StarfieldWiki:Community Portal

This is the main discussion forum used for community-wide discussions about the Starfield Wiki's operations, policies, design, and improvement.

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Namespace Separation: Yes or No?

We should address this early before it gets much harder to change directions. We currently do not have a decision to use namespaces or not.

The main pros for using namespaces include:

• Better compatibility with UESP's infrastructure.
• Can be neater as namespaces function as "super categories" of topics.
• Will allow us to document topics from gameplay and lore perspectives easier.

The cons include:

• Although UESP users are likely to be familiar, most wikis do not use namespaces in this fashion so it could be potentially confusing to readers and prospective editors.
• We don't know if this is going to be a series yet, so it may not be necessary to really divide between different games and lore.
• It may increase the difficulty in implementing Scribunto/Lua templates.

Considering these points, I find myself in favor of adopting a namespace structure like UESP's. While it may not be standard, I don't think it's that overall confusing. And while we don't know if this will be an ongoing franchise, none of the wording from Bethesda has implied this series will only ever get a single game, and considering the history of the games industry, assuming there will be sequels is likely the safer bet. --AKB (talk) 12:04, 12 May 2022 (EDT)

I'm not strictly opposed, but I don't think there is necessarily a need to do this overall. Namespaces work really well to separate multiple media types and styles, especially when a company is first figuring out what and how they want to create their world. Thus, early games, like TES1 become very very different from later games such that the exact same content is quite different and could be confusing all on the same page. Once a company matures, you see that sort of variation less. I don't believe Starfield and future games in the new franchise will have quite as much contradictory information as TES1, TES2, TES3, etc.

That being said, I do feel like a Lore/Gameplay split is a very useful one for separating talk of gameplay mechanics from the in world content, though this can easily be achieved with separate sections on a single page. One worry I do have is that while a lore section for an existing franchise of multiple games gets filled out, a lore section for a single game often feels... lacking... and presenting pages that are complete but feel empty might not be the look we want to go for, if that makes sense. Jeancey (talk) 13:27, 12 May 2022 (EDT)

I'm also in favor of doing namespace separation. While a single game may not be enough to justify a separate category of articles, it's still likely that Starfield will get sequels, and lore exists in media outside the mainline games as well: books, mobile games, spin-offs, movies and series. I think it's better to create the separation now rather than having to adapt the whole wiki for it once it does become a need. --Sayoregg (talk) 15:50, 12 May 2022 (EDT)

I'm in favor of the namespace separation as well. Starfield is just the beginning, and I can't see them stopping at this game only. Even though we probably won't see any sequels for a while, I think it's better to have the separation now than doing it all later when more entries are made. --YzraDoesStuff (talk) 16:09, 12 May 2022 (EDT)

It looks like overall we are in favor of doing this, although it may ultimately prove to be unnecessary. If that's the case, it'll definitely be worth revisiting this topic if/when any future installments are announced. --AKB (talk) 00:16, 9 June 2022 (EDT)

I'm not entirely sure if its necessary. Unless we think we'll get a Starfield MMO or something? With the expected upcoming games (TES and then Fallout 5) it would take more than 10-15 years before we get a real sequel. --Sgtfrankieboy (talk) 12:59, 20 June 2022 (EDT)

I think that Starfield is likely to receive more content on a faster pace. I think part of the delay with BGS was caused by them working on Creation Engine 2 and the new mechanics/setting needed for Starfield. Beyond that, there is a fairly high chance for a spin-off, based on the other releases for TES and Fallout. So even if the next mainline sequel is a decade out (which I'm not sure about), I think we'll definitely get more Starfield in the interim. --AKB (talk) 14:27, 20 June 2022 (EDT)

Oh, you can bet money that this franchise will be like Fallout or Elder Scrolls... They may very well create SF 2, SF 3, etc. in the future, or at the very least do something similar in the form of DLC's or such. Better to have the namespaces now, than wish you had them later. --Acaveman (talk) 09:14, 15 September 2023 (EDT)

Riven

Riven has now been installed. All the functions listed on its page should work now. Please let me know if there are any issues. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 10:12, 28 July 2022 (EDT)

External Links

I added a Wikipedia link on Starfield:Sol System and noticed that it displays as orange, similar to internal links. Do we want to change external hyperlinks to have a different style to alert users that they are leaving the site? I'm partial to the light blue colour used on UESP personally. —Legoless (talk) 13:30, 21 March 2023 (EDT)

Yeah, definitely would agree with changing the color. --AKB (talk) 13:36, 21 March 2023 (EDT)

Merchandise Namespace

Can we get a Merchandise namespace set up in advance of launch? There are already items of Starfield merch that need to be documented, e.g. the Constellation watch, the Xbox controller. —Legoless (talk) 06:58, 23 August 2023 (EDT)

I requested one be added. --AKB (talk) 16:03, 20 December 2023 (EST)

