
Exactly what I was trying to get at. Generic Magic Apparel has that kind of listing. Idk what userfied means, but I was going to merge all of the body part articles onto the Oblivion:Enchanted Apparel page when I finished them all, also including every item effect thing on it in the same manner as Generic Magic Apparel. meh agreed. --Minimang
Userfied means you put it in your own user space instead of in the Oblivion namespace. Since you're planning on getting rid of them all anyway when you merge them, it would make more sense to keep them in user sandboxes. Also, the other part of my point was that we have yet to decide whether we want the enchanted items to be listed by body part in addition to enchantment. I think it is important that we reach a consensus on this issue before an additional article is created. For example, why would we have Oblivion:Enchanted Apparel in addition to Oblivion:Generic Magic Apparel? It would make more sense to have Oblivion:Generic Magic Apparel by Body Area, for the sake of consistency. –Eshetalk 01:15, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
If we do somehow put them in an article by body part, we could easily just do it s subpages, and provide a link on the central page. I am not sure it is necessary, because the apparel by effect is not massively large, so if someone was looking for something with a certain effect, then it would be there. And I doubt anyone is looking for something that they don't know of yet (which in that case, massive availability is not a concern). –Elliot talk 02:05, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

(outdent) Eshe, the reason to have Oblivion:Enchanted Apparel in addition to Oblivion:Generic Magic Apparel is because the generic one includes only items randomly found in vanilla Oblivion, rather than every unique item, every leveled item, every artifact, and every item found from DLC.
Elliot, "And I doubt anyone is looking for something that they don't know of yet"... could you please elaborate because I don't get what you're trying to say. My point was that pages should not be specific and only include the specific information, but include all of the information of a topic, being very specialized. I'm basically saying "huh?" because I keep misreading your words and... well just ????? --Minimang

I am still not convinced that the categories are a bad idea. I don't think it really is that hard to do, since it just a process of adding information. Will it happen in one day? No. But I have been working on the journal entries for awhile, and it hasn't been a concern. Length of procedure should not be a concern; rather, the end result should be. And there is one thing that I know for sure: we have no use for Oblivion:Enchanted Apparel–at all. –Elliot talk 21:55, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
While I'll keep my nose out of the debate of whether or not Enchanted Apparel should stay, I must admit that the changes to the magical effects pages (adding which pieces of equipment have the effect, and how strong it is) is a great idea in my opinion. It makes it much easier (again, in my opinion) to find gear with the effect you want, especially if you aren't in the Mage's Guild and don't have Frostcrag for enchanting. That being said, I wouldn't object to reformating the information. Dlarsh(Talk,Contribs,E-mail) 23:28, 5 October 2009 (UTC)
The problem was never that Categories would be hard to do, it was that they would not be useful. Categories JUST SHOW NAMES OF ITEMS, and are sorted in NOT USEFUL WAYS. People want know which items give you the highest amount of Magicka, and so going on the Fortify Magicka page, you could find it. If you wanted to find a gauntlet with Fortify Magicka, you would have to go to Category:Oblivion-Armor-Gauntlets_Heavy 57 entries + Category:Shivering-Armor-Gauntlets_Heavy 8 entries + Category:Oblivion-Armor-Gauntlets_Light 45 entries + Category:Shivering-Armor-Gauntlets_Light 10 entries = 120 entries of random names of gauntlets. People do not know the effects that every single gauntlet gives, and so they would have to look through 120 pages to find one with Fortify Magicka. When you are on Oblivion:Enchanted Apparel, you need only to scroll down to Gauntlets, click show, hold control and press F to bring up the find menu, and type in "Fortify Magicka" to find all of the gauntlets that give Fortify Magicka. Better yet, you would go to Oblivion:Fortify Magicka if you were looking for such an effect, and what do you know, it isn't there either.
You're looking for a weapon. Your blunt skill is the highest, and you want to find the best weapon there is with blunt, but you don't know the game very well. Using categories, you can actually find it easier than I thought, looking through. Only 4 pages. Category:Oblivion-Weapons-Blunts_Two_Hand 132 entries, Category:Shivering-Weapons-Blunts_Two_Hand 44 entries, Category:Oblivion-Weapons-Blunts_One_Hand 145 entries, Category:Shivering-Weapons-Blunts_One_Hand 60 entries. 381 different blunt weapons, that you need to comb through to find the best one. On the Oblivion:Blunt page it does not list the weapon with the highest base damage, Nerveshatter / Perfect Amber Hammer, which are shivering only, or the highest base damage weapon in Vanilla oblivion, whatever that heck has 28 base damage. You cannot find it in Oblivion:Weapons. You cannot find it in Oblivion:Items. How do you find this then? YOU DON'T.
Understand why categories are not necessarily useful when looking for information? I think that a central hub where you can find all of the weapons or apparel or whatever is a great idea. Oblivion:Enchanted Apparel is just that.--Minimang 00:01, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
There are two simple ways we could handle that. We could organize the categories and place the pages in them according to a certain number (if it 14 pts, we put it under 1, if it is 56 pts, we put it under 5). This is limited to 99, but not many things go over that. Or, we could make separate categories based on the magnitude of the effect. Two simple solutions to something that has become a major /unnecessary/ pain. –Elliot talk 02:41, 6 October 2009 (UTC)
See Oblivion:Fortify Attribute, and tell me if the list at the bottom of that page is or is not remotely helpful. Elliot I guess I don't understand. Could you make an example of this? Actually, I could see that being very helpful in the events of weapons, maybe sorted by Base Damage, but not really for enchantments when there are so many different effects. Maybe for armor by armor rating, but still not the total power of anything, as far as I can tell. Please could you make a small example?--Minimang 01:36, 7 October 2009 (UTC)
Okay, here's what I'm thinking. I like the idea of adding the items to the effects pages, but I think we can do better than just a list of links. I would propose reformatting the lists into sortable tables, like this example for Shield:
Name Added By Type Magnitude
Ring of Lordship (Mania) Shivering Isles Ring 26%
Raiment of Arden-Sul Shivering Isles Robe 25%
Ciirta's Robes Shivering Isles Robe 20%
Cursed Monolithic Shield Shivering Isles Shield 20%
Cursed Impervious Shield Shivering Isles Shield 20%
Bladeturn Hood Mehrunes' Razor Hood 17%
Tower of the Nine Oblivion Shield 5%
If anything gives us almost maximum versatility and ease of use, I think it's this. We can add or remove whatever columns we like, and users can sort the information based on their own needs. It shouldn't be too much trouble to convert the existing links into these tables, and I think it makes more sense than only using categories for the same purpose. So...what do we think? –Eshetalk 23:32, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

