UESPWiki:Community Portal/Archive 6

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.

Major Discussions

These links are to major discussions, which, though they reside on separate pages, are now considered to be archived. If these issues are to be de-archived, they should simply be added back to the main page in the usual way.

Major Discussions
Anonymous Editing -- Complete Desirability of, limits on, and technical implementation of anonymous editing.
Copyright Issues -- Complete Use of copyright protected material from Elder Scrolls games. Books, screenshots, maps, etc.
Morrowind Quest Pages -- Complete Proposed reorganization of Morrowind quest pages.
Patrollers -- Inactive Addition of a "Patrollers" category of user, that would have the ability to patrol pages. New policy page: UESPWiki:Patrollers
Principles Controversy -- Inactive Controversy over basic UESP Wiki principles and practices, including (links are for new policy pages based on this discussion): Archiving (what and when), Civility (nature and enforcement on talk pages), Consensus, Irc Usage (limits as a decision making forum).
Wikiscrolls Project (Wikiscrolls) -- Inactive A new wiki similar to the UESP.
De-Adminship Request -- Complete Request for Aristeo to return to editor status; resolved.

Archiving/Subpaging

Prior archive: Subpaging.

Following was moved from separate "Community Portal into small pieces", since it essentially re-proposed "Community Portal Subpaging". --Wrye 18:09, 27 January 2007 (EST)

Now I'd like to suggest breaking this page up. It is over 80 kilobytes in size, so it would be in order. Several subpages that are parallel to each other would work. --FMan | Talk | contribs 11:09, 18 January 2007 (EST)

Would make sense, it's currently huge and only the bottom topics seem active Jadrax 11:18, 18 January 2007 (EST)

I didn't check since this suggestion came to me when I was already editing a section of the page and didn't see it as a whole at the time. That appears to be true except for one topic in the middle, so in fact archiving would be the preferred action to cut the current size - someone just needs to do it. :) --FMan | Talk (contribs) 12:02, 18 January 2007 (EST)

So this page would be more like a forum and the pages would be more like threads. Sounds neat! --Aristeo | Talk 13:23, 18 January 2007 (EST)

This page was somewhat overdue for archiving, so I've gone ahead and archived the older, resolved topics. But there have been a number of important issues brought up on the Community Portal over the last couple months, which I felt it would possibly be premature to archive. So the resulting page is still somewhat lengthy. A couple of these topics are possible candidates for subpaging, in that they are issues that have come up a few times, in particular:

No Spoiler Warnings

Mod Info in Articles

Or if the community feels that those topics are sufficiently resolved, another option would be to try to create a guideline page summarizing the discussion (at which point it could be archived). I'm leaning towards the latter: I think these are topics that warrant guidelines. Unless someone else would like to tackle writing up a guideline, I'm willing to take it on... but it will be a few weeks before I have the chance. --Nephele 16:06, 18 January 2007 (EST)

Good deal. I'd suggest subpaging the Mod Info in Articles. I don't think that we reached a resolution, and it will probably need a guideline at some point. --Wrye 20:25, 18 January 2007 (EST)

---

Re Aristeo's recent changes to status of subpage topics. I don't think that Complete is a good designation for most of those. Inactive is probably better. Part of the notion of the subpages is that they're likely to be open for a long time, though going through varying periods of activity and inactivity. E.g. it's possible that anonymous editing will come up again (relatively new users sometimes have pro/con things to say about it). Likewise, "Copyright" and "Curing Stupidity" are perennial topics -- I would rate these as "Inactive". Principles Controversy is certainly not complete since Nephele is still working on guidelines, AFAIK (so it should be "Active"). --Wrye 18:20, 27 January 2007 (EST)

Other page maintenance noes. I've added a 'Contents header to make it easier to edit the subpage listing without having to edit the whole page. I've forced a break == both at the bottom to keep the text from getting to crunched.

Also I've cleared out a couple of headers that have been subpaged. --Wrye 18:35, 27 January 2007 (EST)

I changed "resolved" to "complete", because not everything here is a dispute. Complete seemed to be a better term.

Also, what is the criteria that you use for rating the activity of pages? --Aristeo | Talk 21:22, 27 January 2007 (EST)

I agree that "Complete" makes better sense when there's no dispute or question to be resolved -- however, most topics here involve one or the other of those. E.g., there was certainly a dispute over whether Anonymous Editing should be allowed and about Copyright Issues. Dispute doesn't necessarily mean a knock down, drag out fight -- it just means that there was a disagreement.

As for when I would say "Inactive", my rough rule of thumb would be no discussion for three weeks -- unless someone objected, in which case I would keep it "Active" for longer.

BTW, I've archived some of the older subpaging discussion and retitled and moved this section to the top since it's "Meta" -- i.e., about the page itself. --Wrye 15:51, 3 February 2007 (EST)

Archived. --Wrye 00:56, 16 March 2007 (EDT)

No Spoiler Warnings

It has been proposed that we just get rid of spoiler warnings altogether, but leave some sort of message on the Main Page and quite possibly the main gamespace pages. The argument behind this is that the entire site is like one big spoiler, so hiding everything that may potentially reveal plot twists or ending details seems silly. Spoiler warnings are bulky, and not mentioning the information altogether is censorship. What does everyone think about this? --Aristeo | Talk 23:21, 1 November 2006 (EST)

I've been slowly gravitating towards this point of view myself. It does seem kind of foolish to be hinting at the facts instead of just providing them when the whole purpose of the site is to provide information. Why force a reader to have to go to extra work to find out the information that they came to the site to find out? And I know that for myself when I want to play a game without being spoiled, I choose to not visit any web sites; when I start browsing the web for information, I do it knowing and accepting that I could end up finding out more information than I was really looking for. So why should we treat our readers any differently? --Nephele 23:31, 1 November 2006 (EST)

I think we're both hinting that this is a content over style issue. The styles are the potential ways to announce a spoiler, and the content is the spoiler itself. The only way that truly frees the content is to not have any spoiler warnings, text hiding, or censoring of any spoilers. I doubt this will be a deciding factor, but I had to address that anyway. --Aristeo | Talk 12:21, 2 November 2006 (EST)

So does anyone else have any other thoughts on the subject? We discussed the issue in IRC, so there may be some more opinions on this matter. Or perhaps everyone's thoughts have already been addressed by Nephele and me? --Aristeo | Talk 12:21, 2 November 2006 (EST)

I think that the spoilers are a part of Oblivion. It's essentially agreed that they belong on Quest pages, since these are essentialy what is protected. I think that we mind as well just open them up, no warnings except on the Main Page and Section Main Pages, and simply say: this is a walkthrough and information database. What do people come here for besides spoilers and helpful hints? --Dylnuge 22:55, 16 November 2006 (EST)

I've performed some research into this, and conclude that fully ½ of all the players would prefer spoilers be confined to specific areas. The remaining have are about evenly split to the degree that ¼ have no opinion, and the other ¼ would prefer solutions/spoilers be interleaved in the main content. The reasons and psychology are not w/o precedent and are fairly easy to grok no matter which side of the fence you sit.

