UESPWiki:Community Portal/Archive 22

This is an archive of past UESPWiki:Community Portal discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

New Voting System for Featured Articles

I propose the following:

Possible votes are:

Support = 2

Slight Support = 1

Slight Oppose = -1

Oppose = -2

In order to qualify for featured, an article must have at least 5 votes and 5 score.

Who agrees? --Rigas Papadopoulos • Talk • Deeds • 06:50, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

This isn't a very good idea. Krusty has already explained why voting anything other than Support or Oppose is pointless, but the idea of counting a vote as a half if you use a particular adjective is, frankly, silly. Is it really likely that people will be heard chanting "Please give my vote half the value of other people's"? Anybody can edit any article likely to be nominated as a Featured Article, and so can fix any minor problems that get in the way of a "support" vote. If they don't have time to edit, a "Comment" or even an "Oppose" with a description of the problem is the right way to go. I know I've voted "Conditional" or similar in the past, but Krusty is right - it doesn't change the result and makes life more difficult for whoever is counting the results. rpeh •T•C•E• 10:38, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

While I understand the intent of the proposal, it really would over-complicate the voting. If a Featured Article is iffy enough that there isn't a clear consensus through simple "Support" or "Oppose" votes, then it probably shouldn't be a featured article. – Robin Hood↝talk 15:12, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Do you think this is better? --Rigas Papadopoulos • Talk • Deeds • 15:23, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

The scores required aren't really the issue, it's the idea of assigning numerical values to the votes. – Robin Hood↝talk 15:35, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Honestly, this is quite pointless. I understand what you're aiming at, but as RH has already pointed out if an FA nominee lacks clear consensus, it simply shouldn't be one. Creating this myriad of different styles of voting is hardly helpful. --SerCenKing ^Talk 17:31, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

True. It seems like it's not going anywhere, so I'm calling it off. --Rigas Papadopoulos • Talk • Deeds • 17:53, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Morrowind Map

Please could anybody interested in the Morrowind Map pop over here and read all about the latest fun and games. Thanks. rpeh •T•C•E• 19:41, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Random Page is not Random

When I click on it, it sends me to Plan for the Big Heist, then to The Rear Guard, then nothing. Could someone explain this? Well now it's back to normal... 99.237.87.79 11:37, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Sometimes you'll get a cached page. Just keep trying - it'll work eventually. rpeh •T•C•E• 11:44, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Before I created an account and was not logged in, the Random function did not work. I hit "Random" 30 times in a row, each time arriving at the Cluttermonkey page. I refreshed my browser's cache and was able to get to a different page upon hitting "Random", but again, every time I hit "Random" it took me to the same page.

Once I created an account and logged in, however, the Random function worked as intended. I do not know why this would be so, but thought I would add my observations. Telinome 01:56, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I found a map marker not on UESP

It's called "Secret Tomb" and it is LITERALLY on the top-right corner. You might need tmm to find it, cuz thats what i did. When someone gets the chance, can they start it up? Oblivion Lover 17:49, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Nope. It's from a mod - certainly it isn't in the standard game. rpeh •T•C•E• 18:43, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Diff Function

Is it just me, or has the wiki diff function been broken these last couple of days? I haven't noticed this problem prior to then, but when I bring up diffs via Recent Changes, no differences are actually displayed - I see the page as it was after the edit, I see the times/dates of when the checked/previous edits were made, but not the diff text showing what was done. Reloading the pages over and over will eventually get them to display correctly, and it seems to apply to any edit.

Here are some specific edits with which I've had this behaviour:

- Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 00:02, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I've noticed this too. Not with those links per se, but every now and then the differences on the edit won't show. --DKong27 ^{Talk Cont} 00:24, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I had been meaning to post something here about this problem but I hoped it would clear up before I had to. I already brought the problem to Daveh's attention, so hopefully it will be sorted out soon. It seems to be a problem with the site's caching - the changes are all being recorded correctly, but the content1 server is sometimes not reporting a diff correctly.

For example, compare these two versions of your first diff: Content1 and Content2. The content1 diff shows no change, but the content2 diff shows the change that was made.

