The Elder Scrolls Construction Set Wiki Announcement & Feedback Thread

News:
April 28, 2008

Welcome to the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Main_Page! This new Main Page has been designed from scratch for the sake of easing navigation on the Wiki. After considering complaints regarding finding information, a great deal of effort has gone into making everything as accessible as possible.


Meaningful Main Page

The new Main Page provides not only the same simple blurbs found on the original page, but also dozens of useful links and sections that will be updated much more frequently than the Featured Article or News sections.

The new Did You Know section offers one-line snippets of articles, leading you to new and exciting facts. Here you'll find all kinds of useful things, the kinds of facts that you might not have even known to look for! Each contains a link where you can learn more.

There's also the What's New section - so you'll always know what articles have seen major improvements and where new additions to the Wiki have been made. These new articles may be cutting-edge modding techniques, great new tutorials, or simply notes of improvement in the Wiki. Check back frequently to always stay on top of what's new!


New and Improved Table of Contents

The old Table of Contents on the Main Page has been moved to its http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Portal:Contents, complete with a link from the Navigation box. The Table of Contents is now far more organized and complete, with descriptions of every entry in the list. The list now follows the organization of the pages that it links to, providing a far more streamlined entry into the Wiki.


Portals - Your gateway to modding knowledge

In order to provide users with the most coherent collection of information, the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Portal:Contents/Portals have been hand-crafted to provide all of the information on a facet of modding in one place! There are Portals for AI, Animating, Building, Modeling, Quests, Scripting, and Texturing, each with a full compliment of features:

Each Portal has its own Featured Content, similar to the Main Page but devoted to that Portal's topic. This means instead of only a single Featured Article, we now have ten (including old ones)! All Featured Content, past, present, and upcoming, can be found at the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Portal:Featured_Content!

Portals also have lists of tutorials, tools, and basic information, plus links to other Portals which may be of interest. Portals have lists of simple things you can do to improve that Portal - getting involved in a Portal is a great way to help out the Oblivion modding community!


Help Pages

Also with this redesign is a huge improvement and addition to the Wiki's help pages. Everyone should read the all-new http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Help:Welcome_to_the_Wiki - the new welcome page is chock-full of ways to make your browsing experience the best that it can be. Absolutely guaranteed to have at least one thing you didn't know about the Wiki, it's a must-read!

In addition to the new Welcome, there is also a great list of http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Help:Simple_Things_You_Can_Do_To_Improve_the_Wiki, for everyone who wants to help out, and make the Wiki the best resource it can be for all modders!

For those interested in diving deeper into the Wiki, we also have a full compliment of http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Help:Editing, explaining what we're trying to achieve and how you can help us achieve it, both technically and stylistically.

And if you have any questions, be sure to check out our new http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Help:FAQ! The FAQ answers some of our most common questions, and can be a great source of information about the Wiki!


New Service Pages

Two new features of the Wiki bear special mention: http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Category:Request_an_Article and the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Help:Administration_Noticeboard. These two pages provide detailed instructions on how you can get everything you need from the Wiki!


Various Other Improvements

In addition to all of the above, please note some other great improvements:

• http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Category:Articles_Nominated_to_be_Featured - let your voice be heard! These are some great articles on the Wiki, but are they really ready to hit the front page or a Portal? Let everyone know what you think!
• http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Help:Search_Terms - definitely a work in progress, but we have finally come up with something of a solution for the much-maligned Search Tool! Also, if you're still having trouble with your Search, give http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Help:Searching!
• http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Toolkit - the Toolkit is a Wiki editor's best friend. From a simple link in the Navigation box, one can find all sorts of handy links and references for improving Wiki articles. Note the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Category:Article_Tags in the Toolkit - everyone can use these to let the Wiki editors know that a page needs attention! Try to use the Tags as frequently as you can, whenever you have an issue with an article - tag it, and let us know!
• http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Wiki_User_Style - these great pieces of code allow you to completely customize the way you view the Wiki. Move things, resize things, stretch things out! Give yourself more room, reduce those ugly black borders - all of this is possible!

Wiki Policy Changes/Additions

Please note the following Policy issues on the Wiki:

• Bylines - As has been noted before, Bylines ("by ______") are not allowed on the Wiki. While this has always been true, for a long time it was never enforced, leading to a number of bylined articles as well as the confusion that they were allowed. We have taken measures to determine the community's opinion on this issue, and for a great many reasons it is widely believed that bylines are extremely damaging to the Wiki. For this reason, bylined articles will no longer be accepted, and we therefore ask that authors either release their work for public use, or else find other hosting for their work - each section of the Wiki maintains a list of links to outside articles for just this sort of thing. We have no objection to bylined articles, they just cannot be on the Wiki.

• Questions - The old Questions category on the Wiki ballooned to a massive size, making Searching for information ever the more difficult, and making the job of keeping the Wiki clean and up-to-date nearly impossible. These questions were all too specific, of little or zero value to anyone but the original author, and by all rights should have been asked on this Forum. Therefore, we have closed the Questions section, and will direct all specific mod questions (e.g. "I did this and I wrote this script but it doesn't work why not?" type questions) to the Forums. Questions on the Wiki should be about the Wiki - asking where information is, asking for clarification on an article, that kind of thing. These are questions the Wiki editorial staff is equipped to answer. The others require the broader knowledge and quicker response time of the Forums.
  
  For this reason, we have begun the process of going through the old questions, and deleting them after documenting any important information on the Wiki properly.

Any and all questions, suggestions, or critiques of Wiki policy belong on the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Community_Portal.


