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This is the Community Portal, the main discussion forum for community-wide discussions about UESP's operations, policies, design, and improvement.

All members of the community are welcome to contribute to this page. Please sign and date your post by typing ~~~~ or clicking the signature icon in the edit toolbar. If you would like to start a new post, please place it at the bottom of the page with a two-tier (==) heading.

Before starting a discussion here, please review the other community pages below, as your question or suggestion may be more appropriate on another page.

Other pages for community-wide or general questions include:

  • Policies and Guidelines — A list of policies and guidelines, which each have individual pages; their talk pages are the best place to discuss these policies (see Active Discussions for links to active policy discussions).
  • Administrator Noticeboard — If you have a request that requires an administrator, you may want to post your comments there.
  • Deletion Review — An area to discuss controversial page deletions and reach a consensus.
  • Reference Desk — This is the best place for questions about how to play Elder Scrolls games.

Specific requests can be made on these pages:

  • Bot Requests — This page can be used to request that one of the wiki's bots take on a task.
  • Image Requests — You can request specific images for articles here.
  • Creation Kit Information Requests — You can request specific Creation Kit information for articles here.
  • New Page Requests — You can request a new page here if you were prevented from creating the page yourself.
  • Purge Requests — If you are having problems viewing an article on UESP, the page may need to be purged. New purge requests can be made here.

In addition, past discussions from the Community Portal can be found at:

  • CP Archives — Lists all of the past discussions from the Community Portal page, including major discussions and chronlogical archives.
Active Discussions

Many discussions of community-wide interest are held on pages other than the community portal. Discussions about specific policies belong on the policy talk pages, for example. The following table lists other discussions that are currently in progress on other talk pages. If you start a discussion on another talk page, please add it to this list. If a discussion listed here has been inactive (i.e., no comments of any type in at least a week), please remove it from the list.

Location Date started Topic Listed here by
Lore talk:Skyrim 2024/02/26 UOL use Legoless

Elder Scrolls Castles CanonicityEdit

Now that Elder Scrolls Castles has been released, its time to discuss its lore affects it can possibly have. Are we going to consider it canon, partially canon, or what? Are we considering only the opening cutscenes and maybe flavor text canon? How do we handle say Tiber Septim being labeled as a Nord? Say if the game later on includes daedric artifacts, is it ok to say that "at one point in time, the kingdom founded by Odar the Brave bordering Rivercrest obtained X artifact? or say just include photos of them. I have many questions.Analeah Oaksong (talk) 01:18, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

