User talk:Nephele/Archive-2007-07

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A whim...[edit]

So, I had this cool idea, hit me like a spark, but I don't know how to pull it off. Remember that Template:User Birthday thing I made? Now, what if we designed it so that you could actually put in your birthday, and design it so that the template only appears when it's actually your birthday? So on your User page somewhere, you'd have: {{User Birthday|m=4|d=17}}, and on that day and that day only, the Birthday tag would appear automatically? I know it's possible to access the current day's date, as you did that on Chaos Monkey's signature template that I made a while back. So how difficult would it be to compare those values to the numbers given in the template, and then use that to decide whether the Userbox shows or not? It's totally not that important, and may be more trouble than it's worth, but I just thought I'd throw it your way because you don't already have too much stuff to do. ;) (Come to think of it, I wonder if Wikipedia already has something like this? Might be worth checking out...) --TheRealLurlock Talk 18:11, 28 April 2007 (EDT)

While cleaning up, I noticed this neglected question ;) I did look into this a bit at one point, but got stuck on the fact that what's displayed would only get updated if you remembered to edit (or purge) your user page on your birthday; otherwise what's shown would be stuck at what was generated the last time your user page was saved. With a bit of rummaging I found some suggestions that perhaps the wiki does go through and update pages periodically, maybe even once a day. But I don't know for sure if that's true, and even so, it would be unlikely to happen to do the update of your user page right on the stroke of midnight (whenever your midnight happens to be).
There is an extension that allows for pages to be dynamically updated every time a user requests to view the page, but it's not an extension we have installed. The extension would actually allow for a few nifty tricks beyond just getting birthday messages to pop up on user pages. For example, it would make it possible to have a link added to an editor's contribution history that opens up the UESPWiki:Warnings page with that editor's name automatically filled in on all the boxes. Whether it's worth installing or not, I'm not sure yet... and Daveh is on vacation for a few weeks, so it's probably going to be a month before there's any chance of getting new extensions installed.
So that's about where my incomplete musings on this idea stalled :) --NepheleTalk 03:32, 4 July 2007 (EDT)
I only just noticed this little discussion, and it happened to be something I'd been thinking about... This is a template I knocked up for my user page to update my location according to some rudimentary rules (you'll see just how rudimentary when you look). It definitely seems to work. Couldn't something similar work for birthdays? --RpehTalk 14:27, 4 July 2007 (EDT)

A hopeful request...[edit]

I don't know how difficult this will be, so feel free to say no if you don't want to do it, but you remember how you did those lists of where to find the most abundant plants for every ingredient in Oblivion? I've been doing the same for Morrowind, only I've been doing it the hard way, manually compiling lists and using Excel's sort function to figure out where the largest numbers are. It's a bit of work for some of them, but I just ran into one - Marshmerrow, where there are over 2500 plants to be counted. I really, really don't want to do this one by hand. And I just looked down the list and noticed that another one, Wickwheat, has 4650 plants... Is there a chance that the program you wrote to analyze the Oblivion data would be adaptable to Morrowind? My capacity for tedious labor is nearing its limit on this one... --TheRealLurlock Talk 23:06, 14 May 2007 (EDT)

