UESPWiki:Community Portal/Archive 12

This is an archive of past UESPWiki:Community Portal discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.

Quicky Editing Question.

I can't beleive this. I've been editing for about 7 months and I don't know this. How do you PERFECTLY scale down an image to a userbox scale? Just a real quick question. Thanks.

After you have entered the image link, add the parameter "|40px". That should work, as long as the image is roughly square-shaped. Otherwise, you may have to tweak its size a little further. --HMSVictory 05:09, 18 February 2008 (EST)

Problems Saving Pages

For a while now, we've had an occasional problem where large pages "disappear" for Internet Explorer readers. The page comes up completely blank when IE people try to view it (and, no, it's not just that the page takes a while to load; IE thinks that the page has been completely loaded but that it is blank). For whatever strange reason, this does not happen if you look at the page in Firefox, which means that our editors tend to never know when the problem occurs, and therefore we generally only find out about it when readers take the time to point out the problem. The pages where this has happened most recently are Oblivion:Places and Oblivion:Merchants.

Based on some experiences over the last couple days, I am now fairly certain that this problem happens when editors try to save a large page but the site is too busy to fully process the page within the 5 minute window set by our web server. Generally this only occurs when the page has a large number of templates on the page; see also an earlier discussion on Revamping Templates. It uses a lot of system CPU and memory to process any templates; when the site is trying to answer 100 other web requests at the same time it sometimes just doesn't have the power necessary to simultaneously do particularly complex work.

The main reason I'm bringing this up is that perhaps if our editors know what to look for, we can catch these problems earlier. First, if you need to edit a complex page (i.e., one with many templates), it may be best to not do it when the site is busy. Second, and more importantly, could all editors try to keep an eye out for cases where after saving a page, the site takes a long time to process it, and then displays a blank page instead of showing the actual page? If this happens, the chances are that page is now glitched for IE readers and needs to be fixed. Don't try to do anything right that minute (if the site was busy 5 minutes ago, it's probably still busy). Instead, perhaps put a note on the talk page saying that your save of the page glitched. That will let us know to follow up later and try to fix the page. Hopefully we can then fix these problems a few hours later instead of a few days later.

Finally, and perhaps, most importantly, what to do to fix a glitched page? What you need to do is "purge" the page. One way to do this is to click "edit" then in the URL that appears on the edit page replace the word "edit" with "purge". For example, the URL might read http://www.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=Oblivion:Places&action=purge. Hit return on the URL to make your browser load the purge request. Then wait and make sure that you are shown the page! If you don't see the page after it's done processing, the page is still glitched. Try again later ;) (N.B. the purge does not show up in the page history or anywhere else, because it's not a page edit.)

Thanks! --Nephele^Talk 14:04, 18 January 2008 (EST)

I finally took the time to read this. I will do the "purge" strategy if it ever happens to me. I have IE, and I have never witnessed a blank page unless an un-registered IP editor blanked it. but yes, purging the page will do. Is there any permanant "cure" (cuz I can't think of another word) to this? Good Job Nephele, highly appreciated. --Playjex 15:43, 24 January 2008 (EST)

Update: Daveh decreased the apache timeout earlier today from 300 seconds to 60 seconds. The decreased timeout has suddenly made problems with saving pages a very serious problem right now on the site. There are a large number of pages that can no longer be edited, because it is not possible for the server to process the edit within 60 seconds. I've also brought this problem up at UESPWiki talk:Upgrade History#Timeout Too Short (and for those who haven't been following the various discussions about site performance problems, the timeout change was largely in response to a discussion at UESPWiki:Administrator Noticeboard#Blocking Rogue IPs at the Server). As I stated at the Upgrade History discussion, it's possible that this is a sacrifice we need to make in the short term just so that the site no longer shuts for 6 hours per day (12 hours per day on weekends). But hopefully we can find some other more viable alternatives. --Nephele^Talk 22:10, 24 January 2008 (EST)