I really think spoilers should be confined to specific areas (such as quest pages, or item pages), rather than interleaved through-out the content. At first I tried to enumerate all the reasons for this, and include my research into this matter by looking at several other game sites which asked this very question, but then I realized no one here is very interested in reading a 150 page magnus opus. An opinion was requested, and here it is: confine spoilers to specific areas. ⌈Uniblab 06:23, 23 December 2006 (EST)⌋

I'm not a regular editor, but I am a regular user of the UESP so I suppose I have good grounds for an argument.

To me, the UESP is a source of detailed knowledge of all the games in of Elderscrolls and the content helped me greatly to work out things about the older games. For the functionality the UESP should contain the largest amount of information possible, this would include spoilers.

However in two to three years, Oblivion will be old and most of the storyline discovered and along with that allot of editors will have moved on to something new.

At this point, the Wiki will become somewhat static and any information that isn't known, will most likely never be known. It's therefor important that the style of the articles written *in the present* should never withhold any information.

86.80.122.213 19:37, 21 January 2007 (EST) Proweler

User-Centered Questions

Even after the addition of the reference desk, people have still been using the talk pages of the subject that they need help with as a place to ask for game-play advice. I must remind everyone that article talk pages are meant for the sole purpose of discussing the respective articles, and these types of questions make the talk pages dirty and unusable. If you see one of these user-centered question topics, please move the entire thread over to the user's talk page and briefly introduce the reference desk. Answer the user's question at your own discretion. If the question was already answered, move the answer as well for clarity purposes.

Example of what I'm talking about

I tried to walk through an Oblivion gate, but I just ended up on the other side of it. Please help me out.

Example of what I'm not talking about

It may benefit the article to mention that walking though an Oblivion gate alone will not transport you to the Plane of Oblivion.

As always, common sense is a powerful tool. ;) Thanks for participating! --Aristeo | Talk 18:27, 30 October 2006 (EST)

Addendum: Someone has recommended to me that instead of moving the questions to the user's talk page, they be moved to the reference desk and a message be placed on the user's talk page that redirects him/her to the reference desk. This sounds like a pretty good amendment to what I said above. Feel free to suggest any other proposals to the above as you deem necessary. --Aristeo | Talk 17:43, 1 November 2006 (EST)

I was wondering when and where it was discussed that "article talk pages should be for the sole purpose of discussing the respective articles." What is the community's opinion on the best place for "user-centered questions": should these be on the talk pages of appropriate articles or on the reference desk? And should a question posed in one place be moved to another?

Taking Aristeo's example, for instance. I think the distinction in wording between the two statements is pretty minor. The basic point being addressed in both cases is identical; identical steps could be taken to answer either statement. If someone says "I tried to walk through an Oblivion gate but failed. Please help me out", I think UESP editors should read between the lines and realize that perhaps this is a topic that is not clearly enough spelled out on the Oblivion gate page, and consider making changes to the page in response to the comment.

The advantages of having all user-centered questions on the reference desk:

• Editors interested in answering general game questions only need to check on one page.
• Talk pages don't get cluttered up with questions.

The disadvantages:

• The reference desk page will turn into a very long list of unrelated questions, that will need to be archived to be manageable, and therefore won't be too useful for later readers looking for answers to already-asked questions.

The advantages of allowing user-centered questions on individual talk pages:

• Subsequent readers of the page are more likely to find the question and answer, and therefore not ask the same question over and over again.
• It's a fairly fine line between whether or not a question is specific to the content of a page. Forcing editors to reword a question just to make it fit these guidelines doesn't seem to help anyone.

I think that individual talk pages are a perfectly appropriate place for any question that is related to the page, no matter how it's worded. There are very few talk pages that are so long as to be "cluttered" with questions. I know that as a self-appointed question-answerer, I'd rather just spend my time answering the question than debating whether or not to move it first. If the community feels that the reference desk is the best place for all "user-centered questions", I'll work on changing my habits, and I'll start trying to move such questions from talk pages to the reference desk. But I'd like to be sure that this is the community's preference before doing so. --Nephele 01:37, 11 January 2007 (EST)

UESP server problems

As you all know, the site has been effectively dead for most of the last few days. If you are able to see this, it means that you've accessed the site during one of its brief periods of availability. At the moment, all that is happening is that the server is being restarted occasionally; this clears things up temporarily but does not address the underlying problem. After it is restarted there is a period of one to two hours during which it is possible to use the site. I don't have any control over when those restarts occur, nor do I have the ability to implement the more longterm solution that is needed to really fix things.

If you're interested in knowing how long you have during your current access window, you can check the server status and see how recently the server was restarted ("Server Uptime"). When that time reaches an hour, the site becomes barely functional; after two hours, it is nearly impossible to get a response from the site.

In the meantime, feel free to use the site as normal. Normal user edits are NOT responsible for what is happening; you viewing or editing a page will not make the site's availability deteriorate any faster than normal. Based on my assessment, the key problem is that a web crawler (used to collect information for a web search engine) is flooding the site with page requests, because our configuration file for web crawlers is not providing proper instructions to the web crawlers (trying to avoid too much techno-speak). --Nephele 14:30, 12 December 2006 (EST)

As announced on the news on the main page, a real fix to the problem has now been implemented (thanks Daveh!) Preliminary status reports show that the server seems to be doing much better now, so I think the server will stay available for more than two hours this time around. I'll definitely be continuing to keep an eye on things during the day, but I think everyone should be able to start using the Wiki as usual again! --Nephele 14:41, 13 December 2006 (EST)

Yes, the server has been having some problems again. Unfortunately, the server needs to be restarted every couple days in order to keep functioning smoothly; this has been the case for nearly a month now. Daveh is the only one who can do such restarts and he is currently on travel, so it took five days for the server to be restarted. I would desperately like to find a better long term solution to this problem, but at the moment there is none.

