UESPWiki talk:Lore/Sources for Lore Articles

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

The first section of this discussion (everything up to my contribution at Nephele) was originally posted at Lore talk:Main Page#The Case for Kirkbride. I've moved it all here because it is general discussion about the Lore namespace, rather than discussion specifically about what belongs on the Main Page of the Lore section. Also, any guidelines that are adopted as a result of this discussion will be posted on UESPWiki:Lore; this keeps the discussion together with the guidelines. --Nephele^Talk 15:01, 4 August 2008 (EDT)

The Case for Kirkbride

As most readers of this page are indubitably aware at this point, there has been something of a tempest in a teapot regarding the contributions of the user Temple-Zero. I admit readily that I involved myself in this community fully at his behest, and that I agree with his principles fully. This essay is an attempt to explain and justify the position he and I are taking in a non-bombastic way.

There are a few people who have significantly contributed to the "lore" of the TES series in an official context - Ken Rolston, Kurt Kuhlmann, Marilyn Wasserman, Douglas Goodall, Gary Noonan, Ted Peterson, and Michael Kirkbride. Of these, the latter two's contributions have been by far the most significant, with Peterson writing proliferously for the series and Kirkbride being the primary force behind worldbuilding and lore since 1996. The difficulty that arises is that Kirkbride has contributed, as of today, 20 works which have not appeared in TES games, in addition to several collaborations with other writers. Others have contributed similarly, though not to nearly the same extent. These works have been archived by The Imperial Library on this page. There appears to be some disagreement over whether these qualify as "lore."

The argument many members of this community have put forth is that something is not "lore" unless explicitly endorsed by Bethesda Softworks (or one of the associated companies involved in the production of TES games) by appearing in a game. Though this may sound like a simple and successful way to organize lore into "canon" and "non-canon," this line of reasoning is specious and not accepted by any prominent member of the lore community.

The idea that Bethesda is the source of canon does not hold up with Bethesda's own policy. "Ius, the Animal God" is not serious lore, its own author readily admits that. Arena is not an accurate depiction of Tamriel except insofar as it has the provinces right and the cities are kind of accurate. Even the Pocket Guide was ignored when creating Oblivion, something which would be inexplicable if not for one of the texts some editors argue should not be treated as lore. If the games are conflicting, how can it be them that is canon, and the texts which repair this conflict not?

The reality is that Mr. Kirkbride is the primary moving force for TES lore. He was the primary author of the First Pocket Guide to the Empire, Varieties of Faith, and every single creation myth except the Khajiit's, he drew the art which inspired the design of virtually every aspect of Morrowind's visuals - from the Ministry of Truth to corpus beasts to the Telvanni mushroom towers - he is the voice of Vivec and the author the Thirty-Six Lessons, and the man behind Mankar Camoran. Almost every major character from the lore is either his creation or someone he expanded on immeasurably - from Pelinal and Alessia to Tiber Septim and Zurin Arctus to Sotha Sil and Almalexia. The only major exceptions are the events of 2920 and Barenziah and her children, which are Peterson's invention. Dismissing him as a "dev," or one of many in a large group of contributors, is folly. Similarly, dismissing half his corpus as "forum posts" is equally unwise.

You cannot fully understand The Thirty-Six Lessons of Vivec without "Vehk's Teachings," or grasp their ultimate implications without "A Letter from the Fifth Era of Tamriel." You cannot account for Oblivion's plot-holes without "The Nu-Mantia Intercepts" or "From the Many-Headed Talos." The story of the Alessian Revolt is not complete without the "Lament for Pelinal," and the in-game version of "Where were you when the Dragon Broke?" is missing half its text. "Lord Vivec’s Sword-Meeting With Cyrus the Restless" is a sequel to TESA: Redguard and his contributions in the Trial of Vivec bring the story of Morrowind and Tribunal to a close. "The Imperial Census of Daedra Lords" gives invaluable information on the Daedra, and "Cosmology" gives equally important information on the metaphysical geography of the TES universe. I can continue to describe the significance of the eleven other texts at hand, but I think my point is made.

When Temple-Zero says "TES is literature" he means it. The view that has developed slowly from the gestations of the lore community sees Kirkbride as an author like any other, and his works as a story that has developed over more than a decade. Lore is ultimately just the cataloging of this story for ease of understanding. If UESP ignores such significant contributions to this story because they aren't included in the video game that allowed this story to exist, then UESP's lore section remains crippled and useless as it so much is currently. The obscure texts are not unsourced and non-canon, they are essential to our understanding of this universe and stories within it. Sload 08:26, 3 August 2008 (EDT)

I agree with your argument. In my personal opinion, this edit should form the foundation of our discussions on how to proceed from here. What is the purpose of the wiki "Lore" section is maybe the bigger issue, what audience are we trying to reach? Without a basic agreement on these two issues, Lore namespace will remain piece-meal; with a varying, sometimes dubious quality. Much more can be said, but as many probably agree, we need to discuss this in the community. --Benould^•T•C 19:40, 3 August 2008 (EDT)

Indeed. If UESP aims only to inform the average player of the basics of the games' backstory, then it can settle with in-game sources. But it could be more than that, it could be a source players newly interested in lore could go to learn about things unhindered by the poetics of the in-game sources, or by their conflicting narratives, and also providing background as to how consensus was formed and links to the original sources. The obscure texts are essential to our understanding of this.

Certainly treating these sources with scorn will only alienate the lore community from this website, making it useless by virtue of not being taken seriously. As will comments that suggest that the lore community is somehow insigificant, along the lines of insinuating that we can go off and "discuss" in our "forums" as if you have any audience but us. Sload 20:59, 3 August 2008 (EDT)

Does wiki have some sort of charter? Because unless reluctance to include non-canon material is in writing somewhere, its inclusion seems very much in keeping with the nature of the site, in some ways. UESP doesn't judge, it only reflects and records. In the articles dealing with aspects of the games, every conceivable detail finds a place- useful, interesting, or not. This allows it to be used as an open-ended resource for a variety of purposes. It is not a targeted runthrough of the subject with clear goals in mind. It is wiki's job to show or reference everything, EVERYTHING that there is to be seen, a database of details to minor to be explored in something as cursory and efficient as a walkthrough. The entirety of Elder Scrolls, just as Wikipedia tries to be the sum of all knowledge. Withholding lore does not make sense in such a place. Temple-Zero 22:03, 3 August 2008 (EDT)

But like Wikipedia, we do not appreciate faulty inceptions in our articles, which brings us back to the non-canon discussion that took place earlier. We want verified, sourced material straight from the horses, in this case Bethesda's, mouth. Daedryon^{•T•C•E•} 23:01, 3 August 2008 (EDT)

This site isn't about Bethesda. It's about Elder Scrolls. What is your fascination with this faceless corporation? You aren't affiliates. It's hard for me to take this viewpoint seriously when no one explains it, only reiterates it. It's not that hard- I've heard one passable justification before now.Temple-Zero 23:05, 3 August 2008 (EDT)

A faceless corporation? While not every person at Bethesda may have contributed anything to the ES lore, the current canon we hold is what has been agreed upon by the developers at Bethesda. Yes, there are developers who may have contributed the major part to the lore, but that does not mean that what they say outside the official sources is inrefutably true. We don't know what happens inside Bethesda, for all we know the developers vote for every plot arch before they continue upon it. What Kirkbride says outside an official source may be what he would have written, but as he doesn't say "This is official" we can't take it for canon without placing question marks to its validity. There has not been stated on the site that unofficial sources can never be used, the major issue has been with you automatically taking them for true. You have been jumping to conclusions right from the beginning and are taking a very cynical approach to anyone who questions the validity of such sources. --Timenn < talk > 03:19, 4 August 2008 (EDT)

Question: If what is found under Obscure Texts at TIL is mostly contract work done for Bethesda, how can it not be considered part of the Lore, even by the old standards - only Bethesda sanctioned material? What is contract work there, what isn't? Do we have any written standards on what is admissible? Anyone care to enlighten me? --Benould^•T•C 03:24, 4 August 2008 (EDT)

First, apologies for the length of this post but I think we have a lot to talk about.

I think there are three areas of disagreement: the perspective of the articles, the sources for them, and the degree to which conclusions should be drawn.

To quote the Style Guide, "Within Lore articles, it is more appropriate to write from the perspective of a person living within the Elder Scrolls universe. The articles are still expected to be encyclopedia-style, but designed as if they were reference materials for a citizen of Tamriel. Gameplay details should be avoided in Lore articles; game events should be described as historical events from the perspective of an anonymous citizen." Although the section is still marked as a proposed guideline, it's been up there for months and nobody has ever argued against it, That means that additions like this one should not be made because it's pretty clear that a citizen of Tamriel wouldn't know what the developers have been saying. The previous version of the text is perfectly accurate, neutral and fits with the required style; the new edit simply pushes a personal viewpoint. The average citizen is much more likely to believe a more "impressive" history - in our own universe the Romans' version of history held that they were directly descended from Trojan refugees, rather more lofty than "Another Italic tribe that happened to get lucky".

As a little bit of background, the reason for the Lore space being different in perspective is that we had several complaints about the site being written from an all-seeing, all-knowing point of view, with some believing it spoiled the games. We decided that it was almost impossible to avoid doing this in the gamespaces but that the Lore space would be an ideal place to write from a citizen's viewpoint. I'm well aware that most of the pages don't quite work like that at the moment; most focus has been on "finishing" the game pages (inasmuch as such a thing is possible). A few pages have been rewritten in the new style, however - my edit to the Dark Brotherhood page was intended to act as an example of how even the game sections of Lore pages can fit with the style. Since then, the article has grown and become much better through the additions made by people like Apophis2412 that have been made in the same style. In his case, opposing theories were presented with equal prominence, which is the correct way to write when there is disagreement.

As far as source material is concerned, I don't think anybody will be massively shocked when I say that I strenuously oppose the inclusion of sources from outside the games. My main reason for this is simply - where do you draw the line? Material that MK wrote in an official capacity for Bethesda? Material written by MK for fun? Material improvised by devs in a roleplay? What about somebody like Douglas Goodall? We know that he isn't a fan of the way things have developed so what if he wrote some lore that brings things back to his way of thinking? I know that's a hypothetical question, but it's one that is worth asking.

The "obscure texts" are material that, for whatever reason, has not been put in the games. Obviously, anything that appeared after SI came out can't really be included anywhere, but for the rest of it, it was available and yet not included for whatever reason. You say that the fact the in-game "Where were you when the Dragon Broke?" is half the size of the other means that we have to use the latter; I say that half the material was deliberately cut so we have to use the former.

The points you make about the games being internally inconsistent is a good one, but then we already know that they retconned^* once, with the Warp in the West, so I don't see that it's a deal breaker. There are things going on that your typical citizen of Tamriel doesn't know about, as I'm sure they'd admit.

^* the irony of linking this particular post to a WP article flagged for containing original material has not escaped me.

Let me give you another piece of history from the site. We've had several edit wars about the ranks of people in Oblivion's Dark Brotherhood ([1] [2] [3] [4] for just four such examples on one page) The site policy on this is that we always use the values from the data files, which gives us a quick and easy way to decide any issue like this that comes up. By drawing an analogous line and saying that only texts that appear in the games (plus the PGE, which at least comes with them) can be used, questions about the legitimacy of material are answered easily.

This brings me to the last point - conclusions. There have been several cases where edits are presented as facts where they are actually extrapolation ([5] and [6] are two examples). This for me is the most disturbing trend in recent edits. If this kind of content appears regularly we're going to be lost in a wasteland of unverifiable pages that will undoubtedly be the subject of edit warring. Even having said that, there are instances where extrapolation can be acceptable. Lurlock recently posted a theory to explain why there is a huge gap in the ranks in the Morrowind Camonna Tong, the basis for which is that there are people living in Vvardenfell (and Cyrodiil) that we don't see. In this case, it's pretty easy to prove. In the case of Oblivion, for example we have the Night Mother Rituals edition of the Black Horse Courier being written by one Agnes Earheardt. Since no NPC in the game has that name there must be people we don't see - QED. On the other hand, his suggestion that the unseen people outnumber the seen by 50 times is just a guess. It's an informed guess and he gives his reasons for making it, but it's a guess nonetheless. Personally, my guess would be more like 75 times, but I'm not going to put that on an article either.

In conclusion, this is a potentially very exciting time for the site. The Lore section has always been the poor relation of the site and I'd love to see it spruced up, but not by including material of dubious veracity. In any case, all material should be supported with citations. Benould gave a good example of how to do that, and it should happen with all these edits so people can find the supporting material quickly and easily.

–Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 05:42, 4 August 2008 (EDT)

Just to follow up Rpeh's comments on source material, I am also opposed to the inclusion of non-game material. If we are going down the path of including everything that a developer (or whatever you want to call them) has said in a 'semi-official' capacity, where do you draw the line? For example, if you include Gary "Wormgod" Noonan's forum posts as 'official', do you also count the 'Morrowind Advanced' mod as official, because he wrote it? I would argue that, despite being written by a BethSoft developer, it is very much an unofficial mod as it is not officially supported and distributed by BethSoft. I would could forum posts and other 'semi-official' works in the same manner. Just because somebody who works for BethSoft happens to say something about something somewhere, it doesn't make it official. What if MK posted something along the lines of "Actually, Vivec is the illegitimate child of Azura and Mehrunes Dagon" - does that become official canon simply because MK said it? --Gaebrial 06:01, 4 August 2008 (EDT)

Maybe we should concentrate less on determining what 'canon' means in the context of TES's "spaghetti lore" and more on the usefulness of this wiki. As the lore community — an important part of our audience — sees MK's views as taking precedence over in-game material as well as over material by other developers, we should edit the Lore section with this in mind. That is, we might want to write something to the effect of "source X says Y, Michael Kirkbride says Z" whenever such contradictions occur — and link to a "Michael Kirkbride" article where we explain that the lore community sees him as having a "privileged" status among the developers. If we simply ignore MK's forum posts/Obscure Texts (and by "ignore" I refer to not writing anything about it; I'm not referring to not treating it as the absolute truth), we will miss an important part of TES lore. Treating MK-Lore as absolute truth would be better than this in my opinion, but as it seems that a great deal of this wiki's editors are opposed to such an approach, we might find the compromise I've just presented as being a good solution instead. Valaggar 07:10, 4 August 2008 (EDT)

If I had been asked about this a few days ago I would have probably been of the opinion not to consider these texts canon. I do not like Mk's texts very much and they're not a part of "my ES world". (The only one I really like is "Fall of Ald-Ruhn") However the recent discussion on this site has changed my opinon a bit: How much I may dislike them, they are still a part of the Elder Scrolls however and thus cannot be ignored. Since this site's goal is to be a major source of information about Elder Scrolls this site does not have the luxury to simply ignore them.

