UESPWiki:Community Portal/Interwiki Links

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.

Wider Use of Interwiki Links

We already have this discussion but this edit has made me wonder about the wider use of Interwiki links. The page as it exists at the moment is pretty poor: do we want a page that consists solely of links? On the other hand, the subject is probably of interest so it should be on the site. I'm unsure whether or not I should revert the latest edit to keep the information here or whether we should support the idea that other sites may have better information than we do. If the latter, then what becomes of almost the entire Tamriel space given the existence of TIL? Basically, I've been having a problem deciding whether I should mark this edit as patrolled, undo it, mark it for deletion or deletion review... so I decided to make it the community's problem instead. So what do you think? –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 17:58, 2 May 2008 (EDT)

Definitely a good question, I was unsure how to patrol it as well. At first glance, it looks like the equivalent of blanking. The problem you bring up reflects on several, broader issues at once, not sure if all lumped together can bring about a fruitful discussion. As to this edit specifically, I have a few questions that might help making a choice:

1. Is the material outdated or otherwise incorrect? Is there a more lively environment for this topic over at the linked site? Do we not have editors that can cover the issue? I am no expert on game mechanics, but it just looks like the raw data was turned into a pretty table, something we can do as well.
2. Was the move done by the original author? What is the policy on moving whole articles out?

I definitely support linking and cooperation in general, however this doesn't look like one these cases. Sometimes it is better to leave areas to dedicated sites, and only provide a shorter article with a link pointing elsewhere, if the focus remains to be an Encyclopedia. There is room to present the same material in different forms, catering to different users. --Benould^•T•C 18:23, 2 May 2008 (EDT)

Personally, I think that any interwiki linking that causes the UESP to lose content is a bad use of interwiki links and should not be allowed. We're here to build a site, not an organized collection of Elder Scrolls links. If the link contains updated information, we should improve our own article. As for moving articles off site, the UESP has the permanent license to any edit on the site (the editor retains the ownership). Another reason to avoid using interwiki links at the expense of our own content is we don't control other sites. What if they go down in the future? The content is lost.--Ratwar 18:36, 2 May 2008 (EDT)

I didn't do that post very well. We should have as much content as possible here and that's clear. What worries me is that we have content that becomes out of date. My preference would be to keep the previous version of that article but to keep it up to date, but it's difficult when the only person with the requisite ability has made it clear he's moving elsewhere. There is also the question about other sites disappearing: we know we're going to be here but just how long will other sites stay around (less of an issue with the official CS site but hey...) FWIW, I think we should keep the previous version of that article and try to keep it up to date. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 19:10, 2 May 2008 (EDT)

Yep, that's a bad edit. Fundamental rules should be : Don't remove content from UESP just because there's better information available elsewhere.

To qualify that somewhat: There are some areas where we've generally decided to not go, or to not make an effort. However, when we don't have such are rule, i.e. we are involved in an area, then our content is king. It's okay to link to other sites if it's particularly useful, but not at the cost of our content. To give some examples that I'm familiar with:

• Coverage of Oblivion mods has expanded somewhat. But we continue to distinquish between ourselves and OblivionModWiki. The Midas Magic page has been prod'ed for not meeting our Oblivion mods standard.
• Due to some complicated history, the Body_Mods page is generally inferior to Sanity Control version. But we have some stuff that they don't and there's always a possibility that site may go down. Solution is: prominent link to Sanity Control version, but retention of our page info.

This incidentally to my mind is a problem with interwiki linking. IMO, interwiki linking should only be used when we have a very tight cooperative relationship with another site. (Which in fact, we may not have with any site.) E.g. when wikipedia links to wikinews, that makes sense -- they're strongly cooperative sites. The reason is the physical distinction of wiki links from regular http links. Interwiki links look just like regular links and so imply a "blessed" integrated link -- i.e. a link implies that the two sites operate as a unit to strong degree. And that encourages exactly the sort of edit referred to here. I.e. the reasoning is that since the two sites are presented as a unit, information should not be replicated across the sites. Similar problems could happen with wikipedia, cs wiki, etc.