I personally believe partially canon is the right choice, I think the opening story and character and item descriptions should be considered valid sources, aswell as things like appearances in the case of enemies. However most of the actual gameplay shouldn't, atleast attempting to date it. As theres things like the Synod and Mages Guild coexisting. I feel like some of the events and things could be mentioned, but as undated things and not inherently connected to the kingdom in the game. Though I think certain ingame dialogue can be used for things like placing the location of the kingdom. Its a weird case by case thing. -Tarponpet (talk) 1:23 AM, Janurary 18th, 2024 (EST)
I agree with Tarponpet, we'll have to go case-by-case with this one. Given the disregard for the setting's chronology, I would categorise most information from Castles as gameplay rather than lore. The best comparison we have is Legends gameplay, where it isn't unusual to see e.g. Aela the Huntress on the board alongside Abnur Tharn, despite those two characters never interacting in lore. Does that mean we can disregard information in Castles provided outside of gameplay? I don't think so. Similar to how the Hulking Scalon card confirmed that Scalons are Grummites after 12 years of intended ambiguity, I think that the Tiber Septim NPC in Castles is a valid source for clarifying Tiber's "canonical" race. The game has bad lore, but in the absence of other sources we will have to make the best of it. —⁠Legoless (talk) 10:28, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
I think anytime we get a race for a figure with no confirmed race elsewhere we should definitely go with the source that gives us one, but in the case of Tiber we do have a couple other stated races for him in Atmoran and Breton. Even if we consolidate the idea of being a Nord/Atmoran into one which the lore often does that still leaves us with the Breton conflict. To reveal my biases on the matter, I’m someone who believes the traditional view that Tiber Septim is a figure who came from Atmora and thus would be considered Nord and or Atmoran racially. My biases aside, I honestly don’t find this castles race thing to be an incredibly strong source even though it in theory is first hand.
I know this is probably a bit of a different case but I would almost consider this akin to Pelinal Whitestrake being considered an imperial internally in tes 4 or something of that equivalent. My guess is Castles race system wasn’t designed to handle complexity or nuance so they just slapped Nord, arguably the least controversial race available on him. I’d be willing to be open minded to discussion on this though, thoughts? Dcking20 (talk) 11:22, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
We see Tiber Septim appear as an Imperial back in Morrowind, so him appearing in a spin-off game as a completely different race, a Nord, should be mentioned, but not in the Navbox as his actual race. It could be an avatar like Wulf the Imperial from Morrowind. Plus we see in Redguard and in Legends he is a brunette, but in Castles he is depicted as blonde. It should be noted npcs in Castles doubt its Tiber Septim at all. Analeah Oaksong (talk) 20:39, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
I personally think most if not all of Castles should be disregarded. As someone who played it, game has zero regard for lore and is purely a time-waster game. At most, I agree the opening cutscene, initial ruler (since they're the same for everyone iirc) and general location of the kingdom (if we have one, I don't recall) should be written down. But anything beyond that "narrative" is irrelevant and purely gameplay fluff. It somehow ignores time moreso than ESO does which is already quite the feat. CoolBlast3 (talk) 20:49, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps Tiber Septim was a bad example to go with, but this only exemplifies the initial point around having individual discussions when trying to cite Castles on lore articles. I think a consensus-driven approach is better than disregarding it wholesale. It's not the first mobile spinoff we've had to reconcile, and it won't be the last. —⁠Legoless (talk) 23:31, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
Yeah on the note of Castles lore in general I would say there’s definitely some stuff we can use. For one the Odar the Brave lore page that was deleted could stand to be restored if an admin could retrieve it or if the info is gone it should be remade. As for other things, I think as stuff comes forward we can look at it on a case by case basis like Lego said. Dcking20 (talk) 00:22, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
I restored the Odar page, Dcking. I know nothing about it, but hopefully that can help you start off with updating it. —Dillonn241 (talk) 00:27, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

() Just as a note, it was deleted because Castles was in pre-release at the time, and pre-release content is not allowed in lore. Now that castles is out, that isn't an issue. Jeancey (talk) 22:41, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

I know why it was deleted, the request to retrieve it from its deleted state was one of convenience since very little info changed. Thanks for doing that Dillon! Dcking20 (talk) 23:04, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
In a sorta similar vein, is there a Hero of Castles? Any title the player tends to be referred to by? And if there is, would it even be canonical? My phone isn't compatible so I can't play the game myself, but from what I've seen I'm skeptical if the player character should represent any kind of canon figure in the lore. Maybe a note on Lore:Hero would be the best option. — Unsigned comment by Mindtrait0r (talkcontribs) at 01:06 on 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Making the UESP THE one stop shop for all things Elder ScrollsEdit

First of all, I love the insane Detail all of you put into this Website, and I am insanely impressed by the amount of information that has been recorded here.

But the issue is most people (that I have talked to about Elder Scrolls) don't know that this is the best site for Information about the franchise. I was wondering is there any effort to consolidate all the different Elder Scrolls related Wikis into one?

For Skyrim alone, I found 4 different Wikis with a quick search:

  • The Skyrim Fandom Wiki [1]
  • The Skyrim Wiki as part of the Elder Scrolls Fandom Wiki [2]
  • Another Skyrim Wiki [3]
  • And of course the UESP.

