User talk:Salamangkero

Welcome

Hello Salamangkero! Welcome to UESPWiki. It's always good to have new members. If you would like to help improve any of our pages, you may want to take a look at the following links:

• Policies and Guidelines: UESPWiki standards and expectations
• Quick Editing Guide: a quick guide to wiki markup
• Getting Started: how you can help

If you, on the other hand, would like to spice up your userpage, take a look at this link:

• Userboxes: near complete list of userboxes, including a guide to make your own

When you're editing, it's always a good idea to leave edit summaries to explain the changes you have made to a particular page, and remember to sign your talk page posts with four tildes ~~~~. Also, the "show preview" button is a great way to view the changes you've made so far without actually saving the page (our patrollers really appreciate it!).

Feel free to practice editing in the sandbox or discuss the games in the forums. If you need any help, don't hesitate to contact one of our mentors. Have fun! --Wolok gro-Barok 14:05, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

Work on Vampire-Related Pages

Hi. I'm currently beginning an initiative that entails modifying a lot of Morrowind game pages and here seems like a good place as any to post my rationale.

I'll be slowly reviewing and modifying (where required) pages, specifically, the section regarding related quests. I've observed several inconsistencies with this section so I'll be using the following guidelines:

• If a person, item or place has several related quests but all of them are of the same type (e.g. Ajira (Mage's Guild), Fargoth (Miscellaneous)), a single "Related Quests" section will be enough
• If a person, item or place has several related quests of different types, even if each type has only one quest (e.g. Socucius Ergalla (Main Quest, Miscellaneous), Tel Fyr (Main Quest, House Redoran, House Telvanni, Mages Guild, Official Plugins)), there will be as many sub-sections as quest types there are.
  • Each quest section will be LINKED to its own page, where applicable.
  • All subsections will be arranged in alphabetical order
    • If included, the Main Quest subsection should always appear at the top of the list; this is an exception to the above rule
    • If included, the Miscellaneous subsection should always appear at the bottom of the list; this is an exception to the above rule
  • The Vampiric section excludes those for the Aundae, Berne and Quarra clans
  • The Thieves Guild section excludes those for the Bal Molagmer

Now, I'm well aware that there are a lot of pages in the Morrowind namespace, which is why I deemed the Vampire-related pages to be a suitably small group of pages to begin with. Hopefully, either this initiative meets with little opposition or I am presented with a powerfully convincing counter-argument that will spare me from continuing any further. Salamangkero 16:42, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Few people will find this on your User page. I would suggest you post it on a relevant Morrowind page instead. This long after Morrowind has been released and with Skyrim edits flooding the wiki, it probably still won't attract a lot of attention, but it'll probably get more than it will here. – Robin Hood↝talk 23:40, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Robinhood70 is correct. However, this proposal is fairly uncontroversial and so you might just go ahead and implement it right away. The only issue I can think of is that it'll be more work for the patrollers, but that definitely shouldn't stop you. Wolok gro-Barok 00:07, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

I have already implemented a few edits though I have been careful to include a "see User_talk:Salamangkero#Work_on_Vampire-Related_Pages" suffix on all revisions summaries. The goal of this user talk section was not to gather attention no support in efforts to modify Morrowind pages, but simply to provide a suitable explanation for interested parties (ie. those who have certain Morrowind pages watchlisted) should any of my edits seem questionable. With that in mind, I have deemed it unnecessary to create a new page, at least, not in the Morrowind namespace.

