UESPWiki talk:Morrowind Redesign Project

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Suggested change of placement of the People table, in Places[edit]

Moved here instead, from DrPhoton's talk:

I'd like to propose a change in placement of elements in the Places category. Here's why:

While doing all this cleanup work I noticed that the people table is often filling the screen, and at least at first glance obscures valuable info in Notes and Quests. Was there ever a discussion on the order of elements? I think from a viewers standpoint and also for good design/easy read, having quests/notes above the peoples table would be preferable.

As how to implement it, maybe the bot could process it, or, if that's not possible, change it by attrition, as edits are made. Thoughts? --BenouldTC 09:02, 30 March 2008 (EDT)

Since we're now addressing all interior maps...
Suggested order:
  • Place desription
  • Main Text
  • Notes
  • Quests
  • People
Is it possible to anchor/integrate dungeon maps into the Place template? --BenouldTC 15:35, 23 June 2008 (EDT)

Inns[edit]

Do we want to group Inns together with Morrowind:Taverns or make a separate Inn page, maybe like in Oblivion:Inns? --BenouldTC 03:48, 7 May 2008 (EDT)

Time To Close This Down[edit]

I think it's time to declare this project officially "finished" and to coordinate activity through the Task List instead. At the moment, things are being listed on both pages and that's just confusing. The only major task remaining is to add the maps, and there's no need to keep a separate project page for those. Sure, there's some checking to be done and I'm sure improvements will continue for some time, but that's the same as for any other page. I'd suggest that the page be blanked but for a brief explanatory paragraph and a link to the task list, and that it be moved to a "finished" section on the Projects page. I don't think it needs to be deleted because there's a lot of information both here and on the talk page. Thoughts? –RpehTCE 13:15, 22 June 2008 (EDT)

It is hard to let an old friend go, but it is time to move on. I support archiving in the fashion rpeh suggested. --BenouldTC 16:35, 22 June 2008 (EDT)
It's pretty close, but my only hesitation regarding this is that I know that Tribunal and Bloodmoon are not quite up to the level of Morrowind in terms of quality and completeness. Also, I know there's a few location pages within Morrowind which still need to be created (see the red-links on my sandbox). I say once we get those pages created, we should focus on finishing up the Expansions pages (perhaps alter this page to be Morrowind Expansion Redesign Project - though that's somewhat lengthy) before we can truly call this job "finished". --TheRealLurlock Talk 17:21, 22 June 2008 (EDT)
Pst, Lurlock, the redlinks in your sandbox are misspelled places ;) Bloodmoon is up to par with MW, a few armor/weapons pages need final details, the merchants have to be checked for item lists, but that's all, AFIK. I have not looked Tribunal over, but if it needs work, I'll be happy to help. --BenouldTC 18:28, 22 June 2008 (EDT)
Yeah, as far as those redlinks are concerned, instead of "Akimaes Ilanipu Egg Mine" we have Akimaes-Ilanipu Egg Mine. "Almurbalarami"->Almurbalarammi, "Elith Pal Mine"->Elith-Pal Mine, "Felas Ancestral Tomb"->Falas Ancestral Tomb, "Manat Farmhouse"->Manat's Farmhouse, "Missir-Dadalit"->Missir-Dadalit Egg Mine, "Mul"->Mul Grotto, "Sterdecan's Farmhosue"->Sterdecan's Farmhouse, "Vanusanalit Egg Mine"->Vansunalit Egg Mine and "Yanemus"->Yanemus Mine. Tribunal and Bloodmoon have a few bits and bobs missing but all the NPCs, factions, quests and locations are up. I think it would be a good idea to coordinate things through one page rather than having this one as a distraction. –RpehTCE 00:48, 23 June 2008 (EDT)
Hmm. Well, oops on my part - I'm trying to remember where that list originally came from, as it's not like me to make that many typos on one page, so I probably copied it from the Places page at the time or something. Anyhow, my bad. I'll go ahead and correct those. I seem to recall there were still some missing pages in Bloodmoon, though, but maybe I missed them. I'll check later. --TheRealLurlock Talk 12:11, 23 June 2008 (EDT)
Okay, I stand corrected. There is, however, a good deal of work to be done on the Expansion creature and items pages to bring them up to Morrowind's level. Currently, they're mostly piled onto single pages and not very well organized in some cases. --TheRealLurlock Talk 12:53, 23 June 2008 (EDT)

