User talk:Darman36/Archive 1

Welcome to the Order, Darman36/Archive 1!

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Feel free to contact me on my talkpage if you need anything. DarkFeather (talk) 17:14, December 21, 2015 (UTC)

Re: Database

Hey there. All of our Database articles got renamed and re-structed not too long ago, due to which the pages we had previously used to display them became obsolete. Every DB entry now has it's own page (i.e. Database: Evie Frye), instead of piling all of the entries onto a single page. I'm afraid this re-structuring has left the Database article in somewhat of a state of disarray. The revamping of this article will consist of considerably more than a small update. At the moment of writing this, I'm not even quite sure what the page is supposed to become like... So while I'd love to offer advice, I think it might be most prudent to wait a few days. I'm currently in the process of deleting all of the 'old format' pages, which consist of pointless re-directs, and will be tackling the Database article afterwards. Mass-deletion, however, takes a little while if there are over 400 redirects. Amnestyyy (Contact me!)

<helper /> 22:13, December 22, 2015 (UTC)

Helix Research Analyst's personal files

Hey Dar
Just popping in real quick - I was reading through the Helix Research Analyst's personal files (welp what a mouthful) article and noticed that the audio files like "New Orders" don't have the dates these conversations took place. Will those be added along with the videos? Thanks for reading and for all your hard work! :) Crook ^{The Constantine District} 14:18, February 24, 2016 (UTC)

Crook,
Pretty sure the dates are there. Using "New Orders" as an example, the code should look like this:

"File:[video]|November 2013, Philadelphia: Laetitia England disbands ..."
Unless I missed something? Darman (talk) 22:44, February 24, 2016 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I see it now in source mode, but it doesn't pop up in visual mode. Is that the way it's supposed to be, or..? Crook ^{The Constantine District} 22:49, February 24, 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, I have it written out in source, but it'll only appear after I've added the video. I've got a system of write transcript, then add vids. It's not an issue? Darman (talk) 22:52, February 24, 2016 (UTC)

No, no, by all means, continue as planned. I was making something out of nothing, evidently :P Crook ^{The Constantine District} 07:57, February 25, 2016 (UTC)

Re: Continual Edits

Alright, thanks for the heads-up. -- ZéACNS (talk) 21:56, April 9, 2016 (UTC)

Alright, thanks again. -- ZéACNS (talk) 10:48, May 5, 2016 (UTC)

Sup

I'm on IRC if you want to talk, though I promise I still plan to go through that video list. DarkFeather ^{Raven's Nest}_{Raven's Hunt} 23:59, May 2, 2016 (UTC)

Talkpage updates

I've responded to a couple of your messages on my talkpage. Cleaning out the videos is still ongoing, but I'll look through your Sandbox. DarkFeather ^{Raven's Nest}_{Raven's Hunt} 18:47, May 18, 2016 (UTC)

Signature Response

Thank you for contacting me on the signature thing. Regarding changing the font size, I will be doing this as well as leaving you this message. I am editing as I speak. I am almost done with it.

Screen shot:

So what do you think?

{{BigBrother99Sig}}

Sadly I don't know what to think, I've never used sig coding. The issue is that you don't have 2 sets of blue-highlighted brackets "]]" indicating end of code for the "User", "User:talk" sections. Since your coding doesn't "end", my font is massive, even though I'm "talking". Other tips: 1) "Thanks for contacting" might be redundant (you've linked your talk pg) 2) Your sig adds the Garter crest to pages like a normal pic; I think there's a coding trick for sig images, but you'll have to ask around. You may want to contact Staff for the coding, I'm afraid I can't do much beyond pointing out errors. --Darman (talk) 00:09, May 30, 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for help

Hey, thanks for fixing that link for me. I could not figure out what I was doing wrong. <theproclamation> (talk) 20:57, May 30, 2016 (UTC)

IRC FYI

Hey, next time you're on IRC, stick around for a bit if you can or type "r.msg I'm here" into #ACWiki so that I know you're there. I'm still working on your analysis category, but I'd like to check in with you on where you are with things and if you need anything -- basically say hi. DarkFeather ^{Raven's Nest}_{Raven's Hunt} 14:12, June 15, 2016 (UTC)

Noted. Sorry. It's just when I've logged in there lately, it's mostly quiet, & I didn't think you were here (or there) as frequently, as your last edit was 1 month ago. --Darman (talk) 14:15, June 15, 2016 (UTC)

Sir Gunn's Armor

My apologies with regards to the incorrect Style formatting of the Sir Gunn's armor contribution. I think it is a good idea to have the picture there in more of a thumbnail style like you have it now. My only question would be why remove the effective 'bonus' of the armor from the article? If it is located somewhere else on the wiki, I was unable to find it, which is what prompted me to contribute in the beginning. Thanks for cleaning the page up, looks much more cohesive now.Dread Loch (talk) 18:15, June 20, 2016 (UTC)

It's all good, formatting can get messy at times. If I recall correctly, Sir Gunn's armor doesn't have any abilities, only an aesthetic difference. The gas mask you mentioned is only seen on the Assassin Killer outfit from uPlay. --Darman (talk) 00:15, June 21, 2016 (UTC)

You have the gas mask ability with this armor as well, when you're in a situation when it is necessary to have it, you have the ability to press "A to equip Gas Mask" appears on the screen.Dread Loch (talk) 22:29, June 23, 2016 (UTC)

Perhaps we're having a communication error on both ends. Let me try again: Sir Gunn's Armor, like most (not all) of the ACRG outfits, allows Shay to equip the gas mask when needed any time after Sequence 3-1, "The Color of Right". That I know of, the Assassin Killer's gas mask is only a cosmetic change, with the mask appearing always equipped even if the situation does not call for it, though I could be wrong. Does this make more sense? --Darman (talk) 08:10, June 24, 2016 (UTC)

I know that the Assassin Killer's outfit perk is that the gas mask ability is always on, no need for engaging it. I will check later this evening on Sir Gunn's Armor to see if the perk is permenant or not.Dread Loch (talk) 17:58, June 24, 2016 (UTC)

Category Relevance

Hey Darman,
I saw you pop into the IRC, but my attention was elsewhere, so I figured I'd answer your question here. If you want to change the category order for articles like the example you gave, you are free to do so, but it's not as necessary as for character articles because they generally just have a lot more categories and it can look very disorganized without the "order of decreasing relevancy". You can always consult the other admins (best bet would probably be either DarkFeather or Sim), but my stance is basically: the "order of decreasing relevancy" rule for categories doesn't need to be enforced on articles that don't have a lot of categories, but adhering to it certainly does no harm.
Cheers! Crook ^{The Constantine District} 00:44, December 14, 2016 (UTC)

Crook,
Sorry for constantly popping in/out of IRC. I know it's frowned upon, but I keep disconnecting from the server or something. Gonna wait it out, see if it's my connection. Anyway, I wasn't thinking about altering character categories. I was thinking more, say, the War of Unification. It's listed as "Spoilers", "Stubs", then "Wars" and "Timeline", when as I said earlier, Wars are subset of a Timeline. To confirm: I'm free to flip the two as needed for consistency's sake? BTW, would the Timeline infobox go above or below the Isu one?
--Darman (talk) 01:01, December 14, 2016 (UTC)

Don't worry, people will understand if your connection isn't stable. And yeah, I don't mind if you want to flip around categories like that. As for the order of those templates, I'm not sure if there's actually a rule for it. You'd have to ask someone else ^^; Crook ^{The Constantine District} 01:29, December 14, 2016 (UTC)

Thx. It's just last time I popped in/out constantly, I'd accidentally "slapped" someone, thinking it was like a "poke", then couldn't find the type box & kept flipping back/forth, then quit to prevent further potential issues. Re: Category rearranging – I'll add it to my (growing) project list. I'll ask another Admin later on the infoboxes. Thx again, --Darman (talk) 01:38, December 14, 2016 (UTC)

Black Cross

Hey Darman,

Regarding the changes you've made to the Black Crosses article and the William Stoughton article, where exactly is it stated that Stoughton is a Black Cross? In the 4th issue of the Assassins comic? Or the Templars one?

Additionally, I would like to point out, William Stoughton might not be the character you mean - from what I know of what a Black Cross is (it's not a lot, I have yet to read the Templars comic series), Samuel Parris would fit the description much better. The comics themselves get Stoughton and Parris mixed up though, so I understand the confusion. Can you get back to me on this? Thanks for reading. Crook ^{The Constantine District} 18:54, December 14, 2016 (UTC)

Crook,
I thought he was a Cross. Issue 4 for the Titan Assassin comics page says so, at least. Did I jump the gun? I don't have the books, so I went off the wiki, and the issue's noted confusion between the two makes it worse... --Darman (talk) 19:20, December 14, 2016 (UTC)

Just checked the summary for issue 4, yeah, that is definitely wrong. Whoever wrote it went off what the comic said, which I don't blame them for. I'm speeding through the Templars comics right now, cause I don't think the Assassins comic series ever explicitly called Parris a Black Cross, to look for some confirmation on that. Crook ^{The Constantine District} 19:35, December 14, 2016 (UTC)

Alright. I'm working on duplicate links/unlinked pgs in the Titan comics. Shall I revert the previous edits & remove the Cross line? --Darman (talk) 19:40, December 14, 2016 (UTC)

You can. I will add Parris if I come across any evidence that he was indeed the Order's Black Cross at the time. Crook ^{The Constantine District} 19:45, December 14, 2016 (UTC)

Sourcing Question

Hi Darman. I've responded to your query on my talk page. --Jasca Ducato (talk | contributions) 09:19, April 4, 2018 (UTC)

Skill tree

Thanks! You'd have to ask an admin about that - I just named the Odyssey page how I saw the other named and figured that was the standard. Raylan13<staff/> (talk) 16:17, June 29, 2018 (UTC)

Re: Mass Edits

Hello, Darman. I apologize for editing sections so quickly, i'd had a lot on my mind during those edits, and just thought those pages would sound better in my mind, disregarding the thoughts of you and others on this wiki. Altair 0147 (talk) 11:24, September 25, 2018 (UTC)Altair 0147

Hey, no problem! Admittedly, there is a learning curve for Wiki writing formatting and style. I'd only meant that as a pointer, not a reprimand, so I apologize if I came off as blunt. You didn't step on anyone's toes, so I think you're good. Happy editing! -- Darman (talk) 23:01, September 25, 2018 (UTC)

Re: Skill trees

Hey Darman, thank you for reaching out to me! I especially appreciate your recognition of our sentence case naming policy as we've had quite a number of users who have been oblivious to it or fail to respect it. However in this case, I'm not entirely sure that tree shouldn't be capitalized. The reason is because conventionally, gameplay terms are capitalized and treated as proper nouns (i.e. in game manuals, game guides, reviews, etc.) so as to distinguish them as gameplay terms. This is normally necessary so as to avoid confusion. Per our in-universe writing policy, we normally make sure that all gameplay terms are translated into "real-life" terms anyways, but with certain articles, like the Skill Tree articles, these are expressly out-of-universe pages.

The question with the Skill Tree pages is that, if the game explicitly names the skill trees by this generic name of "Skill Tree" (i.e. named after what it is), then skill tree can be validly seen as either a gameplay term that should be capitalized or as a general noun not capitalized. If, on the other hand, the skill trees in the games aren't given this name (but given another name, e.g. [w:c:leagueoflegends:Runes Reforged|Runes]], formerly [w:c:leagueoflegends:Summoner Mastery|Masteries]], in [w:c:leagueoflegends|League of Legends]]), then you're absolutely right that the skill trees should not be capitalized. My apologies if I have made this a bit confusing. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 10:45, October 3, 2018 (UTC)

Helix Rift Events

The events cycle through so I'm not sure its necessary to note when the event was active. Additionally with each new iteration of the same event they change which heroes give the synch bonuses. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 07:53, November 27, 2018 (UTC)

Hyphen vs En/Em dash vs colon

Hello Darman, thanks for asking about this since it is indeed a very common mistake among editors. In reality, usage of the hyphen in any context outside of compound words is technically grammatically incorrect, a point that even many professional companies tend to miss. The correct punctuation to be used in the subtitle of a title is always a colon, and with a subsequent subtitle, an en dash. Otherwise, hyphens and colons are not actually supposed to be interchangeable with dashes and have entirely different functions.

En dashes and em dashes actually are interchangeable when used in prose to set off additional information within a sentence, and usage of either is entirely a stylistic choice. The only requirement is that there must be single spaces flanking either side of an en dash when used in such a case. If an em dash is used instead, there should not be any space. However, our wiki prefers em dashes over en dashes for this function. One other usage of an em dash is in attributing quotes, although this is given automatically by the template.

You raise a legitimate concern, but hyphens simply do not belong in titles despite the common, unprofessional error made by even Ubisoft itself. If it is the case that our audience may have trouble finding articles due to being unfamiliar with typing dashes, then we should create pages with the hyphenated titles redirecting to the proper pages.

Finally, it is possible to type the dashes. There are different codes for it that you can find online, but the ones I am familiar with are ALT+0150 and ALT+0151 for en and em dashes respectively where ALT denotes holding down the ALT key while typing the numbers. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 02:10, January 21, 2019 (UTC)

Lines being added

Hey Darman36, saw your edit summary earlier so I would just like to say I did not intend to do it on purpose. I merely added the link into the "Ibis Reborn" text, so I'm not too sure why the lines are moved. It could likely due to a FANDOM bug, similar to the one accompany the {{DISPLAYNAME}} tag. Just wanna let you know and I apologies for the inconvenience caused. XOdeyssusx (talk) 14:56, April 3, 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, my bad. It's just that you were the last edit, so I thought it was you. My apologies for the bad faith. Damn, I hate it when Fandom bugs mess up stuff! -- Darman (talk) 15:08, April 3, 2019 (UTC)

No full sync

I have responded to your question on my talk page. --Jasca Ducato (talk | contributions) 15:30, April 4, 2019 (UTC)

Altering image source & licensing

Hello Darman, I've noticed the widespread changes you've made to hundreds of our images today. Can you explain a bit what is the purpose for these changes? I find them to look really messy now, and I can't even put it into words, only that this...
Template:Cc-by-sa-3.0
Looks very disruptive. I have never seen that template before, but if it indicates the same licensing as {{CC-BY-SA}} why not just use {{CC-BY-SA}} in the license field of the information box? Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 20:32, April 21, 2019 (UTC)

Hey Sol,
Sorry for the edit spam on the pics. I'm just going through the achievements page and noticed that we hadn't properly sourced the AC3 achievement icons. We also need larger Brotherhood icons, but when I tried uploading the icons, they look...funny. There's some bars on the bottom of the pngs that aren't there originally, and I've not altered them in any way. As for the licensing: damnit, I see the template code went weird; I've seen the blank spaces in the Cc-by-sa-3.0 before but thought they were just a glitch on my end. Wait, they're the same license?!? *sigh* Guess that's what comes from not reading properly. My sincerest apologies for messing up the aesthetic. I'll fix all instances of that ASAP. -- Darman (talk) 05:10, April 22, 2019 (UTC)

Hello again, sorry for such a late reply. I did indeed forget about your suggestion when I read it while I was busy, so thank you for reminding me. Yes, feel free to make corrections to the two templates. :) Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 22:33, May 15, 2019 (UTC)

Re: Ubisoft articles

Of course it's a given that if a link is broken or outdated, we should fix it with an archived version of the page. It defeats the whole point of sourcing otherwise. :) Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 13:54, April 26, 2019 (UTC)

Various Rebellion stuff

So for the time being, the CM doesn't want her real name on the wikia, at least not while she is still the CM, but she's fine with her forum name which I put. She did not confirm who 3P3EC74R works for, so it could be Erudito or something completely different. Couple other thoughts: Should we create an IU Rebellion page separate to the AC: Reb page similar to Liberation and the AC: Lib pages? And, the messages sent from Player Admin and 3P3EC74R through the Mobile Animus chats aren't really part of the memories. Should they be included on them or should we move them to something like the 21st century conversations? – Lacrossedeamon (talk) 12:29, December 11, 2019 (UTC)

A pity we won't know if a 3P3EC74R/Erudito link exists. It'd have been nice if it was even denied, but maybe it'll show up later? Thanks for asking, though! As for your questions, I don't know if we need another Rebellion page. I'd always thought that users just happened to use an Abstergo Animus in our world, eg. Rogue and Unity, and not that it was an in-universe game. When you describe the memory dialogue like that, I can certainly see a case for moving them to 21st cen. convo's, but I think you're better off asking a Staff for both matters, as they'll have a better idea where things go. – Darman (talk) 20:10, December 12, 2019 (UTC)

Date of Rebellion memories

Hello Darman, a few other editors told me just now that the missions in the first few regions of Rebellion are set a few years prior to 1492. I got the impression that the game begins in 1492 because of our memory pages on them. They told me this is incorrect, and I noticed that you were the one who changed the dates to 1492 in the infoboxes. Can you please give me your reasoning to help us verify the correct date? Thank you! Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 21:38, March 27, 2020 (UTC)

Hi Sol,
I'll gladly explain! But where in the missions does it say they are prior to 1492? Unless my eyes skipped it, I don't see anything. Anyway, I worked off the AC film's intro showing Aguilar's formal initiation in 1492. I felt it had to have happened before Rebellion's Prologue, where he says it's his first mission as a (true) Assassin, in keeping with the Spaniards seeming more orthodox in following the Levantine Order's practices. However, the assumption does not apply for Region 5's last 3 missions leading to Torquemada's death. While he died in 1498, no date is given in-game. The most players get are Aguilar's logs saying Tomás "has not appeared in public for years" since "he has had years to study the Staff". I think we can easily assume there was a time skip from 1492–1498 in the Spanish Order's activities. – Darman (talk) 05:20, March 28, 2020 (UTC)

So there are a number of contradiction that need to parsed for this. The movie state 1492 for the ceremony but Granada capitulated on January 2nd of that year. That most likely means that memory 18 Fall of Granada happens no later than that date. The novelization however moves the ceremony and failed rescue of the prince back a year to 1491. The other historical scenes aren’t labeled but Sophia mentions the 6th as the date for Benedicto's death. The memories War of Attrition and Ammunition Ablaze mention the start and end to the siege of Baza from 1489-1490. This being the case might put memory 18 in November of 1491 which was the end of siege of Granada. Finally Aguilar's bio in the game actually states he joined the Assassins in 1487. The ceremony from the movie and novelization might therefore not actually be an initiation but a promotion. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 08:44, March 29, 2020 (UTC)

Putting aside for a moment that the film suggests (almost certainly erroneously) that every Animus scene is set in 1492, are we absolutely sure that the scene where Muhammad XII is to give the Apple to Torquemada is set during the formal capitulation ceremony and not during the surrender in the Siege of Granada? Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 08:58, March 29, 2020 (UTC)

I for one am not certain. The novelization makes it seem more likely that it's surrender and not the capitulation. I'd say it depends on which we believe overrules the other. Does anyone know if Christie Golden answers fan question? Lacrossedeamon (talk) 09:40, March 29, 2020 (UTC)

But even the film itself doesn't say clearly that it is the formal capitulation and the not the surrender of the city. The year it gives is a different matter than what event it is meant to depict since the year itself is already known to be most likely erroneous in the context of most of the events and therefore unreliable. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 10:08, March 29, 2020 (UTC)

I actually haven't finished the game yet, but the description for this last memory, "The Fall of Granada", pretty much says that it's occurring during, well, the Fall of Granada as "Torquemada and the Army of the Inquisition are entering Alhambra". So this is the exact same scene from the movie then right? Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 01:12, March 30, 2020 (UTC)

(Damn, I step away for 1 day!) Thanks for clearing up the dates, I didn't know there were so many inconsistencies between media and real history. Infuriating, to say the least. I'm sorry for inadvertently causing such confusion with my edits. Lacrossedeamon, I'm near-certain Golden answers fan questions, for ex. via Twitter, though she's been busy with Star Wars of late, so I don't know how good her memory will be for AC. As for ACReb's Torquemada scene, Sol, yes, it's the same: Muhammad XII et al. have just left the room as Tomás reveals the Apple to the Templars, before Aguilar enters absent María and fights Ojeda, whom he kills as Tomás escapes. – Darman (talk) 03:15, March 30, 2020 (UTC)

Response on Cult talk page

Hey just to keep you aware the situation, the person you tried to respond to is a sock puppet and the reason why that page got locked in the first place. We realize it’s inconvenient to have a page locked like this for a indefinite time but the edit warring was starting to get out of hand. Hopefully the guy loses interest and we can unlock it in the near future. For the time being if you have any suggested edit either use the article‘s talk page or one of our own. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 04:03, May 9, 2020 (UTC)

Ahh. I thought they were a sock, given how cocky they were in their Cult/Templar belief for such a new account, but I wasn't sure. Thanks for the tip, but I don't have any suggested edits now. Even if I did, they'd likely be minor, so I'm willing to wait until Staff reach a decision. – Darman (talk) 04:20, May 9, 2020 (UTC)

Hey Darman! I don't know if you are on the discord or not, but I just made a blog post about this guy and his sockpuppets: here. - Soranin (talk) 18:24, May 9, 2020 (UTC)

Merge Proposals

Hey, Darman! I just opened up a [Thread:241337|discussion]] on our open merge proposals. It's quite long, but if we discuss it we can close them (especially because there are some from 2014 still unsolved :o)

If you have the time, could you offer some input? Thank you a lot. - Soranin (talk) 22:27, May 21, 2020 (UTC)

Sure! I don't know how much sway I'll have, and I doubt the changes will affect me much as I'll just follow the community decision, but I'll give input where I can. Thanks! – Darman (talk) 23:40, May 21, 2020 (UTC)

Images

I haven't gotten around to sourcing the Buckingham Palace images and I'm working on sourcing not just the Buckingham Palace images, but the rest of the images that needs to be sourced. Andrewh7 (talk) 22:35, June 13, 2020 (UTC)

Never mind. I thought you meant before uploading them to the wiki like using the File summary to do it all at once or something. Maybe, but after uploading the rest of the images, adding the sourcing sounds taxing and prefer to reverse search them at that point. Andrewh7 (talk) 22:52, June 13, 2020 (UTC)

If there are images that are from multiple sources, do I just write each source link to the ArtStation page or the entire template? Either way, would they have to be in order? Andrewh7 (talk) 02:12, June 14, 2020 (UTC)

From what you said before it sounded that way and now you’re saying not to do that? So I have to include the link and the template? What if they are images that are completely different things / places and aren’t all the same? What then? Andrewh7 (talk) 03:16, June 16, 2020 (UTC)

Not just from the same set, but could also be from completely different ones. On an unrelated note, if I wanted / felt like certain characters needed closeups that lacked them, is there anyone in particular that I should ask? Are side characters / NPCs the only ones that can have closeup images or can playable characters have them too? Andrewh7 (talk) 05:00, June 16, 2020 (UTC)

Le Louvre Gallery

By the way, you added the Environment art caption to images of interior images. Thought you should know, so you could think of the right caption to change it since it isn’t an environment image. Andrewh7 (talk) 03:19, June 16, 2020 (UTC) Andrewh7

Yes, thanks. I used it for now, reasoning that they're renders of an enclosed environment instead of The Outside we usually associate with that word. I plan to update them when I find out what building they are within the Louvre, but feel free to do it yourself, too.– Darman (talk) 03:55, June 16, 2020 (UTC)

Suggestions

Had two suggestions I wanted to run by you. I noticed there isn’t a family section in the infobox. Maybe there should be. It would make things easier knowing who is related to who when users don’t know and the information is located on various parts of the page. There are characters that have gameplay alternatives that have different endings depending on the choice made. Perhaps a category can be created to notify users that the character has alternative gameplays and the endings stated on the pages may not necessarily be the case for every player right off the bat. Andrewh7 (talk) 04:23, June 27, 2020 (UTC) Andrewh7

Re: redirects

I have two check boxes, follow this page and leave redirect. I assumed they were available to all editors but maybe it’s a permissions only thing. In that case, oops! I lied to the other guy. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 04:22, June 29, 2020 (UTC)

Purpose of redirects

Hey Darman, I think I've explained this before, but "unused redirect" is not really a valid reason to put redirect pages up for deletion. The two latest examples I was looking at were "Artist (Piagnoni)" and "Mayan stelae". In the latter, you gave the reason that it is an "unused link except for once on talk page".

Redirects serve to link to articles using an alternate term or phrase; ensure that any page which has been redirected doesn't immediately cause the former link to become dead; and finally, so that users who type in a different search term than the exact title can still find the article.

The first function is rendered moot by the fact that we have this convention of always linking using the exact article title anyways, followed by the pipe for the alternate term we wish to use... this is technically speaking not a codified policy, and it's just a convention carried over Wookieepedia who banned using redirects as links for whatever reason. But let's ignore this first function.

The second purpose, you understand, which seems to be your reason why those two redirect pages should be deleted.

But it doesn't seem like you understand the third. Redirects serve to help visitors find the article they're looking for because they auto-fill to the right article if they mistyped or used an alternate name for it. So let's say that a visitor thought to search for "Mayan stelae" instead of "Mayan stele". By keeping the redirect page for "Mayan stelae", they'll still be directed to the right page.

Now in some cases, even without the redirect page, they'll still be auto-filled along the way, as in the case with "Mayan stelae". By the time one hits "Mayan stel-" they should find the page, but this isn't always true since some alternate names may be entirely different. Maybe one can argue that we shouldn't be keeping redirects where the auto-fill leads to the correct title appearing ahead of the mistake, but I am accustomed to maintaining pluralized titles as redirect pages.