(Outdent) It looks great. For what it's worth, I think this should solve any issues with the magical effects page. Dlarsh(Talk,Contribs,E-mail) 23:39, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Looks great! This should solve the effect problems.--Minimang 11:00, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
But wait. First items need to be listed by effect, but now also by base damage? I can see this is going to result in numerous different classifications and a variation of Wikipedia's infamous lists-of. We might as well make a list for items that have multiple effects, as some other players might consider that a better way of ordering items than the strength of a single effect. And how about the equipment weight?
I think we can better spend time on thinking how to implement a proposal such as made by Nephele. Or why not utilize the Data Sharing technique? We store all the actual content on the item page itself, and just load the various needed properties. If we are already going to spend time on this, we might as well do it properly. --Timenn-<talk> 11:31, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm not opposed to eventually having a page where all of this information could be listed any way you could think of, but it seems like this is a good setup in the meantime. I mean, we've already listed the ingredients at the effect pages, so listing equipment seems like a logical (not to mention useful) addition. I think it makes sense to go ahead with these listings for the sake of having more complete effects articles. If we want to work on something bigger and more complicated, we can do that too...assuming someone knows how to do it! –Eshetalk 16:12, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
IMO Alchemy is by far the best organized bit of information in Oblivion. There are 2 pages that list all of the ingredients, 1 page that lists them all by effect, on every effect page are the ingredients, and there are only about 2 pages that list all of the information and tips and tricks to being an alchemist. I finished Oblivion:Enchanted Apparel, and every effect has been updated with apparel that give it that effect. The only thing left is to reformat all of the effect pages with the tables. Could someone look it over and tell me if it's adequate?—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Minimang (talk • contribs) on 12 Oct 2009.

(outdent) Mmkay, if there aren't any objections to the sortable tables, I'm going to add them to my list of things to do...hopefully to get started this weekend. We'll see! –Eshetalk 00:22, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Hm, are we in agreement for the format of those tables? Should the other effects of the items be presented? What about my suggestion for using the Data Sharing utilities? That way the magnitude of an effect is stored at a single location.
The reason Alchemy works is because no other data about ingredients is mentioned, they are simply linked to. Each ingredient has its own article, which is not the case for the various enchanted items. --Timenn-<talk> 10:16, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] New Template Category

