User talk:Mikeprichard

Let me welcome you properly now!

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Cookie

You have been given a cookie! Your dedication and diligence to the wiki has not gone unnoticed. A user has seen the progress you've made, and has given you a cookie because of it. Good work! The user had the following to say: Thanks for all of the maintenance edits you've been doing! It really helps out! --AKB Talk Cont Mail 05:52, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for the cookie (nom nom)! This site is extremely useful and I've enjoyed it for many years, so I'm happy to contribute in any small way I can. Cheers! --Mikeprichard (talk)

There is/There are

Hi Mikeprichard! Thanks for the ongoing grammar cleanups. I've reverted a few instances where you've changed "there is" to "there are" when referring to a series of nouns. The general rule is to use "is" when the first noun in the series is singular; for example, "there is a bandit and a bandit chief" is correct in standard English. I understand there exists some controversy among grammarists regarding this usage in formal English but we tend to go with most common usage on the wiki. —⁠Legoless (talk) 21:37, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the note! The Collins interpretation linked above is an example of (in my opinion) a very unfortunate contemporary erosion of standard formal English rules. That said, I'm certainly not going to cause a controversy over something as silly as "is" vs. "are" here on this fine site! I'll just let these go from now on. As always, I really appreciate the site admins' hard work to keep the UESP the definitive resource for all things Elder Scrolls. --Mikeprichard (talk)

Skyrim:Places Icons

I believe the issues on Skyrim:Places should all be fixed now. Hard to say for sure what might've caused it, but it was most likely some kind of temporary template issue or something along those lines. In most cases, it's just a matter of opening up the place page itself (i.e., Morthal, Corpselight Farm, etc.), then purging Skyrim:Places. There are gadgets to add the purge feature, if you're not familiar with it. It's good for fixing things that have invalid data or where the cache needs updating.

If you spot any issues I missed that aren't fixed with the above procedure, let me know and I'll look into them. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 11:19, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the help and information! All of the map icon/link issues do now appear to be fixed on the Places page. I appreciate the response, and will keep the above in mind for future reference. --Mikeprichard (talk)

Great Work

You're doing readers a big favor with all of your recent Skyrim place page edits. Those things are monsters of wordiness and even 1000 bytes shaved off is a much smoother read. In other cases, they totally deprioritize what's actually important. Thanks for trudging through them! —Dillonn241 (talk) 00:20, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to comment - I appreciate it, and fully agree! I'd taken a break from Skyrim and similar UESP location page edits for the past year or so until coming back this month, and intend to continue with more (mostly Dragonborn-related) location page edits over the next few weeks as I finish my ongoing save file. Anyway, have a great day/night! --Mikeprichard (talk) 00:25, 15 August 2022 (UTC)

Thank you & one question

Hi Mike, first off big thanks for all your excellent edits on Oblivion place pages! I haven't patrolled all of them yet, but many of them flow a lot better now or are better structured.

I had a quick question for you on this edit however. I don't really follow what you mean with Speechcraft "continuing to provide benefits" after level 100. What exactly would those benefits be? For Athletics and Acrobatics, it's clearly running faster and jumping higher, but unless I'm missing something obvious, I couldn't see what you were referring to here? I thought perhaps you meant Disposition, but that's determined by Personality attribute differentials rather than Speechcraft.

Grateful for any clarifications you could provide and thanks again for your edits! --SerCenKing (talk) 19:12, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Hi there - thanks very much! I'm coming back to playing Oblivion (and reading/editing this awesome wiki) after a long break, as you've seen; I think Wolfborn and Legoless have already reviewed my past few weeks' edits until today's, but of course feel free to dig in as well. As to your question, based on further research I made a subsequent edit to the Speechcraft page on November 11 that I think/hope clarifies the issue ("Increasing Speechcraft past 100 continues to increase the maximum disposition at which the speechcraft minigame may be started, up to a maximum base value of 188") - but if that's still not legit, please do reach out again and/or correct as needed. See you around! --Mikeprichard (talk) 19:27, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply and for the additional information. Could I just check where you're getting the fact that Speechcraft impacts starting disposition? According to the Disposition page, particularly this section, the main factors include Personality, race and faction, but not your Speechcraft skill level. So if you're right we should also add it there. Thanks! --SerCenKing (talk) 12:42, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I think I see where you're coming from - it's not that Speechcraft has any direct impact on Disposition; it's that Speechcraft allows you to start the persuasion minigame at increasingly higher starting levels of Disposition with the NPC. E.g. (not using real numbers, but just to demonstrate the principle) - at Speechcraft 50, I'm only able to "Start" the minigame with a guard until his Disposition hits 80; the minigame "Start" option/button then disappears. But when I reach Speechcraft 51 with all other factors equal, I may now be able to once again "Start" the minigame until the NPC's Disposition with me reaches, say, 81 at the end of an attempt (at which point the "Start" button once more disappears). I did struggle with explaining this succinctly and clearly before landing on the current page text quoted above, but please do let me know if we need more on this! --Mikeprichard (talk) 13:31, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Ah yes, you're absolutely spot on - I hadn't understood what you meant with the second note initially. Having tested & confirmed in-game, I also slightly tweaked the explanation so that it's hopefully clearer that what is meant is the ability to physically start the mini-game, rather than the starting disposition of the mini-game. Thanks again for all the excellent edits over the past couple of weeks! --SerCenKing (talk) 19:51, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Looks great to me! Thanks again for your work and patience with my ridiculous (even by my own neurotic standards lol) number of recent edits to the Oblivion pages, especially the location pages which are my main focus as I play through the game. I currently have about 10 more "backlogged" dungeon locations I'd previously revisited/researched in game (and the CK when needed), which I'll likely tweak over the next week or two. After that, I hope to gradually do more comprehensive "one-and-done" reviews of each new location page in turn - especially based on my much greater familiarity with the Oblivion page structures gained over the past few weeks - which should save everyone the headaches of reviewing a barrage of nitpicky serial edits to the same pages. This may be too much info for you, but FYI! Enjoy the rest of your weekend. --Mikeprichard (talk) 20:01, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Settlement People Tables