As a result, redirect pages which have common misspellings are spelled correctly but lack the appropriate diacritics, or where the title has been inflected do not automatically need to be deleted. That they are "unused", if you mean not linked to anywhere currently, is also not a valid reason for deletion. This also means that "typographical error" is also not always a valid reason for deletion. Make no mistake, this doesn't mean we should arduously create redirect pages solely to account for all kinds of possible misspellings, only that you must be mindful that a misspelling or inexact title isn't always an immediate cause for deletion.

I deleted "Artist (Piagnoni)" with the view that it is probably unlikely someone would accidentally type for that instead given that "Piagnoni" is a disambiguating term, and it is not a commonly known word. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 21:01, July 1, 2020 (UTC)

Ahhh, OK. Thank you for explaining that more. I'm sorry about the mess, then. I'll try to keep this in mind and be less eager in my redirect edits in the future. Thank you. – Darman (talk) 21:20, July 1, 2020 (UTC)

Re: Animus Archetypes

Yes, and I wrote him a sorry message. I now cannot write in my sandbox. It will stay incomplete. Just a thanks for your involvement. But why don't he blocked me? I published something under construction, and that's not right. I have to thank Sol. GodGamer GodConsole 18:10, July 2, 2020 (UTC)

I don't think Lacrosse has the admin rights to block users. As best I understand, his job as a Moderator is page clean-up and ensuring users play nice. The reason why you aren't blocked is because, as Sol said, he "see[s] your edits as being made in earnest faith". The Staff believe the pages you've started are needed, it's just that your writing and sourcing needs work to match the standards set here. I'm sure you'll be able to edit your sandbox in time, but as I'm not Staff, I don't know when. – Darman (talk) 00:00, July 3, 2020 (UTC)

ACSisterhood

You should get the banner made by the Rebellion team as well to commemorate the movement. – Lacrossedeamon (talk) 01:20, September 15, 2020 (UTC)

Great, thx! Now added, and AC's acknowledgement too – Darman (talk) 01:50, September 15, 2020 (UTC)

Bug report

However, this site is not the place to file bug reports. For that, you'd want to contact Ubisoft Support.

Other game wikis have a place for bug reports and various solutions to them if anyone's found them when the developers have not tried to fix them yet. Why is this one different? – ZW2018 (talk) 16:27, September 26, 2020 (UTC)

re: AC Identity arm guards

I really missed it. Thanks. --UJ112013 (talk) 10:40, September 28, 2020 (UTC)

Badge hunting

Sorry my man, I didn't know that Badge Hunting was a ban-able thing. I will not do so again. —unsigned comment by DSegno92 (talk · contr)

Extent of real-world info in articles

I've opened up a new thread on the topic of how much information from real-world sources we should allow ourselves to draw. I noted that you briefly broached the topic before in the agenda post, so I was hoping you might be interested in elaborating your position further on this? It hasn't gotten the attention I would like so far, probably due to the recent merger of the forum and Discussions board. If you have the time, could you please offer your input? Thanks! Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 22:34, October 9, 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know! Tbh, the 2020 agenda thread dropped off my radar because I had the sense that everyone there had said their piece, but thanks for reminding me. Just commented on it now. I hope I was clearer in my point on IRL vs AC info than before. – Darman (talk) 05:00, October 10, 2020 (UTC)

Soranin's Sandbox

Soranin put out an open request on the ACR discord server for people to help him fill out the table. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 10:27, October 11, 2020 (UTC)

Hey, Darman!

So I wanna start with thanking you for keeping an eye out for us. It's really heartening knowing someone's got our back.

But, yeah, as Lacrosse said I did put out a request on Discord because good God the size of those tables! I knew I'd probably not be able to finish it alone before Valhalla came out, and we're all swamped with that, so I asked my friends for help over on Discord. If I ever do something like this again, I'll be sure to warn you :)

Thank you so much! - Soranin (talk) 12:34, October 11, 2020 (UTC)

Ahh OK. Thanks for clearing that up. I didn't know you had put out an open offer to everyone for help, as I haven't joined the Discord (just too much to keep tabs of), so I thought Blinx347's edit, however well-intentioned, was overstepping. Sorry for the confusion. – Darman (talk) 14:00, October 11, 2020 (UTC)

Aw, shucks. It was nothing, really. Just managed to coincide a lull in my work and the need to make the pages. All the data was already in the wiki, was just a matter of shuffling it around. You helped a lot too! :D – Soranin (talk) 14:37, October 15, 2020 (UTC)

CoD Wiki

Ok delete it I was going to focus on one specific game though and one only I've given up all hope on it anyway. – —unsigned comment by Farengaurd (talk · contr) 13:43, October 14, 2020‎ (UTC)

Images

Look, Sabin Lanchette done a same variant. I didn't knew it. Sorry for duplicating the fles, but I sent you a link, at my talkpage. He made the same image too. Sorry. Please delete it. GodGamer GodConsole 15:20, October 19, 2020 (UTC)

Assassins are Hidden Ones, Templars Order of the Ancients

Darman, I noticed you changing the categorization of various characters to specify that they were associated with either the Hidden Ones or the Order of the Ancients rather than the Assassins or Templars respectively. Your edit summary here indicates that you take Hidden Ones to not be Assassins and Templars to not be Order of the Ancients. This is incorrect. We had an extensive community discussion earlier this year righting this misconception though due to the migration to UCP, it might take some time for me to scour for it. Long story short, if the Hidden Ones were not Assassins, this invalidates the entire premise of Assassin's Creed: Origins being a story about the founding of the Assassin Brotherhood. Fan reinterpretation that the Assassins didn't begin until the name came into being pushes the founding of the Assassin Brotherhood even way further forward from Origins, which goes against the canonical interpretation. This is notwithstanding that the presumption seems to be that the name began with Hassan-i-Sabbah which is also not confirmed. The most faithful to the way the lore has been presented is that the Hidden Ones and the Assassins are one and the same organization with clear continuity, only under a different name, not two distinct organizations. In our discussion and voting, we also settled why we will interpret the Order of the Ancients as Templars all the same.

I have not corrected this because our policy on whether we should include a category where a more specific subcategory page has already been included has not been settled. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 19:39, October 19, 2020 (UTC)

Hi Sol,
I'm sorry for the confusion I caused with the categories. I wasn't aware that either early iteration of both secret orders were the same as their modern counterparts because, as you said, I saw it more as a restructuring from one to the other rather than a simple rebranding. I believe the Proto-Assassin vs. Assassin & Proto-Templar vs. Templar thread is what you were referencing, yes? I remember seeing it a few times when someone added new comments, but I admit I only briefly skimmed it. Guess I should fix that. Thank you for alerting me to my mistake, I'll make a note for the future. – Darman (talk) 21:20, October 19, 2020 (UTC)

Redundant edits

Hey, Darman,
I saw some edits that are redundant. I checked differences and found out what you changed. It's not bad, but redundant. For example at A Helot's Dagger page you changed it from [Helot|Helots]. Look, I don't know why you do this, but I want to know before I revert. – GodGamer GodConsole 19:56, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

No worries, Gamer. It's actually not redundant, but I see why you'd think that. Instead, it's your style that's redundant (through no fault of your own, I will add) due to all wikis' internal codes. Using your example, [[Helot]]s has the same effect as [[Helot|Helots]]. It reduces what we need to write and makes linking plurals of page titles with nouns much easier. – Darman (talk) 23:35, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I start it first and you write it second. Why? – GodGamer GodConsole 14:35, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Because that's how collaborative editing sites work when anyone with an account can add as they see fit? I've had it happen to me, where someone rewrites something I did which I thought was clear into something more coherent. It's not a slight against your writing, I just thought having less code where possible was cleaner. – Darman (talk) 02:40, 30 October 2020 (UTC)

Eivor's Gender

Why does Eivor's page make it sound like Eivor is canonically female even though Darby McDevitt himself confirmed that both were canon, so shouldn't the page be gender-neutral using words like they and their? – Andrewh7 (talk) 07:40, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

It normally should, as that was the policy we'd previously established, and you're right, Darby did say both were canon, so they/them would have worked perfectly fine. But it turns out there's a major spoiler reason later in-game which makes a strong case for Eivor being a woman. – Darman (talk) 13:45, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Which is what exactly, if I may ask? – Andrewh7 (talk) 20:05, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

The difference is due to "Animus glitches" Odin's Isu DNA affecting the Animus – Darman (talk) 22:55, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

That still doesn't seem like confirmation/proof that Eivor is actually female, just a strong case. Making a “strong case for it”, doesn’t mean that it is proof/enough proof to state it. For all we know Eivor is actually male. We don’t know and we really can’t say for sure. Andrewh7 (talk) 21:29, 12 November 2020 (UTC) Andrewh7

Except we can. The "animus glitch" Darman refers to is the Animus reading the Isu DNA from Odin present in Eivor's DNA, which is explained in the "hidden truth video" which you unlock. Besides that, in the quest where you unmask the the Grand Master of the OoA, you'll get a key to his private study room, where in one of the documents, the name "Eivor Varinsdottir" appears written alongside Sigurd's. - Soranin (talk) 20:43, 14 November 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I mentioned DNA under (now-removed) <!-- hidden text --> in my reply in case others felt like reading my page, though I don't know if you saw it. But it's an open secret given the spoiler template on Eivor's page. Thanks for elaborating, Soranin, much appreciated. – Darman (talk) 00:05, 15 November 2020 (UTC)

My mess

Heh. Thanks for clearing up the mess I've left in my wake during my edits. It seems I'm a little rusty on the wikia editing policy and MoS (ironic, since I helped write the dang thing back in the day...). Not to worry, though, I'll get the hang of it again soon enough... I hope :/ Amnestyyy (Contact me!) <helper /> 21:26, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Welcome back! Hey, no worries. The site has had a completely new wiki engine since you left a while back, so it'll take time for everyone to get used to it on top of you refreshing your old skills. Glad to see you around again. – Darman (talk) 21:55, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

RE:Chinese Templars

Hey again, Darman. My apologies for getting back to you for this question so late. You must have felt bad about asking at a certain point even though there's not reason to be because it is a perfectly valid question, and I actually really appreciate you taking an interest in this topic.

The simple answer is that Mao built up a cult of personality just as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and the Kim dynasty in North Korea did. You may be familiar with the history, but even after the Great Chinese Famine caused by the Great Leap Forward and his Cultural Revolution which resulted in a combined average estimate of 40 million deaths—equivalent to the total death toll in World War II across the entire world—his glorified cult remained. Even while Deng Xiaoping sought to diminish this cult, Mao has never truly been repudiated in the Mainland. The CCP line is to maintain him as a unifying, national icon, such that despite the undeniable and unprecedented devastation that Mao wrought—he is responsible for a greater death toll than any other historical leader in history and set Mainland China back for decades—countless excuses have been invented to divert his culpability.

Deng even said that Mao was "70% good, 30% bad" despite having his own reservations about his cult of personality, which Guan Yun brought up as evidence that Mao's flaws have been acknowledged and as some sort of correct metric for assessing Mao. In reality, this only demonstrates how the CCP have tried to reduce Mao's guilt as much as they can while recognizing that it's impossible to wipe his record clean. At Mao's death, the Gang of Four were made into exclusive scapegoats for the worst excesses under Mao's reign—not to suggest they weren't also guilty—while many PRC nationalists attribute the Mainland's rapid industrialization from the 1980s onward to socioeconomic foundations lain by Mao's sacrifices (of millions of people) rather than economic reforms under his successors and the opening up to global trade.

In my view, Mao is unequivocally one of the worst leaders in the history of the world, not just by sheer death toll alone, but there was nothing but catastrophe throughout his rule, and only a cult could possibly convince people to not only deny his colossal incompetence but fathom that he could be China's greatest ruler in history. I think maybe an easy contemporary comparison are attitudes about Donald Trump among his most fanatic supporters, where even with over 266,000 deaths in total and counting in the United States, somehow people find ways to excuse his complicity, like the outrageous argument that 266k deaths is the best that Americans could possibly have done to mitigate the damage and that if not for Trump, the death toll would be exponentially greater.

I am not a psychologist and cannot explain phenomenon like this. Perhaps the easiest is to imagine times when we ourselves have had our idols. I have Mongolian friends who have trouble not being apologists for Genghis Khan's crimes even when they are really good people who despise imperialism and strongman rule. Even the way young people stan Kpop stars or other celebrities is a similar mentality. All of us instinctively have a temptation to filter out flaws of people we like and redeemable qualities of people we hate.

I don't think having someone to look up to is all bad, but obviously there is an extreme that can be exploited by governments, and it's frightening to see how absolutely all-consuming it can be. Additional factors to the perpetuation of Mao's cult is that the people ruling China today are largely from what we call the "lost generation" (equivalent to Boomers in the US :P and not to be confused with other lost generations). These were those youths during the Cultural Revolution who were galvanized into fanatical anarchic riots, witch-hunts, and purges in the name of Mao against the country's intellectuals, teachers, scientists, artists, etc. The worst stereotypes of Chinese people today stem primarily from this generation.

While there was a period of gradual liberalization in the 1980s, the PRC took an even darker turn after the Tiananmen Square massacre. This was a crossroads moment, at a time when many other countries around the world were experiencing a wave of democratization, including South Korea, Taiwan, and of course the Soviet bloc, the PRC chose to double down on coercive rule. After the CCP chose violent crackdown, national education was introduced along with the narratives that are a mainstay of PRC psychology today. Anti-Japanese sentiment over World War II and rhetoric like "century of humiliation" and "hurting the feelings of Chinese people" predate this time, but their prevalence in youth education, media, and foreign diplomacy dramatically escalated from the 1990s onward as a political tool.

For example, it is now often forgotten that from the 1950s to 1970s, the PRC policy had been to lay the question of demanding reparations and an apology from Japan for WW2 aside because they valued re-establishing trade ties over justice for the Chinese people. Mao even thanked Japanese diplomats for the invasion because he recognized that the Japanese invasion weakened the KMT and contributed to the CCP victory.

This is not to say that Chinese people do not have legitimate traumas from WW2. They very much do. I know from my own grandparents how real that trauma was, and Japanese war crimes cannot be excused. The Japanese Empire was a fascist regime and a frighteningly evil reflection of what China can become today, but the CCP did not and never truly cared about these traumas. Only in the 1990s when it became politically prudent to exploit that trauma by magnifying it and deepening the wound whenever they could as part of a campaign to encourage xenophobia to consolidate power did they start pretending to care.

Nor do I entirely reject the concept of the "century of humiliation" either, for even as a Hong Konger, whenever I go back and read about the Opium Wars, I loathe the injustice wrought by the British as well, but that narrative is now constantly invoked more than ever to frame any political dissent as fomented by foreign agents, removing all agency (and therefore humanity) from local people. I may feel anguish when I read about Chinese people being victims of European imperialism, as were innumerable other peoples around the world, but other Hong Kongers and I can understand the nuances of this narrative. We do not reject our Chinese ethnic and cultural heritage, but a vast portion of Hong Kongers are either refugees from Mao or descended from those refugees, growing up with front row seats of the gross atrocities which has continued to be committed by the People's Republic of China since the death of Mao.

I want to avoid this cliché because it is so often abused to denigrate those who disagree with us, but the one word that concisely answers your question is brainwashing. We Hong Kongers are also often accused of being brainwashed in turn by PRC nationalists—obviously as do leftists and rightists levy the same charge against one another in the US—but I strictly refuse to use the word for just anyone whose political beliefs are in opposition to mine, even if they are extreme and fanatical. I believe that some individuals certainly can and do become fanatics through their own free exploration and life experiences.

I would identify brainwashing when there is actually the presence of an active, deliberate campaign of rigorous indoctrination by powerful actors, which involves the restriction of exposure to diverse beliefs and suppression of dissenting perspectives. Although every society has an underlying ideology in its culture which forms the default, subconscious lens through which a local would view the world—in America's case it is classical liberalism—being influenced by one's social bubble itself is not brainwashing or indoctrination. Even if we were to argue that this does constitute a minor form of indoctrination, such that we are all indoctrinated to an extent, I don't believe using this as the operative definition for brainwashing is convenient as an analytical tool where there exists the aforementioned deliberate campaign of the figurative "burning books and burying scholars". Such a campaign is a distinct beast altogether in no small part for its production of structural violence, for being a form of structural violence.

So as an example, there are home-grown PRC ultranationalists and then there are "tankies"; Western-born apologists, closet fascists, and fanatics for non-Western totalitarian regimes like the People's Republic of China, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. If you have ever had the misfortune of being attacked by a "tankie", you would most likely see them as brainwashed cultists, but I do not believe most "tankies" are technically speaking brainwashed whereas PRC ultranationalists by and far are very much brainwashed. I make this distinction because I believe it is important to recognize that tankies are often Americans, Canadians, etc. who grew up in the same environment as us where they had free access to diverse resources and opposing perspectives online. They exercised their freedom to choose what sources they consulted, which they believed, and arrived at their conclusions that way.

One of my childhood best friends is a "tankie" who idolizes Mao just as Guan Yun does, and he harbours some of the most sociopathic convictions about the "nastiness of love", about how massacres of innocents are not unethical if committed in the name of self-interest, about how domestic violence is not only okay but should be encouraged. But this former friend of mine, I have never once thought to call him brainwashed because we grew up in the same hometown, went to the same elementary, middle, and high schools. I was his earliest friend, and he grew up with a circle of friends who believed in the complete opposite of these horrifying beliefs he now embraces (we were a group of kids who idolized first the Jedi then the ninja from Naruto and our philosophical beliefs were mostly a fusion of the two). Even if his household were Mao cultists, I don't think we can reduce his environmental upbringing down to that household. This former friend of mine arrived at his extreme conclusions based on his own independent thinking, his exercise in his free will which was not obstructed, with access to diverse sources telling him differently, and based on his underlying temperament and personal values.

PRC ultranationalists and Mao-worshippers who grew up in a society where Mao is at times treated as even a god, where from the earliest age they are taught only the glory—we must pause and ask ourselves if we can be sure we would not be like them if that is the world we were brought up in? If you have ever met a Mainlander who came to disavow the PRC and become a human rights activist reflect on their childhood education, their guilt at what they had believed when they were young because it was all they had known, then you understand what brainwashing truly is. So I come back to my prior answer of the Cultural Revolution's impact on Chinese society, producing the lost generation, and then to the national education campaign that escalated from the 1990s onward.

As for Qin Shi Huang, the simplest way to understand his significance for Chinese people is that he was our cultural equivalent to how Adolf Hitler is globally seen today. Cursory searches online for "greatest Chinese emperor" will inevitably yield Qin Shi Huang as a candidate for the title, but this masks the fact that for the Chinese, Qin Shi Huang was the icon of the pure evil ruler for thousands of years, that one man people would compare their opponents to when political arguments turned sour. I do not know for sure how he is taught nowadays in Mainland China, but I have seen a trend in favour of reassessing his figure as truly one of China's greatest rulers. I encounter this opinion quite commonly among PRC nationalist and "tankie" circles, and Mao himself at the Eight Party Congress in 1958 said this: "What did [Qin Shi Huang] amount to? He only buried alive 460 scholars, while we buried 46,000. In our suppression of the counter-revolutionaries, did we not kill some counter-revolutionary intellectuals? I once debated with the democratic people: You accuse us of acting like Qin Shi Huang, but you are wrong; we surpass him 100 times". The Mainland Chinese government today, while nominally communist, actually draws a lot from the philosophy of Qin Shi Huang as well, which is called Legalism, and its precepts are epitomized by my aforementioned former friend. If you want more information on the fundamentals of this philosophy, feel free to ask.

I am inclined to see a connection between worship of Mao with glorification of Qin Shi Huang, but this, at least, is not ubiquitous among Mao supporters even if common. Guan Yun's specific view is that Assasins are heroes, and Mao was a hero for liberty, so it is offensive for Mao to be a Templar. He does not, however, dispute that Qin Shi Huang is a Templar—though maybe this is because it is clearly substantiated in the sources—so maybe he does not also idolize Qin Shi Huang. Regardless, his was a peculiar perspective for us because the PRC today fits the Templar mould perfectly, down to the exact same rhetoric and political philosophy they churn out regarding national security, re-educating the masses, and violently purging all diversity in thought and beliefs for the sake of supposed peace, unity, and harmony. The errors in their logic are the exact same errors we can identify in Templar logic. Most PRC nationalists are the kind to actually argue that Templars are in the right and Assassins to be foolish terrorists, and one would think that most of them would be happy to be equated with Templars. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 06:40, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Loki

Hey Darman, regarding your recent edit on the Loki page. It still could have been Heimdall, he finished uploading himself before Loki killed him. V i l k a T h e W o l f (talk) 05:26, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I could've sworn that Isu had only just grabbed the faceplate to upload himself before being killed, but on reviewing the file, it seems you're right. Everyone uploaded themselves simultaneously, but this Isu was just late to remove the faceplate and rise from the chair, giving Loki time to impale him. We still don't know who it was, though. – Darman (talk) 14:20, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Well Rig is definitely Heimdallr and Loki does kill Heimdallr in the Ragnarok myth (well they kill each other in that but close enough). The real question is did either of them turn into a seal? Lacrossedeamon (talk) 14:52, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Rebellion Bios

Want to go halfsies on the work? You do the links on the database pages, I'll add the links to the character pages infoboxes/references? - Soranin (talk) 00:54, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Gladly! And I'll recategorize the entries, too. You have it as "Rebellion database entries", when all other instances on the wiki follow "[Animus/Helix type] database entries" – Darman (talk) 01:00, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I went with "Rebellion database entries" to follow "Initiates database entries", cause I felt it was closer to that rather than the others, but fair enough. - Soranin (talk) 01:05, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Re: Floating talks

Not sure if you saw my reply on my talk page so I'm copying it to here as well:
Personally I think we are premature in categorizing such activities as full memories. The shift from DNA progression logs of Syndicate to the Quest log of Origins changed a lot of things that I don't think we've ever really discussed as an editing community. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 04:32, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Valhalla Images

Hey Darman, saw you were awake. This is partially a warning and partially a request for help.

I'm gonna start uploading the images for the Valhalla weapons a bit later today so if you could keep an (eagle) eye out to see if I don't get stuff wrong that'd be great! :D - Soranin (talk) 16:45, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

I'll try to, but I can't promise everything will be correct, as I don't have the game myself; I mainly rely on other gamers' footage for stats, dialogue, and so forth. But I can still watch for grammar, redirect links, etc. – Darman (talk) 17:10, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Oh, it was less anout the actual content and more like "oh, they forgot the weapons category with this one" or "forgot to change the name in the link" kinda stuff. - Soranin (talk) 17:25, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

So, the usual small edits. Sure, no prob. – Darman (talk) 17:35, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Since ACV's weapons can be upgraded more than once and have a new look every tier, I used the "Ritualistic Xiphos" page as a template to draft "Varin's Axe", thinking the format could be for future weapon pages. I'd hoped to fit each upgrade pic with their stats, but it seems too crowded. Any thoughts? – Darman (talk) 21:10, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

I think the gallery is the way to go here and the page is looking really good in my opinion. - Soranin (talk) 21:25, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Soranin, I used your old tables from ACU gear, eg. Arno's Set, as a template for the different tiers of Eivor's armor and updated the Raven Clan set accordingly. How's it look? – Darman (talk) 02:45, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

IN-real-life INfo IN INdia INfobox

Ah yes your question about in-real-life info in "India"'s infobox reminds me that we need to get back to that thread I opened up months back on this topic about standardizing how much real-world info we should be restricting ourselves to. Lol. In other news, I blocked that latest Batalex sockpuppet. Thanks for notifying me, as always. :) Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 01:19, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Oh to give some more info on this specific case, I did think that listing all those languages was excessive, but I also felt bad about excluding any group's native language from even just a basic list of no importance. A lot of people in my political circle are pretty outspoken about the linguistic imperialism minority groups everywhere have had to suffer, and as a native Cantonese speaker myself who has witnessed how my people's language get politically marginalized by Mandarin even when it is actually the most widely spoken Chinese language across North America, it's something that I can really empathize with. It's a pervasive problem for all other non-Mandarin Chinese languages as well. I couldn't choose which languages were significant enough to include in the Indian list or not. On the other hand, I could have listed only Hindi but then I feared that would be offensive to all the non-Hindi speakers, especially Dravidian peoples. In India, there is no national language for this reason, and people across the country still use English as a lingua franca to avoid the controversy that comes from any one regional language being privileged above others—or so I have been told. Perhaps another solution is to list the language families exist, as I did in the China article? Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 01:36, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Haha, yeah. We keep meaning to get resolve the IRL/AC info issue, but always get sidetracked by personal projects here and/or the latest game. Oh well, in time. I totally get your concern over readers thinking you're intentionally omitting minority languages, it can seem like a minefield at times. I like the language family tree idea, though I still find it long. I assume each dialect listed was the main language at whatever time AC was set in China. Maybe we could have ref tags denoting what language(s) would have occurred in which AC media? Alternately, if we're going for the most minimal IRL info except where needed as supplemental (eg. military commanders who aren't mentioned in AC), what if we just... removed that section from the [[Country Infobox/doc]]? (On a similar topic, we should remove the "actor =" and "voice =" parameters from the Character Infobox/doc since we've decided to put that in Behind the scenes instead. But we'll have to fix a bunch of AC1, AC2, BH character profiles.) – Darman (talk) 16:35, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

The infoboxes for our country articles primarily reflect contemporary data because if it only reflected data from a select periods of time, that would be extremely confusing. How could we specify that the data given is for a different period or another? Using parentheses? I fear that would look disorganized and messy. However, it is important to give data that is more relevant to Assassin's Creed. For that reason, I included older languages from past periods, like Classical Chinese and Middle Chinese, but I did so in such a way so that it makes the list look comprehensive across all time rather than jumping from random periods to another. Still, I am wondering if we would still have to specify in parentheses which time periods each language was spoken...

