Request for General Wiki Cartography forum

[IgorVonDame]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to request this ...

The Wiki provides the ability of users to add the User:Cartographers subject/category to their main talk page to highlight their interest in working on the maps related to the game in the wiki. Currently for various reasons the cartography efforts seem to be vertical efforts in each TES version section (Skyrim users doing Skyrim, Morrowind folks doing Morrowind, etc.) but little unity in the planning of the work.

Having a separate forum for this subject would allow the exchange of ideas and help all the participants communicate more effectively. I for one need to bounce lots of plans and ideas I have for the Arena wiki maps off of those who are active in the skyrim/obilivion/morrowind/daggerfall area, but currently must 'talk' individually to those users.

I have asked if there was a User:Cartography wiki page with discussion of the subject associated with it on irc and received no useful input/hope - hence my request here.

Summarizing:

Cartographers need to communicate ... can we have a separate area in the forums to do so, or should we be using a discussion page on some undefined page in the wiki?

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

[Musicman247]

As far as I'm concerned you can make threads for the efforts in this sub-forum. I don't think we need a sub-forum devoted to it, but maybe a thread for each game (Skyrim Cartography, Oblivion Cartography, etc.)?

[AKB]

First off, literally anyone can use the cartographer userbox. It doesn't matter if they're interested in adding maps or not.

The cartographers are an actual group of users (see list). Truthfully, the majority of the work that needs to be done by maps can only be done by those users, and we all know how to talk to each other/already have pages dedicated to that work. And even then, the only maps that are still to be completely done from my knowledge are Skyrim maps. We really only need maps for Skyrim, the others are fine as of now.

[legoless]

Wiki discussion really ought to be discussed on the wiki, not in a subforum.

And even then, the only maps that are still to be completely done from my knowledge are Skyrim maps. We really only need maps for Skyrim, the others are fine as of now.

Oblivion still needs interactive maps for the different worldspaces as well.

[AKB]

We already have an interactive map for the ones that I'd imagine you would want an interactive map for. What exactly are we missing?

[legoless]

I remember rpeh was working on Gaiar Alata and the Painted World.

[AKB]

I don't think we need interactive maps for those, though. They're really small and easily taken care of with a compiled map with added map markers.

[IgorVonDame]

First of all, thank you for responding to the request, the level of discussion of what does or doesn't need to be done regarding maps, just from the few responses, speaks volumes of the need for a common forum for discussion across all TES versions.

First off, literally anyone can use the cartographer userbox. It doesn't matter if they're interested in adding maps or not.

The cartographers are an actual group of users (see list). Truthfully, the majority of the work that needs to be done by maps can only be done by those users, and we all know how to talk to each other/already have pages dedicated to that work. And even then, the only maps that are still to be completely done from my knowledge are Skyrim maps. We really only need maps for Skyrim, the others are fine as of now.

Thank you for pointing out the Special:ListUsers/cartographer document, as I read the description, the group is only valid for those involved in the creation and development of the Google Map interactive maps for each of the games. That project does not currently include the Daggerfall and Arena TES games which I am trying to address.

If the Users:Cartographer userbox is ignored by the community of cartographers (or at least an eagerness to enlist their help is lacking) then why even provide the option?

As I understand the assets needed to create a Google map, or even an interactive map within the wiki, layers of 'maps' are needed. Saying that Arena or Daggerfall is done because someone has created an image of the map of Tamriel or even the regeons is ignoring the need for maps of the towns, floor plans of the accessible buildings and perhaps a revision of the regional maps to include scaling information from the games. All those assets, although unique to the individual games, need to fit into the overall 'plan' for cartography within the UESP wiki as a whole. For that communication is needed beyond direct talk-page posting.

The power of a wiki is the unified efforts of a group to achieve a goal. A message of 'We don't need any help, we are done' does not support the encouragement of help from eager users who have already spent hundreds of hours gathering artifacts to create missing map information in several areas of the wiki.

From what I've observed:
Daggerfall
- most village map information was obtained from the .BDA formatted files and contain no legend as to the significance of the colors of the buildings
- no interior floor plans exist.
- If the colors on the BDA files were defined by Bethesda, they should be used when coloring buildings on Arena maps for wiki consistency purposes.

Arena
- there are 256 town maps missing from the wiki, currently some of us are working on editing the screenshots to create them.
- The accessible buildings have floor plans that map the locations of NPCs within them that should also be added.
- Existing world and region maps are covered with useless topological artwork which limits the usability of the artwork as an object location service - maps are being reworked as political ones highlighting only the town and route information.


So, some examples of what I see as unfinished work currently out of the scope of the users listed in the special user list you provided.....

[AKB]

I wasn't aware you were primarily interested in the older games in my original post, I've read up more and can clearly see I'm wrong. Sorry. I would like to say that you clearly know a deal more about mapping than me, so I'll only try to stick to providing advice from an administrative position, and not an editorial one. I like most users rarely visit the namespaces for those games, so please pardon my ignorance.

First off, you are reading far too much into a simple user box. The only ones prohibited from the use by anyone are the Admin and Patroller boxes. Expecting those people to be interested in map making is asking too much for someone who simply added a userbox to their page. People have the option to add them because people like userboxes.

Yes, it's entirely true that Arena and Daggerfall maps aren't up to snuff, but there simply aren't many people who play either nowadays to bring the old wiki articles up to current standards. It would require an immense amount of tedious dedication by anyone to get it done, so the real issue is getting interest in getting that done.

As for maps of every single building? I wouldn't argue for their inclusion if the town structures weren't randomly generated like dungeons, but I don't see a huge demand for them.

Onto Arena, Arena simply isn't content complete in any form of the word. Many articles are still red links or don't even exist as a red link at the moment, so I would say that adding maps is a secondary objective to the primary one of actually bringing it up to standards. I wouldn't be able to guess how to go about that as my practical knowledge of Arena is limited by the fact that I never got out of the starting dungeon (I did get a bit far in Daggerfall, but couldn't find the time for Arena).

The common forum you're asking for already exists. It's called the Community Portal. You've used it before. There aren't so many cartographers present that a forum for it would be entirely useless after a short period of time. Hell, it would actually be counter intuitive as the users who do know how to do this work would be more likely to help you there than on the forums. Please create a topic on the CP laying out your request. Any long term plans for this effort would do better as a projects then as a forum where it will be less organized and will not reach the attention of the people who can help it on its way.

Either way, I can't help but fear that this is doomed to fail unless you can actually produce those hundreds of hours of work into any kind of feasible example of your own efforts to do this. I would love to see this get done, but generally speaking someone starting a project must show their work and dedication to convince others to jump on. I'm unaware if their are many other users active towards getting this done, so I'm assuming you'd have to recruit them to this cause.

Whatever you decide, I wish you the best on this and hope to see your work soon!