One temporary measure that would help is if those users who use the RSS feed could avoid using it for a couple weeks. Broken RSS connections are the main reason that the server becomes sluggish and eventually completely inaccessible. Although the major shutdown last weekend was caused by robots inundating the site, the more recent slowdowns are just due to occasional broken connections from regular users; the most common broken connections are when accessing the Recentchanges page using the RSS feed. Although the RSS feed is not fundamentally the problem, it is aggravating the underlying problems with the server. And with Daveh only intermittently available from now until January, any stop-gap measure that will keep the server semi-functional for longer needs to be considered.

I realize that those of you accessing the RSS feed probably rely upon it for UESP updates, and not using it will be a significant inconvenience. But I think it's possible that if everyone stops using RSS for the immediate future, the server will be able to stay up for much longer at a time, maybe even until January without any more restarts. So I sincerely hope that those of you who have been using the RSS feed will consider making this small sacrifice for the good of the site. (And for those of you wondering, no, I don't have the power to block the RSS feed and force this change, it has to be done voluntarily by the users at the moment). Thank you! --Nephele 11:13, 18 December 2006 (EST)

Is there any way to disable the RSS feeds? I checked quickly but didn't find any obvious setting for it. I won't have any internet access for 2 weeks or so during Christmas so need a way to ensure the RSS bug doesn't bring down the server during that time. -- DaveH 13:46, 18 December 2006 (EST)

Good question :) At the moment, all I see is a couple of settings that may make the RSS feeds less likely to misbehave. My gut feeling right now is that when it takes the server too long to respond with a RSS feed, the client gives up and that leads to the dropped connection. In which case, decreasing the amount of info that gets included in the RSS feed may help. So some settings that could help are:

• $wgFeedLimit, number of results to return, default value 50, decreasing (20? 10?) should make the data stream smaller
• $wgFeedDiffCutoff, maximum size of the diff results to return, default value 32768, again decreasing (5000?) should allow the server to respond more quickly
• $wgFeedCacheTimeout, default value 60. This is the one I understand the least, so it might be best to leave it as is. It sounds like increasing it would reduce the server workload.

I'll keep rooting around in the code, and post anything else that I see. --Nephele 15:22, 18 December 2006 (EST)

OK, one more possibility: set $wgFeedClasses = NULL;. This variable is described as "Available feeds objects"; hopefully setting it to NULL in LocalSettings.php will override the default setting in Defines.php. If this array is empty, any attempt to access the RSS or Atom feeds should result in the code immediately returning a 500 error message ("Internal Server Error, Unsupported feed type"). --Nephele 15:34, 18 December 2006 (EST)

When it rains, it pours.... There now seems to be a new UESP problem, which is completely unrelated to the previous problems (for those who are curious, the server itself seems to be doing quite well right now). It now seems to be very difficult to post any edits to the site. Pages can be accessed and read without problems, and some actions (such as previewing edits and deleting pages) seem to work without problems. I'm unable to do any real diagnosis of the problem, but I'm guessing there may be a problem with available hard disk space. The only evidence for this is that after deleting a handful of images that had been proposed for deletion, I was able to post an edit. Based on that assumption, I'm going to try to clean up unused images and purge thumbnails of rarely-used images. --Nephele 02:10, 24 December 2006 (EST)

It seems increasingly likely (to me, at least) that this is a problem caused by a shortage of hard disk space. Therefore, I'm requesting that nobody post any new images to the site until this can be fixed (which as with all other issues, is unlikely until January when Daveh returns from travel). I'll continue to try to make a bit of space by getting rid of redundant and unused images (and apologies for bypassing the proposed deletion process while doing this, but in my opinion the situation warrants it). --Nephele 02:36, 24 December 2006 (EST)

Yes, unfortunately the server filled up its hard drive which was causing the problem. It seems it has been keeping some 60GB of web server logs (ouch!) which I wasn't aware of until now. Things should be fine now as I've deleted a few GB of old backups and am in the process of cleaning up the old logs. Figures this happens a few days after I leave for the holidays. -- DaveH 15:24, 4 January 2007 (EST)

I am experiencing a very slow connection to the site right now. Is there a problem with the server again? --DrPhoton 03:59, 25 January 2007 (EST)

There is a new issue that has been cropping up lately: computers inundating UESP with requests in order to download the entire site. Last night a single IP address (corresponding to a location somewhere in China) was hitting the site. Every time I checked the server status, almost every available connection was being used by that one IP address, and every time I refreshed there was a new list of files that the IP address was requesting. The night before, the same thing happened, but it was a different IP address that night. At various points over the last two weeks I've noticed at least five different IP addresses doing this; each time, the server becomes pretty slow in responding. I've told Daveh about the problem, and it seems that he's tinkering with things right now. Fixing it may require adding some new capabilities to the server, so it can "throttle" individual IP addresses that try to monopolize excessive bandwidth. But the good news is that the problems that were happening over christmas seem to have been resolved! --Nephele 10:43, 25 January 2007 (EST)

Yes, as Nephele described the recent slowdowns are due to entirely different reasons than the previous site issues. Currently I'm just manually banning IPs that clog the site (currently only 2) but am looking into installing a mod_throttle or similar apache plugin that will automatically handle such bandwidth abuses.