I don't think we need to declare every Morrowind, Bloodmoon, and Tribunal page perfect before we can say that the Redesign Project is complete. This is a wiki, so there will always be more edits that need to be done. But if we're talking about a few pages here and there, then it seems that standard wiki tools (cleanup tags, Task List entries) are more appropriate to keep track of the odds and ends, rather than a whole redesign project. I'd say that the project only needs to kept active as long as there are large sections of work that need coordinating and/or large-scale formatting questions that need to be answered. And most of those have been tackled here.

However, there is one area where I think some questions still need to be resolved, namely related to the format we want to use for the incomplete interior maps. I raised some questions about this earlier on the page, under Restart. If everyone is OK with Hoggwild's existing map format specifications then I'd at least like confirmation of that. If not, I think we should revise those specifications to match what we'd like to see done. And the Morrowind Redesign Project seems like the best context in which to complete that discussion. --NepheleTalk 13:13, 23 June 2008 (EDT)

Ok, I can see the maps needing attention. How about we archive the rest of the page then, so we can focus on what still needs to be done. I'll write some thoughts about image standards in a few, but generally think Hoggwild's suggestions are overly complicated. --BenouldTC 14:06, 23 June 2008 (EDT)

City footers / Store pages[edit]

Borrowing an idea from Wikipedia, I came up with a plan for connecting the various pages connected with a given city, using footers, like Template:Dagon Fel Footer|this example on all pages relating to the city. It lists all businesses within the city, all relevant NPCs, and also any neighbors that you can fast-travel to from the city. I thought about including quests as well, but the names tend to be a bit long, and in many cases fairly numerous, and quests have their own footers, so it would look weird to include this on quest pages. This would work as is for almost all cities, though I think we'd have to break Vivec's up into cantons to keep it from being huge. The main Vivec page could have a simplified version, just linking to the individual canton pages, and including the "Neighbors" section.

Additionally, I'd like to create pages for each of the businesses in all of the cities, I've drawn up a list in a sandbox. Only problem is that the majority of stores in Morrowind are named after their proprietors, e.g. "Heifnir: Trader" in the Dagon Fel example I gave. Whether [[Morrowind:Heifnir: Trader|Heifnir: Trader]] should be its own page or just a redirect to Heifnir, I haven't decided. It's clear that at least SOME stores do not have their merchant's name in the title, mostly taverns, but also The Razor Hole and almost all of the shops in Vivec. I think if The Razor Hole is significant to get its own page, then so should all stores, even those named after their owners. Given the high number of them, it might make sense to split them into categories: Blacksmiths, Booksellers, Clothiers, etc. based on their wares. The Category:Morrowind-Places-Stores category is currently empty, and in this setup, it would remain so, since no store would be labelled simply as "Store". Perhaps it could serve as a parent category for all the others, and thus Category:Morrowind-Places-Blacksmiths, Category:Morrowind-Places-Taverns and Category:Morrowind-Places-Traders would all be included within the Stores category. (So far, only Taverns is particularly established; Blacksmiths and Traders have 1 and 2 pages respectively, since almost all the rest seem to be named after their merchants.)

Any objections, comments, suggestions, before I go crazy on this? --TheRealLurlock Talk 10:09, 9 November 2008 (EST)