In any case, all my edits regarding this initiative could be found here and safely reverted, if necessary. Salamangkero 11:59, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

I doubt if there'll be any need to revert your edits, I was just suggesting posting the guidelines somewhere more visible in case anybody had any suggestions or concerns before you got started. Adding the link in your edit summary works well too, so no worries. – Robin Hood↝talk 20:51, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Hover

Hi, we're actually moving away from hovertext on the wiki as it's not mobile-friendly. If you see lock levels in plain text, it's better to leave them as-is. —⁠Legoless (talk) 13:28, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Oh, got it. I didn't know that. I should've been doing things the other way then (ie. changing locked hovertext to plaintext). Thanks! —⁠Salamangkero (talk) 01:51, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

Cookie  

You have been given a cookie! Your dedication and diligence to the wiki has not gone unnoticed. A user has seen the progress you've made, and has given you a cookie because of it. Good work! The user had the following to say: Great addition to put intercardinal directions on the Spelling page. I'm really not sure how we've missed it all these years, as it's been policy since as far back as I can remember. – Robin Hood (talk) 16:22, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh wow, thanks for the cookie! ^_^ Salamangkero (talk) 13:28, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

I was intrigued by you correcting the header and wondered what on earth that was about. Sure enough, when I looked at the older version, there was no header. I suspect this is actually very recent, as I didn't notice anything at the time. It turns out that it's our ad-blocker that's doing it. If you disable that, everything's fine. I've reported the issue to ABP, which I assume is what we're both using. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 14:50, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Hover Replacements

On the topic of replacing {{Hover}}, if you decide that any of them can/should remain as is, but you want them to still display the hover text correctly, you can swap the order of the Hover vs. the link itself. So, for example, instead of Axe, you can put Axe. There are still a few pixels where, if you hover over them, the native link is displayed, but at least it's now reversed so that the majority of it displays the desired text instead of just the few pixels. I just fixed Lore:Calendar to do that, if you want a large-scale example.

That all being said, as you note in your table, we're better off getting rid of hover text where we can so that we're offering the same info to mobile users as everyone else. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 18:52, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

ESO Typos

Heya, we do actually have an easy way to verify if a line in ESO is correct or not (thankfully, considering the size of the game). Follow this link, go to the latest update (currently Update 38PTS), and download the file labeled lang.zip. Within that file is a csv document containing every dialogue line in ESO. If you see a line on any ESO article that you aren't sure about, you can then search that document and correct it or identify it as a spelling error within the game itself.

Those files also have a lot of other uses for the wiki, incidentally, but just wanted to cover that specific scenario! --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 14:30, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Oh my goodness, thank you so much for this! This will be a very useful resource for me; I don't play ESO myself so, up 'til now, I've had no way to check on suspected typos except to flag them. I will put this to good use, thanks! Salamangkero (talk) 15:31, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Cookies!

You have been given a plateful of cookies! Awesome work on cleaning up and fixing the Morrowind vendor pages and other areas of the wiki. It's always good to see the name Salamangkero on the recent changes page! — Wolfborn(Howl) 21:48, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

My goodness, cookies! Thank you very much! Salamangkero (talk) 06:13, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your work on Morrowind!

I've noticed that when I edit articles in the Morrowind namespace, you're often the most recent person who has previously edited the article. Also, sometimes you fix my edits when they don't quite go far enough - some of the remove-hovertext ones I tried to do are like that. It takes a dedicated critter to do free user-to-user tech support for a game that's 21 years old.  :D Thanks! 69.247.222.163 06:05, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Hand of Dagoth

I noticed your Incomplete tag on Hand of Dagoth and took a look in the CS. Turns out there are actually two spells with the name "Hand of Dagoth" in the game.

The first spell has the EditorID hand of azura, casts Restore Agility / Endurance / Speed / Strength / Willpower / Luck 100pts for 1sec (each) on Touch, and has a Spell Cost of 30. The only place this spell is used in-game is in the script ringAzuraScript (which includes the wonderful comment "makes ring spin around like a cheesy B movie until you click on it"); the script casts this spell on the player when the player picks up the Ring of Azura at the end of the main quest.

