User talk:Aristeo/2006-08

Request for Aid

Seeing as you are an administrator, I would like to request your input on a few inquiries of my own. I understand the depth of commitment such a position entails, and thus, am in no rush to recieve a reply, but am merely entreating you to drop by and answer those questions which you might on my user page. In gratitude for your time... — Unsigned comment by Booyah boy (talk • contribs)

I just read your user page, and I'll be able to reply around 3PM when I'm less busy. Welcome to the wiki, btw :) --Aristeo 11:26, 8 August 2006 (EDT)

Thank you for the kind welcome, I appreciate that. I am afraid I must log-off for the moment, but shall return later to read your comments, for which I also thank you.

Again, with gratitude...

Oblivion's horses

Hi, just thought I'd drop a quick note regarding this comment on the Oblivion's horse info page:

Note: The horse itself reports nothing, and if you are out in the wilderness, you can beat it repeatedly without bounty, although your conscience will flog you in return thereafter. Beating a horse within sight of NPCs, however, can land a bounty on your head. I suppose PETA must have a legislative lobby in Cyrodiil.

Just so you know, in the mid-1800's a man witnessed a work horse beaten to death by his owner in the middle of a street after the animal collapsed from exhaustion, starvation, prolonged mistreatment, and general neglect. Such acts were a fairly common occurance during the time period, but the horror of actually witnessing the act prompted the man to form the ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals), the very first animal protection agency of it's kind in the USA.

I know not all people think as highly of animals as others, but there is a human side to this tale: about 20 years later, a woman discovered a little girl (younger than 10, if memory serves right), whipped every day by her own parents, chained into her bedroom in complete darkness all day long, malnourished, and repeatedly cut with knives. At the time, no child abuse laws existed in the USA to protect this girl, so said woman appealed to... the ASPCA, who filed in court to win custody of the child under the argument that the girl was a member of the animal kingdom, therefore giving the ASPCA the right to sue on her behalf. ASPCA won the case, the girl was removed from the home, and the first ever child protection laws were created in this country, 1873. However, government-run child protection agencies were not realized until the 1930's... so for approximately 50 years, child protection remained under the blanket of animal welfare.

All of that from one man watching a horse beaten to death because it could no longer perform. Just something to think about... — Unsigned comment by Nordic ay (talk • contribs)

Yes, that is a very sad story, but I'm glad that story has a happy ending. In many ways we have improved over the years, and I'm glad to see that we have laws and agencies to prevent the abuse of animals and children. Also, I hope you don't mind that I removed that comment from that page. --Aristeo 09:34, 3 August 2006 (EDT)

Re: my edits.

I appologize for the Sandbox one, I was tired and was just checking it out. Forgot to reverse my edit later. As for the other edit, I don't see how that wouldn't benefit anyone. I waited, 1 hour at a time, for 5 days for the countess to show up, but she didn't. I was merely helping people that are in the same situation as I was.

Perhaps if you would care to elaborate and enlighten me as to how what I did was wrong (not the Sandbox thing, I admit that :D)

NEW REPLY: Logo Concepts

As promised, I am submitting the first two logo concepts I found time to bang out (I apologize as they were rather...rushed). I would be happy to modify any portion of either, or design something utterly different (as you can see each is based on the same image; I am, in fact, in the process of designing unique concepts at this very moment). Feedback would be appreciated. In gratitude for your time... -- Booyah boy 14:08, 10 August 2006 (EDT)
Concept I
Concept II

Wow! Those two pictures look great! Of the two, I like the first one the best. I have a couple recommendations for that first picture:

• Make the word "Pages" a little larger, maybe as big as the words "The Unofficial".
• Make the watermark in the center more noticeable.
• Try adding some shading on the text; that might look good

Like I said, it looks great! Apologies for my hasty reply, as I'm a tad rushed at the moment. --Aristeo 15:03, 10 August 2006 (EDT)

Rushed, aye? I can understand that. I amended the first as per your instructions. Kindly tell me what you think...