In theory it's possible. I ended up doing the Morrowind NPC stuff by adapting my Oblivion code which wasn't too difficult in the end, and that means I've already tackled some of the key chunks of code change. It's something I'd prefer not to tackle in the next week or so, because I'm trying to avoid any wiki commitments until I've finished a project at work that's turned into my personal nightmare ;) But if you can wait a little bit, I should be able to look into it some more. Feel free to remind me if too much time passes without any updates :) --NepheleTalk 23:58, 14 May 2007 (EDT)
Okay, I've officially done all the "easy" ones. Just 8 ingredients left, and these have LARGE quantities. If you feel up to it, the ones missing are: Marshmerrow, Pearl, Saltrice, Scathecraw, Trama Root, Violet Coprinus, and Wickwheat. (Also Small Kwama Egg, but that's difficult for another reason, I'll probably do that on my own later.) If you can help me out with just these ones, that'd be a real time-saver. In the meantime, I might move on to the Tribunal and Bloodmoon ingredients... --TheRealLurlock Talk 21:17, 26 June 2007 (EDT)
I'll try to get to it in the next few days :) --NepheleTalk 21:58, 26 June 2007 (EDT)
OK, at long last, I'm almost there! But, the bad news is, I'm not completely sure if I'm getting the right numbers. I randomly decided to test using Ampoule Pod. I got the first one right: 15 plants in BC (-7,4). But then things go downhill... I'm also getting 15 plants in BC (-5, -3), then 14 in Vivec Guild of Mages, and 11 in Ules Manor. Those are just my top four locations. It looks perhaps I stumbled onto a messy case, since I'm tagging four different plants as all producing Ampoule Pod (flora_bc_podplant_01, flora_bc_podplant_02, flora_bc_podplant_03, and Flora_BC_podplant_04), but the Ampoule Pod page seems to sometimes (but not always) be only showing total only for flora_bc_podplant_01. So am I missing something here with the different varieties of plants? Or should I not treat the posted information as 100% reliable?
The second question is what info exactly do you want? Do you just want the cells with the most plants? Do you also want the cells with the most loose samples? How many cells in either list? And do you just want the 8 missing ingredients, or do you want all the ingredients so that you can double check existing pages? How about Tribunal and Bloodmoon?
Yes, it never rains but it pours ;) Now that I've got the code set up to process this stuff, I can pretty much inundate you with vast amounts of information. Just tell me how much! --NepheleTalk 04:08, 4 July 2007 (EDT)
You did pick an odd one. Ampoule Pods are only found in flora_bc_podplant_01 and flora_bc_podplant_02. The other two produce Coda Flowers instead. However, your numbers do seem accurate if you were to combine those two ingredients. As for what I need, the cells with the most plants is all I really want. Loose samples are easy to do in the CS. The existing pages I've done should all be pretty accurate, so there's no need to double-check them (I hope). And Tribunal and Bloodmoon have far fewer ingredients in general, so there's no need to bother with those. (I've already done all but one of those pages anyhow.) The only reason I'd want to revisit the already completed ingredient pages is if we were going to add maps like you did for Oblivion, but that can wait until later, as I'm sure it brings up all other kinds of issues. So just those 8 (or rather 7 - Small Kwama Eggs I'll have to take care of manually, I think. It's mostly lots of loose samples, but also appears in several leveled lists, making things more complicated.) As for number of items in the lists, I've kind of been winging it on a case-by-case basis. If you just post the entire lists, I'll decide how much to put on the page based on when the numbers start dropping off or whatnot.
Oh, one other pitfall you might run into - There are 6 plants labeled as Trama Root, but only 5 of these actually produce ingredients. Likewise, there are 6 types of Kollops (which produce Pearls), but only 3 of them actually have Pearls in them. It's pretty simple to see which ones in the CS, but you should make sure your program knows the difference. Thanks alot for this, it'll be good to finish these pages up. --TheRealLurlock Talk 14:00, 4 July 2007 (EDT)
That's what I get for trying to quickly circumvent an error just so I can print out some results :) The code is correctly identifying just 01 and 02 as sources of ampoule pods, but I'd made a quick and dirty (and wrong!) fix last night that caused all four to get thrown in. Now that I've got everything working as advertised, I'm getting the right numbers.
One more question that's come up: if I'm reading things properly, trama shrubs can have 2 or 3 trama root samples, depending on the variety of shrub (there are some other cases, too, of one plant giving multiple samples). Do you want a count of the number of shrubs or the number of possible samples? --NepheleTalk 14:14, 4 July 2007 (EDT)
I had a couple like that. While I'd like to include that information, I didn't find a good way of formatting it, so I just basically mentioned in the text that some can have up to X samples and some have up to Y. Not ideal, but I didn't have a better idea at the time. --TheRealLurlock Talk 14:41, 4 July 2007 (EDT)

Alright, finally finished with all Morrowind ingredients, those charts helped a lot. Might have a small job for NepheleBot now - It's occurred to me that now that there are existing pages for every ingredient in the game, the MW Ingredients Link template is no longer necessary. Any pages still using them could be just changed back to regular links now instead. Likewise for TR Ingredients Link, BM Ingredients Link too. Obviously not a priority sort of thing, since everything works as is, it's just more complicated than it needs to be. (Somebody will have to do the Shivering Isles ingredients as well at some point.) Anyhow, if you feel like putting your bot to work again, there's one suggestion. --TheRealLurlock Talk 15:12, 7 July 2007 (EDT)

You need to change your page[edit]

Number one on Active Users now! Congratulations. --RpehTalk 08:09, 1 July 2007 (EDT)

Lurlock's obviously been slacking lately ;) But I'd rather have a larger margin than 50 edits before declaring that I'm likely to stay in first place! --NepheleTalk 19:27, 1 July 2007 (EDT)
Yeah, just give me another 500+ edit type project and I'll reclaim my throne - I mean, um... Never mind. Though if you count Nephelebot, you've still got a pretty comfortable lead on me. Don't worry, I'll be back with something one of these days. (Been moving a lot lately, and my office no longer has an internet connection for a while, so I can't waste time at work like I used to...) --TheRealLurlock Talk 20:58, 1 July 2007 (EDT)

