UESPWiki talk:Lore

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Archives Archive 1: Aug 2008 - Jun 2012

Overview Pages

I've made drafts of overview pages for the current categories which don't already have them. I want to put them in place (and, of course, link to them here and at Lore:Main Page). A couple of them duplicate some info already found here. Here they are: Lore:Library, Lore:People, and Lore:Factions (this page already exists, but it's empty). It's all pretty boilerplate stuff; a lot of the info on them is stuff that's already found on this page, and I don't think there's anything of substance that's controversial in there. Two notable things, though, are that the Lore:Factions page makes it explicit that prominent families can be considered factions, and that authors, generally, should not have entries in Lore:People unless they have some significance independent of their writings (that's being discussed here; long story short, deciding who to include and then actually doing so would be a big hassle with very little gain). I'd appreciate any thoughts, objections, tweaks, etc.

Once we have overview pages for each category, we could consider removing the entire "Understanding Lore Categories" here, and move any remaining relevant info to the overview pages or elsewhere on this page. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 16:48, 19 October 2012 (GMT)

I like your drafts, Minor Edits. They look excellent as always, and it would definitely help who ever is interested in the lore to see what's applicable for the Lore space. Well done! Eric Snowmane^{(talk•email)} 17:15, 19 October 2012 (GMT)

I generally like them. Is there a deeper reason behind only mentioning the main games in the see also sections? At least for books we have Battlespire:Books and Redguard:Books too. Perhaps condensing those page lists into a single line somehow would be a good idea. --Alfwyn (talk) 13:32, 22 October 2012 (GMT)

No deeper reason; I just forgot. Not sure exactly what you meant about condensing page lists, but feel free to revise them as you see fit. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 14:27, 22 October 2012 (GMT)

Now that I see what you mean, I love it; it reduces the dead space on the page. I added another factor to consider when adding books to the lore: redundancy. It hasn't been articulated before, but I imagine it's been implicit thus far. I just wanted to say that I'm not necessarily advocating the deletion of some pages which this would seemingly go against this factor, such as Lore:Thirsk, a History. What's done is done; I'm just offering it as a prospective guideline. I also added an image; I couldn't think of a more symbolic representation of the Library than the Oghma Infinium. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 15:46, 22 October 2012 (GMT)

Another thing to consider may be cut content status (is there a discussion somewhere how to treat it Lore-wise in general?). For example Skyrim:The Secrets of Ragnvald doesn't actually appear in the game. This may be due to oversight, or a deliberate decision of the developers, we don't know. --Alfwyn (talk) 11:44, 24 October 2012 (GMT)

Dang, you just blew my mind. I hadn't considered that. My gut reaction is that cut content found in the game files is no different than OOG content and thus is categorically banned. Like you said, we don't know why some content is cut, so we can't presume that cutting it was an arbitrary decision. Another way to look at it is that, by being cut, it is not "officially approved" material, and thus not suited for lore. I'm hesitant to make that conclusion at the moment because I'm not certain how far-reaching the effects would be. At the very least, it would seem to dictate the deletion of that lore page. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 17:12, 24 October 2012 (GMT)

I just set up Lore:Factions. Before I set up the other two overview pages, does anyone object to these positions?

1. Cut content = OOG content: If so, the lore book page for The Secrets of Ragnvald would likely be deleted.

1. Authors should not be mentioned in Lore:People unless they have some significance independent of their writings: If so, many snippets on the People multi-topic pages would be deleted. For example, the entries at Lore:People S for Salarth, Sigillah Parate, Scribe Stem Gamboge, and Stronach would be deleted. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 18:55, 14 November 2012 (GMT)

(←) I'll agree with those tweaks, ME. ES^{(talk•email)} 19:07, 14 November 2012 (GMT)

Layout

I propose that the Official Guidelines be changed so that the See Also section goes ABOVE the References section. That is how it is done on wikipedia, and it was decided to do this because reference sections, especially on major topics, can become extremely long, pushing the see also section way down the page. If people want to find a reference, they click the link in the text, and it takes them automatically to the reference they wanted. There is no way to do this with the see also section. Most people would want links to related topics, rather that the references used in the actual article. I think that we should change the policy to reflect this. I can't really think of a good reason for see also to be after references, but if there is one, please inform me and I would be open to reconsidering this change. Jeancey (talk) 17:48, 11 March 2013 (GMT)

Makes sense. I see no issues with doing this. Snowmane➚^{(talk•email)} 18:00, 11 March 2013 (GMT)

This also makes sense to me. The "See Also" is a part of the article, and it's standard format to list the references after the article. This has been more or less unofficially followed, so I'd support making it official. • JA^T 18:07, 11 March 2013 (GMT)

Considering I thought this was the standard until several minutes ago, I'm all for it. ⇠eshe^talk 18:09, 11 March 2013 (GMT)

Just to clarify, the layout in these guidelines is not mandatory. Legoless and I have had a disagreement on layouts for a long time (I think References should be at the bottom, he prefers See Also). I wanted to avoid problems when promulgating the guidelines, so I used his preferred arrangement while expressly stating that "there's room for variation". Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 18:53, 11 March 2013 (GMT)

I usually view the "See Also" section as an informal footer, or something similar to "External Links" on Wikipedia. It also looks rather repetitive when stuck beside the notes on most pages. Reference sections are rarely so long as to hide the section from plain sight. If certain pages look better with a different order, exceptions can obviously be made (such as Eshe's example of Lore:Dragons), but I think most small lore articles look stylistically good the way they are currently. —Legoless (talk) 19:40, 11 March 2013 (GMT)

Does anyone else besides Legoless feel this way? It seems to me that most people commenting thought that the see also already was supposed to go above the reference section, and that you might be the only one to think otherwise... Votes aren't really what is used, but 5-1 seems a pretty strong indicator that this change would be supported. Jeancey (talk) 19:43, 11 March 2013 (GMT)

(←) Let's give it a few days so less active people can have a chance to chime in. It wouldn't be that huge of a change, but more input never hurts :). ⇠eshe^talk 19:45, 11 March 2013 (GMT)

As a reply to the redundancy comment, we don't need the note section at all, because lore places summary has an |appears= param which you can use to add the link to the in-game pages. The notes section is already redundant. Jeancey (talk) 21:23, 11 March 2013 (GMT)

It has been several weeks, with no other comments. I'll leave it until the end of the week, and if there isn't any other opposition (since most people seem to support this change), I'll make the change to the guidelines. Jeancey (talk) 21:46, 2 April 2013 (GMT)

There has been no other objection. I am making the change. I do propose that the pages not be changed all at once (unless someone wants to do that), but rather, as people come across them. Any new See Also's should be above the references. Jeancey (talk) 06:44, 6 April 2013 (GMT)

Citing a single source multiple times

I think that our rules governing references is lore are causing articles to become cluttered and in some cased detrimental to the usability of the wiki. Because of the rule that every sentence needs a source, we get cases where a single source is used on multiple sentences in a row with no other source used. Wikipedia has a guideline for this, which I think we should add:

"If one source alone supports consecutive sentences in the same paragraph, one citation of it at the end of the final sentence is sufficient. It is not necessary to include a citation for each individual consecutive sentence, as this is overkill."

The would allow for the article to be less cluttered and more readable. Another change would be to how many sources should be used for a single sentence. ME has pointed out that we should cite every source that supports it in order to help people who are doing research on a single topic. This would mean that a single sentence could have 15 sources on it, if 15 sources support that statement. How is that useful? We want the wiki to be readable by the masses, not helpful for the very, very few who need links to every source of a statement at the detriment of everyone else. If someone is doing research on a topic, they likely are going to search for themselves, not rely on the inline citations of an article. I'm not saying they all should be removed, but that we should follow wikipedia's rule on citation overkill:

"While adding footnotes is helpful, adding too many can cause citation clutter, which can make articles look untidy in read mode, and unreadable in edit mode. If a page has extra citations that are either mirror pages or just parrot the other sources, they contribute nothing to its reliability while acting as a detriment to its readability."

"A good rule of thumb is that one footnote after a sentence is almost always sufficient. Two or three may be a good way of preventing linkrot for online sources or providing a range of sources that support the fact, but more than three should be avoided as clutter."

ME also pointed out that there might be a difference between citing outside sources and inside sources. I don't think this is the case. The problem here is HOW they are cited, not WHAT is cited. A sentence on wikipedia that has 5 citations to outside sources looks no different than a sentence on UESP that has 5 citations to other UESP articles. There is no difference at all. This readability also applies to the |name= parameter in the ref template. The goal of the parameter is to allow you to cite the same source multiple times. If a source is only used once, the parameter isn't useful and just clutters the text when you are editing it. This means it is actually detrimental to the overall usability of the wiki without providing any sort of benefit. Anyone who knows enough about citing on a wiki to realize that a source is already used in the article is smart enough to add the |name= parameter themselves if they are using the source more than once. Thanks for reading all this, I'm not trying to single ME out at all, I just had a long conversation before this, so I know ME's points pretty well :P I'll abide by whatever the consensus is. Jeancey (talk) 21:11, 2 April 2013 (GMT)

If people want to more rigidly follow the first rule Jeancey quoted (one cite for consecutive sentences relying upon a single source) in the lore, I don't have a problem with that. I think that could improve the aesthetics of our pages without substantially harming reader comprehension or satisfaction. However, I'm a very strong advocate for "string cites" when appropriate. I'll be back on later to articulate that more fully, but I have to leave at the moment. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 21:25, 2 April 2013 (GMT)

I'd also like to poke a stick in here, as I'm currently trying to bring some consistency in the the end notes of pages by applying style guides to reference formatting (see my sandbox). My concern with the proposal above is what doing away with the |name= parameter for single-use references may do for people who edit a section of a page, rather than the whole page. For example, before you hit that edit link, you may notice a citation on the page for, say, Saint Jiub's Opus, and you can see it quoted in the page, in a section above the section you're planning to edit. Now, as you know that people who cite that particular book normally give it the name |name=Jiub, if you're planing to cite that book again, you should be able to just use {{ref|name=Jiub}} when you edit the section, without having to edit the whole page. Otherwise, why would we have edit links on every section? I recommend that the first person to add a citation for a particular reference to a page should name it. Then, if a subsequent edit makes use of it above the previous citation, it is the responsibility of the subsequent editor to make the necessary changes to the page. But if the subsequent edit is below the original use, you should be able to reasonably assume that the first citation is named appropriately. This is just my point of view, and I know my views have been marginalized a lot lately, but here it is anyway, for what its worth. — Daric✐ 21:56, 2 April 2013 (GMT)

If that is the case then we would need a consistent way of naming references, as there is no way to determine the name of a reference without seeing it in the edit box. Otherwise people would name it incorrectly and have to edit the page again anyway. Jeancey (talk) 22:02, 2 April 2013 (GMT)

You're right, Jeancey, and I have been thinking along those lines too. Each in-game book should have a standard abbreviation, IMHO, which could be stored in a comment line in the book itself. If you then cite the same book many times in different articles, you will get to learn the standard abbreviation for it. I'm already seeing what seems to be some standard abbreviations in use around here, but they should be codified, IMHO. — Daric✐ 22:08, 2 April 2013 (GMT)

Books are already pretty consistent, its the first letter of each word in the title in caps. So, The Black Arrow would be TBA, The Black Arrow volume 2 would be TBA2. The only iffy bit is one word titles, like Withershins. The real problem comes from other sources, ones that aren't books. Jeancey (talk) 22:11, 2 April 2013 (GMT)

(←) True. We do have tools such as {{TIL}} for some of them, and other completely external sites should be given a |name= automatically when first used. If we start to see the same external sites being referenced over and over again (such as with judicious use of LinkSearch), then we can add a new template like TIL for it. Is there a tool like LinkSearch that would show us a list of all (or the top 10? top 100?) outbound links from a namesapce, sorted by frequency of use? That would be handy for resolving this particular issue. — Daric✐ 22:42, 2 April 2013 (GMT)

I don't think there is, but I can check. Jeancey (talk) 22:44, 2 April 2013 (GMT)

I lied. [1], [2]. You can use it to find the rest :P Jeancey (talk) 22:48, 2 April 2013 (GMT)

(←) (edit conflict) To give background, this started because Jeancey had some issues with this version of Lore:Dragons. She He had some valid concerns, though other than an assertion which had one irrelevant cite, there's nothing I would've wasted an edit on. I disagreed on some other points, and we've effectively reached a ceasefire at the moment on the page as it stands (though I can't rule out further revisions to correct any possible deficiencies which pre-date our discussions). If you don't mind, Jeancey, I'd ask that people disregard the sections of your post where you seek to make my argument for me. Show me a statement with 15 citations, and I'll show you where in the existing guidelines such a string cite is unnecessary. The longest string cite I've seen is roughly half that. And as for researchers who may want every available source highlighted for certain statements, that is a fringe part of my argument. I was merely pointing out that there are certain users who would greatly appreciate us compromising slightly on aesthetics for the sake of fully backing up our declarations. And keep in mind, the detriment of string cites to aesthetics is very slight. And there are most certainly differences between citing on wikipedia and citing here, as I'll elaborate upon below.

Okay: on the name parameter. I make it a habit to put the name parameter in the first, full cite of any source. This was something I think I noticed some other editors doing and went along with. I think it's helpful to future users who might find something else that's significant to an article from that source. I extend it as a courtesy, to "lock in" the source for future use by others, no different than putting the toilet seat down. And, if history is the judge, that "future user" will likely be me (maybe even in the near future, while I'm still working on an article) or some other experienced user of the wiki. I.e., someone who will know how to take advantage of the name parameter. While "very few" user might know how to do so, it's the regular contributors who end up doing most of the editing (especially the citing). I believe the name parameter's contribution to "clutter" in cases where a cite is not (yet) used again on a page is minimal. In fact, this is not clutter at all because it is a serving a purpose, albeit prospectively. A perfect example is the Arngeir dialogue cite in Lore:Dragons. Angeir has quite a bit of dialogue in Skyrim, and it can be rather difficult to reliably track down all of an NPCs dialogue on CSList (you can never really be sure you got it all). Even in the dialogue I can track down or hear in-game, I might overlook something relevant. Further, something he said could take on a greater significance and become noteworthy as more information is gathered from obscure or future content. The presence of name params on the pages for the time where is doesn't seem strictly necessary (yet) seems to me like a very small burden on the site.