Also, is there any goal or project to make this site multilingual? Because that is the one advantage the fandom sites have over the UESP. If someone wants information in another language then English, Fandom is the only option.

Is there some coordination in the greater Elder Scrolls Hivemind, or is it just everyone does their own thing, like it seems from the outside? --Soanfriewack (talk) 21:58, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Hmmm what I can say is that I've pondered this question myself for many years now. The "Skyrim Fandom Wiki" is a layover archive from Gamepedia's merge with Fandom (formerly Wikia) and is abandoned, but TES Wiki on Fandom is still fairly active. As the only person to be staff on both, relations between the two wikis is pretty good and we sometimes help each other if need be. There is a benefit to two big wikis as we do certain things differently, allowing readers alternate routes to information; UESP has some articles that TES Wiki doesn't, and likewise tes wiki has some articles that uesp lacks. The problem is, because of Fandom (the company), even if TES Wiki did decide to unanimously merge with us and provide all their information/files, they still couldn't delete their own wiki and it would still exist as an abandoned site that remains at the top of the search results, getting the same viewers it did before; the only change being that they just don't get updated with new information. I could only see a merge happening if UESP was made an official wiki by Bethesda, but that's a big if and is unlikely to happen due in part to Microsoft's bias towards Fextralife.
As for multilingual projects, uesp does have alt language wikis in French, Arabic, Italian, and Portuguese, but even then they are mostly lacking and Fandom has more alt language TES Wikis (found in General:Links#International_Sites). You could propose to the teams on these alt language wikis that they can move to uesp (their staff are not linked to the primary wiki's english staff) and that way their information would now also be on our site, they would just have to agree to it. Main issues would be the original wiki also remains undeleted (due to Fandom) and there would have to be a lot of coding added for their templates, but in theory it is doable.
Hope this clears things up! If you have more questions I can def help you out :) The Rim of the Sky (talk) 23:10, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
I just looked at the alt wikis, for one I think discoverability could be better for them. As I looked myself before making the first Post but did not find those other languages.
Also, I discovered how much more fragmented the Wiki situation is for Elder Scrolls then I expected. Most of the Sites are very much abandoned, and there are SO MANY! Most haven't had any updates this decade, some not even in the last 10 years. Even though many are massive and have some information even the UESP doesn't have.
Why is the Elder Scrolls Community in particular so fractured? Because at least the other game Franchises I follow do not have this big issue of being fractured across dozens of Websites per language. Or at least there seems to be a clear one-stop shop for all the information you could need. Like Minecraft has the Minecraft Wiki [4] which has the best info on everything regarding Minecraft and extensive information in other languages as well.--Soanfriewack (talk) 22:29, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Use of Discord Messages as UOLEdit

Saw this brought up on the Discord, but it never got made into a CP post. I figure it's useful enough to get some consensus on. So, the Sheathed Blades are mentioned across the wiki, but their name is only sourced from a Discord message sent by a developer. There was a general sense that the source wouldn't be allowed as UOL with the current guidelines, citing some instances in the past where similar messages were disavowed.

Personally, I think Discord messages from devs are just as valid as Reddit posts from devs, which are considered UOL per such instances as MK's posts. Thus, I think this source should be valid. Mindtrait0r (talk) 18:29, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I think this should be allowed as this is the only instance we have of the heroes' names being referenced. doesnt actually get brought up in the game itself. Other wise we'd be saying "Ex member of the blades" which is a mouthfull, and that ex member also fits the Warrior from TES: Blades.Analeah Oaksong (talk) 19:16, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Don't we already have a solution for this? A bunch of General:Cartogriffi's Posts are derived from Discord messages. Even the original Imperial Library page for it documents his Discord messages. They should be treated the same as forum posts. For the Sheathed Blades specifically, I think it should be fine to use the name as they appear in the official game and its just the name itself that appears externally. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 21:46, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
Rim is correct, we already allow for this where appropriate. Discord is a terrible place to post information, but that is the direction Bethesda and other companies have gone with their public comms and we will just have to do our best when it comes to archival. —⁠Legoless (talk) 10:46, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Authored ListsEdit