Minor template issue[edit]

Another minor issue with a template I'd like you to take a look at. The Template:Ingredient Summary has worked pretty well for most cases, but there's always one exception, isn't there? Take a look at Bloodmoon:Belladonna Berries. This ingredient is a bit of a complication (since it's actually two different but identical ingredients). First, the harvest percentages are variable, so I needed to put the note underneath the chart explaining the 3 values given. Only problem is, I can't find a way to do that which doesn't leave a huge gap between the main text and the location lists below. I'm not sure it's possible with the template as it is now, but if you know a way, I'd love to hear it. (I've had to do this on one other page: Morrowind:Gold Kanet. In that case, I got away with it because there was enough stuff above the bottom charts that the gap wasn't too bad, but it could be better too.) Maybe if a feature were added to the template that allows you to put some text below the chart such that it stays on the right underneath?

Anyhow, the second issue on this page (and I think this is unique to this case) is that this is an ingredient which can be found both on a plant and on a creature. I've left off the |creature option for now, because using both |creature and |plant at the same time causes the template to really screw things up. (Because they both use the same value for |harvest, I'm guessing.) The only solution I can think of that wouldn't require re-doing a lot of ingredient pages would be to have a special seperate value that allows you to have both a Creature and a Plant field, each with their own individual Harvest field. Seems like a bit much though for just one page. (I'm almost certain this is the only one that would need it.) At this point, I'm strongly considering just subst'ing the template and adding the fields (and the text note at the bottom) in manually. I did this before for Morrowind:Bittergreen Petals in order to have a second chart appear below the first. If you have a better solution, let me know, but otherwise, I'll probably end up doing that tomorrow. --TheRealLurlock Talk 23:59, 1 July 2007 (EDT)

Sorry about that[edit]

I frequently rush headlong into things without thinking things over or having all of the information, so I appreciate any guidance you can give me. I'll try to think about what I do before I do it more now.Giamgiam 13:34, 2 July 2007 (EDT)

Looking for something "wiki lite" to work on and hone my wiki skills.[edit]

I'm looking for something I can really help with that doesn't require a lot of knowledge and familiarity with wiki formatting, which I'm still in the process of learning. If you're aware of any particular parts of the OPRP of anything else that might fall into that category, I would appreciate your suggestions. Giamgiam 17:06, 2 July 2007 (EDT)

I don't mean to intrude but would the sandbox work?--Most Honored Listener 20:37, 2 July 2007 (EDT)
Since someone else has made the first intrusion - Honestly, Giamgiam? As long as you have enough knowledge of Wiki code to know which parts aren't code and an excellent grasp of the English language, navigate over to the left hand bar there and hit "Random Page". Repeat process until you find a page that needs grammatical editing or sentential restructuring, and have fun. A good editor knows how to change how a page's information is displayed without actually altering the information itself. (And if all else fails, patrollers are watching the Recent Changes board most of the time. Err on the side of caution, but should you make a misstep, they're there to be the safety nets.) --Kementari 20:45, 2 July 2007 (EDT)
Just out of curiosity, was that line about having an excellent grasp of the English language a compliment, or a recommendations of what to have before editing? Giamgiam 22:35, 2 July 2007 (EDT)

Long time, no see![edit]

Well, I'm back, if only at semi-active status. I was wandering around the OPRP pages, but couldn't find much to do. I don't know if I'm not reading it right or what, but let me know what needs work. --GuildKnight (Talk) contribs 16:29, 3 July 2007 (EDT)