On multiple citations to support a sentence (string cites): The amount of data about our world is immense, so immense it is literally impossible for a person's brain to retain all of it. Yet, that is essentially the scope of wikipedia's coverage. The scope our lore section is obviously miniscule by comparison. Our focuses necessarily demand different treatment in some cases, and one of them is that we must have greater leniency when it comes to the frequency and length of string cites.

For the vast majority of the information in the lore section, there is only one source available. Further, the vast majority of that information is very, very questionable. Think of how many little nuggets of information can be traced back to only Varieties of Faith in the Empire, and how much of that text has been found to be inaccurate or dubious. I believe there are an abundant amount of assertions in the lore section where, if a reader sees only one cite, he or she will intuitively conclude it's likely the only available cite. For a lot of statements which may convey relatively obscure, controverted, or otherwise questionable information, my approach is that one corroborating source is good, two is better, and more than that can and should be used as appropriate.

There are a ton of statements in the lore section which are amalgamations of information from a variety of sources. They're not synthesis or original research, mind you, but only one source may provide a date, another may not all name all the subjects involved, yet one more may ignore all that but delve into greater detail on where an event took place, and so forth. Then, you have very broad statements, such as sentences starting with something like "Many legends say that...". Supporting that "Many legends" said something likely cannot be done by one source, or even two or three. And once you've cited two or three, what if there are more relevant stories detailing legends supporting the assertion? By what criteria do you cite to some and not others? If you pick and choose, you're only partially supporting the veracity of the statement in this context.

At the same time, we expressly provide that very basic in-game information doesn't even need a cite, let alone two or three. There's a threshold whereby a piece of information is so well-supported that it doesn't even need one cite to begin with. But you can't articulate that threshold in terms of regulating the number of cites per sentence; that needless infringes upon an editor's discretion to apply his/her own common sense, which (surprisingly) is usually still the best guide to editors. This provision implicitly acknowledges that there are occasions where a plethora of mutually corroborating sources may confirm a fact that some people may not consider "very basic" in-game information. In this situation, in my opinion, citing to one or two of the available sources which most fully address the fact is satisfactory. If I wanted to support "The Third Era lasted 433 years", for example, I might just simply cite The Third Era Timeline. It would be clearly and patently unreasonable to reference every bit of character dialogue or every text which may reference the date in passing. We don't need any guideline change to know that.

Given the unique circumstances in the lore section compared to wikipedia, different treatment is necessitated. We have to let common sense dictate whether particular assertions in a statement calls for no cite, 1-2 cites, or every citation available. We have to be tolerant of each other, as the fact is that this is a collaboration. Reasonable users may in good faith differ on some propositions' obscurity or arguable nature, and we must make accommodations for this on a case-by-case basis. Besides possibly taking into account the "only one cite needed for consecutive sentences relying upon a single source" rule, I don't believe the guidelines require any further revisions to address the concerns here. Well, I've run out of time at the moment; I haven't read the intervening posts since my last message, but I'll address them later as needed. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 00:24, 3 April 2013 (GMT)

I'll let others give input first since we have discussed this before, but for the record, I'm a he. :P Jeancey (talk) 01:35, 3 April 2013 (GMT)

Dang it, sorry, Jeancey. I knew that, too; I was reminding myself that when I started. And that first paragraph generally had a negative tone I didn't intend, so sorry for that, as well. Anyways, in regard to how to properly abbreviate the name parameter, it would be great to standardize that. Like Jeancey said, all caps of the first letter of each word seems to work well, though there are many special cases to consider where a briefer, more logical abbreviation would be better. Vivec's sermons comes to mind. For an NPCs dialogue reference, I put down the character's first name, possibly with game initials beforehand if needed to cite to a character's dialogue in two or more games. Clearly, there are a few ins-and-outs to consider to do it right, but I'd be more than happy to help get any kind of set practice in place.

To drive home my point from earlier about our difference from wikipedia: at wikipedia, their goal is often to weed through mountains of irrelevant info to get the best citations they can get their hands on. They can pick and choose a relatively small amount of references out of what is often a large pool. We, on the other hand, are dealing in a microcosm: our sources our very limited, and our audience knows this. While wikipedia has the luxury of choosing a select amount of credible sources, we have to scrape by with the few sources we're dealt, riddled as they are with concerns of credibility, bias, and incomplete coverage. For much of their information, they have greater quantity and quality of sources to choose from; we have neither for most bits of information on the TES lore universe.

On the plus side, we can also give our subject matter much more comprehensive treatment than wikipedia. Our goals couldn't be more different in this respect, and our policies must reflect that. So being more lenient with string citing is a natural, perfectly proper result of both the greater scrutiny we can afford to give to the smaller pool of information we have access to, and to the relative deficiencies in virtually any given source we may rely upon. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 01:57, 3 April 2013 (GMT)

List of relevant books

I'd like to propose a change in the format guidelines for the Lore namespace: Instead of saying "This section may or may not include a list of relevant books in alphabetical order, even if they are cited and appear in the reference section", the guidelines should encourage the creation and expansion of such bibliographies where appropriate. They are a very helpful complement to the list of inline citations, and many Lore articles already benefit greatly from a combination of alphabetical book list and inline citations: Dwemer, Skyrim, Nord, Vivec (god), Dunmer etc.

Articles like Daedra, Daggerfall, Dark Brotherhood or Morrowind could all benefit from additional inline citations. However, I think that adding a list of "relevant books" to these articles is a much more urgent issue. To provide some more specific examples: 1.) Potema, so far only a "snippet" on an overview page, is an article without any inline citation – but at the end, it at least mentions important books about its subject. 2.) The article Mages Guild has a few inline citations, but the references only list Origin of the Mages Guild. The other book with "Mages Guild" in its title, the Mages Guild Charter, is mentioned in the second sentence of the article with a link. A least these two books could be listed in a "See Also/Books" section. 3.) Then there are articles like Nerevarine Cult, which are still waiting for their first reference. Before even adding an inline citation, this article could easily be improved by listing at least the books that are mentioned in Morrowind:Nerevarine. --Holomay (talk) 12:36, 3 April 2013 (GMT)

That seems fine to me. I like book lists. I've heard some grumbling before, however, that book lists are often redundant considering the references section. Also, a lot of topics just don't have the books. I wanted to make sure that no one was compelled to include book lists if they disagreed with them or didn't think an article needed them. But I was suppose we could encourage people to include them without actually compelling them. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 19:02, 3 April 2013 (GMT)

I agree, not only will it help people understand the subject more, but it will encourage people to add the relevant info from those books to the article, should it be absent. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 01:28, 6 April 2013 (GMT)

• If three or more in-game texts are focused upon the topic of an article, a "Books" subsection should include a bulleted list of them in alphabetical order using the {{Book Link}} template.

How's that? Should it be four texts? Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 03:52, 6 April 2013 (GMT)

Why not all? Anyway, I just did this to the Sithis page, and not all cited books are "focused" on the article, they are relevant to the subject, but are "irrelevant" to someone wishing to expand their knowledge on the subject, as they only briefly mention the subject (e.g. Varieties of Faith only mentions Sithis in relation to a myth about Sheogorath). Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 16:30, 6 April 2013 (GMT)

My concerns are that a list of one or two isn't really worthwhile, and for bigger topics, including books based on that easier-to-satisfy standard will make some book lists gargantuan. Lore:Nord, for example; that book list could easily be two or three times as long, if we were to include every book that says something relevant about being a Nord. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 19:32, 6 April 2013 (GMT)

I agree with ME’s concerns on including all books in the list. I think the relevant books list should serve a different purpose than the references list. Instead of just paraphrasing the list of cited books in alphabetical order, it should list books that focus on the topic. To be a helpful complement to the references list, the books list should be dealt with on a case-to-case basis. On Lore:Dwemer, for example, there is a list of “Books about the Dwemer” as well as a list of “Books in Dwemeris”. On the other hand, I don’t think that we need to set a minimum for the number of books in the list. If there’s a Lore-worthy subject with just one or two books focusing on it, the list should just consist of one or two books. --Holomay (talk) 13:14, 8 April 2013 (GMT)

• A "Books" subsection may include an alphabetical, bulleted list of all in-game texts which are focused upon the topic of the article.

How's that? Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 19:50, 8 April 2013 (GMT)

Sounds good to me! :) --Holomay (talk) 08:11, 9 April 2013 (GMT)

Abbreviations for the |name= parameter

Quotes don't seem to be necessary at all. A lot of older references feature quotes around the abbreviated name, but it doesn't seem to serve any purpose.

For books, I find it easiest to put the first letter of each word, including introductory "The"s and what-not, all in caps. Users can determine the abbreviation phonetically, and they never have to guess whether certain words are capitalized or not. And, obviously, include any applicable volume number. E.g., The Argonian Account, Book 2, becomes "TAA2". There is the possibility that two sources to have the same abbreviation under this method, but it hasn't been a problem yet and we can cross that bridge when we come to it. Some special cases include:

2920, The Last Year of the First Era. 2920v1, 2920v2, etc.

The 36 Lessons of Vivec. 36L1, 36L2, 36L3, etc.

The Pocket Guides. PGE1S, PGE1C, PGE1High, PGE1Ham, PGE3Arena, PGE3All, PGE3M, PGE3Sky, PGE3Sug, PGE3Sum, PGE3Ors, PGE3Other, you get the idea.

There may be others I'm forgetting at the moment which need special treatment.

For a cite to in-game dialogue, I've always put down the NPC's first name. We do run the risk that a NPC will appear in more than one game For instance, Neloth's Morrowind dialogue may have to be distinguished from his Dragonborn dialogue. Here, I think it should be "MWNeloth" and "DBNeloth". Should we do that all the time, for every character? Enodoc did so at Lore:House Redoran, and I think it works pretty good. The added descriptiveness will prevent any problems in this regard and won't really be any harder for editors to figure out or use.

For generic cites to the events of a game or expansion, I just use the name. "Events of Skyrim" = "Skyrim".

As discussed above, how we treat non-TIL external links might be changing soon.

Is there any category of citations I'm forgetting about here? Does anyone have any objections to these abbreviation methods? Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 22:31, 5 April 2013 (GMT)

What about quests? Many of them use the format "Events of (game)" where the word 'events' links to the quest in question. However, this means you have to click the link to figure out *which* quest actually is being sourced, and the format provides a conflict with the general "Events of (Game)", as well as when there are multiple quests on the page. Jeancey (talk) 06:47, 6 April 2013 (GMT)

Three things to address. First, books with single-word titles should be abbreviated with the name (Withershins, Wabbajack, etc.). Second, loading screens: OBLoading, SRLoading, etc. Third, quests. I can't guarantee this will be foolproof, but the game abbreviation plus the first word in the quest title should suffice. Example: Oblivion:Cure for Vampirism would be OBCure. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 06:59, 6 April 2013 (GMT)

First full, non-article I would say. So we don't get OBThe or OBA. Or could we do the abbreviation of the quest name? So OBCFV? Or simply CFV. Jeancey (talk) 07:01, 6 April 2013 (GMT)

Sounds good. The full, undercase non-article word approach is probably better because it shouldn't have any potential to conflict with abbreviated multi-word book titles. It might pose a small problem with a quest title begins with "Loading" and both it and a loading screen from the same game are cited, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 07:07, 6 April 2013 (GMT)

No problem there. There aren't any. Jeancey (talk) 07:18, 6 April 2013 (GMT)

(←) So, I'd like to move forward on this and add a section to the page detailing what has been generally outlined above. If there are no objections, I'll do so in about a week. If there are, I'll try to build a consensus more formally. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 20:36, 1 December 2013 (GMT)

Sounds good to me. Consistency in citations makes things easier, and I think the above-proposed naming conventions are sensible and simple. -- Hargrimm^(T) 20:49, 1 December 2013 (GMT)

I have no particular opinion on the actual name parameter choice, but just to answer the question about quotes, they're not required for any HTML attribute as long as the value doesn't contain any spaces, apostrophes, quotes, ampersands (except legitimate HTML use), and a few other characters that we're not likely to use anyway. That said, a number of web pages recommend using them across the board for consistency, since HTML tags often require them anyway (e.g., <table class="wikitable sortable" ...>). A lot of people follow a more programmer-like style and put text in quotes, but leave numbers bare (e.g., rowspan=5). In the end it's up to the editor to figure out what makes the most sense in any given context. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 04:10, 2 December 2013 (GMT)

I've always found that the text is easier to read without the quotes, as they tend to clutter up the page. That may just be a personal preference though. Also, I like having the code as short as possible, even if it is only shorter by two characters :) Jeancey (talk) 04:16, 2 December 2013 (GMT)

Proposed change to the guidelines

Since the template includes links to the gamespace pages of place articles, (and our plans for the people page templates include the same), I propose that we change the guidelines under the notes section to specifically state that if there is a template on the page, a note specifically stating that it appears in that game should not be added. Furthermore, since the see also section likely has a link to the game page anyway, I propose that we remove the featured in notes entirely, since they are doubly redundant. The link is stated in both the template, and specifically stated in the see also section. Thoughts on the matter would be greatly appreciated. Jeancey (talk) 17:33, 29 April 2013 (GMT)