As a workaround, when viewing a diff that appears to be blank, change the "www" in your URL to "content2" and you'll see what was changed. This is obviously not a solution, but it serves as a temporary fix for people who need to see diffs. rpeh •T•C•E• 00:26, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Righto, thanks for the info. :) - Bomb Bloke (Talk/Contribs) 01:34, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Morrowind Help

Hey I have just made a new facebook group called morrowind help> http://www.facebook.com/pages/Morrowind-Help/105712632835258?v=wall&ref=ts This is to help people that want help with morrowind. This is not to replace going to this website becasue this website has alot more information then I will ever have. I will try to give you cool places on the map, cool cheats, and cool hints, and other miscellaneous cool stuff. Again this is not to replace this website just for cool stuff and other help. I will try to make a website soon and a youtube channel so please join and tell other people about it.

Pages for Houses

There's been a bit of discussion on my talkpage recently about the best way to document the catacombs beneath Jakben Manor, something that we currently don't do. It looks like there's a slight preference for creating a page for Jakben Manor and including the catacombs as a section of that page. The purpose of this discussion is to find out:

Do people think this is the best way to proceed in this case?
Do we want to create pages for other houses? If so, what criteria will we use to decide which ones get written?

I absolutely do not want to create pages for every single dwelling in Cyrodiil, but I think pages for the larger houses would be worth having since there's usually a good quantity of loot to steal. I'd suggest saying that only houses with four or more zones should be eligible for pages. That only includes Jakben Imbel, Ulen Athram, and Umbacano. If we drop the requirement to 3, there are at least 30 pages we'd have to write. The other houses will be documented on their NPC pages in due course anyway.

What does everybody think? rpeh •T•C•E• 19:33, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I support this. Some houses could be benefited by having their own pages. I'm not sure what I would suggest for a requirement, but I think that 4 zones would be good. Although maybe others if they are significant in some way, such for a quest and the like. --DKong27 ^{Talk Cont} 19:50, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Which 30 people would get their own house page if it's 3 or more? Also will there be any special circumstance options (Quest related, quest specific, and/or notable in any other way)?

Almost everybody in the Imperial City for a start: the Elven Gardens (19) and Talos Plaza (17) houses all have three zones. Vilena Donton's house in Chorrol also has three, as do Ahdarji's, Alval Uvani's, J'Bari's and Mahei's houses in Leyawiin. So that's 43 - I underestimated!

I'm not sure about quest-related houses. Maybe. Let's see what others think. rpeh •T•C•E• 09:44, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Oops - I forgot about the Temple district - another 18 houses there for a total of 61. rpeh •T•C•E• 15:32, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I have mixed feelings about this, as I'm not really sure how we should handle it. I tried to set up an example in my Sandbox (now deleted), using the existing text from the NPC page and tried to accomplish a look similar to the Guild pages or stores in the Market District. Rpeh and I had a little chat about it and the biggest fear is that we will end up with 61 identical pages, because houses basically contains the same. The example in the Sandbox shows that. Another way of doing it would be to make lists like, say, the Cave-pages – with "The following items will always be found"-style, and a list of equipment chests, jewelry boxes and the like. I have no idea how such a page would look – but in theory, a decent excuse for doing something like that could be our "lacking" page on the Independent Thievery quest, which could be improved greatly using this method. It would provide quick and easy access to valuable loot for Thieves, but question is; is it worth it? As I said, I have mixed feelings. Let's hear some more opinions. --Krusty 15:54, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I've never been a fan of specific pages for houses; mostly because they end up getting cluttered with not-really-needed stuff and may end up looking the same, as Krusty has pointed out. Personally, I think we should stick to the really big houses (e.g. Umbacano Manor) or 'special' ones, like Jakben's house. That means we have fewer, better and more original pages. Unlike a dungeon, I don't feel we need to listed every single item or respawning container in a house: instead of listing all the various ingredients found we can just say "food". I've managed to write pretty concise, yet detailed, house contents for the OBNPCRP for houses of three floors of no more than a paragraph. I don't feel like we need pages for houses with less than four "zones". To wrap this up, I think 61 new pages is madness and would prefer to see a maximum of 10. --SerCenKing ^Talk 20:11, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

(←) Rather than limiting it by number of cells, I'd rather make a restriction that only quest-related and/or unique houses get articles of their own. I think the quest-related restriction would cover pretty much any house we'd want to do a separate article for.