Revised, Dark Edition

Revised, Light Edition

Oh, and thank you for the compliment. -- Booyah boy 15:41, 10 August 2006 (EDT)

I showed those two pictures to some people on IRC, and they liked the darker picture the best. They gave the following advice:

• There should be a little shading on the curled bits of the paper
• The center watermark should be a little bigger and more noticeable
• The smaller text might be clearer by "reducing the width of the stroke outline around the letters"
• "You could make the image large scale and let the computer do the calculations to shrink it. (Like 1000x1000 500ppi or something.) Then when you shrink it to web size, its nice and crisp."

The quoted parts were direct quotations from what the people on IRC said. They also said that the images are looking great, which I definatly agree with! Thanks again for doing this! --Aristeo 16:57, 10 August 2006 (EDT)

It's my pleasure, Aristeo. I'll get right on it, and see if I can't modify the images once more. Insofar as the stroke on the text goes, well, there is really little I can do about that (it's already set at one...I'll try reducing the opacity); making the watermark large is easy enough, and increasing it's fill is a matter of a moments time (I'll even create one with a new watermark, just to see if it appears any better); shading the curled bits of paper will take some time, as my original illustration will need to be modified to do so...which leads to the last bit of advice, that regarding the creation of a large-scale image...frankly, I cannot do that without a few days work. You see, I drew the parchment itself at the very size you see it (having created such solely for use with this logo), thus, I'll need some time to redraw and texture a larger image. I'll see how it looks after I take the other advice in hand, and create a larger one if necessary. -- Booyah boy 06:26, 11 August 2006 (EDT)

I can't wait until I see what it looks like. I bet it's going to look awesome :) --Aristeo 19:12, 12 August 2006 (EDT)

Thank you, Aristeo, I appreciate your faith. On that note, my apologies for the delay, I am afraid I was taken somewhat ill over the last two days, and thus, have been unable to work on the logo as often as I would like. With luck, I shall have the refined (as according to the notes last left me) small-image available by the evening of the fourteenth, and new concepts by the fifteenth.

Until then, I would appreciate your aid in other projects, most notably in answering some new inquires and/or referring others who might do so to them. You will find the questions listed under the "article" heading on my talk page. Thanks! -- Booyah boy 08:42, 14 August 2006 (EDT)

Here you are, the promised revised edition for this evening:

Latest Verison

As you can see, it is somewhat more "crisp" having been shrunk down from a 500x500 pixel version (which was rather grainy, as I attempted to retain the exact same proportions of the former parchment, as well as the same texturing and shading, which meant that certain things could not be done to enhance the clarity of the image), the center watermark was made significantly larger, the shading slightly darker (as well as added under the top curl), although, the "pages" text appears to have been obscured somewhat, despite my having reduced the opacity on the stroke, and removed the bevelling. Odd.

Well, tell me what you think, and if any further corrections should be done (which, undoubtedly, they should). I'll have some new concepts ready by this evening, and posted herein. Thank you. -- Booyah boy 06:43, 15 August 2006 (EDT)

Looks great! I'll make sure Daveh sees the most recent picture once he logs back into IRC. --Aristeo 16:33, 15 August 2006 (EDT)

Sounds good. I have another concept for you...sort of. I am still attempting to come up with an appropriate background setting for such (having abandoned placing it on a scroll as well, and currently working with a landscape vista), however, I thought I would give you a sneak peek at what I have thus far. Enjoy...

Concept II

-- Booyah boy 11:17, 17 August 2006 (EDT)

The logo on the main page has been with the site for a long time, so I doubt that should be replaced. --Aristeo 11:32, 17 August 2006 (EDT)

Fair enough, I understand the need to allow it to remain, if only for nostalgic purposes...not to count, if it's been there awhile, it is most likely somewhat iconically synonymous with the site.