Lore People summary

We decided a little while ago that we should have a Lore People Summary template. I wrote one up today, and I was just wondering what everyone's thoughts were? It can be found here. Are there any things I missed that should be in the template? Thoughts on how it is displayed? Thanks in advance for your comments!!! Jeancey (talk) 19:30, 29 April 2013 (GMT)

Ok, I have fixed it up based on a few comments I have received on IRC. I'll be back in a few hours, so I'll get to any thoughts people may have then. Jeancey (talk) 20:07, 29 April 2013 (GMT)

I'm a template noob, but I love its appearance and arrangement. I'm not 100% sure that any given image will look good when embedded in the summary box, but the example looks excellent. It will improve Lore:People immensely. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 20:18, 29 April 2013 (GMT)

Currently, it seems like the Bosmer image is "hard-wired" into the template; I can't get it to use anything else. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 22:51, 29 April 2013 (GMT)

Really? That's strange, since the image is done via the doc, rather than the template itself.... Let me look into it. Jeancey (talk) 22:55, 29 April 2013 (GMT)

Try it now. It was my fault for copy pasting things. Jeancey (talk) 22:58, 29 April 2013 (GMT)

I think a few more details could be included in the template. Some example possibilities include birth sign, where they lived, when they lived as a range if death date is known, possibly allow for a list of titles, since some characters have quite a few titles to list. In the case of sovereigns, I would say the beginning and ending of their reign belongs in the box. Of course, doing all of that could make it look cluttered - those are just ideas. LordXenophon (talk) 00:30, 30 April 2013 (GMT)

Death date and location are already in the template, I just haven't died yet so they aren't in the example. Currently title only supports titles which are prior to the name, but I don't really know of any people who have titles AFTER the name. Their reign is something that I will add eventually. I feel that the location of birth, death and last known residence are enough for where they lived. The birthsign is next to unknown, I think only a small handful would ever use it, so I don't think that is needed in the template. Jeancey (talk) 00:34, 30 April 2013 (GMT)

Currently, images must be accompanied by a description, otherwise the caption reads "[name of person here] {{{imgdesc}}}". It doesn't necessarily need fixing (every image should probably always be accompanied by a description anyways), but I thought I should point it out. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 03:05, 30 April 2013 (GMT)

Also, I was toying around with it, and it seems like there's an alignment issue when I try to implement it. Also, if there's no image at all, it gets all jumbly. Example. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 03:12, 30 April 2013 (GMT)

ME, if you add the parameter imgdesc= but leave it empty, it'll take away the {{{imgdesc}}}, but it seems the name is left as part of the description and I have no clue if there's any current workaround that. Same issue with the images, I can't seem to rid of the [[File:|frameless|center]] if there was no image for the specific lore person available. -helenaanne  ^{talk ♥} 05:29, 30 April 2013 (GMT)

(←) meh, all that is my fault for writing it up so fast. I don't have time right now, but I'll try to fix it later. About the image descriptions though, the name will always be in there, to insure that the image (if there is one) will always have an image description, even if one is not specified. The frameless center thing though, i should be able to fix that easy peasy once I get back and have time to sit down at my computer to do it. I'll also align the entire infobox to the right-hand side, like all the others. Totally forgot about that part earlier. Jeancey (talk) 05:38, 30 April 2013 (GMT)

(edit conflict) So the image descriptions will always be there with the name if an image or not is specified, okay. Is there any way that if the image= parameter is unchecked that it could null-in-void the parameter so that the name doesn't even come up as part of the image description, seeing as some (if not most) may not have images included in the summary and their titles are already stated along the top of the template itself? -helenaanne  ^{talk ♥} 05:44, 30 April 2013 (GMT)

Oh, what I meant was it'll be there if there is an image. The image description won't be there at all without an image. Possibly though. I modeled the template after how wikipedia does it, and they have a header with the name and the name in the image caption, which is in the same position as I have placed it. I can work with it though and see what works and what doesn't. Jeancey (talk) 06:03, 30 April 2013 (GMT)

I like the general idea, but so many lore people have such minimal background info that I fear only the Race, Gender and maybe Born fields will apply - the question is: Is that enough information to warrant its own infobox? It means the template will only display a little two column box in the minor lore people pages - might look odd and not very substantial. What does it add to the article? Another problem I foresee is infoboxes can become rife with speculation and assumptions. People will begin to assume birthplaces based on race etc just to fill up the template. For example, while it's very likely High King Gellir was born in Skyrim, but it should never find it's way into a lore infobox as it's unsourced - while I'm confident such statements would be removed by a patroller, it's something to consider. Just my thoughts on the matter :) --Jimeee (talk) 09:20, 30 April 2013 (GMT)

Actually, even the race and gender may not always apply. Many characters in books are never given an explicit race. And gender might be an issue if we use this on pages for certain deities - the Daedric Princes often have indeterminate or varying gender, for example. I think these fields need to be optional - and it should be possible to have either one without the other. — TheRealLurlock (talk) 12:14, 30 April 2013 (GMT)

In general I think it looks good. I don't personally think a 'small' infobox is a big problem, as there are quite a few instances of that with the Place Summary as well. It may be better if Gender and Race are on separate lines, as then if one is not filled in, such as for a Daedric prince, it does not need to appear. This would make it a bit bigger in the 'small' instances as well. Would the aim to be to add a summary to every person's page? If that is the case, and I assume it will be, there may be a few special cases that crop up as it goes along, as we found with the Place Summary. In which case, they can be addressed as they are found.

I noticed that the loc= parameter currently calls a row called Resides in, which suggests to me that the person is still alive, whereas the template doc calls it the Last known location of the person, which would still be valid even if they were dead. You could add a switch there to change it to Resided in, dependent on whether a death date has been added or a dead=true logical is called (this could be set automatically by including a death date, otherwise manually).

In relation to the points above (you probably know these already), you may need to enclose your image row in an existence loop {{#if:{{{image|}}}| so you don't end up with [[File:|frameless|center]] appearing if no image is defined. {{{imgdesc}}} will not appear on the page when undefined if you pipe out the end {{{imgdesc|}}} of the parameter call. --Enodoc (talk) 14:54, 30 April 2013 (GMT)

Damn, I wrote out a whole big thing about this last night and my browser crashed. Probably a blessing, since this was originally longer.

Jimeee's right that it's very important we stick to the source material and not make assumptions when filling out these summaries. For instance, is Alisanne Dupre a Breton? She had a Breton's name, but it's never spelled out in source material. Why is Potema called a queen and not a jarl? It's actually quite possible that she was "High Queen" of all Skyrim, not just the leader of Solitude, but this is not corroborated by in-game sources. She's only ever called a queen, so that's what we should call her, and leave the speculation to the forums. Only the most concrete of inferences should be utilized.

Regardless of whether we adapt the template for Lore:Gods, the race parameter will pose a dilemma just for some people since, throughout history, we have Chimer changing into Dunmer, Akaviri turning into dragons, all races turning into werewolves or vampires, as well situations where we have conflicting accounts (Night Mother) and where a character is assigned two different races interchangeably (Ysgramor). There may be more I'm forgetting about. Point is, I think the simplest, most reliable approach will be to put a character's first race in the race parameter, and leave any trans-racial events to be explained in the text. So Alandro Sul was a Chimer, and Ysgramor was an Atmoran. Also, I don't know if it's been spelled out yet in the template Doc, but Jeancey did add the option to put "Unknown" for the race param.

Also, when it comes to beast races, I think we should get specific if we can. If we only know that a character is a Khajiit, that's great, but if we know for certain that he or she is, say, a Cathay-Raht, then we should put that in instead.

By the way, as long as we're cleaning up the lore people pages, some pages need to be moved because they start with a title: Lord Darkworth, Lord Lovidicus, Jarl Hanse, and possibly others. And as a general rule of thumb, authors should be deleted unless we have more to say about them than one sentence. Notable exceptions include Marobar Sul and Enric Milnes.

I also have a question about the technical stuff: instead of filling out a name parameter, can this be automatically filled in as the PAGENAME like the place summary does? Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 16:18, 30 April 2013 (GMT)

(←) Ok, this is going to be long, since I am replying to many many people.

On unknown race: Currently, setting the race to Unknown will not link to anything. Also, given it is autolinked, anything with a page on the wiki can be added, which includes subraces of Khajiit and other beast races.

On short infobox pages: Honestly, if we really don't know this much about them, they shouldn't have their own page. These infoboxes won't be for the people who just have a blurb on the main people page and a redirect. We know enough about the others that we shouldn't have any problem with those. Also, we don't have to include birth and death location if it is unknown. It'll just display the date of birth in that case. If the date of birth is not specified, it appears as "unknown".

On Gender: Gender isn't linked, so we can just put Neutral, or Genderless or something in the field for those who have to gender, and unknown for those who do have a gender. In fact, I can make it so that a blank gender field will display as unknown, if that's what we want.

Endoc: Yeah, I know how to do the image thing, I just didn't get around to it last night (and I completely blanked on doing it the first time around. Totally forgot about it lol). Also, I'm pretty sure I can do the resided in thing, but, given that this is lore space, I actually think simply having at Resided In from the get-go would be better, since this all of this should be in past tense anyway.

On multiple races: You can put multiple races in the infobox, as long as you link them yourself. Something like [[Lore:Chimer|]], later [[Lore:Dunmer|]] should work fine, since autolink *should* stop when it hits a link. I'll look into it after I do this. Wearwolves and vampires probably don't need to be in the infobox? Since they are vampiric Bretons or Nords who are also werewolves, that part can probably just be in the text, with the base race in the infobox? Not 100% on that though.

On titles in page names: Honestly, we should remove them regardless. THEY are their name, not their title. There is a slight wrinkle with some Nords who have their titles after their names, such as Jorunn the Skald-King, but I suppose that could stay in their name.

ME: I can do that with page name, I'm not 100% sure on how to have the name parameter override the pagename though... I used the name parameter because that's how we did it with the Lore Place Summary.

Ok.... I think I got all the points in that... but if I missed one or two, just ask them again :) Jeancey (talk) 16:39, 30 April 2013 (GMT)

Alright, I made the image changes, name and gender are now optional, where name displays as the page name and gender displays as unknown if they are not specified. Jeancey (talk) 17:06, 30 April 2013 (GMT)

As far as beast races go, it actually might be better to add a "sub-race" field. Sure it's great to be specific and state that a given Khajiit is actually Cathay-Raht. But the average reader is much less likely to know what that word means, whereas everyone who's played any ES game should know what a Khajiit is. Plus, I think there are very few named members of any of the other Khajiit sub-races seen even in books.) Likewise for the Argonian sub-races. (I personally think these sub-races may have been invented solely to explain why both Argonians and Khajiits looked basically human in Arena.) This may be another case of "Let's hope we get more answers about this in ESO." Since Elsweyr and Black Marsh will be open to the public for the first time in almost two decades, one would assume we'd get to see a bit more variety on this point... — TheRealLurlock (talk) 02:23, 1 May 2013 (GMT)

I'm stockpiling page revisions which have summary right now for when the template is ready. I've got A-D covered, then I decided for no particular reason to work back from Z. I'm currently on S. Just thought I should mention it in case anyone else was doing the same; don't want a prospective edit conflict. I'm only working off the multi-topic articles, though, so I might be missing a few if they're not listed there. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 02:46, 1 May 2013 (GMT)

I mean.... if we are all happy with the idea of it, and the current things in it, I could launch it now. I can always add more things (like sub-races or reign for monarchs) later if need be. Jeancey (talk) 04:20, 1 May 2013 (GMT)

I'm good. Got about 50 summaries ready. By the way, about the birth/date years: it will accept and to link to "Merethic Era", but not any of the numbered eras. Which isn't really a problem, but just so you know. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 04:31, 1 May 2013 (GMT)

Now we also need to replace the example with a real one - I nominate Barenziah. Appears in 2 games, referenced in a 3rd, plus several books. She's royalty, so you can get those "reign" dates in there, and she served as the Queen Mother after being Queen. Probably one of the best examples for showing off all the most-likely-to-be-used features of the template. (Very few people have appeared in multiple games, so that narrows down the list considerably. Only other ones I can think of are Neloth and M'aiq the Liar, neither of whom is royalty, and the latter may not even be the same person in each case.) Also deities, but it's hard to put "reign" dates on them too. — TheRealLurlock (talk) 04:47, 1 May 2013 (GMT)

Dervenin appeared in SI and SR. There's also Ulfgar the Unending. But this reminds me: Uriel Septim VII technically "appeared" in Arena and Daggerfall. Should it say so in the summary, or is it better left to a note? I'm not sure if the lengths of Barenziah's various reigns have been established, but Uriel VII's has, so that might make him a slightly better example for showing off a reign parameter. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 05:16, 1 May 2013 (GMT)

Also, we might want to create a "Reachman" redirect to Lore:Forsworn to cover Red Eagle, Madanach, other possible Reachmen out there. Madanach is labeled as a "Breton" in Skyrim, but some lore indicates the Reachmen are a distinct "mongrel" race, so I don't think it'd be accurate to label them as such in the summaries. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 05:21, 1 May 2013 (GMT)

(←) I updated the template with reignStart and reignEnd params, also updated the doc to reflect that and used Uriel VII as the example, rather than myself :) Jeancey (talk) 23:01, 1 May 2013 (GMT)

I'm new to this conversation so I don't know how it goes but I would suggest adding a few things that I can see normally in other wikis(a good ex:[3]) So i'm gonna suggest that that template should have:

• Affiliation - Which government/group they belong
• Occupation - What they do for a living
• Relatives - Family members

Like i said i'm new to this discussion(and the above is too big to read :P).--Ashendant (talk) 23:32, 1 May 2013 (GMT)

The more, the merrier. The biggest issue I can think of with those is that a "Relatives" list could get very, very long for certain people in the TES-verse. There are certain risks of editorializing and pigeon-holing with "Occupation" and "Affiliation" that we'll have to mindful of, but I don't see any deal-breakers. edit- I don't disagree with Jeancey below that there's an inherent question of usefulness for each, but I'll leave you all to flesh that out. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 23:41, 1 May 2013 (GMT)

(edit conflict) Some of them, like Occupation and Affiliation, aren't all THAT useful, since the majority of people in lore space are nobles (and thus occupation is implied by their title) and so is their affiliation. We don't have enough opposing sides to warrant inclusion in the infobox. Sure, one or two people from skyrim might find it useful, but 95% of people in lore would probably just have "Empire" as their affiliation. Not sure about family either, since that might only be useful for a select few people as well. Jeancey (talk) 23:42, 1 May 2013 (GMT)

Family is generally useful for readers, of course there is potential for abuse if someone's family is rather large, and while limits can be added, they won't probably be needed.