I'm just noticing that we lump user warnings in with Category:Markup Templates. Would anybody object if I created Category:Warning Templates and moved our various warnings ({{Blocked}}, {{Caution}}, {{Warning}}) over there? Also, if I do, is that the best name for the category, or is there some other name you think would be better? —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 03:00, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually, reminding myself of how things work here as opposed to Wikipedia, can I suggest that we create several templates just as backups to the UESPWiki:Messages page? I know for myself, I'd find it much more intuitive to simply place templates on a user page than to jump to a totally different page only to click a button that puts a warning on the user page I most likely just left...or is this just me? —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 03:43, 21 September 2009 (UTC)
I'd be in favor of that too. When I'm spamming welcomes, for example, it would be a lot nicer to be able to paste {{Welcome|Username}} instead of having to open up a bunch of tabs to the Messages page ;). The Messages page is good for an overview if you're trying to decide what message to post, but a shortcut would be nice too, I think.
Oh, and as far as the category goes, could we use Category:Message Templates and throw all the notices and the welcome in there too? –Eshetalk 02:04, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I agree with most that has been said (figuring I brought it up not too long ago). I have already mapped out how all of this could be done, so there are multiple ways to go about it. With a warning template, we could have the parameters as Username|Page|Diff# etc. or whatever is decided on. Also, there is the base page name, etc. –Elliot talk 02:11, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I hadn't seen the original discussion, but I see Templates as a "best of both worlds" scenario. We can set up the templates to transclude the existing messages (or if that poses difficulties, simply put a noincluded message that if you update one, you must update the other), but for those times when you want to customize, the Messages page is there and you can do it the good old-fashioned way. —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 02:53, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Well, we would substitute the templates if we did. We would want the hard text on the page. –Elliot talk 02:59, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
As Nephele pointed out in the other discussion, though, subst'd templates can get rather ugly with #if's and such. Of course, the other possibility here is that we don't subst them. I understand the reasoning why you want to or don't want to in some instances, but for the most part, I think for us, we're probably safe not subst'ing them. —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 03:54, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Parser functions can be substituted as well, so that isn't an issue. We would want to be able to change the template without worrying how it affects the template calls elsewhere. If we decided to drastically alter something on the template, we would be bound by the parameters (which would be bad...). We would want the liberty to change it (plus, we would want the warnings to reflect how they looked at that given time, not in the future... if that makes sense). And, I don't think substituting welcome messages would be much different than clicking a link to do it. We don't fool any of the new users. This provides a nice guide to using substitution. I see no issue with starting to use templates for most automated messages. –Elliot talk 05:18, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I won't oppose a template for such things, but I know I'll continue to use the message page for warnings. I want to be able to say what I want to say, not what the template says. This is especially true for warnings and blocks, but the same is true in my opinion for welcome messages (if I ever stopped refusing to use them, like when hell freezes over). If you're sending one to an editor that's already started editing and has made some mistakes, I'd assume you'd like to point those out specifically. Also, I question the wisdom of using a template on new user talk pages. If they try to edit a reply, they could be confused by the template (especially if it was large and complex). Really, if we're just going to have a template for welcome messages, how 'bout we just set up a bot to deliver them. It would be about the same level of individualization.--Ratwar 05:26, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Then we can keep both, to satisfy the different wants of editors. And they won't be confused by the message because there would be no trace of the template left over after the substitution, since as I said, everything can be substituted. –Elliot talk 05:40, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
@Elliot: As I said, I understand the reasoning behind not subst'ing, but I don't think it's likely to be a major issue for us...we're not Wikipedia. If a template was going to change that drastically, I'd suggest creating a new one anyway. But that's a side-discussion, really. The major point is that, at least personally, I'd prefer it if the warnings were relatively standardized and available as templates for when you're already on the user's talk page. I think we're all agreed that there's no reason not to as long as the Messages page remains intact, but I'll give it a few days before we do anything drastic.
You said you had ideas on good ways to approach this. Would you care to elaborate? —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 05:48, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
Well, on my wiki I use for simple template tests, I drew up this:
{| style="border: 1px solid #AA9999; background-color: #FFCCCC; width: 80%; margin: 0 auto 1em auto; padding: .2em;"
| width="69" | [[Image:Stop_hand.png|69px]]
| Please do not add nonsense to UESPWiki{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>#if:{{{1|}}}|, such as your edit to [[{{{1|}}}]]}}, as it is considered to be '''[[UESPWiki:Vandalism|vandalism]]'''. If you continue to abuse your editing privileges, this IP address will be '''[[UESPWiki:Blocking Policy|blocked]]''' from editing. Please consider improving the work of others, not harming it. —~~<includeonly></includeonly>~~
|}
...which was the easier one. We could also do this for welcome messages:
Hello {{subst:BASEPAGENAME}}! Welcome to UESPWiki. It's always good to have new members{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>#if:{{{2|}}}|. {{{1|}}}.|.}} If you would like to help improve any of our pages, you may want to take a look at the following links:

* '''[[UESPWiki:Policies and Guidelines|Policies and Guidelines]]''': UESPWiki standards and expectations
* '''[[Help:Quick Editing Guide|Quick Editing Guide]]''': a quick guide to wiki markup
* '''[[UESPWiki:Getting Started|Getting Started]]''': how you can help

When you're editing, it's always a good idea to leave [[Help:Edit Summary|edit summaries]] to explain the changes you have made to a particular page, and remember to sign your talk page posts with four tildes ~~~~. Also, the "[[Help:Show Preview|show preview]]" button is a great way to view the changes you've made so far without actually saving the page (our [[UESPWiki:Patrollers|Patrollers]] really appreciate it!).