I don't think removing the whole section would be a good idea simply because it could leave the infobox looking more incomplete. It is odd for an infobox on a country to not list its languages which is usually basic information, but yes, thanks for reminding me that we should remove the "actor" field from the character infoboxes.

Also for future reference, be careful not to mix-up the words dialect and language and to always avoid calling Chinese languages dialects even if you hear a Chinese person do this.

Not finalizing the thread on real-world info is really my fault since I really was supposed to do so within two weeks of opening it, but since it has been so long, then we all have to return to it to review it again. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 17:41, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

OK, those are good points. I admit I was too quick to suggest a fix without considering the impacts. The time periods in parentheses sounds nice; it'd certainly lessen confusion for what IRL/AC eras they appear in for casual readers. I'm sorry for using dialect to mean a full language. I meant no insult and erroneously thought it could apply interchangeably as a synonym. – Darman (talk) 20:45, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

I suppose I will have a look to see if it is too messy if I gloss each language with their corresponding time period. And no worries, I know that you meant no harm treating dialect and language synonymously, and I didn't take it offensively because I knew it was an honest mistake, one that I've even known some Chinese friends make innocuously. It's just good to know for future reference since dialect is often used pejoratively by Mandarin speakers to denigrate the status of all other Chinese languages (when languages like Cantonese, Shanghainese, and Hakka are more different from one another and Mandarin than French, Spanish, and Italian are to one another). Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 06:14, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Voice and actor in infoboxes

Hey Darman, if you want to help (because there is kind of a lot) with removing the empty parts of the infoboxes/moving the parts that have info to the bts section, I have these links I'm using to guide me. So far I've only been deleting the empty ones because that's easier :P - Soranin (talk) 19:05, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, sure I'll help. OOoh, what are these pages? They look real nice. Wait, I think I've seen them when I got lost here once and found SpecialPages. So that's what they do... Also, how are you editing so quickly!? – Darman (talk) 20:50, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

It's either a gift or a curse, with no in between, for sure. - Soranin (talk) 22:43, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Well dammit, I want it! [uses Yggdrasil to reincarnate as you] Anyways, I've a question: some character infoboxes are on profile pages of long-inactive users. It's technically against our policies to edit someone's profile page, but on the other hand, we'd still have floating parameters lying about that would need to be cleared for consistency. Can I still go ahead and remove them, and do any link clean up as needed? – Darman (talk) 23:10, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Damn, when you work fast, it's FAST! I refreshed the Tags page, and looks like you got ~90% of the infoboxes by yourself. I'll clean up the rest, but wait before acting on the User infoboxes. – Darman (talk) 23:35, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

If we are using POE to make a brainwashed army of Jhonnies I want some. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 04:09, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

...I have no clue what that means. Who/what is Jhonnie? I assume it's a bot? All I know is that I don't have it, and have been slowly pecking away at my list manually. – Darman (talk) 04:15, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

It's me, Darman. It's my name on discord. You should join us one of these days :) - Soranin (talk) 13:40, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Noooo! You were supposed to reply with the meme that I was too lazy to create!! >:( Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 17:00, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Uhhh, I mean, "What? Who is Jhonnies? I don't understand... Please, wait! I have so many questions!" - Soranin (talk) 17:14, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Har har, very funny. Sol, do I have clearance to remove these infobox parameters (and possibly do link/file clean up to?) on long-inactive users who are using the template? – Darman (talk) 08:30, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

I could've sworn we've already removed the infobox parameter. I don't understand your latter question. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 22:33, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

I thought so too, but seems we still have a bunch of "voice" parameters to clear. There's a small handful of "actor" parameters which I'll get to imminently, but its other uses are in infoboxes that now-inactive users had put on their profile page. I'm wondering if I'd have permission to remove them so then the parameters are all gone across the site, as I believe editing another's profile page rather than the talk page is against our policies. – Darman (talk) 23:15, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Single-use citations

Oh by the way, while I'm at it, I noticed that you were removing the "ref name=" part of the citation code (I don't know the technical word for this) in the "Tomás de Torquemada" article whenever a citation only appears once. This is actually strongly discouraged although we never went as far as to make it a strict rule. The reason is because whenever editors don't bother including "ref name=" because they happen to expect that that citation will only be used once, it can come across as "lazy" (though in this case, you were actually doing more work by removing them). Not literally speaking, but one can never know for sure if the citation won't be used again on future edits, and it leaves extra work for other editors if they have to scroll back and then add a ref name. It's simply more efficient to always input a ref name as you're writing a citation rather than forcing later editors to have to jump back and forth along the edit screen to fill that in when it should already have been there. Apart from that, it also comes across as pretty presumptuous because an article usually have room for improvements and updates, meaning just because one editor didn't have more than one use for that citation, it doesn't mean that others also wouldn't. In your case, you were actually removing cases of ref names for citations that only appeared once, so it seems that you actually thought it was part of our standard to do so when it isn't, so I understand it wasn't like you were lazy or presumptuous. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 06:24, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Oh. I didn't know that "ref name=" for everything was an unofficial sourcing policy. Should I refrain from removing it in further edits, then? I've only ever done it when I've seen a single-use reference, because my thinking was almost what you'd described: "Source A" is only used once, so why have what I saw as an "ibid" tag that won't be used, especially if the words it's attached to are likely all the info we'll get from the memory or in-game file anyway? – Darman (talk) 08:30, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, please refrain from removing them in future edits then. I would even ask if you could add them back to the "Tomás de Torquemada" article if that isn't too much trouble. I couldn't flat out revert the edits without also deleting the rest of your edits that were perfectly valid. I'm not as strict about this if people are neglecting to add a ref name for a citation they've only used once in an edit session, but it was actually jarring when you were removing the ref names that others have gone to the effort of preparing just in case. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 21:37, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

OK, I've put them back, and I'll try to remember for future edits elsewhere. Sorry for the unintentional disorganization. – Darman (talk) 22:05, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Images for deletion

Hey, Darman!
I see you're hard at work marking those old unused images for deletion. If you find any I missed, would you mind adding them to my sandbox? It's so when the cache clears we can see more unused images cause they have a limit of 1000. Thanks :3 - Soranin (talk) 02:59, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Sure! I'll try to remember which ones I've edited now, there's been so many lol. (Why ever did Admin decide to allow fanart/fic? Wookieepedia doesn't) On the topic of deleting old content, I'm trying to remember some long inactive user who posted what I found to be a small network of subpages in a choose-your-own-adventure fanfic. Does this sound familiar? I'm pretty sure they posted a few ACRev maps in their work, but it's been so long and I forgot to add them to my watchlist. – Darman (talk) 03:10, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

AHA! Found them! The offender was User:Animus 1.28. Since I can't filter users by whether they have sub-pages, I decided to look through all the Wiki's users, past and present, knowing that the author's lengthy work (They made 31 pages?!) would have to appear in a block of names at some point, and I struck gold within a few clicks. Turns out, the map wasn't from ACRev, but an AC1 marketplace. – Darman (talk) 14:20, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Re: Glyph sandbox

Hello! Thanks for letting me know.
About what I intent to do with the Glyph page, basically is just adding their explanation about the lore. To give a summarised version of the info they are revealing, also giving links to the respective articles that explain these with much more details.
But yeah, thanks for letting me know! c: – —unsigned comment by Cristophorus35 (talk · contr) 10:27, 6 July 2021‎ (UTC}}

Eikþyrnir

Thanks for your edits! I must be getting tired or something, totally forgot to update the source and Wikipedia link at the top >.> Thanks again! :) – Kennyannydenny (talk) 21:30, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

No prob! While I'm here, though, I notice you put "dream sequence of Asgard" as the location of the memories in Odin's arc. I think it should just be "Asgard", though, for two reasons. One, it's basically like how Kassandra visited Elysium, the Underworld, and Atlantis in ACOD (even if they were simulations); and two, these memories are Layla reliving Eivor's memories as she relives Odin's life, which is just like how Desmond relived Ezio's life as he in turn relived highlights from Altaïr's life in ACR. Even with the double genetic memory, Altaïr's sequences are still set just in "Masyaf", even though it's Ezio's vision. I admit I'm still trying to figure out whether things go in (irl) "Mythology" or (in-universe) "Biography" sections of various Isu's pages. Any ideas? – Darman (talk) 21:40, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I'm fine with just saying Asgard. That's just an old habit from back when I was adding a lot of pages from Odyssey's dlcs, and I just used Elysium etc, and was told we should mention it was just a simulation, thus could also not be true. In this case, it seems Eivor relives Odin's memories, things that actually happened, so we could use it as biography instead of just mythology. As long as it's confirmed ingame in Asgard other otherwise. – Kennyannydenny (talk) 21:45, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Ahh, OK. Though, some things get a bit murky, because there's slight overlap with irl myths and Odin's life as depicted in-game, such as the idea of Ragnarök being prophesized, Odin binding Fenrir, and Tyr losing his hand, to name a few. *shrug* We'll figure it out in time, as with the Atlantis DLCs. – Darman (talk) 21:55, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

I currently did Vé like this. Things like Bestla and Borr, and the gift to Ask and Embla are mythology as they're just that. The murdering of Ymir is confirmed ingame by the cairn mission Litamiotvitr, thus I put it under biography. I think that's best when confirmed ingame. That's my two cents. But we'll figure it out indeed, i'm sure of it. Kennyannydenny (talk) 22:00, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, just saw. Still trying to make sense of it and separate the two, tbh, especially since notes in "A Feast to Remember" for example imply that Ask and Embla are alternate names for Adam and Eve from way back in AC2. It's known the Isu made humanity via Project Anthropos, but now it's specified that it was the Æsir who began it out of vanity for worship, while myth seems to say they made humanity "just because" – Darman (talk) 22:10, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

Garm

I saw you added a citation needed to the page Garm. The note mentioning Garm can always be found, it's not bound to just one memory. But if you really want a name, I encountered the note during "Extended Family". It lies next to where Loki and Tyr are standing. – Kennyannydenny (talk) 14:18, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Ah, one of those "floating" notes that can be found any time. I'd rather we try to have as many notes as possible connected to as appropriate a memory as possible, so we don't have "loose" papers lying around to write separately here, but I know that won't always be the case the way the games are designed. I'll add it the ref now. – Darman (talk) 14:25, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

No probs. it's kinda the same with that Skadi letter. The letter is found on the opposite side of the map from Njord, near a shipwreck at the bottom right (Njord is at the top left). We could link the note and the quest as the contents are related, but that's about it for the relation between the two.

By the way, I also saw your change to Ivaldi. While you did a great job rewriting the page, I think you made a slight error. The secret was never in exchange for the cord. In exchange for the cord you can only answer "My gratitude" and "your freedom". The secret is actually in exchange for Ivaldi telling Odin what the builder asked him. I can't remember what it was exactly, something about the magic in his runes, that jötnar magic. (oh and I personally told him humanity will survive (the third secret), no idea if all three of them work) – Kennyannydenny (talk) 14:30, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Ahh, that's what it was. OK, sorry, I'd misinterpreted the scene. Thanks for clearing up! Btw, I fixed how the notes appear, as you had them a "Dialogue" subsection when they're more part of the scene itself, like Murder Mystery clues in ACU/ACS, or other ACV papers like Rikiwulf's note in "Honor Bound", Burgred's files in "The Sons of Ragnar", etc. – Darman (talk) 15:50, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for that! I wasn't sure what the layout needed to be with such notes. As for the Ivaldi page, I haven't changed it yet, as I wasn't sure how to rewrite it exactly. Could you do that or do you want me to do it? I need to think about how best to phrase it if I'm going to change that part. – Kennyannydenny (talk) 16:25, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the format we've adopted, because using bullets as in ACU/ACS (still have to clean up sooo many of those missions...) makes it look like someone's speaking instead. Sure, I'll try to work it, no worries. – Darman (talk) 16:35, 5 February 2021 (UTC

On Papyrus Puzzle and Ainigmata Ostraka

Hey Darman!
So I saw you were going to fix the ordering on these and I wanted to say you might want to hold on a bit. I think Lacrosse is going to make a forum discussion soon proposing doing away with the memory pages for them and just putting all the info on them on the respective Papyrus Puzzle and Ainigmata Ostraka pages. - Soranin (talk) 02:23, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

So they'd be all on one page, like with the Stone Circles and ACV's Order of the Ancients confessions? Sure, it's a lot easier. Thanks for notifying me first, otherwise I likely would've moved onto that as my next project after finishing fixing some redirects now. Thanks, will hold off then. – Darman (talk) 02:30, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Alisa in Wunderlandscire

Just a FYI: I've changed your edit on Alisa in Wunderlandscire. I specifically didn't phrase the sentence like that as it would claim something incorrect, it's not just the title of the memory, it's full of references to the book. The story she tells Eivor, the table in the cave, lots and lots of rabbits around it. Kennyannydenny (talk) 09:10, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Cool, no worries. I don't mind you having changed it, because I was going off the assumption that it only applied to the title, since the page is a stub lacking dialogue and I haven't come across the memory myself. It's all good. – Darman (talk) 11:40, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Ok :) Just wanted to explain a bit why I changed it again, to avoid you thinking I just didn't agree with your changes. Kennyannydenny (talk) 13:10, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Þrymr and Isu

So I thought, since the dreams of Jotunheimr and Asgard are actually memories of Odin, that the god being mentioned in those worlds meant that they were Isu. Maybe I'm wrong. Why can't AC games just openly say if gods are Isu or not, sometimes they do, but with a lot of gods they don't... annoying. Kennyannydenny (talk) 21:29, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

True, having things implied rather than concretely stated is a major grievance. I was working off the belief that while the Greek Isu are represented as jötnar, not all jötnar have Isu counterparts. Perhaps I was mistaken, and if so I apologize. – Darman (talk) 23:45, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

No it's not problem, I'm not 100% sure either. I just found the quest item "Thor's Circlet", which says Thor wore it when posing as Freyja at her wedding to Thrym (Þrymr). So it's safe to assume he's an Isu, right? Kennyannydenny (talk) 20:31, 4 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't think so. The way the myths tell it, the jötnar are separate beings from the Æsir. But I think we have an answer on Skaði's page. She's considered an Isu, like Þrymr and Ymir currently are (though Lacrosse raised his doubts on Ymir's talk page), but the caveat seems to be that she is a goddess, while both male entities are "just" jötnar. – Darman (talk) 00:35, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

Response to Metadata Security

Hello Darman36,

Thank you for letting me know of the photos. – Batfan13 (talk) 09:03, 6 March 2021 (UTC)Batfan13

Valhalla's World Events

Hey, Dar!

I've been transcribing the ACV world events and the DLC missions over on my sandbox, but it turns out a lot of them have ~player choice~ so I'm here to ask for help :)

My proposal is to keep doing the bulk of the transcriptions with you helping out with the choice stuff?

Let me know! - Soranin (talk) 17:42, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Hey! As much as I'd like to help, I'm not sure how much use I'd be. I don't have ACV, so I'd have to rely on digging through countless YouTube vids just hoping that the player took any alternate choice(s). I have logged one handful of complete choices and their impacts in just two of Odin's memories, but that still took some doing to find. – Darman (talk) 02:45, 18 March 2021 (UTC)

Oooops, 100% thought I had answered you already! Fair enough, it's what I'm having to do too, though I've mostly been noting down the choices made in the video I'm watching and moving to the next memory.

Though I wouldn't be opposed to you keeping up with your checking, hyperlinking, and incorporating the completed ones, wink wink ;D - Soranin (talk) 20:23, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Also, before I forget, we should look into using some images from the German wiki for Valhalla. I noticed Bertha Star adding the language links for German, and checked out their pages. Turns out they've uploaded a bunch of the ones we lack for memories and even the Orlog dice faces. And that's what I managed to see from a quick look. - Soranin (talk) 21:00, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Haha, all good! I took a look at the German wiki and DAMN, that's some good stuff! Those upgrade and cost details on the Ravensthorpe settlement buildings is nice, as example. Way more thorough than I'd expected, since all the (admittedly few) times I've visited another language wiki, what was written on the page usually paled in comparison to what was on ours, eg. not fully updated/stubs or being filled with red links. And makes sense to borrow from others, since the FR wiki has added their own ACReb images to our site. I was wondering if/how we'd get images for that, but put that quandary out of mind for other projects. Uggh, how dare you give me more projects! Curses! – Darman (talk) 22:35, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Mwahahahahaha! My evil plan is working! - Soranin (talk) 22:56, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Wow, I'm a monster making you work so much. (Also, I'm waiting on your first review of the Brigandine Cape for me to do the other pieces of armor of that set and call it a day :P) - Soranin (talk) 18:21, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

I did have a window just full of improperly/unsourced images to fix, but noooo, you just had to have a flurry of armor edits, so I had to read through them all to see if you missed some stuff! Anyway, the Brigandine Cape looks good, but I just want to remind you of redirects that use the Old English/Norse spellings, in this case Shropshire / Sciropescire, or [[Essex]]e from earlier. – Darman (talk) 18:35, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

I did try and warn y'all! My edit summary for the armor page around 17 hours ago said "Tomorrow I'll do a batch of these". I wasn't lying. Also, on those Old English/Norse spellings? I don't know their names, I just copy you when you fix my stuff xD - Soranin (talk) 19:00, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Locations in Rebellion memories

Hello Darman, I noticed that some of our memory pages for Rebellion indicates precise locations which to my knowledge were not explicitly stated in the game itself. For instance, Tarragona in "The Artifact", Balaguer in "A Lap Dog's Death", and Jaca in "The Monastery of St. Lucia". Unless I'm missing something, I don't recall any point in the memories, map, or Aguilar's journal that states for certain that these are the locations for these memories. There are probably more examples, but these were the first three I noticed. Did you infer these locations by the positioning of each memory point in the map? Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 19:51, 21 March 2021 (UTC)

Hello Sol,
Whoops, I totally forgot that I'd edited those pages, and a number of other ACReb memories. Yes, I did infer those locations by approximating where they were on a map, but I admit that I was using a modern map and at the time had not considered what I know now, that almost all ACReb events occur in the contemporary Kingdom of Castile instead. I think I used a modern map because of my confusion with the Helix Event Horacio's Retribution, which takes place in New/Old Castile, and the fact that the WP maps of Spain roughly align with the Region divisions in the game map. Sorry for the confusion there. – Darman (talk) 01:36, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Okay no worries. I will double-check another time how accurate we can be in aligning the Rebellion map to a real-world map of Spain. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 14:11, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Birna

The Birna in the game and the Birna in the novel are not the same person. —unsigned comment by Lacrossedeamon (talk · contr) 18:01, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I just realized that now when searching for an earlier mention of her. In Chapter 14, she's described as having "tangled red hair, green eyes, and a nose that [was] set a bit crooked after a break", features that Birna from Soma's army does not have. Sorry for the confusion, I admit I'd been randomly flipping pages when I found the patronym and thought it was the same woman. – Darman (talk) 18:10, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Spelling standard

Darman, I think this is not the first time that I've brought this up with you before, but please don't go out of the way to change the spelling standard of a page from Canadian or British to American. Our wiki really doesn't have a standard due to past disagreements over it. Just as a matter of principle, it's kind of rude to go out of the way to force one's own spelling standard one way or the other. I think it is fine if you're just making it consistent, which may have been the case initially on "Last war of the Roman Republic", where it slipped my mind until I had just reverted it that you may have just been making it consistent with the spelling of center. So when I thought back on it, I didn't necessarily need to undo your conversion of defence to defense. It is usually a habit of mine to do so if I see someone pushing a spelling standard out of nowhere on principle, so I may have jumped the gun there. But then you deliberately went out of the way to revert both. At that point, then it's definitely rude because you would have considered that I changed it for a reason but decided to force your spelling standard back without asking about it. Just as part of editing etiquette, I usually leave the initial spelling standard as is unless I'm doing a total rewrite of the article. In the same vein, I normally only revert the change to the spelling standard if a user isn't being considerate about that etiquette. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 00:55, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

Hello Sol,
Sorry, I didn't mean to seem rude by changing the spelling. My computer underlined it in red, and I'd forgotten that the Manual of Style says either British or American English is fine, so long as the author is consistent. – Darman (talk) 02:30, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I apologize if I was too snappy, especially since it seems like such a trivial thing. It's just that I feel like something like this keeps happening. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 10:34, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

I don't think so, I believe this is the first time you've reached out to me on this. I don't recall having this type of convo across edit descriptions, nor can I find an instance of it earlier on this page. Perhaps you've seen I had changed the spelling on a page after another user—maybe even yourself—had edited it a while earlier, as added my own contributions. But I'll try to keep the British / American spell-check to a minimum in any case. – Darman (talk) 12:55, 10 April 2021 (UTC)

You know what you did :P

I'm watching you add a billion unconfirmed red links to templates - Soranin (talk) 01:37, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

Oh, and you missed a weapon! The Natural Aegis was also datamined. Should be in my primary sandbox under Jord's blade. - Soranin (talk) 01:39, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

I'll just leave this here ;) - Soranin (talk) 22:05, 11 April 2021 (UTC)

No, I didn't miss the Aegis, because I didn't see it in that video. And YES THANK YOU THAT'S IT!! (How did you find that??) – Darman (talk) 00:35, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

For the leaks I tend to watch a few youtubers who tend to show it, usually Legacy Gaming cause they're the ones that tend to show descriptions and more pieces of the armor/more gear. And for the sandbox I figured we had a small pool of suspects and I knew it wasn't Vilka or Odey, so the plan was to look at Sal, Jasca and Lacrosse's sandboxes, but Sal was a sweetie and labeled his stuff on his user page. :D - Soranin (talk) 00:41, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Ahh. I only follow @AccessTheAnimus, but don't search for leaks. So if they report on something leaked, cool; if not, that's just as fine too. Since Sadalyrate hasn't been here in over six months, do you think he'd mind if I moved the page (or copied over instead) to a main space location, like how Lacrosse did with the Target menu? – Darman (talk) 00:50, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Nah, Sal pretty much gave us carte blanche to mess with his sandboxes, I did the same with the Rebellion bios quite some time ago now. - Soranin (talk) 00:56, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

OK. Still thought I'd ask—even if it's not him—because it's generally seen as bad form to edit another user's profile / subpages unless it's a working page (eg. Kennyannydenny's "Valhalla notes") or they gave open permission.(...says the one editor who changes pages of years-long inactive users, to the other co-conspirator who does the same) – Darman (talk) 01:35, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Sal did give permission considering he named the section of the sandboxes on his user page as "Safekeeping for now" and when we discussed the rebellion stuff he said " I figured they're there just for safekeeping until we figure out connected stuff. That's why I left, for example, all the linkage for later.". Also shhhh, there are no crimes in fixing templates and updating linkage.That's what we'll say if the cops come for us - Soranin (talk) 01:46, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

You know the rules:

If they get the cuffs on us
It's 25 to life
Run, run, your own direction
And I'll lead 'em down a different road
Take the gun, hide the car and the money
I'll meet you in Mexico^[1]

– Darman (talk) 02:10, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Inventory menu article

Similar to [Target menu], I've been wanting to make pages for other sections of the animus desktop like the inventory, progress tracker, and possibly even skill trees. For now though I want to focus on inventory. I know you've done some work on both the target menu page and some of the smaller inventory categories like trade objects. I was wondering if you had any ideas on how to do this and make it comprehensive while keeping it concise. I have various subpages for inventories from different games but they are incomplete and I don't know the best way to merge them. If you have any thoughts I'd greatly appreciate them. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 15:19, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Hmm. Can't seem to think of anything immediately. What exactly would this page look like? Because almost all the weapons, medicine, etc. are categorized individually, except for trade objects collected by Ezio, Kassandra, and now Eivor (I think Bayek gathers stuff too?) This would be an overarching page for the Animus section, the way Database is divided by what Animus/Helix system is used, right? – Darman (talk) 15:25, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Yeah so while the target menu is broken up by historical subject I think this would need to be divided by animus model and detail how each iteration is broken down and what goes in each section. Like AC2 the inventory covers armor (and capes), weapons, reloads (consumables), and items (collectibles) with subsequent games adding more and more in their inventories. I think this would be a good way to stay in universe and cover all these items in either a single page or link to them easily. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 18:19, 14 April 2021 (UTC)

Nobles

Before you go much further, what are your thoughts on using the term Nobility instead, since I think we use Royalty rather than Royals as another category. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 16:03, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Ooh, good catch, thank you! Sure, let's do that instead. – Darman (talk) 16:05, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm actually not sure nobility is preferable to nobles and royalty preferable to royals since usually the demonym should be used when putting characters in categories. A prince is a noble not a nobility, grammatically speaking. But I don't know if we need to be so strict on that because a prince is also part of the nobility. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 20:45, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Oh no wait, I just saw [Pharaoh], and I guess if we want to keep titles of nobility in the same category as nobles, then nobility would be preferable. I'm not sure if we really should put nobles and noble titles/positions in the same category page, but if that is what we want, then we should go with nobility. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 20:50, 18 April 2021 (UTC)