So my advice is: 1) undo that edit, and 2) strongly consider backtracking on the use of interwiki links. --Wrye 20:23, 2 May 2008 (EDT)

I'd go with Wrye on this one. As to there only being one person who can maintain it, my question is: Can someone else maintain it? He's obviously getting his info from somewhere, whether it's by figuring it out, reverse-engineering, or access to the source code. So is it possible for us to find someone else with the same skills/access? Even if not, we should at least leave the last-known-accurate copy there in case at some point in the future, we develop someone who can update it. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 20:35, 2 May 2008 (EDT)

For the specific question of Movement Formulas, I agree that the previous version of the article should basically be restored, with the addition of a link to the CS Wiki article. (And since I started writing this commment, rpeh has indeed restored the article. Thanks!) The formulas that govern gameplay fall in the gray area of overlap between the two sites. UESP has numerous similar formulas on other articles (Oblivion:The Complete Damage Formula, Oblivion:Alchemy#Calculating Potion Strengths, Oblivion:Magic_Overview#Overview), Oblivion:Armor#Armor Rating, etc.) because the information is of interest to people playing the game, even without access to the construction set. For example, players will want to know that athletics increases running speed but not walking speed, or how encumbrance affects player speed. As for maintence, I don't anticipate much need for future edits to improve accuracy. But the article probably could do with some revamping to make it more player-friendly... which would only be appropriate on the UESP version of the article.

The information also belongs on CS Wiki, where all of the parameters available in the construction set are listed and described. The basic information will always be the same on both sites' articles, but the emphasis on CS Wiki is likely to be different, because readers and editors are more likely to be interested in issues of how to manipulate those parameters and equations to enchance a mod. It just seems to be one of those cases where both sites have reasons to provide the information. I don't think one article should be deleted or emptied in favour of the other, especially given that both articles have existed for some time.

The larger question of interwiki links is a complicated one. I think the site could benefit from making it easier to link to other Elder Scrolls related sites, in particular sites that complement UESP, such as CS Wiki and Oblivionmodwiki. So far we have primarily reserved "plain links" (that look like this, as opposed to this) for UESP links, including links to UESPWiki articles but also including links to other content on UESP (the Oblivion and SI maps, the old site, the alchemy calculator). We have generally avoided the interwiki feature, so most of our links to Wikipedia look like this instead of using the "built-in" interwiki link style, wikipedia:The Elder Scrolls.

There are advantages and disadvantages to using interwiki links. Interwiki links are much easier to add (no need to translate punctuation, remember the exact site name, whether the site uses "wiki" or "index.php" in its URLs, etc). They blend in with other links on the site; depending upon your perspective, that's either good or bad. But they are also somewhat dangerous. Interwiki links are always blue, even if the link is broken. I'm used to relying on the red/blue switch to tell me whether a link is valid, but with interwiki links you need to manually check that the link doesn't contain a typo, for example. And the interwiki links don't tell you if the linked-to page is changed in some way that invalidates a link that was originally valid.

Overall, the broader questions about when to link to another site seem similar to a familiar UESP conundrum: when do you link to a Tamriel article, and when do you link to a game-specific article? I think the answers are generally analogous. UESP links are always preferred over links to another site if UESP has an article on the topic. A UESP red-link is preferred over a link to another site if UESP wants to create an article on that topic. Links to other sites should be used when the topic is not one that UESP is going to cover. Links should also be provided to overlapping articles. So just as Lore:Mages Guild and Oblivion:Mages Guild should cross-reference each other, UESP articles could probably benefit from more links to other sites in cases where other sites provide more in-depth or complementary information.

I'm not saying that an article like Oblivion:Find the Heir should link to every other site that describes that quest; describing quests is one of UESP's primary goals so I don't think we should be telling readers that they need to look elsewhere to get more complete quest information. But on topics that overlap with or border on sites that complement UESP, such as the formulas governing movement speed, I think both the site's editors and readers would benefit from adding more links: readers would know where to go for more information; editors would have an indication that the article is at the limit of UESP's coverage, and doesn't necessarily need to be expanded.