Addition of a Newsletter on the Wiki

I have had this discussion with SFWiki Discord Staff, Including a UESP Wiki staff member. As many members of the wiki knows, there is a part of the front page where you are able to see the news of the game and stuff relating. My point being, I run a newsletter as the News Director on a Discord community called Galaxy News Network. The newsletters being for Fallout and now one for this game with it being called "The Constellation Tabloid". The tabloid is a newsletter where we cover news about the game and the community of players, modders, artists, storytellers, roleplayers and everything under the sun. We plan on expanding the tabloid and think this place would be an amazing home. The newsletter makes people, big or small in the community, have a voice and share the things they made / are apart of or things they wanna make or do. We genuinely love this game and we think that others will as-well. Any questions that anyone may have will be answered. --GalaxyNewsJah (talk) 23:23, 27 August 2023 (EDT)

just adding my support. having a newsletter is something i've wanted on the uesp side for the longest time, with starfield being new and a burgeoning audience i think it makes sense to have a regular starfield newsletter to help build and foster a community. it could also be something i or dave could supplement on the dev side - email newsletter or improved news system, just some thoughts. Thal-J (talk) 08:08, 28 August 2023 (EDT)

It would be nice to see examples of this newsletter. I don't feel really capable of commenting on it with the actual newsletter sight unseen. --AKB (talk) 10:15, 28 August 2023 (EDT)

Hey AKB, I totally forgot about putting a link. Here is an example with our Fallout newsletters called The Galaxy Tribune. I have also taken the liberty of putting our first edition of the tabloid in here too. Hope this helps! (ps, I am in the Wiki server in #server-discussions) --GalaxyNewsJah (talk) 11:36, 28 August 2023 (EDT)

The newsletter addition on Indie Fallout Wiki has already jumped to our top 30 most visited pages. Folks love it! Highly recommend letting Jah and co bring the same attention and love to SF. -Kate Aces ^{Take her for a spin!} 08:10, 18 September 2023 (EDT)

Main Page Rename: Home vs Main Page

as part of the styling spruce up that launched today in the lead up to starfield, the main page was renamed to "Home". this is a departure from how it is done on uespwiki currently. i brought up to dave/reorx whether the main page should be renamed to "Home". (reasons below) he ok'd the idea, provided it was seamless.

it was brought up today that i should have given the community a say on this as well, so that's why i'm here.

my reasons:

• with the focus on content (the content menu on the home page), i thought it made sense to call the main page "Home", as fits with what users today would commonly expect from a traditional webpage navigation.
• in doing research on how other similar sci-fi game wikis did it, i found that a lot of them had either the main page fully as "Home" (as in both the url and the page title), or a hybrid (the page title was called home, but the url said main page)
• the rest of the styling spruce up was following starfield's modern, simplistic in-game ui closely, sampling from the game itself. i thought that "Home" fit starfield's more simplistic aesthetic more than "Main Page" did.

does anyone oppose this? i welcome any comments, and i will be happy to defer to whatever the community decides. — Unsigned comment by Thal-J (talk • contribs) at 12:12 on 28 August 2023‎

I'm ok with either, but we should probably rename Lore:Main Page and Starfield:Main Page as well if we update the home page name? BoderiFarano (talk) 16:00, 28 August 2023 (EDT)

Sounds like a good idea! -Kate Aces ^{Take her for a spin!} 08:09, 18 September 2023 (EDT)

"Main Page" tends to be a thing across wikis and is a recognised term (see Wikipedia:Main Page history, Wikipedia:Don't delete the main page). Aside from maintaining consistency with UESPWiki, I think it's important to keep with the recognised terminology used by both MediaWiki and Fandom. Can't see any particular benefit of going with "Home" instead. —Legoless (talk) 11:45, 9 October 2023 (EDT)

I would prefer it to be restored to "Main Page" for consistency reasons. --AKB (talk) 21:53, 16 October 2023 (EDT)

Flora and fauna data conflicts

Some flora and fauna appear on multiple planets, with identical name and appearance, but different resources and temperaments (and biomes depending on the planet). What is the best way to add the data in these cases? In my mind, having the common information at the top and having variable information split out by planet makes most sense, but I am not sure on how to actually add the data in this way. NJRBailey (talk) 20:10, 7 October 2023 (EDT)

I can't speak for Flora, but Fauna's getting a new mini-infobox that'll give the details of the different variants. We did it as wrapping infoboxes since those scale well enough on both mobile and desktop. You can see an example of that on the development server. Note that the page is more than a little ugly right now, since it's basically a sandbox and is missing some info, like the main Creature Summary, and has duplicates of other info for testing purposes, like the repeated variants. The format of the infoboxes themselves is also preliminary and likely to change to make height differences less problematic. For now, though, my focus is on getting the information on the page; prettifying it can come later. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 21:17, 8 October 2023 (EDT)

Ah great thank you, that looks ideal - I agree that it's most important to get the info on the page and worry about the looks later :) Personally I think that would be good for flora as well, as both flora and fauna have the same issues with variants. Is there an expected date for that to be put live on the production wiki for information to be added? NJRBailey (talk) 08:41, 9 October 2023 (EDT)

Partnership with Independent Fallout Wiki

Heyo, my name is Kate and I am the founder of the Independent Fallout Wiki. I wanted to reach out and see if your community is interested in partnering up with us! Our partners (the current list is here if you are curious) consist of like-minded wikis, websites, communities, and organizations that share our goals and collaborative spirit. Partners have a special role on our Discord, listed on our footer/have unique pages wiki-side, and join a strong community where we support each other's projects including cross wiki editing and more!