If you happen to notice a particular site monopolizing connections just record its IP and let me know (e-mail or a talk page) since I cannot continually monitor the site and may miss them (technically I should be able to see them from the logs but I'm not sure exactly how atm). -- Daveh 12:44, 25 January 2007 (EST)

New layouts for Template:Oblivion Places Summary

I'd like to propose re-working the Oblivion Places Summary template, which is used on most of the pages listed at Oblivion:Places. Instead of the current horizontal box, I think a right-aligned infobox format would be more attractive, and more consistent with the infoboxes that have started to be used on other oblivion pages (e.g., Imperial City, Alteration, Fire Damage). I've put together a sandbox version of what I'm thinking of at User:Nephele/Sandbox/3. Does anyone have any suggestions or objections? --Nephele 16:10, 22 December 2006 (EST)

I like it - it seems more streamlined, and, as you say, more fitting with the rest of the wiki. --Justthisguy^talk 03:27, 16 January 2007 (EST)

Looks nice, similar to other wikis (which is a good thing). I am all for it. -- Dylnuge(talk · edits) 18:35, 21 January 2007 (EST)

Done! Thanks for the support. If anyone has a reaction now that it's been done, feel free to comment. --Nephele 01:33, 22 January 2007 (EST)

Customizing Special Pages

I've just experimented with customizing the appearance of a couple of the Specialpages:

• On the Recent Changes page I've added some breadcrumb-type links at the top right of the page, to provide easy access to a few pages that I think are particularly relevant while monitoring recent changes.
• On Special:Categories I've created cross links to a few other pages of interest.

First, what do people think of the changes? Any suggestions/modifications? Second, are there other special pages that people think could benefit from some customization? These types of edits can only be done by admins (they require edits to pages in the MediaWiki namespace, which are all protected pages). But if anyone has requests, feel free to pass them on! --Nephele 03:29, 10 January 2007 (EST)

Seems fine to me. --Wrye 23:17, 14 January 2007 (EST)

Namespaces

Links to previous related discussions:

• Subpages (And why we need them)
• Why Put Quests Under Quests Article?

I agree with Endareth and now strongly feel quest pages should be Oblivion:Quest:<name> and NPCs should be Oblivion:People:<name> and places should be Oblivion:Place:<name> and so on. Having everything on the same level causes confusion. I know this issue has been resolved once (March '06) but I am reopening it for further discussion. --FMan | Talk | contribs 16:47, 17 January 2007 (EST)

I'd be interested in finding out how you think a different naming system will reduce confusion. And in particular, what a new naming system can do that the category system is unable to do. I doubt that anyone ever looks through the list of all Oblivion pages to try to find a list of Oblivion places, which is the only case that comes to mind for me where having a different naming system would make it easier to identify the purpose of a page.

If anyone wants a list of all quests, people, or places, the categories are set up to provide that, at Category:Oblivion-Quests, Category:Oblivion-NPCs, or Category:Oblivion-Places, respectively. And if you pull up any categorized page, the category link at the bottom of the page immediately tells you the purpose of the page. And the category system provides power and flexibility that would not be available with a page naming system. In particular, a page can belong to multiple categories when appropriate. So, for example, each of those categories I listed also has subcategories. So you can pull up a list just of Dunmer NPCs or forts.

Therefore, I'd like to have a better sense of what about the existing system causes confusion. I'm wondering whether there might be an easier way to address the problem than renaming some 1000 wiki pages. --Nephele 17:55, 17 January 2007 (EST)

The answer is simple: when I look at an edit in the Recent Changes list, I have no idea whether a certain page is about a quest, a place or what. There would be zero confusion if it was clearly visible in the full name of the page. I know this is a small problem and possibly affects only me personally and it would require lots of work to implement a change of this scale and it wouldn't do that much good in whole so I didn't really expect anyone to support me on this, but I just wanted to make this point. --FMan | Talk | contribs 11:09, 18 January 2007 (EST)

I think this issue is always going to polarise people based upon what they use the wiki for. Personally I don't like the way it's subdivided by games, but would be happy if things were subdivided by object type. (That is to say, if I type in Dremora, I want to see a page telling me about Dremora's in all games, I might think to type Creature:Dremora or even Race:Dremora I am would never have thought to type Oblivion:Dremora though.) Jadrax 11:27, 18 January 2007 (EST)

And when I'm typing in Cross Links, it is MUCH easier not to have to add a subspace in there. Not only would bringing those things mean a lot of work currently, it would be more work in the future. Oh, and Jadrax, that's what the Tamriel space is for, though I will admit that at the moment, it is lacking. --Ratwar 11:31, 18 January 2007 (EST)

Ghostfence

I disagree with Dr. Photon's edit on Morrowind:Ghostfence. The fence does not protect the surrounding areas from the Blight storms that are very much present almost everywhere around Red Mountain outside the fence. This is a minor issue, but I am asking for comments. --FMan | Talk (contribs) 12:02, 18 January 2007 (EST)

I think Dr. Photon is right. Blight storms (characterized by red skies) occur only in the Red Mountain region. Ash storms occur in neigboring regions, but not Blight storms. As for blight creatures, I think that the explanation is that they either escaped from Red Mountain, or were infected by other creatures who escaped from Red Moutain. --Wrye 20:22, 18 January 2007 (EST)

If you do a search for Blight Storms in the Construction Set, you'll find the answer (unfortunately, I don't have access to it now). I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this is the way it is. BTW, shouldn't this kind of discussions go to the article's talk page? --DrPhoton 03:12, 19 January 2007 (EST)

Yeah, should be on article's talk page. I assume FMan brought it here because of dispute with other editor, but best action for that is to put it on talk page, then if there's no resolution, and you want more eyeballs, just message another editor or two to comment. Anyway, the TESCS is not immediately definitive, because blight and ash storms for both regions are zero to start with. I think main quest turns them on through scripts and then back off through scripts again later when you finish it. And I didn't bother to double check it by searching all scripts. --Wrye 03:46, 19 January 2007 (EST)

What I meant is that if you look at what NPCs say about the Ghostfence or Blight Storms in the dialogue entries, you may find the answer to this question. --DrPhoton 08:06, 19 January 2007 (EST)

Here's what any Ordinator, Buoyant Armiger, Priest or NPC at Ghostgate will tell you about the Ghostfence:

The Ghostfence is a magic wall running completely around Red Mountain. The barrier keeps blight storms and blight monsters from spreading across Vvardenfell.