With the specific question of TIL I think we've already reached a point where UESP details many topics that are also on TIL. For example, the in-game books are provided on both sites. In general, I think we want to continue to expand our Tamriel section. There are some specific topics where we clearly have links to TIL, and probably will continue to always have links to TIL (decoding the Mysterium Xarxes, books that didn't appear in the game, etc.) But I don't think we want to start putting "See Also: TIL" at the bottom of every Tamriel article; I don't think we want to tell editors not to expand a Tamriel article because TIL has a similar one. The main reason behind my thinking is really just that TIL is not a wiki. Not being a wiki gives TIL advantages (such as being able to host authored content), but it also means that we can't tell editors to improve TIL's articles instead of UESP's.

To me the biggest uncertainty is what format does the community want to use for links to other sites? The options seem to be:

1. Plain links are only ever used for UESP links. Essentially what we have been doing, although there are a few exceptions that would need to be fixed. Ask Daveh to get rid of the wikipedia: and other similar prefixes that currently exist, and don't add any new ones.
   • In this scenario, we may still want to add some templates to facilitate links to other sites. For example, make it possible to type {{CSWiki|Movement Formulas}} to create an external-style link to CSWiki.
   • I'm not actually sure whether it's easily possible to turn of the default prefixes such as wikipedia:. If it's not possible, then it just comes down to editors and patrollers making sure those prefixes aren't used. It seems like the option should be in there somewhere, but I seem to be searching for the wrong terms right now when I look for it.
2. Plain links are used for UESP links and a limited number of ES-related wikis, in particular for sites where we've decided that those sites should be the primary source for various ES topics. CS Wiki, Oblivionmodwiki, Tamriel-Almanach come to mind; Daveh could add prefixes like CSWiki: and OBMWiki: to the wiki configuration. But delete wikipedia: et al.
   • It seems that it's our decision whether we consider these sites to be "blessed" or otherwise highly-integrated with UESP. In my opinion, the main thing we're saying is that UESP does not consider itself to be the primary (or exhaustive) source of information on this topic. And I think it's already established that we're not trying to cover every possible ES-topic here. Oblivion Mod talk:Modding#Vs. TESCS Wiki states as much; Oblivion Mod:Mods#What Goes Here likewise. I don't think using interwiki links implies much more that.
3. Plain links are used for UESP links and a broad range of wikis, both ES-related and not. In particular, we expand the use of wikipedia: interwiki links. Even in this case, I think there are some existing prefixes that we should turn off. dictionary: in particular is one that popped up the other day and seemed completely inappropriate.

Overall, I'm somewhat ambivalent about the details. I'd primarily like to find a way to encourage more links to other sites, but whether that's through interwiki links or templates or some other mechanism is less important. In the past I've promoted option #1; thinking about things over the last few weeks I've probably shifted to a slight preference for #3. I'm sure my mind could be changed again ;) --Nephele^Talk 17:20, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

A very nuanced response, Nephele, and if someone said tl;dr, they are cheating themselves ;) Ooopse, I used an interwiki link there... Seriously, the old external link feels very 1996, when the net was new, and offsite links were uncommon. I don't agree at all that an interwiki link implies any form for blessing, in todays blog-sphere and ever-tighter integration, a link is just a link. The way to handle an external and interwiki link is to open it in a new tab, which is like a "See also:" In general, we should keep our users in mind, have the site behave as expected by internet users and have ease-of-use as a high priority. Our Search system is archaic enough, but that's another topic. -- That is my take on it. Cheers, Benould^•T•C 18:59, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

I'm strongly for number one (which is essentially what I argued earlier, so no surprise there). And if anything were old fashioned, I would argue that treating all links, internal and external, the same would be it. All links equal only makes sense when you don't have a coherent collection of tightly linked articles. In contrast, a wiki is sort of a mini web, almost like an intranet, of closely related articles, created and edited under similar editorial control. It's useful to the user to have a clue (before following the link) which links are internal (and thus "blessed") and which links are external (and thus not under our control). Hence, tightly restricting inter-wiki links is preferable. (Of course, which approach is more "old fashioned" is a moot point -- what's relevant is which is better.)