I have some more small logos forthcoming (each awaiting the moment at which I can decide upon which font to use) within the next two days.

Apart from that, has Daveh had a chance to see the latest concept logo? Should I submit these on his page as well?

Yes, I showed the top-left corner proposal to him in IRC, and he said that he liked it. I'll talk to him about setting it up later when he logs back in. --Aristeo 13:39, 17 August 2006 (EDT)

I went ahead and created an image to the same proportion as that which is currently being used (that is, with a width of 135 pixels). It turns out, it was best that I do so, unless you guys wanted to use a larger image, as manually shrinking one of those I gave you greatly reduces the clarity of the text. So, after some fiddling with font-size and spacing, I was able to come up with an image of 135 pixels in width, 134 in height, and with the proper backing: Small Logo

-- Booyah boy 23:07, 18 August 2006 (EDT)

Article: Septim Dynasty

...I would like to inquire as to the foundation for an article on the Septim Dynasty (or Third Empire, or whatnot). I have been working on a chart of the Septim lineage - primarily tracing the Imperial bloodline - in anticipation of such, however, the chart being (mainly) self-explanatory, the article would be quite...slim, in it's initial state. Thus, again, I ask if it would be appropriate for me to create one? The chart (in it's current form, as it is a work-in-progress with aid from some of the good folk at the Imperial Library) may be viewed here: Septim Lineage Chart

The above is the stylized version, as a "flat" copy is also being made.
-- Booyah boy 08:42, 17 August 2006 (EDT)

Sure, I can be your mentor. And the Septim chart looks nice too; I have no problem with uploading it to the site. Giving it it's own article seems a little redundant, but perhaps you could link to where the image is on some of the Septim articles. --Aristeo 10:49, 17 August 2006 (EDT)

Fair enough. I'll scout out some appropriate articles and append the link.

Oh, and thanks for acting as my mentor, I appreciate it. -- Booyah boy 11:17, 17 August 2006 (EDT)

I could not find any articles in which the image would have a great impact (the most appropriate to a chart like itself being the timeline of the Third Era, however, it would skew the entire page were it inserted...not to count, it hardly tracks the entire span of time), and thus, uploaded such and left it for any editor who finds an appropriate location for it to freely use such. Moreso, the administrators over at The Imperial Library kindly agreed to host such, thus, it will at least be made available there, if no place for it at the UESP is ever found. -- Booyah boy 19:57, 17 August 2006 (EDT)

I asked Nephele about it, and she said to put it under somewhere like Tamriel:Septim Dynasty, and link to it on some of the historic pages. --Aristeo 10:57, 18 August 2006 (EDT)

Alright, it's now linked in the article. -- Booyah boy

Morrowind/Bloodmoon, annoying thing.

I can ask a question here right? If not then sorry...

While playing Morrowind, sometimes my map, spells, or inventory will go all glitchy and they will be distorted and all different colors. But recently it's gotten worse; after I finished the main quest, I went to do the main quest in the Bloodmoon expansion. After about 1 - 2 hours it started snowing. Now, it's done that several times before, but this time, it looked like each snowflake was crossed out by several thick black lines. I couldn't see much, so I saved and quit, then loaded my save game again. Now, it is similar to what I told you before, along with the black lines on the snow/blizzards, it also distorts your inventory, map, and your spells are all glitchy and funny colors. After restarting my computer, I reloaded another save game and it was fine, for about 45 minutes... Same thing started all over again. Sometimes it snows or there is a blizzard and it's fine, then when I walk into a house, or it loads into another area, the second it's done, there are the black lines again. It's been getting worse and worse and I don't know what to do about it. Could you help me? Like email me or something like that?

