Semi Protection

UESPWiki:Administrator Noticeboard/Archive 5

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This is an archive of past UESPWiki:Administrator Noticeboard discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page, except for maintenance such as updating links.


Server Upgrade

I've been thinking of upgrading the server for a bit now and it may happen in the near future...either within the next week or at the end of September (trying to time it so I'm around for a while after it happens).

So what does this mean for the regulars and the rest of the site's users? The majority of the upgrade will be transparent to anyone using the server as it mainly involves setting up the new server and transferring everything from the old to the new. The main 'hiccup' will occur when actually switching from the old to the new server. It will involve locking the old server from edits shortly before the change (1 hour or so), updating the site's DNS entry, and then making the old site redirect to the new site. If everything goes well the new site can unlocked after a few hours.

There may be issues during the switch over which may cause the site to be unavailable in part or in whole or prevent it from being unlocked for a day. Basically this involves how well the site handles redirecting to the new site when the uesp.net domain still points tot he old site. Unfortunately there is not a whole I can do to test this before hand.

Thoughts and comments welcome as usual... -- Daveh 18:00, 13 August 2007 (EDT)

Yay! --Wrye 21:13, 13 August 2007 (EDT)
Quick Update -- I've placed the order for the server and am just waiting for the payment to go through and the server to be setup. The current and new server are compared in the below table:
Old Server New Server
Celeron 2.4 GHz

512MB RAM
2x 80GB IDE
1000GB Monthly Bandwidth
115.54 $CAD/month

Intel P4 2.4 GHz

2GB RAM
320GB IDE
1500GB Monthly Bandwidth
115.54 $CAD/month

So a small increase in CPU, twice as much disk space, and more bandwidth (we'll probably break 1000GB this month). The big difference is the x4 increase in RAM. This will let me do a bunch of stuff, like install MemCache, which should noticeably increase the site's performance and allow it to server more content. With only 512MB on the current server there isn't really too much I could do. Of course the biggest thing might be we may be getting all this for the same price as the old server (still waiting to confirm exact price).
Once I actually get the server I'll post a small blurb on the front page but it will likely be a few more days past that when the actual switch occurs. -- Daveh 17:40, 16 August 2007 (EDT)
Update -- The server was released to me this afternoon and I confirmed that its the same price as the previous server (which is a great deal). The server is 'naked' so it will take a few days to get setup properly before I make the actual switch. -- Daveh 17:32, 17 August 2007 (EDT)
Good grief! You mean this whole site runs off half a gig of RAM at the moment? That should definitely make a huge impact. Thanks, Daveh. --RpehTalk 00:52, 17 August 2007 (EDT)
Yah, it did very well despite being about the lowest-end dedicated server you can get. -- Daveh 17:32, 17 August 2007 (EDT)
Yay, we're finally getting away from the Celeron processor that had horrible performance even when it was introduced! Now we've just got a P4 that has horrible performance next to today's new processors! --Ratwar 19:57, 17 August 2007 (EDT)
Unfortunately to get a similar server with a better processor the prices start at around 250$ a month (since the new server was a special). I'm hoping that with the extra RAM and installing MemCached we won't have to worry about the server being CPU limited. -- Daveh 20:44, 17 August 2007 (EDT)
Update -- As mentioned on the front page the switch over to the new server will happen Tuesday morning, August 21st. Everything has been setup on the new server and it is currently replicating the content on the main site. Hopefully there will be no issues tomorrow morning. -- Daveh 21:19, 20 August 2007 (EDT)

Upgrade Done

The switch-over this morning went pretty well and the Wiki/forums were locked for a little over an hour. It would have been much shorter but the database replication had some errors so I did a complete DB backup/restore from the old to the new server just to make sure everything was synced correctly.

Note that the old server is temporarily redirecting to the new server new.uesp.net. Once the DNS changes apply in a day or two then everything will go back to using www.uesp.net as usual.