I've stumbled upon this "proposed policy" at UESPWiki:Authored Lists that has lain dormant for the last six years and originated in 2008. It seems fine to adopt as is, since it's basically codifying etiquette surrounding user subpages. I think it could actually be expanded to cover all user subpage projects, since I can't find a specific policy page where that's covered.

Let's propose changes, if any, and then either adopt it or reject it, so it can get out of its limbo state. —Dillonn241 (talk) 11:31, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Accounts and Usernames PolicyEdit

Likewise, there's another proposed policy in the category: User:Eshe/Sandbox/10

This apparently would have become UESPWiki:Accounts and Usernames. This seems to be mostly informational, but it does put down in writing blacklisted account names, renaming accounts, and "starting over". This one might require a little more work, since it hasn't been edited since 2013. —Dillonn241 (talk) 11:39, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Creation Club Mod Header IconsEdit

I changed the {{Mod Header}} template to accept both PNG and JPG icons, preferring the PNG. Before this change, there were a lot of broken file links in the CC mod headers. This highlighted an issue we currently have with these headers. See the category here: Category:Skyrim-Icons-Creations

While we have a header for every mod, some of them are PNG cutouts, while others are JPG crops of the official release banners. If we can narrow these down to just PNGs, whether transparent or converted from the JPGs, then I can remove my change to the Mod Header template since all mod header icons will once again be PNG.

There appear to be three options to fix this mess:

  1. Use all custom transparent images
  2. Use square crops of the official banners
  3. Use the full banner images

Dillonn241 (talk) 23:58, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

The JPEG banners were what was initially implemented when each CC Creation was given its own icon. Prior to that, it was just the CC logo on these pages. Work began on substituting these with more appropriate PNG cutouts that were in line with what was done previously for MW, OB, and SR DLCs, but this hasn't been completed and the broken headers were there to signify this. Please do not replace the custom transparent cutouts with those banners again, they look awful. —⁠Legoless (talk) 17:48, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Merging of Specific ESO character pagesEdit

While playing an Aldmeri Dominion character, I noticed that Sergeant Dagla has a merge page request with Dagla. When I checked both characters in-game, they were essentially the same character in both appearance and voice.

Another character that may require a page merge with Andoriel (Woodhearth) and ON:Andoriel (Seaside Sanctuary). Andoriel in Woodhearth is a Bosmer that is disguised as an Altmer during Veil of Illusion as mentioned by the dialogue. Meanwhile, Andoriel in Seaside Sanctuary made reference of being friends with Asteril (Who plays a role in the Veil of Illusion quest) and never getting a chance to thank the player for allowing them to seek justice against the Veiled Heritance. I would say they are the same character.

Please share your thoughts on this proposal?

Raren (talk) 02:14, 31 January 2024 (EST)

Don't think either is a controversial proposal. Go for it! —⁠Legoless (talk) 10:00, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Sticky NavigationEdit

Discord recently had a brief discussion about having site navigation be "sticky" such that it stays on screen as the user scrolls down so they don't have to scroll back up to use any nav bars. This seems like a very solid win for the left side navigation since it seems to always take up the horizontal space anyway; it's just a matter of whether it's blank or still shows the sidebar. The same effect could be applied to the tabs at the top and/or more specific navigation panels within pages. At the time, there was also some confusion about whether Wikipedia uses this principle. Upon further glance, it seems that they do so long as the article actually has a table of contents. See their article on NASA for an example. Eve (talk) 22:21, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