--DrPhoton 06:12, 20 January 2007 (EST)

Mobile Game Page Names

Several pages related to mobile Elder Scrolls games, in particular Shadowkey, have been created lately (thanks, Jadrax!), e.g., Shadowkey:Potions, [[:Shadowkey armor]], and [[:Shadowkey Weapons]]. This raises the question, however, of where those pages should be located (see also User Talk:Jadrax). At the moment, they are all in the main namespace. Even if there is an eventual interest in creating a Shadowkey namespace, it is actually better in the interim to have these pages not look like they're in the Shadowkey namespace. And the site's namespace guidelines say that pages should not be in the main namespace. I would like to propose moving them all to the General namespace, for example, "General:Shadowkey Potions", "General:Shadowkey Armor", and "General:Shadowkey Weapons", and then creating links from the main Shadowkey page to these pages. Are there any alternative suggestions or ideas? --23:41, 19 January 2007 (EST)

The reason for not putting stuff in the Main namespace is that it's expected that everything fits in one of the gamespaces. But that assumption is incorrect for the Shadowkey pages. So, I would leave them in the main space -- but without the ':' delimiter since that would cause problems later when/if the Shadowkey space is created. So for the above, I would make the following adjustments: move General:Shadowkey to [[:Shadowkey Shadowkey]], Shadowkey:Potions to [[:Shadowkey Potions]]. --Wrye 01:08, 20 January 2007 (EST)

I think for the interim Wrye's suggestion makes sense, with the possibility of a shadowkey namespace being created later one once there is enough material to justify it? Jadrax 05:25, 20 January 2007 (EST)

OK, that works for me, with one minor suggested change: move General:Shadowkey to [[:Shadowkey]]. Having it named "Shadowkey" won't interfere with any possible future namespace, so we might as well go for the simpler name. And by extension, it seems like Dawnstar, Stormhold, and Oblivion Mobile should also be moved... or should we wait until someone shows an interest in one of those games before rearranging them? --Nephele 13:34, 21 January 2007 (EST)

Cool. i'd say do the same with Dawnstar, etc. Might be worth adding them to sections sidebar. Someone might start expanding them if they see they're available but empty. --Wrye 15:24, 21 January 2007 (EST)

I'd agree - except I'm not sure about adding to the sidebar, unless they're in their own section. That bar is crowded enough as it is, and if you start adding all the mobile games, it might get unwieldy. Maybe just one link for all the mobile games would be appropriate.

( Maybe collapse Bloodmood and Tribunal into the link for Morrowind while were at it? Jadrax 18:41, 21 January 2007 (EST) )

On a related note, what are we planning on doing once Shivering Isles comes out? Unlike Knights of the Nine, I think it's supposed to be a genuine expansion, as in, something you'll have to go to the store and buy, rather than something you can just download. If we follow the pattern we did with Morrowind, (Tribunal and Bloodmoon each having their own namespaces), then Shivering Isles would also merit a namespace. (I'd still even like to see Knights of the Nine put in a separate namespace, but I think I'm in the minority there.) What we'd call this new namespace is up for debate, since it's a 2-word name (unlike all our current namespaces.) Is it possible to make a 2-word namespace? If not, we could just leave out the space and call it "ShiveringIsles:", though I could see that getting confusing. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 18:28, 21 January 2007 (EST)

I'd also been wondering about the sidebar. What crossed my mind was to create a new page All Games that provides links to all the games and add that to the side bar. Then, given that "sections" on the side bar already incomplete (doesn't have mobile games, doesn't have links to all the namespaces), would it make sense to remove the links to some of the less frequently accessed games? Checking the number of hits on each of the listed games' main pages showed (at that instant in time):

• Arena 108,840
• Daggerfall 99,388
• Battlespire 53,351
• Redguard 65,416
• Morrowind 441,651
• Tribunal 97,659
• Bloodmoon 120,021
• Oblivion 2,093,320
• Tamriel 157,095

I would say at least Morrowind, Oblivion, and Tamriel should be listed. But there isn't really a sudden, dramatic drop off past those three. So I'm not sure whether it will be possible to come up with a universally acceptable list of shorter links.

I also agree that a decision will need to be made sometime soon on Shivering Isles. I see that by analogy to Tribune and Bloodmoon, it should have its own namespace. On the other hand, it's not immediately obvious to me why any of the expansion packs need their own namespace. There shouldn't be any naming conflicts; for example, there shouldn't be any Shivering Isles places that have the same name as an Oblivion place. And there is the practical issue that "Shivering Isles" or "ShiveringIsles" is an awkwardly long name to have to type for every single page. I was wondering if any of the people who've been working on Tribunal and Bloodmoon pages might have some feedback: if starting to describe an expansion pack from scratch, would you think it better to create a separate namespace or not? (Not that I'm proposing to get rid of the Tribunal and Bloodmoon namespaces; I'm just wondering what benefits there have been from having separate namespaces). --Nephele 19:00, 21 January 2007 (EST)

Aggreed. Changes to the sidebar are nessicary, and I have always wondered why Tribunal and Bloodmoon belong in seperate catagories (although, since they do make huge changes and people may not have the games, it makes some sense, but if someone has both games, they may not know where to look for information: there are three possible locations). -- Dylnuge(talk · edits) 19:05, 21 January 2007 (EST)

As for the gamespace name, I think that Shivering would be fine -- reasonably short and clear. As for whether or not to do a new gamespace at all, I don't know.

The official mods so far don't really change gameplay, but rather just add new locations with a few new pieces of armor and items. Shivering isles will likely expand gameplay quite a bit (more alchemy items, more creatures, attacking npcs, maybe more towns). If it does add a lot of new gameplay elements, and if it's not put in a separate namespace, then its info should be merged with existing topic pages (alchemy, creatures, etc.), but its additions need to be made to stand out from the vanilla Oblivion items. This may be so much of a pain in the butt to do that a separate namespace looks better. I suspect that we won't be able to figure it out until the expansion comes out and we see just how much it adds. Note that the previously discussed Mod Info in Articles is somewhat relevant (since it also is concerned with addendary information). --Wrye 19:44, 21 January 2007 (EST)

Reply to Nephele: Well, since I've done the balance of the work on the Morrowind expansions so far, especially Tribunal, I guess my opinion kinda matters. For one thing, I like the separate namespaces. I think having them prevents confusion on what pages are in what game. This means that I believe that Shivering Isles in theory should have it's own namespace. I think having separate namespaces also assists in adding new content, since it allows editors to quickly see what data has or hasn't been added. This seems to boil down to one thing for me, any extras (expansions/official mods) need to be separated from the content of the main game to avoid confusion. There are two ways to accomplish this:

1. Add notes to any and all pages effected by the extras
2. Create a new namespace

Personally, I think that any extra large enough to make single page warnings affect to many pages to make that solution viable should have there own namespaces. As for the practicality of typing "Shivering Isles" in, we could abbreviate it. --Ratwar 19:57, 21 January 2007 (EST)

I agree with Ratwar. Having worked considerably on Bloodmoon, I found it very effective to have a separate namespace for hte expansion, which clearly separates what is part of the original game and what is part of the expansion. The two options Ratwar suggests are very reasonable to me. --DrPhoton 03:50, 22 January 2007 (EST)

Absolutely the expansion should have its own namespace. Simply to distinguish between material involving the base game and the expansion. And don't remove any of the games from the sections. --88.192.171.61 17:36, 22 January 2007 (EST)

Again, I'm not really sure namespaces are a suitable form of distinguishing between material. The problem with them to me is they rely upon whoever is coming to the site looking for information actually knowing which namespace is relevant and then knowing to type it in. Personally, (this from the point of view of someone using the site looking for information,) I would much rather search for what I want, and then be told which game or expansion it's from, rather than me having to tell the wiki where is from to start with. Jadrax 19:13, 22 January 2007 (EST)

Do you have a better suggestion? I mean, I see what you man, but at the same time, I think most people should be able to remember what game/expansion they're playing. --Ratwar 19:46, 22 January 2007 (EST)

Everything in the main namespace, if there is a duplicate name you put the other articles under different names with a redirect at the top. (This page is talking about te game Arena, for other uses of the term Arena in Elder Scrolls, got the Arena disambiguation page here..) Each Article must clearly state what it's relevant too. (But it almost certainly will anyway.) Again, this is just my observation, and in no way do I want to kick up a fuss or come across as on some personal crusade to get rid of the namespaces, I'm perfectly happy to use whatever structure the site adheres too, but it does seem to me to be particularly unfriendly to the new user, especially if he's unaware of any of the games prior to oblivion. Jadrax 20:05, 22 January 2007 (EST)

The discussion has convinced me that creating a new namespace for Shivering Isles makes sense. Although I do sympathize with Jadrax's concerns about making it easy for readers to find the information they're looking for. One big difference compared to Knights of the Nine is that Shivering Isles appears to be adding a whole new area, so I think it should be easier for readers to figure out whether a place they discover is part of Oblivion or part of Shivering Isles. And perhaps setting up redirect pages between the two namespaces for some key pages would help (so that hopefully no matter where you look you end up finding the right page).

Any feedback on what name to use for the new namespace? Wrye's suggestion of "Shivering" works for me. --Nephele 23:30, 22 January 2007 (EST)

Would you like to salvage a Wikipedia page?

Hey UESP, this is just a random guy from the Wikipedia again. We've got an article up for deletion over here, and it doesn't seem like it's going to make it: Architecture of The Elder Scrolls. It doesn't seem like it would be half-bad for your purposes, and it looks like you're lacking an article in this particular topic. (A reasonable name change has been suggested, to "Building styles", so your page might look like "Tamriel:Building Styles") If this isn't suitable for your purposes, that's fine too. Thank you for taking the time to read my post, SulfurousDesign 16:03, 29 January 2007 (EST)

Sure, I'll save it at [[Morrowind:Architecture]]. (Not going with the "Tamriel" namespace because it only applies to Morrowind at this time. If we were to add the other games I might consider moving it.) I may have even contributed to this article at some point, way back before I had a WP account, so I was just one of the nameless IPs. Only thing I'm not sure of is the pictures, though we may have equivalents. I'll look at it later. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 00:52, 30 January 2007 (EST)

I'm sorry, but we can't use it here. We use the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License, and Wikipedia is under the GFDL. On the bottom of every page of the UESP reads "All content is available under the terms of the Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.", and we must ensure the accuracy of this statement. --Aristeo | Talk 01:24, 30 January 2007 (EST)

Copyright specific material moved to following Copyright/Licensing section. --Wrye 16:25, 30 January 2007 (EST)

I was about to try to come up with a plan to keep the article, but it looks like it won't be deleted. [1] :) --Aristeo | Talk 09:26, 30 January 2007 (EST)

Look again - the person who removed the tag did so without permission, and it's back up now with an angry addendum telling people not to remove deletion tags. I don't like getting involved in Wikipedia politics, but is there any way at all this material can be legally preserved? Or is it destined to vanish into the digital aether? --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 19:56, 30 January 2007 (EST)

Just an opinion on the matter. We can projectify the page on WP, which is a fine way for storing such pages. Then whoever wants can rewrite it, and take contribs by active members (who will surely agree with that and write it), if needed. The article isn't that consistent, but contains some good info. CP\M 12:40, 1 February 2007 (EST)

Copyright/Licensing

I'm splitting this off from the preceding topic because it look like it could go on for a while. Essentially the question arose as to whether we could salvage a page from Wikipedia that was about to be deleted. Answering this raises more general issues about when and how we can take material from other sites and when and how other sites can take material from us. --Wrye 16:25, 30 January 2007 (EST)

In regards to issue of salvaging page from Wikipedia...