Great to hear from you again :) I hope you've been able to fix some of the computer problems you were having before! If you're up to looking at pages like Oblivion:Bandit Dungeons, getting those pages assembled would be really helpful, and would fix a lot of red links that are getting added to all the OPRP pages. But I can understand if that seems a bit too intense to tackle first thing and/or when you're only able to be semi-active ;) Otherwise, the biggest task on OPRP is adding walkthroughs; you can check [[UESPWiki:Oblivion Places Redesign Project/Progress]] to see which places have the new data but need walkthroughs. --NepheleTalk 16:59, 3 July 2007 (EDT)
It's been a while, so could you refresh my memory? What needs to be done on Oblivion:Bandit Dungeons? I'll get that page done, and then I'll start working on the similar pages.
On a side note, yeah, I fixed my computer problems, I bought a new one! I was hoping I wouldn't have to do that, but I'm glad I did. I've heard so many complaints about Vista, but I love it. It's kinda dummy-proofed. --GuildKnight (Talk) contribs 17:35, 3 July 2007 (EDT)
I went ahead and started a couple of tables on Oblivion:Bandit Dungeons, because it was easier to show what I was thinking than to explain it ;)
What we'd been talking about before was the table at the bottom half of the table, showing what types of items can be found in the chests found in bandit dungeons. I basically cut-and-pasted the bandit section of Oblivion:Dungeons#Boss Chests over; now the other non-boss chests need to be added in to the table. I'm pretty sure you'll find that a few of the columns end up being completely empty (i.e., bandit chests never have alchemy equipment), so you can probably simplify the tables once they're filled in by deleting empty columns. You might also want to copy over some of the notes from Oblivion:Dungeons.
During your hiatus, I also started thinking of some ways to expand the top half of the Bandit Dungeons page. So I did a demo of what I'd been thinking with a couple of the places: using the places link template to provide a better link/description, and creating a table to clearly show which places have bosses and/or boss chests. Tweak the table if you can think of any improvements; if you like the idea, the rest of the places can be added into the table. Any places that are red-links that you can't make sense of can probably just be deleted for now.
Hope that all makes sense. As always, feel free to ask if you have any questions! --NepheleTalk 18:42, 3 July 2007 (EDT)

Would you mind taking a look at Oblivion:Bandit Dungeons? I left the raw data of the chests because I wasn't sure if we'd need to add more columns, like lockpicks, repair hammers, and arrows. Let me know what you think of the whole thing. --GuildKnight (Talk) contribs 21:47, 21 July 2007 (EDT)

Looks good to me! Although I hadn't realized that the three chests all have identical contents... if that's true for all the dungeons, it might be a bit of overkill to differentiate the various chests. Not that overkill has ever prevented us from documenting anything else in excessive detail ;) --NepheleTalk 01:36, 22 July 2007 (EDT)

already confronted the king on pc[edit]

Hi . i killed the king of worms earlier on in the game now i find myself at the quest confront the king and i cannot complete it as i have already killed him when i was not suppost to. Are the ant console commands that would benifit me because i have already tried some that were givin to me by other people in this site and they did not work mg18kingofworms 30 + mg18kingofworms 100. i come to u because you seem to more skill in helping people than others.Thank you for reading!!!

Answered at Oblivion talk:Glitches#already confronted the king using cheats. --NepheleTalk 21:42, 4 July 2007 (EDT)

Templates are trying to kill me[edit]

Hi Nephele! As if I didn't already have enough to be doing, I recently decided to be crazy and tackle a project that Rpeh pawned off to me, and it's driving me nuts. The goal is to put the appropriate quest icon on each quest's page, and to do that, apparently, the Quest Header template needs to be changed. I've spent a couple of hours staring at and puzzling over the template coding, and it's slowly starting to make sense. It's not that far off from HTML, which is what I'm used to. Anyway, this might be a dumb question, but how do I check to see if the template is working the way I want it to without actually saving it (and crashing the server)? I'll probably have more questions as I get going, but hopefully I'll be able to get it working without bugging you too much ;). Thanks! --Eshe 21:26, 8 July 2007 (EDT)

I took a crack at it. Take a look at Oblivion:Allies for Bruma. Not perfect, but pretty close. Unfortunately, template work does involve a lot of saving and looking at what it does to other pages. One way to limit the effect this has on the server is simply to make your own copy of the template on a sandbox page, and just mess with that, rather than messing with the one being used by hundreds of pages. Then once you get it figured out, you can copy the changes to the original template and delete your sandbox (or have an admin delete it in your case). I didn't do that this time because I'm lazy and I got cocky. But not bad for 3 edits, I think... --TheRealLurlock Talk 22:18, 8 July 2007 (EDT)
Well, you know what they say, "Ninth time's a charm". Finally got it right this time. Enjoy. --TheRealLurlock Talk 22:50, 8 July 2007 (EDT)
Great, thanks so much! There was no way I could have done that on my own. It would have taken me at least a week. What a psychotic template! Hopfeully my other adventures in templating will not be that complicated...thanks again! --Eshe 22:55, 8 July 2007 (EDT)

Thank You[edit]

Sorry about the late reply. I am out of states right now and was not able to respond to your comments until now. For the deletion, I was wondering exactly that. While ago I uploaded a picture under the same name but mistakenly used wrong file extension. I have placed speedy deletion tag fro the picture and sandbox page that I have created already has the speedy deletion tag. Hope that fixes everything. Ah, and thanks for the warm welcome and advice. It really helps a lot even if it is just few words on the user talk page. Thanks again and hope you have a great summer. --MorrowindNub 11:55, 9 July 2007 (EDT)