Thanks in advance if you respond,

Mr. Mage (Mikhailsmith@hotmail.com)

I've never seen anything like that before. I recommend that you visit the Official Forums, and ask their technical support group what you asked me. Good luck :) --Aristeo 05:01, 3 August 2006 (EDT)

Glitches Page

Hmmm, it just took me three full hours to deal with one comment from the glitches page (added to Spell Making)... at this rate, it might take a LONG time to clean up the glitches page. OK, in reality, I intentionally chose a comment that required a fair bit of research (I'd always wondered exactly how those spell level requirements are done). I'll try to followup on some more later, but for now I'm going back to tweaking the magical effects pages (before I lose all the notes I collected!) --Nephele 00:21, 10 August 2006 (EDT)

Sigilum Sanguis

Please remind me why the Sigilum Sanguis page shouldn't be deleted as an unused redirect which isn't in a namespace? Or just delete it. Thanks --Actreal 08:25, 15 August 2006 (EDT)

It was marked for deletion, but I felt it would be better off as a redirect. That way, instead of having to type out "Oblivion:Sigillum Sanguis", they can just type in "Sigilum Sanguis". Redirects for deletion have been an arena for debate between mainly Nephele, Garrett, and I, so I can't exactly give you a straight answer on what we should do with that article. For now, since it's not hurting anything and since it's been used approximately 100 times, we probably should just leave it. --Aristeo 16:46, 15 August 2006 (EDT)

What the heck, I'll go ahead and delete it. It can always be undeleted.. --Aristeo 17:14, 15 August 2006 (EDT)

To me, Sigilum Sanguis seems like a fairly obscure topic that doesn't really merit a high-level redirect. If someone can actually get the spelling correct, they can probably figure out that's in the Oblivion namespace, too. So I think deletion was appropriate. And Aristeo, yes, I noticed your hint about that last to-be-deleted page... for a few minutes at least the category is nice and empty. --Nephele 17:48, 15 August 2006 (EDT)

Morrowind Books

[Moved discussion to the admin noticeboard]

Just discovered that most of the Morrowind books are duplicated in both the Morrowind: and Tamriel:Books/ namespaces. Now, I'm not going to go adding Delete tags to every single one of them, but if you or one of the other admins could take a look at this and get rid of all the redundancy it would help out. I have already changed the links on the Morrowind:Books and Morrowind:Faction Books pages, not sure how many more of them there are. But as many of these pages as there are, I think it would probably be good to get rid of them, as that's a pretty large quantity of unnecessary duplication. --TheRealLurlock 00:18, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

1) It might be worth to compare the Tamriel and the Morrowind books together to see which is worth keeping and which is worth deleting. 2) I'm going to sleep after this edit, so Nephele is probably going to be the deletionist.--Aristeo 00:32, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

Yeah, I was going to suggest Nephele, but then I remembered she doesn't have Morrowind, so she can't look this stuff up as easily. And the other admins haven't been really active lately. Anyhow, if there's any way I can help, let me know. --TheRealLurlock 09:35, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

Actually, it probably would be useful if you went through the duplicated books, and put a delete tag on whichever copy you think needs deleting. That would definitely make it easier for me to find them (and, by the way, I do now own Morrowind... I just haven't done much other than install it so far). Depending on how extensive the edit histories are, I might be inclined to do some delete/restores that allow the two pages to be merged, instead of actually deleting the pages. (Gives me an excuse to try out some of those fancy admin features I've read about!) But I can judge that better once I see which books are on the list. --Nephele 12:41, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

oooOOOooo... A merge :D That's exactly what the pages need! We really don't have a very good way to propose merges, (or deletions for that matter, but that's another story) so I still recommend marking the articles for deletion with the delete tag. Nephele, just be careful with the merges, because they're a pain to undo if something is messed up. --Aristeo 12:58, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