P.S.: Thanks for the feedback, Playjex. Yes, I would like to come up with a permanent cure :) But it's not something that can be fixed right away, in part because it's tied into the site's various performance problems. --Nephele^Talk 22:14, 24 January 2008 (EST)

Just for the record, when we say "blank page", we mean the entire page is blank. Pure white, without the tan background or the sidebar, header, footer, or anything else. This is not the same as a page which has had its contents deleted by a vandal or something. Those will still display the sidebar, background color, top-header, and footer, as well as any other non-wiki elements that display on every page. The "blank page" we're discussing here is a completely different phenomenon, caused by the server lacking the memory to render the page properly. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 22:27, 24 January 2008 (EST)

Do you get an IE error saying "Page cannot be displayed" or something like this, or is it completely blank? I have experienced the former, but not the latter. --DrPhoton 03:19, 25 January 2008 (EST)

I've seen both, but the completely blank pages are often a side-effect of the server being tied up. Not sure what causes the "Page cannot be displayed" error, but I've gotten that a few times even when the site wasn't having any problems. I think that error usually means there's a problem on your end, or possibly your ISP's, not the site's. Because usually when I get it, I have the same problem with all other websites as well. Sometimes if I reset the router, it seems to solve it, too, which makes it even more likely it's a local problem rather than something wrong with the site. (Or it could be just that in the few minutes it takes me to do a router-restart, the problem has corrected itself elsewhere. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 10:06, 25 January 2008 (EST)

The problem that I was describing here is one where the pages are completely blank without any type of error message. It's not a common problem; I've only seen it happen a couple dozen times over the last year. Now that I'm thinking about it some more, it's also possible that it's not specific to IE, but rather that it's related to whether or not you're logged in. When I've examined these cases in the past, I've always been logged in on FF, but anonymous on IE. And tying it to anonymous editors also provides a more satisfactory explanation of what's really going on behind the scenes: anonymous editors see a 100% cached version of the page, whereas users get a tweaked version (to get the personalized links across the top of the page).

Also, my earlier update has now been made obsolete. Daveh switched the timeout back to the original 300 second values... along with a few other major changes to the site's setup that mean that performance will hopefully be much better now. --Nephele^Talk 13:03, 25 January 2008 (EST)

[Rest of Discussion moved to Morrowind talk:Artifacts, as it's become specific to that page] --Gaebrial 08:31, 7 February 2008 (EST)

Wiki Glitch, or just my Comp?

Hello,

I recently hit "Random Page," and it brought me to a quest talk page. Nothing wrong with it. I hit the Random Page link again and it brought me to the same page. I tried about 6 times, and it still didn't budge. Has this happened to any of you besides me? Thanks. --Playjex 16:10, 26 January 2008 (EST)

Nope, it's not just you. See UESPWiki:Administrator Noticeboard#Random Page Link for the discussion. --Eshe^talk16:30, 26 January 2008 (EST)

Thanks. Everytime I post something here, it turns out to be on the Admin. Board. I have to get more active on that page. Thanks Eshe. --Playjex 17:16, 26 January 2008 (EST)

That has also happened to me, so you're not alone. --HMSVictory 11:33, 29 January 2008 (EST)

Two Questions: Images and Signatures

Question 1: I've read the help page on uploading images and including a thumbnail on a page , so I think I've got a good handle on that. My question is: Should the original image be resized before uploading it? My screenshots are at 1024x768.

Question 2: I seem to be having trouble with my signature. I'm trying to include links to my talk and email, but it doesn't appear to be working. I've gone to the extent of copying the code from another user's signature (subsituting my user name, of course), to no avail. My question is: Is this something that gets enabled after the initial three-day probationary period, or will my signature line not show links to me? Or (to state the obvious) have I got something wrong in the coding?

Thanks, –[[User:KJR1012|KJR1012 ^{•[[User_Talk:KJR1012|Talk]]•[[Special:Emailuser/KJR1012|Email]]•}]] 08:54, 28 January 2008 (EST)

1024x768 is a perfectly acceptable size, so don't worry about resizing your images! Also, as far as your signature goes, I think the only place you've got wrong is with your [[brackets]]. Let me see...

