Lore talk:Fish

Purpose of this page

Of course its purpose is to document ESO fish without cluttering the Bestiary with a lot of random fish, which I fully support. However, I noticed some thing that might need improvement or need some clarifications for future users.

• Should only ESO creatures from fishing holes be added to this page?

• If yes, at this moment Merringar is in the list, which might be an error?
• If yes, should this be clarified in the lead and Lore:Bestiary so future editors won't add any other aquatic animals (like Slaughterfish or Dreugh)?
• If yes, what to do about animals that are in (or will be in the future) this list and thus are not strictly from ESO (like Lore:Salmon --> Salmon)? Should they be excluded from this list or added to both the Bestiary and Aquatic Animals?
• If no, then we should expand this list with quite some more entries. And should they be separated from the ESO fish or added in between them?
• If no, what about semi-aquatic creatures? Mudcrab, Dreugh, etc?

• How should the animals be categorized? I like that they are ordered by province. However, they are a bit randomly listed within these headers (see Aquatic Animals#Cyrodiil). Should they be ordered:

• alphabetically? It seems like most of them are already like this, but it's a bit inconsistent.
• by region? The different animals can be found within sub-regions of the provinces and might be separated further by these.
• by living area? The different animals can be found in different types of water (like foul water, lakes, rivers, salt water). Independent if they'll be categorized by this criteria, I think it's a good idea that the descriptions are expanded (or updated?) by their current in-game description. For example, in-game, it is said that the boga is "A rare fish found only in the rivers of Shadowfen.", while our own description only says it's just "A type of fish that can be found in Shadowfen.". As we know they are a river fish, why not add this info? Likewise, the Wrothgarian fish on the lore page are said to be found in "the cold waters of", but this is not reflected in their in-game description. Is there any basis for this? Because not all water in cold areas is cold itself. It seems like the descriptions were updated in-game for all aquatic animals without it being updated/reflected on our lore pages?

Thoughts? --Ilaro (talk) 13:32, 14 April 2020 (GMT)

• I don't believe this should just be for ESO, even though that's how it is currently populated. It should contain aquatic animals from all games/sources.
• I wouldn't include semi-aquatic animals, amphibians/crustaceans for example would stay on there existing bestiary pages.
• Alphabetically makes the most sense, in keeping with the other Bestiary entries.

There's my tuppence Kiz^{(email - talk)} 21:50, 15 April 2020 (GMT)

This page was originally created because seeing all of the fish from eso (without unique images and very little information, might I add) was unnecessarily populating the bestiary and distracting from actually interesting creatures. We can absolutely add other creatures here to fill it up with more than just descriptionless fish. Keep crustaceans and amphibians in the normal page, animals that live underwater (like fish) can go here. Mudcrabs can go on this page and the normal bestiary because we have more information on them and they actually attack you. If you want to populate this page with more creatures or add that X fish can be found in the ocean within the region it's found in, go right on ahead. --MolagBallet (talk) 21:58, 15 April 2020 (GMT)

As one of the people who was very for this page being created/ESO fish being kicked out of the bestiary, I disagree with moving actual fish, dolphins, etc to here because it's just replicating the original issue of actual animals being buried under a ton of generic fish from ESO fishing. Maybe an "aquarium" page could be set up, one with links to a generic fish from ESO page (Basically copy paste this page/move it), one with crustaceans, etc. Or just keep the animals with actual depictions/lore on bestiary and keep ESO fish on their own page. This page is only going to get a load more generic ESO fish as new zones are released, with very little unique aquatic animals getting added due to the nature of ESO lacking water combat, thus making the page even more of a burial ground for actual animals with lore. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 07:19, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Good point and it was basically the reason why I made this post in the first place and why I made point 2 (should be explained in the lead if this is the case). Also, what are your thought about point 3 and the rest of the post? --Ilaro (talk) 19:16, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Although now that they are moved, it might be a better idea to just separate the ESO fish with the other aquatic creatures instead of moving them back. --Ilaro (talk) 19:21, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

I like option three, since it's the one that least acknowledges the ESO reason for separation. A user who sees "Aquatic Animals" at the top of every page is going to think that the creature that they're looking for will go there. I don't support any alternative that requires any explanation beyond the name of the page. I think that there are ways to alleviate the ESO-burying issues without making arbitrary delineations, and the one I personally like most is separation by Body of Water. Dcsg (talk) 01:26, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