Hi Mike! I notice that you added Notes to the Knights of the Thorn Headquarters, Gweden Farm, and Odiil Farm People pages. That's great (and thanks for all of your continuing work on the Oblivion pages!), however I did want to point out (in case you're not aware) that this does cause issues on the People page. The notes will have to be added here as well, and since all of the settlement people pages are transcluded into one large table, different symbols will need to be used to distinguish between the different settlements. I don't have time to adjust this myself right now, so I wanted to bring it to your attention in case you get a chance to fix this. Thanks again for all your work! — Wolfborn^(Howl) 19:21, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Hey! And I was so proud thinking I covered everything the first time, lol... I'd actually seen this general issue on the main "People" page with something else that came up a few weeks ago, then it slipped my mind today - and I just noticed Cropsford will likely need similar edits which I plan to address soon. Anyway, the pages you mentioned should all be good now. As you've probably seen, though I've edited the UESP quite a bit in the past (mostly for Skyrim), I've been learning a lot about the Oblivion pages recently. I hope for your sanity as reviewers I'm finally getting close to a more measured tempo of fully considered and accurate edits (primarily to OB location pages), but again I do greatly appreciate your time and patience. I've always loved the friendliness of this community; please reach out whenever you see things that look odd or for which you want more info! --Mikeprichard (talk) 21:50, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Looks good; thanks for updating those! By the way, I'm not an official patroller here on the wiki; I just like to check the Recent Edits page out of curiosity to see what's new (figure I might learn something :P). I've been playing a lot of Oblivion for the past 3 years, so I know the game fairly well; that's why I usually check edits to Oblivion pages to see what people are adding. Your edits are quality work, they bring a much-needed consistency to the settlement pages, and I really like the way you word dungeon walkthroughs, clear, concise and to-the-point which tells the reader all they need to know without excessive verbiage (which tends to be one my weaknesses). I'll be starting my first play-through of Skyrim soon (just got the game), so I'm sure your past efforts there will be much appreciated when I'm looking things up! Thanks again for all your work! — Wolfborn^(Howl) 06:46, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks a lot - I'm glad you find the edits useful! You can tell I'm quite - um, the polite term is "detail-oriented" - but it's good to know the edits are helping other users. See you around, I'm sure! --Mikeprichard (talk) 11:29, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

More Cookies

You have been given a plateful of cookies! You've kept at it non-stop with the Oblivion edits. You're doing a lot of good work to bring the namespace up to standard. Thanks for your diligence! —Dillonn241 (talk) 02:57, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Deelicious - thanks! I'm sorry the pace has been so hectic - I've had way too much time on my hands recently - but I appreciate it. I should fairly soon be settling into gradually updating individual dungeon pages as I play through and confirm the locations; I have just a bit more work on some other Oblivion location-related pages planned first. Happy New Year! --Mikeprichard (talk) 03:02, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Came here to deliver a truckload of cookies, but I see Dillonn beat me to it! Just wanted to add my appreciation for your top-notch work on the Oblivion pages in the past month or so - great stuff! --SerCenKing (talk) 17:16, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

And thank you for both the snacks and the review of my many, many edits - I've been picking up some great pointers to take forward from your and other experienced wikians' work. Slowly getting closer to my planned more measured pace of edits on (mostly Oblivion) place pages - still revisiting a few I'd updated earlier with fresh eyes/insight into the style guides and other wiki standards. Anyway - cheers, and see you around! --Mikeprichard (talk) 18:02, 15 January 2024 (UTC)