The second spell has the EditorID hand of dagoth, casts the following effects: Damage Health 25-75pts on Touch, Damage Fatigue 25-75pts on Touch, Damage Agility / Endurance / Speed / Strength / Willpower / Luck 5pts (each) on Touch, and has a Spell Cost of 39. This spell is not used anywhere in the game; presumably it was meant to be given to Dagoth Ur, but he ended up with Wrath of Dagoth instead.

I'll leave it up to you to decide if and how to incorporate these spells in the wiki. Cheers! — Wolfborn^(Howl) 20:39, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Self-Closing Tags

Just as a point of interest, whether the wiki uses self-closing tags like <br/> is actually controlled by the wiki, so it makes no difference whether you use them in wikitext or not. MediaWiki has a setting to tell it whether it should generate XML-compliant HTML (the only time the closing slash is required), and that setting will decide how it renders self-closed tags, regardless of what you actually enter. While self-closing tags are officially optional in HTML5, they're actually considered invalid in HTML4, though every major browser in existence has ignored that for decades. If the wiki is instructed to use non-XML-compliant HTML4 mode, though, it will dutifully strip off any self-closing tags you might add and vice versa for XML-compliant (and I think HTML5) mode. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 13:56, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

Ohhh, I should've been doing it the other way then (ie. <br> instead of <br/>) to save space on wikitext, especially on pages with a lot of them (otherwise, the benefit would be almost, if not completely, negligible). I was under the impression that using the self-closing tags was the "correct" way to do it; apparently not. Thanks for this, I learned something new today. Salamangkero (talk) 14:24, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

In theory, yeah, it makes for slightly shorter wikitext, but that really only affects saving and purging; the rest of the time, it all comes from a cache of the already-rendered HTML, so it makes no difference anyway. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 14:56, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

On a different note, if the wikitext is "compiled" into the final HTML upon saving (and purging), then stored in what I'm assuming is a quick cache, is there any real benefit to using substitution instead of transclusion? The doc for {{Substitutable}} (as well as all other templates that transclude it) says substituting is "particularly important when a template is used repeatedly on the same page," which led me to (mistakenly) believe that the HTML is rendered from wikitext in realtime. If that is not the case, is there no difference between substituting vs. transcluding templates repeatedly on the same page? Or am I missing some other info? Salamangkero (talk) 15:19, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

I never noticed this question back then, so please forgive the belated reply. :) The answer is: "it depends". The HTML normally comes from a cache, so only saving and purging will be affected the vast majority of the time. Buuuut, there are a few other situations where the cache won't be used that I didn't think to mention (and maybe more that I'm forgetting), two of them because I think of them as all being part of saving/purging, but most people probably wouldn't:

• Previewing: that basically works the same as a save, just without writing to the database. So, every time you hit "Show preview", the page is re-generated from scratch, even if all you did was add a space.
• Transclusions (mostly templates): every time a template is updated, every page it's used on is purged.
• Dynamic content: if there's something on the page like a random number, the page usually gets re-generated every single time it's viewed. As I just discovered yesterday, that includes <references/>. Every time someone views a page with references on it, it's generated from scratch. A rare few, like the main page, are updated at longer intervals.

Rather than try to explain all that to users who may or may not have the technical knowledge to understand it, it's simplified down to "just do it, it's good for the wiki". :P – Robin Hood ^(talk) 18:09, 3 November 2023 (UTC)

Merc templates on Morrowind pages

These break sort-by-Mercantile on list pages, which is critical page functionality for anyone trying to use the list pages as a reference. I have removed the template from all the list pages where I found it in order to make them sortable again; if you want to re-add it to those pages, fix the template so that it does not break sorting (I do not know how to do this). Removing the words would also be ideal; the categories are fanmade and meaningless. Magic9mushroom (talk) 11:24, 11 October 2023 (UTC)

Addressed by adding sortable parameter to {{Merc}}; thanks for the catch! Salamangkero (talk) 15:46, 12 October 2023 (UTC)

