GECK:Community Portal/Policy
Copyright
What're the rules on putting stuff here from the GECK/Fallout3? Clearly, screenshots are OK, as are lists of names.
But what about scripts? It'd be *awesome* to have the ability to see, for each function/condition/etc, a list of all scripts and other objects that use it, and then look at the scripts online, with each keyword in them linked to the relevant article.
If that's allowed, it's not something that could reasonably be done manually, so I'd be interested in trying to write a script to do it, though I'd need to understand wiki templates first, I think, and there'd need to be templates for functions, variables, conditions, forms, references, nifs, etc, and a standard page-naming scheme, and even then I'd have to run it on my test wiki to make sure it worked, first :) Hrm. Need a way to dump things like scripts and quests to text, though: has that been done anywhere?
I'm thinking of creating a simple data structure listing every ref/form ID and resource filename in the program, its type, and all its links to every other one, then using that to generate the pages.
If it's not allowed, I'll just go through as I have been, and just manually add a list of the scripts that use each function onto each page, though people will have to look them up in the GECK, as they do with the TES CS wiki.
- Considering that those scripts do nothing without the game, I doubt they'd mind. Maybe a special template for the sake of indicating what they are and giving copyright notices. Anyway, the real thing is that frankly, a list of what scripts use a function is just not that useful. We had lists like that for several Oblivion functions, and they were just cumbersome, bloated, and never, ever used. You can get that information pretty easily by using Find Text... in the Edit menu, if you need it.
- I don't feel very strongly about the issue, but I am against it. More importantly, it would be an absolutely ridiculous amount of work; that would certainly not be worthwhile.
- DragoonWraith · talk · 07:58, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
- I massively underestimated "Find text". I'd assumed it only searched text fields and, from posts like this: http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Talk:GetUsedItemActivate I'd assumed that it couldn't find, say, conditions. I was so wrong! You can even search for FormIDs and RefIDs! Wow, I think I'm in love with a menu option.
- A better method than selective scripts might be a universal mod for all text editors that provides context sensitive help for GECK keywords: the context-linking in any app is easy enough, but a prerequisite for it is getting a dump of all keywords (formnames, refnames, functions, conditions, etc), which is something for which I have no clue. Programming projects are wildly offtopic for policy page, so suggestions to my talk page please! DewiMorgan 14:38, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
Bylines
Oh boy.
So, on the CS Wiki, we had a rather serious problem with bylines on tutorials - it prevented them from being edited, updated, improved, and when we asked that bylines no longer be used, it sparked a large-ish controversy spanning several pages and a 200 post thread on the CS forums.
Now we have "bylines", of sorts, in the Talk pages of the Bethesda-written tutorials. Well, OK, clearly they're special for that reason, but are we to take it that those are not to be changed? I'm concerned that they set a bad precedent, and I'm worried about what people will think of them.
Regardless, you guys should add {{Break}} to the end of your userpages, so when you transclude them like that the floated image doesn't mess things up that come after. We could add the template to each of the pages that you've transcluded into, but it makes more sense for it to be done on your end since it will update all of those pages simultaneously.
DragoonWraith · talk · 22:27, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
- According to a forum post they definitely are okay with tutorials being edited. Maybe bylines were for internal... accountability?
- Anyway, this wiki is chock full of info... so much to learn :(
- --Quetzilla 02:31, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
- Just two more comments:
- Adding a byline doesn't directly prevent anyone from editing the page, however it does discourage people from editing the page. The byline implies ownership and, as such, that you need permission to change it.
- If you want to sign your tutorial, there are places to upload it: the Bethesda Softworks forums or the Fallout3Nexus Article Database.
- --Haama 02:52, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
- Just two more comments:
- I'll confess ignorance here - I'm responsible for the appearance/formatting of the tutorials and BGS user pages. I wasn't privy to the Byline debates on the CS wiki, so I'm not really sure what the issue is. I don't see any reason the official tutorials shouldn't cooperate with community standards, though.
- Maybe somebody could summarize the concerns and proposed solution?
- --Joel Burgess 10:58, 12 December 2008 (UTC)
The effect of bylines that we've noticed on the CS Wiki is that it discourages other people from editing the pages. This is sometimes because they think it's impolite to edit an other person's article, or because they doubt their own knowledge if they know who wrote the original article.
While that doesn't sound very serious now it will become a big issue when the number of contributors decreases. Having bylines on CS Wiki proved to be another hurdle in getting contributors while we needed everyone that could lend a hand.
At the moment the bylines are not much of a problem, but like DW said, they do set a bad example and we want to avoid the problem we still have on the CS Wiki with bylines on various tutorials.
I share DW's concerns about this, but I do think knowing a bit about the authors and the developers in general gives the tutorials an extra touch. I'd say we follow Jesse Tucker's example - list the tutorials on the userpage and remove the profile from the talk pages.
--Qazaaq 11:51, 12 December 2008 (UTC)