{{<includeonly>subst:</includeonly>#if:{{{1|}}}|{{{2|}}}.|{{{1|}}}.}}Feel free to practice editing in the [[UESPWiki:Sandbox|sandbox]] and don't hesitate to contact one of our [[UESPWiki:Mentor Program|mentors]] if you need any help. Have fun! --~~<includeonly></includeonly>~~
...among other things. But as you can tell, it can get complex but remain manageable. There are all sorts of things we could possibly do. –Elliot talk 06:26, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I agree with Ratwar on this. Now I don't make a habit of regularly welcoming users, but if I do I want the full text present. I generally don't think it's a good idea to welcome a new user with a template. Welcoming a new user shouldn't be a chore you try to do as efficient as possible. It is a courtesy message of a more experienced user. The proposed setup reminds me too much of how I was welcomed on an obscure language Wikipedia; because I have a global account, and visited that particular language Wikipedia for the first time, a bot noticed my "user creation" and added a welcome message to my talk page, a minute after I visited. I feel that's no welcome, but some sort of general advice you would see in the account creation process. It's better if a new editor can see the effort another editor took to welcome him/her.
Then there is the objection I have to proposed setup of the template. We generally use templates to try to distinguish between formatting and content as much as possible. The various infoboxes and such are covered by templates, while the actual content (text) is on the article itself. That content can then call templates again for formatting (e.g. Sic), but the content remains on the article. The current proposal tries to mix pieces of text, and it remains ambigious what text should be default, and what should be custom. --Timenn-<talk> 09:34, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
I am sorry, but I hardly fail to see the difference between welcoming them with an automated welcome message that you get from an input box and welcoming them through a template. Like I said, both would be up there, but there is no reason to not do it just becayse two members said they wouldn't. That is the very purpose of the template, to allow people who want to use to use them. And no one said anything about a bot, so that is frankly irrelevant. New editors are not stupid, they usually call the welcome message a copy and paste message (which it frankly will always be. But my main point is, if we want both, why not just do it? –Elliot talk 17:53, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
It's not the bot itself I was referring to, but rather the presentation you make to a new editor. I see the presentation the wiki makes as very relevant. Is that not what welcoming is all about? As I said in earlier discussions, I don't believe making guidelines about welcoming users is a good idea, so yea, you're free to use them. It's just that I am discussing the aesthetics here.
And there are my concerns over the design of the template. I still believe it mixes content and code in a way that is confusing enough. --Timenn-<talk> 10:22, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] UESPWiki:Etiquette

I've written a draft for a proposed revision of UESPWiki:Etiquette, which can be found in my sandbox here.

This draft incorporates some content from the existing etiquette page as well as UESPWiki:You Are Valuable, which is an orphaned policy page that seems to fit with the general content of an article on etiquette.

Please keep in mind that this page is essentially just a list of things I could think of that seemed to be commonly accepted here, plus some advice that is often given to newer users. I would love to know what people think of this article (as a set of guidelines rather than cold hard policy, really), so please leave feedback if you get a chance to look at the page. Thanks! –Eshetalk 01:02, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Looks good, Eshe. It's certainly a big improvement over the "soon to be replaced" current one that's getting close to 3 years old now. :) You may want to have a look at Wikipedia to see if there's anything there that jumps out at you (though they have so many guidelines it's not funny). Also, one small point that occurred to me in light of recent events is what to do if your conflict is with an Administrator. That would, I assume, be to contact a different Administrator, although even a Patroller or Mentor would probably be sufficient. Of course, in that event, we'd want to also make some allusion to the fact that admin-shopping is not generally a good idea, but maybe that's just getting too rule-heavy. —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 06:03, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I think it is good as well; however, it could be expanded upon. Looking at WP's version, they seem to nip everything in the butt. And maybe we should look at common issues within the wiki here and try to incorporate them into the guideline. –Elliot talk 18:13, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
OT, Elliot: That's "nip it in the bud". ;) See Urban Dictionary, for instance. As I recall, it comes from pruning roses or some such thing. —Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 22:55, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the suggestions, guys. I'll take a look at the Wikipedia page and see if there's anything there that would be helpful. However, I'd really like to avoid writing a book about etiquette, particularly since I don't think we need anything that extensive.

