UESPWiki:Archive/CP Tamriel vs. Gamespace Proposal

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Tamriel vs. Gamespace Proposal

Most of the editors here should be familiar with the confusion of the Tamriel namespace. When creating pages, no one knows whether to put their page in the proper gamespace, in the Tamriel namespace, or both. What has resulted from this is a handful of dumbed down copies of the gamespace articles in the Tamriel section, with transclusions that put the Tamriel versions onto the gamespace versions. This has been pointed out on the Tamriel Talk:Zainab Camp page, and I believe it's about time to fix this. That is why I'm proposing the following namespace guidelines:

• A subject should only have one page on the wiki.
• Redirects from gamespaces or Tamriel are fine, and recommended in some cases. (ex. Oblivion:Atronach ? Tamriel:Atronach)
• Editors should put a subject in the Tamriel namespace if it is notable in multiple gamespaces.
• Editors should put a subject in one of the gamespaces if it has little to no influence in any of the other games. Pages in this category can still have a section such as "References in Other Games".

With subjects that already have multiple pages, we can merge and redirect so that the subjects follow our guidelines. In the long run, this should put less restrictions on the content of the page and allow the content to grow normally. So what do you all think? --Aristeo | Talk 19:50, 5 October 2006 (EDT)

Sounds good, although I'm sure there'll be some exceptions - there always are :D. Where will we discuss those exceptions and what to do about them? --Actreal 19:53, 5 October 2006 (EDT)

The difference between a guideline and a policy is that a guideline is more likely to have exceptions. We will most likely be able to discuss further guideline changes on the page where we post the guidelines. --Aristeo | Talk 20:37, 5 October 2006 (EDT)

In general I would agree and ultimately will comply with any decision that will be made. This proposal fails to address the issue from which the transclusion arises: subjects are now described generally in the Tamriel namespace, with e.g. the Morrowind namespace page adding game-specific information to that article. If an article exists in the Tamriel namespace and no other articles for that same subject are allowed, also all game-specific information would have to be included in the Tamriel namespace page and this may contain game-specific information from several games. Moreover, if redirects are going to be used, I'd say they would always have to point to the same direction, ie. some cannot go from game-namespace to Tamriel and some the other way - this would again create new confusion and have the content-pages in differenct namespaces for no obvious reason. Finally, I want to remind here as well that in my opinnion the Tamriel namespace should be a full-coverage collection of generic information regardless if individual pieces of information originate or are used in just one game (which may even be subject to change in the future as new games are released). --FMan 21:13, 5 October 2006 (EDT)

I don't really agree with the "one page per wiki" idea for a subject. For example, Khajiit: each game needs its own game-specific page in order to summarize the racial abilities, etc; on top of that, there is alot of general information that belongs in the Tamriel namespace. And I think there are lots of cases like this, where a subject encompasses both information of general interest and game-specific details: Aristeo's Atronach example; FMan's Tribe/Clan issue.

In general, I don't think that the Tamriel namespace should include any game-specific details, by which I mean information that is provided to tell you how to play the game. For example, names of quests, which spells to use to defeat a monster, formIDs, which merchants in a town provide services, etc. I would much rather have two pages on a subject (one in Tamriel, one under the game) than force everything to be included in a single Tamriel page.

I agree with FMan's point that you can't strictly rely on a "used in more than one game" rule to define what belongs in the Tamriel namespace. Obviously, anything new that has been introduced in Oblivion is only used one game. However, I do think that it's a useful guide when evaluating material in previous games. For Oblivion I tend to use this rule speculatively, as in, "is it likely that this will be mentioned in future games?" Another way to word this criterion is "is this a fact that you might care about when you're not playing the game?" (although I'm sure non-UESPers would argue that's a non-starter, because the only reason to care about any ES lore is because you play ES games).

One more random comment on this topic: I think it is completely appropriate for Tamriel pages to have embedded links to game pages. Take the Lore:Ashlands page for example. Especially as a geography page it is very appropriate for it to include the names of various places in the region. But that does not then mean that each of those places has to have its own Tamriel entry; Lore:Foyada Mamaea, for example, seems to me like a page that could exist in Morrowind alone, and the Tamriel:Ashlands page could link to the Morrowind entry. (Not that I want to start an argument here about Foyada Mamaea specifically; I'm just using it is a random example to demonstrate the point). I think links in Tamriel articles are one of the primary factors driving the creation of new Tamriel pages. New pages should not be created solely to satisfy a red link; if you don't have anything new to say on the topic, just change the link to point to an existing page.

Unfortunately, I don't have any good counterproposal for how to actually tackle the problem of deciding what belongs under Tamriel vs what belongs in the game namespaces. But I agree that this is something that needs to be worked out. --Nephele 13:10, 6 October 2006 (EDT)

Looks like we need a counter proposal. I would like to turn this conversation in a slightly different direction to determine what the Tamriel namespace and the gamespaces are meant for before we talk about what their criteria is.

Gamespaces

The gamespaces (which is a word I made up) are the sections of the site that deal with their respective game. Each gamespace should basically take their game and extract every little detail out of them as possible. If a subject can be found on the disk, it should be on the game's namespace.