This should be what you want: –KJR1012 ^{•Talk•Email•}

Which looks like this when non-wikified: ^{•[[User_Talk:KJR1012|Talk]]•[[Special:Emailuser/KJR1012|Email]]•}

Hope that helps! --Eshe^talk09:17, 28 January 2008 (EST)

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery :-) Remember to turn on the "Raw Signatures" option, otherwise the wiki software automatically adds in a partial signature. Also Eshe's right - that's a fine size for images. It's good to be able to get a larger version when clicking on an image. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 09:21, 28 January 2008 (EST)

Merci, arigatou, danke schoën, gracias, spacibo, grazie! –KJR1012 ^{Talk Email} 09:37, 28 January 2008 (EST)

Idea, just an Idea Guys...

I have seen the "Concept Art" page for Morrowind once before. I had an idea, only an idea, that we should create a "TES Fan Art" page. It could be listed under the default of "Tamriel" I am thinking. We would let anyone contribute. Is this a possibility? Maybe we can take a vote. Please leave feeback. Thank You. --Playjex 14:21, 28 January 2008 (EST)

If anything, it'd belong in the General namespace, along with the Fan Fiction. However, I'm not sure how wise it would be to start allowing that kind of content on the site, as it has the potential to mushroom into something huge, and it takes away from the real focus of the site, which is encyclopedic content. Personally, I don't think the Fan Fiction belongs on the site either, but at least it's just text and doesn't take up a whole lot of room. (It does have Daveh's personal blessing, or I'd have proposed the whole section for deletion long ago - no offense to any of the writers who contributed, I just don't feel that this site is the place for that sort of thing.) There are plenty of other sites for fan art/fan fiction, and if you want to upload some of your stuff to one of the many sites that are designed for this sort of thing and post a link to it from your User page or something, you're more than welcome to. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 14:34, 28 January 2008 (EST)

I'd be against that. The concept art is one thing - it can be interesting to see how the game ideas developed - but fan art is non-encyclopedic in the extreme. I considered putting Somercy's nice picture of me on my user page but didn't even do it there precisely for this reason. I suppose if others want to upload fan art and put it on their user pages that'd be fine, but I'd be against linking it anywhere into the main pages. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 14:35, 28 January 2008 (EST)

I agree. This kind of thing belongs on the forums, if not some other site altogether. --Eshe^talk14:42, 28 January 2008 (EST)

With a wide range of free options like photobucket that offer ample storage space and bandwidth, I can't really see the logic in using our bandwidth and disk space to support fan art, unless it is for user pages. Now, this is a double stand, as we do allow fan fiction, but writing is much smaller than pictures. Now, in the future we may revisit this, especially if we start hosting plug-ins, something Daveh has said he wants to do. --Ratwar 15:06, 28 January 2008 (EST)

I agree. I don't think there is a section for fanart on the forums though. You might want to run it by the people there. However, with how slow the site can be... I'm not sure if it will be very popular. Especially with the dial-up gremlins (me). --Timmeh ^Talk 17:54, 28 January 2008 (EST)

This is an encyclopaedia. Our goal is to inform. Official images do this perfectly. Fan art does not. There are plently of websites that offer fan art and, if all else fails, you can just hit "Fan Art" on a Google image search. Why do we need this kind of thing here? --HMSVictory 11:36, 29 January 2008 (EST)

I apologize for putting out a bad idea HMS? As I recently said and look at the title up there ^ "Idea, just an idea..." It was just a thought. I do not mean to make a conflict of any sort, I am just here to give ideas, edit, have fun, and help others. I apologize to any who thought the same, but as I mentioned, it was only an idea. Have fun everyone, and all who left feedback, have a great day! --Playjex 15:01, 29 January 2008 (EST)

Just trying to make it clear that Fan Art has no place here. Sorry if I came across rather Draconian! --HMSVictory 11:35, 2 February 2008 (EST)