Regarding the "conflict with an administrator" bit, I did actually have that in mind when I said anyone having a conflict should ask anyone else for help. I don't have any interest in establishing some sort of hierarchy for who can help who. If two administrators are fighting and a patroller steps in, fine. If an admin and a patroller are fighting and a random user helps out, fine. If two IPs are fighting and...well, you see where I'm going with this. It's true that admins can kind of establish a "final say," if you will, if the argument gets to the point where blocks are needed, but I think anybody with a level head should be encouraged to help with conflicts. It's worked incredibly well before, after all ;). –Eshetalk 23:06, 23 September 2009 (UTC)

@RH Not when you live in the Midwest.
@Eshe We could always set up an Arbitration System with the administrators (and perhaps patrollers if needed), where three uninvolved admins assume the roles of arbitrators to discuss and make a final decision on a conflict. This would obviously be a last resort system, but it could help. –Elliot talk 23:23, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
I really don't think we need to make it that official. Considering we've already seen pretty much the whole spectrum of the best and worst in people and handled it well enough, I think setting up something that formal would be overkill. In any case, like I said, I have no interest in forming a hierarchy. Users are users. All users should be awesome at all times. Yes, admins and patrollers tend to help mediate more than others, but it's not a rule and there's no reason for it to be. –Eshetalk 23:46, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
If two people are fighting, I'd rather have that anyone feels comfortable jumping in to save the day.
As for the etiquette, nice work! I don't think we need to copy all of Wikipedia's items, as that list seems a bit too long. We prefer to allow readers to memorize the points, rather than having to look them up all the time (and make sense of them). --Timenn-<talk> 10:10, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
Couldn't agree more ;). Anyway, I made a couple of small revisions to the page (here) since it was originally posted. Much of it is simple rephrasing, but I also added a short bit on IRC and attempted to clarify what we consider to be a personal attack. Again, if there's anything people would like to see changed, just let me know. I'd like to get this up within the next week or so...y'know, before I see something shiny and forget about it ;). –Eshetalk 15:55, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
Looks good to me. I'm glad we're including ill intentioned sarcasm.--Ratwar 06:18, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Talk Page Deletion

Alright, it has come to my attention that there is a disagreement about whether talk pages where questions are incorrectly posted should be deleted after the question is moved. An example of this situation is Tes3Mod talk:EnableDisable. I will post my full opinions on it a bit later, but I know a few other people need a place to discuss this.--Ratwar 00:58, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Oh I'd say keep them for historical reasons. This isn't an obtuse wiki and those bits and pieces can't be too bad for it. I'd say they even add character.
There will probably be a page there eventually, so it's only taking up a stubs space. Even when a page is deleted, its revision history remains in the database, so there would only be a very trivial, almost cosmetic change.
Outdated searches and web caches will probably have the old page, so the redirect will help people find what they were initially looking for. A 404 is worse than a blank page with a redirect.
Someone might make the same mistake and find someone has already created the unrelated question or comment on the talk page, and follow the redirect instead of making a similar mistake as the first person.
We should remember that we're all here in Good Faith. We don't need to make a huge deal about deletions or contributions unless they are "blatant vandalism, lying, and unwillingness to collaborate." Whatever needs to be done to make a crisp, organized wiki will make us all happy in the end. Lukish_ Tlk Cnt 01:32, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
As the one who proposed the page for deletion, I want to assure everyone that I assumed good faith of the editor. I simply prodded the page because after the question was moved, there was no purpose for the page any longer. That being said, I can see Lukish's points, and I agree with them, I had no intention of creating a debate on the topic. As an aside, there was a small disscussion on Elliot's talk page ({{dm}}?) about this very incident. Dlarsh(Talk,Contribs,E-mail) 04:11, 1 October 2009 (UTC)
I prefer the idea of deleting such redirects/move explanations and instead inform the editor who posted the question. The exception in this case is when discussion of a larger scale (when someone has already replied) is taking place. In that case leave the move notification in place.
The reason we prefer non-existant talk pages over (practically) empty ones is that you can immediately see when a discussion has been opened for a specific article or not (the red link). It's also in line with the guideline we have for normal articles. They shouldn't exist simply as placeholders.
The idea for a search engine is that users find the article they are looking for, not a seemingly related question on a talk page. --Timenn-<talk> 08:40, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Hide / Minimize Function

There should be a function that hides everything shown until you click the SHOW button and the thing expands. In a Table of Contents, it says "Contents: Show", and when you click Show, it will say "Contents: Hide" and the contents are shown. This would be to make it so you would not have to scroll constantly through seemingly uninteresting information. A lot of information could on a page, and a lot of info would be interesting to a lot of people, but those people who are not interested by it could just click HIDE and a long list of every quest would minimize down to "Quests" without any info. Maybe add it right next to a section of a page.