I don't think it's necessary to be honest. All the people and places have infoboxes that already link to the city page and anything more than that is overkill. Apart from anything else I think it's going to create very ugly footers. Your Dagon Fel example is okay as there isn't very much going on there, but for Ald'ruhn or Balmora - to say nothing of Vivec - it'll be a mess.
For stores, I'd been following a policy of creating shop pages only where the proprietor wasn't obvious from the name, like "The Rat in The Pot". The proprietors already have a list of items on their pages and more than that seems unnecessary. –RpehTCE 11:19, 9 November 2008 (EST)
I'm not sure in that case how we justify the existence of The Razor Hole page. His store is no more significant than Meldor: Armorer located nearby, so if we're not going to do all the stores, I don't think we should do any. Make Morrowind:The Razor Hole a redirect to Morrowind:Thorek and avoid the redundancy. Morrowind:Jobasha's Rare Books already follows this pattern. I do think we should consider having pages for establisments where there are multiple merchants to be found, e.g. Arrille's Tradehouse (or any of the others listed on Tradehouses). Even though it's owned and run by Arrille, there are two trainers found there, as well as one quest-giver. The existing tavern pages should stay, as there are typically a number of people in any given tavern, usually a few of whom are significant in some way. Guildhall and Temple pages make sense as well, as there's generally a number of service-providers in each, as well as related quests.
As for the footers, I've already offered a suggestion on how to deal with Vivec - taken separately, each canton is about the size of a small-to-medium city by itself, so it wouldn't be too bad. I'll have to try Ald'ruhn and Balmora just to see how bad they are in terms of size. (Ald'ruhn can be split between Under Skar and outside, potentially.) Another possibility is if we can figure out how Wikipedia does those Hide/Show footers seen on many pages, then they only use up space if you click on the link. I just think it's a handy navigational tool to jump from page to page without having to go back to the parent pages. I use them all the time on WP, and thought we were missing out by not using them here. --TheRealLurlock Talk 11:54, 9 November 2008 (EST)
So, the [[Template:Balmora Footer|Balmora Footer]]? Not that bad. I used smaller text for the people section, and that solved the overly-large size issue. I suspect that Balmora is the worst case scenario, because unlike the other large cities (Ald'ruhn, Vivec, and Sadrith Mora), there's no easy way to split it up into smaller sections. So I'd expect that this footer will likely be the largest of the lot, and it's not TOO bad. (If we can get the Show/Hide function to work, even better.) --TheRealLurlock Talk 13:14, 9 November 2008 (EST)
(edit conflict) For stores I can go either way. There's no way that Balmora footer example you just created works though. It's far, far too large. –RpehTCE 13:16, 9 November 2008 (EST)
I went ahead and changed The Razor Hole to a redirect, merging its content on to Thorek's page. I also created redirects for the other Blacksmiths, and I'll be doing the rest later. I think this is a reasonable way of handling these. Locations with multiple merchants or other significant NPCs can get actual pages rather than redirects, but there's if there's no need for pages for stores named after their sole proprietors, then there's no need to have pages for ANY stores with just one merchant, as that can easily be replaced by a redirect to the NPC page. The only slightly questionable thing now is whether stores with one merchant but with a related quests should get a page, though the quests are probably linked on the NPC pages already, so again, I guess that's just redundant. One idea I did get from adding The Razor Hole content onto Thorek's page is that we might still want to add images of the stores to the NPC pages, or possibly a map in some cases where the stores might be harder to find. Might be worth even incorporating this into the NPC Summary template, much like the Ingredient Summary template. (I couldn't find a good way to keep the wares chart from starting below the image - not too aggregious here, but in some cases, that could look ugly.) --TheRealLurlock Talk 15:41, 9 November 2008 (EST)
After discovering a usage of the Showhide template that more or less did what I was hoping for, I altered the [[Template:Balmora Footer|Balmora Footer]] so that it just displays the header unless you click the [show] link. I think this gets around the "it's too large" complaint, though I'm not 100% satisfied with the formatting. However, I've gone as far as I know how to go getting CSS, HTML, and wiki to all talk to eachother. If anybody can figure out how these are done on Wikipedia, please fix it. But for now, I think it's good enough as a proof of concept. Any thoughts now? --TheRealLurlock Talk 23:20, 30 November 2008 (EST)
As I said in my original reply: "I don't think it's necessary to be honest. All the people and places have infoboxes that already link to the city page and anything more than that is overkill". That's still what I think. –RpehTCE 03:27, 1 December 2008 (EST)

Morrowind Homes revamp[edit]

I'd like to propose some work to be done on the various <City> Homes pages. (e.g. Ald'ruhn Homes, Vivec Homes, etc.) Currently, these are not the greatest pages, informally written, containing various offenses to spelling and grammar, etc., and most of the information on them is somewhat subjective and opinionated. Additionally, several of the "homes" listed on these pages are not actually homes, but stores or guild halls, which shouldn't be on a page called "Homes". It seems these pages were created to give the player a list of places they might want to move into. (They frequently suggest killing the occupants in order to move in yourself.) My proposal would be to describe the homes as they are, without necessarily implying that this is a place you'd want to live.