This is touching on a much larger issue, which is UESP's Monobook interface becoming more and more outdated. If we moved to Vector, a lot of interface modernizations would become simpler, and we could lift more extensions and gadgets from Wikipedia. However, a lot of users still prefer Monobook, and for my own preferences, Vector still has too many stylistic issues for me to switch to it.
In the meantime, I could see us adopting a few Wikipedia-like changes, such as having the language links in a dropdown at the top instead of far down at the end of the sidebar. I'd also like to see the "tools" box moved to a dropdown, since it's now too far down to reach without scrolling. —Dillonn241 (talk) 03:29, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Outdated "PC Only" IconsEdit

It seems the bug template was designed, before mods were available on consoles, to add a "PC Only" icon to the notation of a bug fix by the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch, among others. Now (and for quite a while, in fact), at least that one patch is available on consoles as well. As such, the PC Only icon is no longer appropriate for it specifically but remains useful for other bug fix mods such as ones for games that never received the feature of mods for their console versions (everything but Skyrim Special Edition?) or that are not uploaded specifically to Bethesda.net. I don't see an easy way to edit the template to omit the icon specifically for USSEP. Eve (talk) 23:20, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

It actually got updated back in July to not show the PC-only icon, but then I saw your edits earlier and thought the Bug template needed updated as well. I was wrong, but in the process, I started showing the icon despite it not having previously been there. I've reverted that edit, so it's back to not showing, as it should be. Of course, that still leaves all the older versions where something may have originally been fixed by the USKP, which is PC-only, but is also fixed by USSEP, which isn't. Short of inserting two bullets or adding some long-winded explanation, I don't see a good way around that. Probably, it'll just be a matter of console users getting to know that they can just ignore the icon. Robin Hood(talk) 01:17, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, I imagine the issues themselves are practically universal such that anything the USKP fixes is also fixed by the USSEP. It's more a matter of what the user is actually using. Given the absolute nature of the term "only," though, would it not make sense to go ahead and remove the icon from even USKP fixes since, at least for many, it's really the corresponding USSEP fixes that are relevant to them? Eve (talk) 02:50, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

UESPWiki:History ExpansionEdit

I wanted to put a small announcement out there that I've begun an expansion of our history page at UESPWiki:History. I dug through the old site and added what seemed relevant, but much of UESP's history during its wiki days is still missing. I won't know everything that's of historical value to add to the page, especially pre-2011, so if you have a list of ideas, please post them here. The History page is fully protected, so only admins can edit it.

My main leads at this point were to look through more archives of News, Community Portal, Administrator Noticeboard, and Upgrade History. I did an initial skim of those so far. I also may add RfAs to the list, since they are so few and far between (same with AKB's hiring as staff; I added a rough date on ThalJ's based on Discord discussion). Anything that had a somewhat lasting effect throughout the site could potentially qualify for inclusion. Of course, we don't want to go any deeper than a page like Lore:Third Era. —Dillonn241 (talk) 11:13, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for all the work on this Dillon, I added a few entries I thought were relevant. —⁠Legoless (talk) 16:39, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

VandalismEdit

Due to the widespread vandalism, IP edits and account creation have been temporarily disabled. We have a long-term solution in mind, but it will likely take until later today or tomorrow before it can be implemented. Robin Hood(talk) 20:36, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

IP edits and account creation are back to normal now. The solution we've gone with only targets the type of issues we were seeing this morning, not vandalism in general. It's fairly conservative, so there may still be a few edits of the variety we had this morning, but I expect they'll be relatively easy to handle through traditional methods. If things are still problematic, we can get more aggressive as needed. Robin Hood(talk) 01:39, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
I'd hoped that the blocks I'd put in place would cover the vast majority of the vandalism and that we could deal with the rest by hand, but that's apparently not the case, so I'll be expanding our block list over the next little bit. In the mean time, the wiki is temporarily in lockdown once again. Shouldn't be long. Robin Hood(talk) 01:45, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
And back to normal once again. Robin Hood(talk) 02:56, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Proposed Style Guide change: Bolding the page titleEdit

Currently, the title of a page is bolded where it appears in the opening sentence. There are two ways of doing this:

  1. '''Bolding''', which is how this effect is usually achieved on gamespace pages (e.g. Oblivion:Controls).
  2. [[Lore:Linking|Linking to itself]], which is how we ensure the word is bolded on lore articles but converted to a link when the page is transcluded elsewhere (e.g. Lore:Eagle's Brook, Lore:Places E#Eagle's Brook).