(←) I agree with Imperialbattlespire. We can't bury the few real fish under hundred of content-free entries. My preferred option is moving the fish out of here and labeling this page clearly as a containing zone. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 13:55, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

I was opposed to the creation of this page to begin with, but if we want to separate aquatic animals out of the bestiary then we have to own that decision. This is not an ESO fish aquarium; the purpose of this page is quite clear. It's all-or-nothing; we cannot cherrypick what gets banished from the bestiary proper. Dcsg is entirely correct in calling this an arbitrary distinction, and it will only confuse readers further if we continue to allow only some fish on the bestiary.

If navigation is an issue on this page, why not divide it alphabetically like the main bestiary? That would at least ensure that "real" entries aren't quite as buried. As far as I'm concerned, the issue with this page is its poor layout as a single-page list, not its contents. —⁠Legoless (talk) 14:41, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Edit: Another solution I think should be considered in addition to an alphabetical split is compiling entries on this page, similar to what we've done on the main bestiary to reduce entries. We used to have a dozen entries on the bestiary for various species of wolf, but now we simply ensure that a prominent link to Lore:Wolf is displayed on Lore:Bestiary W. The same approach would work here, e.g. make a Lore:Eel page to list and discuss the various different species and then just put a singular entry under Lore:Aquatic Animals E. This would result in a much cleaner list, and together with a split would ensure major entries like Slaughterfish would be a lot more prominent. I'm quite sure I suggested compiling fish entries as an alternative to splitting them from the main bestiary prior to this page's creation, but I guess that's a fait accompli now.

Essentially, my proposal is to simply apply our existing bestiary format (alphabetical list with compiled entries) to this new offshoot, which is the next best thing to simply keeping the two combined. I must reiterate that this issue of bestiary lists becoming "too long" is not a problem that is going to go away; the more lore we get and the better our documentation becomes, the longer and longer our list pages will become. We need to deal with that and accept that some entries will be less interesting than others. —⁠Legoless (talk) 14:59, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm in favor of scrapping this page, and remerging the content after pages like Lore:Eel are made to house the ESO entries. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 15:50, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

I personally feel this page needs to be exclusive to fish and ocean life that has no lore on it or very little lore. The reasoning is because there is some lifeforms that have very important lore. That do belong into the Bestiary. Dreugh for example never should have been added into this section. Neither should have Slaughterfish, Sea Serpent, Whales and Sea Drakes. This should be used mainly so fish just don't clutter the lore pages. But some are so important they belong in the bestiary.I'm in favor of keeping it but for stuff that has little to no lore on it. The rest should be in the bestiary if it has any lore or has a lore citation or sourcing. (TheVampKnight (talk) 01:17, 15 December 2020 (UTC))

I've hated this page since day one because of how arbitrary the scope of it is. Not every animal that swims in water should be on here, I get wanting to solve the issue of eso fish clogging the bestiary but this was the wayyyy wrong method of going about it, it doesn't fix the issue and moves the problem somewhere else.

A while ago ImpBat made various sandboxes to list each type of fish and its variants and I think that's what should be done instead, make articles for eels etc. and list the variants. For more generic fish the same could be done, or Lore:Fish could be created in the same vain as Lore:Metals etc The Rim of the Sky (talk) 02:19, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

I've reverted TheVampKnight's changes which moved random entries from this page back to the bestiary. I agree with Rim that this division is entirely arbitrary, and shuffling "major" creatures back to the main bestiary doesn't alleviate this problem.