Haha, dude relax I was only kidding. Draconian? --Playjex 12:07, 2 February 2008 (EST)

Oh, I thought you would have recognised that. Draco was an ancient Greek ruler who executed citizens for the most menial of crimes. Today, the word, "Draconian" is used to describe something overly strict, such as an extremely demanding teacher in a school (I can't really think of a better example at the moment). --HMSVictory 06:12, 3 February 2008 (EST)

I'd just like to point out that the UESP is not just an encyclopedia, it is a fan site, and our goals as a fan site are to provide for the fans. That is our main goal. Our wiki structure is here to provide services to the fans of the Elder Scrolls series. Among those, providing information in an easy to read fashion is probably our biggest single service, but if there was a large need for a site to host fan art, I'm sure we'd step up to the plate. --Ratwar 15:35, 4 February 2008 (EST)

I don't know what made Ratwar say this. I have always thought of UESP as an Elder Scrolls encyclopaedia. --Mankar Camoran^{•T•C•E•} 06:34, 5 February 2008 (EST)

Mankar, if were were simply an encyclopedia, we wouldn't have a forum, and we wouldn't be investigating avenues of hosting mods on the site. The UESP itself existed for quite awhile before it became a wiki. We are a fan site with an encyclopedia section. --Ratwar 00:31, 6 February 2008 (EST)

I was actually referring to this section alone when I said "UESP". I ignored the forums completely! Thanks for correcting me. This concept doesn't belong here, I think. --Mankar Camoran^{•T•C•E•} 08:50, 6 February 2008 (EST)

I think that this really isn't a problem, since that because the page is buried under a chain of links that makes it impossible to find unless you know where it is, indirectly protecting it against the problems in the Gripes page. --Twentyfists 21:57, 7 March 2008 (EST)

Structure change for Help:Images ?

When I read through the Help:Images page, it seems to me that most topics are sorted the wrong way around. I would prefer to have it in a different -more workflow like- order. Are there any objections if I 'improve' the page to achieve that ? I have made my alternative Version in my current Sandbox and like to invite all to give comments. In Help_Talk:Images Rpeh suggested to wait a week and give the community some time to have a look. Thanks for watching. -- Adjego 12:58, 6 February 2008 (EST)

I've looked at your version, Adjego, and it seems to have a more logical flow to it. So chalk up one "yea" vote, I guess. – KJR1012 ^{Talk Email Contribs} 10:07, 7 February 2008 (EST)

Seems alright to me. I did wonder why that format had been chosen in the first place, but this one is much more coherent. --HMSVictory 11:33, 7 February 2008 (EST)

Thanks for the comments! There have been no negative comments, hence I have now uploaded the version with the changed structure. This version does not contain changes in content (well almost not). This is necessary as this version cannot easily be compared (diffed) to the previous one. -- Adjego 10:04, 15 February 2008 (EST)

Apology

This is with reference to UESPWiki:Community_Portal/Archive_9#Tamriel_Dictionary_Content. Having volunteered to do it, I should complete the task. But, unfortunately, I don't think I will be able to do it. So I want to apologise to Nephele in particular and to the community in general. --Mankar Camoran^{•T•C•E•} 11:10, 7 February 2008 (EST)

There really wasn't any need to apologise :) Contributing to the wiki is supposed to just be something that you do for fun when you have the time and opportunity to do so, but we all have other (real life) commitments that are higher priority than the site. One advantage of the wiki is that other people can pick up wherever you leave off. Or in other words, you gave someone else looking for a project something to do! --Nephele^Talk 21:40, 14 February 2008 (EST)

Thanks a lot. You made me feel better :) --Mankar Camoran^{•T•C•E•} 08:44, 16 February 2008 (EST)

A new home for TES4 modding information?

For a good while now the CS wiki has been the home for information on Oblivion modding, but it may be time for a new home. During last summer Bethesda did a great job of cleaning up a spam bot attack, but their involvement in the site has declined since then. More recently, we have requested Parser functions and 2 months later, have yet to get them (or hear back from our second request).