FormID

FormID is a fairly frequently used version that is also correct as far as I am aware (in fact at a quick glance, "formid" without space is the more common variant). I don't think we should standardize to Form ID. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 14:52, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

The Construction Set uses both "Form ID" and "FormID" as headings for the corresponding columns in various windows, although "FormID" is more prevalent. (And just to be different, the AI Packages window simply uses "ID".) Just throwing this in for consideration. — Wolfborn^(Howl) 16:33, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Noted, thanks. Will refrain from further edits re: FormID / Form ID. Salamangkero (talk) 16:56, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

To Shorten or Not to Shorten Namespaces

Hi Salamangkero. Thank you for the errors you've fixed recently in the Morrowind namespace. I want to hopefully save you and the patrollers some time by making it clear that changing Morrowind: to MW: or vice versa does nothing and is really just a waste of your time, and likewise, makes it take longer to see what your real edit was. This has been a longstanding aesthetic debate, and it has never been decided because in the end, it isn't worth running a bot job on 100,000 pages to standardize them all (after which, someone would present an argument for why they should all be the other way again). There's no technical or speed difference worth mentioning.

I'd say it's still fine to change them if there's an odd one out and the rest of the page is already using the other style. I also personally like to change Image: to File: because that's the modern MediaWiki name for the multimedia namespace. But even those are essentially wasting time and making the diffs more difficult to parse.

I just wanted to make you aware since I have wasted a lot of time with edits like those in the past, and the end result is no change. Keep up the good work! —Dillonn241 (talk) 11:03, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Edit to OB:Classes

Hey there, thanks for the good edits in the OB namespace you've been doing. On this edit - I actually think the dotted boxes around each class made the page much easier to look at. Right now it's visually a tad tricky to scroll through and distinguish individual classes. I didn't want to revert the whole edit given other changes you made, but perhaps you could have a look at integrating the previous boxes into your current edit? Thank you very much! --SerCenKing (talk) 17:36, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

I understand. I'll get to it in a bit and add CSS styling options to {{Inline Box}} Salamangkero (talk) 02:33, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Brilliant, thank you very much! I should add I would have had a go myself, but despite being here for quite a while, I'm still pretty useless at templates (: --SerCenKing (talk) 08:47, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Fixed by revision 2909433, btw. Salamangkero (talk) 09:48, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Looks great, thank you very much! --SerCenKing (talk) 14:26, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

A Gold Star because you already have a Cookie

You have been given a gold star! Thank you for all of the cleanup work you've been doing. Your user page task list is great, and I would encourage you to adapt it into a wiki project or perhaps as a revision to the Task List, which is woefully out of date. This recent edit showed a great understanding of how to clean up an article. I made some further revisions, but nothing major. —Dillonn241 (talk) 06:32, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the gold star! Salamangkero (talk) 09:01, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Another common typo to check

I've regularly searched for "a/an [race]" (whichever doesn't match). For example, "a Argonian". There is also the variant "is/was [race]" like "He is Argonian", although this has some false positives. Because of how many NPC pages we have, these pop up often. —Dillonn241 (talk) 05:14, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Good to know! I'll add this to my list; thanks! Salamangkero (talk) 06:02, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

MW:Commerce

I noticed that when you edited the MW:Commerce page back in 2022, it broke the link from "Gold" on the NPC Summary template. I was doing some changes to that page after I discovered that selling gold to traders does not increase their gold as advertised, and actually lowers it. --Brf (talk) 20:14, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Nice catch! I've checked the NPC Summary counterparts in OB and SR; looks like we do need a "Merchants' Gold" section. I'll fix it later, most likely following the same pattern as SR:Commerce. Salamangkero (talk) 03:30, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Cool. That page probably needs a few more things anyway. Like, I noticed there is no mention of fatigue raising prices. It always amuses me when I do multiple trainings and the second one is cheaper because the 2-hour training time for the first allowed my fatigue to fill -Brf (talk) 17:28, 16 April 2024 (UTC)