Vallagar has some interesting points. We could of course add a section to each article dedicated to sources not found within the game. I'm saying that we don't add information coming from these outside texts to the main part of the article but rather devote a seperate section of the article to it. I'm also of the opinion that we must still seperate the dev-texts from the in-game sources but that we atleast allow people to find out what is inside them. Perhaps we can even put a disclaimer on the top of the lore page, explaining UESP's and the community's opinion on this and let the reader decide wether they want to consider it canon.

I also agree with Sload when he says that this might be a great opportunity for UESP to improve it's lore section and thus make it a lore site comparable to TIL. On the other hand, one could also argue that the place to go for ES lore is and will always be TIL, while UESP is and has always been the place to go if you need gameplay hints.

The biggest problem I see at the moment with these outside texts is deciding what is a credible source and what is not. If we include MK's texts, do we also include Ken Rolston's texts about Caius Coscades? If we consider the RP: Trial of Vivec, a credible source, does that make Ted Peterson's RP's also a viable source of information? And what do we do about texts like these: http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=754160&hl= and http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=607899&hl=  ??

Are they lore or just a jest?

Another problem is the very nature of Mk's texts. Texts like "Short life of Uriel Septim" or "On: Morrowind" are your standard historical texts. You can take information straight from the text and add it to the UESP article. They aren't much open to interpetation. MK's works (like "Sithis" or "The 36 sermons") are more of a theological nature. In some ways you can compare them to the Bible. The difference with normal texts is that can't take information straight from the article but have to interpete what the texts says.

If the discussion on what is and what is not canon cannot be easliy decided then it might be an idea for UESP to make use of a system of canonicity levels like the Star Wars Franchise uses. See here for an example: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Canon#Canon_in_the_Holocron_continuity_database

Apophis2412 08:24, 4 August 2008 (EDT)Apophis2412

To quote Apophsis2412: one could also argue that the place to go for ES lore is and will always be TIL, while UESP is and has always been the place to go if you need gameplay hints

I think we need to be careful that we are not simply duplicating TIL - the UESP doesn't exist to simply regurgitate stuff that is found elsewhere on the web, but to fill its own niche. I think the above quote also answer's Valaggar's question about the usefulness of the wiki - UESP is viewed primarily as a 'gameplay hints' site, not a 'lore' site.

(Maybe we should have chosen something other than 'Lore' as the title for the moved 'Tamriel' domain, or even not bothered moving it)

--Gaebrial 09:12, 4 August 2008 (EDT)

True, but one must not forget that this site also has articles about lore that Til doesn't have, like our articles about all the factions (MW Great Houses for example), and the articles about important people (Vivec, Almalexia, Sotha Sil for example).

Apophis2412 09:40, 4 August 2008 (EDT)

First, I see a trend among all the responses above that I would like to reply to. You are all coming to the same set of concerns from a variety of angles, whether questions of style or 'UESP doesn't do lore.' You are very skeptical that we should consider the texts official and question our rationale for using them. Well, you have some valid concerns, but I have to ask you, is that enough to completely ignore them? Pretend they never existed and scrub the many insights they have provided from the sight and ban their discussion? This sounds like an extreme portrayal of the situation, but it is what you seem to be asking. Sload, Benould, and I argue that obscure texts should be acknowledged valid as citations, evidence, and sources. We don't ask that you put them on the site and grant them pride of place, only that they be given their intended status of aids to understand ES lore. When you respond to this pointing out the unclear semantics of the situation and possible slippery slopes and negative effects, you follow a course of reasoning that will only be satisfied by their complete and absolute banishment. Is this what you really want? If so, then you should probably contest our claims that you might as well not have a lore section, because we are indeadly earnest on that point.

Rpeh: That is an interesting post, because I can't really highlight any irreversible conflicts. Those are concerns, but not principled objections to the material itself. We are arguing for the basics here, and if your concerns are the qualifications we have to work with, then that's fine and dandy, because we're getting somewhere. But if we are to resolve this, then you're going to have to realize that some things are a little slippery for the rule of thumb, though everyone can submit to the rule of law. You all act like you fear the rabble that will tramp through the site if we relax these constrictions (there aren't enough of us to constitute a mob) and point to areas where trespasses may occur. Well, that's where admins come in, to separate the shades of grey, and from your reluctance, I'm beginning to think you aren't very optimistic about your chances. You have to use your judgment to draw the line, that is what you are there for. And it will be much easier when the editors are working for you, not against you. This is the messy part of the revolution, I hope. How you categorize the sources as does not matter, as you won't be including or describing them on the site. They will only be used as references, and you will be admirably placed to view the content and decide if it is a joke, or too vague. When you cite something on Uesp, you are not crediting a source, you are pointing to a point of information or insight within that source. Decide if that is valid, and nevermind the package. That doesn't matter, and it's downright ridiculous to complain about the confusion from obscure texts when the game's lore and internal continuity is more tangled up by far. The site seems to handle it all admirably, however. Maybe you just need someone as knowledgeable in lore as most of the admins are with the games.

And because I'm up to that part: "What happens if Ted Peterson says Vivec is the illegitimate child of Azura and Mehrunes Dagon?" Because Ted Peterson knows less about lore than Michael Kirkbride does. It seems to me the only reason official material is worthy of such respect is because of the convenience of copyright. In substance it is often less reliable, and needs to be rationalized and updated in other, unofficial contexts.

Valaggar has some good ideas, but I bet Rpeh would find them all lacking in terms of the requirements of the style guide. Well, I had read that quote he provided before, but assumed it meant something else, because I don't see uesp's posts as anything remotely like 'in-character.' In practice, it doesn't seem like a style so much as a guide of what to leave out. Console commands and easter egg notes have an exception? It seems like you are touting the objectives of a goal no one pays any heed towards fulfilling. But I can say that if you believe it is grounds to stifle all candidness about the origins of sources and conflicts in lore to the point of their being left out, consider this the first objection.

Apophis, I will try to answer your concerns. The beauty of the obscure texts is that they ARE unofficial. They are not sitting there in your face and asserting the authority of their canon truth. They are there as references, an invitation to explore the subject more closely. They ask that you view the content inside and judge that, not the format in its entirety. If Ted Peterson wrote a poem that was a joke about T Rex's getting it on and sprinkled it with the birth dates of all the Septim Emperors, some of the details would be worth examining. I wouldn't want to put it up next to some of the more serious texts, but it would still be there, informing our thinking. The writers own Tamriel, the company just owns the game. If you must categorize the different levels of non-canon lore, then gut it up and use your judgment.

Gaebrial, don't be a defeatist.

In conclusion, I don't think I ask for much. Right of footnote, essentially. I leave it to the admins to flood the lore section with prods, flags, and disclaimers if they want to. Linked articles on the nuances of the sources and prominent theories that cannot be drawn by a simple reading of explicit text? Analyses on bias, conflicts and retcons in the real world context of the subject? we can handle it. Resolving disputes is impossible when we differ on such a fundamental level. Meet me here, and I will work towards resolving any of the concerns you have brought up as they arrive. I can't work with you until we are working with the same material. Temple-Zero 10:23, 4 August 2008 (EDT)

If Lore is supposed to be as seen as by an average citizen, follow that thought for a second. The situation here reminds me of Temple dogma, which should be familiar to anyone who has played Morrowind. There is the Temple doctrine that described the situation and the death of Nerevar, the Apotheosis of the Almsivi, and most people were happy with that for 3000 years. There were dissenting voices that were tossed into the Ministry of Truth, or that went into hiding. There was also the oral tradition of the Ashlanders and the report of Sul, which were ridiculed. Although some of these diverging opinion existed in form of texts and books, they were hidden in the Secret Library, marked not safe for public consumption. When things got out of hand with Dagoth Ur, these very people and documents were needed to bring about a solution. The higher ranks were, begrudgingly, able to adjust to the new "truth", Vivec gave 3 different sources, and admitted to murder, yet the god Vivec did not. The clincher is. no-one believes you that Almalexia is dead after the Tribunal Main Quest, and that she went mad and killed Sotha Sil, even if this is clearly the case.

I liken these afore mentioned "Obscure Texts" to the oral traditions of the Ashlanders, and the texts of the Dissident Priests, alternative views of history, that may very well prove crucial to the understandings, even if they're not accessible to the average citizen of Cyrodiil. In-game dogma only may not be sufficient, I believe the Obscure texts are a helpful addition, and they are sufficiently limited in scope, no flood gates needed. Anyways, I am glad we're taking this discussion now, Lore namespace will be better for it, one way or another. --Benould^•T•C 11:25, 4 August 2008 (EDT)

Temple-Zero, I don't believe you've responded to any of my three points. To go through a paragraph at at time... First, Yes I do indeed think that anything outside the games should not be included for the reasons already stated. You obviously feel the obscure texts are worthy of consideration and I feel exactly the opposite. Material that hasn't appeared in the games shouldn't be used as a source because Bethesda haven't considered it worthy of inclusion. However, I obviously disagree with your point about killing the Lore section. I think it should be a section about Lore as it relates to the games whereas you're talking about opening it up to any other material. I don't believe that is an invalid choice. As others have stated, we're not trying to create a duplicate of TIL.

Second, "that's where admins come in"? I've been trying to keep the more speculative material off the site and haven't exactly had a very nice response. I'm not complaining about confusion from the obscure text, I'm saying there will be confusion about what is acceptable and what isn't and there's only one way to resolve that.

Paragraph three... I don't know what it means. That quote isn't what Gaebrial wrote so I'm not sure how it fits. However, you've inadvertently proved my point - you seem to say that if Ted Peterson says something that contradicts Michael Kirkbride then we should ignore the former. In other words, you're picking and choosing from source material based on your beliefs. That is exactly my problem with including material not from the games.

Fourth, I admitted that the Lore space isn't right in terms of style at the moment but I'm darn sure there aren't any console codes or easter eggs in that namespace. If you've found some then, to use an expression of yours, delete with extreme prejudice!

Fifth, Valaggar's suggestion is interesting but it's not a solution as it simply moves the problem to another place. If such a system was used I would give any of the current obscure texts the lowest possible "reliability" score whereas you seem to regard them as just as reliable a source as the in-game books. So instead of reverting each others textual edits we end up reverting each others scores.

Sixth, it's the willingness to include anything at all that I find disturbing. A joke about T Rex should be treated as just that and it should only "inform our thinking" insofar as it shows what a funny guy Ted Peterson is.

So that's my position: No non-game material. It just isn't going to work. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 12:34, 4 August 2008 (EDT)

To comment on the qeustion what would happen when Ted Peterson would declare Vivec to be love child of Azura and Mehrunes Dagon. The Imperial Library has always used the following standard for the obscure texts. They must be verifiably written by a developer and they must be in character. The latter is most important in this case because being written in character will take the dev-author out of the equation. At which point the fictional author will be patted on the back for cracking a great joke.

I'd put in right in place but this wiki style debate system doesn't make that easy.

62.251.15.186 17:09, 4 August 2008 (EDT) Proweler

Nephele

There have been multiple debates over the last week or so about what content belongs on UESP's articles, and in particular whether or not to include information from books that have never appeared in an Elder Scrolls game. Some of the other discussions have taken place at:

• Vivec (god)#Non-Canon Material - Hogithum Hall
• User talk:Temple-Zero
• The discussion previously at Lore talk:Main Page#The Case for Kirkbride has been moved here, as explained above

One term that's been used a few time is "canon", although in my opinion that seems overly dogmatic. I don't think we're trying to establish any universal standards -- the goal is only to establish guidelines for UESP. Other websites, in particular TIL and the Lore section of the Official Forums, will have their own standards and guidelines that are appropriate for their sites.

These are comments that I started writing a few days ago, so some of the ideas predate much of the other discussion. But I've also tried to update these comments based on what I've seen elsewhere, and in particular I've tried to incorporate other people's ideas and preferences into the proposed guidelines. I know it's long, so if you want, just skip to the Proposed Guidelines. But the rest of includes a lot of rationale and responses to what's been said before.

Background/Perspectives

The basic problem here is, I believe, establishing what is "true" in the Elder Scrolls universe. The in-game content is not always sufficient to establish the facts: the content is not comprehensive, it's at times contradictory, and is also likely to contain mistakes (evidenced by changes in books between games, plus occasional obvious typos/mistakes, etc.). So do we limit UESP articles to incomplete (or possibly even incorrect) information? Or do we try to expand the articles to include additional information? And, if so, what additional information?

I think in most cases there is no single universally valid answer to the questions: whether it's that the developers wanted to give themselves "wiggle room" to incorporate future plot twists, or whether it's that they wanted a rich and complex mythos, the fact is that the Elder Scrolls literature contains contradictions. Ultimately, each fan is free to make his or her own decisions about which versions he or she likes most; each of the millions of fans will come up with an individualized storyline, whether or not a website says "this is the unique and official storyline."

There is a pretty wide variety of types of content that end up being used in the community as sources for lore. The first few that come to mind are:

1. Content that has appeared in game, including content from books, notes, and dialogues.
2. Pocket Guides to the Empire (PGE). They have not appeared in-game, but have been released as printed content purchased with (specific editions of) the game.
3. Drafts of in-game content/PGE, some of which have been made available, for example on TIL.
4. Other books written by the game developers (in particular Michael Kirkbride) that have been posted on TIL but have never appeared in-game.
5. Articles written by librarians at TIL
6. Discussions on forums between community members

Reliability is not guaranteed with any type of source -- even in-game content. But also it cannot all be considered equally valid or authoritative -- somewhere a line has to be drawn. UESP has tended to only include #1 and #2; the discussion is about whether some of the other types of content should also be used as sources for UESP articles.

Clearly these different types of sources are not all equally authoritative. But even what we mean by "authoritative" is subject to debate. When it comes to establishing the "true" facts about any topic, there are at least two different standards:

• What was the intended meaning when the information was originally written?
• What will be the interpretation in future Elder Scrolls games?

So we can ask, for example, "Who are the Nedes?" One way to try to reconcile the differing accounts is to turn to the people who wrote the information and find out what they meant at the time. However, we are also assuming that there will be future ES games, with new books some of which may provide new information about the Nedes, so we would like to not add information that ends up being proven wrong by future games. The basic paradox is that what will appear in future games is not necessarily consistent with the once-intended meaning.

Although the developers of any future Elder Scrolls games will presumably want to maintain continuity, they also want to (even have to) be given the creative freedom to come up with new, original ideas. Would any of us want to play TES5 if we could predict exactly what would happen in the game? New information will be added, some of which may intentionally diverge from what's previously been stated and some of which may accidentally diverge. Since Michael Kirkbride is no longer directly responsible for developing ES games, there is no guarantee that his perspective will be integrated into any new game. The lore added by Oblivion seems to confirm that the developers do not consider themselves 100% constrained by MK's vision of the lore. I think it's safe to assume that future games will feel more constrained by facts that have appeared in-game -- or at least they cannot undo what has previously appeared in a game. But I think anything else is subject to developer whim.