Occupation is important in that it gives a general sense of what the character is in a few words, and the occupation would be more than just Noble, well in case of some nobles it would be Jarl of Whiterun or Ruler of Whiterun(if you don't want to include cultural titles) or in a lesser case(using Arcadia as an example) Apothecary of Arcadia's Cauldron... Or you could just go with Noble and Apothecary in these cases.

There was more than one empire, I think Affiliation should include names like Ayled empire, Medes Empire and Septim Empire, but I was thinking of it including lesser groups like the Thieve's guild and the Dark Brotherhood. What do you think?

Also remember that you are making a template for every article not just one.;)--Ashendant (talk) 00:14, 2 May 2013 (GMT)

Also keep in mind, these occupations are game specific info, and thus kept on game pages, most often. Arcadia doesn't have a lore page, and doesn't need one. This is a summary for LORE people, not every person ever. The basic info, that a person is a Jarl, is covered by the Title parameter. What other occupation does a Jarl have, other than Jarl? Affiliation, possibly, but then again, that's what the text is for. Some people switch affiliation. I'm not sure we have a single people lore page for anyone in the Ayleid empire, and Medes' and Septims are just different dynasties of the same empire. There is no Medes Empire or Septim Empire at all. Family, I'm not really all that convinced on that one either. Jeancey (talk) 00:26, 2 May 2013 (GMT)

Arcadia was really just an example of a non-noble. Nothing more meant than that.

Like said in that case Jarl would have the place associated to, of course we can remove the title and just have Ruler of <place> which is the information I wanted to convey in the Occupation (or Kamal of the Akaviri army or Listener of the Black Hand, to give a few examples).

Although you're right about dynasties, accordying to Lore:Empire There have been in total 3 empires, and that's what I meant, sorry for my bad examples.

Family: I think it's important and most wikis have it. Unless you have a alternative way to show this information in lore articles.--Ashendant (talk) 00:47, 2 May 2013 (GMT)

For family.... an alternate way aside from... just having it written in the text? On some of these pages, that information is ALL we really know about them, including it in the template would make the entire article useless. There are so many variations of the occupation, i.e. location, and title, etc, that accounting for it in terms of size and formatting in the template it would be a nightmare. Pretty much all of this information would be in the first sentence of the article anyway. My fear is making the template massively complicated, like the NPC Summary is, and thus contain essentially useless info, or info that is stated much better in the article. Jeancey (talk) 00:52, 2 May 2013 (GMT)

Ok I understand why you want Occupation and Affiliation separate, and while I disagree I will concede to your arguments.

On Family just having it on text doesn't really work if the character has more than one family member. Either a simple template for extended families or a link to family article would work, these are two possible ways of doing it.--Ashendant (talk) 00:58, 2 May 2013 (GMT)

(←) Jeancey's given the green light on the template as is, and I have a stockpile of edits ready to add summaries. In many cases, they include other minor page improvements (hopefully), so in the interests of efficiency, I'd prefer to start adding them. We can continue to make appropriate upgrades to the template as we go, but it's more than serviceable at the moment. I'd appreciate as much peer review as possible. If anyone wants to tackle the people articles starting with "E" (which should all be listed at Lore:People E), they're the only ones I haven't gotten to yet. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 01:02, 2 May 2013 (GMT)

I'm slightly confused.... why wouldn't it work in the text if they have more than one family member? Jeancey (talk) 01:21, 2 May 2013 (GMT)

Because then you would have parts of the text saying "<name> is his cousin, <name> is his mother, <name> is his grand-daugther" which could essentially go forever into a huge block of text.

However I was talking in the Lore Articles itself and only a few minutes ago I realized this was for Lore:People pages. So... :S.--Ashendant (talk) 01:26, 2 May 2013 (GMT)

Yeah, People pages have this kind of this all the time. Like "Three children, blank, blank and blank, by his wife, blank." Jeancey (talk) 01:33, 2 May 2013 (GMT)

Yet another proposed change

I know I do this a lot. :P I believe that the section on Pre-release content should be modified, due to ESO. For single player games, information provided prior to release is iffy at best and is usually leaked illegally, so the guideline made perfect sense. ESO, however, changes things in that there will be an Open Beta at some point prior to the release of the game where we can, and will, add info to the site. Under the current Pre-release guidelines, this is not allowed. I believe that it should be changed to reflect the fact that this would be completely accurate info and allowed on the site, even though it is technically prior to the release of the game. This would also allow us to moderate how much info we have to add, so we don't have to add it all at once like we did with Skyrim. Jeancey (talk) 20:31, 6 May 2013 (GMT)

Open Beta still isn't the official game, so I'd be opposed to using it in Lore. It can still be placed in the Online section as it would come under the Pre-release template. There are many general things that can be taken from betas but many minor details couldn't be used as they might not be in the final release (e.g. new cities are unlikely to be left out, but a book may be left out due to not being needed). Lore needs protection from any kind of misinformation, and as it can go in the Online section there is no need to add anything that isn't fully official. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 20:49, 6 May 2013 (GMT)

At the very least it should be changed to allow for information officially released on the website, which is, according to Legoless, pre-release info that shouldn't be included in the lore section. Jeancey (talk) 20:53, 6 May 2013 (GMT)

I don't see that the guidelines disallow this. My reading of "Officially approved materials" already includes any released info, including interviews, official videos, and the books released for Online. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 20:58, 6 May 2013 (GMT)

I guess. That begs the question though, during beta, wouldn't that be officially approved material and thus lore worthy? I'm thinking about the new books added, not really the storyline/plot which could change. I think it would be unlikely for them to change a book enough between beta and release to change information that could be gathered from it. Names in the books might change, but those are easily fixed. Jeancey (talk) 21:12, 6 May 2013 (GMT)

Not exactly. Betas are but they aren't, in the sense that they haven't been finalized. It's still in testing, albeit a public test, and not what we can take as officially approved. It's not so much the content of said books, its the inclusion of it, a book is something that could easily be removed (or going further, something that was supposed to have already been removed but forgotten about). Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 21:20, 6 May 2013 (GMT)

I wouldn't mind a head start on adding ESO info to the lore, as its contributions are purportedly substantial. Some information, such as from Jorunn the Skald-King, has already been added, and I don't see much point in deleting it and then re-adding it in a few months. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 21:33, 6 May 2013 (GMT)

The books and info about the leaders is already covered under officially released information. All the information about them is confirmed official by the ESO website. Jorunn is officially in the game, in lore and deleting him is basically the same as deleting any other lore page now. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 21:39, 6 May 2013 (GMT)

Doctored Images

Pursuant to this discussion, I propose we add the following note under "Images" in the Content Guidelines:

• Images which have been altered by editors to highlight relevant portions may not be added to the lore pages. Case-by-case exceptions may be made pursuant to a consensus. This restriction doesn't apply to images which have been cropped, magnified, or otherwise uniformly changed.

The last cop-out there ("uniformly changed") is for images which have been brightened and what-not to make them more discernible.

Note: as written, this applies to any given instance of a doctored image. If a page already has a doctored image, and someone wants to replace it with a doctored image they feel is more appropriate or add another one, they would have to once again seek the community's approval. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 22:58, 9 August 2013 (GMT)

• Support - Seems fair enough. Jeancey (talk) 23:00, 9 August 2013 (GMT)
• Oppose' While I think there can and should be guidelines for highlighting portions to avoid making them too extrusive, I oppose a ban on highlighted images. I feel this will only make the lore section more difficult to navigate (as people will be unable to discern exactly where such-and-such place is) and will make it somewhat bland, with large numbers of pages sharing the exact same undoctored map. Having an area highlighted makes a location a hell of a lot easier to locate and blends it well into the game world. --AN|L (talk) 23:14, 9 August 2013 (GMT)
• Support - for consistency across pages, I think it is easier to avoid doctoring images entirely than trying to enforce some sort of consistent standard. It would look terrible having doctored images on different pages (or even multiple images on the same page) that are not consistent, such as: a blue circle around something on the image as opposed to a red circle? Exactly what shade of red (or blue, or whatever)? How thick is the line width supposed to be? Is it meant to be a circle or a square, or are unconstrained bezier curves allowed? Is colorization of a highlighted area allowed? There are so many variables to think about. A blanket ban is much easier to manage. My 2c worth anyway. — Daric✐ 08:01, 10 August 2013 (GMT)
• Oppose: too many locations have a map thrown on their page that on first look wouldn't have a reason to be there. Images should be handled mostly on a case-by-case basis (or map-by-map allowing many locations to be discussed at once). If it's done map-by-map then in all likelihood it will be one editor making all the altered ones, which is where consistency comes in. It's easy enough to let it be known what colour to use (it's nearly always red which should be a standard) while exceptions would be created on what the basic map colour is. "Highlighted" images (they are not "altered" as only a red ring has been slapped on it) would all be from official maps anyway, so there isn't really an unofficial status to it either. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 14:04, 10 August 2013 (GMT)
• Comment: I agree with the concept, as it's the same stance we ended with over on that discussion; consensus needed before doctored images are added; but I would request an alteration to the wording. Currently I see it as a 'negative' guideline, whereas the intentions I understood from the discussion were to provide a 'positive' guideline for how doctored images can be consented when they are beneficial to readers. I offer the following sketch (this was based on your last comment there, ME, feel free to tweak):
  • Images which have been altered by editors to highlight relevant portions may only be added to the lore pages once a favorable consensus has been reached by discussion. This restriction doesn't apply to images which have been cropped, magnified, or otherwise uniformly changed.

  Enodoc (talk) 20:45, 10 August 2013 (GMT)

• Comment: No objections. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 18:59, 15 August 2013 (GMT)

• Support (of Enodoc's 'sketch'): I very much agree with the addition of 'doctored' images, to an extent of course. When there are nearly twenty pages that all have the same map with tiny, illegible labels covering it, something needs to be changed if we want readers to know what exactly they're looking at. However, there is that obvious consistency problem, which is why I'm supporting this proposal. Each should be added on a case-by-case basis, via talk page-- unless a lot are being added at the same time. At which point, I agree with the Silencer in that one person should add them all, to keep it consistent, after having the community's support for a list of pages they'll be added to. Since I was the troublemaker who first started messing around with edited maps, I volunteer for those that I've seen with this monstrosity. :) Also, Daric, just because a blanket ban is "easier" for a few editors doesn't mean that helps this site or its viewers. --_¿Vulpa^? 00:18, 17 August 2013 (GMT)
• Support: I support Enonoc's proposed solution. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 00:52, 17 August 2013 (GMT)
• Support:I support Enodoc's solution as well. --AN|L (talk) 21:46, 17 August 2013 (EDT)
• Support (of Enodoc's 'sketch'): I am all about consistency, and as long as the modifications to the image in question are consistent internally to the page, and externally to the rest of the site, then I have no objections. — Daric✐ 02:57, 18 August 2013 (GMT)

External Links section placement?

I want to add a suggested placement for this type of section in the formatting guidelines. Current practice is to add them to the bottom so they can be under an OOG disclaimer. See here, here, and here. Objections? Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 20:29, 1 December 2013 (GMT)

None from me. —Legoless (talk) 18:55, 9 December 2013 (GMT)

Explanatory notes

Many lore pages have explanatory references on them. I think that when these things become necessary, it's more appropriate to call them what they are: notes. I've edited Lore:Elder Council and Lore:Skyrim in this manner, and I think it looks better. I'd like to revise the guidelines to advocate this formatting whenever citing a proposal requires significant elaboration.

Pros:

• Seeing an "nb" tag instead of a number may give some careful readers a hint that what is being stated requires some inference or is possibly controverted, so there's some substantive merit.
• Switching the applicable pages to this format would require little effort.

Con:

• You want to cite one note, you have to cite all of them, or the formatting gets wonky, and I'm not aware of a workaround for that. A close look at Lore:Elder Council should provide a good example; for a few of them, the particular sentence or paragraph they cite to is only loosely related to their subject matter.

Thoughts? Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 21:26, 10 January 2014 (GMT)

This sounds good to me. My only potential issue is that notes are generally longer than references, and so inserting them inline when they previously weren't clutters up the source of the page pretty badly. I guess that's really only a problem for editors and not the viewing public, so not of much concern. Is there any way in MediaWiki to define notes backwards to the way they are now? That is, with a short notation in the text that is referenced to the full text of the note in the Notes section, rather than the full text inline that is expanded into a list later. Otherwise, if that's the way the system works, so be it. I definitely support separating footnotes and references into distinct sections. -- Hargrimm^(T) 00:15, 11 January 2014 (GMT)

If you name the reference, you can define the contents in the notes section too. See here for an example. --Alfwyn (talk) 12:51, 11 January 2014 (GMT)

Thanks, Alfwyn! That is definitely the way I would favor doing it, since it makes the source easier to read and concentrates the actual text of notes into the notes section. -- Hargrimm^(T) 18:00, 11 January 2014 (GMT)

I was just trying it out, and it doesn't seem to work if there's an OOG cite at the end of the note. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 02:12, 12 January 2014 (GMT)

Yes, this method currently doesn't work for nested refs. Seems like nested refs are only possible when using the template and wasn't anticipated by the author of the extension. For details see this bug report (note: the template works by using {{#tag:ref}}). While one can work around the problem by tweaking the code (see here), the solution produces strange errors when changing that minimally. I don't have any good solution for that case at the moment. --Alfwyn (talk) 15:06, 12 January 2014 (GMT)

I happened to discover the intnote template today. Used in the form {{intnote|ID|[nb 1]}}, it correlates to a note defined elsewhere like {{note|ID|^|Note text}}. This solves your initial con, as notes can freely be referenced to a specific sentence or not, and it also allows nested references since the note is not defined as a reference itself. Thoughts? -- Hargrimm^(T) 17:52, 13 January 2014 (GMT)

Seems to work just fine; I tried it out at Lore:Auri-El. So, under "Cite your source", I would like to add the following:

• If supporting a claim requires anything more than a simple statement of the source relied upon, an inline notation should be provided for this explanation, rather than an inline citation. This can be done using the {{Ref}} or {{intnote}} templates (see, e.g., Lore:Skyrim and Lore:Auri-El).

Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 16:40, 24 January 2014 (GMT)

So it was brought to my attention that when the upcoming wiki upgrade is implemented, the new multi-column layout for reference lists will make the ref method of noting rather messy. I think that is definitely a reason to standardize upon the note template, rather than refs, for doing this going forward. In pursuit of that, I also make a few modification to {{Note}} in order to make the notes play nicely with both bulleted and numbered lists. The new template is {{LNote}} (the L can stand for List or Lore!). It still cooperates with the regular {{intnote}} to mark the spot in the text. It works the same way, with a shared ID between the two templates providing the linkage. I switched over Lore:Sheogorath to the new template as a demo, as well as Lore:Auri-El to show both kinds of lists, as well as mixing linked and non-linked notes. Any comments, please speak up! I know only a little about wiki-markup or templates, so this was a fair bit of trial and error; I'm sure there's many improvements that could be made. -- Hargrimm^(T) 08:17, 5 February 2014 (GMT)

Just FYI, based on Alfwyn's test, it would be completely customizable, so a single-column layout could be made the default. (Oh, and for those who are confused, the multi-column layout is currently only setup to show in Firefox, though it can be done in all browsers with just a few tweaks.) – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 09:43, 5 February 2014 (GMT)

I updated the test on dev to support more browsers (should work for chrome, safari, IE 10 now, a force reload of the page may be needed). Any browser not supported will just display it in the old fashioned way. In the current setup it will change all ordered lists created by <references> tags, there is no way to distinguish between groups. We could distinguish between them by using a template instead of using the tag directly, but it looks like that complication won't be needed after all. We could however define exceptions for stuff explicitly marked with an appropriate surrounding <div> later on, if it turns out to be unwanted in particular cases. --Alfwyn (talk) 11:55, 5 February 2014 (GMT)

We might need to use a {{references}} template after all for any references that should be multi-column. If I tag the style to the ordered list, instead of a surrounding div, I get all kinds of weirdness: Firefox may slightly overlap columns and Chrome suddenly drops the decimal numbering. --Alfwyn (talk) 17:20, 5 February 2014 (GMT)

(←) Either way, I still support using a note template rather than a reference group for these explanatory notes, for three main reasons: (1) You can freely mix plain-text notes and referenced notes in the same section. (2) The text of the note is defined in the notes section, rather than in-line. (3) Semantically, notes are distinct from reference and re-using the Ref template for non-refs is not intuitive. The only issue I'd like to see resolved is the addition of autonumbering to the intnotes, rather than having to name each manually. But again, I don't have the expertise to figure out if that's possible or feasible. -- Hargrimm^(T) 17:34, 5 February 2014 (GMT)

Yes, I think this is not necessarily linked. Anyway, next template-less try, looks sensible in Firefox and Chrome. --Alfwyn (talk) 19:56, 5 February 2014 (GMT)

I agree, it would probably make more sense to use the Note/LNote/Intnote templates for this sort of thing. Actually, looking at the changes you made to LNote, would it make sense to just make the same changes to Note instead? Or is there some reason not to?

Auto-numbering could be done, thanks to #return in MetaTemplate, but I'd be hesitant to go that route. I suspect it would be too "twitchy" and be more of a headache than a help.

On a side note, I had no luck overriding the default references settings with a surrounding div. The ol.references takes place below it, so I think only a per-person CSS customization would work to change the default. While I'm admittedly biased towards using templates :), rather than changing the references style, would we be better off importing the {{Reflist}} template from Wikipedia? We could then easily customize lists to whatever we need on any given page, and the template itself could provide whatever we decide we want as a default. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 22:07, 5 February 2014 (GMT)

Well, you can see here what I meant, the more specific "div.justone ol.references" beats the more general one - we probably won't need it, but it is possible. If we use a template, we could make it more like the WP one of course, however it still would need changing many pages (yes, can be done by bot). We can even mix template and default style later on (set desired style in surrounding div and a class that sets the ol style to inherit) and just change the pages needing it. --Alfwyn (talk) 22:59, 5 February 2014 (GMT)

(←) Reviving this topic after realizing nothing was every put into place on the guidelines. I would like to propose the following modification to ME's above point, incorporating the new note template:

• If supporting a claim requires anything more than a simple statement of the source relied upon, an inline notation should be provided for this explanation, rather than a citation. This can be done using the {{intnote}} and {{LNote}} templates in conjunction (see, e.g., Lore:Auri-El and Lore:Sheogorath).

Any objections? -- Hargrimm^(T) 16:41, 3 April 2014 (GMT)

Sounds fine to me. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 17:14, 3 April 2014 (GMT)

Lore Transclusions

Many pages in gamespace currently contain transclusions from the related lore articles as their opening paragraph. This was done to prevent duplicate info, back before the gradual and ongoing overhaul/expansion of the lore namespace. I for one find this practice incredibly aggravating. Lore articles are going to have a lot of noinclude tags and other fun markup no matter what, due to list pages and whatnot. However, any kind of editing of pages that are transcluded to gamespace is a bit of a nightmare, especially when new lore is released.

The effects of this can clearly be seen on the Morrowind place pages. They're almost uniformly under-developed despite a wealth of lore, from both Morrowind and from sources like Infernal City and Dragonborn. Most of these pages were simply copied over from gamespace. I think it would be preferable to transfer this outdated and game-specific info onto the Morrowind articles, and write the lore pages from scratch. See Lore:Betony as an example. The page has been greatly expanded with new ESO lore, but it made no sense on Daggerfall:Betony. I've simply replaced the transclusion with Daggerfall-era info, which works fine. I think it's time to shy away from this overly-complex transclusion setup and just deal with the slight overlap. Thoughts? —Legoless (talk) 22:42, 18 February 2014 (GMT)

The old way worked tolerably well when most locations pretty much only appeared in one game. But yes, now that many areas are revisited in ESO, it will be extremely difficult to have a Lore section that fits equally well transcluded onto either. I would however, still like to see a link to corresponding Lore articles on the game-specific page, since it provides a lot of valuable background. Perhaps a section in the Place infobox that checks for a same-named Lore article and links to it if present? -- Hargrimm^(T) 23:10, 18 February 2014 (GMT)

The number of times where a transclusion is appropriate is rapidly diminishing because it is premised on that info being appropriate, both in content and format, for the respective namespaces. In the case of Betony, the info that was appropriate for Daggerfall, Online, and Lore from a content point of view was brought down to a sentence. Any gamespace pages with a description parameter, such as Morrowind, Oblivion, or Skyrim place pages, aren't transcluded because of the formatting issue.

Transclusions are still appropriate in a number of situations. Many pages for factions, gods, and people are partially or even mostly transcluded, and things like artifacts have the potential to be (still a relatively recent addition to the lore). I'm a strong advocate for transclusions when it's practical to do them because collecting data on one page will generally make it easier to maintain the wiki (and, as our page count continues to multiply, that is going to become more and more of a priority). While formatting and content control have narrowed the applicability of transclusions, they should still be used when appropriate.

While we have a wealth of lore on Morrowind places, I don't think gamespace pages should have a bunch of lore info on them dating to after that game took place. Readers of those pages are looking for info on "the now". So while the Infernal City, Dragonborn, etc., might provide some extra background info, it really should be background info, not... foreground info... this is really getting away from me...

Point being, transclusions are good, in principle. Some of your concerns, Legoless, could be flipped on their head: if there's a dearth of relevant lore being transcluded to appropriate gamespace pages, then maybe the transclusions should be taken farther, rather than taken away.

And, this is only an ancillary benefit, but the discouraging effect of a transclusion has a benefit to it. A lot of introductory paragraphs containing very basic information are transcluded, and if someone is looking to change that kind of stuff and yet doesn't know how to, then it's highly likely it was not gonna be a good edit in the first place. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 23:42, 18 February 2014 (GMT)

I've been "listening in" on this conversation, mostly from the perspective of "Will a bot run be needed?", and it sounds like that would be a bad idea, so leaving bot runs aside and focussing on the issue itself, I'm thinking that there's no reason we can't do this sort of thing on pages where it makes sense to do so, but not on pages where it doesn't. Hargrimm's suggestion of a template change is entirely doable, and could either be made to link to the same-named page by default (and a different one, or none, if specified), or only link to a page if one is actually specified. I don't think it makes sense to untransclude in cases where it's helpful, but I have to agree with Legoless' original assertion: it's a bit dumb to be <noinclude>ing all but a sentence. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 23:53, 18 February 2014 (GMT)

A link to the lore page is definitely a good idea, no questions asked. I agree that pages like the race articles can benefit from transcluding, and I don't propose to do away entirely with the practice. Place pages are my main area of concern here. —Legoless (talk) 23:58, 18 February 2014 (GMT)

Sorry, I misinterpreted. Online place pages won't get tranclusions due to the inevitable formatting issue. But I still I don't want to paint with too wide a brush; it's still plausible that some Daggerfall place pages could tolerate a lore introduction tempered with ESO info without a great deal of effort. I don't want to do away with them all as a matter of policy.

Anyways, a template change would save alot of time, since many gamespaces pages which have a corresponding lore page don't have a reciprocating link even though they should regardless of the transclusion issue. Of course, adding this parameter would be error-prone since the lore page name and gamespace page name are frequently different, but I'm sure we could sort through it in about a thousand man-hours or so. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 00:15, 19 February 2014 (GMT)

Actually, I have an issue with something similar to this, but the opposite issue. Transcluding lore pages to NPC gamespace pages I think is an incredibly irritating practice. What is involved is adding solely gamespace information in noinclude form onto the lore pages, in order for the format of the gamespace pages to be maintained. I don't see a reason why repeating the info is such a bad thing. The info doesn't need to be constantly updated because once the game is out, any lore from that game and prior to that game can be used. Future lore shouldn't be added for any reason, thus there is no reason to update these people pages at the same time as the lore ones, which totally defeats the purpose of the transclusion. For an example of this, see the Ulfric Stormcloak article (and the Lore article). Is it really such an issue for that single paragraph NOT to be just physically added to the gamespace page? Anyway, my venting is done :) Jeancey (talk) 01:35, 19 February 2014 (GMT)

(←) Another thing to consider in all this is an almost-unused feature we have on the wiki: labeled section transclusion. Essentially, you block off some text with tags, give it a name, then you can transclude just that section rather than the whole page. It still leads to many of the same problems as above, but it at least inverts the logic so that you're only tagging what you want, rather than tagging what you don't want. For example, the last word in this sentence is (link removed: was "transcluded" at time of writing). This does introduce some issues, though, such as text just silently disappearing if the tags are no longer present in the source (e.g., this text is (link removed: was empty at time of writing). I leave it to you guys to decide if we want to use this at all. You can also transclude entire sections by name, without having to tag them with anything at all. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 02:19, 19 February 2014 (GMT), Updated: 20:32, 4 April 2014 (GMT)

Okay, I've added lorepage to {{Place Summary}}. I'm not thrilled with the two slightly different-coloured links on the same line, but I think it'll do for a start. It accepts either a plain page name or a full link, though I'm not sure if we'll ever have a reason to use a full link unless we want to have non-default text. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 06:00, 21 February 2014 (GMT)

So, is there a way to have a bot add the parameter in a mostly reliable way, or are we gonna be doing it manually for... ever? Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 06:12, 21 February 2014 (GMT)

That depends if we want to have it default to the same-named page in Lore space (if it exists) or not. If we do, I can change the template to do that instead, and we can skip the bot altogether. I wasn't sure from what was said if we wanted it setup that way or not. If you think it's better not to have the template use that as a default, then yeah, a simple bot run should be able to add anything with the same name, then we can add or modify from there. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 06:59, 21 February 2014 (GMT)

Well, this isn't exactly a priority at the moment, so if a bot did go through them, it might take a while for us mortals to get fixes done. It probably is better to keep it manual; shouldn't be too hard to flip through the lore place pages. But whatever floats your boat, I guess. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 17:31, 21 February 2014 (GMT)

I'm struggling to think of an example where a Lore page of the exact same name would not be appropriate for a place of that name. I'd favor the template making an automatic link if there is a match, unless there's a real situation where that could be a problem. -- Hargrimm^(T) 18:08, 21 February 2014 (GMT)

Alinor, for one. But it's true they're rarer than I had been estimating. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 18:46, 21 February 2014 (GMT)

Winterhold is the city in Skyrim but a disambig in lore. What you really want is my opinion, which is that it displays it automatically with the option of changing it to none or a different page as needed. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 18:50, 21 February 2014 (GMT)

Yeah, that's exactly what I have in mind. Linking to a disambig is a fairly minor issue in the grand scheme of things, plus the cities in Skyrim don't use the Place Summary, so they wouldn't be autolinked to anything with this change. -- Hargrimm^(T) 19:07, 21 February 2014 (GMT)

(←) Okay, that change is made. I didn't end up using the traditional {{Autolink}}, so anything that doesn't correspond to a Lore page will simply not appear. That means you can use lorepage=, lorepage=none (provided we never develop a Lore:None page), or lorepage=RobinHood70 wuz here if you really feel the need to be silly. :P To actually override it to a genuine page, just enter the unadorned pagename, like lorepage=Winterhold (city), or you can use a full link like lorepage=[[Lore:Winterhold (city)|look here!]]. That last is, as I mentioned above, a bit dubious, but I've left that option open for now until we have a better feel for if we'll ever need it or not. I'm being called for dinner...can someone have a look if the docs need any updating? Thanks! – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 00:03, 22 February 2014 (GMT)

Thanks. Would you mind doing the same magic for the ESO NPC summary template? Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 17:51, 4 April 2014 (GMT)

Done. I also changed the PAGENAME to LABELNAME on both so that things like "(city)" are stripped off by default. I think probably most of the time, disambiguators won't across namespaces. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 20:32, 4 April 2014 (GMT)

See also and the infobox

I've just realized that on Place and People pages, the standard "Appears In" field of the infobox makes the links to game-specific articles in the See Also section redundant. Is there agreement that we should de-duplicate this information, favoring the infobox and removing unnecessary links in the See Also? -- Hargrimm^(T) 17:01, 3 April 2014 (GMT)

Yes, it is redundant, but it's a redundancy that people have insisted upon in the past. For longer pages, there's a scrolling issue. Keep in mind that virtually everything in a summary box is repeated on pages. Redundancy is practically their purpose. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 17:11, 3 April 2014 (GMT)

Official and Unofficial

So, pursuant to this discussion, I intend to bring the page in line with actual practice and formally change the in-game/out-of-game content distinction to an official/unofficial distinction. The OOG template should be changed accordingly, as well.