Thanks for the reply :) There wasn't any rush on the deletions, I just mainly wanted to get confirmation from you before proceeding to do anything. Have fun travelling this summer! --NepheleTalk 22:36, 9 July 2007 (EDT)


Moving Ultra Slow...[edit]

I've been getting this weird glitch where, at random, I'm all of a sudden barely able to move. My character moves extremely slow and everyone else in the game moves the normal speed. Sitting in chairs, talking to people, leaving the area, fast traveling, talking to an NPC, will not fix it, but if I completely exit out of Oblivion and then start it up again, my character moves normal speed again. PC version of Oblivion, patched. -Cayden

It sounds like a problem caused by having a joystick connected. Disconnect your joystick or edit Oblivion.ini and set bUseJoystick=0. (I had it happen to me when I first installed Oblivion, too). --NepheleTalk 21:37, 11 July 2007 (EDT)

Hi - you edited an entry I made. Did I do OK?[edit]

I recently added to the Roleplaying: Travelling section of the wiki. I put in a large chunk about using the map and compass in a realistic way. I believe you recently edited it for formatting, which as far as I can see meant changing my uppercase header to lowercase.

I put the header in capitals to highlight it as a new entry. Was that correct? I didn't need to capitalise the whole thing did I?

Also, was the article OK in itself?

This was the first time I've made a Wiki entry (here or any Wiki) and I am keen to do things correctly and to add interesting and original material.

I would be grateful for any feedback.

Thanks.

Michael.

Capitalizing entire words and sentences is inconsistent with our style guide (in particular Emphasis); it tends to come across as shouting. So as part of patrolling the recent edits, I changed the first line to lower case. The rest of the edit looked fine when I glanced through it (and in fact included some tips that I regularly use, like selecting another quest to get rid of the quest arrows). Unfortunately, the large number of edits made every day on the site make it hard to provide positive feedback on most of what gets done. But basically any edits that are left in place are ones that are considered to be OK. "No news is good news" around here :)
If you haven't already, you might want to look over Getting Started and Style Guide. Those pretty much contain all the general advice that I have for new editors. I hope you keep contributing. Feel free to ask if you have any questions. --NepheleTalk 12:39, 12 July 2007 (EDT)

Nephele,

Thanks for your reply and your advice. You are right of course, I shouldn't SHOUT!. I realise now that I misread the Contribution Guidlines instruction "alphabetise any new ideas", as "capitalise any new ideas." My mistake! I'm glad my contribution passed muster, and I will add some more when the inspiration takes me. -- Michael

Template help[edit]

Seeing as you are a mentor I was wondering if you could lend a little help on templates, how to create them, use them. and thanks for everything else you have helped me with.--Most Honored Listener 01:41, 15 July 2007 (EDT)

There are a couple of help articles at Help:Templates and Help:Writing Templates that summarize most of the basics. If you have any questions after looking through those, or if you have anything specific you'd like me to look at, just let me know! --NepheleTalk 01:45, 15 July 2007 (EDT)
I was looking into User Templates and how to create custom ones. I was also wondering if there was any formal list of already created user templates other than administrator, and knowledgeable about the games.--Most Honored Listener 03:10, 15 July 2007 (EDT)
This page has the only formal list I know of. --Eshe 03:18, 15 July 2007 (EDT)
Wow thanks allot Eshe--Most Honored Listener 03:35, 15 July 2007 (EDT)

Server Restart[edit]

Got your message (thanks) but was unable to get a decent enough Internet connection until now to login and restart. -- Daveh 18:08, 15 July 2007 (EDT)

Thanks, Daveh :) The server had just been starting to act up for the afternoon, too, so that was pretty good timing! --NepheleTalk 18:27, 15 July 2007 (EDT)

Oblivion:Armor page frequently vandalized[edit]

I'm not sure what your protection options are, but I notice back in Jan/Feb, you "semi-protected" the Oblivion:Armor page. I think you may need to do so again (or increase protection), as there seems to be a LOT of vandalism going on lately. I just reverted changes by one anonymous user who just tried to delete the entire page, section by section.