Well, when I had started making the changes, my thought process was: nobility is someone of status, and can be subdivided into monarchs, dukes, emirs, pharaohs, doges, etc. (But not UK ministers, and I'm unsure about reeves). So do/can I continue with the changes or does this require a bit more workshopping? – Darman (talk) 00:30, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

I may or may not have already moved all the pages. - Soranin (talk) 00:32, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

I am afraid that later in the future we might have a clearer idea of which one is correct, but that can't be helped. Right now, I really don't have a strong opinion either way, and I think either is fine. Wikipedia for some reason seems to suggest that royals are not nobles because they're a rank higher though, which is not what I grew up understanding. I always thought royals are part of the nobility, that nobility includes royals...Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 00:57, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed the category was empty after I came back from lunch! Geez, Soranin. Aha, but it seems you've missed some! *cackle* In that case, Sol, I'll continue and clean up the crumbs that ~someone~ left behind. – Darman (talk) 01:05, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

>:o
I admit nothing :P - Soranin (talk) 02:48, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Sync

I see we made the same page at the same time, but mine was the right one :P - Soranin (talk) 15:59, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Title of works formatting

In response to this edit, I thought you might be interested in an ongoing discussion Zero-ELEC just opened up the other day where we are trying to figure out how we should consistently format the titles of Assassin's Creed works: "Titles, colons and dashes, oh my!". Your revision is a bit tangential because it seemed to me more about whether in the appearances section, we should be narrowing down to volumes or restrain ourselves to just the general title. (In this case, I normally go down to the DLC but owing to how extensive the list was, I thought in this case, we could feel free to be broader and more generalized). However, in merging the three volumes of the 2015 Titan Comics together, you went with Assassin's Creed: Assassins, and Kulurak has brought that up in that thread last night. It's a long read because we're getting pretty technical about it, but it might be a talk you're interested in participating in. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 17:29, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

Treasures of Britain

To pile on the list of ongoing and nauseating debates you can jump into, we have also been having a further dispute on how to write the "Treasures of Britain" page. :D I noticed that you made revisions to it after Vilka created the page, so I was wondering if you have a perspective on how the page should be written? If you're unfamiliar with the debate, you don't have to read up all on it. A simple question that you can help by answering is just: do you think that the Treasures of Britain are (a) artifacts, but with corresponding tablets representing them (b) the tablets, not actual artifacts (c) "both". And by this question, I mean from an in-universe perspective, like what the Treasures of Britain actually are within the Assassin's Creed universe, outside of the Animus. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 18:58, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

I think the page is fine as is, with the tablets chart arranged like ship customization tables. What have other users proposed changing? As for your question, I think the Treasures did exist in AC like in actual myth, an unknown someone scrawled images of them on stone, and when the mythical items were lost to memory, the stones informally took their place as the treasures. However, I admit this is muddled by in-game dialogue, such as when Eivor supposedly finds Brân Galed's still-functional drinking horn in the wine cellar, but the game only shows her picking up a stone tablet. – Darman (talk) 19:20, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Being more careful with deletions

Darman, I know we've talked before about how not every redirect page needs to be deleted, and I think that this has continued to present itself as an issue. With examples like [Battle of Megara] and [Talk:Battle of Megara], it might be argued that they are not necessary to be kept after the page moves and can be eliminated to clean-up the system. But I was just telling Jhonnies yesterday that we now have hundreds upon hundreds of page filling up the category for speedy deletion and category for deletion. Because there have been cases in the past where pages were erroneously marked for deletion (and just yesterday reviewing only 20 of them, there were still a sizable fraction that were so erroneously marked), to clear up those categories, I need to carefully verify every single one of those requests and correct them as necessary.

So now the problem is that even though some leftover redirect pages aren't necessary to keep around and can be deleted, it's also not always necessary to remove them. Redirect pages which are just bad typographical errors, sure, but redirect pages that were previous, official titles, not necessarily. Notwithstanding this, I have already told you that one purpose of redirect pages is to maintain viable search options in case people are not aware of the new name. An argument can be made that many people would still search "Battle of Megara" instead of the more specific "Blockade of Megaris" and be confused if the page they're look for does not come up.

But here's another thing: even if that argument in favour of keeping "Battle of Megara" were invalid, I would like you to stop feeling the need to jump at calling pages for deletion because as I said, you are overloading the trash compactors and making it now almost impossible to sift through to delete pages that seriously need to be deleted.

A lot of the pages you call for deletion can be disputed. This includes userpage files, among them a birthday greeting drawing that a former user made for another user. I talked to our former administrator, Sima Yi, about this, and he shared my opinion that it was fine to keep certain userpage files that are relevant to Assassin's Creed and the community. I have also noticed you designating similar images as duplicates when they actually are not. They may be shots of the same scene, but the lightning, different angle, or even the difference in weather and time-of-day (i.e. day vs. night) makes it debatable which image people would prefer to use. Keeping both around gives people options.

I am not saying that in these cases, you were wrong to request them to be deleted (i.e. they can be disputed), but at a certain point, it gets excessive and puts an unnecessary burden on staff because these are so often not pages which are so troubling that they demand immediate deletion. It will take months, maybe even a year, now to clean-up the categories for requested deletions. I am getting the impression that you are getting overzealous about purging pages—with good intentions I'm sure but—you should be more mindful when tagging pages for deletion.

Normally, maintenance work is well-welcomed, but in this case, it's only adding to more maintenance and will divert our time and energy away from content creation. And our wiki desperately needs more content, much more than it needs invisible redirect pages being deleted. If you notice a page that really does need to be deleted, it's fine to go ahead and tag that, but I would much appreciate it if you focused your time and energy on content creation rather than going out of your way to comb for pages to remove. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 02:46, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm sorry for filling up the "To delete" queue in my overzealousness to clean up the wiki. I had not considered that as a consequence of repeatedly using the delete template. Given that this appears to be a problem for me at least twice now, I agree with your statement that it probably would be best for all of us if I were to step back from that and divert my attention elsewhere. Thank you for the message explaining this again. – Darman (talk) 03:45, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Francisco Rizi's painting

I think "Grand Inquisition" is a reference to the time period, eg. Belle Epoch, not the painting's name.

Just reviewed the scene. No mention of anyone in the painting. Added trivia
--Darman36

I would say we are not in the Assassin's Creed universe. The painting's name was the Grand Inquisition said by Ellen Kaye in the movie. There's a close up scene that depicts Torquemada, Ferdinand II of Aragon, and Isabella I of Castile, not King Charles II, Queen Marie Louise d'Orléans, and queen mother Mariana of Austria.

However, in the Novelization, the painting's background was in 1680. Alan Rikkin described the queen was too old in the painting that she couldn't be Isabella I.

Perhaps I was wrong. I didn't catch the point in the beginning. I'm still confused. UJ112013 (talk) 05:11, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Looking at the close-up of the painting, I think you're actually right. I admit I haven't watched the film in a while and was instead working off this scene of Ellen talking to Alan. I apparently forgot that there was a zoom shot of the artwork, so I thought, as my edit description reads, that she was just describing the era, not actually naming the piece. I didn't know the painting is in the book, I haven't read it yet. Thank you for correcting me. – Darman (talk) 14:00, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Germain being responsible for capitalism

I'm not sure if the article on Jacques de Molay is really responsible for the sockpuppet's recent preoccupation with capitalism-related edits. You see, Batalex's attempted edits on this subject aren't actually entirely wrong. Our former head admin Sima Yi himself had explained to me before that one major plot point that flies over most fans' head is that François-Thomas Germain's goal through the French Revolution was to reorient society so that Templars no longer puppet nobles, but corporations (i.e. "the bourgeoisie"). (This insight is actually consistent with the history of the global economy, Marxist theory, etc. and calls attention to the socialist themes Ubisoft tends to insert into the series). In this case, Batalex is actually correct that this information should be included in our articles because it is a very significant point in the lore.

What's more, Soranin is technically in the wrong for outright reverting Batalex's edits on this rather than revising them because the intended contribution is actually correct in this case even if it is badly worded. Just as we should judge an argument based on the content, not the speaker, so too should edits be judged by their content, not the editor—even if that editor is normally a vandal and is trying to circumvent their permaban. I've already mentioned this somewhat to Sora, who continues to revert Batalex's edits on the subject of capitalism because he can't be bothered to spend the time to integrate them correctly. For my part, I have been looking the other way because even though this is technically wrong, I too have my hands tied, and I'm honestly even nervous about how Sora would revise it if pressured to do so since I think economical and political history is outside his field.

Anyway, this is just to give you some better context on the situation around the "capitalism" article. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 01:10, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Huh, I hadn't thought of it like this. Thank you for the clarification. Was my edit fine, then? I tried to paint broadly since, as I said in my summary, capitalism had not been formally codified. Or would a bit more specificity be better? – Darman (talk) 01:30, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Oh no, I thought your edit was perfectly fine. (Otherwise, I would have ruthlessly reverted it. >:D) Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 01:44, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

I will defend myself because I told Sol on Discord my issue was with saying that it became a mantra for the Templars and I do know a lot more about economical history than I do war history. - Soranin (talk) 02:04, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Well I definitely didn't mean to throw shade on you, Sora. If you do think that the edits are incorrect because you disagree that it became a mantra for Templars, though, that just changes how we should be revising the edit. It still would be improper to undo it entirely unless you really think that no part in the idea of the edit is salvageable. I disagree with that because the content actually referred to a major plot point absent from our articles.

My comment about your field wasn't meant to be a condescending remark about your deficiencies, so I apologize if that was how it came across, but please don't take it that way. Rather, I was alluding to the fact that given politics and economics is my field (and I have sources already on hand), it is more my fault for not following up quickly to revise the edit, whereas we cannot entirely blame you for avoiding to do so if it's something you don't feel comfortable explaining.

At the same time, if it is true that you do know a lot more economical history—and of course I'm not going to doubt that—then that does mean that you are in the position to correct those edits rather than remove them. I'm not defending Batalex because obviously he's a vandal and sockpuppet—he'll always continue to be permabanned on sight. It's just that, at the end of the day, the principle is to deal with edits based on their content not on the editor. I understand that it's easy to just instinctively think that every edit made by a resident troll must be more vandalism though. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 03:33, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

Miss me

Hey Darman, just wanted to let you know I'll be staying away from the wiki for a while cause of personal stuff. Make sure to not miss me too much ;) -Soranin (talk) 18:34, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for the message. I hope the personal issue isn't too serious, but take your time. While you're gone, though, I'll see if I can finally pass you on the Leaderboard, haha! I'll keep any messages here though, jut to keep it in one spot. I'd only inquired about your site for browsing curiosity, as anyone can see it so long as it's not set to private. Take care, – Darman (talk) 18:40, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

"Cigars" deletion proposal

Darman, when you tag an article for a deletion proposal, you should follow-up by opening a discussion on it in the corresponding talk page. Tagging an article in this way in itself is not a request for a member of the staff to review it and delete it at their discretion (unless it's already clear the article violates policies). Instead, it is meant to signal that a proposal for its deletion is being opened up on the talk page. It's technically not required to do this, but without the user making the proposal opening up the topic, it in the right of others who dispute it to simply remove the deletion proposal after like two weeks or longer. It is also possible for the user making the proposal to neglect to do this but anyone else who agree with the proposal can take the initiative to open the topic for them; this is fine too. Personally, I am leaning towards deleting "Cigar" as well, but I'm just letting you know how the procedure works. I understand that we haven't really provided a helpful manual for this, so it's kind of our fault lol. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 05:51, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Oooh, OK. So, while the template alone can be used to flag a page, it's generally preferred to go through the more formal process on a talk page. Got it. I've initiated a discussion for Cigars, then. Thanks. – Darman (talk) 12:55, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

{{Delete}} is used to flag a page for immediate deletion because it is spam, vandalism, has a typographical error in its title, has no content, or is otherwise in clear violation of policies and/or guidelines in some way. {{Propose delete}} is used to notify users that there is a proposal being made on its talk page for deletion. Properly used, it does not flag the page for deletion by staff at all. Even if an admin agrees with the reasoning given with this template, it is wrong of them to just go through with that deletion without consulting with the wider community on the article's talk page. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 16:20, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Dynasty ending at chapter 19

Hey Darman, I noticed your question "ACD doesn't end at Ch. 19 and will have a twentieth part?" in an edit summary, and I was a bit confused what it meant or what it was referring to. Like what made you think Dynasty might end at chapter 19? Judging by the plot so far, Dynasty is probably barely halfway done. :P Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 23:52, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Oh, no. I didn't think Dynasty would or should end before at Chapter 19. It's just that the {ComicsNav} template didn't have Chapter 20 listed at the time I wrote that summary, so your edit listing more sections beyond 19 was new information to me then. Sorry for the confusion! – Darman (talk) 01:45, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Per official Ubi information Dynasty is gonna be 5 Volumes long, and Volume 3 just started in May. Also i think we should not add future Chapters to {ComicsNav} until they are released as we do not know how many there are, etc. when Volume end and is followed by Special etc. With BoSJ i always added them there only when SundayGX confirmed release of the next chapter for next issue, so in case of Dynasty add it to {ComicsNav}, when chapter release (aka Chapter 20 shoudnt be there yet). --Kulurak (talk) 06:51, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Correct use of stub template

I'm actually pretty surprised to find this happened only a few days ago, but I noticed that you were the one to add an empty section in the article "Assassin's Creed: The Ming Storm" with the {{Stub}} template. I have already talked with many editors about correct and incorrect use of this template, but the template itself reads "This article..." which indicates that its message always refers to the state of a whole article. It can never be used for individual sections. That aside, creating empty sections has always been strictly prohibited as well. Even if you think a section should be created or you anticipate its creation, it is not allowed. If you create a heading, you have to put content under it. You aren't the only one who has made these mistakes, so there's no need to feel embarrassed. Just please keep this in mind in the future. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 08:33, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

Moving category pages for individuals by organization

I have just finished performing the reversion of Category:Assassins Brotherhood members to Category:Assassins, but we obviously still need to take care of Category:Templar Order members and others. I also find the case for Category:Hidden Ones and Category:Hidden Ones members more complicated, since the latter is grammatically incorrect and obviously should just be Category:Hidden Ones, but currently Category:Hidden Ones is being used as a general category for all things related to the Hidden Ones, not just individuals, in the same way that Category:Assassin Brotherhood is used. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 22:05, 25 June 2021 (UTC)

Cool! Thanks for the update, and great work, I just checked the Recent Activity feed. I'll be busy midday today with a prior engagement, but I can change at least few of the [Category:Templar Order members] to [Cateogry:Templars] in the morning, and then get more (maybe the rest?) in late afternoon / early evening. If someone doesn't nab them all before I do, of course, which is fair game. – Darman (talk) 05:45, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Image file info

The Attention field is meant to explain any modifications to the original image, even if they are obvious. It is also meant to give proper credits where they are due. Hence, technically speaking, every cropped image should be specified as "cropped" in that field. Actually, the files I uploaded with the guisarme and voulge are good examples of what the Attention and Description fields are actually supposed to say. We aren't strict with this standard because we understand that it can be time-consuming to be that informative for every file. The fact that I took the bident, voulge, and fauchard files directly from the French Wiki means that it would have been extremely improper for me not to credit them—and more specifically Touloir—for that work. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 02:59, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Hello Darman! Hope you're doing well.

It has come to my attention that you removed the description from an image, depicting Arno while wielding a Guisarme, that mentioned me as the photographer. What worried me the most was your justification. I cite: "Sorry, didn't see who had uploaded, thought that was Christophorus' own text. [...]". I understand that you might have done it because it was redundant. When we click the image, the info already shows us who uploaded it. I would have agreed with you in other circumstances. But with pictures, the situation is very different. It's not redundant at all. Allow me to explain.

The image description adds the "author" to indicate who took the pictures because the one who uploaded the picture isn't necessarily the one who took it, yes? Just as it happened with the Guisarme image. Cyfiero uploaded it, but it was me who took and cropped the picture. Now, it's not redundant either if the uploader happens to be the photographer as well. This works as a double assurance of some kind. "Yes, I uploaded the picture. And yes, I am the one who took it". If you think about it, it's not about giving the same information twice. When we click the image, and we read the "added by", this gives us the username of who uploaded it. And the "Author" parameter in the image description gives us the username of the one who took it.

Also, from a moral standpoint, it's unethical to remove credits. It's a bad practice. I advise you to not remove them. :( It could lead us to trouble.

That's it! Feel free to reply or leave a subject on my talkpage!

Take care! – Cristophorus35 (talk) 10:27, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Hello Cristophorus,
Thank you for contacting me about this. I'm sorry for clearing your name in the credits, I hadn't meant that in the way it appeared to you. I'd like to explain myself, if I can, as we seem to have had conflicting meanings of what author means. The file in question is in portrait, and on my screen at least, I have to scroll a bit to see who uploaded it. I did not do so when I edited it, and so when I saw that you were credited as the creator, I thought it was a witty self-congratulatory reference (e.g., "I'd like to thank a VIP here tonight... me!"), not an authorial credit. You say the Author parameter denotes who took the image, and I had to check the licensing page to confirm, because all the time I've been here, I've uploaded and sourced files in the mistaken belief that Author/Artist applied to the broader work itself, not who uploaded it. By this, I mean that Gabriel Blain (and Ubisoft by extension by hiring him), for example, is the creator of all the art we have on his page, while Ubisoft as a whole is the creator of the digital worlds that we have taken a screenshot of. Thus, I thought I was correcting a line of joke text, not removing a credit. – Darman (talk) 03:00, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Let me assure you that all my credits are of the authorial kind, so don't worry about that. When I first joined as Wiki-Editor, I was instructed to fill all the necessary parameters (including the "author" parameter, regardless if it was me the one who took the picture). And I did so with every image I uploaded. Glad we could resolve this particular case! My best vibes to you! Take care!Cristophorus35 (talk) 02:12, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Pattern of edits

Also while I'm at it, why did I have to remind you again that the Trivia section should not be separate from the BtS (technically BtS is meant to replace Trivia), or that it is even worse when it is placed before it?

Darman, there is a pattern to your edits across the wiki that concerns me though I don't know exactly how to describe it. It often seems like you presume certain standards that the wiki has then act to monitor and enforce them without consulting staff about them. What would be worse is if you are taking it upon yourself to decide certain standards where there is inconsistency and then enforce them without consultation with staff or opening talks with the community. I do trust that it's not the latter, but as this pattern persists more and more, I begin to fear that it could be something in between the two (like it's an unconscious habit when encountering inconsistent formatting). Past examples include the spelling standard, deciding what kinds of files should be deleted, going out of your way to remove "ref name=" for all citations that appear only once, presuming that it is wrong for links to repeat in references, misusing the header templates for article sections, etc.

And every time, I have to remind you multiple times before you finally listen, which makes me feel like you test whether you can get away with it being let slide eventually. The italicization of quotes in prose is another example, which I hadn't brought up because I'm actually leaning on agreeing that that would improve readability, but because I’ve already told you once that it's not a rule, when you take it upon yourself to enforce it like it is a rule and without acknowledging my remarks about it, that makes me concerned that I would only encourage this pattern by the fact I happen to likely agree with it.

You are not a moderator or administrator. Formatting standards are not your place to decide and enforce. And I understand that many of our staff are not editing actively, but you should still generally see past edits by staff as indicators of what those standards are. Where there is inconsistency, it is a good idea to ask staff about it for clarification rather than deciding on the standard yourself then enforcing it. And sometimes there really isn't a standard, e.g. whether links in references should only appear once, whether it is allowed to be abbreviated or not (which is Francesco's preference). And in those cases, you have either the option of (a) opening up a community discussion asking for it to be standardized (b) accept the inconsistency between articles and use your own preferred standard, but not go out of your way to "correct" the preferred standard that others have chosen in their work—for reasons of etiquette. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 03:11, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Hello Sol,
I do not mean to seem as though I am imposing my order here, nor trying to constantly push boundaries, and I'm sorry for causing you grief lately. I do believe you are right in saying my formatting style is akin to an unconscious habit. The inconsistent styling of some of the things you've listed do bother me for being based more on informal rules at editors' discretion (sometimes yes, other times no) than definite policy I likely have missed.

It is this grey zone that influenced my overzealous categorizing of deletion candidates. I was—and to be honest, still am—of the opinion that the site should be for lore only and not files unrelated to the games/books/etc. I saw that you cleared out the deletion category a while back, and while I may not agree with why some files were kept while others were not, I cannot and will not contest your ruling as Staff.

I had based my decision for italic quotes on the fact that the quotes templates italicize all lines, and I decided to follow suit. I believe you had said that while it was not technically needed, it did sometimes did make reading sections easier, so I took your assent to mean I could continue it going forward thinking that it was better to make quotes in summaries more readable with some errors rather than not at all.

Regarding the Trivia / BTS, I was operating off having seen such formatting with both headings on other pages, and was under the (false?) impression from the forum consensus that Trivia was in-universe, BTS was out-of-universe, and that they were to be kept separate in that order?

I don't know why I am bothered by minutiae here, but I will try to work on slowing everything down and not jumping the gun in the future. – Darman (talk) 03:00, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Darman, I understand that the presence of inconsistent styling in some areas is bothersome, as they would be for any of us, but I wish to be doubly-clear that the issue here is editing etiquette. We all wish for everything to be standardized, but sometimes there is something that just happens to not yet be standardized in policy. The problem is that when you start "correcting" the style others have used which conflicts with your preference, you are actually being the one unilaterally creating and enforcing a standard that has not been discussed and codified, thereby perpetrating the very thing that you say bothers you: "informal rules", which are formally called conventions.

For example:

1. Suppose that you prefer citations to not repeat links. (presumably because it might look cleaner).
2. I prefer citations that do repeat links (because I don't think a reader should have to look up to another reference to search for the access to the reference).
3. One of our editors, Francesco, has also pioneered the style that subsequent citations to the same title abbreviate it, which neither you nor I have done.
4. There is not yet an established policy (formal rule) or convention (informal rule) on which one is correct. This means that they are all equally valid without said policy or convention, as long as they are consistent within a single article.
5. You dislike this inconsistency and wants it to be standardized.
6. Instead of opening up a discussion to create a formal rule about it, you decide to go out of your way to edit all instances of Francesco and my styling to conform with yours.
7. If you can change all cases that conform with yours, you would have established an informal rule (convention) about it based on your own preferred style, without consulting other users about their opinions to reach a consensus, because your style would be only one that remains.
8. This essentially amounts to you actually being the one to "fix" styles that don't conform to yours as though your style has been a rule in the first place when it is neither formally nor informally one.

Notice that on the contrary, I use my own styles where standards have not been established, but when I see yours, I don't go out of my way to edit your work for the sole sake of "fixing" your style to my style. To be extra clear, "going out of my way" here means editing an article with the sole purpose of changing a non-rule-breaking style to fit my own style rather than to contribute to that article. This sends a message to other editors that the style you are changing from is somehow "wrong". I do not mind it if one were rewriting an entire article and incidentally changes the style.

So when you say "inconsistent styling of some of the things you've listed do bother me for being based more on informal rules at editors' discretion (sometimes yes, other times no) than definite policy I likely have missed", this is erroneous, and I have to say this because I fear you still might not understand. The things I've listed are inconsistent precisely because they are not based on any rules. Rather, no rules have been made about them yet. But when you go out of your way to systematically "fix" them to your preferred style without discussion with the community, you're actually the one who is in practice creating an informal rule at your own discretion. Every time I have informed you about these things, I'm not telling you about an informal rule that we have. I'm telling you that you're not "fixing" something that is wrong and need to stop acting like there is a rule about it because this gives the wrong message to other users and is also disrespectful to the styling preferences of other users whose styles have not been determined to be wrong.

I am well aware that there is a grey zone, but the polite way to react to it is either a laissez-faire attitude that allows other users to use the style they prefer just as they allow you to use yours or to open up a formal discussion about it to resolve the inconsistency. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 04:05, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Contining on, I appreciate your apology and assurance that this would not happen again, but it's not the first time you have apologized, so I am afraid that you might still not understand what precisely is the overarching issue. It's not about being "concerned with minutiae" or "jumping the gun", it's about editorial etiquette, assuming problems that aren't there, and needing multiple reminders in each case. I'm not concerned about your individual reasoning behind each of them.

Your reason for mistaking Trivia for a section separate from and preceding BtS is valid, but it doesn't explain why after I clearly explained to you that was incorrect, and you even acknowledged it explicitly, you then went back and made the same mistake the very next day. There's also no explanation for why you were on the verge of edit warring the "Yan Jiming" page for the citation styling. If you have seen me edit it a particular way on several pages and on that page twice, why would you revert it without comment twice? My edits should be an indication that the style is not wrong, or if you still suspect it is in error, you could have asked me about it, but you did not do so. (For my part, I would have explained in the edit summary on my first reversion of your change, but I actually mistakenly remembered myself as being the one to experiment with my own styling and didn't realize I was reverting your edit of mine).