I'm sorry, but we can't use it here. We use the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License, and Wikipedia is under the GFDL. On the bottom of every page of the UESP reads "All content is available under the terms of the Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.", and we must ensure the accuracy of this statement. --Aristeo | Talk 01:24, 30 January 2007 (EST)

While this would be true if it was a simple copy, if the material is being deleted from Wikipedia then its content (document and images) is no longer under the GFDL (as I understand it anyways). Surely there must be some provisions in place to rescue said deleted content from Wikipedia. It would be a shame to lose such information just because of a few letters (GFDL vs CCAS) which may differ in content but have the same intent. -- Daveh 09:06, 30 January 2007 (EST)

Not to mention I've seen Wikipedia articles copied on dozens of other sites, even if they aren't deleted articles. I'm pretty sure they allow this sort of thing, though I'm not sure about the differences between the licensing. It may be that it's permissible if due credit is given to Wikipedia on the page (one reason I made sure that was made clear in the edit summary). I'm okay with it either way, I just acted quickly because it looked at the time like the article was about to be deleted, and I wanted to save it before it went kaput. If that's not the case, then I guess it doesn't matter. Maybe if I'm bored I'll create a new page on the subject instead, though it's hardly a priority project for me. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 09:36, 30 January 2007 (EST)

Aristeo is correct about the copyright/license. Material from Wikipedia is not copyable to here because of license conflict. Deletion of the page at Wikipedia is not relevant because Wikikpedia is not the copyright holder -- rather the individual authors are. E.g., if I buy a book and then throw that book away, that does not void the copyright that the author holds on the book. Put another way, deletion of the page at Wikipedia, does not remove it from the GDFL. The "few letters" are a big deal -- while the intent of the licenses is somewhat similar, they are completely different legal documents and are generally incompatible. (Note, for license discussion, see: UESPWiki_talk:Copyright_and_Ownership.) The copying of Wikipedia material on other sites (except for fair use, which is fairly limited) is illegal and and a violation of the author's copyrights. --Wrye 13:02, 30 January 2007 (EST)

While I don't want this to devolve into an argument, I'd like to get it explained more, at least for my benefit (I'm admittedly rather naive about such things).

• According to section 2 of the GFDL, verbatim copying is allowed, unless I misunderstand the purpose of that section. The Wikipedia Verbatim Copying article also seems to support this.
• I do agree that copying an existing Wiki article into the UESP results in a liscense conflict. According to section 2 above partial or complete copying requires the copy be released under the GDFL which we're not using. I suppose we could explicitly release the copy under the GDFL but that gets complicated real quick.
• I'm confused about what happens when content is deleted from Wikipedia, or the UESP, or in general. Take a simple example of me writing an article. My copyright on that article is implicit. When I place it on Wikipedia my copyright is still held but by putting it on there I agree to release it according to the GDFL. If that Wiki article is then deleted, is the article still held by the GDFL or is now under general copyright? I would say the latter as the GDFL version of the article no longer exists...its contract has ended.
• Another contrived example: say I write an article, put it on Wikipedia can I also put it on the UESP or any other site with a non-GDFL liscense? If I can, being the original copyright holder, then it would be similarily possible to get the original copyright holder of the Wiki article to recreate it on this site.
• Say the previously mentioned Wiki article was deleted. If we wished to reuse it (fully or partially) would this require getting explicit permission from the original copyright holders? In this case it would be the dozens of people who contributed to the page, although it appears the majority of the content was from one user.

Perhaps I'm making this needlessly complex, but you'd think something like this would be simpler. -- Daveh 14:20, 30 January 2007 (EST)

According to the copyrights page of Wikipedia, it's not a problem if you copy content from the site: "The license Wikipedia uses grants free access to our content in the same sense as free software is licensed freely. This principle is known as copyleft. That is to say, Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used (a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement). Wikipedia articles therefore will remain free forever and can be used by anybody subject to certain restrictions, most of which serve to ensure that freedom." So I don't think coppying the article is really a problem, as long as there is a link to the original article. Zoidberg 16:46, 30 January 2007 (EST)

"grants the same freedoms" is short for "release under the GFDL license". SeeWikipedia:Verbatim Copying. --Wrye 17:39, 30 January 2007 (EST)

If we released that specific page under GFDL (and not under CC), then that would be legally okay. It would also be a logistical nightmare. I think that we'll all agree that we don't want a site with some pages under GFDL and some under CC.

Copyright and licensing are very complex issues for wikis! Having something like CC glosses over all that usually, but when you start asking questions like this, then you'll have to face the fact that we very quickly get involved in massively complex legal spagetti code.

Lets start simple. If I write an article from scratch, then I completely own the copyright. Adding it to UESP (under our site terms) does not change that at all. Which means that I can also release that article at a different site under a different copyright, print off copies and sell them, etc.

Now, suppose that I modify an existing article at UESP. Original article is A, my version is A'. The orginal author had sole copyright to A, but what about A'? Do I have the copyright to it? No. What I have a copyright to is the diff between A and A' -- i.e., to my edit. Do that a bunch of times and an article becomes a mosaic of copyright ownership with different people owning different parts. The only reason that this works at all is because they all release their material under the same license. That license: A) allows each author to modify the work of previous authors (this is a derivative work and would be illegal if the license were not there), B) makes successive author's changes also available under the terms of the license, and C) allows UESP (and other sites) to make the material available.

Now suppose the UESP throws the page away. That doesn't affect the material at all -- it's still available under the terms of UESP's CC license. This is because the license is a license granted by the copyright holders (not UESP) to all potential users. The fact that it happens to be currently hosted at UESP is just not that important as far as the life and meaning of the license is concerned.

Back to the material in question... Suppose that the original author has 4 authors. Three of them agree to release under CC and the fourth can't be reached. In that case, you can use the material from the three authors, but not from the fourth unreachable author. Of course, the more authors an article has, the less feasible this solution is, since you won't be able to use contributions from authors that you can't reach.

Note: If you're still confused, then 1) go read articles on copyright, and 2) read the full legal code of the licenses (not the CC summary, but the actual full legal text). If you're a programmer it may help to think of the legal text that's designed to run on human minds, in the context of an "operating system" of the existing laws. Once you understand the context (copyright law, the nature of licenses), then the legal text will be fairly clear -- though (like a program) it requires that you read carefully and follow the logic.