On the other hand, completely eliminating all out-of-game sources of information is very limiting. The person who originally wrote a given text is clearly qualified to provide useful information about the text. Was a particular word a typo? Was the text meant to be a joke, a metaphor, or a literal history? Was the text written independently from other texts on the topic or were the facts in the texts coordinated? Facts about the game's development cannot be changed by future game-writers (even if the facts are not taken into account when writing the new games). And some information that is currently only available out-of-game probably will be incorporated into the game in future. Writing articles ignoring those facts leads to inaccurate articles -- even while writing articles incorporating all out-of-game facts will also lead to inaccurate articles. We can't predict the future, so we can't know for sure what out-of-game information will become part of the games, but there are probably cases where we can be reasonably certain about what to expect.

This problem is not unique to Elder Scrolls games. Apophis2412 posted a very interesting link to Star Wars' canon. However, in the case of Star Wars, the person responsible for much of their lore (i.e., Lucas) owns the franchise, guaranteeing that his ideas will be honoured. Also, with the Holocron continuity database there are some clear statements about will and will not allowed be in future Star Wars releases. Nevertheless, the fundamental issues are similar, and we do ultimately have to come up with some type of similar ranking -- whether it's explicitly stated, or whether each of has our own personal ranking.

Lore on UESP

Decisions about what content gets added to UESP articles need to be based upon the characteristics of UESP: Who are UESP's readers? What content do the readers look for and expect to find on the site? What are the site's overall objectives? How will the wiki nature of the site affect article content? Therefore, what sources are used on UESP articles can not be decided based upon abstract principles. Also, since UESP and TIL are two different websites with different purposes, the content and guidelines on each site will reflect each site's purpose. The two sites should complement each other -- not contradict one another, but also not be identical to each other. So, what works best for TIL is not automatically appropriate for UESP.

UESP, for better or for worse, has tended to focus pretty much on what happens in the games. This has in part developed because we have been putting a lot more time into the game-specific versions of the site. Nevertheless, the majority of our readers are here to find out how to the play games and no matter how much we develop the Lore namespace, that is likely to remain true. Therefore, the Lore articles should be accessible to (and useful for) people who have only ever read one or two books (or perhaps even no books -- but are just trying to understand the story behind a quest line). They should also be accessible to people who have read every single book in-game, and are only now starting to reach out to the web to find out more about those books. These people are not the same audience as the typical TIL reader.

Taking into account readers' expectations is even more important on a wiki than a typical website. If readers think information is missing from an article, they'll end up trying to add it to the article -- no matter what the site's guidelines say, no matter what's on the talk page. While patrollers or other editors can then undo inappropriate edits, it is still best for everyone concerned to try to come up with guidelines and content that will meet readers' expectations from the beginning.

Another factor is the overall content hosted on UESP. We only host the books that have appeared in the game (or with the game, in the case of PGE) and I doubt that is going to change in the near future; the out-of-game books only appear on TIL. UESP should not ignore information just because it's not hosted on the site, but nevertheless what is present on the site shapes the site. One goal for the Lore section is to add full links to all of the books on the site: someone reading one of the books should be able to easily jump to more complete information about anything discussed in the book. Therefore, a top priority is to make sure that all of the topics covered by the in-game books are documented. It's also important that the summary articles be designed with that use in mind. Many (if not most) readers are likely to pull up a summary article after reading a related book, and therefore the summary article has to acknowledge all of the related books. We can't just decide that Book X is all incorrect and therefore refuse to include any facts from Book X in articles, because we will have readers who have only ever read Book X and therefore expect to see that information in articles. Instead, we have to include any "false" facts, but then explain (no matter how briefly) why the facts are false.

In other words, UESP's overall focus on game content inevitably means that UESP's Lore section has to place a higher priority on in-game books than out-of-game books. Places such as Hogithum Hall are not a priority for UESP -- the place is never mentioned anywhere in the game, therefore people whose only ES experience comes from the games will never do a search on UESP for Hogithum Hall. On the other hand, Ius, Animal God is a priority for UESP. Whether or not Ius was a joke, Daggerfall readers are going to encounter this book; they are going to do searches for Ius. So we need to have an article on Ius, even if Ius is not truly considered to be part of the lore. We need to include Ius on pages such as Lore:Gods I and Lore:Gods by Pantheon because readers who have read the in-game book will expect to see Ius listed there (for example, someone who read the book a week ago and now wants to find it again, but only remembers it was something about an animal god -- that reader will expect to be able to find Ius if they scan through a list of the known gods). In that context, what is or is not in the game provides a very real set of guidelines for what readers will expect to find on UESP, and therefore for what the editors of UESP should try to make available.

As a semi-aside, I also wanted to squeeze in a response to one point made in other discussions. Yes, Kirkbride's work can be considered a unified work of literature. However, that does not automatically mean that UESP's purpose should be to document Kirkbride's literary vision. I am quite sure that the vast majority of UESP's readers have never heard of Kirkbride; I myself only began to realize his role in the games' development and lore within the last year. In other words, to most readers on the site, he is only relevant to the extent that what he has written appears in the game -- and therefore to those readers what he has written outside of the game is not relevant. Whether or not you agree with that opinion, the site's articles still need to be written so they make sense to such readers. Therefore, the logistical reality is that out-of-game content included because it fits into Kirkbride's overall vision needs to always be accompanied by some explanation of why the information is relevant. You cannot just assume that "Kirkbride said X" is a sufficient explanation for readers -- although "the game Daggerfall said X" is a sufficient explanation, given the site's focus on documenting games.

On the other hand, UESP's readers clearly also include people who are knowledgeable in Lore. The new editors whose interest in the Lore section precipitated these discussions are also readers (welcome everyone!), whose interests and expectations should be accomodated by the site. They should be able to use UESP as a useful reference tool. If we don't make our articles useful to all sections of the community, then the likely alternative is that people who are knowledgeable in Lore will find another website where their views can be summarized (since TIL is not a wiki and is not set up for community-written summary articles). That would lead to unnecessary fractures within the community, not to mention duplicated effort. In general, the biggest limitation to a wiki's content is manpower: finding editors who are willing to take the time to write new content. Therefore new content, backed by new editors who are willing to continue adding new content, should only be disallowed if the content clearly diminishes the site's quality and usefulness.

Also, readers fundamentally come to a game website to learn information about the game that they could not figure out in-game. If someone was solely interested in reading the in-game books, that person wouldn't really need a website. People turn to websites to find out what else is known and what else is available. Although our articles should prioritize and organize the available information on a topic, we shouldn't censor relevant information. Why not let our readers have access to everything that is known about the topic, and let each reader decide for himself/herself which sections to read and which theories to believe. Note, however, than providing access to all the information does not imply that the articles should be undifferentiated information dumps. Well-written and well-edited articles make value judgments about which information is most useful, in part by deciding what type of "access" is appropriate for that information: direct quotation of a text; paraphrasing a text; mentioning a few key differences about a text; adding a link to the text in the "See Also" section; adding a link to a discussion that mentions the text; etc.

Proposed Guidelines

The following are some strawman guidelines. These can hopefully be used as a starting point to come up with a set of guidelines to which everyone can agree.

• Multi-topic articles such as Lore:People_A, [[Lore:Dictionary A]], and Lore:First Era should not contain any information from out-of-game sources, and also should not contain any controversial points.
  • Basically, any article that contains snippets about multiple different topics should stick to basic, universally accepted facts about those topics.
  • If there are any facts that need additional explaining, then the topic needs to have its own article (e.g., Lore:Vivec instead of just a snippet on Lore:Vivec (god)).
  • This is in part just a logistical issue. Having references appear on multi-topic pages is awkward. Discussions about a topic belong on that topic's discussion page, rather than on a multi-topic talk page. It's not an attempt to limit what's covered overall on the site -- just a question of where the content belongs.
• In-game sources (including PGE) should be the primary focus of articles, including summarizing those books and explaining the meaning of those books.
• Out-of-game content that has been written by a game developer can be used as a source for UESP articles.
  • This includes additional books, drafts of in-game books, developer interviews, etc.
  • Any information derived from out-of-game content must have a reference. The reference needs to include a link to the out-of-game content. I think it would also be useful to include some standard phrase in all out-of-game references (e.g., "Out-of-game content") that links to an explanation of the relevance (including limitations, pitfalls, reservations, etc.) of out-of-game content. A disclaimer, in other words.
  • Out-of-game content should only be used when it helps to explain in-game content. This is a somewhat subjective limitation, but I don't think that UESP needs to start documenting every fact mentioned in out-of-game content.
    • Or, alternatively, out-of-game content should be included (i.e., a summary of the content, or details quoted from the content) only when it is necessary to prevent UESP articles from contradicting the accepted lore. Emphasis on contradicting: it must not just be that UESP's information would otherwise be incomplete.
  • In cases where UESP's information is incomplete (instead of contradictory), a link to the out-of-game content can be included in the notes section of an article, instead of summarizing or quoting the content in the article. This makes the content available to only those readers who are interested. The note would be fairly minimal, e.g., "Other sources that describe Vivec include: Book X, Book Y".
• Out-of-game content that has not been written by a game developer in general does not belong in UESP articles.
  • Talk page discussions can link to any content. If the consensus of the discussion is that the information is relevant to the article, then it can be added to the article -- but the talk page discussion needs to happen first.
• Original research should be avoided in UESP articles.
  • Original research is a core principle of wikipedia, reflecting that the fundamental nature of an encyclopedia is to summarize what's already known, rather than to come up with new information.
  • The implication is that even if a series of statements can logically be put together to reach a conclusion, that conclusion does not belong on UESP unless it has already been stated elsewhere (in valid source material, not just an editor's forum post, for example).
  • Exceptions to this rule may be possible, but those exceptions need to be discussed on the talk page. If everyone on the talk page can agree that the inferred conclusion is indeed logical and valid, then it can be added. In some cases, everyone may find a watered-down version of the statement acceptable. But a consensus has to be reached before original research belongs in an article.

Given the level of disagreement so far, I think it may be best to start by just seeing whether there are any strong objections to any of these points. If anyone has a disagreement, your comments will be more useful if you can state what specifically is problematic about the guideline and come up with a modified version of the guideline that you would find acceptable. --Nephele^Talk 15:01, 4 August 2008 (EDT)

Hear, hear

What objections I have to the main points are in large part assuaged by the details, and possibilities for exception and discussion. This is the sort of thing I was looking for. (-An approving Temple-Zero, clothed in an anonymous IP address)24.97.239.147 18:53, 4 August 2008 (EDT)

Counter-Proposal (Sload)

• Multi-topic articles should be handled differently. Alphabetical directories are, for the most part, useless due to their incredibly low singal-to-noise-ratio.

• Multi-topic articles like "List of Emperors of the Third Empire" would be useful, as there is not enough to say about these people otherwise. I'm trying to think of a similar example in which we know enough about a group of people to make a list.
• Otherwise, they should link to something relevant to that person. Going off People A, Ada'Soom Dir-Kamal is a redirect to Kamal, Agnorith to List of Emperors of the Third Empire#Kintyra II, Akorithi and Aubk-i to Warp of the West.
• Authors should link to their work. Authors of multiple books, such as Waughin Jarth, should be a disambuguation page saying "Waughin Jarth is the author of..."
• If a character could be filed under multiple topics, but is not significant enough to deserve their own page, discussion should be held to decide how that situation is handled.

• In-game and out-of-game sources are the same thing and should not be treated differently. Out-of-game lore is significant to our understanding of lore and absolutely cannot under any circumstances be ignored.

• This includes anything by any of the seven people mentioned in my first essay, especially Ted Peterson and Michael Kirkbride.
• Any information must have a reference to its source, whether a UESP book, a TIL obscure text, a forum post by one of the seven above. If an obscure text is still included in TESF's archive, its original post, rather than its TIL copy, is preferable.
• No reference to whether a source is out-of-game is necessary. This suggests doubt in the source. Further, all out-of-game sources will be obvious by their location; that is, not at UESP.
• Content, whether in-game or out-of-game, is not always relevant. For example, though MK has told a wonderful story about guars in southern Morrowind being striped, guars are not significant enough in lore that they deserve their own page to hold that information, and it isn't significant to an article about the province of Morrowind. Similarly, in-game books which are just stories about otherwise non-characters, like Banker's Bet or one of the countless others, do not contain significant information, and the UESP need not catalog their characters.
• Note on roleplays: In a roleplay in which a developer participated in, only their contributions are canon. This especially applies to the Trial of Vivec. Ted Peterson participated in Loranna's RP, but as I understand its only significant details were made canon by the third pocket guide.

• Fan works should not be included in the UESP by any stretch of the imagination, such as "monkeytruth" like Albides' "Orc Creation Myth." Though these have a place in the community, they are not canon lore.
• Original research is unacceptable by all stretches of the imagination.

• Exceptions are certainly possible for certain widely accepted but not confirmed interpretations of especially difficult works. Adventurous Putty's interpretation of the Tsaesci Creation Myth comes to mind. They should be clearly refered to as non-canon interpretations, reflecting their status.

I have provided an example article, a revision of Tsaesci, here. It covers everything a wouldbe loremaster should know about them, their basic history, the confoundingness of their creation myth, Putty's interpretation, and the conflict with the Pale Pass quest, which Kirkbride was adamant about.

I intend to argue in favor of this counter proposal soon. UESP has so much to gain and so little to lose. Sload 00:04, 5 August 2008 (EDT)

I agree with almost all of Nephele's suggestions, but I'm still opposed to the inclusion of "Out-of-game content that has been written by a game developer". If such material material was written while the developer was at Bethesda then it is material that has been excluded deliberately; if it was written after they had left the company then it has the same status as fanfiction. Those in favour of including this material claim it's essential in making other information clear and unambiguous. I say that if in-game Lore is confusing it's because that's how Bethesda want it for their own purposes.

Having said all that, Nephele's suggestion for differentiating between in- and out-of-game material is a good start towards a compromise. I would accept the inclusion of unofficial sources if they were referred to in a separate section of a page. So, the article on Vivec (god) might have a section at the bottom of "Other Theories" (or something similar) and then go on to mention the forum roleplay about Hogithum Hall, making clear that the material is not from the games.

If that doesn't sound like much of a compromise, I'd remind the reader that my preferred solution is to ignore unofficial material entirely. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 05:40, 5 August 2008 (EDT)

The way to keep saying that they were excluded is oversimplified and inaccurate, and I think you know it. Lore is meant to be complex and confusing, but understandable. The obscure texts are the only thing that make it so, in many cases. They are necessary in large part because animators aren't fantasy artists, and the realities of game design in a chaotic corporate setting can wreak havoc on a simple piece of concept art, much less the more complex details of Nirn.