On a slightly-related note, when I began the NPC house contents the idea was to include all we could until we decided otherwise, with the thought that it would be easier to remove what we don't want than to add stuff we later decide we want; then, nothing else was ever decided. I pretty much agree with Serc's suggestion of simply saying the house contains various food items, rather than listing each individual food item. As far as containers go, though, I'd prefer to still list the contents of containers, but an argument could be made to do it in a more concise way (e.g. "The house contains seventeen respawning clutter barrels; two on the first floor, three on the second floor, and twelve in the basement." Rather than "On the first floor, a respawning clutter barrel sits in the northeast corner, with another on the north wall. On the second floor..." etc.). Also, by the way, that's one of the main reasons I left the larger houses for last, because I wasn't too keen on doing detailed contents for such large houses. Either way, I don't like the idea of extremely-detailed but useless house contents cluttering up NPC articles--GK^talk2me 21:42, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

UESP in other languages

Hi, I use the UESP very often, when I'm playing Elders Scroll and I start thinking about one thing - multilanguage UESP. Did somebody thing of it too? It is technically possible? It is feasible at all? What do you thing? --213.155.255.148 12:42, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

This is something that gets asked from time to time. Realistically, it's not going to happen. There simply isn't the resource available to translate everything into other languages - we don't even have enough to finish the English articles! There's a very good German site here and lists of others here. rpeh •T•C•E• 13:02, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

New Project

Just to let everyone who doesn't watch Recent Changes know, I've started a new project called the Morrowind Quest Results Project. Anyone playing Morrowind should feel free to join. rpeh •T•C•E• 18:57, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Math error on the main page

Unless I'm missing something, it's going to take 12 months, not 11 months.

11 months is December next year. 12/11/11.

12 months is November next year. 11/11/11. 96.48.8.129 06:01, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

You're missing something. :P --Riddle 6:04, 12 December 2010

The number 11

As everyone on this wiki surely knows, TES V was recently announced. I'm surprised, however, that no one on this wiki (or even its sources) mentioned the arc number-eleven.

It was announced on 12/11/10, elven months before its release of 11/11/11. SOMETHING is going on here; this number would not appear so frequently and lack importance.

I encourage everyone to do any research they can on the lore for reasons why the number eleven is significant.

As I am new here, I cannot post on the discussion section of the main page; I implore someone to repost this so that the word spread. In case you're curious, this post is the sole reason I created an account, and I plan to continue being a part of this great community. — Unsigned comment by ResidentPianist (talk • contribs) on 12 December 2010

Since there's absolutely no connection between TES dates and real world dates, you don't think it's more likely that they just spotted the triple 11 and chose it before anyone else got there? Please stop seeing things where nothing exists. rpeh •T•C•E• 23:19, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Not to butt heads with Rpeh, but I think ResidentPianist might have a point. Many developers like to link their release dates or the timing of other significant real-world events with significant in-game numbers, like Bungie often does with the number 7. I think we should at least consider it before dismissing it,, and have a look through the lore (specifically concerning dragons) for significant occurrences of the number 11. Sorry if I'm stepping out of line here, I'm just intrigued as well. Jpot 04:25, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

11/11 is Armistice Day (commemorated at 11:00). I, too, thought that 11 might at least be a motif, but I am wondering Bethesda really just wanted a bunch of ones (based off the "There's one they fear" line.) Anyway, the wiki is really not suited to discuss things like this. Topics like this are better posted on the forum. --Riddle 5:34, 13 December 2010 05:34, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, to be fair there is of course The Lost Prophecy, which contains the phrase "From seventh sign of eleventh generation". This refers to the Nerevarine, last heard of heading over to Akavir, which would fit with the Dragon theme, but would be difficult to reconcile with the game being set in Skyrim. rpeh •T•C•E• 06:51, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Patterns are easy to find when it concerns just a few numbers. I'd say this case is nothing more special than a release date that was chosen with a little sense of good marketing. --Timenn-<talk> 14:37, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Project Rewards

I've just created a new template: {{Ribbon}}. This is something that's been banging around at the back of my head for a while and I decided to go for it because I wanted a break from patrolling and quest-checking. The idea is that people who have taken part in a project should be able to wear a badge to say they did so. While I could have created a set of standard, boring userboxes, I thought something a little flashier was in order, hence the new template.