Camp Cleanup

I've noticed you've been making systematic edits to the Oblivion:Campsites pages. I've looked through a few and most of the changes seem unobjectionable, but it seems to me like you've stripped out a lot of the "flavour text" which was added to those pages as part of the camp mini-project I undertook thirteen years ago (example 1, 2). Those sentences were added to try to give a sense of location or environmental storytelling to what were otherwise small and featureless place pages. I'm not sure replacing these descriptions with cardinal directions from the nearest map marker is an improvement. Just something to bear in mind when revamping existing prose - sometimes less isn't always more! —⁠Legoless (talk) 13:30, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Ah, I did see your name pop up in some of the review templates, and appreciate all your hard work (on the shoulders of giants and all that!). I've been trying to follow a concise and consistent format by highlighting upfront each camp's location and contents (bedrolls/furniture/items/containers) for the player's convenience, while still maintaining flavor text as to the nature of the environment and vistas toward the end of the brief descriptions. But I'll keep an eye out for your patrols, and try to pick up on what's acceptable going forward (including more technical issues like the "Roasted Rat" link I intentionally changed to the "Rat Meat" page, since the former page doesn't exist and redirects to the latter regardless; listing all the flora in a game "cell" rather than the immediately visible camp surroundings also seemed a bit inorganic (pun intended I guess) to me, but I see what you were going for there). Thanks again for your time and patience. --Mikeprichard (talk) 13:36, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Not at all! I had noticed on a few that you managed to shuffle around and maintain some of the environmental text, and that's fair enough. Regarding redirects, it can be beneficial to link to them rather than linking past them. For one, it can be used to easily view where one might encounter a Roasted Rat, which is less common than finding rat meat. Secondly, we may have a full article at Oblivion:Roasted Rat in the future, or indeed we may change the redirect to point elsewhere (such as Oblivion:Containers). Keeping the redirect link in place prevents link rot by ensuring the linked text points to the most relevant article name. —⁠Legoless (talk) 13:43, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Ohhh - I didn't think of that (and really should've researched it first)! Still learning as I go; I've just restored the "Roasted Rat" redirect links on the couple camp pages (gro-Bak and Two Decker) where I'd messed them up. And I appreciate the consideration on the style; I definitely want to respect your very diligent work from earlier (you and other admins are why this site is so useful in the first place), so I'll keep this in mind and not go too overboard with updates to other pages I might make over the next couple weeks. I'd give you a cookie if I could - so just imagine I did, lol. --Mikeprichard (talk) 13:58, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Patches with No Versions

I saw you adding some version numbers to patches. I thought it might be helpful to compile a list of the ones still missing, so I put it in my sandbox. —Dillonn241 (talk) 06:29, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

That's really useful! I was actually inspired by UnknownG's recent edits of this type to go through the Oblivion pages (mostly place pages, but also a few others) in my watchlist and/or which I'd otherwise reviewed recently; my focus has been to add UOP/UODP version numbers and (where relevant) the "fixdetail=" tag, for consistency. I just did a few more, and will keep an eye out for this issue whenever I review additional Oblivion pages in future. My plan is to review mostly place pages as I play through the dungeons/wilderness locations in my new save. Really appreciate your continued work to improve the wiki. --Mikeprichard (talk) 12:44, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi Mike, thanks for adding lots of version numbers to UOP tags so far. Could I just ask you where in the changelog you found the basis for these two edits (1, 2)? I was looking through but couldn't seem to spot them. Thanks! --SerCenKing (talk) 17:38, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Hey SerC! Yep, I'm still lurking around - I plan to continue some edits in the next few weeks that I was in the middle of checking. For the Fort Teleman amulet, the fix is described in the full UOP version 3.0.0 changelog as "Flying misc. items: gold amulet in 36,-24 (placed)" (that's Teleman's cell). For the Fanacasecul ring, that was the only UOP version edit I made that I couldn't nail down specifically, but I know a) the UOP did make the change at some point, and b) a huge number of largely unpsecified similar item/static placement edits were uniquely made by version 3.0.0. I strongly suspect the change was "hidden" among those edits for that version, and there's no clear evidence to the contrary, but if we want to be very careful about the exact UOP version number for any reason, I at least can't 100% confirm it. Thanks! --Mikeprichard (talk) 17:52, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying! Verified on Fort Teleman, but regarding the Fanacasecul one, it is best not to include the version number unless we are certain. It is technically possible to confirm (downloading older versions & testing or using xEdit) if you're interested. --SerCenKing (talk) 13:11, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

