Lore talk:Skylamp

UOL

This page currently lists Daveh's Interview with a Dark Elf as an official source. Despite a claim in the interview that "all information is official lore", this is a fan-published text which we have always cited as an unofficial source. I don't see a need to change this approach now; this is exactly the kind of obscure source that should be highlighted as potentially not reflecting established lore. —⁠Legoless (talk) 11:25, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Definitions change — while the interview itself claims the content to be "official lore", our current definition of "official" means "published by official sources", and an interview published by a fansite does not fall under that definition. It would also always have been considered Out-of-Game Lore, which preceded our current Unofficial Lore definition, and there is no good argument for stating it's suddenly now equivalent to in-game sources or official sources. --Enodoc (talk) 12:58, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

By being an "official interview," I assume that means in-context that some Bethesda exec signed off on it, which means its creation was official, even if its publication was not. There are plenty of Out-of-Game sources we take to be official, most notably the Loremaster's Archives. If I'm understanding the context correctly, the only difference is that the UESP was given the honor of publishing it. "Out-of-Game" as a term fell out of use for a reason and using it to invalidate a separate quality does not hold. If a work has been processed and outputted the Bethesda machine, then it should be official, regardless of how it is transmissed. -Dcsg (talk) 19:26, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Heavily agree with what DCSG has stated, I don't get why we're treating the Loremaster's Archives as canon if we're refusing to do the same with other interviews, we're not talking about a text that was published 15 years after a dev left Bethesda, this was done by active devs of the time. By this logic, all of the Loremaster's Archives that were done by Schick should be classed as UOL since he no longer works at Zenimax, which is just silly. Imperialbattlespire (talk) 20:44, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Current consensus is that fan-published interviews must be marked as UOL. There was next to no support for citing ZeniMax-approved fan publications such as A Matter of Voice and Brass as official the last time this was brought up on the Community Portal. Trying to draw false parallels with texts published on the official website does not change that fact.

The correct way to go about this in my mind is to have the discussion first, rather than making a unilateral change against both the usual method of citing this text and the current broader consensus on fan-published material in lorespace. The inclusion of UOL material in lorespace is precarious enough as it is and relies entirely on consensus; changing any of these texts to regular references without prior agreement runs counter to this policy. —⁠Legoless (talk) 23:17, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

I think hosting is irrelevant, as long as Bethesda/ZeniMax signed off on it (ie, a PC Gamer press article isn't found on the Bethesda website but they worked with them to publish it), its official, and if they didn't, its just a developer speaking unofficially of their own accord. As long as this interview was made with Bethesda's input (as a company) it should be fine to consider official. Though not directly related, I consider the Skeleton Man's Interview with Denizens of Tamriel to be official as the answers are quite literally copyrighted by Bethesda in spite of being published on m0use.net. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 23:41, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

(←) Coming back to this following the related Community Portal discussion and further clarifications around how Interview with a Dark Elf should be cited, I have restored the UOL tag. To be clear, I think this page is notable enough to exist regardless of the majority of sources being pre-release or unofficial, mainly due to the in-universe existence of the Skylamp's Shadow spell. —⁠Legoless (talk) 09:35, 3 May 2023 (UTC)