But I will say that when you hold an absolute position, you can't expect much of a compromise.Temple-Zero 09:00, 5 August 2008 (EDT)

Not at all. I've put forward the two options that I see. If you have a third explanation I'd be happy to read it. And I have suggested a compromise. I'd also be happy to hear your response to it. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 09:08, 5 August 2008 (EDT)

Some overdue feedback on some specifics from Sload's comments:

• I was not trying to single out out-of-game sources and say that we only want references for out-of-game sources. We also want to add comprehensive references for in-game sources.

However, in-game sources are not identical to out-of-game sources. If nothing else, there is the logistical reality that in-game sources are hosted on UESP and out-of-game sources are not. It's perhaps minor, but yet very relevant for how UESP treats the articles. Most importantly, it means that UESP readers and UESP editors can usually find in-game content easily, for example using UESP's search function. Therefore, if an in-game source is missing a reference, it is reasonable to expect that patrollers or other editors can identify the source.

On the other hand, finding out-of-game sources is not so easy. Many of UESP's editors and readers are not familiar with the sites that host out-of-game sources. Google searches are not reliable: most searches will come up with countless non-ES hits; critical ES sites are excluded from Google (Bethesda explicitly requests that its site not be indexed by search engines, so any content hosted by Bethesda or found anywhere in the official forums cannot be found using Google). Finally, an important characteristic of many out-of-game sources is that there are multiple versions: whether the out-of-game source is an early draft of something that appeared in game, or whether it's something that was first posted on the forums, and has now been copied to TIL. So simply saying "Source: Where were you when the dragon broke" is not sufficient -- a reference needs to be an explicit link to the exact text.

All of this means, to me, that extra emphasis is needed on making sure that content from out-of-game sources is accompanied by a proper reference. In most cases, that reference has to be provided by the original contributor. That's the only person who knows for sure which book and even which version of the book he/she was reading; that person should already have at hand a link to the book that was used while compiling the UESP article.

• Sload's suggestion that we eliminate the alphabetical lists such as Lore:People_A, etc. has merit. However, it is really a separate issue from that being discussed here -- and I think we have enough on our plates with the issue at hand. Whatever we do with the alphabetical lists, there will still be summary lists on the site -- Lore:Third Era, for example. And there will still be summary sections of articles that appear elsewhere -- the introductory blurb from Lore:Khajiit that appears on Oblivion:Khajiit and Morrowind:Khajiit, for example. So as part of this discussion, we still need to decide what content can appear in such summary discussions -- as proven by the discussion that subsequently erupted. So I think it should be tabled for now.

--Nephele^Talk 12:32, 23 August 2008 (EDT)

Counter-Counter Proposal

Having read and considered the various arguments, I feel I am willing to shift my position from my earlier posts. Apologies if this is just repeating or reiterating things that have been said above.

An Important Fact

Without the Elder Scrolls games, the entire Lore of Tamriel would not exist outside the minds of a small group of people in Maryland.

Is there anybody who does not agree with this (geography notwithstanding)?

Given that Fact, I think it is perfectly logical to focus on the in-game material in preference to, but not to the exclusion of, other material. Personally, I would place lore material in one of four categories:

1. In-Game References. These have to be the starting point. The Lore is based on the Game, so the Game must take priority when discussing the Lore.

2. Other BethSoft Material. By this I mean out-of-game material produced by an individual (or individuals) in their capacity as a BethSoft employee. This can support, expand upon, clarify, or contradict in-game references. One obvious example here is the PGE, but I would also include here interview responses and works such as the books written by MK in his capacity as a BethSoft employee.

3. Other Developer Material. By this I mean other material that is produced by individuals who have been involved in the development of the Elder Scrolls world, but which was not produced in any official capacity. Here, I would include those works by both Kirkbride and Goodall, for example, that were produced after they ceased to be involved in Elder Scrolls development. I would also include in this section RPs such as Hogithum Hall, as the involvement of developers in a RP on the official forums does tend to give it a kind of 'semi-official' status.

4. Non-developer material. Stuff created by fans, including fanfiction and RP, as well as interpretations of various aspects of Lore. These all fall under Original Research, and should not be included in Lore articles.

My preference and my suggestion is for Lore pages to be organised along the lines of the following template:

First, a summary section describing the subject as it is defined within the games. Except in very exceptional circumstances, this summary should only include category 1 material (in-game references). Where the subject is listed on multi-topic articles, this summary could be transcluded, with a 'see article for more details' line (as is done with a number of articles currently).

Second, one or more sections expanding upon the details contained in the summary. This should focus on category 1 material, but can also include category 2 material where such material expands upon or clarifies the category 1 material.

Third, a section summarising other category 2 material, such as that material that directly contradicts category 1 material, with links to the original source. I don't see any need to go into too much detail - those who are interested can click on the supplied links.

Fourth, a 'Notes' or 'See Also' section with links to any category 2 material that is relevant but which is not required to provide a complete description of the subject. So, category 2 material that merely supports and reinforces the category 1 material should go here. Relevant category 3 material can also be linked to here.

Any disputed material should be discussed on the relevant talk page, to come to some sort of consensus about (a) whether it should be included, and (b) where and how it should be added to the article. And the key word here is consensus.

Finally, not everybody here is a Loremaster, so if the 'canonicity' of material added by a Loremaster is disputed, the onus should be on the Loremaster to provide the necessary links and references to prove the validity of the material. It's the same for Lore articles as it is for other pages on the site - if somebody else disputes your edit, it is up to you to provide evidence that your edit was correct and valid.

--Gaebrial 10:10, 5 August 2008 (EDT) (forgot to login)

That's the kind of solution I was trying to describe above, but Gaebrial has done it more clearly and with more detail - thanks. I can support this compromise as I think it's the best of both worlds. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 12:01, 5 August 2008 (EDT)

The games are only a way to get the image of Tamriel across and should be considered with this in mind. For example the absence of the legions, the counselors, the ban on levitation and other such things should be taken with a fair amount of skepticism because they're products of a games development, not so much of world. Though if in-game material takes preference it will be impossible to argue against this because #1 makes the game the most important source.

There should be no distinction between the in-game sources, out-of-game sources, interviews and obscure texts. Their value should be argued on the merits of the actual writing in Tamriel and not it's origins outside of Tamriel. If not, it's possible to say that books such as 'The Amulet of Kings' which don't even make sense historically are more reliable then say the Nu-Mantia intercept which resolves most consistency issue's around the Amulet of Kings.

Any sort of tiered system will have these problems whenever a lower-graded texts conflicts with higher-graded material while being more comprehensive, more detailed and less conflicting then the higher=graded material.

Putting the Onus on the lore master using the obscure text somewhat negates the whole point of this discussion because rather then deciding now how to handle the obscure text it gets redirected to a hundred different places.

Although it is good practice to source all information, the onus shouldn't just fall on the lore master but anybody who adds or corrects or removes information. 62.251.15.186 06:16, 6 August 2008 (EDT) Proweler

Taking the above a point at a time...

-The games are only a way to get the image of Tamriel across and should be considered with this in mind.

But without the games there would not be an 'image of Tamriel'. Without the games, we would not be having this discussion.

-(rest of paragraph 1) (I won't repeat it in its entirety)

The removal of spells (for example) has been largely explained away by the passing of laws. Yes, it's a cop-out to explain limitations brought about by the game engine or they way they have coded the world, and this could probably be mentioned as such on those pages comparing the games (e.g. levitation being removed from Oblivion because of the way the cities were created). However, on the Lore pages, the laws banning the use of certain spells (Passwall and Levitate are the two that spring to mind) are what should be mentioned - we shouldn't be stating that the Levitate spell was removed from Oblivion on the Lore page, but that the Levitate spell was banned by the relevant Act. I'm not sure how else you would handle these things, but if you've got any specific ideas, I'd be happy to hear them.

-Paragraph 2

Under what criteria is the Nu-Mantia intercept classed as official? Simply because it was written by MK? Did he write it as an Elder Scrolls developer, or as a private individual? What was its purpose? If we can prove that it was written to be an official Elder Scrolls document, then we can use it more or less as a 'primary' source (category 2 above). If we can't prove this, it has to remain as 'semi-official' (category 3), and should be noted accordingly in any article.

-Paragraph 3 - more comprehensive, more detailed and less conflicting

Not to mention less official.

Incidentally, I don't see a tiered system as causing problems, as long as it is made clear that one exists, why it exists, and why a particular text is treated as more 'reliable' than another.

-Paragraph 4

I'm not sure I understand your point here.

-Paragraph 5

I agree. I didn't mean to give the impression that I was isolating Loremasters in particular. Anybody who makes an edit that is subsequently challenged must provide evidence that their edit was correct.

As I said before, the whole point about disputed material is consensus. If the consensus is that a particular text is not official and should not be mentioned in an article, then it doesn't get mentioned. If certain people want to include that text, they need to give reasons why it is official enough to be included, and if the consensus changes based on their reasons, then the text can be included.

I would also like to introduce another 'c' word - compromise. I think that 'traditionalists' in the community who would rather not use any out-of-game resources have, in general, shifted their position to one of compromise. I don't think I've seen any movement in the positions of the 'loremasters' - the message I'm getting is "we'll keep arguing our point until you come around to our way of thinking".

--Gaebrial 06:55, 6 August 2008 (EDT)

No compromise in the "Loremaster Camp?" What? What you meant was "we'll keep arguing our point until you actually read our posts." I've been making mewling noises over compromise for pages now. Do you think I co-authored Sload's proposal? Obviously I prefer it, but I liked Nephele's as well. I may be mistaken, but that applies to older users who want to see things change as well.

(And Nu-Mantia wasn't written by MK alone, and it really needs to be taken as truth because without it, Oblivion's plot doesn't make a lick of sense and is crazier than Sheogorath's cheese fetish and worse than the Eragon movie)Temple-Zero 09:12, 6 August 2008 (EDT)

I have read your posts. All of them. And the comments you have made on your edits. I have also read the comments on your user page. Your attitude comes across as "I'm a Loremaster, so you should let me add what I want to add to the Lore section in the way that I want, without questioning it". I'm sorry if that's not what you meant, but that's how it appears.

As Sload said on your user page: I believe that paw-prints can change this if you will only let him. I implore all parties involved not to let this chance to create a wonderful encyclopedia of lore slip through their fingers. I think that most members of this community would welcome any move to improve the site's content, but you have to abide by the guidelines that are in place, that underpin and structure the site. That is, this site focuses on and emphasises the in-game content above any other. If you wish to argue that the in-game content is clarified and explained by certain out-of-game content, then fine, but that is how it should be described on the UESP - it should not be given equal billing to in-game content because the focus of this site is on in-game content.

If you're happy with the proposals, why are we still arguing about things?

By the way, I've read Nu-Mantia, and B's analysis/interpretation of it. I agree that it explains inconsistencies surrounding Chim el-Adabal*, and I've previously heard the theory that everything the 'hero' has done so far in the ES games has weakened the barriers between Mundus and Oblivion. However, the fact that it nicely explains everything and was written (or largely written) by MK doesn't make it an official source, and therefore it should not be given equal prominence with official sources. Is this so hard to understand and accept?

* Apropos of nothing (as people like to say around here), Chim el-Adabal sounds interestingly Arabic. From what I can remember, al-Adabal means something like 'manners' or 'rules' - as in al-Adabal-Mufrad and al-Adabal-Shar'iyah. Apologies to scholars if I've misremembered.

--Gaebrial 09:56, 6 August 2008 (EDT)

Why are we still arguing? You tell me (after you fix your font size, of course). I have largely stopped, except for one specific response 2000 words ago. But see, it doesn't matter how many of my comments you read when you persist in acting like they don't exist. ie, the 'why no compromise?' complaints, or this insufferable rehashing of 'not official,' which has been going on for the last week, and if you have read my posts, should seem counterproductive right now, so I won't respond further.

I am still awaiting secondary comments from Sload and Nephele, thought I suppose in the meantime I will ask why. if you list categories 3 and 4, you never mention them in the body text, because it seems incomplete. Although it is also possible that 72 kilobytes of text (as my browser warns me) is swimming before my eyes.Temple-Zero 10:31, 6 August 2008 (EDT)

The font size was deliberate. I'm sorry that you think that saying something is 'not official' is insufferable. I don't think stating the site policy is counterproductive to a discussion about the contents of the site. However, I do agree that maybe we should step back and await comments from others.

I also agree that this discussion is getting a bit long and difficult to follow. To answer your question, I said "Relevant category 3 material can also be linked to here." in the fourth section of my proposed template, and I said "These all fall under Original Research, and should not be included in Lore articles." of category 4 material.

--Gaebrial 11:38, 6 August 2008 (EDT)

I'll be willing to try any compromise. Just don't make the hurdles so high that any inclusion of out-of-game material is a hassle. Having edited a lot of lore articles in recent days, I am surprised how much that can be argued with in-game sources. Any time I read a gamebook, things jump out at me and scream to be included to support points and enrich pages. If everyone just did some of that when reading source books, I believe that our Lore pages will be in better shape shortly. If nothing else, the "filling the holes" outside material can give some clues on how things hang together, whether you agree with a particular source or not. The more we work on lore namespace, the better it gets. i know that's a truism, but it does apply. --Benould^•T•C 01:47, 7 August 2008 (EDT)

Gaebrial, I'll refrain from addressing each comment individually because I don't think there will be any end to this discussion if you keep repeating that the games are the most important source of information, while I say that they are also a flawed source of information and as such they shouldn't trump any other flawed source of information. So instead I'll comment on your largest objection against the obscure texts and the compromises you suggested.

Discussing the validity of a text every time it gets used is a waste of time. All Obscure texts have the same properties, they don't appear in the game and they are written in-character by a developer so they can all be decided about right now - which I garnered was the impression of this discussion.

You don't consider these text to be less reliable for only the reason that they don't appear in the game. However the games already use materials that are unreliable, contradictive and incomplete. So being in the game means nothing for their reliability. Yet texts that are written by the same developer, that clarify and expand existing concepts, are considered less reliable then the already contradictive, incomplete materials that happen to be in the game, how can that position ever hold? As such a tiered system of reliability based on a texts presence in or with the game is completely out of place.

Before Oblivion there was period where the devs posted freely on the forums and talked about Tamriel. They did this with understanding that their out of character posts would be taken as their uninformed opinion on the matter while in character posts could be considered as much part of lore as anything else. Their in character material was written with this in mind so it should not be considered any less reliable.

As such on ESF:Lore there is a consensus that they are accepted as equal to other materials. While I realize that the ESF:Lore isn't the UESPWiki but it is the source for most of the lore expertise so it should count for some.

While I would also love to reach a compromise,I do not see a middle any ground. Either the texts are used on an equal basis, or they are not. You might feel that offering to push back the debate to the actual articles is a compromise, it not only delays this debate and decision, it multiplies it in every article that it touches on! Just as a tiered system can not be seen as a compromise because the criteria used do not say anything about reliability.