As well, as expressed in a recent thread on the Bethesda CS forum "Revitalizing the CS wiki" there is a great deal of animosity towards the CS wiki due to navigation limitations, using the wiki in a non-wiki way (though it has been out of necessity for the task, see the fifth comment here), bad information and a difficulty in centralizing information to keep it updated/good.

Hopefully a new face will interest people in the modding wiki (wherever its home) again. More importantly I hope that the navigation issues can be fixed with the extras in the UESP (bread crumb trail, etc.) and that we can get a little more attention than Bethesda is giving us. Also, moving would give us a better chance to filter the information on the CS wiki.

I guess the first two questions are really:

• Would the users and editors of UESP want the modding stuff over here?
• Would there be a relatively easy and quick process to move some of the categories to the UESP? For instance, the Functions list contains a lot of good information (still needs to be standardized, but otherwise good info).--Haama 15:38, 13 February 2008 (EST)

This is the sort of topic that I usually get involved in, but I've cut back on my wiki time substantially (busy with Cobl, Bash and other projects). A couple of quick comments:

• Such a move has been suggested before. The main counterargument has been that CS Wiki was the natural site for tes4 modding information (TESCS itself links to it). However, it appears that the long time argument that Bethsoft has a limited amount of time to devote to the CS Wiki is finally becoming paramount.
• The move will likely require a substantial amount of re-organization -- but since the move is growing out of efforts to re-organize and cleanup the information anyway, now is a good time to do it.
• Effectively this move would expand our active editors list -- expand it with people who are technically proficient. And its always useful to have a pool of such people given the tendency of admins to come and go. (Speaking as as semi-active admin!)
• In moving pages, some automatic text munching would be useful. NepheleBot might help here, or editors might pre-munch pages (if I were doing it, I'd probably do a python function -- something to auto-convert categories as needed).

Move specific comments:

• The info will fit very naturally here. The only reason that our Tes4Mod section is limited is because of the existence of the CS Wiki. So, the space is reserved, it's just a matter of filling it out.
• Re categories. I've always been more than a little wary of them, and I think that CS Wiki has demonstrated some of their limitations (e.g. splitting lists into groups of 200). Hence, while we've used categories, we've also tended strongly to use manually created indices. E.g Morrowind Mod:Alphabetical Function List, Morrowind Mod:Categorical Function List, Oblivion Mod:Mod File Format. Newer index pages have tended to make more use of tables (more work to create, but easier to navigate).
• With the move, the Oblivion Mod:Modding page would end up being restructured. A structure like Morrowind Mod:Modding would probably be better, though even that is probably too simple given the large expansion in number of articles.
• Many of the current articles on Oblivion Mod:Modding are rather outdated (e.g. Oblivion Mod:Mod Merging and even Oblivion Mod:Programmers). Such articles might be updated, or moved to an Historical selection and/or flagged on the page themselves as outdated.
• One thing that might be used a bit more is subpaging. Some of the previous objections against using it have been removed, and I've been using it on the Cobl pages (e.g. Cobl/Modders/Death_Handling). Combining that with navigation templates (nee crumb trails) is quite useful. So, we might have pages like Scripting/SetFactionRank, Scripting/Functions, Scripting/OBSE Functions, etc.

Those are my initial thoughts. Back to other projects... --Wrye 17:27, 13 February 2008 (EST)

Thanks Wrye. You hit the hammer on the nail there.

Anyone else have a comment? I haven't discussed this with the other major CS wiki editors or placed the suggestion on the Bethesda Forums thread - for now I'm just trying to find out if it would be welcome and feasible.

Oh, and to be clear - by moving the category I mean all of the articles in the category, not necessarily the category itself (good info anyway, Wrye).--Haama 12:48, 14 February 2008 (EST)

For reference, the previous discussion on this topic was at Oblivion Mod talk:Modding#Migrate CS Wiki?. And my contribution there probably still summarizes my reaction ;) In particular, my primary concern would simply be that it's what the majority of the CS Wiki community wants. I don't think there are any real issues on the UESP side: the content is definitely compatible with UESP; we have tools such as bots (both NepheleBot and RoBoT now) that can facilitate any batch-type jobs.