The "OOG" label may have to remain as a relic, though, as a practical matter. Unless someone can and is willing to program a bot which can accurately revise all of the applicable pages, I don't think it's worth the time to go through each page manually. Further, I think it would be a waste of time anyways because I think the connotation fans ascribe to "OOG" remains accurate. I think the parlance is and will be understood, even though the literal meaning of the initials would inaccurately imply that all other references are found in-game. So "OOG" is still better than "UOL" or "UL" for "Unofficial Lore", or any other alternative I can think of. Am I making any sense here?

If there are no objections, I'll take care of this when my wiki-break is over, unless someone beats me to it. Insignificant Revisions^{Threats•Evidence} 20:59, 11 May 2014 (GMT)

Sounds like a good idea. We're already citing out-of-game sources as canon (examples [1], [2]). —Legoless (talk) 21:30, 11 May 2014 (GMT)

Seems like a long overdue change, given the existence of the official novels if nothing else. Totally has my support. -- Hargrimm^(T) 21:50, 11 May 2014 (GMT)

Generally I agree with the idea. What would be your thoughts of making a slightly more granular? 3 distinctions: Official in-game, Official out-of-game, Unofficial. --Jimeee (talk) 10:11, 12 May 2014 (GMT)

Agree, the meaning of OOG doesn't suit practice, I always took it to just mean unofficial. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 11:08, 12 May 2014 (GMT)

Hope the latest revision was what everyone had in mind; if there are any problems, shout it out or fix as you feel appropriate. Insignificant Revisions^{Threats•Evidence} 23:20, 30 May 2014 (GMT)

Loremaster's Archive and the Future of OOG

It's been a year since the first Loremaster's Archive, and while it's been fun to help write canon, the use of these articles as sources in lorespace still leaves some questions unanswered. As per this discussion, we haven't been considering the usernames in-universe. This rule should be amusingly obvious when we look at "kevkev21" from a Tamrielic perspective, but something like this brings it into question. The character Eis Vuur Warden isn't just a username; this Argonian's existence has been systematically worked into a question in every second Archive, so much so that by all rights he should be canon. The United Explorers of Scholarly Pursuit is in a similar situation. If we were treating these articles the same as any of the old Morrowind-era dev roleplays or any of MK's term-heavy works, it would be a simple case of throwing out any info which doesn't "provide a rounder background" to a topic which already exists in mainstream TES. I'm not necessarily supporting the idea of downgrading the Loremaster's Archive to 'developer commentary', but it's worth noting that many of the books featured in the Archive have actually been implemented in-game in ESO. Without the real meat, the article series seems destined to become a never-ending series of fan interviews. Are we going to accept that as wiki canon? In any case, the interview links list might soon have to take precedence on the Archive hub page.

The second point I'd like to bring up is one I discussed with Jeancey in IRC a few days ago. The new "Crown Store Showcase" series on the ESO website seems to include different flavour text than what we see in-game. For example, the newest one reveals that the count of Skingrad traditionally uses palominos for his carriage. This seems like the exact sort of thing that needs a wiki page, similar to this or this. A lot of their old "Ask us Anything" articles are also pretty lore-relevant - see Lore:Ancients for example. Minor Edits was also working on a transcript of that Schick interview, wherever that's gone. There's a lot of stuff that needs to be hosted if we're biting the bullet with ESO website lore, and I'm not entirely sure lorespace is the place to put it. There been some discussion about expanding the General namespace (see here), and we already have an Archives section. It might be time to move this stuff out of lore and to a hub page like General:Elderscrolls.com Archive. It could even be a good home for oddities like this, or even some of our often-cited OOG stuff that's currently hosted on TIL, but I don't wanna get ahead of myself. —Legoless (talk) 16:00, 4 May 2015 (GMT)

First things first. We need to separate things released by MK (which shouldn't be hosted by us, ever. It is informed fanfiction, and it really doesn't belong hosted here, anywhere.) from things released by actual developers. This also includes 90% of out of game texts hosted by TIL. Things released by developers on the main site and written from an in-game perspective should be in Lore. The Interviews are from a lore perspective and there isn't really a reason to move them out of lore space. We decided this over a year ago when we decided that lore can include things released by the developer, but not in games. That being said, I think that the more recent Loremaster's Archives have really only included people with lore-friendly names. I haven't seen a terrible name for months, if not longer. I don't see any issue with including the name if it is clearly lore-friendly (i.e. no numbers, random capitalization in the middle of the name, etc). How many of non-lore-friendly names are there, and when was the most recent one? I really don't see any problems with how they are currently being cited. I do think we should separate the persona that is asking the question from the player that submitted it. You, legoless, did not ask the question, the in-universe member of the United Explorer's of Scholarly Pursuits named legoless asked it. There is a difference between author and character here, and I think separating them would be helpful in this situation.

That being said, I don't understand why we need to host the Crown store page at all? Why can't we just cite it on their website like we did the AMA's? Or any number of other sources that are hosted on the website? Just put the information in the article, and use Cite web. Jeancey (talk) 16:28, 4 May 2015 (GMT)

MK's older work is very much relevant to a lot of the Almsivi and Ald Cyrod stuff, although I agree that his fanfic is a discussion for another time. But things like Interview With Two Denizens of the Shivering Isles are very much developer-released. I also haven't seen any weird usernames for quite a while, but canonising people's roleplay characters has the potential to be a dark road to go down. As for why we should host the Crown tidbits, they're all written from an in-universe perspective and are perfectly lore-friendly. I don't mind not hosting the Ask us Anythings, just a suggestion. —Legoless (talk) 16:51, 4 May 2015 (GMT)

'Lo guys, IceFireWarden here. I'm the writer of the 'in-universe' character known as Eis Vuur Warden. Legoless asked me to help weigh in on this matter, and I'm always happy to help. As someone who has talked to both ex and current developers in some sort of capacity, I'd like to point out that two of the main goals of the Loremaster's Archive is to 1)create/build up new lore and 2)involve individuals from the lore community with the lore-building process. In that vein, the LA's could (and probably should) be viewed as lore, specifically developer-fanbase lore; I always try to create and weave a story with Eis whenever I submit a question because it enriches the Elder Scrolls universe. I think one of my favorite things of all time is when I wrote about the United Explorers of Scholarly Pursuits and the Imperial Geographical Society having debates if guar are Argonians or not – funny, yet somewhat lore-y (also made you good folks canon). Or how Cyclenophus brought up memospore (dreamsleeve) transmissions from Battlespire again – revamping old, somewhat uncategorized lore. However, I see your problem with wacky or non-lore base usernames and I agree with Jeancey with how they should be treated. In regards to lore-friendly factions and individuals, they should be referenced in related articles as long as the content fits the lore and it doesn't start to lean into speculation. --IceFireWarden (talk) 18:06, 4 May 2015 (GMT)

I don't know if my input is worth anything here, but I think canonising the characters from the Archive (at least the lore friendly ones) isn't that bad as long as we remember that ONLY the material that actually appeared in the Archive, and not any other info invented by the characters' creators, could ever be canon. So, for example, even though my in-universe Vordur has a fully fledged biography written by me, the only things that could potentially be canon about him is that he participated in questioning Lyranth and that he's a member of the United Explorers of Scholarly Pursuits. --Vordur Steel-Hammer (TINV1K) 18:22, 4 May 2015 (GMT)

I'm against any canonisation of player names or guilds based on the Archives. They are simply used to acknowledge the person who asked them. The slippery slope starts with acknowledging "lore friendly" names (and who is vetting these), and it was already agreed that every character who was crowned Emperor would not be getting an entry, despite this having a stronger case by being ingame. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 18:49, 4 May 2015 (GMT)

Well, the Emperor situation kind of solves itself – there were so many "pretenders" to the Ruby Throne that there's technically no real need to write down their names unless it's for something rather significant. The issue for individual characters like Izara the Restless or Eis Vuur Warden or Cyclenophus is that they're somewhat more integrated into the workings of the universe and seem more dimensional than just a name, I suppose.--IceFireWarden (talk) 20:49, 4 May 2015 (GMT)

(edit conflict) I agree with Silencer. I don't think character/guild names are worth mentioning by themselves, as they have little historical significance (although I can't remember if historical significance is a direct lorespace guideline or just one that I use myself). The information provided by Loremaster's Archive is canon, and for that reason I am happy to keep it in lorespace, but I don't think it's necessary to canonise player-created names. --Enodoc (talk) 20:51, 4 May 2015 (GMT)

(←) I think the main issue will come when the names start to appear in the answers rather just in the questions. I personally would love if at some point these characters were added to the game. I think that would be quite cool, a nice nod to the community if in a city in Murkmire, for instance, is a little outpost of the United Explorer's of Scholarly Pursuits. But that's just me. Jeancey (talk) 21:01, 4 May 2015 (GMT)

As far as OOG status, I recall we've had a similar discussion before, with the outcome being that the term 'OOG' is deceptive in terms of what it delineates. It doesn't actually mean 'out-of-game', since we've long treated the PGEs and official novels as non-OOG sources. Instead, the line is between official and unofficial, in terms of whether or not a piece of information is conveyed with the authoritative voice of Bethesda/Zenimax (or a current employee thereof clearly acting in their official capacity). Thus, my opinion is that everything published with an in-universe point of view on the blog is perfectly eligible for reference in Lorespace as a normal source. Whether we host the original text here or just link to it as we have been doesn't really matter to me. And the question of endorsing the fans' usernames I don't think is hugely relevant, since all that could really be said about any of them is "they wrote a letter to Telenger the Artificer once". If they're more important than that, they should show up somewhere else that can corroborate their notability. I agree with Jeancey that's it's fairly likely this will happen at some point as an Easter Egg type thing. By the way, ME's transcription of the interview is here. -- Hargrimm^(T) 21:11, 4 May 2015 (GMT)

Jeancey, the names have already appeared in the answers quite a few times by now, for example Lego's name has. --Vordur Steel-Hammer (TINV1K) 21:20, 4 May 2015 (GMT)

If we do accept usernames mentioned in answers as canonical, I think the question is whether or not we mention them at all on lore articles. For example, Eis Vuur Warden might not be 'historically significant' enough to warrant a separate article, but when the name plays into the history of another character (i.e. some relation to Lyranth) should it be mentioned? While it would definitely be cool to make those sorts of articles, it kind of flies in the face of the position laid out here, and the fact that the wiki has neglected the lore community's input on the TES universe for years now. —Legoless (talk) 21:41, 4 May 2015 (GMT)

I think that at the moment, as Hargrimm says, all this is not really relevant, because there is very little that could be written about those characters anyway. For now, we could just leave it as it was, leave the Archive in the Lore namespace, and cite it the same way we always have. --Vordur Steel-Hammer (TINV1K) 21:56, 4 May 2015 (GMT)

Based on what Lego said just above, I would posit that right now, introducing fan-created content into lorespace on the basis that it has been mildly corroborated by the devs is opening a can of worms into something that is inherently scoleciphobic. --Enodoc (talk) 22:05, 4 May 2015 (GMT)

Just concurring. I think we're following the only reasonable option available by glancing over interrogator names, for the time being. Not omitting them, but not proliferating references to them.

It's a good idea to archive the Ask Us Anythings and similar developer Q&As, Crown Store tidbits, etc., because it's stuff some readers will likely want to refer to many years down the line without fumbling through the Way Back Machine. We're running into this problem now with Morrowind. And even though these things remain readily available on the official site, the official site doesn't pop up in our search results, so UESP users could miss out on relevant information on their search topics. The Schick-as-Phrastus interview transcription got stalled because I was hoping to fit an edited version of the in-character stuff, the RP side of the interview, into the Lore section, but I don't think it was a good idea. The salient points are already sandboxed, but I'll see about completing it and adding it to General when I have time. Insignificant Revisions^{Threats•Evidence} 04:23, 6 May 2015 (GMT)

I've gone ahead and made a page for the Crown Store snippets, since the recent release has been confirmed to use different flavour text in-game. It's located at Lore:Elder Scrolls Online - Crown Store Showcase for now. —Legoless (talk) 13:41, 8 May 2015 (GMT)

Pre-Release Update

I'm proposing to change the following line:

"Links to relevant gamespace pages can still be added to the Notes and See Also sections."

to:

"Links to relevant gamespace pages can still be added to summary tables and the See Also section."