Hence, I fear that your explanations are still missing the problem. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 04:30, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

I know I tend to be excessively wordy, so I just thought I'd try to give a tl;dr that hopefully would be very straightforward and clear:

Basically, you are perfectly welcome to continue to use all the formatting styles you prefer when you edit where the standard has not been codified, like italicizing all quotations in prose (just not the quote marks), not repeating links in references, American English spelling, etc. I don't want you to feel like you're walking on thin ice on that. You're also allowed to experiment with new styles if they haven't been disputed before.

Just don't edit a page for the sole purpose of 'fixing' other editors on their styling for cases of unstandardized formatting where neither your way nor theirs are wrong. I won't (and never have) disputed your formatting styles for your own work, only reverting them when I felt you were presumptuously denying mine in my edits w/o discussion. In the same vein, I expect that you treat other editors' styling preferences with the same fairness and courtesy.

(The positioning of the Trivia section is a difference case because we have standardized that though I understand the forum thread wasn't very clear about it.)

I think one of the things compounding the problem was also just that you weren't using edit summaries often enough to communicate your reasoning for preferring a different formatting style from others. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 18:06, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

Sorry for my delay here, I was mulling over your responses over the past days to make sure I clearly understood them, comparing different pages that we've worked on and returning to what you wrote here, while trying to figure out how best to reply. After contemplation, I came to the conclusion that in effect you are saying that I can continue with my stylistic choices for my edits, but am not to change others' standards to fit my preferences without consultation, which you just stated above. So, if I wanted to edit Cleopatra's page with new info (which incidentally will be needed given how XOdeyssusx is updating the Discovery Tour segments), there could be different ref styles from multiple editors, but we would both be consistent to our individual standards by not infringing on another's work. – Darman (talk) 19:30, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

That is precisely correct and what I have always been trying to tell you. To be clear, if your styling preference has not been disputed before, you are free to go ahead and try to revise the style on an article right after someone's edit—and it is highly recommended that you explain in an edit summary when you do. But if they dispute it and you guys cannot come to a compromise or agreement about it, then going out of your way to continue to try to get all articles to conform to your style will end up becoming a sort of surreptitious edit warring. Remember that anytime you come to feel that the inconcistency is too bothersome, you can always open a discussion about it. Apart from this, if you see that there is a style that a staff member evidently keeps on using even if we haven't talked about it yet, that should by common sense be an indication of staff's preference, the established standard, or what is permissible. It doesn't make much sense to keep on trying to "correct" the staff on formatting without even asking them about it.

The only other thing to bear in mind is that articles should still be internally consistent. If you see an article that is written 50/50 in American vs. Canadian or British English or that is using different reference styles, it is fine to edit to resolve this inconsistency. But inconsistency between articles on formatting is allowed if a consensus has not been reached on that particular area yet since no one has been determined to be in the wrong. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 16:47, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Image deletion policy

Regarding the images, our staff has always been very clear that our site is primarily focused on lore and fanon is not allowed. But the reasons for my retention of user files that you marked for deletion hinge on other principles at play.

First, users traditionally were allowed a limited amount of original art for personalizing their own page, provided that it is restricted to their user page and are not inappropriate. This is the case even on other exclusively lore-based wikis, like Wookieepedia. Even some of our recently resigned staff used custom art for their profiles.

Second, there is a typical principle of transparency on wikis where talk page history are preserved for posterity. I took notice that in some cases where I deleted a bad file, it would actually gut an archived discussion. While I am determined to not allow users to upload original files for the sole sake of a talk page conversation again, I was undecided about the historic cases and decided to draw a line and preserve those.

Third, we also value community-building both within and without our own wiki, and we see no reason to remove original files that were used for that purpose, like one birthday greeting drawing pertaining to Asassin's Creed that you marked for deletion. I did ask my predecessor for advice regarding this, and he told me that he thought community-building files do no harm, and IIRC, he basically suggested that it was mean to delete them for the sole sake of being extra tidy.

But userpage files like these only constituted a fraction of the files I thought you marked for deletion in error. There were countless cases of "duplicate files" that were not duplicates at all! Others were admittedly nearly identical, differing only by a few frames, in the lighting, in which way a character was looking, or the angle, but your choice of which was the "duplicate" which should be thrown out and which was the legitimate file worthy of keeping seemed arbitary to me. In some of those cases, it seemed like you were making your own decision on which image you liked better without considering that others may prefer the other one you want to toss. In some cases, I did, in fact, much prefer the one you marked for deletion.

That having been said, there were some files that I was quite glad that you hunted and down and marked, especially the ugly fan and/or rap videos. I would continue to be glad if you found those and labelled them for me. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 05:01, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I did recall seeing special user avatars here, though it's been so long since I had tagged them to delete, I didn't recall much else I'd put in the category, or how few of the user images there were. I do remember tagging [File:ACBH Cesare Apple of Eden.png] as a duplicate of [File:Villified 10.png] thinking that we should keep the file that fit the standard of "[memory name/abbreviation] [numeral].[img type]" instead, but looking at it again, I do see that it is indeed a few frames off, with the latter showing a bit less of de Valois' face. What are we to do, then, with images that have a difference of mere frames, or other files that are unused like some of BearticWiki's renders, or have had their contents transcribed like Lacrossedeamon's "Screenshots and Transcripts from AC: Rebellion" blog which is already in Aguilar's journal?

Regarding videos, I have listed a number of files with some rationales in my sandbox if you would like to sort through them. DarkFeather went through a good number of them under [Category:Videos for Review] a while back, before their current hiatus. I will add, though, that I haven't touched that section in a few years, so some of the files may not actually warrant removal, but I'm pretty sure the +20 walkthroughs listed are no longer the purview of the wiki. – Darman (talk) 19:30, 8 July 2021 (UTC)

One of the examples off the top of my head was when you marked two different images of an Apple of Eden, one from Origins and one from the film, as duplicates. The two depictions had completely different patterns, were in different shades of gold, and one was even glowing while the other was not. They were two different Apples of Eden. In fact, it was curious that you didn't mark other Apples of Eden images as duplicates given this. (-_-)

I'm not saying that where images differ by only a few frames, we always should refrain from deleting them. It really depends on the comparison. With unused files, one problem I also had tried to tell you is that a file being unused is not grounds for deletion. This is because articles can get updated, rewritten, or improved and ideally should regularly be reviewed. It's always possible that someone in revising the article decides that another image would work better with the new version, so that's where having a pool of alternative files to choose from at the ready can come in handy. Just because someting is currently unused doesn't mean they are useless. They may be on stand-by.

But really, it's not going to break the wiki to have some unused or even duplicate files laying around, and I always found it perplexing why you were so attentive to this kind of maintenance work. I had the same concern with Sora about the preoccupation with purging all redlinks. It's not that these can't be helpful or beneficial. It would certainly be nice to have it a bit cleaned-up, but these sapseoi ye don't have to be a priority. By far the most critical defects of our wiki so far is in the outdated articles and in having falling way behind on content. We need more content creation and writing, not rote maintenance or format upkeeping. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 16:47, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Feeding the Wolf

I already made a note about the Petra/Tarben/Randvi dating influencing the notes. If the note is a "special thanks" note, you're dating that person. If you're not dating the person it's a regular "thanks" note with a different name and different content. And no, you have to choose either of the three batches, you can't skip choosing one, nor can you mix them around. They are divided in these groups and those groups are always the same. It's just that Tarben/Petra/Randvi have a normal note (for just being friends) and a romance note. Kennyannydenny (talk) 15:07, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Ahh, OK. I just thought that there would be options to select other residents' notes and have even more possible different notes. Sorry, I hadn't seen your edit summaries and was just tracking the "New Pages" filter. I'll update the tabs then to reflect options for if Eivor is dating the respective people. – Darman (talk) 15:25, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Absolutely no probs, I really don't mind giving a bit more info. I've reloaded the mission several times to get all combinations (although I can't get the last few letters as I'm dating Randvi and Petra, but not Tarben so can't get the things from the other way around). Thanks for the edits on the page! I'm not that very skilled in making it look correctly, i'm better and just typing out the letters :P Kennyannydenny (talk) 17:18, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Skrofnung

Not actually true though. I mean, you can start the Sigrblod Festival as long as you arrived in England and "completed one of the two major plotlines in the game in the Grantebridgescire or Ledestrescire and increase your settlement’s level to two". So, you can do the festival when you're not even near being a jarlskona, or that Basim took over from Layla, that's why I named her shieldmaiden actually. I know it's a predecessor to Siege of Paris, but that dlc can probably also be started before she's a jarlskrona (but after the Rollo missions). Kennyannydenny (talk) 20:23, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

Oh right, I forgot that just because the siege is set after the main game, players can still be delayed in actually completing it, just like with some of the Druids gear. Thanks for correcting me. – Darman (talk) 20:35, 3 August 2021 (UTC)

new template

Heads up, we are working on a new template the get the WP-REAL icon back in its old spot, ie. {{Era|Individual|Isu}} {{WP-REAL}}. Currently the code is not merged into the wiki.css but if we could get a head start on switching these over that would be great. (Also join the discord) Lacrossedeamon (talk) 22:09, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the update. I'm not sure if/how I can help, though, as I don't know css. All the (HTML?) coding I've done through my years here is from watching everyone else's edits and following suit. Also, school will be resuming soon, so I regrettably won't be here as much as I'd like for a while. Although I appreciate the invitation to Discord, with +100 people live at any day, I feel it'll be very "loud" and I'd like to keep my online profiles to a number I can control. But thanks. – Darman (talk) 23:15, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

just if you are working on a page with the WP-REAL template put it on the same line just after the ERA icon template, even if for now it doesn't seem to do anything. But take the time you need for school that is obviously more important. Final plug for discord though is that our server compared to something like 4P, ACSisterhood, r/AC, or the ubi official on is rather small but I understand not wanting a larger social media footprint. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 23:49, 12 August 2021 (UTC)

Clan Elgring

Where is that coming from? I'm seeing it on all the news sites but I can't find it mentioned in game, by Ubisoft themselves, or in a historic source. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 19:17, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

The gaming sites are what I'd been going off of ever since I found it mentioned in an article, and I thought they were going off something in-game since they're generally reliable for such information. I haven't actually seen it mentioned yet in dialogue subtitles, so I thought it was from later in the plot. – Darman (talk) 22:35, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

I sorta figured it out. So I still haven't seen the name specifically in the game or from an official Ubisoft source but I found that "elgr" is Norse for "elk" which is the clan's symbol which I thought might be the case. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 23:31, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Ahh, so just as we have Eivor of the Raven Clan and Kjotve of the Wolf Clan, so too do we have Sigfred, Sinric, and Toka of the Elk Clan. Kinda makes me wonder what other animal-themed clans there could be. – Darman (talk) 23:35, 14 August 2021 (UTC)

Didn't the Rigsogur mention a Whale Clan and semi-historically there was a Hound Clan. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 22:53, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Yes, it did. Entry 2 describes Rig's blood feud with Ergon Blade-Tongue of the Whale Clan, who he kills. It continues through Ergon's son Bolli (entry 3) until his death (entry 6) after taking Solveig hostage and provoking Rig's wrath, and ends with Bolli's alleged and unnamed sister (entry 9). I'm still confused, though, as to where places like IGN got the -ing suffix if elgr alone means elk, because the full name wasn't used here until I started adding it. Have you found anything yet? – Darman (talk) 17:20, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

More Valhalla gear

Hey, Darman!

Just passing by to let you know I managed to get most of the descriptions for the Valhalla gear we were missing (both dlc and microtransaction packs) so you can make the pages without needing to track those down. They are on my main sandbox as always.

On another topic, how you've been? I've been dead busy with my dissertation but things should relax a little bit from next month onwards. - Soranin (talk) 15:45, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Hey Soranin,
Great work as always getting the info for the gear! I'll try to get to the pages when I've some time this week, but I can't promise I'll be able to finish them all, since as I told Lacrosse above, school is resuming for me soon. On the topic of school, congrats on working on your dissertation! What field of study is it in, and what are you writing on? Otherwise, I've been pretty swell. Nothing crazy, just work and some AC gaming in my off time when I feel like it. I've earned some new badges here, as I'm sure you can see, and have climbed up the ranking board some since you were last here. – Darman (talk) 01:25, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

I'm a statistician and my dissertation is on snowball sampling and hard-to-reach populations. Though I do add a lot more sociological and historical stuff on my research than most statisticians do...

Oh, so I have some competition huh? That should be fun :D - Soranin (talk) 13:33, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Nice, sounds really interesting! And yes haha, you do have competition. For one, I've earned the Grand Master badge, but you can't see it since UCP removed the "view more" function on badge counters (see my profile infoboxes instead). Luck may be on your side, since I'll be here less with school. But it also applies to you, so maybe the field was instead leveled, lol. Know that if (when?) you do beat me, I'll be right on your tail! Oh, and good luck on your paper! – Darman (talk) 22:10, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

And then there's me like that "We're the Millers" meme. Ya'll're getting badges? Lacrossedeamon (talk) 22:55, 6 September 2021 (UTC)

Darcy's audio files

Hey, Darman!

So, I had the audio files in a different section because they can appear at any location, just depending on the order you do them in. Also, where did you get "Unlocking the Past" as the first mission in the crossover? As far as I know, Synchronization is the first. - Soranin (talk) 01:09, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Oh, I thought that each message followed from each hack (first hack, first message, etc.). They're independent of location, then? And as for "Unlocking the Past", I think I might have mixed up different YouTube vids when I was editing. I could swear there's more info on Darcy and Lucas elsewhere, unless it's from a side mission I thought was a main campaign one? Oop, sorry. Too much on my mind. – Darman (talk) 01:15, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

No problem! Just warning you before you moved the audio section in Re-Sync as well. Also, as for the type of missions they are all side missions in the great WD scheme of things. See this video for reference. Also that "Assassin contracts" under Synchronization seem to be a subtitle, not a label, cause Enter the Assassins has "Bagley's Request" under it. - Soranin (talk) 01:19, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Gear pages

Sorry :P - Soranin (talk) 19:25, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

*Finally surfaces after having to correct two bloody duplicated words across seventy-five pages*
No, you're not! – Darman (talk) 20:45, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Oh, ooops. Didn't even see it, I swear! - Soranin (talk) 20:56, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Hey, do you mind if I comment out your AC mobile memories template on your sandbox? I'm gonna attempt to run an experiment later to learn more about our redlinks situation. It's gonna involve me removing them from the templates, but don't worry, it's just until the redlinks list refreshes early tomorrow. - Soranin (talk) 21:25, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Sure, likely excuse! (Haha, kidding!) Ah, good idea. I've already done it, though, so you're clear to continue your madness. – Darman (talk) 23:00, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Thank you! - Soranin (talk) 23:03, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Updating our naming policy

Hello Darman, I'm pleased to let you know that I've finally opened up a forum discussion thread for updating our naming policy. You can access it here. Since you were one of the main people to remind me of the many unresolved conundrum over this, I would definitely appreciate your input to it. You probably have many questions and perspectives to bring to the table which can be helpful. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 08:39, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi Sol,
Thanks for the invite to the discussion, I'll get to it later today after when I'm free. Almost forgot about it, honestly, what with other issues/pages to update here, so thanks for the reminder. – Darman (talk) 20:00, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Lia Fáil powers

Hi, Darman36! Thanks for helping me with the Odin article! Your help has been really appreciated! I would like to know your opinion on adding a "powers" topic to the Lia Fáil infobox. And according to its functions, I wrote that because of Ciara's song that describes its purpose as maintaining Ireland under control. – TiagoFF (talk | contribs) 10th September 2021, 00:05 (UTC)

Glad I can be of assistance! I think Ciara's lyrics are more stylistic choice than actual fact, since Ireland would be metaphorically held together through the Lia Fáil's support of a High King. Btw, you can sign posts by typing "~~~~" after whatever you've written. – Darman (talk) 00:30, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

LGBT individuals

What do you mean unconfirmed? You clearly don't know history or people very well do you. You want me to stop adding information that is true I'm just doing things that other people are to lazy to add or admit about these historical figures. Plus it doesn't look like you are an admin or a bureaucrat meaning you aren't in charge just regular like me with no high position on the wiki.

Unconfirmed why don't you do a bit of research LGBTQ people outnumber the straight people always have always will half the human population is LGBTQ. Plus being straight is a lie there's no such as straight people everyone is either gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, transgender, queer, non binary or gender fluid. Thick Meatal (talk) October 16, 2021 11:13

I meant what I said. Neither of those individuals are noted on their Wikipedia pages to be LGBT, unless there has been recent developments in the historical community which have not been added yet. Until Wikipedia does update the pages, this wiki's Manual of Style requires facts not noted there to be sourced. True, I'm not an admin here, but I do have a number of years' experience editing. Further, the site has had a slew of unverified miscategorization lately, so I thought your edits were another flurry of unfounded activity. I admit, I doubt your claims that LGBT people are the global majority and that straight people do not exist, especially when heteronormativity has been the at-times lethally imposed standard, particularly across Enlightenment Europe, which is the home region for all three of the nobles whose pages you edited. – Darman (talk) 03:45, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Sorry my reply is late to this message but you replied to your own talk page so I didn't get a notification on this one because you didn't send your message to my wall. With out notifications I don't know when you end up replying or sending message.

Anyway you mentioned about about needing facts there is enough facts and evidence to prove there are no such thing as straight people it's a lie made up by fascist, homophobic, bigots who don't want to face the reality that we are all gay, bisexual, asexual, pansexual, non binary, gender fluid, lesbians, queers and transgender. We don't need homophobes falsely claiming that straight people are real everyone is an LGBT individual. Those people who call themselves straight will lead all of us to a genocide so it's important for people to know those people that we are all LGBT individuals. The proof is there in the everyday lives of all human beings.

The proof that homophobic straight people deny about all of us and deny that they themselves are LGBT individuals is seen in their everyday actions in the lives they live. I'm just telling the truth the people I put in the category LGBT people we all are and people need to wake up and see the truth.

There is literally proof that we are all LGBTQ individuals that includes you and everyone. So people need to stop hiding they need to admit and accept the truth that this is how every human being is.

Don't trust Wikipedia it lies trust what goes on and seen in everyday lives that how you can notice we are all non binary, bisexual, gay, lesbians, gender neutral, transgender, pansexual, gender fluid and asexual. The proof and evidence exists in our everyday lives even in the past lives of people who are dead.

Heterosexuality has been implied it's a lie that has been forced on to people it's something that people have been brainwashed into believing. Those who claim to be heterosexual are brainwashed deceived. It's not heterosexual is a fantasy a fairy tale made up by people who say that they are straight. It's a fairytale just like god, heaven and the belief in an afterlife are fairytales. Even souls are a fairytale nobody really has a soul.

Heterosexual is just the genocide of the whole human race people who are willing to let the whole population die all because of the false lie they spread by saying Heterosexual people are real. It's a mental sickness. – Thick Metal (talk) 12:54, November 5 2021.

I will not debate whether heterosexuality is "real", you know this because there are cis allies to Pride events, and your listing of most known sexualities while decrying all straight people as genocidal fascists is not convincing me of your argument, either. But those are beside the point. I am saying, there is no currently known evidence, whether concrete or circumstantial, suggesting that any of the people you categorized as LBGT were ever of that orientation. Yes, citing Wikipedia is reader's discretion, but there has also been no recent reporting of your claimed findings in BBC or other global press. – Darman (talk) 15:00, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

John Harrison

What do you mean generic name? John Doe is not a generic it's always 100% confirmed that Joe Doe is given to someone who can't be identified Joe Doe is only used when people don't know someone's real name so how does that count as generic? Many people teach, tell or say John Doe is the name of a person with an unknown name or identity. Maybe you need to do a little bit of research on what John Doe means.

If it was generic many people would have that name you'd hear the name John Doe almost everywhere and it wouldn't be used for people who can't be identified or for people don't have a name. You have a lot to learn about names you clearly don't understand the whole John Doe thing do you?

Also how am I a Sockpuppet by saying "suspecting Sockpuppetry" means that you are assuming and guessing with out evidence or proof you are taking a guess looking at someone's work guessing based off of that.

Doing that is like comparing two kids who got all the same answers on the test and assuming that it's the same kid who did the test two times just because the answers on the test are the same. That's what you are doing there say if an edit is similar to another edit then that person is a Sockpuppet. Then by that logic you could be Sockpuppet if you have one single edit that matches someone else's edit.

So all edits have to be 100% all the different in your mind for a person not to count as a Sockpuppet that's impossible for anyone to pull off making sure their edit doesn't match someone's else's edit. That is something even you can't pull off. – Thick Metal (talk) 11:36 November 4 (UTC)

The details on the use of John Doe are a technicality. The point is, there's nothing special about the surname Harrison, Smith, or Doe. Even moreseo with this Harrison, as Wikipedia lists a number of them on a disambiguation page, and I highly doubt he is a reference to all these people or to the British carpenter you linked to in particular.

My apologies for accusing you of sockpuppetry. I forgot that you have contributed to here before, and in your absence, I thought you were a sock Admins have had a problem with for a while, but looking again, your username does not follow their trademark format nor do your edits replicate their pattern of repeated copy/pastes. – Darman (talk) 04:05, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

You don't get it plus you are replying and commenting on your own wall to my message. You don't do that when you reply back to people you send the message over to their wall by clicking on the talk link so they get a notification other wise the person you are talking to isn't going know that you are speaking to them they aren't going to keep coming to your page or stay on your page all day. Because you send to your own talk message no one is going to know when are trying to speak to them. You said the name Harrison and Harrison I'm talk about the full name the first and last name you however are only talking about the last name.

By saying that Harrison is generic name and not John Harrison I can do the same thing and say that Connor is a generic name or Hope or Tom. Not Connor Kenway, not Hope Jensen and not Tom Cobleigh not those characters. But just their first names only are generic. That's what you are doing and saying with John Harrison say only his last name is generic. That can apply to many different names. Any name can be generic Einstein.

Also PS if you do try sending a message to my wall or talk page I apologize in advance if I messed up on the link to my talk page. But that's where you are so post to reply so the other person gets notifications of when you are speaking it's also a good way to get content the person you are speaking to. Because if a person is busy or offline the notifications help to let them know that someone is speaking to them.

Also loading is a little slow on my end from my phone it is freezing up on me a few times so there will be some issues with communication. – Thick Metal (talk) 12:22 November 5 2021

I am well aware how talk pages work, thank you, I've been here a number of years. There is no "supposed to" rule for talk pages so long as communication continues for all parties. It is the user's decision how they respond to messages. Some only keep posts from recipients on their page, giving just one side of the conversation, while others like myself elected to continue discussions on the page they began on so that all entries are in one place, as you can see just by scrolling here.

Again, I state that there is nothing special about the name John Harrison, just as you are right about the plainness of the given names Connor, Hope, and Tom. (Note, though, that Connor never adopted the surname Kenway. That was retroactively applied by fans, as he did not know his father's name until long after, and even then it was the first name since Achilles only wrote "Haytham" on the basement wall.) As for Einstein, it is generally accepted that the use of that surname in slang parlance means the bearer is a genius, which is not the case here. John's surname format of [name]son is common enough in Europe and Scandinavia that the odds of it being a reference to anyone whether historical or a member of AC3's game devs is slim to none, and often unless explicitly stated in the case of game devs. – Darman (talk) 15:00, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Isu groups

Hello again, Darman. I'm contacting you, since we are discording on the name we should give to the main Isu caste, the "Greco-Romans". And that got me thinking that since Valhalla revealed that the Isu were separated in groups, we should try to sort them. I'm sure that you heard about the recent rumours comparing the Nine Realms to each Isu group and their territory. My recent compilation is the following:

• "Greco-Romans" - Or: Frost Giants (Norse mythology) - Realm: Jötunheim (North America) - Capital: "Utgard" --> City above Grand Temple (we don't have a name to it yet)

-Since they are the main caste, they have sub-groups and realms. revealed to us by The Fate of Atlantis.

• "Elysians" - Realm: Vanaheim [not sure about this one, since their habitants are Vanir (Italy?, Greece? - Maybe the temples in Italy are from them) - Capital: Elysium (Sister Realm)
• "From Underworld" - Realm: MAYBE Helheim [since Hel is supposed to be its ruler] (Italy?, Greece? - Again due to their connection to the main caste, as Hades is Jupiter's brother and Elysium is very close to it) - Capital: Underworld (Sister Realm)
• "Atlanteans" - Realm: Niflheim??? (Greece) - Capital: Atlantis (Sister Realm)
• "Asgardians" - Or: Aesir/Vanir - Realm: Asgard (Norway, Scandinavia) - Capital: Asgard --> Maybe Hordaland, Norway? (Yggdrasil is supposedly close to Odin's territory)
• "Egyptians" - Or: Fire Giants (Norse mythology) - Realm: Muspelheim (Egypt, North Africa) - Capital: ???
• "Hindu or Budhists" - Or: Light Elves (Norse mythology) - Realm: Alfheim [since they were guardians of the Koh-i-noor] (India, Asia?) - Capital: ???
• "Celtic" - Or: Dwarfs (Norse Mythology)/Fomorians or Tuatha Dé Dannan (Irish Mythology) [The last ones might be different people but TDD are descendants of the Fomorians] - Realm: Svartalfheim (Ireland) - Capital: ???

At last, we have the last realm: Midgard, which are the Humans and Hybrids (Juno referred in Eivor's visions that she wanted to run experiments on Midgard, and Aletheia replied that they would survive the Great Catastrophe) - Could be the region of Africa (excluding deserts) since it's where Eden is located and Humanity allegedly originated from there.