Just to state the obvious, though: the move would be a move from one wiki to another ;) Some objections to wikis in general were raised in the forum thread; although I personally don't think those objections outweigh the advantages of a wiki, it might be hard to convince some contributors. Also, any useful components that may be making UESP attractive (parser functions, bread crumb trails, redirects, patrollers, bots, etc.) could in theory be installed on CS Wiki. So the factors that seem relevant are those that reflect fundamental differences between the two wikis:

• Bethsoft vs. Daveh. The driving factor here seems to be lack of trust in Bethsoft's commitment (in particular future commitment) to the site, despite the fact that Bethsoft has money (e.g., no ads on the site) and promotional power (e.g., links from the CS). But even at UESP there are tasks that can only be done by the site's owner, in our case, Daveh. Daveh has doubtlessly been far more responsive than Bethsoft at providing upgrades and new features, but the bottom line is that we're just as dependent on Daveh as CS Wiki is on Bethsoft.
• Size and scope of site. At UESP, CS Wiki would just be one part of a larger site. The larger site and larger community would have advantages (better integration with UESP would probably increase use of CS Wiki content; modders involved in both sites wouldn't have to "divide" their time; more people could help with basic maintenance and with advanced tasks such as templates; etc.). But there are some possible downsides, too. CS Wiki articles would only be one part of the site, and therefore would not dictate overall site design issues; in other words, CS Wiki articles and editors would have to adapt to UESP standards rather than the other way around ;) And the modding community would not be its own community here. For example, Haama and the other "sheriffs" would just be regular editors here (at least initially!).

I'm not bringing these points up to discourage the idea. I'd just like to make sure that any decision to make such a dramatic change is based upon full consideration of the factors, both positive and negative. But if CS Wiki wants to migrate, I would welcome the new articles and new editors at UESP :) --Nephele^Talk 14:52, 14 February 2008 (EST)

I am aware that I shouldn't be commenting here, not being an admin and so forth, but I feel I must get some points across. Nephele has evaluated the situation perfectly, but I believe that before anything occurs, Daveh and the admins should visit the CS Wiki to see just how different things are there (Syntax, Namespaces, site policy, etc.), and to come to a conclusion on exactly how difficult the move would be. This is certainly not a small matter, and I think Daveh should certainly be heading the final decision. Sorry for butting in! --HMSVictory 15:03, 14 February 2008 (EST)

I've got a few reservations about this but probably nothing that can't be assuaged. At the moment, the modding sections are a fairly small part of the site and 95% of the contributions (outside the dreadful ideas page) are made by Wrye and he clearly knows what he's talking about so I don't bother to check them. If we're going to start getting a lot of edits in these areas, we're going to need people who can make the usual checks for accuracy, redundancy etc etc. We either leave it all to Wrye (something I doubt he'd want to do!), learn about it ourselves (Personally, I'm not sure I'd want to) or push the existing "sheriffs" through our patroller nomination process to get them doing the same job here. I wouldn't want to do that until we'd seen the same ability we expect from any other candidate.

That's only going to be a problem for so long, but the bigger problem is one of compatibility. If the modding community had an interest in UESP they'd already be here, and vice versa. I don't believe that's the case given the lack of activity in UESP's modding section. Thus we run the risk of creating two communities, each with its own editors and needs. If that's going to happen I'd say it's better to keep things as two wikis, possibly by creating a new one for modding on Wikia.com or something similar.

These aren't deal-breaking concerns and at the end of the day, new editors = good; new articles = good; more Elder Scrolls information = good. If those minor problems can be addressed then I don't see any problem. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 15:45, 14 February 2008 (EST)

Re "need to train existing patrollers to handle modding pages". There's no such need. Editors and patrollers patrol what they know. The expectation is that people watch the parts of the wiki that they're familiar with/interested in and ignore the rest. Hence editors coming in to add modding content, will also watch modding content pages.