Henceforth, each project will get a ribbon in the style of the ones given to the military for participation in campaigns, acts of heroism or completion of certain tasks. I'm not trying to compare UESP to a military campaign or the actions of our editors to the actions of the military, but until now there has been no way of recording your involvement in a project except on the project page. Now, you can wear your project ribbon with pride.

For instructions on using the template, please see {{its page}}. Note that if anybody includes a ribbon for which they aren't authorised, it can be removed at any time - just as names can be removed from project pages at the moment.

I hope people like it! rpeh •T•C•E• 23:14, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

They're interesting, yes. The problem is the Ribbon template and the text that shows up contradict each other. The page says that it's simply a way to record progress. The mouseover text say "This user performed with distinction in [Project name]". So basically, do you have to perform with distinction to put one on your page, or not?--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 23:23, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Taking part is all that's required. The "performed with distinction" bit is to keep in character. rpeh •T•C•E• 23:29, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Great idea and implementation. – Robin Hood↝talk 00:25, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Last Chance

This is your last chance to save anything from the original roleplaying pages, as we are moving entirely to a userspace system.--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 22:30, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

And it's done. All of the old roleplaying pages have now been redirected to the appropriate user ideas categories (which seemed to me like a better idea than just deleting them all since there's so many links still to 'em). Let me know if I screwed anything up! ;) --GK^talk2me 19:45, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

It created 93 double redirects, but I got RoBoT to take care of 'em. I think everything's sorted now. rpeh •T•C•E• 11:40, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Userbox categories

I begin this topic with a sense of trepidation, since I know it's been the subject of many heated discussions in the past: should we use categories to list people with similar interests. Earlier today I saw a new template created: {{User Christian}}, and that it created a new category for Christians. My first reaction was to sigh a big sigh and head for the edit button so I could propose it for deletion; NOT because I'm anti-Christian, but because I thought we'd gone through this and decided that this kind of template wasn't wanted. Before I did, I did a quick check and found we still have {{User Atheist}} (for one) and so having better things to do elsewhere, I decided to ignore it and come back later. When I did, I saw that the category had been proposed for deletion by RobinHood70. The Atheist one remains un-prodded.

Now I'm not criticising RH70 here, because until I checked I thought they were all gone, so my first instinct would have been to propose only the new one for deletion, but it brings this debate back to the fore. Somewhere - and I'm too tired to find it right now - there's a list that Timenn made, and with which I agreed, that contained Userbox categories worth keeping. It seems we got as far as making the list and agreeing that the others should go.... but then not killing them. If someone can find it, that'd be great. In any case, we still have the question: do we want these categories or not? rpeh •T•C•E• 00:08, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Oops, I just deleted the category for Atheist before discovering this, and now I see I have a message too. :) I had meant to follow up on this a long time ago but got side-tracked. The most recent discussion I remember (which links to others) seemed to generally concur that the categories should go, and my opinion certainly hasn't changed since then. To be consistent, and address BFG's concern, I'll prod the Atheist page as well, though we may want to unprod both until this discussion is resolved. – Robin Hood↝talk 00:52, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Aha, I found the list here. I still don't see why those categories shouldn't be deleted. If last night's little to-and-fro on the Christian and Atheist templates proved anything, it's that these things can be far more trouble than they're worth. rpeh •T•C•E• 10:51, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I would agree with all of those being removed and the categories prodded or speedied. We should probably also run RoBoT or HnB to check for any other calls to the user category template, and/or check a list of all category pages starting with "User", so we can deal with any that've been added in the last year. I'm on my way to bed, so won't be running HnB now, but if you haven't done it by tomorrow, I'll set HnB on it. – Robin Hood↝talk 12:12, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I've only got an ancient version of RoBoT with me, 'cos I've only got VS2005 on this machine instead of 2008 on my desktop. I'll leave it to HnB. rpeh •T•C•E• 14:51, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I've created a list just based on calls to {{Userbox Category}}. I did a search of category names that contained User or Users and didn't see any off-hand that weren't already included that should be, but it was a large list, so I think it might be easiest to prune out the bulk of them, then see if any others were missed. The list is in my sandbox. It might make more sense to copy that to a different page for a permanent record, though. Any discussion of specifics should take place here, then move things around once a consensus is reached. In that vein, there were a few I was ambivalent about:

Nintendo Users

Are there any ES games on the Nintendo? If not, this could be removed.

