User:Darklocq/OR notes

Some trimmed notes from User:Atvelonis on original research, attribution, sourcing (via Discord; saved with permission):

That would be in our attribution policy TES:Attribution. The shortcut being TES:OR.

Er actually that only has some of it. It's what discusses our original research policy specifically, though we don't describe our system of sourcing in much detail. That's on the sourcing page TES:Sourcing.

I've been meaning to reorganize some of this stuff, but it's pretty extensive.

We don't go into that much detail about exactly how we "weight" different sources. Our system of source analysis is less arbitrary [than some other wikis'] if I'm to be candid.

Our system is more or less this:
 * 1) If a piece of information is from a work that is copyrighted by a ZeniMax Media company, then we consider it "licensed" and therefore "reliable" (not necessarily "true," but at least worth writing down)
 * 2) If a piece of information is from a work not copyrighted by a ZeniMax Media company, then we consider it "unlicensed" [UL] and therefore "maybe reliable" (e.g. some dev comments might be reliable UL, pure fanon is not)

Which might not seem very different from [an] "official/unofficial" system, but it is rooted in something tangible instead of ... opinions of which texts they want people to read.

Our system is still founded on a couple of opinions, namely what exactly constitutes an unlicensed piece of content that we do document versus one that we don't. That is something that we've decided is not really possible to codify, we just have to discuss it on a case-by-case basis. The conclusion we've reached is more or less that if anyone who has ever worked for a ZeniMax Media company says something about TES while they are no longer employed, it is considered unlicensed material that we do document. This is actually fairly straightforward. There are still a couple of edge cases, like Sotha Sil's Last Words or On Boethiah's Summoning Day (I think we might have deleted that last one), which we are pretty sure are from some dev or former dev, but we aren't technically certain. Such pieces are subjective and determined to be "okay to record" based mostly on the opinions of the very-smart-lore-people in the community, like Aramithius or for a long time Dovahsebrom.

So, most of the time, you can take a piece of content about TES and group it in one of these ways. If content is unlicensed then we just mark it as such with a reference tag:  and separate it from the licensed material in the   section.

We don't document general fanfiction and only document the Creation Club and other such things in a limited fashion. A work like C0DA is considered "unlicensed" but not "fanon" ... it is not realistic or valuable to readers to document absolutely everything, so for practical purposes we have stuck with the least subjective system that we could come up with.

Something to note about the way we treat UL material that is different from [some wikis] is that we do not make any value statements on the veracity of the content present in it. You'll notice on some advanced lore articles (e.g. Shezarrine, Enantiomorph, etc.) that UL material is cited alongside licensed material as though it were itself licensed. We have settled on the belief that our opinions about what is true should be held separate from our opinions on what is reliable or valuable to discuss in the context given. So we signify to readers that unlicensed content is indeed unlicensed, but try not to hide it away at the bottom of a page, and do not replace UL content with contradictory licensed content if the latter becomes available at a later date. Instead, we hold it all as "alternate perspectives" to allow for a fuller understanding of the topic on the part of the reader. It's more up to them to decide that they like or don't like UL content. I think that the way that [some wikis handle] content is inherently somewhat reductive toward [what we call UL], which is not an invalid opinion to have, but as the "guardians" of the common knowledge (so to speak) I think it's not really our purview to tell people what to think quite so heavily.

In the context of the PC journal ... That would certainly be considered licensed but the specifics of how it's referenced might be a little more nuanced.

I would have only guessed about 10% of that correctly, based on what most other fiction-focused wikis are doing (other than, to some extent, those for Battlestar Galactica, Star Wars, and Star Trek, where they are already dealing with multiple and oft-conflicting continuities of a more-or-less official nature plus piles of semi-official "licensed" to completely fanon but popular material).

I find it a refreshing approach (most game wikis lean "canon or else!"), and it better serves TES player interests, since most of us are mod users, and modders will run with whatever ideas – utterly canonical to pretty darned fanonical – that fit what they want to do. Some of these mods end up being "standard" in most people's builds, such as via STEP Project). And not just in Skyrim; e.g. many Morrowind (and now OpenMW) players refuse to play the game without Julan, Ashlander Companion.