Board Thread:Community Announcements and Events/@comment-25356303-20171009043200/@comment-25356303-20171011233057

Blademaster Jauffre wrote: So this is really a very minor thing, but for example: We are 99% certain that Stendarr's Hammer will have creation club edition thanks to leaks in the files. So, is mentioning that Stendarr's Hammer also appears in "Skyrim" fit for removal if it were to be added? Or should it not be mentioned on the original page at all? Also, what caused the change in policy? The idea is that it would only be mentioned on the main Creation Club page, not anywhere else on the wiki. I recall that we decided on this approach some time ago (June?), soon after the platform was announced, so it's not exactly a change in policy, simply a restatement of a previous, less formal decision.

Regardless, the thought process is that fully documenting Creation Club mods would be too much of a strain on our already limited editor base (time-wise and money-wise). And of course, while Bethesda can disguise Creation Club add-ons as "DLC" if they like, the fact of the matter is that they are still mods; the CC Stendar's Hammer (if it's real) is not canonical in the sense that the actual Stendarr's Hammer is. We have to draw the line somewhere, and this is a pretty reasonable point at which to do so.

I agree with this, but only partially. As someone who has been adding dialogue for the last couple of weeks? Months? I agree that character articles with dialogue should not have a personality part, as it can be read through the dialogue. On the other hand, those without dialogue should stay, for the time being, as there should at least be an indication of how the person's like. I don't think it's a must have. Granted, I wasn't present at the Moot, and it's been decided now. It's not that clear-cut. It would be unthinkable to scrap the background information on Ulfric Stormcloak's article, for example, simply because the dialogue is also recorded on the there; readers need a good summary of this content. Plus, other in-game characters have a lot to say about the guy, which must be recorded in sections describing his personality and beliefs.

Dialogue is really documented as a way for the most enthusiastic readers to look closely at the lore. We are an encyclopedia, and have an obligation to paraphrase this information in a more digestible fashion for general purposes. Therefore, the personality section must remain on the articles in some form, but for the less relevant characters such information can be summarized in a line or two and placed in the lead. It should not be removed completely.

This decision was more aimed toward preventing editors from inserting their own unsourced beliefs about characters' into articles. For example, I'm sure you've occasionally come across a character article which takes a rather opinionated approach toward summarizing dialogue; this practice should be eliminated in favor of a more fact-based analysis using dialogue and other legitimate resources as proof.

Another thing I rather dislike, as someone who owns the paper edition of the book, it's a real bother to have to go back page after page until you find the chapter it belongs to, and it entirely gets you out of the reading mood. I haven't added a lot of Infernal City or Lord of Souls content, but was planning on re-reading the Novels again sometime soon to add information. Since only very few people actually own the novels, and I know from experience that having to find a chapter when reading a book is a pain in the behind, progress would be rather slow on the Infernal City and Lord of Souls pages, if it wasn't for AoK it might not have gotten any further than it did the majority of the time here. I understand that, but due to differences in the various formats of the books, cited pages from one edition do not necessarily correspond to the same page number in a different edition. This means that anyone trying to find a statement originating from one of the novels is going to have a nearly impossible time discerning specifically where it came from, if they do not have the same edition as the user who originally added that reference. I think a bit of page-flipping is a small price to pay for more reliable citations.