Undecided Gender Users

While I think this is mostly used to be cute, there are genuinely some people who don't identify with a specific gender, so I'm slightly in favour of leaving this in unless we decide to scrap gender categories altogether. I won't complain if it's taken out, though...if we get a non-specific gendered person or a trans-gendered person, they can always assert their rights at that time.

Users from Known Countries

Is this really necessary in addition to categorizing people in places like "Users from Canada"?

I'm not sure to what extent the bottom two are useful in a site-related context. I can see arguments either way, so I've left them both in "Keep" for now. Also, I've left the various knowledges and the genders as "Keep", but again, I can see arguments for and against, so I'm not really pressing for keeping them so much as trying not to get delete-happy. – Robin Hood↝talk 05:16, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

The "Users from Known Countries" should probably become just the parent for the other country categories rather than being used on user's pages. The Loremasters and Writers categories are useful in the same sense as the "Knowledges" ones - if people didn't just put every damn userbox on their pages, it'd be handy to see who knows what. Loremasters would be useful to find people to ask about lore-related issues, and Writers would help other fanfic writers to find people willing to help or proofread.

The other two can probably go. rpeh •T•C•E• 10:44, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

\=>For the Users from Location it could be argued that is helpful to determine at what times a user will be active, also to give an indication where the most users come from.

As for the knowledgeable categories, they start to get old. I suggest removing the minor ones (for expansions), and just keep those that concern entire games. I think these categories start to get really useful again when Skyrim is out. Expand the categories for a while so users can let know they're busy with a certain guild, and can help patrol articles that concern that guild.

I agree that the Nintendo users can go as well. It's different from the Mac and Linux users, as those users actually got their game working on their platform.

Leaves the Undecided Gender users. I understand your point RH, but you're not obliged to use a Male or Female userbox. Isn't the freedom to omit that userbox enough? --Timenn-<talk> 09:47, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

"Isn't the freedom to omit that userbox enough?"

Not really. I just didn't bother to put {{User Male}} up until fairly recently, if then.

As far as {{User Christian}} and {{User Atheist}}, is there a reason we can't simply create user religion and have different text options for all religions?

Also, Timmen, what do you mean about expanding the knowledgeable categories? I'm not sure if I'm being slow or what, but it's confusing to me.--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 10:15, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

The question isn't about the userboxes themselves, but the categories associated with them. Combining userboxes is not a good idea in this case, as it will lead to all sorts of problems; atheism isn't a religion, for example. It would create more pain of endless discussion than the combining of userboxes would help.

What I mean by expanding is that it can help us with the release of Skyrim. The game will be big enough that no editor is going to complete all of it in a few days. We might need to know the scope of each regular editor. For example; I figure I'll be dealing with the Main Quest mostly, so I can focus on articles related to that. You, on the other hand, want to finish the Main Quest after having done anything else, so you will not want to get spoiled by reading related articles. We can use the categories to keep track whether we have enough editors who can deal with Main Quest articles.

In other words, it's an idea to prepare for the release of a new game and the danger of spoilers for editors. Nothing we need to decide now, but since the matter was brought up I mentioned it right away. --Timenn-<talk> 10:40, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

That's not a bad idea actually, although we'll need to be very, very strict about the use of the boxes.

I agree that the "knowledgeable about x plugin" categories can go. Most people will either have bought them, or will be playing a version of the game that comes with them all right from the start. rpeh •T•C•E• 11:52, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

As far as gender goes, do we need categories for gender at all? I mean, how often do you think "I'd really like to talk to a man/woman about this, let's see who's who"? I think the userbox for each user ought to be sufficient. In terms of the unspecified gender, as I said, I think if we get any alternative-gendered users, we can probably worry about it at that time; I'm not aware of any such active users, so it's really not a big concern either way at the moment.