But look we should still identify the main caste someway, despite not having a confirmed name, so I personally think that Greco-Roman would be the more appropriate nomenclature. Would like to hear your thoughts on this? – TiagoFF (talk) 16:16, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Hello TiagoFF,
I admittedly have not heard many rumors about locations, though the Egypt/North Africa/Muspelheim bit is familiar, and the few I have heard are from Access the Animus pointing to Reddit. I don't search for them, and though I do get mildly intrigued, my personal investment goes no further than "New rumored realms? Huh. If it's legit, nice; if not, nothing lost".

As I've said before, my disagreement is over the fact that while we know a majority of Isu were adopted by post-Catastrophe humans as the Greek gods, we have no name for them whether through self-identification as Juno did in Syndicate's Lydia Frye missions or from external POV guidebooks. Naming some of them for cities makes sense when applicable, but as you said, we don't know the name of the Isu ruins outside Turin.

Your ideas are certainly interesting, but this is technically all supposition until officially confirmed/denied. Unfortunately, we editors may have a mess to fix, because while Valhalla depicts what looks to be the Grand Temple in Jotunheim, Darby McDevitt says the ice realm is not North America, and in this Reddit thread with a similar locations theory, he also said that the OP was "on the right track" but the only correct location was North Africa.

I don't quite know what to call the majority faction other than "the Isu", but I know that leaves too much room for interpretation. – Darman (talk) 18:10, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

In that thread, the user specifies that Jotunheim is the region surrounding Atlantic Ocean, so Darby said that it wasn't. I think that what he is saying is that the region depicted in the game is part of Jötunheim, as he said that they thought on more largely geographical locations. We just have the parts of Asgard and Jotunheim that Odin interacted with in his time. Just saying that the Nine Realms comparison is just speculation, but we have kind of an idea of what the nine castes are.

I thought again and I agree with you on the other topic. The main caste we can call "the Isu" at this moment. We can currently name five castes:

• Midgard - Humans and Hybrids
• Asgardians
• Elysians
• From Underworld
• Atlanteans

Do you have any idea how will we name the Isu from "the Egyptians", "the Celtic" and "the Hindu" cultures? – TiagoFF (talk) 20:59, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, based off what Darby said about broader geographical regions, I can agree with you that Jotunheim may include part of North America, but it's not the realm exactly, and we don't know where it is or if modern geography even applies after ~75,000 years. I'd like to find a demonym for residents of the Underworld like for those in Elysium and Atlantis, but nothing comes to mind that doesn't sound cumbersome.

I'm unsure what to call the Egyptian, Celtic, or Hindu Isu for two interconnected reasons. First, there are so few of them—never mind that AC is completely forgetting East Asian and Mesoamerican deities—that I doubt giving them a group name is worth it. This ties into the second reason, as their limited numbers means they get few appearances or mentions in the main story if at all, and are dropped in favor of the established Roman pantheon. As I recall, and with the technical exception from Fields of Elysium of the Greco-Egyptian god Hermes Trismegistus ("thrice-greatest", a title given when Egyptians merged Hermes with Thoth), the Egyptian pantheon in AC are not actual beings like Jupiter who talk to a character. Instead, they appeared in the historical parts of the semi-canonical Les Deux Royaumes comics, or were in Origins as Bayek's visions and Animus simulations, but no further.

The situation is similar for the Celtic deities in Layla's Valhalla files and Wrath of the Druids, while the Hindu gods are unique in having only Durga in the Brahman comic (Saraswati/Minerva is only mentioned in Last Descendants). That's it. With so few Isu ties to both beliefs, we don't even know if enough Isu were present for humans to place them in these pantheons, i.e. some gods simply may not have any Isu ties and are original creations by humans. – Darman (talk) 02:20, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Late message

Hey, Dar!

Just wanted to let you know I saw that you message me and I'll get to it, but I've been incredibly focused this last week cause my interview for the doctoral program I'm trying to get into was today so I had to study a lot. I'll probs read it this weekend.

"Probs" is because I just remembered I still has to transcribe Oskoreia. :/ - Soranin (talk) 01:25, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Hey Soranin,
No worries, I wasn't expecting an immediate reply, just was venting my grievances letting you know what the situation was. We all know we answer talk pages when we find time. As luck has it, I've already updated the Appearances section of the page you wanted after seeing your edit yet before seeing this message, so you're fine. Good luck with your doctoral interview! – Darman (talk) 19:00, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Odyssey Timeline

Hello, Dar!
Thanks for having fixed my sandbox page (I'm still kinda new in this things). Anyway, I wanted to ask if you know how to correctly format a table through code. I'm trying to do one of myself but it isn't working very well. Thank you in advance! - TiagoFF (talk) 23:41, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Hi, TiagoFF!
Sorry for the delay, I didn't see your message. Glad I could help fix the page! I don't know too much about how wiki tables work, though, as I don't use them much and tend to copy style code from existing tables when I need them. However, I took a look at your sandbox, and it seems you have the table pretty sorted there already. – Darman (talk) 23:35, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

New hub for editors

Hey Dar, I'm sure you're already aware of it, cause you (like me) trawl in the Recent Changes page, but I made a new hub for the editors, so we can see what needs to be done and talk to each other about it.

It's over on Assassin's Creed Wiki:Target board. - Soranin (talk) 16:02, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Hetepi

Hi Darman, considering I have authored and edited many of the Order of the Ancients pages without issue, respectfully, I naturally disagree. The Hetepi page was poorly written and had an indicator at the top of the article that was asking for the page to be spruced up. While you may not personally like my writing style (again, it’s never been an issue before), it is not appropriate to vandalize the page with poor grammar and bad writing. Compromise may be reached however, as I will remove all the bracketed conjecture and unnecessary information, but will once again edit the poor English. There is no excuse for that to remain, especially when the site specifically called for an improvement in that department. No need for an edit war. As you yourself admit, the site calls for clear brevity, but also for proper grammar and intelligible sentences. Unfortunately, your edits leave much to be desired in the latter categories. Please do not vandalize pages by replacing proper sentences with stilted syntax and bad grammar. Sarasti the Serpent (talk) 22:03, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

[Issue moved to Soranin's talk page] – Darman (talk) 17:05, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

Isu de-extinction

I'm very confused about the "other sources of Isu DNA" edit being false and the source of DNA just being from Elijah. How could gramatica resurrect the Isu species and uncover their species' scientific secrets from the DNA of one Isu which presumably Elijah had? I say this because the genetic code of individual beings in the same species are largely the same; but you need multiple people to understand the whole species (not to mention genetic memory of one individual is nowhere near enough to uncover the secrets of an entire species technology.) If the sole source of Isu DNA was from Elijah how could the Templars accomplish their goals?

I am asking this question because you undid my edits on the Phoenix Project page; the reason you gave for it does not make any sense from the context of the story's setting nor from real life science.


Sincerely, – Slaugth324 (talk‎) 19:59, 8 January 2022‎

Hello Slaugth324,
You may be correct regarding how much DNA Gramática collected from where, as I admit it's been a while since I've read the comics issue(s) mentioning Project Phoenix's details. As I recall, Gramática tried to use John Standish's body for Isu DNA, but after it was destroyed in an Assassin raid in 2014, he turned to using Elijah's since he was the only living being with Isu heritage. However, it seems Soranin's latest edit to the page says the info comes from the Essential Guide, so maybe comics don't cover it?

But you are right, the science does not match reality, since an individual cannot hold blueprints for a whole species. But Abstergo's incredibly unethical practices have never let things like "impossible" get in the way of their next mad plot to try and achieve world domination. – Darman (talk) 18:30, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Render images for Asgardian Isu

Hey there, Darman. I'm planning on making renders of the Asgardian Isu seen in the Hidden Truth, as they're their true appearance. The thing is: Is there as specific way of making a render starting from a photo? And if I need to re-upload it, is there a specific procedure to source it and license it? Thank you in advance. – TiagoFF (talk) 20:49, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I think your best bet to get pics would be from the Animus Anomalies screenshots (see page gallery), followed by replaying the file over and over to try and get screencaps of different angles, if you have the game. While other people likely use Adobe Photoshop or a free alternative such as those outlined by @XdanielArt, I use Paint 3D, an updated version of the old Microsoft Paint. If you do have Paint 3D, I can walk you through the steps I do. Hope it helps! – Darman (talk) 21:45, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

I have Paint 3D, so, I would much appreciate your guidance! – TiagoFF (talk) 00:00, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I've discovered the Magic Select function but it's not being very useful since it's constantly cutting parts of Odin's body, his clothes seem mixed with Thor's due to color. It's a bit complicated to use, I wonder if it's the correct tool to use on this matter. (Well, the Yggdrasil room is a bit dark so maybe that's the problem) – TiagoFF (talk) 00:50, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Ah, I see you've experienced the "wonders" of Magic Select. Yes, that's the right tool, and that step is indeed tricky, especially in this case since Yggdrasil's room is full of shadow as you said and the program is "confused". Sometimes, Magic Select will co-operate and cut just what you want, but more often than not, it will be wrong in what it thinks you want to focus on, completely missing a person's limb or including background. If trying to remove background severs a character's legs, leave it in for now. As the adage goes, "Measure twice, cut once"; better to have to trim off more later vs. realize you cut off too much.

Once the majority of background is gone, zoom ALL IN and use Eraser with pixel sizes 1-3 for precise work clearing background right next to [target]. It's your judgement whether a pixel's color is still visible when zoomed back out to 100%. Then, resize canvas to fit [target], or else it will not save any parts extending past the borders. Save file something like "[AC media acronym] [person/object].png", then upload with usual info per Image Source policy. – Darman (talk) 01:00, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

A Brother's Keeper

Hi! Just wanted to thank you for the help with the images. Sorry for the double redirect btw. Is there something else that needs to be done with their sourcing?

No problem! No, I don't think there's nothing else to fix for their sourcing. It's great you're getting images from a playthrough, but we'll have to wait until we can get actual in-game screencaps, likely from XOdeyssusx since that seems to be their thing now. Luckily, the cinematic for Sigurd staying in Norway doesn't actually vary too much from the one when he stays in England. – Darman (talk) 18:40, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Yes, having some screencaps without the HUD would be very good. It is very annoying to not be able to take good pics when you are following someone or while in combat. Anyway, I will try to take as many as I can as long as they're of good quality. - TiagoFF (talk) 20:40, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, HUD can be a bother. However, I believe Valhalla also has Photo Mode, just like Origins and Odyssey before it, so if you're not in combat or simply exploring instead of watching a cutscene, try using that and adjusting camera angle, brightness, etc as needed. That's what I used for "The Taxman Cometh" in 2020. Just a note, any Photo Mode pics will likely be saved to a different folder from regular screenshots, and will also have a lengthy file name something like ACV[year][month][day][hour][minute][seconds].png. So make sure you rename it to what you want before you upload pics here. – Darman (talk) 20:50, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Hey, Darman, I've caught some dialogue with Sigurd if he stays in Norway. It happens in Fornburg, he is in the longhouse. But where should we list it? In "A Quiet Homecoming"? It seems that some time passed, Eivor must have returned to England and came back in this scenario. Just thought that I should have your opinion. - TiagoFF (talk) 21:54, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Huh. I didn't know you could talk to Sigurd if he stayed in Norway—I always thought Eivor left him to brood there as she went home herself—but I guess it makes sense he eventually left Yggdrasil. I think we will have to put it in "A Quiet Homecoming", since the modern day stuff happens immediately upon finishing "A Brother's Keeper" regardless where Sigurd picks his home, and it's not until after Basim plugs into the Animus that we can control Eivor again.

Only question is, how to do it. If Sigurd stays in England, can we talk to him once Eivor wakes from the return party, like how Odin can talk to Týr after defeating Fenrir? If so, then we can put a tab at the end of the Homecoming cutscene with Sigurd's Ravensthorpe lines contrasted with his Fornburg lines. But if we cannot talk to him, then we'd have his Fornburg lines just sitting at the page bottom, since Homecoming ends as we currently have it with everyone singing. Something to mull over first... – Darman (talk) 22:45, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, I have an idea. Maybe we could put all the quest in a tab. Don't know if it is the ideal solution but it could work. That way we could put the dialogue in Norway down in the "Eivor returns alone" scenario.

Also, now that we're talking about dialogues, about those ones in Cheating Fate, I went to Asgard in my playthrough and only managed to find Týr in the feast and Freyja in her garden. I couldn't find Thor so I read again Uli's comment on Freyja's talk page, supposedly Thor was "in a lower courtyard just off the feast", but I couldn't find him anywhere near it. So, I can only provide Týr's and Freyja's dialogue to the memory. - TiagoFF (talk) 01:31, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

It's a possibility, but personally, I'd like to avoid having to copy/paste ~80% of the dialogue for just a few changes. Still plenty time to think it over. Alternately, we could put two tabs on the bottom and just have the "Eivor and Sigurd" option blank (see "The Thousand Eyes" or "Blame and Sail" as examples of this) while "Eivor alone" has Sigurd's lines. As for Odin, hey, 2/3 people isn't too bad! So feel free to add those while you have them. – Darman (talk) 20:40, 29 January 2022 (UTC)

Hey, I just remembered. When does Sigurd tells Eivor about the divorce with Randvi? If I remember well, it's in the day after the feast in Ravensthorpe when they return from Norway? We could put it in a tab against Sigurd's dialogue in Norway. As for the Cheating Fate lines, I'll still try to contact Ullicus on this matter, maybe he can help. (Don't know, maybe I'm not getting the dialogue with Thor because of a plot choice) But, I'll upload the ones that I already have soon. - TiagoFF (talk) 00:23, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Yes, you're right, his divorce lines are the day after defeating Basim and just before pledging to Hamtunscire for "Kingdom's End". That's a good place for his Norway lines, too, as his divorce lines seem to be unavoidable since Sigurd waits outside the map room for a cutscene the moment Eivor walks by. I've already written both after finding Sigurd's alt ending on YouTube. Also, my own thought just now, might both Sigurd's bitter jibe about Randvi ("Yes, I'm sure she'll tell the truth!") and her own request that Eivor talk to him in "Of All That Has Passed" be different if Eivor does not romance her at all? – Darman (talk) 06:50, 2 February 2022 (UTC)

Dividing whole terms into multiple links

Darman, I am sure that I have asked you to stop doing this multiple times already. Stop dividing whole terms into multiple links rather than retaining it as a link to the subject the term directly refers to. As I have already mentioned in the past, one of our old administrators have also expressed that this practice personally causes a ton of confusion for him and would likely do the same for our audience. The most recent cases have been "Crimson Jian", "Flavius Metellus", and "Khemu". Heaven help me if you have been doing this everywhere for the past year despite my continuous warnings.

Given that every single time I have ever had to ask you not to do something—and this has probably been on at least a dozen different matters now—you always require me to tell you against at least three times, my assumption of good faith is seriously being tested, and it really is starting to appear to me that you try to surreptitiously slip back in practices you desire against our formatting styles and conventions if I'm not alert to catch you in the act again and again. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 01:46, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Problem with images

Hey, Darman. I think I may need your help moving the images in the article to the correct numbers. Let me explain: I moved the image 11 to 13, the correct number, and subsequently, moved the 10 to 12. But, when I reached the number 9 to move to 11, I couldn't, because the 11 article that I had put as a candidate to deletion earlier still existed, I couldn't move the image to the desired number. So, I went to the 11 page in order to upload the image 9 there, but, again, I can't because, well, the page 9 still exists! Could you help me get out this one? - TiagoFF (talk) 17:08, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Sure, I can explain this. Unfortunately, if you had asked me to move the pages before attempting yourself, as I had mentioned in our "A Brother's Keeper" chats, this wouldn't have happened, but it's not your fault you forgot. See, when most editors move pages/files, the wiki automatically makes the old link a redirect. Because you edited the 11 file to replace the redirect link with the {Delete} template, a "new file" was "created", in a sense. For whatever reason, I can determine whether pages/files I move do or do not leave redirects; I've mentioned this before but still don't know how I earned this user right (maybe it's tied to edit count? I'm unsure.) Because you tried to move a file to a place where something al ready "exists", two things cannot occupy the same place at once, so we'll have to wait for a Staff like Sol Pacificus or Amnestyyy to delete the liniks individually. – Darman (talk) 00:40, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

Little gift

Just dropping by to leave you with a little gift. The full text dump for Dawn of Ragnarok that someone sent on the subreddit server. Here. :D - Soranin (talk) 00:20, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Aww, for me? Thank you! Just quickly scrolling through, and this is all from cracked game files?! Impressive work! Is it from the community or your mysterious contact who solved "Hunting Wolves" forever ago? Anyways, wow this is great, though I admit I have no clue what order all of this goes in or what all these nouns are. *cracks knuckles* Well, no time like the present to get started on yet another, curse you! this project! – Darman (talk) 06:00, 24 February 2022 (UTC)

Would it KILL YOU to wait until release to add redlinks? >:c - Soranin (talk) 17:33, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

Right, still prerelease. The redlinks should all be gone now. – Darman (talk) 16:10, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

give me a minute man

Please, I lost a bunch of work reworking the megalith page Lacrossedeamon (talk) 16:03, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't know you were also working on it at the moment. Was your stuff saved in the edit conflict preview? I've moved on to other pages for now, so it's free for you to write unhindered. – Darman (talk) 16:10, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Apologies for the curtness. No, it didn't save, but I redid most of the work now Lacrossedeamon (talk) 16:23, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

"Brahmastra" dispute

Hello Darman. A couple of weeks back, we noticed that you had an editing dispute with Piedpiper100 over at the article "India" in regards to the mention of Brahmastra. I did not intervene right away because I wanted to wait and see how you would handle it while I also checked with other staff to verify which edit was correct. Odey, Cris, and a few other editors helped to determine that there is no mention of Brahmastra in the cited glyph, so we were confused where this information came from.

Most seriously though, I noticed that you tried to explain to Piedpiper in an edit summary that "Original research, such as the many Wikipedia links here, is allowed as needed or at editor's discretion per Sourcing policy." This is totally false, and it was made even more jarring that you linked to the sourcing policy where one of the very first sections is titled "no original research". Original research is not allowed in our wiki, and it is imperative that new editors are not confused or misled by this. What our wiki does allow that other wikis usually don't is the use of sources external to Assassin's Creed to supplement our information when needed. However, this should not be mistaken for original research, which involves inserting one's own original analyses, speculation, opinions, and/or field work.

We also determined that there is nothing in the glyphs that allows us to link the irradiation of an ancient city by a Piece of Eden with the Brahmastra, even if we were to use external supplementary sources. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 19:36, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Proper use of spoiler warning

Darman, the spoiler warning, alongside the pre-release warning, are only applicable when the page actually contains spoiler or pre-release content. We don't add those warnings just because the article is brand new, because it pertains to a new release, or because we anticipate that it would have spoiler or pre-release content (an editor adding that content should add the warning only then). I understand you might be adding these reflexively whenever you make a new article, but I have seen this happen several times now, so I thought I would remind you about it. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 16:22, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Sorry just to clarify, the pre-release instances I've seen was actually the inverse of removing the "pre-release info" notice for an article which actually only contains like 10% new info from released sources but still has 90% pre-release info. Though I understand that those were honest mistakes. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 16:37, 11 March 2022 (UTC)

Eivor's letters

I added that [sic] there as it misses the word "the" between "of" and "Raven", like "Eivor of the Raven Clan". It's not correct English without the "the" there, unless it would be "Eivor of Ravensthorpe". But I don't mind if it's not there. I have reported a lot of typos already in the past to the devs, including this one, so I use that thread to keep track of them. I haven't checked if any typos were fixed yet (I should really do that in the near future), but it might be that the missing "the" will be added in the future in this note :) Ubi-Gizmo send this specific typo to the devs this very evening :D Kennyannydenny (talk) 21:16, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Ah, OK. Thanks for correcting me, I wasn't sure. I'll add it back in, then. – Darman (talk) 22:01, 12 March 2022 (UTC)

Desert Threat

Hey Darman, just wanted to say that Aconyte themselves only name it "The Desert Threat" while they use "Assassin's Creed: The Ming Storm". That's why I didn't include the Assassin's Creed part, it was on purpose. (For reference, they also use "Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Geirmund's Saga", "Assassin's Creed Valhalla: Sword of the White Horse" and "Assassin's Creed: The Magus Conspiracy") - Soranin (talk) 02:08, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I followed the link when you posted your latest edit to it. It's weird they did that when the book is part of the Ming Storm series, which itself is part of AC, even if oddly-subtitled as "An Assassin's Creed story". Sure, most of the book is non-canonical—we still need to figure out how to add its differing details here, like Wang Yangming's peaceful death after playing Go against Zhang Yong vs stabbed through the chest—but why change the format now? – Darman (talk) 14:55, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Broken text in the Codex

Darman, I'm not sure what you were doing in "Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad's Codex", but ever since your slew of edits last January, the text in many of the tabbed pages has been broken into a mess. In pages including but not limited to 21, 22, and 28, the text is forced to wrap around giant drawings which caused the paragraphs to be squeezed all the way to the side. Do you think you can go back and fix this? – Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 22:39, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Oh damn, I hadn't seen that my edits did that. I was trying to change the display text into image captions, and remove the "<br><br>"s that were after every few sentences by making it a paragraph instead. I thought having a pic and text in the immediate new line below would appear the same way it does in article bodies. Sorry, should be fixed now? – Darman (talk) 23:05, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Wait, never mind, I thought I had it but I did not. Working to fix now, will report back when done. – Darman (talk) 23:15, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

So I reverted the individual pages with mangled text to how they were before I edited them in Jan, and the pics and paragraphs are aligned properly, but now the image caption appears as mouse-over alt text instead. Do you know what I seem to be missing for it to work? Because I thought that having it written as:

text
[[File:name.png|thumb|left|pixels|caption]]
text

in tabs like how main pages like "Where It All Began" have it would transfer over fine, but apparently that's not the case. – Darman (talk) 13:50, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

Medal Reset?

Hello,

I know it may not be important to ask, but my medal for Grand Master reset after I refreshed my page cause of a low Internet connection. Is that just an error or did something change? I don't know who else more to ask. If you can help. Batfan13 (talk) 19:47, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi, sorry I couldn't get your message, I had other obligations over the past week-and-some. However, looking at your talk page, seems Lacrosse has already answered your question on this. I know what it's like to accidentally lose progress on the Grand Master, as I once lost it at +200 days. As a tip, I suggest trying to edit as close to the same time every day in your local time zone, so that the UTC timer logs it for daily progress. – Darman (talk) 18:45, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Blurry Dynasty character flow chart

After going back to take a look at this, I just realized that most of the characters under the Order in the chart have completely different faces than how they finally appeared in the comic lol. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 00:04, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

They do? I noticed the face differences myself, but had attributed it to Zhang Xiao using a pic of a person from later issues. But now I think on it, with Dynasty nearing completion, there's fewer and fewer future issues where these faces could appear. Besides Yang Guozhong / Li Longji, what other faces have changed since this image was released? And as someone fluent in Chinese, can you make out any names / words in the slightly larger image? – Darman (talk) 02:50, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Though uninvited, I'd like to make some explanation. The Hidden Ones are Li E, Pei Min, He Honger, Jingjing, and Kongkong; Yan's family are Yan Jiming, Yan Gaoqing, and Yan Zhenqing; outsiders are Li Bai, Abe no Nakamaro, and Jianzhen. The court are Li longji, Li Heng, Yang Yuhuan, Li Guangbi, Guo Ziyi, Zhang Jieran, Ge Shuhan, Feng Changqing, and Gao Xianzhi. The Yeluohe Army are an abandoned concept art of Shi Siming, An Lushan, Gao Shang (高尚), Sun Xiaozhe, Cui Qianyou (崔乾佑), Li Zhuer, Li Qincou, Gao Miao, He Qiannian, and double agent Yan Zhuang. The Turtles are Yang Guozhong, Li Linfu, Gao Lishi, Wang Chengye, and Bian Lingcheng.

In addition to other characters who have changed their image, I personally speculate that Yan Gaoqing used the image of Yan Zhenqing's preview image, and Yan Zhenqing used a younger image in order to distinguish. – 一个赛艇门 (talk) 10:21, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! I'll add / fix the categories then. I know I had asked Sol, but your reply works just a well. Don't worry about jumping into reply on someone else's page. I know editors can do this if they have the answer and see one of their fellows is away at the time, as I have certainly done it before myself. – Darman (talk) 11:05, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

一个赛艇门 basically answered your question, which was perfect. I will only add that literally everyone under "The Order" has a different face from their actual appearance in the comic except for An Lushan and Yan Zhuang. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 19:19, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

RE: Dynasty translations

Hey, I am glad that you enjoy those summaries. I was an aspiring writer when I was a kid, but I am not very confident of my writing skills outside of academia now. I still couldn't help but try to add some more flavour to the summaries because I don't like it when people think plot summaries can just be monotonous, vague repetition of events. A lot of times when I read plot summaries for movies, they are hard to understand. They still need to flow in a way that is engaging and gives the reader sufficient context.