I remain of the opinion that the best solution would be to alphabetise this list in a similar fashion to the main bestiary. This would reduce the problem with it being a giant list at present and would make the "major" entries a bit more visible for readers. The problem with adding a single Lore:Fish entry to the main bestiary (as Rim and Imperialbattlespire suggest) is that it would include slaughterfish, which absolutely deserve their own bestiary entry. If we bunch all other fish but exclude slaughterfish, we land right back at the same issue of arbitrary division. —⁠Legoless (talk) 13:13, 15 December 2020 (UTC)

As I perceive it, the bottom line is that naming the page "Aquatic Animals" and then trying to restrict usage to only ESO fishing entries is at the very least misleading and at worst deliberately so. The fact of the matter is that animals which are aquatic in nature which aren't ESO fish would belong here just by the name of the page, and so it is no solution at all, as Legoless and others have said, to arbitrarily remove entries. I would say that whether this page is folded back into the bestiary or not, UESP would be best served adopting ImperialBattlespire's format. — J. J. Fullerton _﴾talk﴿ 06:57, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

(←) The current splitting of the pages that is happening at the moment is the entirely incorrect way to go about this. I'm not sure if the current method is the intended implementation or not, but instead of having some actual lore based connection between the fish, the split is based on ESO icon. This results in an actively incorrect and disingenuous display of the information. Ilinalta Trout and Mud Lamprey, for example, are on the same page, but these are 100% completely different fish, and in terms of lore, there is absolutely no relation between the two. Even the name of the pages are based entirely on non-lore names for the icons, like longfish, which doesn't actually appear in game. They also have zero usefulness to lore, they just list names by ESO icon, which I'm not sure how that's helpful to anyone... it definitely lowers the quality of the information displayed when compared to this page. Jeancey (talk) 19:55, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Proposed Solution

I'd like to propose this approach as a solution:

Example

Eels are a common form of aquatic creature.

• Variations: Azure Eel, Mustard Eel, Nedic Eel, Netch-Hook Eel, Operant Eel, Reaper's Eel, Ribbon Eel, Sand Eel, Sand Moray, Sewer Eel, Snapper Eel, Snipe Eel, Swamp Eel, Trapjaw Eel, Wolf-Eel, Thrassian Eel, Yellow Moray

Found in:

• ESO

Seems like a decent option, to me. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 20:38, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Edit: Essentially, this would be implementing a major merging of sections based on name. So, like in the above examples, all of the eels would be in one entry, as would all of the cods, pike, leeches, slaughterfish, octopus. While there would still most likely be a few ESO fish that would be by themselves, this would hopefully significantly reduce the number of repetitive entries. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 20:46, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I guess this works, the categorization should definitely factor in both name/icon rather than just one (DLC zones do have more reliable icons and less asset re-use). I don't care if Lore:Eel is its own page or just gets an entry on the bestiary, this "Aquatic Animals" page just really needs to go already and this solution seems fine. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 21:01, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I agree with this, as it's a step towards making things cleaner that doesn't rely on arbitrary delineation. It will likely reduce the size of the page to probably around a half and alleviates the ESO fish suffocating the other animals problem. I think it's important to view this as an intermediate measure, where things can be reassessed afterwards. -Dcsg (talk) 21:11, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Also, to note, the comma-separated list of variants probably won't work. I think it's best handled as prose, where the information about where they are found can be incorporated. -Dcsg (talk) 21:51, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Merge Back Into Bestiary

With the purely beneficial contribution that was just made by Dcsg, I think the content is now compressed enough to be remerged into the bestiary, and this page removed from the Bestiary Template. While there is the possibility of FURTHER compression (which is still a good idea), and what exactly the fate of this page should be (possibly becoming Lore:Fish), I think this is the next obvious move. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 03:00, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Agreed: I propose that we remove all non-fish from this page and consolidate them into their own entries in their proper Normal Bestiary pages. All sharks get lumped together and thrown on Lore:Bestiary S under "Shark", dolphins go under D, all whales get consolidated under Whales, all Octopi, all Shrimp, All Crabs, etc. Do that, rename this travesty of my own making to Lore:Fish and call it a day. -MolagBallet (talk) 03:01, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

As the one who suggested it, I think this page can become for just fish as Lore:Fish, as collapsed as it is right now with my most recent edit. Then, a "Fish" entry can be added to the main Bestiary and the non-fish can be placed directly into the main Bestiary, again as collapsed as they are right now. -Dcsg (talk) 03:07, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Lets do it, 100% agree deal with this its bad for the users of the usep to keep it like it is.TheVampKnight (talk) 03:12, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

I am for Molagballet's suggestion for catagorizing all sharks, whales, shrimps, octipi, etc together. Zebendal (talk) 03:30, 12 February 2021 (UTC)