If you can limit it to logged-in users only, or maybe even temporarily protect it from all non-administrators, I think that might be a good idea at this point. --Robin Hood 14:41, 17 July 2007 (EDT)

I took care of it. Full protection is not warranted in this case, as the only vandalism has been from non-registered users. Semi protection means that registered users can still edit the page without problems. I gave it a week, so hopefully they'll go away by then... --TheRealLurlock Talk 18:18, 17 July 2007 (EDT)
I agree that semi protection is sufficient. However, I think this page may need to be permanently changed to semi-protection. I don't think this is vandalism by just one or two people who will move on if they can't edit the page. After nearly four months of semi-protection, the vandalism started again just a week later. There is no pattern in the IP addresses or similarities between the types of vandalism done to the page. I think it's more likely that this just happens to be a page that is often visited by new readers who then choose to experiment on the page. --NepheleTalk 23:14, 17 July 2007 (EDT)

UESPWIKI:Codes[edit]

Why did u delete it?... — Unsigned comment by Zizanzu (talkcontribs)

Read your talk page. Apparently it was both pointless and had a detrimental effect UESP's server. --Saruuk 09:12, 20 July 2007 (EDT)
As pointed out by Saruuk, I provided an explanation on your talk page. If you have any more specific questions, let me know. --NepheleTalk 23:09, 20 July 2007 (EDT)

Another NPC Summary feature request[edit]

Had another minor request with this template (though no change in this template is ever minor, is it?). We already have a feature to have the "|spellmaker=yes" line automatically add Spellmaker to both the template as well as the breadcrumb trail and categories. It seems to me that the same should be possible for Enchanting and Repairs services (links to Morrowind:Enchanter and Morrowind:Blacksmith). All other services are covered one way or another (merchant, spell merchant, transport, training), so these are the only ones left out. I could probably manage this myself, but there'd likely be trial and error involved, and that means tying up the server for 10 more minutes every time I get it wrong, so I figure you'd have a better chance of getting it right the first time... --TheRealLurlock Talk 15:57, 20 July 2007 (EDT)

It definitely should be possible. I was about to say I'd prefer to wait until Daveh gets back and restarts the server again before tackling it... and then just noticed that Daveh did just restart the server again this morning, so the server is back to full speed :) I'll try to remember to do it tonight or early tomorrow, i.e., next time traffic is a bit less busy. --NepheleTalk 18:44, 20 July 2007 (EDT)

We Need Some Help.[edit]

We at the forums are trying to get in contact with Daveh. Nothing has prevailed. So on behalf of the forum users. Could you get us in touch with Daveh so he could work on the forums? Any help would be greatly appriciated. — Unsigned comment by TheBoogeyman209 (talkcontribs)

He's on vacation right now, which is why he hasn't responded. I think he's supposed to be back within the next week, but I don't know his exact schedule. --NepheleTalk 20:48, 20 July 2007 (EDT)

Thank you so much for your help

Main Page "did you know"[edit]

I counted and the did you know fact on Oblivion essential NPCs and the number of them is off, there are actually 201 essential NPCs in Oblivion not 188. Can you change this?--Most Honored Listener 01:51, 21 July 2007 (EDT)

You are free to edit it yourself, at Main Page/Did You Know. --NepheleTalk 01:57, 21 July 2007 (EDT)
Thanks didn't know I could go around and do that learning something new about the wiki everyday.--Most Honored Listener 02:00, 21 July 2007 (EDT)
One question, though, where does 201 come from? I still only count 188 NPCs listed at Oblivion:Essential NPCs, so who are the other 13 NPCs? --NepheleTalk 02:32, 21 July 2007 (EDT)
first there are 3 additional NPCs which are all named "Blackwood Company Guard" but I had counted and taking note at how many NPCs are in each letter and I came up with 198 (not including the blackwood guards) so I don't know if I messed up or if there is some misunderstanding in what the fact is saying which I doubt is the case. I just now recalculated it and came up with 198 again.--Most Honored Listener 02:43, 21 July 2007 (EDT)
If we want to start adding anonymous NPCs, then there are at least a few more (the Yellow Team Champion, one of the Cheydinhal Guards), and I'm not sure whether it makes sense to lump them in with the named NPCs.
But first it would be good to figure out the facts of what's actually on the Essential NPCs page right now. I've added it up multiple times and I get 187 each time. That is one less than 188 originally posted on "Did You Know?" because one test NPC (Denyiir) was originally on the list, and was then deleted. Letter by letter, I'm getting:
A 24, B 12, C 8, D 11, E 7, F 5, G 5, H 7, I 5, J 11, K 4, L 4, M 26, N 6, O 7, P 2, Q 1, R 11, S 8, T 8, U 5, V 9, Y 1
And no matter how I add those numbers, the total comes out to 187. I don't see where I could be missing 11 NPCs. Where are my numbers different from yours? --NepheleTalk 03:15, 21 July 2007 (EDT)
I have the exact same numbers but I don't know if I may have double counted one when I was adding them up but I think it would be safe to set it at 190 to include the 3 Blackwood guards.--Most Honored Listener 03:29, 21 July 2007 (EDT)

Stop reading my mind![edit]