"If the modding community had an interest in UESP they'd already be here..." Ummm, no. Because wikis are a type of social software, it's best to concentrate contributors on one wiki instead of splitting them across multiple wikis. Hence when two different wikis try to cover the same subject matter, typically one wins and the other loses. So far, UESP has been on the losing side of the contest over modding content; but that's now be reconsidered. If we win, our modding content will explode (and if not, we'll stay the same size). --Wrye 18:47, 14 February 2008 (EST)

I think you've missed my point but accidentally reinforced it! What I meant was that there's no evidence that the modding community is interested in contributing to the UESP articles either inside or outside the modding section - if there was any such interest I'd have expected some updates to the modding articles. That's what will lead to two communities - one group concentrating solely on modding and one leaving it alone. That leads to my other point; if we have some people interested only in modding, we can't very well make them patrollers as there's no way of enforcing a "You patrol that bit, I'll patrol this bit" system - and neither would we want to. I wouldn't be prepared to vote in favour of making new editors into patrollers until they'd demonstrated the same skills as everyone else with that role. I also think you're wrong about people only patrolling parts of the site they know about and are interested in. As trivial examples, I have responded to queries in the Tes4Mod namespace and regularly fix errors in the Oblivion:Roleplaying set of articles despite having an interest in neither.

Let me say clearly that I'm not against this idea; I simply have a couple of concerns that I would like to see addressed. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 04:32, 15 February 2008 (EST)

To be honest the CS wiki editors will probably be busy for a few months with the move/cleanup. Also, hopefully this will get some more modding contributors so we'll be busy patrolling those. There are only 3 regulars on the CS wiki - DragoonWraith (who disappears around the middle of the semester as school gets busy), Qazaaq, and I. We've had a few people help us with some rather daunting tasks (Werewolf, Red Fault, and Fella come to mind), but they tend to disappear afterwards. Otherwise, we have maybe 5 semi-regulars. In short, we won't allow your workload to increase, but nor would we be likely to decrease your workload.

As time goes on and we get more acquainted with the UESP this will change, and you'll probably be asking us to stop mentioning game settings, OBSE, and mods in the normal articles (another issue for when it comes up?).

As for your example - the articles in the UESP were written initially by Wrye, and you have a good reason to trust him! I have looked at a few of them and don't know of anything to add to them.

I've brought it up on the CS wiki, let me see what their reactions are.--Haama 12:43, 15 February 2008 (EST)

Rpeh, I understood your point(s) perfectly. Perhaps you misundertood my reply.

• You argued that if modders were interested, we would have seen more participation. My counter was that this was not the case because participation at wikis is typically either all or nothing. I.e., if two wikis are competing for an editors attention, then the editor will usually pick one, and stick with it exclusively, no matter how close the decision was. In any case, this is a moot issue. If modders decide to be more active here, then obviously they're interested.
• You're suggesting that we would end up with different communities (one focussed primarily on modding, and another focussed primarily on the sort of game-info issues that most of the site is about). I agree, that would pretty much happen. Our disagreement was that you see this is a bad thing, while I see it as a normal, even good thing. It's a natural consequence of the wiki expanding that you end up with different groups that focus on different things.
• Re patrollers, it's never been a requirement for patrollers that they be able to patrol the whole site, nor is that even a "good to have". What's important for patrollers is that their edits be reliable, quality edits. Lack of expertise in a given area is not a problem so long as the patrollers don't try to fix pages which they're not expert enough to fix.

But enough of that, I don't think the above considerations are substantial issues. What I'm most concerned with is performance. UESP still has significant peformance problems. Several hours ago, I found the site to be effectively unusuable (page wait times went over a minute, and then the server started returning odd page cache complaint pages). It's my understanding that these problems are particularly a problem on Sundays (peak load time). But if that's the case, UESP may be effectively unusable as a CS Wiki replacement (Sundays is when it would be hardest hit by weekend modders looking for info).