62.251.15.186 05:23, 7 August 2008 (EDT) Proweler

Proposal I just saw that rpeh posted on til summarizing this discussion as "it must just be flagged as it is" while not an accurate summary, it does seem like the thing everybody can accept.

I don't think explicitly mentioning this is aethestically pleasing, but perhaps something can be done with the reference symbols. I don't know how the wiki works but stuff like [] or {} to mark the differences in source. Alternativly it can be completely ignored as the sources are listed at the bottom of the article anyway.

06:01, 7 August 2008 (EDT) Proweler

Having had some discussions in a more efficient manner in other places I can see the use of this tiered system when it's used to facilitate the reader who may or may not be familiar with all the material rather then as a system to describe a sources accuracy.

I reckon this proposal will work with the following change: The fourth section should be a full fledged explanation rather then a notes section because most of the texts in the 3th category are often too complex or too large to merely link too. The reader wouldn't see the forest for the trees.

62.251.15.186 07:48, 7 August 2008 (EDT) Proweler

It looks like we can agree that some variant of Gaebrial's system can be used. It's clear that nobody's going to be 100% happy but if we can come up with a good system then maybe we can at least please most of the people most of the time.

To step back for a minute: any system is going to have to work for all the pages in all the ways they work. That means as standalone articles, as transclusions into alphabetical lists and as transclusions into game pages. As I see it, that means there will have to be a section, preferably at the top of the article, that tells the brief, in-game theory. Without wanting to be dogmatic, this is going to have to be the case because otherwise we're going to cause inordinate confusion to the site's readers, most of whom read the material through the game pages and who really aren't interested in the intricacies of the lore.

After that, the difference between the two viewpoints comes down to the prominence that can be given to non-game material. Do we have two different detailed sections - one without OOG lore and one with? Do we use Gaebrial's sections idea to lead to tiers of information?

If we can agree on an introductory section with no out-of-game material then I suppose I can agree to the inclusion of such material in a second section, but with a couple of caveats. First, all OOG material must be fully cited. That doesn't just mean a link to TIL - it means also describing the place and time that the source was first presented, meaning that people can judge for themselves whether or not they want to trust it. Secondly, only material that doesn't break the POV of the Lore space can be used. That means "The Nu-Mantia Intercepts" or "Vehk's Teachings" would be acceptable but not interviews with developers.

On a personal note, I'd like to thank Proweler for joining the debate and being apparently agreeable to compromise. It looks like we can get things moving again now. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 08:28, 7 August 2008 (EDT)

A proposal

I could go through and give comments to the individual points, but bear with me for a second. After having followed the discussion above, my take is that the conflict boils down to this:

Both sides don't want to have their viewpoints of Lore diminished.

Let me try to explain this with an example of one of the greatest mysteries of the TES series, the "Disappearance of the Dwarves". We were given many clues, books, fragments, even quests, stumbled over mysterious ruins where machines and Animunculi still functioned. The debate over what happened to the Dwemer occupied players for many years.

As it stands now, the ES forum presents it as this: We know what happened to the Dwarves. (We're done with that, go away. ;))

The wiki mentions many clues, but not the answer.

If you're a player, would you just have the answer presented to you, a "cheat" so to speak? Would you not equally feel cheated if only clues were presented, if an answer exists? I propose that all in-game clues are presented, the scholars involved, Fyr, Yagrum Bagarn, Demnevanni etc. followed by

"Kagrenac was devoted to his people, and the Dwarves, despite what you may have read, were a pious lot-he would not have sacrificed so many of their golden souls to create Anumidum's metal body if it were all in the name of grand theater. Kagrenac had even built the tools needed to construct a Mantella, the Crux of Transcendence." - Skeleton Man's Interview (my emphasis)

One without the other is either boring, or incomplete or false. We need both, the puzzle pieces and the accepted answer. I propose a peer-reviewed article incorporating the base principles suggested in Nephele's write-up, and then the other "sides" can see if they're satisfied. I feel the theoretical discussion has gone far enough, we need to see what such a new article looks like. After all, that's what the wiki offers to its users, articles. I shall attempt to write Disappearance of the Dwarves as an outline of such an article, any help and critique is very welcome. --Benould^•T•C 13:49, 6 August 2008 (EDT)

I'm not going to post a full response right now because I'm hoping others will respond first, but I will say that if you're writing an article based on disputed material you should do it in a sandbox instead of the Lore space. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 14:17, 6 August 2008 (EDT)

With all the dirt flying and Benould's renovations, the Lore section IS a sandbox right now. /gigglesnort The sourcing and formatting refute present policies often enough, never mind what we decide here. No one seemed to mind when Martin's mother was listed as Gemile, and that family tree is bloody old. A new standard is and good, but bend all our stubs into knots over the scruples of it.Temple-Zero 20:45, 6 August 2008 (EDT)

Have your cake

An opportunity has been lost here.

I am not interested in dealing with the sort of people I will find here. I should have taken some good advice, this just isn't worth it.

Nephele, I greatly respect what I have seen from you and I would have liked to have known you. Temple-Zero and Benould, there is no point pursuing this further. Rpeh, I am sure you will be satisfied. UESP is defended against us fools who actually know what we're talking about.

Be seeing you. Sload 01:16, 7 August 2008 (EDT)

This is exactly what Gaebrial meant when he talked about compromise. You are sticking rigidly to your view that there is no difference between in- and out-of-game texts and refuse to countenance any kind of distinction being made. If you won't move from that belief, then of course you're going to be disappointed. Discussion is about compromise and those of us who were opposed to any inclusion of unofficial texts have already made a big move in your direction.

To portray me as "satisfied" that UESP has lost somebody who could have been a useful editor is utterly untrue, but you don't seem to have understood any of the comments above on the suitability of material, the nature of our readership or our willingness to compromise. I'm not sure that an editor so unwilling so listen to the community would find themselves at home here in any case. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 01:36, 7 August 2008 (EDT)

To clarify something; Sload made this edit only a few minutes after he had been discussing with Rpeh on IRC, which was basically a reiteration of what has been stated here. This has led me to believe that no compromise is being sought by Sload. I apologize to Nephele, Benould and Gaebrial in advance, I know you worked hard on compiling a good proposal, but I have to vote for not having out-of-game sources at all (or only be an exception). Had we agreed on a compromise I still think it wouldn't have made any difference on the discussion on individual pages. Both parties would still have end up having lengthy discussions on every controversial edit. --Timenn < talk > 04:53, 7 August 2008 (EDT)

What's Daveh's opinion? Just out of curiosity.

It would seem Sload is not alone in thinking that a compromise is not reachable. I looked at the discussion at Til and saw that other lore-guru's/masters/khans like Albides and Sload think that TES lore is not complete without the Obscure Texts. Their main argument seems to be that many holes in the in-game lore, holes that are filled up by the Obscure texts. Secondly many of the "higher mysteries" of TES (like the Dreamsleave, the Eantiamorph and Chim) are only briefly mentioned in the ingame books. We need the Obscure texts to explain them. Some, like Sload and Albides, have accused the people who came up with a compromise as either being biased or flat-out wrong. Others have thanked Nep~hele (and others) for coming up with a proposal for compromise, but have said that a compromise is still not an option.

The main question, that I haven't seen anyone here asking himself, is if these people are right. They do know more about lore then we do so who knows? Are the loremasters living in an ivory tower and do they fight about dogma like a bunch of die-hard Christian theologians or is what they say right? Discussions about these sort of topics have popped up at the ES forums from time to time and have generally not lasted long. The end result was always that the loremaster'stance was taken as being canon. (examples : http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=738606&hl=cult and http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=855895&st=60&p=12524154&#entry12524154)

Encylopedias, such as UESP are built on objective truths. If solid proof isn't found, then subjective opinions such as yours can't go into them.

The following qoute was postec on TIl by Michaelsuarez, a member of UESP. The TES lore, with it's many different and conflicting sources isn't much different from your standard historical discussion. Deciding which sources take precedence over others, combining sources to form theories, use new sources to overthrow older theories. In the scholarly field of history, these sort of things happen all the time. In history, unlike the natural sciences, all knowledge is subjective and therefore a matter of opinion.

Many people think that nationalism is one of the reasons the First World War started. Many people do not realize however is that this is not the absolute truth. It's just a subjective truth. A group of scholars interpeted the sources and were of the opinion that there was a connection between the two. There is evidence to support this theory, but unlike the natural sciences historical evidence can be interpeted in a number of different ways. An historian, using the same sources, can come to a radically different interpetation.

This is also the case with TES lore. The Dissapearance of the Dwarves, the Night Mother, Pelinal Whitestrake, the nature of the Daedra Lords, these things can't be taken directly from the source material, they must be interpeted and combined with different sources. The result is not an objective truth, but a subjective one. UESP is a source of subjective knowledge without maybe even knowing it. Take for example lore:Dark Brotherhood. The second theory about the formation of the DB is clearly wrong. It states that the DB was formed after the murder of the lats potentate (2e 421). There is however solid proof that the DB was already formed in 2e 358-360. I could add this to the article, but under the current guidelines that is not allowed, because it is my personal opinion, not solid fact.

I'm still in for a compromise, but I'm not sure if both sides seem to be ready for this.

Apophis2412 07:52, 7 August 2008 (EDT)

A Rat’s Viewpoint

Alright, I have been involved with these discussions to some extent, but I haven’t actually posted my opinion here. I wanted to get all my ducks in a row before I decided to charge into no-man’s land. I’ve actually been preparing these comments since before Sload posted his position. Once we attracted Temple-Zero I saw this conversation happening, though I am a bit surprised it came up early. I’m going to attempt to flush out the issues and then propose a compromise.

The Facts

1. The Lore Community considers MK’s out of game writings to be canon. This is important because they are the experts on Lore. Their opinions matter.
2. The UESP doesn’t have a license to MK’s out of game works, and since they are not truly part of a larger work, we’d need them. I have talked to a few people (not MK or Bethesda), and I can definitely see that there may be trouble getting the license. This is not a showstopper. We can link to TIL as necessary. This has its downsides, since we can’t control the material that’s on TIL, but it could fulfill the need for sources.
3. If we get a lot of out-of-game sources, we need people that know the material. Right now, I only see one long term person (Benould). Temple-Zero has been around a bit, and I think he can be trusted to stay, but I’d rather see at least one more person.
4. The Lore Section as it currently stands needs major help. It is nothing compared to either the Morrowind or the Oblivion section in terms of detail.
5. We are not owned by Bethesda, though we do have an important relationship with them. It is in our best interest to not piss them off. This is rather unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but I think it needed to be said.

My Positions

1. In general, in-game content needs to be preferred. Basically, if Akatosh appears and explained the Dragon Break differently in ESV, we’d accept that version even over MK’s objections. This does have its limits. We can’t count up the number of NPCs in the Imperial City and call that its lore population.
2. MK and other Developer’s work can be accepted as expert testimony. In a void of information, their work can bridge gaps.
3. We can’t split articles based on OOG info or not. That’s going to cause too many organizational difficulties.

Proposal

1. We need to cite information, where it is in game or not. That means we need to investigate getting a citation add-on if we haven’t already. This is critical in expanding the Lore section due to conflicting view points that take place both in and out of the games. This obviously means both IG and OOG source will be included.
2. Fan information does not belong on the wiki.

Why my proposal is different

I believe both Nephele’s and Gaebrial’s proposals lend themselves to problems with keeping IG and OOG sources separate. That’s going to take a lot of work on a section as big as Lore. It is different from Sload in that preference is given to the in game sources. Overall, I think it is a very workable solution that I hope can please everyone. That being said, if anyone wants to add anything to this, talk here, I'm willing to change some portions. -Ratwar 12:00, 7 August 2008 (EDT)

I think this is a workable solution, if we can get consensus behind it. Whether to host or link is a separate discussion, let alone negotiations with the involved parities. I think (short) quotes and links will suffice. --Benould^•T•C 17:49, 7 August 2008 (EDT)

I'm sorry but I can't support this. It looked like we were heading for a compromise but this seems to be a step back. As I said earlier we must have a section that contains no unofficial material so that the pages can be used in gamespaces. Anything else is not appropriate for the types of user we typically see on the site. I think the fact that one group of people has been ready to move so far in this debate has caused you to forget how strongly we feel. My preference is still for no OOG material at all but this proposal puts in-game and unofficial on almost the same level. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 00:51, 8 August 2008 (EDT)

For what it's worth (and I really don't want to get too involved in this discussion), ex-developper Douglas Goodall made the following statement in his interview: "Books that are actually published in one of the Elder Scrolls games have precedence over ramblings on the forums.". I think he has a point there. Which is not to say we should be ignoring all non-game sources, but I do think it makes sense to keep material that is not game-sourced outside of the game namespaces. In other words, keep it in the Lore namespace only. That means that any material which gets transcluded onto gamespace pages should only include information seen in the games. However, the gamespace pages should have links back to the Lore namespace, where the other material can be seen. The reasons for this are the same as the reasons why we don't discuss the details of a Morrowind quest on an Oblivion page, even if it is somehow related. (E.g.: Oblivion:A Rat Problem and Morrowind:Exterminator (Fighters). The pages link to eachother, but say very little - you want the whole story, go to the linked page.) The same should go for the Lore namespace and any of the game namespaces. Thus Morrowind:Vivec (god) should really be about Vivec as he relates to the game of Morrowind. Any information about Vivec that does not relate to the game of Morrowind or which cannot be seen in any of the in-game sources should stay on Lore:Vivec (god). This means that the first section of the Lore page, which is transcluded on the Morrowind page, needs to include only material seen in the game. Anything else should be in the non-included part of the article (and of course, properly sourced, but I think we've gone over that enough). --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 01:13, 8 August 2008 (EDT)

Wait, the sticking point is what part gets transcluded onto to OB game pages, Rpeh? Some fancy noinclude can handle that, right? (Editors note: Most Lore articles, at least in part, also appear on game pages; the multi-purpose part that Nephele mentioned earlier) --Benould^•T•C 01:19, 8 August 2008 (EDT)

Noinclude tags aren't going to work when the text that needs to be excluded is inextricably merged into every paragraph in the article though. More than two or three pairs of noinclude tags will make the article impossible to edit. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 01:25, 8 August 2008 (EDT)

What part and how much of an article does the transclusion entail, anyways? If the topic is so obscure that oog lore is needed for a passable summary, what is it doing in the namespace? That 'probable reader' thing works both ways.Temple-Zero 01:32, 8 August 2008 (EDT)

(Outdent)But your main concern is that OOG is found in OB pages, right? I agree that the confusion would be big if OOG is sitting on an OB page. In case of Amulet of Kings, the OB article probably would have to be severed from Lore, but OB content is very mature at this point. This shouldn't be too much of an issue, just a few pages that won't be transcluded. I don't see this to be a show-stopper, either have separate pages, IFEQ or noincludes. OB shouldn't stop Lore from being acurate, OB should just be accurate to what's in the game, with links to the Lore article for those that are interested. OB articles wouldn't really deal with references anyways, the main sourcing there as in MW would be links. --Benould^•T•C 02:19, 8 August 2008 (EDT)

I agree, more or less, with everybody. I can support Ratwar's proposal, with the modification mentioned by Rpeh & Lurlock - that where a Lore page is transcluded onto non-Lore pages, the bit that is transcluded must contain only information from 100% official, in-game, sources. The rest of the Lore article can contain information from out-of-game sources if required, as long as these sources (in fact, all sources) are properly referenced and cited.