Popup in a new window or new tab is also not desirable IMO. It should be the users choice whether a given page pops up in a new window or tab. --Wrye 22:54, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

They still have a choice, they can set that in their browser preferences, new page or tab. You want to have a modal dialog box every time someone clicks a link? C'mon, try to think as a user, not a programmer. It'd be interesting to see how traffic goes when people actually land on the site, whether they stay on the "tightly" integrated site and follow links, or just use Google to navigate it. --Benould^•T•C 23:19, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

Since I've spent a lot of time designing/coding the UI for Mash/Bash/etc. designing for users is part of my "job". Being able to think from the users perspective is an absolutely fundamental part of that job. Hence, stating that I'm incapable of doing it implies that I'm fundamentally incompetent. Don't do that, okay? It's not polite.

Now, my complaint as a user is that it definitely annoys me when a link opens a new window/tab that I didn't desire. If I want a new tab/window I'll right click on the link and choose that option from the link menu. And, as a UI designer, my observation is that programs/sites/links should not behave in unexpected ways -- that's a basic UI design rule. Ordinary web parlance is that clicking on a link may well take you to a different site, and that ordinarily happens in the same window. That behavior should be disrupted unless there's a good reason to. Simply going to an outside site is not a good enough reason. --Wrye 17:39, 8 May 2008 (EDT)

Wrye, it was not my intention to offend you, and I never said that you're incapable of thinking like a user. Perhaps my response was hasty, taking your "bait" that my suggestions were in some way forcing a users options. Now, I completely agree that an action should not lead to an unexpected result, that's part of my core argument. We just disagree what an expected result is when one clicks on a link in this instance, that's all. I don't see the wiki as an island, or intranet, but then again, I am new here and you all have done fantastic work before I even knew the wiki existed. Hope that clears things up, cheers! --Benould^•T•C 20:57, 8 May 2008 (EDT)

I tracked down at last just how interwiki links are done behind the scenes.

• Information of general interest:
  • The interwiki prefixes can be changed, but by default it's less straightforward than most wiki configuration tweaks.
  • By default, there are are 107 interwiki prefixes defined, most of which are not within the wikimedia family. Some of them aren't even wikis (e.g., IMDB: takes you to us.imdb.com; Google: takes you to www.google.com). Even of the sites that are wikis, I'd guess most of them are no more closely related to wikipedia than UESP is. The current list used by wikimedia can be seen at Interwiki map. Ours isn't identical, but it gives you an idea of what types of sites are there.
  • It seems to me that that the wikipedia software added the interwiki feature as a general mechanism to make it easier to add links to any other websites. The main criterion just seems to be whether the prefix is likely to be used on multiple articles.
  • The link style for interwiki links is not identical to internal links. All interwiki links use the class "extiw". By default, that class uses a slightly different shade of blue than an internal link. But we could easily modify the css definition for the class to make it as similar or dissimilar to internal links as we like. In other words, if the only problem with interwiki links is telling them apart from internal links, that problem can be easily fixed.

• Technical information
  • The interwiki prefixes are stored in the "interwiki" database table. It can be modified using SQL, see Interwiki linking, but cannot be configured from LocalSettings.php
  • The Specialinterwiki extension can be installed to provide a wiki page from which the interwiki entries can be viewed and modified. Access to the wiki page can be limited, for example only to bureaucrats or only to sysops. If we want to make any changes to the interwiki entries, this seems like a good extension to install.