Also, as an aside to GgD/TAO: it would be relatively simple to create a global User Religion template, and probably another one for User Nationality, but doing all-in-one templates discourages users from creating their own, as it makes the templates much more daunting for people inexperienced with template editing. That's why it made sense to do it that way for things like User Birthsign, where there should rarely (if ever) be a need to add new birthsigns, but for things like Nationality, where we may get someone come along from Tuvalu tomorrow who wants to create User Tuvaluan, it makes sense to keep them as single-purpose userboxes. Of course, that does have the significant disadvantage that if you want to change something for all of them, you have to do it one-by-one or using a bot. – Robin Hood↝talk 23:17, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

I see the gender boxes as useful because they allow you to use proper pronouns when replying to someone, or asking them a specific question.--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 01:21, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

The boxes themselves are very useful. I just mean the categories. – Robin Hood↝talk 02:25, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Good point. The categories can probably go then.--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 02:41, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

(←) Just to reiterate what I've said before, I fully agree with deleting any categories that don't complement working on the wiki. I have no issue with the userboxes themselves, but there's no reason to maintain categories that have no real purpose. --GK^talk2me 03:25, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Okay, since there doesn't seem to be any opposition to the removal of these categories, I'll try to get started on the removal tomorrow. So if there are any objections to the keeps & deletes in my sandbox, speak now, or forever hold your peace! – Robin Hood↝talk 23:43, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Just to make triply sure: The only things up for deletion are the categories, right?--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 00:48, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Yup. No userboxes will be harmed in the making of this mov...errr...you know what I mean. – Robin Hood↝talk 04:48, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

(←) Okay, the template portion of the work is done (unless I missed any). I still have to propose the categories for deletion, but I'm going to give it an hour or so while our job queue catches up so I can tell if there are any manually-added categories that need to be removed as well. I'll post another update when I'm done. – Robin Hood↝talk 02:34, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

And the rest of it is now done. If I missed anything, or screwed anything up, please let me know either here or on my talk page. – Robin Hood↝talk 06:54, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Final (I hope) wrap-up: Now that Krusty has gone through and deleted the bulk of the user categories, I've gone through the remaining categories with "user" in their name and proposed four for deletion that we missed the first time around. I think that should be the end of it unless we decide that certain others are unnecessary (e.g., the Tamriel Rebuilt or Modding categories, but I suspect those are useful). – Robin Hood↝talk 21:23, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I would agree that those are useful. If I'm having trouble getting a mod to work right, and I can't figure out why from the pages on here look up the category. Tamriel Rebuilt is also rare enough knowledge that you can't assume that everyone knows about them.--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 00:16, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Please be more lenient with Show Preview advice

It might be me, but I feel that sometimes regular editors can be too hasty when giving the known "Use Show Preview" advice to new editors. For a new user the advice might seems to be contradictory. Everyone is invited to freely make edits, but then they see a notice on their talk page that too many subsequent edits gives the patrollers a hard time. I fear this might scare them.

Admittedly, patrolling a few subsequent edits (especially edits to user space) doesn't bother me. They are easy to patrol. Just open the series in tabs (every browser supports them now) and quickly check each edit, and base your judgment on only the last revision. After that Mark the entire bunch as Patrolled. For that reason I never felt warmly towards the idea of Userspace Patrollers. Easy edits are fast to patrol, most time is spend checking edits with dubious claims.

That's my view on it, however, so you can imagine I don't feel comfortable if new editors are warned if they made 5-10 subsequent edits. Give new editors time to figure out the effects of their edits first. Only when someone starts making repeated sessions of 5-10 edits give them a friendly reminder. That's my request to the other (regular) editors, please be more lenient in this regard. Here is at least one editor who patrols who doesn't mind a few series of subsequent edits. --Timenn-<talk> 12:57, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. I only tell people about this if they make a huge series of minor edits, especially repeatedly.--Ghurhak gro-Demril _{or TAO}^Yes? 00:46, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it is better to remove the "(our patrollers really appreciate it!)" part of the standard welcome message. I think a new user does not really need to know what a patroller is, and should not feel like I will not edit this so I don't bother the patrollers. --Wizy (Talk/Contribs) 05:20, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I'll be honest and admit that I think it is a nuisance to Patrol multiple edits in Userspace. I don't really mind though, as new users will have to practice somewhere. I rarely post "Advices" or anything - except if I'm addressing the User about something else, then I always make sure to link to Help:Show Preview which explains the entire Patrolling procedure a whole lot better than "our patrollers really appreciate it". As for our standard welcome message, I suspect that new users gets tired of clicking links when they reach the "Policy and Guidelines", which is of no real interest to them; it is only important to us, as we can later claim that the User was informed about the Policies when he/she joined. An idea could be to move the Help:Show Preview link a bit closer to the top and place the rather "boring" must-have links to the bottom of the message.
Nevertheless, I have noticed the same as Timenn - way too often new Users gets a Notice after only four edits done to the same page; and sometimes they get the Notice several hours after they finished working on the page and that is quite simply wrong. Established community members should realize that such a Notice, no matter how friendly it is, will take away a lot of energy from a brand new user. Must be annoying to be "corrected" after making four edits to a page – and many new users even feel obliged to post an apology, which takes away a bit of the fun they were supposed to have in here.
On the other hand, multiple edits (10+) done to an article will net the user a notice from me right away, as I regard Page Histories one of the most important tools on the Wiki and I simply hate when someone is clogging it up with experiments. --Krusty 06:34, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I think there's a difference between Userspace and Gamespace when it comes to a threshold for advice: as Krusty points out, it's sometimes annoying when histories are clogged up with dozens of tiny edits, but there's rarely a need to look at the edit history of user pages, and I'd rather see people practicing on their pages than on a major article.