I've created a list of homes in the game (may be missing a few). My proposal is that each <City> Homes page would have a header (or maybe a Linkable Entry if we decide to put them in some sort of table) and all of the Home pages in my sandbox would be redirects to those headers, with appropriate categories so they appear in the various Morrowind-Places city categories. My already-existing Service Redirect template could be modified to add these. The listings on Homes pages should include a list of all NPCs living in each home, with links to either the NPC pages or the <City> People page for non-relevant NPCs. (Or just link to the NPC names regardless, and let the existing redirects do their job for the non-relevants.) They should also list any notable loot to be found in the houses, as well as any related quests. They would also have a brief descriptive paragraph, objectively stating what is in the house - the current language sounds like someone trying to sell you a timeshare. Larger residences, such as Manors inside and outside the major cities, should have their own pages. A few already do, but most do not. Manors are typically large and contain several NPCs, and in some cases multiple cells, such as the Ald'ruhn Manors. They also often have related quests. I can do the majority of the reworks on the Homes pages, though if somebody with a bot could do the redirect-creating later, that would help a lot. Any comments/suggestions/outraged objections? --TheRealLurlock Talk 16:48, 25 November 2008 (EST)

I've created the first page in the format I'm thinking of for the rest: Pelagiad Homes. It could maybe benefit from some images. I've avoided the biased statements such as "large and spacious" or "small and cozy" that exist on the other Homes pages - each section gives a brief, matter-of-fact description of what the homes are like and what can be found in them. Items of interest or value are listed for potential thieves, but suggestions to murder the occupants and move in yourself have been avoided. (Who'd want to live in Pelagiad anyhow? Yes, I'm aware that that was a biased statement in and of itself, but this isn't the article, just a talk page about it.) I've also removed the "Services" section seen on the other Homes pages. Pelagiad is so small that most of the houses are not far from the few shops and the tavern here, and there's no fast travel in town unless you count Divine Intervention. I've also listed only homes, not taverns where you could kill everyone and pretend it's your home, or anything like that. The article is about homes as they are, not meant to be a list of places you could call home if you had a sufficient murderous streak. I think this format would be better for all the Homes pages. Thoughts? --TheRealLurlock Talk 13:18, 2 December 2008 (EST)
That looks fine to me. You can get the house images from here. –RpehTCE 03:24, 3 December 2008 (EST)
Ooh, I wasn't aware that you'd already partially done Pelagiad. Is that the only one you've done, or are there others? I just picked it first because it's a relatively small town that didn't have a page yet, and I was curious what that whole Ignatius Flaccus thing was all about. (I guess his house won't get a screenshot, but that's okay because it's an invisible test cell anyhow.) --TheRealLurlock Talk 09:30, 3 December 2008 (EST)
That's the only one I'd started. Having grabbed the images and written a few lines of text I felt far much too like an estate agent for comfort! I'm glad you've taken this project on because I really didn't want to have to do it. –RpehTCE 10:45, 3 December 2008 (EST)
I know how you feel - trying to find something interesting to say for each house when the contents are all pretty much the same useless junk can be a challenge. Did you already generate screenshots for any other towns that you haven't uploaded maybe? I can do it if you didn't, just don't want to duplicate effort here. I generally do most of my screenshots from the CS, so I get better camera and environment control, which is fine for interiors, but exterior shots from the CS need to have a sky added in, so I usually don't do them because it's a pain, either adding a fake sky in Photoshop or having to load up the game, travel to each destination, push any undesirables out of the shot, (I've even done stuff like deleting trees and such that were just in the way) and then trying to arrange good shots without the fine control of the CS camera. Anyhow, I might leave the screenshots until later, or maybe somebody else will do it. I'll just work on getting the pages up for now. --TheRealLurlock Talk 16:07, 3 December 2008 (EST)
No I haven't done any others. I always do 'em in game - I can't get the hang of moving around in the CS. Slap a NeedsImage tag on any you don't want to do and I'll finish them off at some point. –RpehTCE 00:25, 4 December 2008 (EST)
Hey, guys -- been a while since I checked in, and now I see that there's some more work that I could do. I hope you don't mind a volunteer for getting screenshots? – KJR1012 Talk Email Contribs 09:27, 4 December 2008 (EST)
The more the merrier! –RpehTCE 09:46, 4 December 2008 (EST)