One thing about my translation style is that I try hard to preserve the Chinese idioms even when they are not necessary. I think this serves to link the reader more closely with the culture they are reading about. I also like to preserve the cadence and rhythm of the speech as much as possible, something that the Tokypop translators do not care about at all. Because of this, however, I can sometimes be too literal in my translations. I can be a little too reluctant to swerve away from the literal translation and substitute with something that sounds more natural in English. Recently, in my work on "Abe no Nakamaro's letters to Li Bai", I have been trying to improve this about my translations, which is why I keep going back to polish them, trying to figure out the right balance between being accurate and sounding natural.

Keeping up with Dynasty content is quite stressful, especially since there are other major projects on the wiki warranting my attention. I decided to put off updating most character pages until the comic ends, so I wouldn't have to keep updating them as I go. It is awkward to have some plot summaries up but not others, so I will also need to complete those.

And by the way, if you liked yeet, I would be in favour of re-adding it in if approval from other editors around here is unanimous. >:) One can make the controversial take that it improved the quality of the summary hehehe. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 19:19, 6 July 2022 (UTC)

Mirabeau's butler

heya, do you know if there is a page for Mirabeau's butler? (The one that Arno spoke to while investigating Mirabeau's murder) – MedievalVibes (talk) 15:22, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't believe Mirabeau's butler has a name, and can't seem to find anything in the subtitles amongst a few playthrough vids either. And I'm not sure his exceptionally brief appearance would warrant a page, either. For a moment, I thought you meant either Olivier or Perrault, but they were the majordomo and messenger, respectively, for François de la Serre. – Darman (talk) 15:55, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Footnotes

You should have brought it up in a talkpage, forum discussion, or at least in your own edit summaries to give your train of thought before going through with those changes. But here. Discuss. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 02:31, 19 September 2022 (UTC)

Ah, yes, you're right. I should have has asked first. I had forgotten that Wikipedia and even scholarly articles can have footnotes separate from citations. – Darman (talk) 14:10, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Numbskull's personal files dead videos

To your question "But what use is a thumbnail pic if the vid is 'dead'?" I will ask the question again, what use is replacing them all with the "No image" image, which is also essentially a dead picture with no value. At the very least, the dead link maintains the aesthetic quality of the article while we pursue replacements, and they still serve as references for the time being. The video have just been made private. They haven't been removed, and some of our old admins probably still have contact with Stormbeast. It's not that it's ideal to keep inaccessible videos right now. It's that replacing them with essentially "dead image" files is in no way an improvement. Nor have we ever used that file for that purpose. I might add that I don't understand why you always insist on tweaking article formatting to your liking in unprecedented ways without consultation with staff or others. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 02:01, 20 September 2022 (UTC)

...Right, you make a good point. I wasn't thinking about page aesthetics. But isn't the wiki-noimage used as a placeholder with {Imageneed} until a proper file is made/found? If other admins haven't contacted Stormbeast already, I've sent a message to them and am awaiting a response, if they see it. – Darman (talk) 14:10, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

wiki-noimage is only used for infoboxes, and you were replacing not even images but videos, inaccessible as they may be. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 15:09, 2 October 2022 (UTC)

Ahhh, and because a wiki-novideo.mp4 does not exist, partly since a video of nothing would look weird, and because there are so few videos here that are in-game audio logs instead of official promos, the jpg was the wrong "replacement" anyway. Also, just got word from Stormbeast. Had to try a different method after first didn't work, but happened to catch them at the right time. Vids should now be listed on their channel and visible to all, users and readers alike. – Darman (talk) 02:30, 3 October 2022 (UTC)

ACR image background

I saw you upload this image a month ago. I haven't finished ACR yet, so I don't know what's happening in this image. Is it the "Riot at the Harbor of Theodosius"? If so, it'll look pretty in the infobox of the event. – UJ112013 (talk) 05:08, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that's what it is, as I don't recall any Janissaries present in the underground base of Derinkuyu, Cappadocia, and if they were present, I'm near certain they weren't fighting civilians who were fleeing fires started by Ezio. I'll add it now! – Darman (talk) 05:40, 26 September 2022 (UTC)

re: Sea-Chariot

I don't think its a specific pack. I think the dialogue has been in the game since the beginning but most people aren't using opals to buy ship cosmetics. A further issue is that I don't think it procs on every ship cosmetic purchase from Reda; I think it pulls randomly from a limited phrase bank. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 14:50, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Ah. Damn. Yeah, that's the more likely option. I'll try to tweak the page to take this into account. I guess that, unlike with the cracked Dawn of Ragnarök files Soranin linked above, there's no way to know what the lines are in the core game for ship cosmetics, is there? Pity. – Darman (talk) 11:25, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

We could check if we had a cracked pre patched base game set of files but I don't know where to find those. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 13:00, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Idk where we'd find the base game's cracked game files, either. I just know I haven't seen them uploaded here. – Darman (talk) 19:45, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Current status of multiplayer

The multiplayer is actually still running, albeit Ubisoft has decided to keep one game online for each platform. PlayStation 3 players have Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, PC players have Assassin's Creed: Revelations, and Xbox 360 players have Assassin's Creed III. This is all aside from the fact Black Flag multiplayer was never planned for shutdown at this time at all, and so its servers are still active on all platforms. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 01:15, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Really? I thought it was all discontinued, so I must have misread something. Thanks for correcting me. I do know I can no longer access AC3 multiplayer on PC, which kinda sucks since I still had those uPlay achievements to at least try and get, even if I only played it intermittently when not doing main game. – Darman (talk) 05:05, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

You probably didn't misread anything. There was discrepancy between Ubisoft's announcements and their actual plan. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 05:51, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

En dashes are not grammatically incorrect

I've already explained this in the edit summary for "Database: William Johnson", but grammatically both em dashes (—) w/o space and en dashes (–) with spaces are correct and are perfectly interchangeable in usage. I always prefer the former, but there is one exception. Ubisoft's persistent and annoying incorrect usage of the hyphen (-) indicates they actually intend to use the en dash in those cases, not the em dash (or otherwise they would erroneously write --). Hence, when transcribing Assassin's Creed text, I prefer to use the en dash because it is technically more faithful transcription. It is correcting the hyphens to the en dashes, the intended punctuation.

I was surprised that your edit summary claims en dashes are grammatically incorrect because I had thought that you would think that they should be turned into em dashes since that is what we normally do, which would have been fair reasoning. Also, this is another one of those things where it would have been common sense to ask me about it first rather than "fix" my edit. I always have to remind you (this must be at least the dozenth time) that you are not in charge of formatting standards or even patrolling them. This is not your duty, and if you see a moderator or admin making deliberate formatting edits, you should presume they know what they're doing. Yes, they could be mistaken, but it's still better to ask to make sure first. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 03:14, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

My apologies. I'm sorry for mis-correcting you, I was under the impression from reading...somewhere that I cannot remember now, or maybe I was taught it in school, that em dashes are to be used for clause separators similar to commas, en dashes are more for dates, and both are preferred instead of double-hyphen. I was unaware that en dashes could suffice just as well, even if the separating distance is smaller. – Darman (talk) 05:20, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

I was under the impression (perhaps mistaken) that I had explained the grammar around dashes multiple times already, hence my impatience. At the very least, it is explained in the manual of style. Now, personally I do wish that en dashes couldn't grammatically be use for clause separators. I think I will open up a discussion regarding whether we should transcribe Ubisoft's erroneous use of hyphens as clause separators as en dashes or if we don't have to be so fastidious and just convert them to em dashes. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 07:01, 5 November 2022 (UTC)

Hmmm, perhaps the Manual is where I saw the em dash info? It's certainly on a number of grammar/citation sites like Purdue OWL, at any rate. Myself, I don't think we need to be so meticulous and say we should just change hyphens to the em dashes they should be. As opposed to database spelling errors, which may be intentional by Ubisoft as in-universe Abstergo blunders, we can all see separate clauses even as in-game dialogue are being separated by tiny bars that are not quite the proper length. Nor are they used as stops in telegram-like sentence fragment messages like "Agent has parcel - Request new instructions - Heading to rendezvous". – Darman (talk) 00:25, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

I think you're missing the point again. I always prefer em dashes to en dashes, but both are grammatically correct. It's not that the "tiny bars are not quite the 'proper' length"; en dashes are grammatically proper too although I myself disagree that they look proper. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 03:47, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

RE: AFS

That's actually a good idea and probably my plan during my revision while going back to replay AC III (whenever I get around to that). At the time though I'm only pulling this information from the datamined text files which are a jumbled mess and I think the formatting with the full synch objectives is slightly different so at this moment I am unsure on how to merge the two. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 06:54, 13 November 2022 (UTC)

As I said I agree they can fit together. But again I am not in the position to do so right now in the correct format. I'm just trying to get them on the page and they can be moved later when a better format has been decided. You brought up being redundant with the default constraints but we don't actually have those listed on the article, only the optional stuff and I feel these are more necessary than those which I why I've been adding them. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 03:17, 14 November 2022 (UTC)

Urgent work

Hey Dar, I got some kinda urgent work for you, if you choose to accept it.

So, if you haven't seen it yet, twitter is falling to chaos, people are getting fired, i saw the figure that only 238 employees remained and that reminded me that still have a bunch of unarchived/unscreenshotted twitter references that run the risk of disappearing entirely. I would do it myself, but I quite literally don't have the time right now.

That's why I'm throwing this ticking time bomb towards you! :)

If you choose to accept it, please screenshot and/or archive the tweets we need ASAP.

Love youuuu - Soranin (talk) 00:56, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Yeeeeaah, I've been watching it unfold live as a user, so not like I've missed the news. :$ Been working on slowly drafting an update for the devt section of ACV's soundtrack page, so I totally didn't think of this. The social posts without screenshots also don't count the times where users from years ago didn't use the template and it's just <ref>[https://twitter.com/user/status/1234567890 Darby McDevitt's tweet]</ref> so will have to try looking for those posts (assuming they're not deleted or account was nuked, as is the case for @Valskuiken's tweet about Io:nhiòte's necklace). Will get on it ASAP when not on shift (ugh holiday retail).

No worries for your absence, the whole wiki is a volunteer endeavor done when/where we few regular "staff" (like Twitter! *cries*) have time. Congrats on your plans and teaching job, and good luck with the presentations! – Darman (talk) 03:45, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Welp, just doing quick look, and already have a major loss: Darby's account no longer exists. Anything that cites him without a picture is completely shot. Thank goodness we got that critical Reborn Isu/Sage post when we did! *cries harder* – Darman (talk) 05:05, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Hmm. I checked a couple of tweet links from Darby in the web archive and some of them do seem to have been saved, so maybe the loss isn't as big as we think it is. Also, Fielran sent me a link that might help you, it's a firefox add-on from web archive, which makes saving the links much easier. - Soranin (talk) 13:19, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I have that Chrome extension too, it's quite handy! But not all his tweets that we used are on the Archive. At a quick glance, I cannot find his post about how he recommended players pick "Let the Animus decide" whether to have male/female Eivor, the one about how Patience Gibbs' charm is a minor Piece of Eden, or how Jill Murray wrote many backstories for muliplayer characters. The latter two also used the old [https://twitter.com Twitter: Darby McDevitt] type format, so we don't even have a quote to use like with the Eivor and Animus post. – Darman (talk) 23:10, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Robert Waugh

How exactly is describing the character's appearance irrelevant to character? —unsigned comment by Mr Mackie (talk · contr) 22:25, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

It's not that the appearance is irrelevant, but that information is not fit for the "Trivia" section. While it ordinarily would go under "Personality and traits" as they are physical characteristics that make a person unique, he appears for so briefly in the series and exists only to die early on, as well, that I don't feel the few physical descriptions there are of him are significant. – Darman (talk) 23:40, 22 November 2022 (UTC)

Mod use note on image

The note on use of a mod in creation of some of my images was requested by Sol Pacificus and Jhonnies. Please don't delete the notes without talking to them. Fielran (talk) 05:10, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Makes sense, since they're heavily altered from an original screenshot with Arno. Hmm, I thought I had kept some of them in my edits, but the point still stands. Sorry about that, I'll restore the notes. – Darman (talk) 14:30, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Hidden Ones and Assassins in Dynasty

Hello, I remember you getting confused about this several times, so I wanted to clarify it. Assassin's Creed: Dynasty seems to present the Hidden Ones and Assassin as two separate groups. The Hidden Ones are a multi-ethnic group which trained Li E before the start of the story. They are obviously meant to be directly descended the organization founded by Aya and Bayek. The "Hidden Ones of the Great Desert" seemed to have never moved into the interior of China before being exterminated by the Abbasid caliph As-Saffah.

The Assassins is a tradition that dates all the back to at least the Spring and Autumn period if Sima Qian and Pei Min are to be believed. At the time of Dynasty, Pei Min was leading a Mohist community, which safeguarded a hidden Assassin armory. Li E is given the honor of undertaking the Assassin banner by Pei Min. In this way, I think he and his group can be seen as a merger of the Hidden Ones and the Assassins in China.

Since we know that the Hidden Ones is the official founding of the Assassins, this seems contradictory to established lore. A possible explanation is that Li E was not really the first Hidden One in China but that the Hidden Ones had had intermittent presence in China over the previous centuries already. The older Hidden Ones' presence and their legacy coalesced into the public consciousness as the Assassins. The legendary assassins of the Warring States and Qin period belonged to disparate vigilante groups that later generations posthumously classified together as Assassins. Li E was the member of yet another branch of the Hidden Ones operating against the Abbasids on the outskirts of China, who was different from the Assassin lineage in China only in being a different Hidden One group disconnected from previous ones. That is my understanding so far, but it's speculation, and I haven't gotten access to Assassin's Creed: Prophecy of the Emperor, which likely provides more enlightening answers. As far as our sources go through, we should be referring to Wei Yu and the Five Assassins extolled by Sima Qian as Assassins, not Hidden Ones, because no source has referred to them as Hidden Ones as of yet. Also, please remember to avoid the term proto-Assassin. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 04:21, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

These contents are not mentioned in AC: Changanwang (or you can just call it Prophecy of the Emperor), in fact, this book book does not mention anything related to the Dynasty even. And for those questions you mentioned, I believe these conversations can be the answers: Questions and Answers to Xu Xianzhe on Issues Related to Assassin's Creed: The Dynasty - Weibo 一个赛艇门 (talk) 05:16, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you so much, Citingate! This was enormously helpful. I have already translated the Q&A for our editors and shared it with them informally, but we think it would be a great idea to do an official translation of your whole post and publish it here. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 06:45, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Marking "citation needed" for narrower references

You don't need to go around adding {{Cite|Memories/Database}} whenever you see a citation that is not specific enough. It's actually superfluous since editors normally know that most citations should be more specific. The only reason why some citations aren't is because the old system of sourcing did not cite as narrowly. With the exception of information taken from across an entire work, it's a given that all of these citations just need to be updated. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 06:42, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Unproductive edits

Darman, you have been one of the most active editors on our wiki for a few years now, but if I had to sum up the reason why there always seems to be recurring issues with your pattern of edits, I think it is because they are generally not quite productive. You spend an inordinate amount of time on rote maintenance tasks, rummaging through slews of pages (and image files in the past) daily, marking and labelling things that could be updated or tweaking formatting in little ways to suit your liking.

As but one example going off the latest case, it is not that marking "citation needed" for references which are not specific enough is fundamentally wrong, but if you are going to scout pages to mark that anyways, your time could have been better spent actually updating those citations instead. I would rather you spend your wiki time updating the citations to one or two pages than zig-zagging across pages just to note the issues they have and tweak a little formatting. And this is just but one example. We just end up with a lot of pages with maintenance notices and not enough pages which are actually getting updated and improved.

I've noticed this pattern of yours for at least a good two years now. On many other occasions, there would be articles which may not have critical flaws per se, but then you spent time traversing through them to change trivial formatting styles to your own preference as though you were making corrections. That is what led to so many past incidents over minuscule formatting disputes and conventions. Most of the time, even if you weren't making wrong edits per se, you also weren't really making corrections. Even if some formatting styles between some articles are inconsistent, they are not the most significant matters of the wiki.

The area where the wiki needs the greatest amount of work is content creation, i.e. the actual writing of articles. Apart from some content still missing from main installments, we have countless novels and comics with lore needing documentation. If you are going to go through old articles, why not update them to modern standards? How many location pages in the past or created even recently are just wrongfully plagiarized from database entries? Why not help Soranin with missing pages or go through the stub category and expand on stub articles? Or perhaps go to the forum to propose new policies of writing and formatting standards instead of slipping in your own formatting preferences and hoping they become convention? You can investigate articles still using gameplay language and fix them, or check out which pages have insufficient images and work to upload them yourself (as opposed to spending your time scouring old images to mark for deletion). We also have some newer editors whose writing skills need a tremendous amount of help. I have noticed often too that you check their edits for the most basic of formatting errors, but never bother to help correct their myriad grammar, syntax, and spelling errors.

These are but a portion of the kind of help our wiki needs. It's a different matter if a volunteer is just too busy with their life outside the wiki to contribute as actively as they would like. That's fair, and that is the problem for many of us. But the message I'm trying to tell you is that if you are spending so much time on the wiki, then that time and your energy can be put to better use. Your quantity of edits are high, yet they are not typically productive contributions or they are at most minimally productive. I would rather you focus your time substantially improving one article or an area of articles than patrol hella pages everyday and marking them for maintenance issues without fixing them yourself. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 02:13, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

You're absolutely right, Sol. I should be working to expand and improve pages rather than focusing on such minutiae. It serves no purpose to the community to add even more pages to [Category:Articles in need of sources] or [Category:Articles that need updating] all while bemoaning the work needed to fix them to more current standards. I can see how and why my edits lately are more disruptive than I thought, and I am sorry they too often have not been useful. I had thought that my filing pages as "needs work" was good categorization, filtering them out from the more complete pages, without thinking about how many articles were being put in the queue. I admit that in my distracted activity frenzies, I have been forgetting both my Watchlist and the Target Board that Soranin made, when their very purpose is to help users know what areas and personal projects are incomplete. I will rein in my activity and return to both lists to resume work I have put off for far too long. – Darman (talk) 06:15, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm glad that you've taken my feedback to heart. The target board is actually missing some of the biggest outstanding projects of our wiki, so we have to update it. You don't necessarily need to refer to it although you can if that will give you an idea what you can help with. You can just think of an area of interest yourself, whether that is a particular novel or comic series, a particular category of articles needing improvement like stubs, etc. I gave various examples in my previous message. The most important thing is that if you have the time, energy, and interest to contribute to the wiki, that you find something to focus your attention on. Rote maintenance and filing has never been a responsibility of non-staff, and there's a reason why I've always said that it's better to let staff handle those. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 07:30, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Proofreading task

Hey Darman, I was wondering if you could do a complete proofread of Batfan13's latest edits on "Alfred the Great", as well as others of their edits if you have spare time. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 19:59, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Sure thing. I'll try to get Alfred done by week's end at least (family stuff suddenly came up), but will get on it. I know I edited a slew of pages related to the Escape Room book, but I saw them all appear on Recent Changes when I logged in and thought to give them a look over for any quick changes that I thought may be needed. Just so this is recorded, my main focus now will be the soundtrack pages then Echoes of History and its relevant info on appropriate pages (almost done the transcriptions, 3 eps left). – Darman (talk) 21:45, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Oh I forgot to thank you for your work proofreading the article. I had asked a few other editors, and they didn't get around to it, so it was a great thing that you did. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 00:51, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Chimera and Greek fire

https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Греческий_огонь —unsigned comment by 012345678901111aaaa (talk · contr) 22:04, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Since the English Wikipedia page does not include the source which the Russian Wikipedia says is unverified, it is equally invalid for this site. Thucydides' mention of a flame device at the siege of Delium in 424 BC also does not count because it was bellows-operated, land-based instead of on a ship, and was not Greek Fire proper. – Darman (talk) 00:05, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

ACU floating conversations

I saw your edit comment on the Café Théâtre page. I'm actually working on putting together the other dialogue from the Café anyway, so the dialogue can go there fairly easily. The only thing I'm not sure of is whether dialogue not initiated by Arno should go on the [Floating conversations] page—the onstage conversations and performances, and conversations between staff—or if there is a better place for it. Any thoughts?--Fielran (talk) 06:34, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

Making an ACU floating conversations tab for ACU certainly wouldn't hurt! I wasn't aware that it had enough lines to warrant a tab. Ambient dialogue not prompted by player/Arno would probably go there as well. I've seen the Guild Wars 2 wiki do it (e.g. see their page on the "Trader's Forum" district in the community hub location "Lion's Arch") and I can't imagine it's the only site that records non-subtitled lines.

Adding any stage performances is a good idea and perhaps we may be able to research and identify some plays! In similar form, the ACV memory "Flann over Ireland" includes Ciara's lyrics in both Gaelic and English during Flann's coronation even though they're only written in the Database instead of subtitles. I could have sworn that the AC3 memory "A Deadly Performance" had the lines from The Beggar's Opera in it, but I was wrong and it's just a trivia note, though I guess it can be amended later? – Darman (talk) 16:15, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

It'll be a bit of a project transcribing it all, but there is definitely enough—I totaled 11-12 minutes of dialogue out of 38 minutes recording tonight, and it isn't nearly everything. I will note most if not all of it is something other than plays—there are debates, announcements similar to the heralds in older games, 'sing-along' songs, and instrumental music. I haven't actually seen any plays yet that I can remember.--Fielran (talk) 10:42, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

Huh, interesting. Even if there are no plays in the footage you have now, it makes sense that the café would have a variety of performances by its local citizenry, seeing as it was a public food establishment with basically an open mic. I look forward to seeing what you've found! – Darman (talk) 00:45, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Realized now that some of the stage events, whatever they are, might be written for entertainment instead of based on documented performances elsewhere, so researching them may prove difficult. But we can try! – Darman (talk) 01:00, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

Osiris

I think the images used of Osiris in the style of Curse of the Pharaohs is blatantly obvious as to whom it may be, but with your logic, I assume the images used of Isis aren't Isis either sense there's no clarification that it is in fact Isis. —unsigned comment by TheKingofFables (talk · contr) 18:23, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

I disagree, it is not obvious who this character is. This is an unnamed pharaoh holding a crook, as Osiris was not associated with snakes. The Isis' images do have the clarification you want, however, if you go directly to both artists' sites. The first concept art in the gallery is saved on ArtStation as "jeff-simpson-iset.jpg", while the second one from which the page image render is taken from is saved as "datsumoto-satanawa-isis-3-6-copy.jpg". The mysterious pharaoh does not have such a file name and is only "konstantin-kostadinov-08.jpg". – Darman (talk) 00:45, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Howdy. I just took a look to the image supposedly depicting Osiris and I could argue that it is indeed him for the following reason: the image shows several elements exclusively related to him. The first one is the Atef crown, a really tall crown with feathers-like wings in each side. This is only worn by Osiris because it remarks his authority as Lord of the Duat/Underworld/Afterlife. The second element is how he's being represented: mummified. Osiris is depicted in two ways, with green color skin or mummified. The former is more frequent though. Why mummified? Because in Egyptian mythology, Osiris is the very first mummy. The third and last I recognized is the Heka scepter, one of those objects in Egyptian society that remarked the Pharaoh's authority, attributed to Osiris as well in most of his depictions. If you ask me, it is indeed him. I'm still baffled about the snakes because Osiris ain't related to them, nor was his wife/sister Isis, and definitely not the one who killed him, Set. Perhaps creative liberty?Cristophorus35 (talk) 09:57, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

To add on to this, while Darman would normally be correct that we shouldn't be so quick to jump to conclusions without an explicit name for the figure, there's a reason why an exception can be made here. As far as I understand, in ancient Egyptian art and writing, the depictions of deities follow the same template and differ only in specific distinguishing elements, such as an animal head, what they're wearing on their head, what they're holding, etc. In many cases, two Egyptian deities are identical except for these elements. See Isis, Nephthys, and Ma'at for example. They are each distinguished only by a throne hieroglyph on her head, a building on her head, and a feather on her head respectively. While deities can be merged with one another, fusing elements, or be depicted in other forms, they each have a form unique to them, and Egyptians were expected to be able to identify which deity was being depicted by these unique elements alone. On this logic, I think we can allow ourselves to identify this image as Osiris. As Cris said, he is wearing the Atef exclusive to him, alongside at least two other elements iconic to him, the objects he is wielding and the mummy wrappings.