I also agree with TZ's point that if the topic of a Lore article is so obscure that it cannot be summarised without using out-of-game resources, it shouldn't be transcluded onto non-Lore pages. If there is a need for a game-namespace page on the same subject (e.g. Amulet of Kings), then as Benould says, the two articles should be kept separate, possibly with links in the game-namespace article to the Lore article 'for further information' for those who are interested in such.

--Gaebrial 02:53, 8 August 2008 (EDT)

I don't think the two-page idea is quite right. Nearly, but not quite. In the case of the Amulet of Kings, the Oblivion article doesn't need to mention the unofficial material at all, but definitely benefits from some of the history surrounding the item. On the other hand the Lore page has got to mention the Oblivion version of the story to be a complete story of the... well... lore surrounding it. Whichever version of the story you want to believe, lore means "the body of knowledge, esp. of a traditional, anecdotal, or popular nature, on a particular subject" so to exclude one version of events would be a mistake.

It's worth saying that there are only a few pages where this will be an issue, but on those pages, I think we have to take the two sections approach. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 04:16, 8 August 2008 (EDT)

I can't support any proposal to change lore pages so that they fit in the other namespaces, or as the case is here, not improve the lore pages so that they fit into the gamespaces. I am fine with a two page idea, but I think the separating the page into sections is a recipe for an organizational nightmare. New editors aren't going to know the rules since it isn't obvious. With two pages, the game information only part (which I currently think should be a subpage of the main Lore article) could have messages explaining its existence. Doing this on regular pages would simply cause more confusion.--Ratwar 19:41, 8 August 2008 (EDT)

How many pages are we talking about here? Oblivion:Mannimarco is severed from Lore, Akatosh redirects to Oblivion:Nine Divines, Amulet of Kings transcludes. Is there any other conflicting stuff that does get transcluded into the Oblivion gamespace, since that's where the big pot-holes are, that the OOG content is attempting to fill. I hope we're not squabbling over a non-existing problem, or one that is very minor. Can a tech-savvy person please make a list and get us an overview? --Benould^•T•C 20:06, 8 August 2008 (EDT)

As I've said before, the lore section is chaotic and incomplete right now. The style guide is often ignored, and there are obscure text links in there that have nothing to do with this debate. If we limit any new standards to future edits regarding oog lore, and those subject to case-by-case review, is there that much of a problem?Temple-Zero 21:17, 8 August 2008 (EDT)

Nobody is claiming the Lore space is anything but a mess at the moment, but it doesn't need unofficial material to fix the problem. This proposal seems to have got back to treating unofficial material the same as official, and as such I don't support it. In general, I'm not going to support any proposal that doesn't make a clear distinction between official and unofficial material. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 02:06, 9 August 2008 (EDT)

You mean besides the external link icon and the linkt hat opens a new tab, bringing you to a page with a proper disclaimer?Temple-Zero 20:01, 9 August 2008 (EDT)

(outdent) Although there are technical issues related to references in introductory material, in my opinion this fundamentally just comes down to good writing style. Any encyclopedia-style article should start with broad, general-interest information -- basic facts that everyone takes for granted. The first sentence of an article is the one sentence that all readers are likely to read, therefore it should be relevant to all readers; similarly, the first paragraph is the most-read paragraph; the first section is the most-read section. Knowledgeable readers may well only skim over the introduction, but readers who are completely new to the topic are likely to only read the introduction. So it should contain information that you're sure everyone wants to know.

In Elder Scrolls terms, this means that any well-written article will start with facts that are covered by nearly every book on the subject, or at least is not contradicted by any book: facts upon which all readers and editors will agree, and facts which are the most fundamental to defining that topic. If it's information that everybody agrees upon, then it's invariably going to be content that is not based solely upon out-of-game books. It's also content that is unlikely to need any citations (in other words, multiple sources that are already referenced later in the article are all relevant, so listing them again would just be redundant).

That type of structure then naturally leads itself to the technical wiki details that have been discussed. Since the introductory content is universally accepted, it is equally relevant to Lore articles, summary articles, Oblivion articles, Morrowind articles, etc. And since references are not critical for supporting the information, we can get away without including the references on every page that uses the content. Overall, wiki styles were adopted to accomodate what naturally occurs in well-written articles: first, write the article; then, see how that article can be used on the wiki. If a well-written article really doesn't follow this pattern, then we shouldn't try to force it to fit -- and there are already examples where related articles are not transcluded copies of one another. But the majority of articles do fit this pattern, and therefore guidelines are developed that are appropriate for the majority of articles.

The length of any introductory, non-controversial, and therefore non-referenced content will vary widely from one article to another. In an article that is only five sentences long, the "introduction" might be the entire five sentences; or for an obscure topic, perhaps it would only be a single sentence distilling the only fact upon which everyone agrees. And no matter how controversial the topic, there has to always be some amount of basic content upon which everyone can agree ("The Amulet of Kings is a necklace worn by the Emperors of Cyrodiil"; "Direnni tower is a structure located on Isle of Balfiera"; "Numantia is an obscure word mentioned in religious texts such as Commentaries on the Mysterium Xarxes"). The introductory sentence(s) should probably be in a separate paragraph from subsequent content -- but again for reasons of basic writing style. A transition from widely-known to more detailed information is generally significant enough to warrant a change of paragraphs.

As the article gets longer, the introductory content will also be longer. For page-length articles, it might be one or two paragraphs in length. Or in lengthy articles, the introduction might be its own section, separated from the rest of the article by a level-two header.

As a result, I'm not really sure why the concept that articles should start by covering content from in-game books is so controversial. If you'd rather think of it as starting with content common to all books (in-game and out-of-game), then so be it; the result is still the same. (If the absolutely only mention of a topic is in out-of-game books, then it's arguable whether the topic needs an article on UESP; in any case, such articles will be the exception, not the rule.) As long as contributors place their articles' content in a logical order, then other editors on the site can work out the technical details (e.g., where to place a noinclude tag, whether to transclude the article).

(Quick technical points in response to Ratwar:

• We don't need to host any of the content; all that's necessary is that links to the content be included in articles. Licensing is therefore not relevant to the question of what should or should not be discussed in articles.
• We already have a citation/reference extension that has been installed on thesite, and is being used widely in any revisions made to the Lore page. At some point we may need to discuss some details of the specific format used for references but, again, that's really not relevant to the immediate issues at hand.)

--Nephele^Talk 12:45, 23 August 2008 (EDT)

Resolution?

Debate seems to have stopped. How is this question resolved? A decision of all the admins? A proposal to the community? It's time to make a decision. I support Ratwar's proposal as it does not share the fatal flaws of some others, which would split sources and make the criteria for citations too byzantine and arguable to be easily navigated by users who aren't very familiar with the site. This would handicap the rejuvenation of the lore section and besides, it is the place of uesp to present a comprehensive picture of everything that is Elder Scrolls. This is the UNOFFICIAL Elder Scrolls Site, it is not the place to make such judgements over material. These resources are essential. Their use can have limits and qualifications, but forcing them into narrow categories and supporting roles overcomplicates editing and discourages their implementation. This makes any sort of obscure text editing difficult and clouds the true issue over their trustworthiness suitability to the topic.Temple-Zero 13:30, 20 August 2008 (EDT)

Not only the debate has stopped. Any momentum that existed to improve the Lore namespace has stopped as well. What looked liked a consensus has been abandoned over posturing. I am disappointed. There may be no editors left to implement the changes that are so vigorously discussed above. "Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe --Benould^•T•C 18:03, 20 August 2008 (EDT)

I have been absent from the internet as much as uesp lately. If we can get this resolved soon, then I am all for a (perhaps official) lore project.24.31.156.165 22:28, 20 August 2008 (EDT) Temple-Zero

So we call a vote? Or just try and see where the ship goes? 62.251.15.186 12:52, 23 August 2008 (EDT) Proweler

We're not ready for guidelines...

Preamble: This has been a long, difficult discussion, but ultimately I think it was necessary and for the best. It may also have been inevitable that it would be an intense discussion: the two groups contributing clearly have different perspectives, yet both are deeply invested in the Elder Scrolls community and therefore unlikely to just walk away or give up. These guidelines could not be developed without input from both groups (in other words, if these guidelines had been written two months ago, they would have had to be rewritten). Even if we can't yet finalize some guidelines, the discussion to date has been valuable: hopefully everyone has gained insights into the opposing perspectives. Or at least, it should be clear to everyone just how strongly held some of these beliefs are.

At this point, I don't think it is possible to reach a resolution; I don't see any workable compromise that will be acceptable to everyone involved right now. Progress was made and it seems like near-compromises were reached on some major issues -- but nevertheless multiple posts late in the discussion still include absolute negatives such as "I cannot support this." Furthermore, we've reached a stalemate. Not only the discussion has stalled; as pointed out by Benould it is also a major obstacle preventing any progress from being made on the Lore pages. I think part of the problem is that we've reached the limits of what can be accomplished through discussion. Most of this has essentially been theoretical arguments about what might happen, but with very few real examples to illustrate the points. We need practical arguments at this point. It's particularly imperative in this situation, given that the contributors have such different perspectives and, even more importantly, differing familiarity with the wiki and even each other. I'm willing to bet that this conversation is riddled with countless misunderstandings that are only exacerbating the problems: are we really all interpreting these proposals the same way? I know I'm not completely sure about the details of some proposals. The best way to clarify the proposals is to turn them into concrete examples. We need to see what happens in reality when we try to re-organize an article (is it possible to separate in-game content from out-of-game, or is it too awkward? Which specific obscure texts are relevant, in what context, and why?) Which means we need to get back to editing articles -- and I think we also all simply need a break from this discussion. Remind ourselves of why we even care about this discussion.

With that in mind, I'm basically going to suggest some temporary measures to break the stalemate, placing a top priority on simply making it possible for editors to get back to working on articles -- even if those articles are not written to a common set of guidelines. Towards that end, I think it's worth remembering a few fundamentals:

• Content Over Style is one of this wiki's guidelines. If disagreements about style (i.e., guidelines) are preventing content from being added to the site, then the process has gone very wrong. Any content added to the site can later be revised to meet a given set of guidelines, but creating the content in the first place may not be possible (especially if knowledgeable editors have been lost). Although this debate is not purely about style it has nevertheless resulting in stopping any content from being added to Lore articles.
• Any guidelines that are adopted are guidelines, not absolute rules. Exceptional cases may well exist where the guidelines do not work. The guidelines can not and should not be written to encompass those exceptions. Probably each exception needs to be considered on an individual basis, and that probably can't be done until a first draft of the article has been written. The guidelines should instead focus on the majority of articles. Guidelines should provide the standard way to tackle a situation, or the method that should always be tried first.
• Wiki decisions are never final. New contributors, new circumstances, or new content; any one of these can make it necessary to revisit any decision. In particular with a substantial issue like this, it is probably inevitable that any guidelines that are adopted will need to be tweaked -- whether we spend another day or whether we spend another year in discussions. Given that any conclusions are going to be temporary and imperfect, we shouldn't let this process drag on to the point where it prevents progress from being made.

And because I like to be long-winded ;), before getting to the real ideas, I'd like to share a few other perspectives that have crossed my mind.

• This discussion is not taking place on "neutral" territory, where TIL and UESP contributors on equal footing. Rather, it is taking place on UESP -- because it is about the standards to adopt for UESP content. The UESP contributors are undeniably more familiar with how the wiki works, how editors are likely to alter articles, and how UESP's readers are likely to react. The UESP contributors also have to live with the consequences of this discussion, no matter how it turns out; not only live with the consequences, but even enforce and maintain any standards. Therefore, expecting an impartial (or "fair"?) conclusion may not exactly be realistic.

• I doubt UESP will ever be an appropriate place to document every nuance of the lore. Nevertheless, I think that revamping the Lore articles on UESP will help the lore community nearly as much as it helps UESP. Several comments have suggested that UESP's articles will be most useful for "educating" newcomers to the lore discussions -- providing the fundamentals that are necessary before diving into the more advanced content discussed, for example, on TIL's forums. Also, UESP's articles can become a vital way to introduce new people to the lore -- but UESP's readers will only discover links to obscure texts if they are willing to the read the articles in the first place. If articles are not written at a level accessible to non-experts, then those non-experts will give up.
  • A good analogy is perhaps to treat UESP articles as the equivalent of an introductory college Physics class ("Physics 101"). Such a class focuses on over-simplified but widely accepted concepts (Newtonian laws of motion; conservation of mass; events are predictable not random). It might mention advanced theories (Einstein and relativism; quantum mechanics) but only in very simplified terms. Students have to master the outdated 19th centry theories before they can possibly move on to the 20th century physics -- physics that in some ways completely invalidates the 19th century physics they just learned. Trying to teach freshmen students physics by putting them in graduate seminars would be a complete failure. Any information targeting a broad audience that is unfamiliar with the topic needs to cover the content at a sufficiently simplified level so that the audience can understand it.

• The Lore articles are going to be full of contradiction and controversy, even if (perhaps especially if) we stick to only in-game content. With in-game content alone, there are going to be difficult decisions about how to prioritize different sources, which ones to emphasize, which ones to discount. The obvious issues involve the games's "historical" texts (Is PGE1 biased? Is Mysterious Akavir based on hearsay or facts? How to deal with fragments of text and questionable translation, e.g., Father Of The Niben). But beyond that there are also dozens of "fictional" texts from the game that contain snippets of information. Are the descriptions of Black Marsh from The Argonian Account accurate? Is The Refugees simply fiction, or is this reliable evidence that Mankar Camoran is the son of Camoran Usurper and his Bosmeri mistress? We already have to make judgment calls about whether to treat such pieces of information as factual, despite being embedded in fiction. The judgment calls don't seem fundamentally different when, for example, evaluating Kirkbride's RP posts and identifying a few factual points even if the majority of the content is not relevant to UESP. We can't eliminate quality-based decisions by declaring a category of Elder Scrolls content off limits. Conversely, any standards that are adopted for evaluating the relevance of in-game content can probably also be applied to evaluating out-of-game content. The fact that the content does not appear in the game may be an additional criterion used in any evaluation, but it cannot be the only criterion.