I take the point about the Policies page, but the link is to quite a basic introduction that offers a good list of the important policies without being too intimidating. One page that might be worth making is a Help:New Users page. I know we already have at least three policy/help pages devoted to getting started, but a single page describing the most common mistakes might be useful. No gossip, no guesswork, no personal experiences, sign your talk posts and so on. rpeh •T•C•E• 08:54, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Timenn here; consecutive edits to a userpage, especially for the first time, shouldn't get an "advice" message. What I think deserves the use-show-preview advice message:

over, say, 20, consecutive edits to the same page in userspace
the second, maybe third, time the user has made ten or more consecutive edits to the same page in userspace
over ten consecutive edits to the same article outside userspace
the second or third time the user has made over five consecutive edits to the same article outside userspace

Now, please don't get me wrong, I certainly do not want to create a policy over something so small, but I agree that perhaps some users should hesitate before handing out advice messages so frequently. I've provided the above suggestions just so that others can see what criteria I use(d). --GK^talk2me 03:07, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Those four "rules-to-keep-in-mind" are actually great and resemble my own philosophy about multiple edits. Of course, exceptions tend to show up every now and then; if three edits in a row adds a "!" to the page, then changes it to a ".", then back to a "!" - it is time to pull out the Notice right away. Nevertheless, I think it would be great to incorporate the four pointers somewhere, so it is possible for Patrollers and active non-patrollers to look it up when in doubt. --Krusty 06:38, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Elderscrolls.com

It's been mentioned once or twice that we have a few broken links now that Bethesda have devoted the whole of elderscrolls.com to some new game or other. In fact, we have 257 of them. These include several important references, links to downloads (some of which have already been fixed, but not all) and several pages of concept art. There are 126 links to the forums, which might be fixed simply by swapping the URL to forums.bethsoft.com, but I dunno.

My reason for bringing this up here is to ask if anybody knows of any other locations where the information we previously linked to is now found; to ask if we should in future create copies of off-site information (there are obvious copyright problems here, but there might be ways to deal with those); to ask if we should host patches and other downloads (ditto copyright problems); to ask if somebody wants to handle the task of switching the forum links over (we might want to consider a template); and generally to find out what people want to do here.

For now, it might be worth an admin emailing somebody at Bethesda to ask if there are any plans to reinstate the old material - better it comes from one of the top people. rpeh •T•C•E• 21:50, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

From what I can tell, most- but not all- of the forum links can be fixed by changing "www.elderscrolls.com/forums/" to "forums.bethsoft.com/". I really like the idea of a template. I'd be perfectly willing to switch the forum links over (and at the same time figure out what it's supposed to link to if the URL replacement doesn't point to a legit page), but if someone is willing to create a template for it I'd rather wait 'til after that's been created and go ahead and switch them to the new template.

As long as the copyright owners are okay with it, I think it would make sense to host copies of official pages; theoretically, we could create the articles, delete 'em, and then have an admin un-delete if-and-when necessary. Ditto patches and other downloads, though I really don't know what's involved with that.

I've emailed Bethesda at the general contact page and sent gstaff a message on the forums since he was active at the time. (By the way, is there a better way to contact someone?) I'll let y'all know if/when I get a response. --GK^talk2me 02:46, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, that was a quick response. Here's what gstaff said:

"For the forum stuff, you're best bet is linking to the new extensions... we've been using forums.bethsoft.com for well over a year now and plan to keep with that.

In terms of stuff from the old Elder Scrolls site, I'll need to check with some folks on what the archiving process will be. I'll try to find out after holiday break."