Or, I guess, the Recent Changes page, more likely. Thanks, I was about to ask for those, looks like you're a step ahead of me. I had one question - a couple of them had the skills values listed as (??). Is there some reason you weren't able to get numbers for them? I marked them all in the summaries as "missing Training values", should fill them in later. --TheRealLurlock Talk 15:22, 23 July 2007 (EDT)

It's not reading your mind when you just asked me for the data ;) But, yes, I did also notice you working through A-E on the recent changes page, so I figured you'd want to move onto F next. The ?? values are for NPCs whose statistics are auto-calc'ed. I don't know how the skill values are calculated in those cases, although I can figure out which are the major and specialized skills, so I can tell which skills have the highest values. In other words I can (hopefully) figure out the relative values but not the absolute values. --NepheleTalk 15:33, 23 July 2007 (EDT)

Improving News Content & Code[edit]

Just so you're aware, I'm tweaking the news content/code a little. The reason I'm posting this is to try and encourage my improvements to be continued by other news authors/publishers (you seem to be the main one). I'm starting with the most recent (newest) articles, so to see my changes, obviously check them first.

No major changes though;

  • replacing <font> elements with CSS (via <span>).
  • replacing double hyphens (--) with a proper — character.
  • tweaking link text to be more accessible/descriptive (think visually impaired (screen reader) users).
  • bit of grammar here and there; mainly for readability.

Lee Carré 17:05, 24 July 2007 (EDT)

I'm definitely not the primary author of news articles, so telling me about format changes isn't necessarily going to get the message out to most of the editors who create news articles. If you think there are overall format changes that should be applied to the news articles, I'd suggest that you should create a template to be used on all the news articles. Having a template is the easiest way to implement/update a format and the best way to ensure that any format gets used consistently on all articles. Especially if you think that easy-to-implement wiki codes (such as ":" for indenting text) should be replaced with CSS styles (such as <p style="margin-left:2%">). I doubt that many wiki editors are going to want to type in such a long command, or remember to consistently use 2% as the setting (in fact, it seems like you've been somewhat inconsistent, using both 2% and 2.2%). --NepheleTalk 15:08, 25 July 2007 (EDT)

Containers and Horses[edit]

Thanks for your comments.

I went ahead and created the Containers article and added the Moving Lots of Items with your Horse section to your Getting Around article.

The Containers article can use some more work, but I guess that will come with time.

--RobertDB 18:12, 24 July 2007 (EDT)

Hmmm, this is the third edit in a row where I've felt it necessary to start out by denying responsibility... somewhat of a trend starting here ;) In this case, I wanted to clarify that it's definitely not "my" Oblivion:Getting Around article. No wiki editors have individual ownership of articles. And in the case of Getting Around, I can't even claim to have written the content that I initially posted there; it was all information that I moved from an old version of the Oblivion:Tips article.
In any case, thanks for the contributions and the effort that you've obviously put into researching and documenting the information. We're not too good (or at least I'm not too good) about giving feedback on individual edits here, in part because it can be a lot of effort just to even read through all the new edits. So the bad edits get criticized while the good edits just get accepted without comment :) And posting articles like Containers that need more work is definitely fine (especially when you took the time to start off by posting more than a stub). It will gradually get fleshed out as editors get the chance! --NepheleTalk 15:32, 25 July 2007 (EDT)

Next round of MW NPC requests...[edit]

Well, I'm pretty much done with the trainers. (Except for the whole check-them-in-game stage, which I'm unable to do for technical reasons at this time.) So I guess the best thing to do next would be all Enchanters and Blacksmiths. After that, maybe Merchants, to finish up all the service providers, though Merchants would require me to have access to the CS to determine what they have to sell. (Unless you can think of a way to have a program search both their inventory and the cell they're located in to find any items in their possession that match the items they can buy/sell, though that may be asking a bit much.) Finally, the last round of NPCs would of course be the hardest - all those involved in any quests. I suspect I'll have to do those manually, since it might be hard to tell without taking a close look at all their dialog, scripts, and other references that aren't exactly obvious to a human, let alone a computer program. Anyhow, if I can just get Enchanters and Blacksmiths for now, that'd be something to do for a little while. Thanks. --TheRealLurlock Talk 09:22, 27 July 2007 (EDT)