I doubt the page histories will be much of an issue in this case, because we're talking about the books, which are pretty much the text copied verbatim from the game, no interpretation or added content by the editors, nothing controversial or potentially incorrect about them, so there's not likely to be more than an edit or two per page, and most of them will be minor typo and formatting corrections, nothing important worth archiving. (Also, it's been my practice when seeing typos in the text of a book to leave them in as written. If the typo appears in-game, it may be intentional, so it's not for us to correct it.) I may go through and find all the Morrowind books to label them for deletion/merging, but you should now be able to find most of them just by looking at the Orphaned Pages list, since I changed the two main pages that linked to them. (Some may be individually linked from various other pages, so that may be harder to track down.) --TheRealLurlock 17:48, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

Okay, you should be able to find them on Orphaned Pages, but you can't. Or at least, I already marked the only 2 you can find. Anybody else have a clue where they may be linked from? --17:56, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

I've taken care of the ones that had been marked for deletion. I opted to give preference to whichever version had been created first, and deleted the more recently-created page. In other words, I didn't always delete the specific page that had been tagged, but the final result should match what you wanted.--Nephele 19:22, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

On the topic of books, might I inquire why there exist article pages for both the book's contents and a description article as well...it seems rather superfluous to me. After all, take the following:

Tamriel:Children of the Sky: The book.

Tamriel:Children of the Sky/Description: The description; which reads "Description of the Nords.".

See my point?

Might I suggest - if it is not against the better interests of the site - that these "Description" pages be appended to the "Book-Content" page. Simply adding such under the heading of "Description" at the top or bottom of the page, then listing a brief analysis of the contents, would surely be more appropriate to the circumstances than this...

Oh, and ere anyone says "because we need it for this chart, I'd ask: why? Surely a new table can be designed that does not require such redundant topics. -- Booyah boy 14:23, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

If the /Desc pages are being used in multiple places, then it's no longer redundant; instead it allows various links in different places to be consistent, and makes it easier for editors to set up links to the books. At the moment, the /Desc pages are being on all the Tamriel:Books pages, and also on the Oblivion:Books page. Admittedly, though, it's not being implemented all that well at the moment. The Morrowind:Books page isn't using the descriptions; this probably needs to be fixed at some point. So many of the /Desc pages are missing that pages like Oblivion:Books end up filled with ugly red links. Finally, the naming is somewhat inconsistent: non-book pages use /Description instead of /Desc for the subpages (e.g., on Oblivion:Places... hopefully this inconsistency isn't completely my fault). But I think these problems will slowly get resolved, and so it's better to work on improving the system than scrapping it altogether. --Nephele 14:45, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

I agree whole-heartedly with you, Nephele, and apologize, for obviously my comments were poorly phrased...in short, I am not advocating that the pages be "scrapped", rather, that they be implemented more appropriately.

My primary reason for bringing this forward is thus: due to the sheer number of book-description pages, they appear quite often when clicking the "Random page" link; apart from containing little content (due to their nature), they would - most likely - act as something of a deterrent to future purusal of the wiki by outside parties. Might there be some means by which you - the administrators - can limit the access to these pages, or, at least, prohibit them from appearing when hitting the "Random page" link? -- Booyah boy 15:10, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

Good point. I don't use Random page too often, so I hadn't thought about that before. But probably the Random page should be set up to not use any subpages like these, and perhaps also get it to skip stubs and any page less than some meaningful length. The only problem is that this requires even higher-level access than admins have... Daveh is the only one who can implement any changes. I'll add a suggestion to his talk page, but since he's already got a sizeable to-do list, there are no guarantees he'll be able to get to it soon. --Nephele 15:05, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

The random page feature was made so that people might find themselves on a stub that doesn't have much attention, and could increase upon it. It's not really a serious feature, it's just a "for fun" kind of thing that some editors might like to use to find a page or group of pages that they would have otherwise not have heard of. --Aristeo 17:53, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

That sounds great, Nepehele. Thank you for resolving this issue on my behalf. Hopefully Daveh will find the time to get to it sometime soon...for now, I'll leave this topic alone, lest something remains to be said on it's original premise (Morrowind books, that is). -- Booyah boy 15:10, 16 August 2006 (EDT)