--Nephele^Talk 13:06, 23 August 2008 (EDT)

You make a good point about non-experts and using UESP as a sort of lore dictionary (something I very much wish it to be). The crucial obscure texts are exactly that- Metaphysics 101 with more difficult language. Teaching the topics they cover without referencing them would be nightmarish, and I am speaking as one who learned lore largely from the explanations of others, going to find the sources afterwards. How can we write intelligible articles that will be useful to probable readers if we are encumbered in what thoughts we can express and how we can justify them? I have been resorting to byzantine and evasive wording in some of my edits, trying to pass off knowledge gleaned from unofficial sources as the natural conclusions of in-game books. This is not helpful to anyone.

Anyways, I think we're on something like the same page. I await your proposal. 24.31.156.165 14:31, 23 August 2008 (EDT)Temple-Zero

Anti-Guideline Proposal

The priorities, in my opinion, are to:

• Make it possible to get back to editing Lore articles before losing all of the momentum and interest.
• Accept that there are going to be mistakes, so try to make it possible to come back later and find any articles that need to be revised.

To that end, there is only one guideline that seems vitally important:

Any content that comes from a non-UESP source must have a reference. That reference must be a functioning link to the source material. The reference should be provided by the editor who added the content.

Rationale:

• Although ultimately we want references for all content, including content from in-game books, in the short-term it is more important that offsite content have valid references (see, for example, my comments under Counter-proposal (Sload)).
• This requirement should not be a hindrance; it does not place any limits on what content can be added to articles. It's also been part of every proposal to date, so I think it's reasonable to say that we've reached a consensus on this point. (Whether or not the same treatment extends to in-game books may have been debated, but everyone has agreed that out-of-game books need proper references).

• Despite the appearance of consensus on this issue, it is so fundamental to what I'm going to say next that I think it still needs some additional emphasis.
  • Functioning references are particularly important to enable any type of progress on Lore articles, because those references provide some critical traceability. With proper references, any articles containing links to particular out-of-game sources can later be identified. We all know that we eventually need some type of guidelines for that content, so the only way to encourage content to be added in the absence of such guidelines is to provide a mechanism to later apply any guidelines. When guidelines are eventually adopted, we can search for content that does not meet those guidelines and modify it as necessary -- whether that entails revising the reference format; adding details such as when and why it was written; adding links to a source critique; or, deleting content that is deemed unsuitable for UESP. Mistakes can be tolerated if we know that we can later fix the mistakes.
  • That search capability requires that the references be actual, working links. Although there is no "What Links Here" feature for external links, it is actually possible to mimic that function through database queries. In other words, I can create the equivalent of "What Links Here" lists (I've done it a few times in the past for other types of external links). It's also possible to use Google to find such pages, using the link: keyword in Google.
  • Patrollers (or any other editors) who cannot verify a contribution based on in-game content should add a VN tag to request that a reference be provided. In addition, even if there is a reference, a VN tag can be added if the other editor cannot see how the reference supports the provided facts. If a reference is not provided within a reasonable amount of time (i.e., a week), the content should be moved from the article to its talk page. It cannot be added back into the article until a supporting reference has been provided.

• A corollary of this one guideline is : If content cannot be supported by a link to a supporting source, then it does not belong on the site. Such content is original research, which does not belong on an encyclopedia. Again, all proposals have contained restrictions of some sort on original research, so this isn't really a unilateral decree.

Other than that, I don't think we're ready to adopt any other guidelines. In other words, because I do not see a consensus developing over limits on what can be added to Lore articles, I'm saying that we should not enforce any limits on the validity of sources at this time. As long as a link can be added providing a source for the statement (and as long as the statement is relevant to the article, of course), the statement is acceptable -- no matter what the source's category, classification, officialness, or canonicity may be.

Before anyone gets upset/angry (or even elated) at that statement, please take the time to hear me out and hear why I'm advocating such a one-sided position in violation of all rules about consensus.

• First, and most importantly, this is temporary. It is not the basis for any final guidelines; it is not a consensus. It is just a way to get moving again, even if it's movement in the wrong direction. Although it's not too different from Ratwar's proposal, the fundamental difference is that I'm acknowledging that it's unlikely to be acceptable as a final set of guidelines.
• Why is my proposal so one-sided?
  • Adding out-of-game sources is fundamentally a change from what's been done on UESP. We can't expect to evaluate any suggested changes if we return to our past "business as usual" -- if we keep doing the same thing, then we can only end up with the same result. So I opted in favor of the radical extreme instead of the conservative extreme.
  • The best way to really evaluate what has been suggested (good, bad, or ugly) is to let it happen. If this really will be a disaster, then there's no better way to prove it than by letting the disaster happen. Any problems that arise will be solid evidence that can then be discussed as a reality rather than a theoretical example. We can point to specific articles, specific sentences, specific references; we can be sure that everybody is discussing the same facts, not just interpreting proposals differently.
• How is this different from what was happpening before?
  • Ultimately, it may not be any different. But it is my pretty firm belief that UESP (or at least the Lore section of UESP) was healthier three weeks ago than it is now. It may well have been harder on the patrollers than the current stagnation. But if making patrolling easy was our top priority on UESP, the only logical conclusion would be to shut down editing and turn UESP into a static site, not a wiki. A wiki is healthy when articles are being modified and when new editors are contributing, so I'd rather go back to what was happening before.
  • If there are patrollers who thought that the situation was previously unacceptable, those patrollers are free to ignore all edits that get made to Lore articles.
  • I'm also hoping that everyone has learned something from this process, and that editors will consider the various opposing opinions when editing and perhaps allow those opinions to temper their actions.
• Why edit Lore articles instead of just sandboxes?
  • Editing sandbox articles as examples has already been suggested several times, but it hasn't led anywhere. The only example that we have so far is Sload's -- but Sload was not provided with any feedback on that sandbox example.
  • The Lore namespace is currently dying; resuming progress on Lore articles is more important than details of how the articles are written.
  • Working on real articles will be more beneficial to everyone. Any system needs to work with collaboratively-written articles, which is not truly possible on personal sandboxes. Patrollers need to be able to point out information that is missing references; multiple editors need to each contribute the puzzle pieces that they think belong on the article. Articles need to cross-reference each other. Transclusions into other namespaces need to be tested.
  • Nevertheless, this will need some amount of tolerance from everyone if it is going to work with "real" Lore articles. If a patroller sees an edit containing controversial material, that doesn't mean we need to start a debate immediately on the merits of that content. The only requirement I'm emphasizing here is that the content needs a reference. As long as the reference is there, give the contributor some freedom to create an article that shows why that content is useful. Don't start debates over every individual edit, but instead think of them as eventual examples for this general debate.
• Some editing suggestions
  • Use this freedom to include any sources very wisely. The edits made over the next few weeks will, in one way or another, determine whether or not out-of-game sources can remain in the Lore articles. Abusing this opportunity will only convince other editors that out-of-game sources are frivolous, irrelevant, or otherwise unacceptable.
  • Try to find examples where you think the obscure texts are indispensable for the content. Make it as obvious as possible why the out-of-game content contributes useful and relevant information. Find ways to prove that UESP articles need to have this additional content: examples that are useful for "typical" UESP readers will be far more significant.
  • Even better: try to edit articles incorporating proposals and ideas with which you disagreed. Make a good faith effort to write an article, and see how many compromises are really necessary. For example, can you write an article that first summarizes the in-game content, and then moves on to out-of-game content? If the resulting article is truly unacceptable (at least in your opinion), post it anyway and then explain on the talk page why the proposals didn't work. Ask for advice on how to fix the article. Find out whether your interpretation of the proposal was accurate.
  • Be over-zealous about adding references. The most important point is to put a link to the source in the article. If nothing else, copy and paste the URL from your browser directly into the article. The format of the link can be fixed by other editors; the reference tags can be added by other editors. Just make sure to include the raw information. Without that information, other editors are far more likely to lose patience with this experiment.
  • This doesn't require the creation of "important" or "substantial" articles. We need examples of typical Lore articles, because the guidelines are supposed to encompass typical situations, not the exceptional or unusual articles.
• Is there a timetable for establishing real guidelines?
  • I don't think it will help to set a fixed timetable about when to restart the discussion about guidelines. Rather, I think it should happen once editors start to feel like there are enough examples to start drawing conclusions. And once the editors have the energy and motivation to resume. It might take a couple months; it might take a few days.
  • Another possibility is that editors will feel compelled to resume this discussion when they have simply had enough of the chaos. Every aggravation is likely to accelerate the pressure to adopt new guidelines. And realistically, the more irritated editors are, the more likely it is that any guidelines will be end up being strict or even punitive (whether or not that's the actual intent).
  • Conversely, honest efforts on everyone's part to make this experiment work will increase the chances of success: increase the chances that we can work together to create some articles that are real examples of high-quality, properly-written Lore articles that are useful to everyone in the Elder Scrolls community. If we can create some examples that illustrate what works and what doesn't work, coming back and writing some guidelines should (I hope!) be less arduous.

If anyone is still angry after reading to this point, could I at least ask that you take a day to think things over? I've spent more than a few days thinking this over before posting it, and my thoughts have changed over that time. I honestly hope that these suggestions will help us to move forward, rather than deepen the rifts that have developed.

In the meantime, as I've said more than a few times, I really think editors should feel free to return to editing Lore articles right away. I don't think we can afford to wait another week or two just debating whether or not it's acceptable to make edits; if we wait that long we may never be able to recover. --Nephele^Talk 16:18, 23 August 2008 (EDT)

Another suggestion: on articles such as White Gold Tower, Nede, Disappearance of the Dwarves, it might be a good idea for an editor who plans on major changes based on far-flung and unofficial sources to state his claims and references in the talk pages, and wait a day or so for critiques. I plan to do this in the case of the former, where Rpeh has moved a paragraph anyway. It saves having to write a heavily-cited section twice, and makes debating the issue easier. If this is a sandbox sort of thing someone tell me, because I think adding a talk page heading called "Needed Conversations" is a nice, obvious way to go fishing for a consensus. In addition, is a lore Project needed? Temple-Zero 20:10, 24 August 2008 (EDT)

I agree with almost all of Nephele's post but not with the conclusion "we should not enforce any limits on the validity of sources at this time". The idea that UESP can start basing its content on forum posts is utterly ludicrous and is clearly unacceptable.

Let's clear one thing up here: the impression some people will have picked up from the discussion is that the "Lore Community" is united in their acceptance of MK's fanfiction as canon. They aren't. We have attracted elements of the pro- group but even a few minutes spent on Bethesda's Lore forum will show there is an anti- fanction too. If there really was a consensus on these forum posts then I would reluctantly go along with their inclusion, but there isn't and to pretend otherwise is disingenuous.

Apart from anything else, the unofficial material is unnecessary. As Benould said above, "I am surprised how much that can be argued with in-game sources." [7] and he's right. For instance, I was able to replace a speculative paragraph about White Gold Tower with an informative one supported by sources that won't have our users scratching their heads and wondering what on earth it's talking about. [8].

I'm not going to rehash what I've said before so I'll simply restate my belief that a compromise along Gaebrial's proposal is the only way this will work. If it comes down to a choice between including any and all external sources or excluding them totally, my vote is unhesitatingly for the latter. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 02:30, 25 August 2008 (EDT)

Summary of the discussion so far, in brief form --Benould^•T•C 05:38, 25 August 2008 (EDT)

The "anti-MK faction" is currently made up of a fascinating individual who charges that the Trial of Vivec RP was a malicious attack on Linda Carter wherein the developers staged the violent rape of wonder woman and should be fearful of the litigous wrath of her US senator hisband. Lady Nerevar is on ueso somewhere under a similar moniker, she could tell you all about it. No, I suppose we're not ready for guidelines. But we need Nephele's temporary solution because right now editing lore is like trying to practice penmanship by spraypainting graffiti on an underpass swarming with armed guards, and wondering why it's not very clear. Temple-Zero 10:46, 25 August 2008 (EDT)

The only guideline, and therefore the only proposal derived from consensus in my above statement is the statement that "Any content that comes from a non-UESP source must have a reference."

The remainder, and in particular the statement "we should not enforce any limits on the validity of sources at this time," is not based on consensus. It is not a guideline. Rather it is just a basic distillation of the facts; it is an admission of defeat. As such, it's not a matter of who agrees or disagrees, or personal preferences about what ultimately should happen. Personally, I don't like the facts myself, but I don't see any way to change them. To reiterate:

• We do not have a consensus.
• We are not making any progress towards a consensus.
• Without a consensus, there is no justification for unilaterally enforcing one set of standards.

If there really is agreement with everything in my post other than that one sentence, then it seems like there must be an agreement on these basic facts.

We can't break a stalemate over reaching a consenus using a vote. In particular, Reaching Consensus says: " Avoid turning a discussion into a vote: it is far better to find a solution that everyone likes than to simply impose a majority opinion." This is not a minor stylistic issue being discussed (e.g., is blue or yellow a better color for a table?) It is not even a situation where there is a clear majority; if there were just one lone dissenter, then perhaps we could proceed (in the process, alienating that one editor). The consensus article suggests getting more people's opinions -- but I think we've already done that. Nearly every active admin and patroller has contributed; everyone who has been active on Lore articles has contributed; it's listed on the CP's active discussions.

If we're not willing to allow edits to Lore articles to continue in the absence of an agreement over guidelines, then the other alternative is to basically disallow any editing until we reach an agreement. That's basically what has happened over the last couple weeks, and without something to break the ice that situation is going to persist indefinitely. I think it's fundamentally against our existing guidelines (such as Content Over Style) to allow this discussion to shut down an entire section of the wiki. It's also worth remembering that we're talking about a game-related website: allowing questionable or biased content to appear on some wiki pages for a couple of months is not the end of the world. It's not going to cause anyone's death; given that it's the Lore section, it's not even going to cause anyone's game character to die or fail a quest or lose an artifact. Without a new TES game scheduled for release in the next couple months, we're not even really risking giving new readers a bad impression of the site. The only real negative consequences are if we individually choose to turn this into a crisis that damages the wiki. If we make people's opinions on this one issue the only thing that matters, and divide the entire community based upon this discussion, then we are only hurting ourselves.

If you want to change the facts, then you need to find a way to reach a consensus. No such suggestions have been forthcoming in the last couple weeks, but if you have been holding back on suggestions, by all means, contribute them. Or at least some new ideas on how to approach the situation; again, none have been put forward. Without new, constructive ideas this discussion is dead. Repeating the same positions from earlier in the discussion is not introducing new ideas.

I've just tried to find a way to break the stalemate -- with the eventual goal of returning to this discussion and actually establishing a consensus. I'm not imposing any limits on what that eventual consensus will be. In fact, it's pretty clear from what's previously been said that any eventual consensus will place some limits on what is acceptable source material. I'm just trying to allow new information to be introduced and allow new perspectives to develop, because I think it's the only way to stop going in circles.