Let me know of any issues that pop up. There are a few things left to do that I know of:

  • Oblivion map is not working. I think the problem will resolve itself one the DNS change propagates. I think if I try to fix it now it will just break again in a day or two.
  • E-mail server not tested (doesn't affect the Wiki).
  • FTP server not installed.
  • Server settings not tweaked (still using the same settings as the old server for now).
  • Make sure everything is copied from the old server before letting it go (a few misc/backup files are left to copy).
  • Setup automated backups and live-replication on the new server.

As I mentioned on the main page news, expect the server to be restarted now and then (downtime of 1 minute or less) and the occasional slow-down over the next few days. -- Daveh 09:58, 21 August 2007 (EDT)


I confirmed that the Oblivion map works fine once www.uesp.net points to the new server (due to caching this will happen at different times for everyone). -- Daveh 12:41, 21 August 2007 (EDT)
Thanks Daveh! Of course now it's time to start listing all the little problems that come up :) So far, just one. Trying to add a new spam site to UESPWiki:Spam Blacklist returned a database error:
A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:
   (SQL query hidden)
from within function "SearchMySQL4::update". MySQL returned error "1034: Incorrect key file for table: 'searchindex'. Try to repair it (localhost)".
It looks like the change was made to the page, but I'm guessing that perhaps internally the blacklist regexp wasn't changed. --NepheleTalk 13:06, 21 August 2007 (EDT)
I got this error too on an edit I made around the same time as yours. I repaired the searchindex table and subsequent edits seemed to save fine. You might try doing another edit/save to make sure. -- Daveh 13:46, 21 August 2007 (EDT)
The server seems to be experiencing occasional hiccups where it decides to just reject all of your connections. This happened to me once yesterday then again just now, and based on IRC I may not be the only who's noticed it.
What just happened to me is that I made an edit to a page, posted it, and then immediately went to do a few other things (mark some edits as patrolled, refresh recent changes, etc.) in other tabs. All of the requests failed. A few timed out after 2-3 minutes; the others were returned with 503 status (service temporarily unavailable). Attempts to refresh those pages or other pages all failed, for a duration of about 5 minutes.
While my other connections were all timing out/failing, I was able to get a server status, which showed that the server definitely was not overloaded (10 active requests, 13 idle servers). The odd thing is that one of those ten active requests was the POST request from the page that I had edited. It was still showing up as an active connection (status W) in the server status, even after the request had already timed out at my end. Furthermore, the edit request had been accepted by the wiki [1] at 20:22, but at 20:27 the POST request was still active in the server logs.
So based on this one case it seems as if occasionally POST requests are just hanging for some unknown reason. And while that request is in limbo, you're prevented from doing anything else until the server releases the request. I'll keep paying attention to see whether the problem continues to occur and, if so, whether the pattern seems to be the same. But I figured I'd post this now to document it (instead of relying on being able decipher my scribbled scraps of paper later!). --NepheleTalk 20:53, 22 August 2007 (EDT)
The 503 error is the mod_limitipconn limiting you to 3 concurrent connections at a time. I haven't seen any problems with POSTing myself but will poke around and see if I can find anyhing. -- Daveh 21:03, 22 August 2007 (EDT)
Well, it just happened to me again :| It's definitely not every time I post... it's only happened 4 times since you switched to the new server, and I've made a lot more than just 4 edits. But it does seem like it's somehow the post that is triggering it. When I can finally get a server status, I can see the 3 connections from my IP to the server, and the oldest of the three is the post.
The strange things seem to be that (a) it's keeping a post connection active after it's obviously fully processed the info (it's updated the wiki page already) and (b) it's keeping multiple other connections active even after they've timed out on my browser's side. So I'm getting 503 messages even when from my side it looks like I only have one or two active requests (unlike most of the time when I see 503's, when it's quite obvious that it's because I'm requesting way too many pages at the same time). But the 503's look like they're really just a symptom/side effect of the main problem, namely the hung connections. I'll keep looking for patterns.... --NepheleTalk 22:29, 22 August 2007 (EDT)
A quick note that I'm on the road again for the next week or so and have only have itermittent Internet access. I will try and keep an eye on the site as I can. -- Daveh 19:19, 24 August 2007 (EDT)

Email and Editing Problems (aka 5 minute bug)

Mail services (i.e., sendmail or equivalent) on the new server are evidently not set up properly. Although mentioned above that mail would not affect the wiki, it in fact seems to be triggering multiple problems on both the wiki and the forums.