Oblivion Map

Heya Aristeo, this is TheSpectator from OblivioWiki. I was just perusing through UESP's new searchable Oblivion map and I think it's great. Nice job to all who contributed (and still are contributing) to it. Would you mind if we externally linked to it on our Maps page? TheSpectator 17:19, 17 August 2006 (EDT)

Hey, it's probably more Daveh's call, since he created most of the map and owns the site. I'll talk to him about it when he logs into IRC, or you can ask him yourself on his talk page. --Aristeo 17:36, 17 August 2006 (EDT)

Alright. I'm headin' to your IRC now as I want to discuss the whole license/copyright issue as well. TheSpectator 18:57, 17 August 2006 (EDT)

Still haven't seen Daveh pop up in there for a while now. :/ --Aristeo 22:32, 19 August 2006 (EDT)

He just popped in if you want to say hi to him --Aristeo 16:29, 20 August 2006 (EDT)

Pirates

The discussion page for the Thieve's Den official plug-in has talk of downloading mods from Torrent. I didn't know how well you put up with this kind of thing, but it should be easy to tell know posted the comments from the history.

Sorry I didn’t add a direct link, it wouldn’t copy and paste.

Thanks for point this out. I just deleted and protected the page for now, and I'll deal with the two mischief makers momentarily. --Aristeo 21:43, 18 August 2006 (EDT)

Copying

I think were not aloud to copy and paste but, the whole Dagoth Ur page was copied from the real Wikipedia Dagoth Ur Page, But If Im wrong then sorry for bothering you --Delrok 17:08, 21 August 2006 (EDT)

It wasn't me this time! :D --Ys 17:16, 21 August 2006 (EDT)

I know--Delrok 17:18, 21 August 2006 (EDT)

Thanks, it all should be taken care of :) --Aristeo 17:46, 21 August 2006 (EDT)

User reviews

I was wondering, could I add a user reviews section?––Ys 21:58, 21 August 2006 (EDT)

There already is one at Oblivion:Review_Page --Nephele 22:05, 21 August 2006 (EDT)

There should be one for morrowind--Delrok 09:36, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

Then feel free to make one. :) --Aristeo 09:42, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

Okay should I include bloodmoon and tribunal in with the morrowind review or make seperate reviews?--Delrok 10:20, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

My opinion is to merge them all together, but you may want to get a couple different opinions. --Aristeo 10:45, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

sure--Delrok 10:56, 23 August 2006 (EDT)

To be frank, I do not support the addition of "user reviews" to the site (as, in greater part, reviews contain first-person commentary and are based on opinions, thus having no place in an encyclopedic setting), however, that much aside, I too would suggest that Morrowind, Tribunal, and Bloodmoon reivews all be merged into a single article. -- Booyah boy 18:51, 26 August 2006 (EDT)

I don't have a strong dislike for it, because it's well our of the way. As I said on the review page's talk page, it would make a better forum thread. It's mainly for the benefit of the editors here, not for the readers, but I don't see any cons about the page.

Indeed, it is a rather obscure and rarely visited portion of the site (at least, in light of the page-hits other articles recieve), however, as you said "it would make a better forum thread." Understand, it is not that I see the inclusion of reviews on this site as a "con" (necessarily), rather, that said inclusion (in my eyes) engenders an atmosphere of the usual "gaming site" (read: GameSpot, GameFAQs, etcetera), lending itself poorly to an encyclopedia of the Elder Scrolls universe...in short, it seems...improper.

-- Booyah boy 20:04, 26 August 2006 (EDT)

Another for your Cookie Jar

Cookie from Booyah Boy, moved to Cookie Jar

Thanks for the cookie, and for the kind words you offered with it. :) --Aristeo 19:08, 26 August 2006 (EDT)

You are quite welcome... -- Booyah boy 20:04, 26 August 2006 (EDT)