--Nephele^Talk 14:11, 8 May 2008 (EDT)

Neph, was the "IMBD" prefix a typo for "IMDB" (B & D are reversed), or is it actually correct as written? --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 15:01, 8 May 2008 (EDT)

Oops ;) IMDB, now fixed. --Nephele^Talk 15:42, 8 May 2008 (EDT)

My opinion is a combination between Nephele's #2 and #3. I think we should have interwiki links for OblivioWiki, tamriel-almanach etc. , also for the biggest wikis; wikipedia, mediawiki, wikibooks, Wikia. But I don't really think links for random wikis across the net are all that nescessary. - Game Lord^{Talk|Contribs} 15:16, 8 May 2008 (EDT)

Is there a way to generate how many times UESP articles link to an outside site, and/or what sites are most common? --GuildKnight^Talk2me 20:03, 8 May 2008 (EDT)

There is a linksearch extension that makes it possible to find pages using a certain external link... but we don't have it installed. However, using behind-the-scenes SQL magic, I can get the basic info. The most common websites used for external links on UESP are:

• 5905 links: www.uesp.net (these are just external links to the site)
• 386: en.wikipedia.org
• 239: www.elderscrolls.com
• 211: www.tesnexus.com
• 194: www.bethsoft.com
• 165: planetelderscrolls.gamespy.com
• 164: www.google.com (many of these will be automatically created links on to-be-deleted pages)
• 160: creativecommons.org
• 116: cs.elderscrolls.com (cswiki)
• 96: meta.wikimedia.org
• 75: wrye.ufrealms.net
• 74: www.youtube.com
• 69: www.tessource.net
• 66: www.elricm.com
• 60: bethblog.com
• 57: i182.photobucket.com
• 50: www.svatopluk.com
• 41: imperial-library.info
• 41: www.oblivionmodwiki.com
• 40: www.imperial-library.info
• 33: homepage.eircom.net
• 29: www.mediawiki.org
• 29: obliviondownloads.com
• 25: til.gamingsource.net
• 24: www.elderscrolls.net
• 22: oblivion.gamewikis.org
• 21: dictionary.reference.com
• 20: neon.chem.bg.ac.yu

Of course, the list trails off with countless entries listed less than 20 times. Some of which are just permutations of the listed sites, and therefore should really be added in to boost their count (e.g., there are 7 tessource.net lower on the list, in addition to those already listed for www.tessource.net).

The counts provided are basically the number of links to each site (except that identical links on the same page will only count once). It's from all namespaces, including user pages and talk pages. --Nephele^Talk 21:11, 8 May 2008 (EDT)

Well, using just the WP interwiki link, we could get rid of 386 ugly arrows.

I think it might work to limit it to ES-related sites, with a few select non-related sites. We notice quickly enough if it's a conventional link; I don't think we would have any problem noticing if someone used an interwiki link inappropriately. And that's the only problem I could see if we included interwiki linking capabilities to sites that may not be ES-related.

Honestly, I never assumed that sites linked to with interwiki links had any sort of special "blessing" from UESP, and I can't imagine anyone doing so. Also, I've never had any problem distinguishing UESP links from interwiki links.

Anyway, that's just the way I see things, because of the way I use the site. --GuildKnight^Talk2me 01:12, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

I have two conflicting views on this. I like Interwiki links because it creates a better sense of community - rather than saying "This is our link but this is a nasty external one" it lets us treat all the sites with which we associate in the same way. I dislike Interwiki links for exactly the same reason! I like to see what's UESP content and what isn't, and IWs hides that information.

I suppose the question we need to ask is "What benefits are gained through the use of Interwiki links?" There's a small benefit to editors because the links are shorter, but since most will be done through cut-and-paste, it's not a huge one. The other change is in what is presented to the user and having thought about it for some time I think the benefit lies in being able to see that a link will take you away from UESP; in other words, in not using IWs.

On balance, therefore, I agree with Wrye: we shouldn't use Interwiki links. I know that I was adding the darn things a week ago but having thought about it more, I think it's better that we classify everything we don't control as "external" and mark it as such.

As a final point, it's worth noting that, should it be required, the cleanup won't be a problem as NepheleBot or RoBoT can take care of it easily. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 03:55, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

It looks like we have two (or three) different proposals:

1) Keep external links as they are, with the arrow, and clean up all interwiki's with the help of bots.