Tamriel

The Tamriel section is for the lore of the Elder Scrolls series. According to dictionary.com, the definition of lore is:

"Accumulated facts, traditions, or beliefs about a particular subject."

The Tamriel section should be what Wikipedia would be if it was in Tamriel, if that makes sense. Everything in the Tamriel section should be subject to content criteria such as notability, verifiability, and NPOV.

Example #1 – Khajiit

Tamriel:Khajiit should talk about the lore of the khajiit, such as their background, where they came from originally, their home province, their beliefs, etc. Morrowind:Khajiit would focus on the attributes, skills bonuses, and powers of a khajiit, the fact that they cannot wear shoes in Morrowind, and how khajiit are common slaves in Morrowind. Other games that have khajiit would have an article about them in their gamespace.

Example #2 – Balmora

If there is any notable lore about Balmora that is worthy enough of having its own article, which I doubt, it should go in Tamriel:Balmora. If it is decided that there is not enough lore on Balmora for it to have its own article, it would help if the page was redirected to Morrowind:Balmora. Morrowind:Balmora could discuss the background of Balmora, how it's the seat of the Hlaalu council, some of the services it offers, and the lore of the town since the lore is not worthy of an article on Tamriel:Balmora.

Example #3 – Aleswell

In case you don't know, Aleswell is a small settlement on the Red Ring Road north of the Imperial City. There is an Oblivion quest in Aleswell, a couple houses, and a handful of residents. Aleswell has no lore about it that would be worth a page on the Tamriel namespace what-so-ever, and the information known about Aleswell would barely build up a good article on Oblivion:Aleswell.

Example #4 – Atronach

I don't know a single game in the Elder Scrolls series that does not have atronaches. Also, there is plenty of avaliable lore on atrnoaches, which would mean they would be given a page on the Tamriel section. This would mean that almost every gamespace would have their own page on the atronach, as well as the Tamriel section itself.

So in my opinion, an article should be created on the Tamriel namespace if the article's subject has sufficient game independent lore. An article should be created on one of the gamespaces if the game features the article's subject. It is possible that a subject could have a page only on the Tamriel namespace, on one or more of the gamespaces, or both. --Aristeo | Talk 14:49, 6 October 2006 (EDT)

I agree that Tamriel entries should try to be encyclopedic (Wikipedia rather than Wiktionary) in nature; or to put it differently permastubs should not be allowed in the Tamriel namespace. If you can only write two sentences about a subject, it does not warrant its own Tamriel page. In some cases, short content like that might belong on one of the Tamriel listings (i.e., dictionary, creatures, gods, etc); or just put it all on the gamespace page.

I'm not sure, though, that we're striving to "extract every little detail" about the individual games. To quote Lurlock from earlier on this page: "If you followed that logic, we'd have pages describing exactly how many plates are on Crassius Curio's dinner table, and an ordered catalog of each of the shelves at Jo'Basha's Books, etc." --Nephele 15:53, 6 October 2006 (EDT)

I know we're not trying to extract the most tiny of details, but pages should still go into detail in the gamespaces. Content that is included should pass the "Would this be helpful to our readers?" test. --Aristeo | Talk 16:01, 6 October 2006 (EDT)

One thing that might help would be to do a search on the page and see how many hits you get. This is the results of a search for the word "Balmora" with the Morrowind namespace excluded. You can see that the city is mentioned in several books, many of which can be found in other games besides Morrowind. The city certainly exists on maps prior to the release of Morrowind. (In some cases its translated name "Stone Wood" is used instead.) I will certainly agree that Tamriel:Aleswell does not need to exist. But major cities like Balmora still should, in my opinion. (Oh, for the record, Arena, Battlespire, and Redguard did not have Atronachs, though Golems and XXX Daedras were pretty much the same thing.) --TheRealLurlock 17:26, 6 October 2006 (EDT)

I agree with Lurlock in that major citties like Balmora, Ald'ruhn, Vivec, etc., should be included in Tamriel. Especially those with strong links to factions, like the Great Houses or the Imperial Legion. For the case of Balmora, you would discuss the background of Balmora, how it's the seat of the Hlaalu council, and the lore of the town in Tamriel, and services it offers and related quests in Morrowind.

Another possible way of looking at the Tamriel:Places pages could be as an Atlas of Tamriel, listing all cities, towns, regions and landmarks of the continent. This is more or less as it is now. --DrPhoton 08:02, 7 October 2006 (EDT)

I don't think the Tamriel:Places pages should be an atlas listing ALL places in any game. The Oblivion:Places page has something like 300 entries, and there are alot of entries on there that even alot people playing Oblivion aren't particularly interested in (i.e., the list of campsites). I don't think it is appropriate to copy that complete list over to Tamriel; the useful information would just get lost in the middle of a list of 100 places named "Fort X". Not to mention that the pages would become insanely long if we kept to the current format where each place has a brief description. I think the Tamriel:Places page should be limited to places that are important enough to show up on large-scale maps of each area, such as the Cyrodiil map at Lore:Cyrodiil. --Nephele 12:46, 7 October 2006 (EDT)

The atlas was just a thought, and I agree that at some point you have to draw the line. A very good starting point are indeed the official provinces maps which you mention, and other towns of historical or political importance can be added to that selection. --DrPhoton 03:19, 9 October 2006 (EDT)