I hesitate to make this final point, because it's a bit rude... Copyright and licensing like many things have a simple description and a long description. The simple description is good most of the time, but at times like this you need to understand the long description in order to be able to understand the issues and comment knowledgeably. So if you haven't done that (and are willing to be bored to tears) go grab some coffee and start reading. Figure on at least two hours. (Personally, it took me a couple of days of reading and thinking to really understand copyright and the various licenses.) --Wrye 17:39, 30 January 2007 (EST)

Surely there's some sort of limitation on this sort of thing? I mean, from the sounds of it, if one editor comes and corrects a single spelling error, then that correctly spelled word is technically his copyright, and the article cannot legally be reproduced unless the spelling error is preserved. (And somebody else fixing the same error would then be guilty of plagiarism.) I mean, of course that's a reductio ad absurdium, but you get my drift. There's got to be a line between what constitutes copyrightable material and what doesn't. Presumably, you'd only need to get permission from the primary creators and editors of the material. And since they wrote the article for a Wiki in the first place, it seems like it was clearly in their intentions for the work to be freely shared/altered/etc. I also think that few people are likely to object over a small difference in the license on another Wiki, and on the off chance that they did, we could always take it down then if they insisted, though I think that's highly unlikely to happen. I can understand not taking things from other sites which don't have any sort of free-use license, but when it is a Wiki, and especially when, as in this case, the material is destined to be removed, it seems such issues should be relatively moot. Anyhow, I'll defer to the legal-experts on this one, I just think it's an awful shame to let the material in question just disappear forever. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 20:05, 30 January 2007 (EST)

Minor edits, such as a typo, are not eligible for copyright. In any case, the article's deletion did not succeed, so there's nothing to worry about. --Aristeo | Talk 22:41, 30 January 2007 (EST)

Discussion at the this point is no longer about the article salvaging, but rather is intended to clarify UESP licensing. As for typo corrections not being eligible for copyright, I know of no such legal distinction -- please point to your source for that. (It sounds possible, but barring court judgements that support that view, then I think it's inconsistent with copyright law.) Now, on to my own answer for Lurlock...

The safe thing is to remove the spell checkers corrections. Then run a spell checker on the document and fix any spelling errors. Since this last operation would be mechanical and would not involve copying the other contributors changes, then there would be no problem with plagiarism. Legally, if two people independently generate the same text, then no copying is involved and there is no copyright violation.

The general problem with trying to separate primary authors from "lesser" authors is that there's no clear dividing line. Start with spell checking, then grammar checking, then sentence/paragraph stucture improvements, then improvements in content, etc. -- where do you draw the line between "substantial" and "trivial"? Moreover, there's no need to draw a distinction as far as open source docs are concerned -- all contributors are respected and all contribute under the same rules. And the document is available under a free license -- all you have to do is follow the requirements of the license.

Re intention: Generally in law, you only try to discern intentions when the legal document is ambiguous -- note that the very purpose of legal documents to remove ambiguity -- i.e. to remove guessing about intentions, and say "we mean specifically this!" The GFDL is very clear, and very generous -- if we don't want to use it at this site because it's too much of a hassle, fine -- but that means we forego using GFDL licensed documents.

As for who would object to using such material here, I would. If we start ignoring GFDL licenses because they're inconvenient, then we're simply copyright violators, grabbing whatever we feel like. And if we're doing that, then how can we expect people to respect our own CC license? --Wrye 23:45, 30 January 2007 (EST)

Typos cannot be copyrighted because they hold no original value. The English language is not copyrighted by anyone. For more information about what can be copyrighted, see http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Canadian_Copyright_Law/Subsistance_of_Copyright. --Aristeo | Talk 15:21, 31 January 2007 (EST)

That's a single unreviewed web page on Canadian Copyright law, and it doesn't say anything about the copyrightability of proofediting. I'm not looking for deductions, but something which specifically covers proofediting and discussed whether it's copyrightable or not. --Wrye 23:39, 31 January 2007 (EST)

I can't help you with US law, but in the UK proof editing another's work and then distributing it, even if you have the rights to distribute it, is in itself illegal.

"Preserving the moral rights of authors is also expensive because this involves accurate proof reading of the digitised text to make sure that it does not deviate from the original. Reproducing and circulating inaccurate copies of a hardcopy original would be to subject that original to derogatory treatment." -Joint, N. (2006) Libraries, digitisation and disability. Library Review, 55 (3).

Console Commands

There are several pages under the Morrowind gamespace (and I guess also under Oblivion) with console commands. These commands can be input in different ways, i.e. abbreviated, with or without commas, etc, which causes confusion to readers and editors. As an example, I am in some kind of edit war with an anonymous user on Morrowind:ToddTest, Morrowind:Character Stuff Wonderland, Morrowind:Mark's Vampire Test Cell, and Morrowind:Clutter Warehouse.

I propose to standardise the way these commands are written in the Wiki to avoid any more disputes. Should we write them in full or abbreviated? With or without commas? The Tes3Mod namespace contains pages with the full commands and using commas, e.g. Morrowind Mod:CenterOnCell. --DrPhoton 03:45, 2 February 2007 (EST)

I suppose the most informative way would be something like "CenterOnCell (Abr. coc) cellname" Jadrax 05:37, 2 February 2007 (EST)

My suggestion would be to show the command as, for example:

coc toddtest

And then make sure that the CenterOnCell page provides details on the various different ways that the command can be entered. This would allow the various commands to be consistently shown on Morrowind pages in their most simple, easy-to-type form, but would make the full info easily available for anyone who has questions. The only downside is that there's a bit of extra typing for editors. --Nephele 11:48, 2 February 2007 (EST)

Why not just give the different options on the page? Page would say:

Either of the following lines will work:

CenterOnCell toddtest

coc toddtest

CenterOnCell, toddtest

coc, toddtest

Not too much work with cut & paste...

-- Felic 12:52, 2 February 2007 (EST)

I think that Nephele's solution is best. It's short and easy to follow. But (DrPhoton), why is there no discussion on any of those pages? Or anything on the other editors talk page? If you have a dispute with another editor, the first thing to try to do is resolve it on the discussion page -- you might have been able to work it out with them. (Of course, at this point, there should be a link to this discussion.) --Wrye 14:00, 2 February 2007 (EST)

I also like Nephele's solution (Felic's doesn't look very practical). Sorry for not starting this discussion on those pages, but since there is no policy on how to enter console commands in the Wiki, I thought it would be best placed here. I have now left a message to Mr666 inviting him to join this discussion. --DrPhoton 12:37, 4 February 2007 (EST)

Hey guys, I'm sorry for having that edit war with DrPhoton. I agree that the solution that nephele came up with is good. I'll just leave you guys to sort it out. --Mr666 1:12, 4 february 2007

Thanks for the input, Mr666. I've gone ahead and changed the pages to hopefully close out this issue. --Nephele 02:11, 8 February 2007 (EST)

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