2a) Make use of interwiki links in some limited fashion, to game related sites only, and distinguish them by different color or a new tab.

2b) (or3) Same, but with additional use of wikipedia interlinks

No one is proposing total free-for-all use of 107 interwiki prefixes.

I hope that's correct, and if so, I'd vote for #2, and either method would be fine. --Benould^•T•C 04:25, 9 May 2008 (EDT) (edit: probably just 2 proposals, interwiki or no interwiki, then hash out the details)

Assuming Benould's summary is correct (and I believe it is, but I've only been half-paying attention to this thread), I would vote for 3. I find it useful on occasion for editing to have the interwiki links, including Wikipedia, but I also think it should be clearly visible and two shades of blue isn't very clear. That said, it's not a big deal for me, though the little external-link icons do tend to interrupt the flow a bit when they're used in text (as opposed to a bulleted list, for example). --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 11:34, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

My vote, what little weight it carries, definitely goes to option one. I think we should keep things as they are, there's really little need to change anything. Rather, the need is to prevent edits that include unnecessary inter-wiki linking. It's not always a bad idea, but this will hopefully prevent further disruptive edits. --HMSVictory^Talk 11:40, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

I just found this discussion after changing one page's wikipedia links to interwiki style yesterday and seeing that it was reverted today. I thought I was just "cleaning up" the links, and didn't realize at the time that there was so much debate over the issue. But here's my take on it:

• perceived advantages of interwiki linking:
  • shorter to type
  • gets rid of the "ugly arrow"
• perceived disadvantages:
  • may imply more "chumminess" with the other wiki than some contributors are comfortable with
  • may be hard to discern from internal links

I am speaking here only in regards to true "interwiki" links, i.e. [[wikipedia:example]]. I believe that both of the perceived disadvantages can be overcome by specifying a slightly different color for interwiki links than for regular internal wikilinks. Wikipedia, for example, does this, their interwiki links are a slightly different shade of blue, making them easy enough to tell apart without being blaringly obvious (as a green link, for example, might). 71.113.146.96 17:43, 13 May 2008 (EDT)

From what I can see, there are some people who favor more widespread use of interwiki links. But there are also some who don't. The main concern as far as I can tell is being able to differentiate between interwiki and internal links. So would it be possible to reach a compromise where we use interwiki links (i.e., some variation of the above options 3/2b), but find a way to tweak their appearance so they don't look like internal links?

We can modify the link styles, and really do just about anything. The current settings are:

• external style, used for external non-interwiki links: text is color #3366BB, uses the ugly little box
• extiw style, used for interwiki links: text is color is the same as external, i.e. #3366BB, no ugly little box
• default, used for unvisited internal links: text is color #002BB8, no ugly little box
• visited, used for visited internal links: text is color #5a3696, no ugly little box

Assuming for starters that we just want to tweak colors (leaving the box/no box options the same), we could for example:

• Stick to a blue scheme, but choose two less similar blues: default vs external/extiw maybe
• Change the external/extiw links to a completely different color, green was mentioned above. But I think a color that fits with our site scheme would be better. Perhaps #996633 or #775533?

Or just about anything else is possible... revamping the site's color schemes may potentially just be opening an even bigger of can of worms. But first, would this allow us to at least reach a decision on the use of interwiki links? --Nephele^Talk 01:52, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

My vote: Different blue hue, external/extiw looks good to me. This should satisfy both concerns, ease-of-use, not ugly, yet still different from our own links.--Benould^•T•C 02:06, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

I think a different colour is going to cause confusion more than anything else. I stand by my earlier comment; that we shouldn't use them. This seems to be a change being done for editorial convenience rather than an attempt to improve experience for our readers. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 02:38, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

I'm going for the external/extiw. We already use different colors for red links, so why not for these? - Game Lord^{Talk|Contribs} 03:44, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

I'm with Game Lord more or less, except that I don't care much for the blue links vs. the blue links. It'll vary from one monitor to the next, of course, but the difference in colour isn't all that big, and is easy to overlook. As for editorial convenience, I agree, it IS for editorial convenience...but if editing is inconvenient, it's less likely to be done. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 17:47, 17 May 2008 (EDT)