Our hope is that these partnerships will successfully connect independent wikis, lead to new friends, and generally bring good vibes across the board. I appreciate you considering our request. If you feel like giving it a go or have any questions, feel free to respond here or message me on Discord (kateaces). Thank you so much in advance! -Kate Aces 06:59, 29 October 2023

That sounds like a good idea to me :) --AKB (talk) 18:16, 5 November 2023 (EST)

Yeah, same here. Then again, I'm kinda biased on that topic anyway. ;-) Xora (talk) 00:47, 9 November 2023 (EST)

How to refer the player character

I've been refering to the player character as "The Starborn, Starborn, etc", following along the general Bethesda themes such as "Dragonborn", "Sole Survivor", "Lone Wanderer", "Narravine", "Courier". This is complicated by the fact that there are multiple Starborn active during the game. What name should we use to refer to the player character? --Starborn5500 (talk) 20:48, 6 November 2023 (EST)

Generally we can refer to them using second person writing, "you" (you will go to this place in this mission). For more technical articles, we can also use third person (the player character does this). For lore content, "new Constellation member" is an accurate description. --AKB (talk) 00:28, 7 November 2023 (EST)

I've been linking to Player when I need to refer by name. I agree that it's not a particularly good name. --Digmaster (talk) 11:02, 9 November 2023 (EST)

NSInfo Extension

For those of you from UESP, this will sound fairly familiar, but for everyone who's not, I've just installed the new NSInfo extension which will update and replace the various {{NS_whatever}} and {{MOD_NAME}} variables in templates. I haven't started the formal documentation yet, but you can look for it at UESP soon. In the meantime, here's a quick list of what's new/changed.

• Like with many of the other extension updates, we've updated all the variables ({{NS_whatever}} without a colon) to functions ({{NS_whatever:}} with a colon). This is an unfortunate necessity due to changes in upcoming versions of MediaWiki. I think SFwiki was already switched over a while back, but if there are any left, they'll need to be changed before we upgrade to the next version of MediaWiki (1.39) or they'll start to produce the wrong results under some circumstances. Any pages that still need updating will automatically be tracked in the category Category:Uses Deprecated Namespace Variable.
• {{GAMESPACE:}}: this is a new function that returns 1 if you're in gamespace; blank otherwise. This is mostly for convenience when designing templates. For now, all of our custom namespaces are considered gamespace except those we had to create for use with different extensions or MediaWiki itself (e.g., TimedText or Module space). It's debatable whether something like General or Lore should be considered gamespace, but we can figure that out as we look at what our various templates need.
• {{NS_CATLINK:whatever}}: this is a shortcut for [[Category:{{NS_CATEGORY}}-whatever]] and, like a category link, takes a sort key as the second parameter if desired. So, for example, {{NS_CATLINK:Quests| }} gets you [[Category:{{NS_CATEGORY}}-Quests| ]].
• All NSInfo functions now work correctly with NS_BASE, NS_ID, alternate namespace names, namespace number, and full page names. So, {{NS_CATEGORY:General}}, {{NS_CATEGORY:GEN}}, {{NS_CATEGORY:GE}}, {{NS_CATEGORY:104}}, and {{NS_CATEGORY:General:Todd Howard}} will all produce "General". In the event of a conflict between namespace names and page names (e.g., Starfield), namespace names win out. You can force it to use main space by putting a : in front of the name.
• I've created {{NSTest}} for testing. With no parameter, it'll use the current namespace; otherwise, it'll use whatever you specify (e.g., {{NSTest|SFMOD}} will show you all the values for Starfield Mod space).

Many of these will be of less use than they are on UESP, just because most templates here are designed primarily for Starfield namespace, but I expect some of them will still be useful. I've tested all this as much as possible, but there's always the chance something's been missed, so please let me know if you spot anything that doesn't look right. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 22:36, 18 February 2024 (EST)

I've now taken a first stab at documenting the functions this extension supports. A lot of it's copy-pasted from the original UespCustomCode documentation, and some of it could use some more work, but if you're not already familiar with the functions, that's the place to go. I'll refine and update it as time and energy allow. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 21:39, 19 February 2024 (EST)

I just uploaded an update to the extension that fixes a number of minor bugs. You can see the full list on UESP. – Robin Hood ^(talk) 19:52, 21 February 2024 (EST)

Embedding YouTube Video

We recently did a video on player housing which I think is a good candidate for embedding on Starfield:Houses.

Comments and feedback welcome! Note, so far I think this is the only Starfield video which is a good candidate for embedding. Most of the other videos we've done are a little subjective (although a couple might be considered useful). -- Daveh (talk) 10:35, 8 March 2024 (EST)