Example:
If there was a "Bows" = section , and under it were two == sections, Light Bows and Heavy Bows, and you minimize the Bows = section, it would minimize both of the == sections. If you only minimize Light Bows, then only that would be minimized.--Minimang 22:38, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Actually, we have a template for that: Template:Showhide ;). –Eshetalk 00:04, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
That does not work. It simply is really freaking broken. I mean it DOES NOT WORK. *sorry, I'm really frustrated because Ive been trying to use that for 20 minutes now and it doesnt work. If I put the entire block of text (see the following) in, it makes the template / list of apparel i am trying to hide invisible even if I click show. Here see my example and please tell me what I am doing wrong :(
HEADER GOES HERE 
--Minimang 00:51, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
The template does work, but I'm not sure if it's table-friendly. The first example I can think of for seeing the template in action is my sandbox (here). I didn't write the template myself, so I'm not sure how to tweak things to make it work with tables. In fact I'm not sure it can be done at all. Anybody know if/how that works? –Eshetalk 02:58, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
It looks to me like GK, Elliot and Lukish have been kicking around the idea of adding ShowHide to the location tables here to try and clean things up, but I have no idea if they've managed to pull it off, or even if that's what they're trying to do in the first place. Dlarsh(Talk,Contribs,E-mail) 03:17, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
The template works within tables well enough (I have an example on my talk page, actually)...it's tables inside the template that I'm not sure about. I feel like it should work, but I haven't managed to get it right yet.
Also, I'm pretty sure they're trying to enable show/hide in the Place Summary for pages like Oblivion:Castle Chorrol, which have a really long list of location codes that messes with the rest of the page's formatting. Wish 'em luck, cuz it'll be a great improvement! –Eshetalk 03:23, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
It's simple:
HEADER GOES HERE 
The problem is putting table parts within the showhide. –Elliot talk 03:29, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Store and Castle interior in-game verification

I didn't really know whether to place this here, but since we don't have a 'Stores' page like we have for Inns I thought I might as well. This is mainly to do with the rewriting Eshe, GK and Krusty have been doing on Store and Castle pages, so this is somewhat directed to them, although of course it is open to everyone.

First of all, I am in favour of the overall idea and offer my compliments to whoever took part in it. However, I did find a few points which I think should be reconsidered.

  • Firstly, I realise that most of this work is towards fulfilling the 'House Contents' section of NPCs who live in stores etc. and is therefore to be considered part of the NPC project. However, these pages are essentially Place pages. What I have noticed is the unnecessary and extreme precision with which the interiors have been treated. As a general rule in place pages, we tend not to list items that are worth less than 5 gold or that are extremely common. I have noticed clutter, common and cheap items being listed; when they shouldn't really be there. What we could do is simply give a generic overview such as: "a good amount of food can be found in the room" or "a variety of wares are on display, such as pelts or books", rather than listing each item separately.
  • Similarly to the first point I don't think every single chest, barrel, sack or cupboard should be mentioned unless they might contain interesting items (e.g. rare ingredients, weapons, armor etc.). As a general rule I think anything that has 'clutter' in its id shouldn't be mentioned. In the case of food containers we might just say: "a good amount of food can be found in the room; both in the open and stored in cupboards and barrels". Mentioning safe containers is also a good idea.
  • Just for consistency with the fact that the other zones are listed, I think we should keep basements. However, the same rules would be used as listed above - just because most basements hold clutter and food containers. As said before we could generalise and only mention in detail interesting chests or items.
  • My last concern are images. While most of the are good in the sense that they portray the zone well, their resolution is a bit... pixely. I see Eshe has uploaded most of them so a simple re-uploading of the images but with a higher resolution would solve any problem. I also think that most of the basement pictures should go, unless there is something of interest that is show. At the same time, if we want to keep them for page consistency I'm fine with that.

So, what do you think? --SerCenKing Talk 17:11, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I can see that it might be overwhelming when you read through the new place pages (after being away for quite some time) - We set out to write complete and uncut descriptions for each house/building in the the game (not counting NPC houses, though) and the guild hall pages, Market District pages and castle pages deliver just that. If you read through a page like Leyawiin Mages Guild, you will notice that all the respawning containers have been mentioned as well. And the listing of respawning containers justifies the endless listings of clutter containers IMO. I know that GK stopped mentioning the containers a bit later on, but hopefully, she will get around to add this useful information, because without it, there is really no need for such detailed listings.
HERE is the very first discussion on the matter. A bit further down, HERE to be exact, another discussion. And my own entry in order to reach consensus on the Market District pages can be found HERE. And HERE is the newest, and most complicated, discussion and it's still going. As you can see, consensus have more or less been reached to make the pages like this, and even though I disagree strongly in the last discussion (mostly because of the size of such a project), the place pages are pretty much here to stay the way they are. But I can understand the edit you made to Shafaye's page. Such a detailed listing simply seems "wrong" when we are talking NPCs, so feel welcome to add your two cents to the discussion on NPC houses. And, of course, let us hear your opinion on the other subjects as well. Welcome back! Krusty 10:27, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] The Elder Scrolls Novels