These pre-release guidelines were written before the "appears in" notes were removed from lore pages and before the advent of People and Places summary tables. I think I saw a link being removed from a place summary a while back over this technicality, so it's important to keep this page up-to-date. —Legoless (talk) 17:04, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Sounds good. Insignificant Revisions^{Threats•Evidence} 17:09, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. I had such a case myself, when a link I added to a place summary was later removed on this basis. --Vordur Steel-Hammer (TINV1K) 17:31, 30 May 2015 (UTC)

Forgot to update this. The change has been made. —Legoless (talk) 03:11, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Unofficial and OOG

This is partly a reminder to myself, but this policy needs updating on some wording. The page basically treats OOG as unofficial, but this is no longer the case. OOG stands for Out-Of-Game, which there is a substantial and growing amount of official OOG. Under the References in Lore section this is one of the points "Unofficial Sources (OOG)". We must separate the terms here, and probably find another abbreviation to call something unofficial, such as UOS (UnOfficial Source), of just use the full words. We probably also need to think about renaming every one of our OOG reference sections, if we want to treat official sources of information as fully-incorporated lore. Either way I'm going to update this page, at least to separate out OOG and unofficial. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 20:00, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

what would be an unofficial source? Just for clarification. Would OOG = Official things such as pocket guides, the Elder Scrolls websites, etc? Timeoin (talk) 20:24, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named mostly, until they decide to add it at a later point anyway. The pocket guides have always been treated as ingame, probably because they came with the games. OOG is technically even the novels, but I think we allowed ourselves to define them as games to include them. I started this because OOG isn't always unofficial, but this page treats them as the same thing. There will still be official OOG, such as AMAs, or the ESO support system, which could be seen as anything that is "4th-wall breaking", while other stuff such as the Loremaster's series is official and treated as ingame because it is presented as within the ES universe. This isn't really about what is or what isn't official, its to break the way the page treats OOG and unofficial as synonymous when they are not (ie if it is OOG it is unofficial). Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 20:47, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

That's why I was asking the question - because those items, whilst clearly official, are not in the games themselves. Timeoin (talk) 22:24, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

The most common sense guideline, I think, would be to treat anything published by Bethesda/Zenimax (or under license as per the novels) as full-fledged lore, no different from the content of the games, while anything else such as forum posts, AMAs, interviews, etc. as UOS. Materials like the Pocket Guides and the Redguard comic are still canon, even if they aren't "in-game" strictly speaking. The fact that they're printed materials shouldn't really warrant a special category I don't think. --MarginWalker (talk) 01:09, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Just to throw my thoughts out there. I think perhaps these references should just be split into Official and Unofficial (UOS), to essentially replace in-game and OOG. I don't think it would be necessary to have more than two sections of sources, for example I don't think having three categories like, in-game, OOG, and UOS (where OOG and in-game are official) would be beneficial, I think that would just make the reference sections on the page more messy than they need to be. Though I imagine that might be a lot of work to go through everything to change the names. Enderkingdev (talk) 07:25, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Official/Unofficial split is fine, but I don't really like the other abbreviations for unofficial, despite "OOG" being inaccurate. MinorEdits said this earlier, which I somewhat agree with: The "OOG" label may have to remain as a relic, though, as a practical matter. Unless someone can and is willing to program a bot which can accurately revise all of the applicable pages, I don't think it's worth the time to go through each page manually. Further, I think it would be a waste of time anyways because I think the connotation fans ascribe to "OOG" remains accurate. I think the parlance is and will be understood, even though the literal meaning of the initials would inaccurately imply that all other references are found in-game. So "OOG" is still better than "UOL" or "UL" for "Unofficial Lore", or any other alternative I can think of. Am I making any sense here? --Jimeee (talk) 10:07, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

(←) Perfect sense Jimeee, unless all of that was MinorEdits. Unfortunately we've already had and lost debates trying to have things easily understandable but not quite accurate (the accuracy advocates won those debates). UOS was an attempt to show something different, I don't particularly like it myself but couldn't think of anything else. OOG has always meant Unofficial to me, but with ESO and some later Skyrim I've seen things I'm not comfortable not labeling OOG even though it is official (Calcelmo's Stone translation for instance). It is also fairly trivial for a bot to change the OOG part in the reference section, but not the rest of the text (where it actually is more likely to be correct already). It would also require a change to the wiki cs which is not as trivial or it may be if it's just a name change. I can make a stop-gap change that actually explains the OOG meaning while still separating them out, in preparation for a potential future change (need consensus and acceptance of a new term before that happens). As the page stands, OOG is unofficial, which is simply untrue and requires change if nothing else. I didn't really mean or want a debate on what is an official source, but you've provided good ideas on where to go with our terms, and indeed the future of the wiki which has always taken the data from the game as the first and foremost source of information, overruling information from any other source whether official or unofficial, or indeed Out-Of-Game. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 19:38, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Talk First rule for UOL

These guidelines currently state: "A talk page discussion should happen before introducing new information from UOL."

It was brought up recently that this rule is overly cumbersome for editing, and I know there have previously been some off-wiki discussions where this was raised as a concern. Personally my view on the matter is that this rule runs contra to WP:BOLD. Controversial lore edits are regularly moved to the talk page for discussion when they are objected to, and this strict talk-first rule is not one that has been followed historically. Having such a barrier when citing a well-established UOL text which has otherwise been referenced correctly doesn't make much sense to me, particularly when trying to draft a new article.

There has recently been a bit of a push to enforce this rule, invoking this long-neglected procedure without raising any actual concerns about the inclusion of the UOL material. See for example this discussion which was snowballed. In my view, there wasn't much need for a discussion on that page, as the UOL usage was non-controversial. I think this rule is well-meaning and has been on this page unchallenged for many years, so there's certainly no issue trying to enforce it in the same way we enforce a similar rule on Easter Eggs pages. That said, I also think lorespace has been doing perfectly fine without it, and I think it better at this stage to simply remove the rule in favour of the current de facto practice of moving to the talk page only when an edit is controversial.

Our lorespace guidelines should reflect actual practice, and by my estimate any serious enforcement of this rule would result in the stripping of a lot of UOL material from the wiki until a talkpage consensus had been established. Obtaining a pre-established consensus in this manner is superfluous and therefore I think this rule needs to go. —⁠Legoless (talk) 23:50, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

Adding an addendum to this proposal based on discussions with Jeancey. In place of a mandated talk page discussion prior to adding UOL to a page, it was suggested that the editor should be required to leave an explanatory note on the talk page outlining their reasoning for the inclusion of the material. That way, if questions arise in the future, the original thinking is present. Enforcement of such a rule would likely be a matter of simply asking the editor to add their reasoning after the fact, and in any case a lack of reasoning may highlight problematic additions in the first instance.

This sounds like a good proposal to me and I would say is already best practice. See for example Lore talk:Sutch where I added such a note all the way back in 2011. It would be good to codify this practice, and I think it addresses concerns with low-quality UOL additions while preserving the goal of WP:BOLD. —⁠Legoless (talk) 00:16, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I would like to see this policy go, however I do have suggestions though. I mentioned these on the discord. The thing is we should be using Uol, that is written during the time periods where Devs or Ex Devs were working with Bethesda or doing stuff for Bethesda. Say for example. Mk said something about Sanguine actually getting disgusted by Reman. That was written during the time he was working for or contracted by Bethesda that would be Valied. But Stuff writen after he's no longer with the company wouldn't. Say for example C0DA. Then using Uol when its needed for like history or lore we don't have much about. Or stuff written that tells us exactly how the Devs intended it that stuff. But only when they were part of the Company. Then removing the Talk Page requirement. So I do think there should be rules but I don't think we need the talk page requirement. (TheVampKnight (talk) 00:21, 8 December 2020 (UTC))

I agree with Legoless, enforcing this policy honestly just drags discussions out longer than they need to be. I feel that the current policy assumes that UOL is metaphorically "guilty until being proven innocent" rather than "innocent until proven guilty" if that makes sense. Easter Eggs are better off being discussed before being added, since a lot of the times they are guesses, but uol is a different case and doesn't need to be handled in the same way.

I understand Vamp's point, stuff they said during and after their tenure as a developer may be a little different but often times the devs only give info that was established as true while they were working there, they don't make up brand new lore (unless its an original story like C0DA).

All in all the policy should be changed to have uol able to be added to any page, but a discussion to remove it can be made on a talk page if somebody sees an issue with how it is written. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 00:45, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

If we're going to change the policy, I'd like for us to implement the suggestion of requiring a talk page post explaining the addition of UOL. By requiring a talk page post, users can explain why they feel their addition is helpful and how it adds to the subject. Users can also engage each other if they disagree with the addition. Having contributors make that talk page post when they add UOL will help us determine whether or not the content added is actually substantial, and it encourages people who have an issue with the addition to speak out where they may not have tried before. -MolagBallet (talk) 06:22, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I generally agree with the idea, but requiring people to post an explanatory note on the talk page when they add UOL not really enforceable, especially if people don't know the policy. If UOL is added without a reasoning, there needs to be an agreed protocol (like we move it to the talkpage etc). --Jimeee (talk) 09:49, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree with the suggestion of adding an explanatory note to the Talk Page rather than "talk page first", but also with the concern that where this doesn't happen, there needs to be a protocol. Rather than the standard at the moment of "cut and move to talk page", the most logical solution that is in-keeping with the theme of the suggestion is "copy to talk page" - if the editor themself doesn't add an explanation, even after being prompted, someone else can take it to the talk page without removing it from the article page first. If nobody can work out an explanation, then it should probably be removed.

I think Vamp's comment meanwhile is more related to the definition of UOL, rather than the use of UOL, and from what I remember, the definition of UOL already generally excludes content from post-Bethesda former devs. --Enodoc (talk) 20:11, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

While a talk page isn't a bad idea I think even then it's a little over the top. The same thing could be accomplished with much less time by simply giving an explanation in the Edit summary as suggested above. A talk page shouldn't be required when adding it, but I think it can be optional if the justification for adding it is lengthy. If the justification is small enough to fit in an edit summary, it is still preserved (if not better) within the article's history for people to look too, and a small entry on a talk page would be redundant if required. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 20:51, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

(←) I've updated the guideline based on the above. —⁠Legoless (talk) 00:19, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

We have not agreed on a protocol if the editor does not add a talk page note. Enodoc suggested "copy and move" to talk page. I prefer "cut and move", because if no one see or takes part in the talk page note there is the risk it will slip through the net and will be forgotten about. --Jimeee (talk) 08:50, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

This is an issue of rules enforcement and site administration, which I don't think needs to be inserted into content guidelines. If someone adds UOL to a page and it ends up being copied and/or cut to the talk page, I don't think anyone will object. The changed wording reflects the consensus here and the current best practice. —⁠Legoless (talk) 09:02, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

My point is to inform the reader as much as possible - this is separate from rules enforcement and site administration - and given this is quite a niche topic, its worth hammering the point home. I would propose: "When introducing new information from UOL, an explanatory note should be left on the talk page. Failure to do so may result in the UOL information being moved to the talk page for further discussion."--Jimeee (talk) 09:25, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Late reply to this but I've amended the page to include the above clarification. —⁠Legoless (talk) 18:54, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Lore links standardisation.

Some game pages have lore links in only the main body of the article (Skyrim:Winterhold) some only in the stat box (Skyrim:Winterhold (region)) or both (Oblivion:Umbra (sword)) I know this is an issue on pages not in the Lore namespace but it's inconsistent for every game (morrowind:Balmora & Morrowind:Vivec (god)) so it's not just for any one game namespace either. I believe it's best to co-ordinate a solution from an overview position. My appologies if this does belong on another namespace. — Unsigned comment by Jinxmaster1 (talk • contribs) at 22:35 on 21 July 2023 (UTC)

What specifically are you referring to? The {{Lore Link}} template itself should only be used on pages which are transcluded from Lorespace into another namespace (the primary use of this being the books, where we want to display different links on the lore copy of Lore:Guide to Chorrol vs the game copy of Oblivion:Guide to Chorrol, for example). If the {{Lore Link}} template is being used elsewhere, in something that is not transcluded from Lorespace to another namespace, it should be converted to either a standard link to lorespace [[Lore:]] or a standard link to a page in the same namespace.

If you are referring to standard links to Lorespace, such as [[Lore:Hammerfell]], generally we should be linking to the gamespace article first, and the lorespace article (only where relevant) if a gamespace article doesn't (and shouldn't) exist.

If you're referring to the "For more information, see the lore article" note and the (lore page) link in the infobox, personally I would say that the infobox link is generally expected, and the note in the main text is at best nice to have, or at worst redundant and should be removed. If this is where you want to see more consistency, a discussion here should theoretically suffice, but for greater exposure could be moved to Community Portal. --Enodoc (talk) 21:49, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Your third paragraph is indeed what I was talking about, note how the major cities of skyrim morrowind and oblivion all lack the infobox link. I wouldn't be shocked to discover more articles given that it's missing on such prominent articles. as for moving this talk topic I have no idea how to go about that. Should I copy the text as it appears in the editor, paste it in the Community Portal discussion with a summary explaining the transcription, then remove the original with a summary explaining the deletion? --Jinxmaster1 (talk) 18:56, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Should be easy to add those missing infobox links, so I'll do that now for the ones that you mentioned. For the rest of the discussion about consistency of where we do (or don't) the FMI sentence, I have linked this topic from Community Portal to try and give it more exposure. If that doesn't work, we can restart the discussion specifically on that topic over on CP later. --Enodoc (talk) 14:50, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Edit: It may also be a longstanding oversight and/or change of practice over the years. The Morrowind Town Table and City Summary templates (for Oblivion/Skyrim) don't actually have the Lorepage parameter at all, so it isn't used because it doesn't exist. Should be relatively easy to add though. --Enodoc (talk) 14:59, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

I think it's a non-controversial improvement to any gamespace template to add a lore page parameter. Not sure there's a policy discussion to be had. —⁠Legoless (talk) 16:19, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Indeed. But I would say any discussion would be more over the removal of the in-prose FMI links, which would be redundant in such places where these templates are updated to include the lorepage parameter. --Enodoc (talk) 14:47, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Concerning Lore articles written in past and present tense

• Perspective: Game events should be described as historical events from the perspective of an anonymous citizen of Tamriel following the latest chronological events of the officially approved TES media. The articles are still expected to be encyclopedia-style, but designed as if they were (extraordinarily well-researched and polished) reference materials for a citizen of Tamriel.