The reason why mail services affect the rest of the site is that both the wiki and the forums allow email notifications for a range of events. Right now, none of these email notifications are getting delivered. Even more problematic is that any action that triggers a notification is getting locked up at the step where email should be sent, and freezing the associated http request. On the user side, the connection times out after a couple minutes and returns an error message. On the server side, it becomes a frozen connection until apache gives up on it and forces a "graceful termination" after 5 minutes. In the meantime, other requests from the same IP also get frozen.

The specific symptoms of this problem include:

  • On the wiki, no email notifications are being delivered (for talk page changes or for changed pages in watchlists)
  • On the wiki, the "email this user" function cannot be used (using it triggers the 5 minute bug, see next)
  • Editing the wiki has a very annoying and seemingly unpredictable bug where posting an edit completely locks you out of UESP for 5 minutes -- what I've nicknamed the 5 minute bug. This is the same problem I reported on this page a few days ago, and has since been noticed repeatedly by multiple editors. It's unpredictable, because you don't know ahead of time whether any other editor has requested an email notification for modifications to that page (and it's impossible to know whether the editor has visited the page since the last previous edit, which is also necessary for an email to get sent).
  • On the forums, no email notifications are being delivered (for private messages or for new posts to watched threads)
  • On the forums, posting a message or post with an email notificatino triggers the 5 minute bug.

I'm very confident at this point that all of these problems are related and tied to the mail service. It's quite clear that no emails are being delivered (thanks, Bear, for pointing this out!). And it's also easy to confirm that the "email this user" function is broken. As for the connection to the 5 minute bug, I've done tests today that confirm that when an edit should cause a notification to be emailed, the edit locks up; the same edit without an email notification has no problems. (For those curious about all my posts this afternoon, I was changing NepheleBot's notification status for various pages. Turning it on and off in various combinations allowed me to test what would or would not hang, and I was able to reproducibly trigger the bug.) Furthermore, this explains why the 5 minute bug first appeared after moving to the new server. Finally, checking the wiki code confirms that after an edit is added to the database, but before it is auto-marked as patrolled, the wiki takes care of email notifications. And the 5 minute bug is clearly happening in the interval in between adding an edit to the database and patrolling the edit.

Hopefully now that the source of all these problems has been identified, it won't be too difficult to fix them! :) --NepheleTalk 18:14, 29 August 2007 (EDT)

Ahhh, nice work tracking this down. I just got back from my latest trip and should have time to look into this in the next few days. -- Daveh 11:08, 30 August 2007 (EDT)
Do you think this should be mentioned on the main page, at Latest News/Server Upgrade? --GuildKnight (Talk) contribs 02:02, 31 August 2007 (EDT)
Although very annoying, it is still a problem that only affects editors, not wiki readers. In general, main page news updates have only been used for items that will be of interest to readers as well as editors. --NepheleTalk 02:27, 31 August 2007 (EDT)
Ah, OK. I was just thinking that because, being only semi-active, I use only emails to stay up-to-date on the changes of my watched pages. So I don't check my watchlist or the recent changes pages often. When I didn't get any emails for a while and opened my UESP link to check to see if it was down, I saw that it was working properly and thought for a while there that everyone had abandoned the wiki :( --GuildKnight (Talk) contribs 02:40, 31 August 2007 (EDT)
Good point :) I hadn't been thinking of that aspect of the problem... although it's still mainly going to affect editors. This probably needs to be highlighted on the Community Portal, since more editors check that page than the Admin Noticeboard. Ideally it would be good to somehow send out an update to anyone who uses email notifications once the system has been fixed, but given how the system works that's pretty difficult to do (in particular, an email is only sent out the first time a page is updated after you visit it. So any followup edits to pages won't trigger new emails at this point).
I'll try to remember to follow up on this tomorrow morning... at the moment it's getting late for me, and I know when I hit submit on this post I'll trigger the bug ;) --NepheleTalk 03:40, 31 August 2007 (EDT)
I've added a warning which appears when you edit a page - not sure if there's a better place to put this, but it serves for now. If you've got a better idea, feel free to move it somewhere more appropriate. --TheRealLurlock Talk 11:23, 31 August 2007 (EDT)
Update -- It seems the issue was just a bad sendmail link (pointed to the old mta instead of the new qmail). I've tested on the Wiki and forums and it seems to be able to send mail fine now. There is still an issue of mailboxes on the server not working (i.e., dave@uesp.net) but this should only affect me. Just let me know if there are other issues of if this issue is still present. -- Daveh 13:54, 1 September 2007 (EDT)
Fantastic! A couple of quick tests later, it looks like that's solved the problem. You've got me intrigued about the possibility of having an account @uesp.net now, though! Thanks, Daveh. --RpehTalk 14:03, 1 September 2007 (EDT)