My issue is with the latter. As can be seen in the above example of Eagle's Brook, this approach leads to an inconsistent style on Lore:Places E between the linked Eagle's Brook and the alternate name Eagle Brook.

Furthermore, on the mobile version of the site, these sorts of recursive links don't work at all. Compare the mobile Lore:Eagle's Link page, the word displays as a non-functional hyperlink, without the desired bolding.

My proposal is as follows:

  1. '''[[Lore:Bold and link|Bold and link]]'''. This achieves a consistent style by ensuring the word is always bolded, without needing to rely on the recursive link in situations where that trick doesn't work (mobile, transcludes). So, Eagle's Brook and Eagle Brook.

This would require a bot job to change over all lore articles to follow the above style. Not sure if there's any benefit changing how we do things in gamespace since we usually use far fewer transclusions, but I'm open to correction. Going forward, this would be the mandated way of bolding, and I envision adding a line to the Style Guide to explain. —⁠Legoless (talk) 20:19, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

I've fixed the mobile self-links so they work the same as on desktop now. Robin Hood(talk) 22:42, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
That's one way of doing it! The same update is needed for the Android as as well, although I imagine that's one for ThalJ. —⁠Legoless (talk) 22:47, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
Personally I am of the opinion that if a page is transcluded, any bolding should be removed when it is viewed as an entry on a broader page. I like transclusions but its incredibly odd to read the Artifacts section for Clavicus Vile and see alt names for the artifacts bolded through the transclusion and Clavicus' name needlessly bolded a bunch too. I get that in the case for the latter, its because of the hyperlink, but isn't there a way to keep the hyperlink on the regular page while removing it from displaying when it is transcluded? It makes reading these sections so messy. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 22:51, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
I'd be fine with that, it just seems technically difficult to strip out bolding as opposed to ensuring it gets consistently displayed. —⁠Legoless (talk) 23:06, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
It's easy enough to do that with a template, it just means we have to remember to use the template for everything we want to bold. Robin Hood(talk) 23:54, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

TIL content on UESPEdit

Recently an issue arose where content written by editors at TIL was taken, word for word, and attached to a page here. While this has been dealt with, it does raise an issue of people "archiving" content found at TIL here at UESP. We very much do not need to be doing this, as TIL gets specific permission to host things that doesn't extend to us. While all of the current content on UESP that is also found on TIL is likely fine, stuff that is not yet on UESP should probably stay at TIL. There is a specific template {{TIL}}, made purposefully for us to cite The Imperial Library content on UESP. This should be used going forward to cite anything that is found on TIL, rather than simply taking the content for UESP wholesale (which is both inconsiderate of the work they do, and could open the wiki up to issues, if the content is being used without permission from the original source). I don't see any situation where we would absolutely NEED to host the specific content here, but if any arises, we can approach them at that time.