If you want to shut down even this attempt at progress, then I just basically give up. I'm out of ideas; everyone else is out of ideas. --Nephele^Talk 13:04, 25 August 2008 (EDT)

Nephele as far as I'm concerned this isn't an attempt to "break the stalemate", it's capitulation. You're "solving" the problem by ignoring one side in the debate. As Gaebrial has pointed out, one group has made several attempts at compromise and had them rebuffed or ignored. We have moved from a position of "Absolutely no non-game sources" to "include them, but in their own section to emphasise the difference in sources" so that our material stays accessible to everybody. Don't tell me and those that share my point of view that we're causing this problem when we've already moved so far.

I have never said I want to disallow edits to Lore articles, and a simple look at the recent changes page will show you that editing has continued: not at a particularly high rate, but then the old Tamriel namespace never got a huge proportion of the edits either.

Invoking the Content over Style policy isn't appropriate. This entire debate is about content. We exclude content all the time: when people post additions to game articles about cheats, or about how mods change a quest they get deleted so why should content added to Lore by "mods" be any different?

You say no suggestions have been forthcoming? I thought I'd already made about three but let me try one more. I can see why Temple Zero et al don't want to write two versions of the same article - especially when they consider one to be wrong. So let them add a separate section for their version and put a {{peer review}} template on the whole article (yes I know the template is supposed to go on the talk page, but tempora mutandur). That will flag an article for attention by an editor to go through and improve the non-external sources section.

I had an interesting discussion with Proweler on IRC the other day in which we agreed that the wiki is probably not the best place for this kind of thing anyway. He (and his associates) want the answers. We're not in the business of subjectivity and so should be happy with the questions. It's the attempt to get the wiki to do something it's not really intended for that is at the root of these problems. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 13:58, 25 August 2008 (EDT)

Thank you, Nephele, for the summary of ideas brought forward; I felt my suggestions were very well represented and summarized. I kind of have reached my limit, whether writing anything is worth the hassle. Rpeh's example with the White Gold Tower: As it stands now I'm not sure that it even would pass muster in Reader's Digest in its limitedness and scope. Not that TZ's entry was specifically clear, but it mainly suffered from not being able to link to anything, let alone a supporting, broader article on towers here on the wiki. I don't think I can write a meaningful article on the towers, without outside sources. It doesn't make much sense to take the abandoned article on Disappearance of the Dwarves out of my sandbox, as things are now. What I see is a tyranny of Oblivion-centric players, which should not be. Oblivion was/is a popular game, but its lore should not limit the Lore namespace Period. Rpeh, my suggestion that many things can be argued with in-game material was in the context of getting the editing process going. Many things will come from in-game sources, obviously, some will not. What you're missing Rpeh is that this is alienating productive editors, so I can't see how you can agree with everything, and then not endorse a return to editing, with NEW content being added. There's been little new in Lore, Prowler is fighting with the Pantheon, a few formating changes, that's about it. If you want to just push code around to make it seem alive, eh, maybe down the line there will be others taking up the torch. Sorry my attempt at bridge-building & humor has failed. I wish you all the best, --Benould^•T•C 17:53, 25 August 2008 (EDT)

Rpeh, I believe the sentiment of your last paragraph warrants the term 'capitulation' better than Nephele's proposal. Lore wasn't good enough (compared to the other namespaces, an embarassment) before all this started, and now all progress at a badly-needed status quo shakeup has stopped. If we are not to include obscure texts, than uesp will still serve its original function, which was valuable in its own way, except for the title, which is misleading and presumptuous. We would need to slap permanent incomplete tags on many pages. What is uesp if it can't be comprehensive? 24.97.239.147 19:14, 25 August 2008 (EDT) Temple-Zero

Benould, If you reread what I said, it pretty clearly allows the addition of new material including from unofficial sources. Temple-Zero, ditto. I'm not going to respond further until you've actually read my proposal and responded to it. This isn't about being Oblivion-, Morrowind-, Daggerfall- or anything else-centric but you're missing the point that the Lore section must be accessible to game players who are interested in the Lore only insofar as it affects their game. You risk turning Lore into a Loremaster-centric area that is incomprehensible to anybody outside the Lore forums or TIL. If I'm alienating new editors by asking them to remember that not everybody knows as much lore as they do then so be it. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 00:53, 26 August 2008 (EDT)

Rpeh, excuse me but nothing is clear here and reading your proposal doesn't help it. If I have to spell it out, so be it. You backed out of a compromise at the very last second once, and went back to square one. You summarized your comments to Nephele's proposal with "Absolutely not", and said if it can't be your solution, you'd rather have no outside sources at all, as late as yesterday. You call the interested editors a Lore clique. You've engaged in extended back-and-forth in a very combative manner over edits that included outside sources with TZ. You lobbed off a section in White-Gold Tower where I just had asked for clarification and references, taking the article back to Oblivion-content only. Where is the goodwill, trust, where is anything clear here? Actions speak louder than words, I only see stone-walling. Sorry, I don't see the suggested "I'm willing to compromise". I worked hard for a compromise to happen, to bring new blood into content creation for Lore, defended you and sought understanding for your position, for no-one to lose face but I'm tired now. All the best, hope you guys can hash it out, for the better of the wiki. --Benould^•T•C 03:03, 26 August 2008 (EDT)

(from my earlier post) "So let them add a separate section for their version and put a {{peer review}} template on the whole article". You still haven't responded to that. I have backed out of NO compromise. I would indeed still prefer no outside sources, but as I am getting sick and tired of saying, I am willing to let them on as a compromise. The ONLY point of contention is that I believe external sources MUST be treated differently from in-game ones and it is that point that you, Temple-Zero and others refuse to listen to. Do not blame me for the stubborn refusal of another group of people to give up on even that simple request.

I replaced - not removed - one paragraph on the WGT page because it was acting as a centre for confusion and contention. I moved the previous paragraph to the talk page. If the replacement is Oblivion-centric, it's because the White Gold Tower isn't mentioned in any in-game source outside Oblivion. (It may feature briefly in Arena, but not in any Arena books)

Well fine. It's my turn to give up too. Fill the namespace with whatever you wish. I'll simply add the Lore namespace to my Ignore list and leave you all to it. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 03:36, 26 August 2008 (EDT)

I'll throw my quick 2 cents in before I go to bed. I'm siding with Rpeh, so to speak, because I too think outside sources are different than inside sources, and just because a FORMER writer continues to write about TES, doesn't mean it's exactly...er...whats the word....canonical(?) to the rest of the TES world. Daedryon^{•T•C•E•} 04:00, 26 August 2008 (EDT)

I never gave Gaebrial's proposal much consideration because I couldn't tell you the difference between category 2 and 3 material (this coming from someone very familiar with the obscure texts)and I was not able to envision me or many other people writing articles based on thos rules. This seems a better way to alienate editors than your vague claims that my weirdness will throw off Oblivion players. In fact, the nebulous nature of the obscure texts in this regard made up a large part of your case against using them. And that is the precise reason why a standard applied here would be heavy-handed and harmful. I'd give you a few examples of strange restrictions these categories would cause, but you seem to have given up. Whether or not ignoring an entire section is acceptable given your role as an admin, I don't know, but it would mean that you would be an example of an editor alienated by these changes before they were even put in effect. You would also be one of the few, and those stuck on principle, because I don't plane on changing the namespace into anything inaccessible or more byzantine that its guidelines, which I would be able to prove if I didn't have to dissemble constantly in edits. But thanks for the vote of confidence, anyways.

I would, however appreciate, a more specific description of writing my own section with a peer review flag. That sounds similar to my many requests for more lenience alongside the use of flags and prods.

By the way, of course the WGT article will be Oblivion-centric. And I regard the Numantia Intercepts as a vital part of Oblivion, dealing intimately with its story. characters, and landmarks.

Daedryon, you're going to have to explain the term FORMER WRITER to me. First of all, MK, is a former dev, not a former writer. He has done contract work quite frequently, and is currently sharing design notes on TES V with Bethesda. It's enough to rehash, without being inaccurate. Temple-Zero 17:51, 26 August 2008 (EDT)

Former Dev, Former Writer, whatever. It's all the same to me. Daedryon^{•T•C•E•} 21:19, 26 August 2008 (EDT)

First one small step

Here's what; when an editor feels that a Lore article is missing essential information that glues the article together, the only thing he/she will do is add a new section at the bottom. The editor will link to the source that "clarifies" the assumed confusing information, and provide a small introduction in the most neutral way that works (e.g. "A possible reason for the conflicting nature of [this] story is given [here]."). Obviously, the source must have at least some credibility, but that is part of another discussion. The link section will not be transcluded to gamespace articles.

Now this is from my point of view the smallest step that can be taken towards a possible compromise. This method will be most beneficial/least harming for the two most extreme compromises. If the final decision is not to include any out-of-game material, then the link section can easily be deleted from the articles. In the case that the final decision is to include all credible out-of-game material in the article text itself, editors can use the already provided sources to include that in the text. Using categories can make articles that are subject to this discussion easily recognisable and easy to trace. --Timenn < talk > 10:22, 5 September 2008 (EDT)

That's fine by me. It's not quite what I had in mind with my own two-section proposal but this should work too. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 10:32, 5 September 2008 (EDT)

But what to call it?Temple-Zero 11:33, 5 September 2008 (EDT)

I've mocked up an idea I had User:GuildKnight/Sandbox/2|here. Thoughts, anyone? --GuildKnight^Talk2me 11:54, 5 September 2008 (EDT)

Could you apply that to an actual article pasted into the sandbox real fast? Just write "Vehk loves cheeseburgers" into Lore:Colovia or something.Temple-Zero 12:07, 5 September 2008 (EDT)

(outdent)User:GuildKnight/Sandbox/2|Here's my thoughts on an out-of-game info template and a test run of it, and User:GuildKnight/Sandbox/6|here's the mock-up of the template, complete with a /doc subpage ;) (By the way, I can't figure out why it displays strangely on the "template" page; I transcluded it on sandbox 2 and it looks exactly right, and the /doc for Sandbox 6 is displaying properly too.) --GuildKnight^Talk2me 01:15, 6 September 2008 (EDT)

I missed this comment. So is that dividing information sourced to in-game texts from information justified by obscure texts? That would be a god-awful mess, applied universally. The template in itself is useful, but in many cases it would be better just to make a separate section for the sources alone. (Which means another template) Newly-written parts of articles that deal exclusively with out-of-game lore (the few pages that could be written about Towers and the Psijic Endeavor) could be partitioned to get things moving.Temple-Zero 20:16, 6 September 2008 (EDT)

You're right, and I would even take it a step further and say that there should always be a references sub-section for out-of-game information. So I tweaked it some more... see my User:GuildKnight/Sandbox/2|test run now. It displays references perfectly, it seems. Just add the "ref" tags in the text, like normal.

As far as your other concerns, here goes:

I have watched this discussion from the sidelines, and still I find myself leaning more towards including the o-o-g sources than not. These are, after all, the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages. I would like to think that we encompass all known information relating to the Elder Scrolls, period.

However, the discussion is still taking place; we have not come to any conclusion or consensus. So in the meantime I feel that it would be best to leave the out-of-game info in a separate section. I think that the article's first section, the bit transcluded onto gamespace pages, for now at least, should be written as though out-of-game information was not allowed, and out-of-game info restricted to this template. Inside this template, the editor adding o-o-g info can explain how some o-o-g sources may contradict or expand upon the article's depiction of the topic.

This would be the easiest way to implement our consensus, whatever it may be. If we decide to not include o-o-g info, a bot can go around removing all of these templates, and it will remove every bit of the out-of-game info. If we decide to keep the o-o-g info, but keep it restricted to its own section, then the only change that would need to be made would be to change the notice-box. If we decide to fully integrate o-o-g info into our articles, the articles already containing o-o-g info would at least be all placed into a convenient category, and references already recorded, so that editors could integrate the info into the articles. --GuildKnight^Talk2me 21:33, 6 September 2008 (EDT)

That's sensible enough, but having spent the last month working with the material (and sneaking in my fair share of oog information) I can tell you that it won't be elegant or simple to delineate, especially since the namespace isn't pure or organized to begin with. But you probably expect that. Such a thing as, say, the origins of Alessia's other names from the unofficial fragment of the Asabal-a would be ridiculous to put in its own section. The article should be in one piece but have two reference sections. The complex, Nu-mantia-exclusive role of White Gold Tower in the Oblivion Crisis definitely merits its own section, and it would be flagged as oog. I'm not about to worry about it looking illegitimate because the in-game part of the article will be laughably skimpy and of no use to anyone. :P

There are two ways to use oog lore- as sole reference points for topics explained almost exclusively by them (yet that are fundamentally important to Nirn), such as Nu-Mantia and Vehk's Teachings, then there are sources that can be used as small-scale references for facts. (Almalexia's encompassing of daedric sphere, Cyrus' post-rebellion activities, the crucial ideas of the skeleton man interview that inform so much of Morrowind). The former needs to be segregated, to a degree, in the current climate. But something like free-reign for the latter is of great importance, as we can't ignore such a massive resource. So flag the sources, but leave the two sentence addendum alone.Temple-Zero 22:20, 6 September 2008 (EDT)

As I said above, I would prefer that UESP include out-of-game information in its articles, and do not want to see it excluded from articles; however, I think it should be kept 100% separate from in-game information, and that in-game information should take obvious and clear precedence. I like the approach that a gamer would learn all he or she can from the games, and then search outside sources for supplemental information, which could contradict or expand upon what was learned from in-game sources. It seems to me that the perfect solution would be an extension of Timenn's idea above. I've suggested this template (User:GuildKnight/Sandbox/6/doc|/doc here) as a temporary compromise because, as Timenn stated, it is a balance of most beneficial/least harming to each extreme opinion. I also think that, with a small tweak to the text in the notice-box, it would be a perfect long-term solution. --GuildKnight^Talk2me 15:35, 7 September 2008 (EDT)

The template looks good GK. It would be how I imagine a final compromise to be like. Though for now I'd prefer if we stick to the idea of only links (no content) just yet. To clarify why I feel this is important; it gives a good idea what sources exactly will be used if sections of articles are going to be based on it.

This brings me to another matter. Right now I don't trust Temple-Zero to keep to any guidelines we agree on here. He has admitted himself he has added out-of-game information while the discussion was still going about, and has argued many times he isn't able to add information from out-of-game sources without editing main texts of articles. --Timenn < talk > 06:23, 9 September 2008 (EDT)

Well listen to you. This from the author of the joke found here? http://www.uesp.net/wiki/User_talk:Temple-Zero#Warning_2 ...I understand Rpeh's warning stemmed from preschool standards of decency, but your little intervention made me crack up. Maybe you should sit this one out and we won't have to get into the matter or trust in administrators who may abuse their powers and distort the debate. If you feel like adding another delightful paranthesis in the discussion, then take it up with Nephele first, as she is the only admin involved in the matter (deeper than her shoelaces, anyway)that has acted like one.Temple-Zero 12:02, 12 September 2008 (EDT)