News Item?

I don't know whether you think this is worth mentioning on the news page? I've put it on the Xbox 360 page so maybe that's enough. --RpehTalk 11:07, 6 September 2007 (EDT)

Seems pretty interesting, I know a load of people (who are 360 oblivion palyers) who were gutted that shivering Isles was a download (since they do not have xbox live).--Willyhead 11:10, 6 September 2007 (EDT)
I realized that we didn't even have a news item about the GOTY edition, so I wrote about a blurb about that, and included the SI retail disc in with that news.
It's actually possible for anyone who wants to write news items. Each news item is its own separate subpage under UESPWiki:News, so any registered editor can create the article and add a link to it on UESPWiki:News. An admin is only necessary to get the news to appear on the front page. As always, the less work an admin has to do to, the faster the job will get done ;) --NepheleTalk 15:27, 6 September 2007 (EDT)
Thanks for the advice - I shall bear it in mind, although the thought of my humble words appearing on the front page is a dizzying one! --RpehTalk 16:11, 6 September 2007 (EDT)

A very spammy day

Hi ladies and germs. I'm sure you've already seen all this on Recent Changes but could one of you add:

  • 189.21.156.2
  • 59.41.39.21 and
  • 221.100.73.12

to the spam blacklist? There's a spambot going wild at the moment. --RpehTalk 08:02, 10 September 2007 (EDT)

And QrrX9q, wherever they're posting from... --RpehTalk 08:59, 10 September 2007 (EDT)
And 130.194.11.71 plus UefBud. Good grief!
And Ul7F7j!--Willyhead 10:51, 10 September 2007 (EDT)
And all the rest of them! Haaalp! --Eshe 11:24, 10 September 2007 (EDT)
We'll just have to keep holding 'em off until an admin comes along!--Willyhead 11:30, 10 September 2007 (EDT)
I've added one of the sites used in all of these posts to the blacklist. (You add websites to the blacklist, not IPs. Those we just block.) It should stop now, at least for a little while. --TheRealLurlock Talk 11:39, 10 September 2007 (EDT)
Ah, few. Thanks Lurlock--Willyhead 11:40, 10 September 2007 (EDT)


Requests for Adminship

The administrator nomination process for UESP is based upon Wikipedia. A candidate is nominated, accepts the nomination, and then answers questions asked by the community. Any editor with an account is invited to participate in the process, by asking the nominee questions, expressing an opinion, or placing a vote. After a week or so, Daveh makes the final decision based upon the community's consensus.

TesSource Down

The popular ES mod site TESSource.net (now TESDB.com) recently went down and according to the latest news from the admin (DarkOne) it may be a while before it is back up. See the discussion on the official forums. The latest news seems to be is that they have to start everything over from scratch but may be able to recover some data as time passes.

