UESPWiki:Archive/CP Old UESP Site

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

Old UESP Site

Before UESPWiki, there was... UESP! Although most of the old site was copied over to the wiki as part of the wiki's initial creation, the copy was not complete. But figuring out what content didn't get moved over to the wiki at this point is stymied by a lack of knowledge: there are no records of what has or has not been copied. I'd like to set up some wiki pages documenting what exists on the old site and whether or not the content exists on the wiki. I realize we have no shortage of active and incomplete projects right now on UESP :) But I figured it wouldn't hurt to set up the pages, then anyone who happens to be in the mood to work on it would be able to.

I've now compiled a list of all the files available on the old site. My idea was to create pages like UESPWiki:Old UESP Files/Morrowind with tables listing all of the files. Editors could then start filling in whether or not the files are available on the wiki. For now I was thinking of just figuring out the basics of "yes it's been done" or "no it hasn't". Obviously there will then be the question of what to do with any files that haven't been copied, but I don't think that needs to be answered right now.

So any thoughts? In particular, does the format of the page look like it would work, or should it be revamped somehow before I fill it with hundreds of files? --Nephele^Talk 01:46, 18 October 2007 (EDT)

I am not really knowledgeable about formatting, but it looks good from an amateur's point of view. --Mankar Camoran 09:43, 18 October 2007 (EDT)

Whoops - I meant to post here after our discussion on IRC earlier. Yes, I think it's a good idea. Moving the old stuff across has been something I've kept looking at then looking away again, partly because there's no clear map of what needs doing. This should be a great help. --Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 09:45, 18 October 2007 (EDT)

Sounds good to me, though I fear that this will be more of an exercise in confirmation over addition to the wiki. I think most of the valuable content has either been moved already or replaced by new content added without knowledge of the content's existance on the old site. Still it does need to be done.--Ratwar 11:00, 18 October 2007 (EDT)

Some followup that I ran out of time to properly research and add last night.... Primarily to explain why I'm increasing convinced that it's necessary to go through the painful process of checking some 1175 (at last count) pages.

I agree that most of the content probably has already been moved over, in particular for Morrowind pages. However, for older games and Tamriel I'm convinced that there are missing chunks. Users are constantly finding missing pages and adding them piecemeal to the wiki. For example, all of the Battlespire quest pages were only created this April, presumably after User:YessMaster happened to discover that they hadn't previously been moved. I recently copied over a bunch of maps (most of the maps on Lore:Maps, a couple others on Morrowind:Maps, Daggerfall:Maps, etc) that had never previously been moved over... including maps as important as the standard game map of Vvardenfell for Morrowind. A couple of weeks ago User:Nirreln added the "Daggerfall Files" link to the bottom of Daggerfall in order to make it at possible to find a set of files still hosted on the old site. The Lore:Bestiary pages were only created last December, and done basically independently of the old site's Tamriel Monster pages; probably the information from the old pages has now been made obsolete, but nobody has ever checked.

And I'm sure there's more missing information. There are forum posts complaining about missing information on older games (and this was posted after the Battlespire walkthroughs were added, so presumably it's not referring to that set of missing walkthroughs). The Lore:Places pages were created independently from the old geography pages, and almost none of the old information has ever been incorporated into the wiki as far as I can tell. Compare for example Lore:Places_K and Geography K. A wiki search on some of those place names comes up completely empty (Khibi, for example).

It really bugs me to have information divided between two places and as a result feel that it's necessary to tell readers that if they want complete information on a game such as Daggerfall they need to search through two sets of pages to find all the UESP information (and there isn't even a functional search engine for the old site to facilitate finding info). At the least, it would be good to have a wiki page listing the old site pages that are missing from the wiki, to make it easier for readers to find the missing content. Of course, long term it would be good to make the old site obsolete (or at least merely of historical interest).

So that's my pep talk to motivate other people to do all the hard work for me ;) --Nephele^Talk 12:05, 18 October 2007 (EDT)

I've gone ahead and dumped out a complete list of all the files, see UESPWiki:Old UESP Files and subpages. Ensures that the data doesn't get lost somewhere on my computer never to be seen again... ;) --Nephele^Talk 17:56, 18 October 2007 (EDT)