If TIL were ever in danger of disappearing from the web, we would certainly hear about it before hand, and content can be archived here if that ever happens, but until that point, anything they have archived that we have not should probably remain at TIL. Hopefully that provides a good middle ground where the information can be cited here, but we don't have to worry about anything being copied incorrectly or any copyright infringement. Jeancey (talk) 04:26, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm not really seeing need for discussion here, the problem has already been dealt with, right? These kind of issues are already covered by our rules (and copyright licences). We shouldn't take content from other community sites without permission, be it the Fandom wiki, ESO fashion, TIL, etc. It might be acceptable in exceptional circumstances when we can't reach the original authors and we'd lose all the content from a site, but otherwise we should add our own content. --Ilaro (talk) 14:49, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
Yes, this is more of an announcement, but I felt this was the best place, in case there were any weird edge cases that I hadn't thought of. Jeancey (talk) 17:22, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
Just to add, the majority of TIL content we host has been mirrored here with permission since 2020. —⁠Legoless (talk) 11:57, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

NSInfo ExtensionEdit

I've just installed the new NSInfo extension which will update and replace the various {{NS_whatever}} and {{MOD_NAME}} variables. I'll fill out the documentation tomorrow, but here's a quick list of what's new/changed. Full documentation can be found at Project:NSInfo.

  • Like with many of the other extension updates, we've updated all the variables ({{NS_whatever}} without a colon) to functions ({{NS_whatever:}} with a colon). This is an unfortunate necessity due to changes in upcoming versions of MediaWiki. The current way still works, of course, but will need to be changed before we hit MediaWiki 1.39 at the very latest, and preferably before then to avoid a lot of warnings flooding our logs. Pages that need updating will automatically be tracked in the category Category:Uses Deprecated Namespace Variable. Most of those will be coming from templates used on the named page and not the page itself.
  • {{GAMESPACE:}}: this is a new function that returns 1 if you're in gamespace; blank otherwise. This is mostly for convenience when designing templates. For now, all of our custom namespaces are considered gamespace except those we had to create for use with different extensions or MediaWiki itself (e.g., TimedText or Module space). It's debatable whether something like Books should be considered gamespace, but we can figure that out as we look at what our various templates need.
  • {{NS_CATLINK:whatever}}: this is a shortcut for [[Category:{{NS_CATEGORY}}-whatever]] and, like a category link, takes a sort key as the second parameter if desired. So, for example, {{NS_CATLINK:Quests| }} gets you [[Category:{{NS_CATEGORY}}-Quests| ]].
  • All NSInfo functions now work correctly with NS_BASE, NS_ID, alternate namespace names, namespace number, and full page names. So, {{NS_CATEGORY:Online}}, {{NS_CATEGORY:ON}}, {{NS_CATEGORY:ESO}}, {{NS_CATEGORY:144}}, and {{NS_CATEGORY:Online:Vvardenfell}} will all produce "Online". In the event of a conflict between namespace names and page names (e.g., Morrowind), namespace names win out. You can force it to use main space by putting a : in front of the name.
  • I've created {{NSTest}} for testing. With no parameter, it'll use the current namespace; otherwise, it'll use whatever you specify (e.g., {{NSTest|OB}} will show you all the values for Oblivion).

I've tested all this as much as possible, but there's always the chance something's been missed, so please let me know if you spot anything that doesn't look right. Robin Hood(talk) 03:24, 18 February 2024 (UTC), edited: 02:33, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

There's a new version up. It eliminates a false hit that on the category for deprecated calls and temporarily disables the internal cache which might be the source of the wrong-namespace oddness we've been getting. Thanks to the joys of caching, it's possible we'll still see some pages with namespace issues floating around. If you find one, do a purge/null-edit but still report the page here. Hopefully, the reports will fall off as we find and eliminate any old ones, but if the issue keeps happening fairly regularly, I'll know that there's still a problem. Thanks!
Also, apologies for those of you that experienced a momentary blip and got errors on some pages. I goofed the upload slightly but fixed it as soon as I realized there was a problem. Robin Hood(talk) 20:37, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Known IssuesEdit