I think this worthy of a news item to let people know what exactly happened to the most popular ES mod site there is but wanted to run it past everyone first. -- Daveh 19:33, 13 September 2007 (EDT)

Yep. Newsworthy. Might point out that Planet Elder Scrolls is still up. --Wrye 22:38, 13 September 2007 (EDT)
TIL (The Imperial Library), which was hosted on the same server, is also down. -- Daveh 23:11, 13 September 2007 (EDT)
Dang. TIL rocks. Hope that's back up (somewhere) soon. --Wrye 01:09, 14 September 2007 (EDT)
Definitely worth a news item. -Ratwar 00:01, 14 September 2007 (EDT)
Done...UESPWiki:News/TesSource.net Temporarily Down. Feel free to tweak as needed. -- Daveh 11:58, 14 September 2007 (EDT)
Tessource is back up (with a new interface) at tesnexus.com, apparently with most content (except for images) intact. --Wrye 15:47, 21 September 2007 (EDT)

New Address for the Imperial Library

Hey folks, the Imperial Library is back up but we're no longer hosted with gaming source. The new url is:

http://www.imperial-library.info/

Please update your links.

86.80.122.213 01:34, 19 September 2007 (EDT)Proweler

Excellent news! I was relying on the archived version on the Wayback machine - deadly slow and missing most of the images. Glad to know it's back up. --TheRealLurlock Talk 01:39, 19 September 2007 (EDT)

New Bot

We appear to be the target of a new bot that inserts a single nonsense word at the top of an article, for example: [2] and [3]. There have so far been seven such edits made (although five are on pages that have been or are about to be deleted), all in the last 4-5 hours. To summarize:

  • Oblivion:Quests/Anvil_Recommendation: 63.241.9.240 added "noviric"
  • Oblivion_talk:Quests/Anvil_Recommendation: 192.115.104.88 added "noractadar"
  • Oblivion:Quests/Mazoga_the_Orc: 63.241.9.240 added "trorrol"
  • Tamriel_talk:Sload: 218.39.17.155 added "roervaracell"
  • Oblivion:Quests/Paradise: 222.86.132.20 added "rollivarolod"
  • Oblivion:Quests/Deliver_the_Amulet: 217.169.44.14 added "pasdarlar"
  • Tribunal:Diary_of_a_Lost_Sailor: 202.101.189.126 added "eltcaa"

There is obviously a pattern here, and the fact that six different IPs have made such edits so far says that a bot is likely to behind it. The problem IMO is what can be done about it. Blocking an IP address for adding a single nonsense word to an article seems unreasonable: thousands of edits in the past match that description. There is no way to objectively tell the difference between one of these edits and a real person experimenting with the wiki for the first time by typing "asdfasdf". And most of the time we haven't even bothered to give warnings for edits like "asdfasdf". So far only only 63.241.9.240 (the only IP to make two of these edits) has been blocked.

On the other hand, keeping track of repeat offenders here is going to be difficult if the bot continues to hit pages like the Oblivion:Quests/* pages that are due for deletion anyway. Deleted nonsense edits won't subsequently show up in the IP's contribution history.

At the moment, I'm not too sure what to do here, but I thought I'd post the information in case anyone else has a brilliant idea ;) --NepheleTalk 02:06, 26 September 2007 (EDT)

Well I'd agree it's a bot of some kind given all the different IP addresses but it seems unlikely to me that somebody would go to the trouble of developing a bot (or whatever exactly it is) to add a few letters of nonsense to a page. I'd guess that what we're seeing at the moment is the test phase of a new spambot, which means we can expect lots of new and exciting links to dubious sites sometime soon. If that's the case then the IP addresses can be blocked; no problem. If we keep getting these irritating edits then it may be time to look again at CAPTCHA implementations or even disallowing anonymous edits. --RpehTalk 07:44, 26 September 2007 (EDT)