With the upcoming book The Infernal City (and it's as of yet unnamed sequel) by Greg Keyes, I was wondering what sort of changes the site will go through? I know UESP is based primarilly around the games, but if the stories are considered cannon, which I assume they are, will there be a new namespace created, or will we just update the Lore space? Just wanted to ask since the release date of the first book is coming up (late November last I checked). Dlarsh(Talk,Contribs,E-mail) 20:54, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

It's really gonna be hard to make any decisions like that until the books come out. I've been wondering about that myself: new namespace, use General, use Lore? It'll be interesting to see what we get with the new books. --GKTalk2me 22:09, 9 October 2009 (UTC)
We cover in-game books in Lore, we might as well do the novels there too. We can't simply copy the contents ofcourse, but a good summary is doable. Other Lore articles that are updated with the new content can then refer to the novel articles as sources. --Timenn-<talk> 17:47, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
The only problem I foresee with using Lore is: what about other articles that will need to be created? Characters, Places, etc... Lore:Characters in The Infernal City? Lore:Annaig? Of course, I see other problems with the other options, too; namely, If we go with a new namespace, what do we name it? And are the novels worthy of an entire namespace? A lot of questions that we can speculate and talk about, but it really doesn't make any sense to decide beforehand. --GKTalk2me 22:44, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
Alright, I've posted the new article for the book, with the preliminary information, here, in the mainspace for now. The more I think about it, the more I'm leaning toward a namespace, probably "Novels:". At least we have a few weeks to discuss it!  :) --GKTalk2me 00:11, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
Why pages like "Characters in The Infernal City", don't we have categories for that? I think Lore serves its purpose perfectly for these novels. There is no reason why every notable character in it can't have its own article. It's not like a game where we need to provide NPC summaries based on certain game properties. The great advantage of using Lore is that we would actually be able to combine all possible Lore easily, we don't need to incorporate everything into another namespace, and then add it to Lore too. Lore should be the complete repository of all, well, Lore... --Timenn-<talk> 09:36, 15 October 2009 (UTC)
I think we should create a namespace for each individual book. If you look at what we already have set up, you will see a namespace for each game and each mobile game. The amount of information in the game is irrelevant to the need for namespace. Then, say, we have an article on the Annaig in the InC namespace (The Infernal City:Annaig), the second novel (Novel 2:Annaig), and those two can be joined in a "retrospect" or wide-view of the entire series in the Lore namespace (Lore:Annaig). Since you expect to have some OOG (or, OON) information, relying on the Lore namespace would get confusing. Also, having a Novels namespace would be a pure redundant move (why have Novels:Annaig when Lore:Annaig would be more appropriate. The different namespaces for the novels allows a singular look at the novel information, while keeping the Lore namespace allows for a synthesis of information while minimizing redundancy. –Elliot talk 10:33, 16 October 2009 (UTC)
Well, I favor the idea of a 'novels' namespace. Though I'd be willing just to stick it into lore as well. I think Timenn has made an excellent point about most of the novels articles ending up being redundant with the Lore ones, but I also see GK's point that there will be minor characters in the book that may not warrant a Lore page, but have enough information to have a small article, or even just a list of 'minor' characters. That being said, I am against putting it in its own namespace currently. We use namespace to keep the wiki organized, and so when you're search for Oblivion's Helm of Oreyn Bearclaw, you don't end up on a page for Morrowind. I don't believe that these will negatively impact the novels namespace, and I think that there is real potential for a ton of cross namespace links if we separate them. I'd rather avoid those.--Ratwar 18:39, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] New info

I don't know if anybody wrote this but I have an awesome news! http://news.softpedia.com/news/Elder-Scroll-V-Revealed-in-Greg-Keyes-s-Novel-125238.shtml TES V will be embedded 200 years after Oblivion Crisis!!! TES V will come soon(relative in due time, of course:P)

Where will TESV have place? My types: Summerset Isle and Morrowind(mainland and Vvardenfell) What's your opinion? Morihaus 08:29, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

As the article itself states, it's a very thin rumor. Until Bethesda or someone directly owned by the company gives an official statement on the matter, it'll remain just that. Dlarsh(Talk,Contribs,E-mail) 13:09, 28 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Morrowind Pickpocketing article

Having just started playing Morrowind recently, I'm still rather uneducated on much of the game. Still, I wish to create an article here, as I feel this wiki should at the very least explain HOW to pickpocket someone, if not give some idea as to how BEST pickpocket someone. Before I begin, however, it'd be handy if someone could verify my thoughts thus far:

  • It seems the common consensus online that Sneak is the skill exclusively required for pickpocketing. While you obviously need Sneak in order to look inside your mark's pockets, the Xbox manual states that it is the Security skill that states your chance of success (as well as how many of the items you'll actually see on them).
  • It seems that a check is done when you attempt to lift an item, and when you close the mark's inventory. If you fail to take the item, the inventory screen closes, everyone nearby becomes hostile and the guards are alerted. Likewise if you successfully take the item, but fail to "safely" close the inventory. Failing the "close inventory" check will alert the guards regardless of whether you attempted to take an item. This discussion mentions that there are in fact two checks per item lifted. If you attempt to take a pile of items in one go (eg 10 gold), does the pile count as a single item?
  • Using the Xbox Classics version of the game, it seems chance of success is excessively low. As in, with full (100) security/sneak/agility/chameleon, plus with high luck and invisibility active, standing directly behind a mark... You're still very unlikely to grab an item weighing 0.1 units off someone, let alone get away with it. It seems if you manage to take one item from someone, you'll be able to take them all. Is this version dependent, a bug, or am I just missing something?
  • Seems to me that holding down "sneak" mode doesn't have any affect on the matter.

- Bomb Bloke 10:49, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Elder scrolls etymology

I made short Elder scrolls etymology using various dictionaries.I am not sure where to post this, so will post it here.


Morrowind etymology

Kagrenac

 χαος (chaos) -infinite space, unformed matter, nether abyss
 γραω (grao) -gnaw, eat

Dwemer

 δυη (due) -misery
 μερος (meros) -part, share, destiny

Daedra

 δαιος (daios) -hostile, destructive, enemy, unhappy, wretched  (αι (ai) becomes in Latin ae)
 δραω (drao) -do, accomplish, perform mystical rites

Ajira

 ajira -agile, quick, rapid (Sanskrit)

Vivec

 viveka -distinction, discussion, true knowledge, right judgment, faculty of distinguishing
 and classifying things according to their real properties, power of separating the invisible
 spirit from the visible world (Sanskrit)

Almalexia

 alma, almus -nourishing, providing nurture
 lex -law

Pania Cadiusus

 pane -bread
 cadium -small jar
 cadus -jar
 usus -use

Hortator

 hortari -encourage, cheer, incite
 hortator -inciter, encourager, exhorter

Aedra

 αιος (aios), αιων (aion) -perpetually, for ever, eternity  (αι (ai) becomes in Latin ae)
 δραω (drao) -do, accomplish, perform mystical rites

Bacola Closcius

 baca -berry
 ol -little, small
 clodere, closus -shut, close, block


Oblivion etymology

Ayleid

 αυλη (ayle) -chamber, hall, any dwelling, courtyard
 ειδος (eidos) -form, shape, to be or become like

Bruma

 bruma -winter, winter cold/weather, winter solstice, shortest day

Bravil

 bravere -gamble
 il -able to, having the passive quality

Lake Rumare

 rumare, ruminare -chew over again

Namira

 na, nare -swim, float
 mira, mirus -wonderful, strange, extraordinary

Hieronymus Lex

 ιερος (hieros) -holy
 unire -unite
 lex -law

Umbra

 umbra -shadow, shade, ghost

Umbacano

 umbo -boss (of a shield)
 canus -white, gray, aged, old

Volanaro

 volare -fly
 nare -swim

Talos

 θαλος (thalos) -scion, child

Viator Accius

 viator -traveler
 via -way, road
 accire -send for, summon, invite

Suurootan

 surya -sun (Sanskrit)
 tan

Gaiar Alata

 γαια (gaia) -earth, land, country
 alata, alatus -winged, furnished with wings

Ruma

 ruma, rumen -throat

Mankar Camoran

 manceps -a purchaser of any thing, owner, master, chief
 manus -hand
 capere -take hold, seize, grasp
 camur -curved, bent, crocked

Baurus

 bae -palm branch
 ur -pertaining to, use of

Ungolim

 ungula -hoof, bird claw/talon, toe nail

Seridur

 serum -late hour
 durus -hard, cruel

Umaril

 umerus -shoulder, bearing a burden
 il -of a, pertaining to, in a condition of

Nirn

 νιρνος (nirnos) -seed of a kind of pine (Achaean)

Carac Agaialor

 carus -dear, beloved, costly, precious, valued
 ac -having a tendency
 αγαιομαι (agaiomai) -(in good sense) admire,(in bad sense) look on with jealousy or envy
 (Ionic for αγαμαι (agamai)
 αγαιος (agaios) -enviable
 lorica -leather cuirass, enclosure, defence of any kind

Ungarion

 ungere -anoint/rub with oil, smear with oil/grease
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