I was thinking exactly the same after you pointed it out - I even realized at the time of the edit that I was only about 99% sure, lol. I did also consider messing around with older UOP versions to confirm which actually made the change at some point, and if I do, will add the correct version on the page. --Mikeprichard (talk) 13:17, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Note that unless you already have the older UOP versions, it won't be possible to check them since they are no longer available for download due to Unofficial Patch team policy regarding older versions of patches. Another option in this case might be to search through AFKTrack to see if you can find the bug report which triggered the change. You could also try asking in the Unofficial Oblivion Patch topic on AFKMods. — Wolfborn^(Howl) 18:01, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd forgotten that, but was immediately reminded when I looked at the UOP Nexus page... and that AFKTrack list (while a great idea I hadn't thought of) seems to only show open issues. I might sign up for an AFKMods forum account and ask around at some point, though. Thanks for the helpful tips, and congrats on your selection as a patroller - you do great work, so it's a natural fit! --Mikeprichard (talk) 18:22, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

(←) AFKTrack does have a Search feature, but when I tried searching for "Fanacasecul" and "Ring of Destruction" I got no results. It is possible to view closed issues if you are registered (note that registering for AFKTrack is separate from AFKMods); you can select the "Unofficial Oblivion Patch" project, open an existing issue, and there will be links near the bottom for the previous/next issue, which will allow you to page back through every issue ever reported (including the closed ones). However, doing it this way would be extremely tedious and probably not worth it just to get a version number. Asking on the forum would probably be the best bet (note that registering for the forums there can be a bit of a pain; the anti-bot check can be rather flaky to say the least). And I haven't been officially confirmed as a patroller yet (the nomination process is still ongoing), but thanks for the vote of confidence! — Wolfborn^(Howl) 19:11, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Turns out I'd already made an AFKMods account years ago - I just posted in the UOP forum and asked for confirmation. (I did separately sign up for AFKTrack right now, but from some quick searching and again reviewing the UOP full changelog, I'm not even sure the older UOP bugs had tracked bug numbers - in any case, that's definitely not a reasonable route for the reasons you mentioned.) If I get a clear response, I'll revert here. --Mikeprichard (talk) 23:36, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you very much for digging into this and getting a response from Arthmoor. For completeness, are you able to post the link of the discussion on the Fanacasecul talk page please, so we have a permanent record of the source of the info? Thanks! --SerCenKing (talk) 10:22, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Done - and thanks to you and all for the tips! --Mikeprichard (talk) 11:03, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Gottlesfont Priory

You're right about it being better categorized under faction settlement. I hadn't noticed that the residents were in the same faction. It fits with the other priories, then.

I was looking for a reason to get rid of the "Religious" part of "Religious and Faction Settlements" because it was too long, and I wanted to throw out Cadlew Chapel. —Dillonn241 (talk) 05:06, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Your changes are absolutely on point IMHO, and yeah, I always thought that "religious" etc. category was wonky - splitting the template into more categories is in any case both convenient and more in line with the corresponding Oblivion and Skyrim templates. Thanks once again for your patience with the mad pace of my edits these days! --Mikeprichard (talk) 05:08, 5 January 2024 (UTC)

Fixdetail

Just a heads up, adding fixdetail to {{Bug}} does nothing if that parameter is already the 4th unnamed parameter. It could be argued that it's clearer to future editors, but if that's the case, it's better to switch them all over from unnamed parameter 4 to the named parameter with a bot job. There are well over 300 cases of that parameter in use without fixdetail. —Dillonn241 (talk) 10:55, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Ah, I thought it might be helpful to somehow more clearly flag these situations - but since it's apparently not useful/necessary, I'll stop spamming that change! I also don't think another bot job to change the "4" parameter to "fixdetail" is necessary (or vice versa). Cheers. --Mikeprichard (talk) 10:58, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, if we decide it's worth the extra clarity, it's about five minutes for me to run the bot and be done with it everywhere throughout the whole wiki. I believe the reasoning is that unnamed parameters imply that the previous ones are required. So in the case of Bug, you have to specify the issue (1), patch (2), version (3)*, and then fix detail (4). By the asterisk*, I mean version is technically optional but as we know, it shouldn't be if done properly.

Still, there is a good argument waiting to happen against 4th unnamed parameters. Once you get that far out without a name to guide you, it can get error prone. That might be worth a talk page post on the template page or perhaps community portal if you can find enough template examples that are unclear. —Dillonn241 (talk) 11:09, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. I've been mostly cherry-picking the pages I'd looked at relatively recently, so I haven't had the chance to collect unclear examples more broadly, but I'll keep this in mind! --Mikeprichard (talk) 11:16, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Is/Are

Thanks for correcting me on that one--I couldn't remember which way it went; knew I should have looked it up! — Wolfborn^(Howl) 18:38, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

And thank you for your patience... I tend to agree with your edit, but I've tried to follow the wiki convention since it was pointed out to me by Lego above. Cheers! --Mikeprichard (talk) 18:49, 2 February 2024 (UTC)