Okay so I understand the above but I believe the context of different tense should be mentioned, Because I've seen lore articles in both present and past tense, while game-specific articles are always in present tense. I have a few questions. The latest main game is (Skyrim) which is set in the latest Era (Fourth) and year (201), does that mean Skyrim character lore articles should be written in present tense since it's the most recent main game, Era, and year, until further notice? Additionally how about Skyrim characters who have scripted deaths, like bosses, are their articles supposed to be in past or present tense? Furthermore, If TES VI is set a few years later, are the Skyrim character lore articles going to be written in past or present tense? If TES VI is set in the same year (201), are the Skyrim character lore articles going to be written in present tense, if its set a few years or a hundred years after will they be past tense? what about other certain character lore articles from ESO, Morrowind, and Oblivion, should they be written in past tense due to the games they appear in set in eras and years from hundreds of years ago? How about ESO, Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim characters who are elves, vampires, and dragons who live forever due to their immortality and who don't have scripted deaths whose fates remain unknown? I will just assume certain characters from ESO, Morrowind, Oblivion who have lore articles, who are Human and Beastfolk are past tense due to them not being immortal, and living hundreds of years before Skyrim correct? I believe the rules for present and past tense should be clarified so there wouldn't be any confusion --KevinM^(talk) 23:59, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

The style guide says: "Past tense should only be used for historical or lore-related articles or for articles or sections describing deprecated content." Honestly, my immediate thought is just to make ALL of lorespace in past tense, even for pages regarding people and places from the most current (timewise) game. It isn't specifically stated that ALL of lore is past tense, but it certainly would make it more consistent, easier, and remove any issues as described above. Jeancey (talk) 19:32, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The key word here is historical; even events that occurred in Skyrim are historical if your perspective is defined as "following the latest chronological events". This essentially means that everything in lorespace should be written in past tense, except for things that could reasonably be considered persistent, permanent, or perpetual; this would include things such as geopolitical entities (regions, city states, provinces) or immortal beings (gods, Daedra, undead). --Enodoc (talk) 19:37, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Well, the style guide says historical OR lore-focused. Which means that lore focused articles for things that still exist should still be in past tense. Jeancey (talk) 19:51, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Writing everything in lore-space as past tense just doesn't make sense to me, there are a lot of beings in this setting that exist perpetually. As Enodoc points out, it doesn't make sense for a large number of locations to refer to them in the past tense. "The Imperial City was the capital city of Cyrodiil and the entire Empire" is an inherently wrong sentence as that never stopped being true. It is stating that this state of things is no longer accurate. Conforming all of lore-space to past tense only will make a lot of our articles less accurate than they are at the moment, and make it harder to write these articles as editors have to ignore a desire to write in a more natural tense for a lot of topics. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 20:23, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

I would just like to add that I was asking about character lore spaces. So basically lore spaces should be treated as historical but my questions were regarding immortal and mortal characters. Basically should Humans and Beastfolk characters from every game (who have lore articles), be in past tense, while immortal characters Elves, Vampires, Dragons, Gods, from every game (who have lore articles) be in present tense. How about characters like ghosts? they should be in past tense because their deceased right? well how about vampires who don't have scripted deaths like Serana & Valerica? How about Harkon, who has a scripted death? For gods, Almalexia has a scripted death but what about Vivec, whose fate is left ambiguous? For Dragons, How about Odahviing who doesn't have a scripted death and Paarthurnax whose fate is left up to the player? What about Durnehviir who is basically an undead dragon, should his article be in past or present? and to just talk about settlements for a second I understand using past tense for certain cities located on Vvardenfell because they're all supposed to be destroyed but I don't see a point to use past tense for cities that are still very much around. For example on Wikipedia all the present-day cities like London, Paris, NYC etc. use present tense in the opening paragraphs, while past tense is used for ancient cities like Babylon. Back to characters, for exampple, Naryu Virian, a Dark Elf ESO character, we don't know where she is during the time of Skyrim, do we still use past tense? How about Elenwen, a High Elf from Skyrim, do we use past or present for her, since Skyrim is the latest game. If we make it present tense do we change it to past tense once TES VI releases? Should every lore article be in past tense because of the historical context or should there be exceptions? Balgruuf the Greater, a mortal, has no scripted death, if TES VI is set during the same time do we keep his lore article past or make it present. If TES VI is set 20 years later do we keep it past or make it present, if it's set 100 years later we definitely use past tense but again what about immortal characters who don't have scripted deaths like Elenwen or Serana? I fully understand that game-specific articles should be present tense. should lore articles all be past tense to solve all the issues presented above? (concerning character lore articles only) for characters who are immortal (elves, undead, dragons) who don't have scripted deaths should they be in past or present? How about mortal characters from ESO, Morrowind, and Oblivion and Skyrim? How about immortal characters who have player determined fates i.e. Paarthurnaax? --KevinM^(talk) 20:37, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

To be clear, I was talking about what would be easiest from a consistency point of view. Not what would be best/most intuitive. I think there is lots of grey area on who to have present tense and who to not. Jeancey (talk) 21:57, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Who do you believe should have present tense and who should have past tense? --KevinM^(talk) 22:19, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Just my own personal opinion here: I think we should just use our best estimates based on lifespans and the most recent definitive living status (Vampires should count as "living" specifically in terms of tense usage despite being undead since they are still willful characters, while ghosts/zombies/skeletons do not usually maintain their will and body. However older vampires are interesting in that technically Gwendis never dies in ESO, but past tense is natural since she has not appeared anywhere since 2E 582. I think vampires should have the tense of their most recent actions, so Gwendis would be past tense while Serana is present tense until TES VI). So Imperial City, Tolfdir, Valerica, Alduin (unknown where his soul is), Shor (living in Sovngarde), Divayth Fyr (his death was speculated but not confirmed, and it appears he still lives anyway), Elenwen, Durnehviir, Vivec (maybe, he did disappear), and Odahviing are present tense. But Bromjunaar, Mercer Frey, Harkon, Miraak, Astrid, Almalexia, Dagoth Ur, Ancano, Svaknir, Kvenel, Naryu (lifespan estimate), and ghosts are past tense. Paarthurnax is interesting because technically his death is a quest, not a choice. Many don't complete that quest, but I would argue he is canonically past tense.

However, if we use an "out of time" perspective, we could say "Tolfdir was a professor in the Fourth Era" and would never have to edit the page regardless of living status. I think this is defensible since the perspective quote above seems like it has more to do with avoiding omniscient statements and maintaining unreliability of narrators. For example, Tiber Septim should not be written of as ascending to a divine, only as it being believed he did. This is because a citizen would only know beliefs while players know he did actually ascend from evidence in Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim. This approach would be easiest from an editing perspective, but might not be best for clarity. This is just an alternative view, and I think we should follow Wikipedia like I described in the previous paragraph. BananaKing5 (talk) 22:43, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

I highly favor using present tense for people still alive during Skyrim. It becomes extremely clunky when transposing the alternative to gods. Imagine "Molag Bal was the Daedric Prince of Domination". Feels wrong. If there's ambiguity I say past tense works. Mindtrait0r (talk) 01:19, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

That is a great point. I think the alternative generally works really well for mortals and characters within a timeline, but you're right in that it falls apart for gods that encapsulate a sphere. Saying "Molag Bal was the Daedric Prince of Domination" would almost be like saying "Electricity was the transfer of electrons". Perhaps a line can be drawn between present tense for gods and this alternative for people, but it is probably best to drop that alternative and just follow Wikipedia. BananaKing5 (talk) 05:04, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I maintain that what I said above will be the most consistent (and also will not need changing when the next game comes out). Having present tense for people alive during Skyrim is itself already a contradiction to the current guidelines - past tense is the rule, present tense is the exception, and if we want to codify that exception, it's when something is persistent, perpetual or permanent. To pick up on my point earlier about immortal including gods and undead - I'm talking true immortality in the sense of "cannot be killed", not biological immortality which would apply to Vampires and Dragons (as well as some "mortals" like Divayth Fyr), because if you can be killed that's not perpetual.

To run through that list of examples - Elves are not immortal anyway, so they would never count (as such, I'm not going through every individual named Elf); Vampires and Dragons are tricky, but I would defer to the above point that for the sake of this argument neither would count as perpetual, because they can be killed; Vivec is "missing", so for all intents and purposes nothing about him is current, which means he is no longer persistent (regardless of whether he's dead); and Imperial City is permanent. Therefore out of the entire list, the only thing that should be in present tense is Imperial City. I think the only possible exception (because there's always an exception to the rule) is Durnehviir, because he comes back when you kill him - like a Daedra - and is therefore perpetual and persistent. --Enodoc (talk) 19:20, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

My proposal would therefore be to expand the current Perspective guidelines to include tense specifically, and then link across from the Style Guide to that section:

• Perspective and Verb Tense: Game events should be described as historical events from the perspective of an anonymous citizen of Tamriel following the latest chronological events of the officially approved TES media. The articles are still expected to be encyclopedia-style, but designed as if they were (extraordinarily well-researched and polished) reference materials for a citizen of Tamriel. Articles should therefore be written in past tense except for when the subject of the article can reasonably be considered persistent, perpetual, or permanent (such as geographic regions, major political entities, and immortal beings).

--Enodoc (talk) 19:28, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Would your proposal include mentioning the relevant years or events? For example, would you say "Arngeir was a Greybeard" or "Arngeir was a Greybeard in the Fourth Era"? Although I may be wrong (I am by no means an expert on grammar), I think the former grammatically reads as though Arngeir is no longer a Greybeard, which is not the case according to "the latest chronological events of the officially approved TES media". An anonymous citizen in the latest year (4E 201) would see that Arngeir currently is a Greybeard, not that he used to be one. The former grammatically places the lore article in the future looking back at the TES universe, while the latter idea including the era (essentially the alternative that Mindtraitor and I were talking about) places the article outside of time, as if we were writing these articles from sources in Apocrypha's timeless libraries. This inclusion of dates would still only work if it was similar to your idea, drawing a line where all impermanent things are in the past tense and the reasonably perpetual being in the present tense, though I think it is better than excluding the relevant dates/events. I think this idea could work though I don't favor it. I believe that the most consistent idea that is most in line with the perspective of a citizen reading the latest edition of an encyclopedia would be using present tense for living people and perpetual beings/things, and past tense for anything or anyone no longer currently extant. The basis for this is, well, Wikipedia in real life. BananaKing5 (talk) 21:13, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I would prefer it be written "Arngeir is a Greybeard" as the timeline has yet to progress past 4E 201. Present tense is a much better way of doing it. Doing it in past tense is inherently misleading as it implies things have happened since then. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 23:10, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Apocrypha is a good analogy actually, so yes. And that is exactly how the Arngeir article has been for the last 4 years up until yesterday, so that is a good example as well. The main reasoning behind this for me is so that we don't have to go through hundreds of articles when the next game comes out to change 6 words, which seems entirely unnecessary, as well as being a contradiction of current guidelines.

My suggestion above is to properly codify current practice in those guidelines to answer the original question, as that original question was a request for clarification on what tense to use and when. Since your suggestion to change to present tense would be a change of current practice and an edit to the Style Guide, I think we should probably move over to Community Portal for a specific discussion on that topic, so others can contribute to the proposal. --Enodoc (talk) 22:22, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

(←) While I appreciate the argument of effort when the next game comes out, I can't get passed the awkwardness of the past tense for latest-game characters and organizations. I'm unfamiliar with pre-Skyrim UESP, was this practice the same when it came out? Mindtrait0r (talk) 22:55, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm with Mintrait0r on this, I can't get passed the awkwardness of the past tense for latest-game either. I know the "current guidelines" dictate one thing but they're old and not set in stone, isn't this a discussion that would propose changing them? The Rim of the Sky (talk) 23:20, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

It certainly could be such a discussion, but that wasn't what it started as, which is why I suggested it now needs to be called out on Community Portal as an active policy discussion. As for pre-Skyrim UESP, I don't really remember either, but I don't think many "current game" characters had individual lore articles at that time, because the gamespace article was sufficient to cover everything about that character. Looking at the Lore:People pages, some even seem to be tenseless, probably intentionally; see for example the entry on Jauffre, which doesn't say "Jauffre is" or "Jauffre was" (although he wasn't even added to the page until after Skyrim's launch anyway). --Enodoc (talk) 13:51, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

(←) I replied to this discussion on my talk page. —⁠Legoless (talk) 01:13, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Astronomy as a Lore Category

Brought this up on Lore talk:Astronomy to no reply. I think Astronomy and its related pages are separated enough from the Appendices to more than warrant being its own category, particularly when considering Lore:Linguistics' status. Mindtrait0r (talk) 02:56, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

When I saw how much that section of the namespace had expanded, I figured this had already been done. Let's make it official. —⁠Legoless (talk) 13:35, 26 May 2024 (UTC)