So, that looks like a go-ahead on changing over the forum links, and a wait-and-see on everything else. --GK^talk2me 03:09, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Wow, fast stuff - thanks GK. RobinHood70, this sounds like another task for HnB if you're willing. If not, I'll have RoBoT do it when I head back to London. Either way, using a template is probably the way to go: {{forum|id}} or something like that. rpeh •T•C•E• 09:45, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

As you might expect at this time of year, I've got a few things going on the next couple of days, so you'll probably end up getting to it before I will. If I get time to write it up, I'll post before I start, otherwise, assume you can go ahead without duplicating my effort. – Robin Hood↝talk 11:20, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

I've just sent gstaff a follow-up message, to see if there's any new info. Unless someone wants to go ahead and create the template, I'm going to be working on fixing what links I can over the next few days; please, everyone, feel free to point out any mistakes or anything I may have overlooked.

Is anyone aware of what ways there might be to deal with copyright issues involved with creating copies of off-site information? I suppose we could just ask the copyright owners, but I honestly don't know at all how all that works. Like I said, we could always create the pages and delete 'em, so that they'd be there to restore if necessary. --GK^talk2me 19:08, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

I just checked, and it looks like the forums now require the topic name as well as the ID. I only looked quickly, but I didn't find any method of locating an older post by ID only, which may be a problem. There's already a {{Bgs}} template, though that links to http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums, not just .../forums. It looks like that's yet another variation of the forum links, but I'm not that familiar with either Bethsoft's former or current forums, so I'm not sure how that relates to the elderscrolls.com forums. In any event, those links are broken too.

Just to make a clean start, I've created {{BSForums}}. See its docs for how to use it. Let me know if there are any issues. – Robin Hood↝talk 21:26, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

(←) More as a reminder to myself than anything else: I've found that we'll also have to search for external links to other websites, like morrowind.com. I'm going to leave them for now until we find out what's going to happen there, but when we go through and fix the links for the final time we'll have to check those, too. --GK^talk2me 23:50, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Inappropriate Adds

Lately I've been getting 3 inappropriate adds. In particular:

The add I get the most is advertising the site geek 2 geek (www.gk2gk.com). It is an adult dating site.

I also get a different add that also leads to some kind of dating site, judging by the look, but I can remember anything else on that add.

The final leads to a chatting site, www.chatplanet.com

I have no idea what anybody should do in such a situation, so I am posting the message here. --Rigas Papadopoulos • Talk • Deeds • 16:49, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

You mean the Google ad at the bottom of the page? Dating or chat sites are not really considered inappropriate in the general internet audience. --Brf 16:59, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I mean the Google adds. --Rigas Papadopoulos • Talk • Deeds • 17:00, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

If it bothers you that much, and you use firefox, you can get the ad blocker add-on to block the ads you see on webpages. However, like Brf said they are not really inappropriate ads, especially the chat site one.--Pwnageincarnate 17:02, 30 December 2010 (UTC)Pwnageincarnate

It doesn't bother me much. --Rigas Papadopoulos • Talk • Deeds • 17:04, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Then why post? --Pwnageincarnate 17:05, 30 December 2010 (UTC)Pwnageincarnate

"I have no idea what anybody should do in such a situation, so I am posting the message here." --Rigas Papadopoulos • Talk • Deeds • 17:06, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

You need do nothing, since these are not inappropriate. If you see pictures of naked people with links to porn sites, this is probably the appropriate place to report it, or somewhere on Google --Brf 17:11, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

The only person who can do anything about the ads that get shown is Daveh, so his talk page is the place to go. A chat site doesn't sound like a problem, although an adult dating site probably is (although your link doesn't work for me). See a previous set of complaints from 2008 for an example. rpeh •T•C•E• 19:05, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, the correct link is www.gk2gk.com. I fixed it. --Rigas Papadopoulos • Talk • Deeds • 19:16, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

(←) I remembered a conversation about this and now I've finally found it: UESPWiki:Administrator Noticeboard/Archives/Advertising Update. In this discussion, DaveH mentions being willing to remove annoying or inappropriate ads. It's not 100% clear in the discussion what Dave's opinion is, but I think it's implied that dating sites would be considered inappropriate within the context of the site. – Robin Hood↝talk 23:26, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

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