City District Category[edit]

Having just corrected (I hope) the various Oblivion categories for the IC districts, I came to look at the Morrowind categories for the districts in Vivec. To quote somebody famous "Houston, we have a problem...". The Place Summary template is setting the category as "Game-Places-City-District", but the categories that have been set up are "Game-Places-City District" (with a space between the city and the district). The complication with the Morrowind categories is that the Service Redirect template is being used for the various shops in Vivec, and the numerous redirect pages that use it explicitly set the category as City District - e.g. "Vivec Foreign". So my question is: should we change all of the affected service redirects to explicitly set the category in the manner that the Place Summary template does, or should we change the Place Summary template to set up the category in the way that has been manually done? At present, we have a number of service redirects in an existing category - such as Morrowind-Places-Vivec Foreign - while the non-redirect pages are in a non-existent category - such as Category:Morrowind-Places-Vivec-Foreign. --Gaebrial 09:23, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

It's (mainly) my fault. I noticed that we had wanted categories for things like Category:Oblivion-Places-Imperial CityWaterfront District‎ (without a space), made a bad assumption that something had deleted a hyphen (what we usually use as a separator), and added it back. Looking again, it seems the upgrade stopped recognising the space that was there which is why we got the odd wanted categories. It probably should be put back to space, using the syntax. –RpehTCE 09:34, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
Looks like the parser doesn't like a blank space between the city and the district in the template. I've put in an explicit space character (#32), and it appears to have accepted it. Just got to wait for the categories to sort themselves out, now. I suppose that means I'll have to undo what I've done with the oblivion categories... :( --Gaebrial 09:56, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
(Update) Well, I've removed the prod tag from the correct templates, and requested speedy deletion of the ones I created. How long until the categories and the Wanted categories page manage to sort themselves out? The affected pages have already sorted out their categories, but they are still appearing on the 'old' category page. --Gaebrial 10:09, 29 June 2009 (UTC)
I hurried them along using null edits. The reason they showed in the correct categories when viewing the page is that if you're logged in you get a non-cached version; the wiki was still using the cached copy to decide the category though, so they still showed up in the old category page. All sorted now. Sorry about that. –RpehTCE 10:22, 29 June 2009 (UTC)

Joining[edit]

I didn't know if I needed to put this on here, but you guys have a list of members, so I thought I should. Can I join this project? I'd love to help out. Thanks! --Archer7 21:13, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Generally, with projects, you can just add your name to the list if you're going to work on it. I don't know if TheRealLurlock checks this page much anymore, but it looks like he'd be the one to go to if you're looking to be given a specific task within the project. Vely►Talk►Email 22:15, 30 April 2012 (UTC)
Okay, thanks! --Archer7 00:32, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Wow, didn't realize I was still listed as a project leader on this - especially since I took that 3-year leave of absence. Not like it ever involved much other than coming up with the criteria shown on the main page. Can't really think of any specific tasks, other than just look over the criteria and if you see any pages that don't meet them, then try and fix them. Pretty much same as any project. --TheRealLurlock Talk 02:40, 1 May 2012 (UTC)
Cool. Let me know if you need anything else...--Archer7 20:42, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Still active?[edit]

Is this wikiproject still active, or has it be replaced by UESPWiki:Morrowind Overhaul Project? — Darklocq  ¢ 18:14, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

It has been replaced. MWOP is the current active Morrowind project. (That's why I created MWOP :P) Jeancey (talk) 03:19, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
Ah, I see. Well, I've watchlisted this just in case someone still shows up here, like I did. I'll confine my MW coverage improvement posts to MWOP's talk page, though. — Darklocq  ¢ 21:36, 29 March 2017 (UTC)