Okay, I may have figured out a way to get most of the quest-related characters as well - I compiled a list from Special:Wantedpages of all Morrowind NPC pages with 3 or more pages linking to them. (Almost all NPCs are linked from Hoggwild's Sandbox, and most are linked from location pages, so I figured those with 3 or more would likely be more important.) It's possible that some non-NPC pages slipped into that list. I did weed out a bunch of things, but some location names look like NPC names, so there could be a few I missed. But that list should be a pretty good representation of the remainder of the "relevant" NPCs. --TheRealLurlock Talk 12:20, 27 July 2007 (EDT)
293 shiny new NPCs have been put in User:Nephele/Sandbox/4/ABCDE, etc. That's everyone listed in your sandbox plus all enchanters and blacksmiths, or at least all those who haven't been covered by one of the previous lists. That still leaves any merchants who don't offer any other services. Trying to figure out what merchandise they have to sell would be a fair bit of extra work. I haven't set up anything to read containers or inventories (yet). And the trickier step would then be figuring out how to categorize those items. I can still print out all the merchant entries, but you'd have to manually add the "sells" section. Which is presumably what you've been doing with the merchants so far ;) --NepheleTalk 01:24, 28 July 2007 (EDT)
Theoretically, my sandbox should have caught all the merchants, as they would be listed on 1. Hoggwild's sandbox, 2. Their location page, and 3. The appropriate merchants page. If anything, this set probably included too many, particularly in cities, since even the unimportant residents of, say, Vivec's Foreign Quarter would be listed both there, as well as transcluded on Vivec People and City People. But that's okay, there's more important people in cities anyhow. But if your list of merchants somehow includes anyone I missed, by all means, include it. And yes, I'll still have to do those manually, I guess. I'd really like to know what criteria Hoggwild was using for "relevant/non-relevant", as I've already caught a few listed as "non-relevant" which really shouldn't have been. (Among them one of the master-trainers, kind of important that one.) But since she's not around anymore to ask, I'll probably just have to come up with my own criteria and completely redo that section. I was considering after all this was done asking for NepheleBot to make redirects for all the non-relevant names to link to the non-Relevant page, but that'll come later. --TheRealLurlock Talk 09:53, 28 July 2007 (EDT)

Dorian money glitch[edit]

This has been patched, but there is a post-patch version of this glitch which is not listed on this site. I tried to edit the page but it seems that page is uneditable. I just created this account yesterday so I'm not very accustomed to editing on this site. Sorry if there's something stupid I'm missing here.

How much does Knights of the Nine[edit]

I was just wondering how much microsoft points Knights of the nine cost for xbox360 because for some reason I was unable to find its worth. --The True Knight of Cyrodil 21:33, 28 July 2007 (EDT)

800 MS points. Check the Xbox live site for information on costs of all downloadable content. --NepheleTalk 01:03, 30 July 2007 (EDT)

I Would Like Your Permission...[edit]

Hi! I would like to have your permission, to be a site "Vandal Hunter". May I pleaseeeee? I'll somehow make a userbox even though I don't know how to make one! thanks. --Playjex 12:11, 30 July 2007 (EDT)

You're free to add information to your user page, such as a user box, saying that you like to hunt vandals; nobody's permission is needed to do that. If you're suggesting that you think there should be a special user category for "Vandal Hunters," I personally don't see the need. But I'm also not the person you should be asking. Decisions about the site are made by the community, not by individual administrators, and therefore questions/proposals about policies and procedures should be made on the Community Portal, not my talk page.
If you would like to be more actively involved in dealing with vandalism, I would suggest that you read through our policies, such as UESPWiki:Vandalism and UESPWiki:Blocking Policy. Although some vandalism is easy to identify, there are also cases where apparent vandalism is just an accidental mistake made by a new editor (for example, deleting an entire article can easily be done by mistake). Being overly zealous about dealing with vandalism can end up driving away new editors, so it is best to be very cautious about calling an edit vandalism. Always Assume Good Faith.
When there is unambiguous vandalism, it is best to take advantage of the prewritten UESPWiki:Warnings to post messages on the editor's talk page. These messages ensure that the editor is clearly warned that they will be blocked if they continue to vandalize, and therefore allow an admin to immediately block the account if there is further vandalism. Finally, adding comments such as "u know i hate u" to edit summaries really doesn't help to accomplish anything: malicious vandals will just be entertained by knowing that they're annoying you; ignorant vandals won't even know about the comment. And comments like that can be seen as a personal attack or insult, and such comments are not acceptable, even when directed at vandals.
In any case, thanks for your work identifying and reverting vandalism, and thanks for helping to make sure that the vandalism gets cleaned up as quickly as possible :) --NepheleTalk 12:55, 30 July 2007 (EDT)
Oh, thank you so. I will continue being a vandal hunter. and no prob, I love taking care of vandals. maybe on the Community Portal I shall make an idea of a "Vandal Team". lol thanks. --Playjex 19:08, 30 July 2007 (EDT)

P.S. I apologize for typing that comment. just, i get angered, though there is no excuse for my action.