Another thing is that red links can be specified to look like this or like this in the user's preferences. Would it be possible for Daveh or an admin to configure the option of having external links like this, like this, or even like this? - Game Lord^{Talk|Contribs} 10:41, 20 May 2008 (EDT)

Interwiki linking between Tamriel-Almanach and UESP

(Question moved from Administrator Noticeboard)

Hello,
I'm the administrator of the biggest german wiki for The Elder Scrolls, the Tamriel-Almanach. What do you think about interwiki linking between uesp.net and our almanach? I think this could be an improvement for both sites.

Greetings, --Scharesoft 05:34, 21 April 2008 (EDT)

I feel sorry that it has taken all of us this long to respond, most of the administrators are a bit busy at the moment, and Daveh, the owner is seemingly always busy. On our side, we've always liked the idea of having multilingual resources for our readers, though we've never had the bilingual man power to pull it off. Still, I'm definitely not one of our more technically minded administrators, so I'm not exactly sure what all this would entail. I guess what I'm trying to say is that in the very least, we're interested, and hopefully we can look at it more soon. --Ratwar 11:24, 24 April 2008 (EDT)

Sounds great :) I am looking forward to hear your final decision. --Scharesoft 11:43, 24 April 2008 (EDT)

I'm trilingual, pretty fluent in English, German and Danish. If that can help in any way, let me know. --Benould^•T•C 01:16, 2 May 2008 (EDT)

Same for me. I'm already a member of Tamriel-Almanach, but I'm ashamed to say that I haven't made a single edit. If there's any way I can help, please say. Oh and when I say "Same for me" replace Danish with Italian. - Game Lord^{Talk|Contribs} 03:30, 2 May 2008 (EDT)

I've been meaning to chime in here for a while. Although the question seems straightforward and my immediate reaction is "of course we want to," there are actually a few subtle implications that have made it hard for me to come up with a short answer. "The devil is in the details" ;)

• There is the larger question of interwiki links. UESP doesn't really use interwiki links for other sites, even wikipedia, right now. A separate, lengthy discussion has now started to discuss that general question.
• There's the question of "how". The most obvious approach is to use the de: prefix, so a link like [[:de:Oblivion]] would point to the Tamriel-Almanach. However, there have been several discussions about UESP starting to support other languages, which overall have suggested that we'd like to move in that direction, but just need to work out some details. If UESP is likely to someday have sections in other languages, I think we should reserve de: for use within UESP. Even though Tamriel-Almanach is already a well-established wiki, and we don't want to duplicate the Almanach, the integration of the two sites is fundamentally limited both by copyright issues and by being separate sites. Within UESP, there are options to share images, icons, and tables; there are even possibilities of adding multilingual capabilities to non-wiki tools such as the map.
  I'm not saying that we shouldn't find ways to integrate our two sites better right now. We can do a lot right now to benefit readers by cross-linking existing content; some vague, future pipedream for UESP should not influence what we can accomplish now. The only real implication is that I think we should find an interwiki mechanism other than the obvious "de:" prefix.
• It's a change that needs to be implemented by Daveh. The community's opinions are important to Daveh, so this discussion is useful. But until he makes a configuration change (which is likely to depend upon his schedule as much as anything else), there's nothing we can do other than talk. --Nephele^Talk 17:52, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

Dear UESP team, we are glad to hear that our proposal found attention. We are looking forward to the decision by Daveh. Like you we would not want to use a national tag (like en: or de: for the link prefixes. We suggest specifiv prefexies for our sites (ta: for us and uesp: for you), as far as i know should this be possible. As we both know, our wikis have a completely different page structure. We could not and would not link each page. For example don't cover plug ins or other nonlore topics very much. But for the ingame material, books etc. a general partnership between both sites would be of big advantage. We'll stay in touch.

Greetings, --Deepfighter 09:36, 8 May 2008 (EDT)