Feedback:
The Continuation of Revitalization

This thread is to be a continuation of the original thread, http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=795927. The Wiki Revitalization Project spurred by that thread has resulted in massive improvements in the Wiki, and we would like to see more.

We are therefore inviting everyone to please share their thoughts on the Wiki here in this thread. We're going to try to avoid large internal debates here - this thread is for the Oblivion modding community, not the Wiki staff. We will continue to have discussions on the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Community_Portal about internal issues, including topics brought up here - which we strongly encourage everyone to participate in! But we want this thread to be kept clean of this, to allow people to voice their thoughts here without worrying about jumping in in the middle of a huge discussion.

So, a huge thank you to the community for their thoughts that started this project, from your TESCS Wiki "Sheriffs", Qazaaq, Haama, and myself. We want to hear what you think!

Looks good. You guys did a great job in organizing it.
It took me a bit to find the script functions again. Its sort of hidden inside a paragraph instead of a direct link like before.

You can go to the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Portal:Scripting, which is on the top right side of the Main Page, in the big box, for that link, or you can go to the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Portal:Contents, which has its own link on the Nav box plus it's on the Main Page under the title box, which is much like the old list and has the link down near the bottom (like the old list did).

EDIT: Actually, I was wrong. The TOC did not have a link to the Category. I changed it so that now it does.

Yeah, I found it on the Scripting portal, in the top box titled "The Scripting Portal".
In this sentence:
Scripts are limited to the functions available,
Once there, I click on the v1.0 Functions link.

I am still lookin on the TOC page to see if I can find the link.

Thanks!

On the Scripting Portal, look in the box on the right, Getting Started. It has a link to all of the functions.

Thoughts on making this easier to find? I mean, that list is the most commonly used thing on the Wiki, definitely do not want to make that more difficult to find.

If you are asking my opinion, I can give that. But please, take it as just my opinion...

The (Function Categories) link seems a bit odd to call it. I never really understood why it was called just 'functions' in the first place, when it shows the 'syntax' of the language instead.

I would suggest a link called Complete Function Syntax List or something similar. Why, becuase it is the page that contains 'all' the functions used 'inside' a script, and it has the syntax for each function there. It also links to Non-OBSE functions, which I prefer. (And greatly appreciate that link, as the OBSE is twice as big, or bigger now, and difficult to wade through.)

Heheheheh... I checked it 4 minutes before you posted this =D Loving the new layout.

I bow in respect

And finally it's done, nice work on the new main page DW!

Completely missed this yesterday. Excellent work.

Great work DW, thanks for all your efforts.

Thanks Gstaff!

Yup, I was asking your opinion. As for OBSE vs. non-OBSE, we integrated the two with the explicit intention of maintaining the ability to filter things, so that you can look at just vanilla functions, or just OBSE functions, or all of them together, in every "Function Type" category. The List was created by mmmpld, and that intentionally is just everything - that allows you to use Ctrl+F, which you can't on the usual functions because they are separated on different pages, 200 max per page.

Anyway, as for your thoughts, I guess I just don't really see the difference. The "Function Category" is just a list of Function references - the syntaxes, examples, notes on how to use them, etc. I think that the Functions Category contains exactly what I'd expect it to - but then, I've been used to that system for a very long time. So I guess the first thing I'd like to know is, what do you expect when you see a "Functions Category"? What does that title make you think it is?

Also, I'm curious what others think. Anyone else have an opinion on this?

Thanks! Your efforts are really helpful for this newbie modder.

Great work! This is a huge improvement!

Update:
Add a map of the categories in the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Category:Functions.

Update Edit:
Map moved to http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Functions_Navigation_Map and an All Functions by Letter sorter has been added to the Functions Category page.

Nice!

A function, to me, is a mathmatical formula for calculating something. Or a called sub-routine that performs one single task and returns one value to the calling program.

Since the very early '80's when I started programming, the 'code' has always been refered to as the 'Syntax Language', the rules that apply to the language and how its used. The Oblivion code has always been called 'script', so perhaps "Script Syntax" would be more appropriate.

That is my opinion, explained.

this deserves a tap dance

Ah. Well, unfortunately, over-turning the practice of referring to AddItem and the like as functions isn't going to happen now. That would cause far too much confusion for a lot of people. Sorry.

I really like the re-design. VERY nice. I must also point out that the ability in Category:Functions to navigate by letter is a HUGE time-saver. I happen to remember things by the 1st letter if I do not remember the entire name and this makes it MUCH faster for me to find what I'm looking for. I also like how it always puts that first letter at the top left so that the page contains the maximum amount of functions that begin with that letter. I'm lovin it.

LHammonds

Glad you like it.

I've re-formatted the http://cs.elderscrolls.com/constwiki/index.php/Category:Settings section and added a similar tool for the GMSTs.

yeah i noticed the same thing, just use Explorer or the browser that came stock with your computer.
my Safari has a "Develop" option at the top with File and Edit, the first option under develop says "Open Page With.." and gives you a list of web browsers you have installed, only thing is I can't remember how I got it there to tell you how to do the same ...

Not entirely sure why you'd be using Safari on a non-Mac (which would have it pre-installed), but that's besides the point. I do (strongly) recommend Firefox for general web browsing, personally, and I can also guarantee it will show the CS Wiki properly, though I can also tell you that Internet Explorer and Opera also work with the CS Wiki (IE is a terrible "browser", if it can even be called that, and I do not recommend it for anything).

However, this is a rather serious issue. I will talk to the Bethesda admins about fixing that.

I liked the older Main Page a lot more. I found it easier to get around and finding the areas I wanted to find. Now, it seems to take longer, which is rather annoying.

Would you mind explaining what you're trying to do from the Main Page, and why it's taking you longer to do?