  • Fixed: Trails aren't quite as they should be. This is most noticeable in Online space, where trails appear as "Online" instead of "Elder Scrolls Online". Some elements may also appear unlinked. This is tentatively fixed on dev but needs more testing, which will wait until tomorrow. Now fixed—as usual, a purge may be necessary. (Note for SF wiki: issue is actually due to dependence in UespCustomCode\SiteCustomCode_body.php) Robin Hood(talk) 07:32, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Fixed: Namespaces with spaces in them aren't being properly identified under some circumstances. While this has been fixed, pages may need to be purged in order to display correctly. Robin Hood(talk) 08:40, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Possible: We've had a couple of pages with transclusions appearing to come from a different namespace than they actually were (e.g., a {{Book Link}} to "Oblivion:2920, Frostfall (v10)" had "Morrowind:2920, Frostfall (v10)" listed in "Templates used in this section"). So far, there have only been a few pages, and they've all been Oblivion links falsely trying to use Morrowind links, which is really odd. Please let me know if you notice anything else like this, especially if you know it was working correctly after NSInfo was installed, but then it later started showing odd links. Robin Hood(talk) 22:51, 18 February 2024 (UTC), edited: 02:33, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
I found another transclusion trying to use the wrong namespace, this time in a {{Place Link}} on the Skyrim:Places page. The entry for the Abandoned Shack (second entry in this section) was showing a redlink for the shack icon (i.e. 20x20px instead of  ). When I moused over the redlink, it was trying to use MW-mapicon-Shack.png rather than SR-mapicon-Shack.png. All the other entries were fine, it was just that one line. I purged both the source page and the Places page and that seems to have fixed it, but I thought I'd bring it up here just for the record. — Wolfborn(Howl) 08:37, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll have a look into it. I suspect the internal cache is the culprit. I'll review and see if I can figure out how it's coming up with the wrong space sometimes. Robin Hood(talk) 15:13, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Fixed: {{NS_FULL:}} was returning : in Mainspace instead of nothing, breaking trails and possibly other links. As usual, affected pages may need purged to display correctly. Robin Hood(talk) 23:57, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Verified Creation FormIDsEdit

The new ESL format for Skyrim's verified creations dynamically generate the entire FormID on load. This seems to warrant a third kind of FormID wildcard tooltip, like the ones we have for ESM indices (xx) and Creation Club indices (FExxx), but instead indicating the entire FormID varies (xxxxxxxx looks a bit silly, so maybe just use the word "Dynamic").—Eve (talk) 04:59, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Does this apply to xEdit as well? If not, I would use the Form ID as recorded in xEdit with some sort of indicator that the ID in-game is variable. --Enodoc (talk) 20:06, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
Yes. xEdit is a giant mess in this regard. It shows different IDs at different times and erroneously reports conflicts that lead people to start unfortunate fights.—Eve (talk) 20:37, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
The cases in point I've noticed thus far are a couple "Dialog Topic" records for Katja.—Eve (talk) 06:33, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
... and the black powder ingredient from Arquebus.—Eve (talk) 06:36, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
... oh, and our much-sought-after aloe in the resource pack.—Eve (talk) 06:37, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
... and a bunch of activators in Shadetree Lodge ... basically, any of the new records that xEdit shows as using mod index 0.—Eve (talk) 06:40, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

FormID CapitalizationEdit

When we do have at least part of a FormID that is static, we are inconsistent about how we capitalize letters. Obviously not a big deal, given they're not even case sensitive. But in the name of looking uniform, is the ideal treatment lowercase x (for the wildcards) and capital A-F (for the static alphabetic portions)? So xx0B83CB for Skyrim's Falmer Armor, for example.—Eve (talk) 05:06, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I personally believe that should be the preference, as hexadecimal is normally written in upper-case, but I seem to recall there being some debate about it at the time we wrote the {{ID}} template, so it wasn't forced one way or the other. I'm pretty sure the template forces the x's to lower-case, though. If you look at the bottom of ID's doc page, it tells you how to use CSS to force one display or the other using CSS (specifically, the idcase entry). That said, a standard is probably the better way to go, if we can come to an agreement. Robin Hood(talk) 15:55, 29 February 2024 (UTC)