IPs for Blocking

  • 217.169.44.14 - has now made three such edits (Oblivion:Quests/Deliver_the_Amulet above, Oblivion:Quests/Temple of the One and Oblivion:Quests/Liberation or Apprehension) --RpehTalk 08:40, 26 September 2007 (EDT)
I just blocked it. The weird thing about this is the way it's mostly been targetting obsolete pages which need to be deleted anyhow. I wonder if the bot is aware that these pages are marked for deletion, and is perhaps attempting to fly under the radar by running tests on pages that nobody cares about? I agree with Rpeh, though, that this is likely just the first phase of a new spam attack. I've blocked 2 accounts already (both of which had made several of these nonsense edits, not just one). I realize that it may have been slightly premature to do so without first giving a warning, but I believe this behavior is almost certainly a bot which would never see such a warning, and I'd really rather not see what this thing has planned for us next. (Though we probably will anyhow.) If it really is a legitimate editor, which I highly doubt, well, they can complain on their talk page and ask the block to be lifted, but I don't think that's very likely to happen. --TheRealLurlock Talk 10:02, 26 September 2007 (EDT)

A Mail for UESP.net from Germany =)

At the beginning I must say that I wrote a mail to your technical Adminstrator (uesp@sympatico.ca). He answered that I should write it here and now i am here ;) Actually I wanted to write it privately by mail, but i think I don't need to hide this suggestion. Thanks for all your comprehension =)


Dear UESP.NET team,

my name is Frank Schwalb (Nickname: Deepfighter) and I come from Germany. I am one of the few german TES Lore masters and besides adminstrator of the largest german encyclopedia about The Elder Scrolls, called Tamriel Almanach (www.tamriel-almanach.de). We exist since May 2006 and currently have more than 2550 articles and 1200 pictures. Apart from a few “stubs” like each site has, there are many very good, or better said excellent articles in our knowledge base. But I don't write to you to introduce myself. I have an proposal to you.

What do you think about some kind of cooperation between both sites, the UESP and the Tamriel Almanach? If this sounds interessting to you we should discuss this further, as these things need a special planning.

I think a cooperation between our two sites offers many advantages. For example we could develop a network together, exchange pictures, translate articles, create common projects and in the future we even might think for example about additional languages. However I also see one problem. At Tamriel-Almanach we have a different site structure than you have on UESP. You differentiate between the The Elder Scrolls games, we do not, we consider TES as one single large universe. But I work at special portal pages for the TES games. In these you can find summaries and overviews of all articles about each game. This will look similar to your structure, so I do not consider those different site structures as a big problem.

Of course I hope for an Answer. If you have questions (which you probably have) please ask me,

Greetings from Sweden (I live there temporarlly) and naturally from Germany and the remainder of our team.

sincerly yours
Frank Schwalb aka Deepfighter
www.tamriel-almanach.de - www.scharesoft.de
--Deepfighter 09:09, 2 October 2007 (EDT)

My first thought is that it's a great idea. There are already one or two pages (eg this) in other languages but by and large it's an English-only site. If we can get more content in other languages, that's got to be good. My second though is that there are legal problems. I am not a lawyer so I have no idea exactly how this affects things, but we use the by-sa license and you use by-nc. That might mean we would have to have messages everywhere pointing out that some content comes from another site, and it gets even more complex if people start editing one site's content on the other's pages.
I'm sure there are solutions to any problems and maybe the problems aren't as big as I imagine. In any case, I still think it's a great idea. Thank you for suggesting it. Now let's see what other people think. --RpehTalk 09:57, 2 October 2007 (EDT)
Was ist jetzt los? I've taken German in school, and I could probably help with the task of doing translations and such, to some degree. If nothing else, I can try and give your Almanach a boost, with what knowledge I've gained here. I'm not one to ask about the legal things, but I'm enthusiastic and willing to help! Somercy 10:20, 2 October 2007 (EDT)

Hi! I'm another sysop from the Tamriel-Almanach. I've been surfing the ues-pages for quite a while. There're an astonishing library for all game related contents in the TES series. But i've missed the lore. That's what keeps the game interesting for years. I've been willing to add some of this knowledge, but I didn't find the proper place for this. I hope that we can arrange some cooperation between our sites. Hopefully, --Killfetzer 17:59, 2 October 2007 (EDT)