Nor is this a new problem. Server performance has long been a problem. I had hoped that with the server upgrade, lightened load (less Oblivion players), a second person with server access, that these problems had been resolved, but it seems that they're not.

In contrast, while there are a number of problems at CS wiki, I've never seen performance be an issue. While generally speaking, I would like to see CS Wiki content moved here; low server/page performance will trump any other annoyances associated with CS Wiki.

--Wrye 20:19, 15 February 2008 (EST)

Thanks for the comments everyone - it's good to know that such a move would be possible. I've brought it up on the CS wiki - the two major editors mentioned before (DragoonWraith and Qazaaq) don't seem to be very keen on the idea. We've also mentioned it on the Revitalization thread, but barring a massive call for the move, I believe the issue is dead.--Haama 21:31, 16 February 2008 (EST)

Fanfiction

Hmm... I'm not sure if this is really the right place to put this, but anyway, here goes. I am sure that you are all aware that Somercy has decided to stop writing fanfiction as she was flooded with requests and ideas. I am now (rather idioticly) offering my services here as such, as Somercy's replacement for writing up requests. I am in no way trying to stop Somercy from writing at all, I just want something to do, and I need your ideas, faithful brethren! Please, if you have any requests or ideas about your character, put them on my talk page. Bear in mind that if I do end up with too many, I will eventually collapse like Somercy, so just take it easy guys... :) --HMSVictory 06:14, 19 February 2008 (EST)

Is it okay though?

I remember I was discussing this with Eshe on the IRC one night. I greet EVERY editor/IP I see with the official "Welcome" message. She said it was not very needed, but very curteous. May I still do this? Haha, maybe I'll have to be the town crier, "12:00 PM and all is well!!!!" --Playjex 15:21, 25 February 2008 (EST)

It'll certainly be a lot of work for you! ;P It's a nice idea but I don't really think it's necessary, after all, one day you might accidentally welcome a vandal.--Willyhead 15:35, 25 February 2008 (EST)

Personally, I'd prefer to not have every anonymous IP automatically welcomed. I think it's problematic in a few ways:

• Many people have dynamic IPs so they won't ever see the welcome message. Or the person who ends up seeing it is someone completely different. Or the person ends up getting barraged with new welcome messages every time their IP address changes.
• The presence of a talk page for an anonymous IP is often used by admins as a signal that the IP has been warned. So when I see a blue link for an anonymous IP's talk page, I tend to assume they've previously done something questionable.
• The standard welcome message is not tailored to anonymous IPs. I think any message welcoming anonymous IPs should at least point out that the person is free to set up an account, and that there are some advantages to doing so. But that type of information is not provided in the default welcome message, so it's essentially skipping the most important piece of information.
• Automatically welcoming an anonymous IP who makes one questionable edit can then make subsequent notices awkward if the IP's next edit is vandalism (and, yes, that has happened in at least one case where an anonymous IP was welcomed).
• I see welcoming as a way to reach out to someone who has joined the community. Anonymous IPs have chosen not to join the community, so should they be welcomed as community members? And in part this goes back to the dynamic IP issue: if an anonymous IP wants to be anonymous, will that person really want to be welcomed every time he/she is assigned a new IP? I'd feel more like I was being stalked than welcomed at some point.

There are cases where it's appropriate to welcome an anonymous IP, but generally I think it's most useful when the editor has clearly made multiple useful contributions to the site. At which point, it's good to reach out to the person and suggest that he/she sets up an account. It's best if such a message is personalized, to make it clear that the person's edits are considered to be valuable. Sorry if I'm biased here, but I don't consider a dozen edits to our Gripes or Mod Ideas pages to be high-value edits. --Nephele^Talk 16:09, 25 February 2008 (EST)

Haha, thanks you two for responding! I know what to and not to do when I am tempted to welcome an IP .... Go into the fetal position. haha thanks guys! --Playjex 17:01, 25 February 2008 (EST)

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