UESPWiki:Archive/CP Ramblings:Tes3 Modding and the OblivioWiki

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Ramblings: TES3 modding and the OblivoWiki

So, first of all the OblivoWiki. Is that a horribly bad idea or what? Since they're under a NC license, they can't use UESP content... did they fork from here, are they not aware of the UESP, or what? Then again, is keeping them away from here a Good Thing? Hrm...

Secondly, TES3 modding. TES4 has the whole "Elder Scrolls Construction Set Wiki" thing happening, but TES3 has pretty much... well, the UESP and that's it. There's a little bit of technical info on NIFs at the NifTools wiki; if, suppose, I wanted to put some technical info on modelling for Morrowind, where should I put it? Here or the NifTools wiki?

Thanks, Alphax 09:49, 27 March 2008 (EDT)

I'm really not sure whether or not OblivioWiki knew about us when they started, but they certainly know about us now :). We've had a few conversations with them in the past, and found them to be reasonable people. There's actually several sites that compete for our audience, ranging from well established multi-game sites like GameFAQs to much smaller start ups like The Elder Scrolls Wiki. It is just that we're probably the best in organization and amount of content.

As for putting in more information about TES3 modding, we'd love to have more here. We love to expand into areas of the Elder Scrolls world, especially when there's a lack of information, which is definitely true about Morrowind Modding. --Ratwar 11:53, 27 March 2008 (EDT)

Right, I had no idea what the situation was :) It'd probably be a good idea if Morrowind Mod:Tes3Mod didn't redirect to Morrowind:Morrowind - perhaps make it a portal of some sort, so that the extent of content can be measured (and give incentive for adding more)? Alphax 10:09, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

Good point. That redirect has been updated to point to a more appropriate page, namely Morrowind Mod:Main Page. --Nephele^Talk 11:38, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

Bit of history. In spring 2005, several people started looking at doing a wiki for Morrowind mods and modding info. I posted on the forums about the possibility, and Dave H responded that he was about to wikify uesp, so I joined with that effort and ported some of my notes from my personal site over. And of course, some people worked like crazy porting the old uesp to wiki. Incidentally, we weren't the only site. Thelys(?) also put up a wiki (focussed on mods, it died later).

Anyway, we have a fair chunk of info from the old site (a lot of function stuff originally developed by Dave). Also we have a fair amount of new material (a fair chunk by me). However, at that time the existing standards (Bible, and MW Scripting for dummies, plus a bunch of other scatter resources) were ensconsed in various sites, and authors were missing and/or reluctant to move their info to a wiki. (Many authors don't like the loss of obvious authorship.) There have been concerns about loss of tutorial info as various sites have gone down, and some of it has been archived in whole at places like Mythic Mods. During one of those instances, I suggested moving/copying material here, but again nothing much came of it.

So, in short, yes good idea to move stuff here and/or expand it. But if copying, original author's permission must be obtained. And adding new stuff is a lot of work. It is doable, but it's not trivial. (I just spent a chunk of time updating just part of the Tes4Mod section, and it was pretty time consuming.) --Wrye 20:01, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

Hrm. There's pretty much nothing on modelling (the NifTools Wiki seems to be the place), or example scripts/script extenders (Fliggerty's Morrowind Scripting Wiki). Alphax 12:06, 29 March 2008 (EDT)

Another thing to mention is that the TES4Mod namespace is intentionally being kept small, as we've made agreements with the Elder Scrolls Construction Set wiki to avoid duplicating too much content or diluting the editor pool by splitting the community onto two sites. Any detailed content on modding for Oblivion should be covered on the CS wiki, not here. No such arrangement exists with the Morrowind modding. So UESP's TES3Mod namespace is in far more need of a little love given that it's about the only site of its kind out there. (Barring things like the single-author guides Wrye mentioned). --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 12:35, 29 March 2008 (EDT)

Unfortunately, this discussion has apparently resulted in at least one UESP editor concluding that vandalizing other ES-related wikis is somehow justified, and, even worse, that it is appropriate in that vandalism to insult members of those communities for choosing to contribute somewhere other than UESP.

Therefore, I feel that is necessary to emphasize a few points. For those of you who feel (like me) that some of these points should be self-evident, I apologize for the lecture.

• Vandalism is never acceptable. On any site, for any reason.
• Other Elder Scrolls-related wikis and websites can coexist (and always have coexisted) with UESP. Just because those sites are different does not make them "bad ideas."
• Everyone is free to contribute to any and all wikis, according to their own personal preferences. Insulting people, or in any discriminating way against people, for those personal preferences is inappropriate.
• Vandalism in the name of UESP does nothing to help our site and ultimately only hurts it, by creating a negative impression of UESP and its editors.

Thanks to everyone who has been willing to help by contributing constructively to the site. Hopefully we can all get back to working together as a community and focussing on making UESP a site of which we can all be proud. --Nephele^Talk 12:53, 11 April 2008 (EDT)