Glad you both found the site and enjoy it! The UESP has always been mostly a walkthrough/hints/tips type of site. Most of the lore would be within the Tamriel section of the site although this is probably the least edited section of the site (other editors can correct me here). I know a good deal of work has been (and is being) done on the books but not a whole much elsewhere. I think the main reason for the omission is merely a lack of a devoted editor(s). That and we simply don't want to copy information from other ES lore sites such as yours or the Imperial Library.
As for translations of the UESP it has been brought up before but hasn't gone anyway do to lack of interest and lack of willing and capable editors. Any large translation project probably should be discussed in more detail before people dive into it. -- Daveh 18:40, 2 October 2007 (EDT)
I'm definitely interested in some type of cooperation between the two sites, but I must say that due to my own schedule, I won't be able to help all that much. I would really like to see our Lore based section (Tamriel) become larger. The problem with enlarging it has always been the monopoly that the Imperial Library enjoys as an English based lore site, so most Lore masters are pretty entrenched over there. As for difficulties in working together, there is the license problem, as the two sites use different (though similar in my non-lawyer opinion) licenses.--Ratwar 19:37, 2 October 2007 (EDT)

Several points:

  • I'll state more clearly what others have mentioned. The incompatible licenses means that our articles (under cc-by-sa) cannot be copied/translated to a cc-by-nc site. And vice versa -- articles from a cc-by-nc site cannot be copied/translated to our cc-by-sa site. This is not a small deal, and the licenses are not "almost" the same -- they are quite different in what they allow and don't allow. Were we to allow our articles to be posted there, we would be violating the license under which we gain articles from users. Same reasoning for you, if articles from your site were posted here, then they would violate the license under which you gain contributions from users. Breaking the terms of such licenses is guaranteed to raise havoc with a community. (And is just plain wrong.)
  • The implication of this is that there really can't be "cooperation" between the two sites, other than say linking. Of course, individual contributors can contribute to both sites -- so long as the respective licenses aren't violated. (E.g., if I write a totally new article, then (as sole copyright holder), I can add it to both sites (with the one here being under by-sa, and the one there being under by-nc. But I couldn't modify an existing an article on one site and post it to the other site, since the modified work is a derivate work (protected by copyright) and under the terms of the respective licenses, can only be copied to another site where it is hosted under the same license.
  • Of course, if you want to contribute (new content) to our Tamriel section, please do. But as has been pointed out, the existence of the excellent Imperial Library will probably prevent us from being the premier ES lore site.
  • Likewise, if our content is translated to german and placed here, that's fine. However, despite earlier discussion, this does not seem to have happened. (Note that since the preceding link is to an archive page, it should not be edited -- any new discussion should be here).

I'm sorry that this comes across as a bit negative -- I certainly look for cooperation whenever practical (e.g., supporting easy translation of my tools into German and other languages), but conflict between our licenses nixes most forms of cooperation. --Wrye 21:15, 2 October 2007 (EDT)


Hej, thanks for all your answers =)

To be honest, I did not consider the matter with the licenses. Unfortunately this implies the impossibility of an exchange of content like it should be considered normal in such a close cooperation. However it should be possible to work together more closely.

1. AS an example, I think we can put simply a link under our articles, we make this on our wiki and you on yours. The link on UESP could be titled "Further reading in german" and point to the Tamriel Almanach article about that topic. On our wiki the link title would consequently be in german and point to the UESP article.

2. I've thoght also of the use of interwiki links in the navbar. This is according to our technical administror only a small change in the config so that our sites kann use this feature.

3. We have for example this page: Uebersetzungsreferenz

There we try to provide a reference for translations between German and English and there we also could cooperate more closely. Partnerlinks on both pages are also possible.

There are possibilities for an co-operation, without to break a rule or a license. I think we should collect ideas what we can do together, the article translation was only a first thought, which took care of itself now.

@Wyre None ensures, it was very well that you said this important notes. If it is not possibly, we can do nothing. Better be safe than sorry.

--Deepfighter 06:32, 3 October 2007 (EDT)

Well, having been to your site, gentleman Deepfighter, I have an idea. Maybe since you can understand English, and I can understand German...I can translate the pages in your site to English for your site's purposes, and vice versa for us. Perhaps. Maybe. Somercy 08:35, 4 October 2007 (EDT)
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