Lacrosse previously argued that we should be able to identify Dama Rossa as Caterina Sforza by observation alone. Now this is a greyer case because Dama Rossa wears an outfit we never see Caterina in, and I don't feel too confident about going off of facial features since face models tend to be generic or recycled. (So many little girls in Odyssey are identical in appearance to Kassandra as a kid!). On the other hand, for an extreme case, if we see a character identical to say Connor in a comic book without explicit identification, I am pretty sure we would all feel comfortable saying "yeah that's Connor", so there probably is a point where visual recognition is permissible. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 01:58, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you Sol and Cristophorus for correcting me on Osiris and his associated elements, I admit that I was unaware of the wider details. We can re-add the image and include the reasons you two just outlined explaining why this untitled concept art is indeed of that god. About the recognition factor, Sol, this is similar to how many people watching the AC film noticed a ghost of Arno during Callum's initiation, even if his character was not outright named by anyone, right? – Darman (talk) 05:15, 12 February 2023 (UTC)\

Yes, the debate over Arno's possible appearance in the movie is precisely another example. In that case though, I recall it being more uncertain. I will leave it up to The King of Fables to re-add the image if he would like. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 00:51, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Chinese regnal names

Darman, in regards to your recent edits on "Great Rites Controversy" and "Shao Jun", it is not correct to append the title "Emperor" to Chinese emperors' real names. (e.g. "Emperor Zhu Houzhao" and "Emperor Zhu Houcong" are both erroneous.) This is one of those cases where if you don't know the cultural custom, you should not take it upon yourself to change the status quo on the page. I'm frankly tired of constantly having to remind you against this habit of touchiness on articles, correcting things that do not need to be corrected on the basis of your presumptions. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 00:51, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Hello Sol,
I'm sorry I missed this. How is referring to the Chinese Emperors' birth names wrong? I thought the consensus in the Discussion thread long ago was to change their page names to their birth names and make "Jiajing Emperor", etc as redirects. The Manual of Style says to use their regnal names, but if those are dependent on the era they take it in and can change—Emperor Wu of Han apparently had 11 regnal names alone—wouldn't referring to them as "Emperor [birth name]" as we do with European rulers make it easier to identify them across their eras-long rules, even if we don't include every other regnal name they used? – Darman (talk) 20:40, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

The consensus determined that we would use their real names (i.e. surname + personal name) for the title of their articles because this will end up yielding the greatest consistency. You are correct on this. But the way that an article is titled does not mean that you cannot refer to the subject by any other form of address. I can see that you were confused by several things.

First, we do not append the title Emperor to the real names of Chinese emperors. We never say "Emperor Zhu Houcong" or "Emperor Liu Che" (for Emperor Wu of Han). "Emperor Zhu Houcong", like "Queen Elizabeth II", would be a regnal name, and this is not how regnal names are constructed in Chinese custom. "Zhu Houcong" is one name; how he was referred to as emperor would be another name.

Second, regnal name is not the same thing as era name, as you just linked here for Emperor Wu of Han. By regnal name, I mean any name a ruler has undertaken as ruler. In some cultures, like Ancient Egypt and Imperial China, rulers had many different types of regnal names. In Imperial China, the era name is one type of regnal name. Other types of regnal names for Chinese emperors were the temple name (the form of address their descendants used to pay respects to them at their tomb) and the posthumous name (originally a name given to the ruler after their death which describes their reign).

An era name is like a name for a specific period and served a timekeeping purpose, where years would be counted from the start of each era. From the Ming dynasty onward, era names were standardized as one era name per emperor's reign, making it convenient to refer to an emperor by their era name (e.g. "the Jiajing Emperor", meaning the Emperor of the Jiajing Era). In fact, this practice is still used in Japan today. The current emperor Naruhito took the throne in 2019 with the era name Reiwa, so 2023 is Reiwa 5. When the last imperial dynasty in China was overthrown in 1912, the Republic of China began using "Republic Era" as the era name. 2023 is Republic Era 112. As you followed Dynasty, you should have noticed that there were dates going by era names like Kaiyuan and Tianbao.

Now you have to understand that it was taboo for people to refer to an incumbent Chinese emperor by their name. The current emperor would be referred to as "the Emperor", "His Majesty", "Your Highness", etc. From what I understand, this is still the case in Japan, where Japanese people are not supposed to refer to the current emperor by his personal name Naruhito even though we non-Japanese people do. Despite this, it would not technically be incorrect to refer to the Jiajing Emperor as "Zhu Houcong" all throughout his article about his life because that was his actual name even if most people weren't allowed to use it. In fact, referring to Li Longji as "Emperor Xuanzong of Tang" may or may not be a bit anachronistic because he wouldn't have acquired that regnal name until after he died. But it is not an unknown practice in historiography to use different names for an individual's stage in life for clarity. Historians like to refer to Augustus, who kept changing his name in confusing ways throughout his life, as Octavian from his adoption by Julius Caesar in 44 BCE to his receival of the title Augustus in 27 BCE, from which point he is known in the literature as Augustus. Generally, the practice is to refer to a ruler by their regnal name when describing them in that period of their life.

Zhu Houcong was born Zhu Houcong in 1507, and he became the Jiajing Emperor of Ming in 1521. Li Longji was born Li Longji in 685, and he became Emperor Xuanzong of Tang in 712—even though "Xuanzong", as a temple name created after his death, is technically retrospective in this case. Apart from Qin Shi Huang, who might be argued "dead-named" his birth name like [w:c:starwars:Sith/Legends|Sith] customarily do with theirs, these rulers did retain their birth names as their identities, so it's not wrong to still refer to them by their real names after they began their reigns. It's just that for clarity's sake, the common practice is to use their regnal names after their reign began.

The problem is which regnal name to use since all three, the era name, the temple name, and the posthumous name are retrospectively applied after the emperor died. For emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties, the era name is most typically used because it's convenient. There was one era name per ruler's reign, so they lined up. But as you pointed out, emperors of the Han dynasty had many era names in their reigns. Emperors of the Tang dynasty had only a few (Kaiyuan and Tianbao were two "eras" of Li Longji's reign), but that is still too many. So it's not convenient to refer to emperors of these older dynasties by era names in their reign.

Instead, Han emperors are typically referred to by their posthumous names. Liu Che is popularly known as Han Wudi (half-translated as "Emperor Wu of Han", fully translated as "The Martial Emperor of the Han") because he was given that posthumous name in lieu of his military expansionism. His grandfather, Liu Heng is known as Han Wendi ("the Cultured Emperor of the Han") because he was given that posthumous name in lieu of his peaceful and prosperous reign characterized by leniency in criminal punishment. But why don't we just use the posthumous names for all Chinese emperors then for consistency? Because posthumous names became ridiculously long and unwieldy in later dynasties. Tang dynasty emperors are typically referred to by their temple names instead (although it looks like Chinese practice today sometimes uses temple names for Ming emperors as well).

The inconsistency between which regnal names a Chinese emperor is commonly known by in English today is the reason why I pushed for using their real names for their article titles. This is the only way to ensure actual consistency. Three Kingdoms rulers like Cao Cao, Liu Bei, and Sun Quan are best known today by these real names rather than by their own regnal names after all, so my decision was made anticipating they might someday appear in Assassin's Creed as well.

But the policy for which name to use for the titles of Chinese rulers' articles does not mean that we can't talk about them using other names in their own articles. Common historiographical practice is to use a regnal name for a ruler when describing them in the period of their life when they reigned. And in Chinese custom, we don't say "Emperor Zhu Houcong". The birth name is separate from their name as a ruler. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 23:20, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I wanted to add a few more comments regarding this topic to better clear up the confusion and give some leeway. The main issue is just that it's not normal practice to style the real name of a Chinese emperor with the title "Emperor". For whatever reason, that's just something that's never done. We don't say "Emperor Li Longji". We would say "Li Longji" or use a regnal name to refer to them as the emperor. But I can understand why that would be confusing for people, especially someone from an English background. In English, we might not think of "Queen Victoria" or "(Emperor) Napoleon I" as regnal names since it follows the basic format of title + name, but categorically they're regnal names in the sense that that's how you refer to them as monarchs.

I brought up also that the practice I'm used to is to refer to a ruler by their regnal name when writing about them during their reign. It's a practice that historiographically provides some clarity. But actually, if you or other editors would like to continue referring to a Chinese ruler by their real name even when writing about them during their reign (e.g. to refer to Li Longji as Li Longji for his entire article), that is something I am open to talking about and making a convention. (We just can't say "Emperor Li Longji" because that sounds weird and is incorrect afaik.) Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 08:51, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Reflection

Hey Darman, I wanted to let you know that I've decided to do a mental reset of my attitude towards your contributions. While reflecting a few weeks ago, I thought about how, had it been someone else, most especially had it been a newcomer to the wiki, I would not have been so harsh regarding your edits to "Great Rites Controversy" and "Shao Jun". In fact, it normally would not be fair to be so stern about it as I could have easily just explained the mistake right away. I've carried this perception of you for a while now that you're always so touchy about everything, taking too much initiative in tweaking things to your liking, identifying things that do not need to be fixed, and in ways that I felt were disruptive. I'm going to be honest that at times I even could not help but suspect that your contrition was disingenuous.

But the problem is that I haven't kept rigorous track of all the times your edits have caused me to think that way. While a few cases might stand out here and there, there are others where I can't confidently say I would still take such a strong stand about if I were to re-examine them today. What I'm trying to say is that assuming good faith is a vital community guideline of our wiki and indeed in any community. Now, there's an extent where a persistent pattern of bad behaviour or the severity of the misdeed exceeds the presumption of good faith. Thus, my perception of there being a disruptive pattern to your edits led me to be unduly harsh towards you previously. But on reflection, how can I know that I was fair to be stern with you if I don't recall every incident that led to that perception developing and if I don't remember them all your mistakes well enough to know if I would still agree that they all "count"?

I don't wish to assume bad faith on your edits every time you make a mistake. The perception I've developed of you risks causing me to always link your mistaken edits back to a previously disruptive pattern on the sole virtue of them being mistakes. It can cloud me from distinguishing an honest mistake from a behavioural issue. And that's neither a fair nor a helpful attitude of me to have because as long as you remain a contributor to this wiki, of course you will continue to make some mistakes. We all do. I do as well.

That is why I have made the conscious decision to do a "mental reset" of my attitude towards your contributions. Yes, there were a few times you might have been disruptive here and there without meaning to, but I will leave those behind to ensure that they will not foster in me a prevailing bias against your current and future edits. So that when I speak with you about a mistake, it will be as someone with a mindset open to earnest confusion rather than someone who sounds exasperated and judgmental. And also so every time you see another new message from me, you don't always have to fear it is another scolding lol. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 08:39, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Hello Sol,
I am...unsure how best to respond to your message here, to be honest. I believe I understand your reasoning here, that your small sampling of my bad edits impacted your perception of me, correct? While I am glad to hear that you have decided to look at my past contributions with new eyes and clearer mind, I feel your observations that I can be touchy about tweaking aesthetics to my liking and focusing on minutiae are not entirely unfounded, as you have criticized me for them before. You are also not far from the truth by saying I feared every new message from you would be a scolding. I did grow apprehensive when logging back in to see notifications, particularly ones from you, thinking that I had unconsciously overstepped and made another error in my apparent enthusiasm to "correct" something.

I would like to think that I have improved after each of your reprimands, but even in retrospect myself, I am uncertain how much of it is becoming a better editor or near-total avoidance of select issues lest I make a blunder like the ones that prompted your messages. Or do you think I have actually brushed up and this is somewhat similar to that scene where Malik rejects Altaïr's apology because "[he was] not the same man who went with [him] into Solomon's Temple. And so [he had] nothing to apologize for."? – Darman (talk) 03:30, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

You don't have to apologize for anything more because I am reassuring you that you have a blank slate. That is what I meant to tell you. I understand that I could also be overly strict in the past at times as well. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 05:42, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

Bizarre behavior

Okay Darman, I know I said I will be going easy on you going forward, but I'm going to need an explanation for this strange behavior. You've been editing on this wiki for years. We've been using the European date format of day-month-year for years, e.g. 6 April 2023. You've never felt the urge to "correct" this format by adding a comma like so "6 April, 2023" in all this time on any other article. Why did you just randomly do this on a single page and then revert my correction of it? It comes across as something that you just whizzed up in your head yesterday as a new way of styling to just start doing. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 06:29, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

I thought we were supposed to put commas between months and years. But looking at the Manual of Style again, and even Wikipedia's own Manual, that is incorrect and I had been confusing it with the month-day-year style that does use a comma. I thought the comma applied to all styles even if their order was rearranged. – Darman (talk) 13:00, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

But this was never a confusion that came up for you in all these years of editing. That's what I find so strange. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 14:55, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm afraid I cannot suitably explain why I started this after years of not doing it, my mind just latched onto it thinking it was right. But I will not do it again and will try to properly fix the date formats I had touched before if I see them again. – Darman (talk) 15:50, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Image licenses

Hi

I see you have reverted my edits to images, not once, but twice already. I know the images were part of promotional material. However, the files' being part of promotional packages does not change the license nor ownership status.

Is there a reason it has to be CC-BY-SA instead of adding Fairuse? SeichanGrey (talk) 16:08, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

[Issue moved to SeichanGrey's talk page] – Darman (talk) 01:25, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I just added another reply on their page - letting you know so as to keep the conversation in one place. –ReverieCode <staff/> 08:41, 2 May 2023 (UTC)

mirage release

I don't think amazon can know the release date if Ubisoft haven't confirmed it themselves, December is most likely a placeholder - they'll likely give a release date on June 12 when the gameplay reveal comes out MedievalVibes (talk) 23:22, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

Category clean-up drive

I am doing a complete overhaul of our category structure because it has lain in a neglected state for many years, with categories being added haphazardly all over the place, creating a navigation mess. Many categories are organized inconsistently or redundantly. One of the main errors we have been making for years is to put pages in a parent category when it already belongs in subcategory, which goes against Wikipedia's guide on best practices for categorization. As well, we have already had a recent forum discussion about this. The flow of changes as I manually perform this clean-up can be very confusing for an observer, and I will have to ask you not to interfere with this clean-up drive until it is done as that will be extremely disruptive. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 05:41, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

OK, thank you for explaining this. I had wondered why you had taken an unusual interest in categories and was unaware of the forum discussion. I won't disturb your work. – Darman (talk) 12:10, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Even prior to seeing the forum discussion, there was no cause for you to see my interest in categories as unusual. Maintenance work is a normal duty of administrators, category navigation has been dysfunctional for a long time, and you should not have leapt to rash assumptions about the reasoning behind my edits (e.g. that I'm unaware a prime minister is a politician or that an Olympic champion is an Olympian) without contacting me about your confusion. I'm taking the extra step of pointing this out because while I appreciate that you will comply with non-interference going forward, this is part of a pattern of presumptuous correcting that lately other editors have expressed concerns about as well. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 17:08, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Random page tool?

Darman, apart from patrolling the recent changes, do you usually use the random page tool to find pages to peruse and edit? Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 21:04, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Not typically, why? Are you thinking to remove that function or are my edits seeming disorganized? If you want to check, I'm trying to work on correcting modern day parts incorrectly linking to Philadelphia in Egypt instead of the American city in Pennsylvania. – Darman (talk) 00:30, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I was wondering if your pattern of edits is the result of using the random page tool because it often appears that you're making passes at random pages and looking for tiny things to edit. As a reminder, instead of marking citations on multiple pages as needing to be updated for greater specificity, it would be more productive and helpful if you just went and updated the citations for a single page. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 01:18, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Given name vs. surname usage

Darman, it sounds like you are having this confusion again lately, so I thought I should explain it to you again before you forget once more. Our wiki practice is to use either the surname or the given name for all subsequent mentions of a character after introduction, depending on which is more intuitive. Note that this differs from real-world professional practice that always prioritizes surname over given name for subsequent mentions. This is already spelled out in our manual of style. We use "Ezio", "Desmond", etc. instead of "Auditore", "Miles", etc. because, as main characters we come to know on a personal level, it sounds more natural to use their given names instead of having to avoid them most of the time. At the same time, it is probably more natural to most people to say "Washington", "Machiavelli", etc. because these are more distinctive than "George" or "Niccolò" and because these are famous historical figures. The practice is to just use what is more intuitive. Of course in some cases, there may be ambiguities. Use given names instead of surnames when necessary to avoid ambiguities, like if you're talking about multiple members of the de la Serre family together. No matter what, the choice for each character should be consistent throughout the whole article.

As another reminder, the practice for Chinese names is different. Individuals with one-syllable given names like Shao Jun, Li E, Guan Yu, Cao Cao, and Geshu Han should always be referred to by their full name in professional writing or it could get confusing. Individuals with two-syllable given names like An Lushan and Yan Jiming can be referred to by their given names on subsequent mentions only.

I didn't want you to start going around presumptuously correcting articles on this at your own discretion before being reminded of our practice. For example, using Faulkner instead of Robert is fine. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 00:00, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, thank you. I was indeed getting confused whether to use given or surnames in articles. I had seen so many instances of "Ezio says", "Desmond did", "Arno felt", etc that I thought given names were to be used throughout. I found it unusual that protagonists were mainly referred to by first names instead of like "Varinsdottir believed", etc. while surname use was almost always kept for secondary characters. As you noted above regarding intuition, I admit it felt a bit strange calling the Marquis de Sade by the name Donatien. Thank you again for the reminder on Chinese names; to the best of my knowledge, I believe I have mostly avoided editing things related to Dynasty, Chronicles China, or the non-canon novels since other things have my current attention, but I will note for the future as more Dynasty pages are gradually updated. – Darman (talk) 00:10, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

Proposed deletion for ACO images

Hey, Darman, you did see that the "ACO Documentation" images you proposed for deletions are miles away better in quality than Kain's files, right? And that Kain upscaled the images themselves, while the ACO ones are directly from the files? :p - Soranin (talk) 01:03, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Uhh...no. I admittedly had not noticed that, but looking closer now, yes I can see a quality difference between the blurry File:AC4 Early Animus Prototypes 2.png and clearer [:File:ACO Documentation - Animus Guide - MS-3000.PNG]]. Since you have ripped other files from AC4, are these pics naturally that poor quality? If not, could I/we save the cleaner files to computer, reupload them using the "Replace" function for the respective AC4 files, and then delete the then-duplicated ACO images, since it's Ubisoft recycling AC4 media in ACO as they occasionally do elsewhere? – Darman (talk) 23:20, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Reverted Lyle White edit

Sol doesn't want ideas that compete with his and thus stay with all the reason in the world. You don't realize that these people delete the editions of others just because, all to keep the glory for themselves. – AménRK (talk) 03:43, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Your comment's tone matches those of a repeatedly-blocked sockpuppet who believes themselves superior to Sol. Sod off. – Darman (talk) 15:05, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

About the image description.

Hello Darman! How are you doing? Hope you're doing fine!

Hey, I just realized you edited the description of Nie Jing's render, I appreciate that and I'll try to be as concise as possible. I do have a small request. Please, don't change the licensing field. We usually use fair use, but in the case of the following images I'm about to upload, this is different. According to our image policy, we use "fair use" when permission cannot be proven. But I can attest that the ACJ team directly sent the staff some material to help enhance our Jade-related pages. So, permission fits better than fairuse since it's more precise.

That's it. I shall now proceed to change the licensing field on Nie Jing's page and continue uploading.

Have a nice day/evening/night!

EDIT: Now that I take a look to the licenses here. I think "express" fits more, right? – Cristophorus35 (talk) 02:11, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

I was unsure whether "express" was the right one, since I was basing it off the license revamp from May based on User:ReverieCode's comment on User:SeichanGrey's talk page, where they said that "an original game concept art, a cropped render of game concept art, cropped render of comic cover art, and a textless comic panel" would all be fairuse since [Insert Company] has not released them to public domain. – Darman (talk) 02:55, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

I see.

I've read the entire conversation and I think I know how it works now. CC-BY-SA allows people to use edited/altered images for both commercial and non-commercial purposes as long as credit is due. Fairuse allows the use of an image without the express permission of the author as long as limits are respected (no alteration, no edition, no profits, etc.) It assumes cooperation and good faith.

Fairuse would be correctly set for Jade images that would have been obtained from the official website for example, as a wiki-editor can take a screenshot or extract images from there and upload them to the wiki without their permission or asking for it. Or if they are obtained from ArtStation since that isn't exactly public domain.

In the case of Nie Jing's render, the staff counts with an express permission from the dev team. Thus, fairuse wouldn't be totally correct either.

If we wish to be totally specific as the conversation you shared suggests, "Express" suits better. I was going to choose "Permission", but since that isn't mentioned in our policy, I opted for Express. I don't think Express will cause trouble. If it does, I will personally revert them to Fairuse.

Okay! I will continue then using Express instead of Permission. And I will be as concise as possible in the description. Thousand blessings!Cristophorus35 (talk) 04:10, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

No more "translations"

Darman, if you add any translations of Chinese one more time—I don't care if it's from Google Translate, or from another fan site, or from a YouTube creator, or from your own wild guess you've pieced together from dictionary checks—I will hand you down an official warning. I've warned you more than once that translation work you add of a language you have no study or experience of whatsoever is dishonest work. And out of all the habits I have had to tell you not to stop engaging in time and time again, this is one of the most important. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 22:22, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

If I may a try to explain myself, I had thought that everything was in order for the stele text. The original text was direct from the Chinese Wikisource page and cited there. The translation, such that it was, came from Access the Animus and also cited there. I changed nothing from either of them. I cannot recall trying to translate Chinese characters, nor have I ever used or even considered Google Translate for things here. How was using ATA's video and citing it dishonest plagiarism and different from sourced entire block quotes here? We've either used or watched their various videos on other languages in the series, from the Latin in Siege of Paris, the Old Norse runic cypher of the Hávamál for Valhalla, and even the wholly made-up Isu. How are the Staff's translations of, say, the Dynasty promotional pieces different than what ATA does? They "ask" viewers to trust their work and their contacts, like we do of readers, and if better information comes up, they post a video update while we correct the passage(s) and cite to better sources. – Darman (talk) 20:20, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Darman, repeat after me, the offence here is not even just using Google Translate or another fan site, but the nature of dishonest work by contributing on content that you have no language background in. This is unethical practice because you're contributing to our site with information for our readers that you yourself do not genuinely know to be correct—it is based on your own guesswork or putting blind faith in a non-authoritative source's work.

For many years, our wiki had required that all content be sourced to official Assassin's Creed sources or at least statements by Ubisoft, eith the exception of news and the like. This is pursuant to a core Wikipedian policy called "no original research" (NOR). Fan work constitutes original research. From the start, our wiki found it challenging to abide absolutely to this because of the historical fiction nature of the series, where many details are presumed real-world knowledge and where not taking certain information from external sources could create awkward gaps and handicap writing. Because of this, editors everywhere would take information from Wikipedia—a non-authoritative source—anyways and without being transparent about this bad practice by refusing to cite to it. Since wikis are also permitted flexibility to adapt their practices to the nature of their work, in recent years, our solution to this problem has has been to permit the use of external sources—preferably academic ones—to supplement our work. If we can't stop editors from using Wikipedia and then trying to hide this fact, we can at least encourage them to use more authoritative sources for real-world information and be willing to always cite their source for transparency.

You are confusing the evolution of this practice with permitting any external source whatsoever. The aforementioned practice pertains to using real-world sources for information about lore in Assassin's Creed that are taken for granted because they are based in real-world facts. The use of other fan sources, i.e. original fan work, for lore original to Assassin's Creed is a grey area in this regard. Technically speaking, while ATA has done excellent and reliable work, theirs is still fan work. Using it on an unresteicted basis is no different from using a fan's YouTube channel for theories and the like. Fan-work is not authoritative information on Assassin's Creed content even if a certain fan group's work may be reliable in practice.

I cannot speak for the use of ATA's Latin and Norse work because I have not inspected them and was not involved in that. They may be wrong just as well, but our wiki did ask ATA for help for Isu translations, so that entails a specific exception that can be classified as collaborative work or ATA acting as editors or editor adjuncts.

"How are the Staff's translations of, say the Dynasty promotional pieces different from what ATA does?"

Our willingness to supply our own original translations ofDynasty content was an exceptional recourse owing to Dynasty being originally published in Chinese and to the tremendous volume of mistranslations in the official English editions. There was no other way to deliver accurate information about Dynasty to an English-speaking audience without using our own translations.

But the difference that you keep missing is that you are not Chinese literate nor are you Chinese. I am. You yourself cannot supply translations of Chinese because you do not actually know the language. As I have explained previously, Odey and Sora have also contributed to Dynasty documentation by relying on the official English and French editions. This is by far not ideal given these editions' mistranslations, but it is permitted because they are using authoritative (even if unreliable) sources that are for them, personally, the best they can access as editors who are not literate in Chinese. This is what I mean by honest work. They do not pretend to understand Chinese when they don't.

The core problem is that even if you use another fan group's translation work, you yourself cannot verify its accuracy because you have no Chinese language background, and because fan work is not authoritative (even when reliable) you cannot justify this practice on the grounds of using an authoritative (even if unreliable) source as Odey and Sora do with the official translations. Case in point, you so carelessly used ATA's translation that you did not even the notice the slew of English grammatical errors in their translation, even prior to the need to verify the accuracy of the translation.

Now, you first used Google Translate for translations back in 30 July 2020 when you created a section for the "publisher's summary" in our "Assassin's Creed: Dynasty" article. You found the summary on a Chinese website, then used Google Translate to try to figure out what it says and inserted it onto our wiki. You then repeated this offence when you updated it with another summary on 6 August 2020 that had been published by Access the Animus.

You repeated this offence again when Dynasty Chapter 21 was released, and you had the audacity to try to write an original plot summary by using online translation tools (presumably Google Translate) to try to make sense of the Chinese. The result was a jumbled mess of errors after errors after errors about the plot.

I cannot locate all instances where I have explained this issue with you as they are scattered across edit summaries and talk pages, but you and I both know this is not the first. We had this talk earlier this year in April for example.

Access the Animus' work is parallel and independent of ours as a different fan group and that is why it would be unethical to simply take from it as opposed to producing our own content when we have no other recourse but to do so. I will concede but one point: I was mistaken to call your edit plagiarism since you cited to ATA, giving them credit as appropriate.

In your case, since you have so much trouble distinguishing when it is appropriate to contribute translations of Chinese at all, you should just avoid doing so entirely. But this offence is part of a larger issue of contributing information on works that you do not actually know are correct or have properly fact-checked, and in publishing these edits, essentially present yourself as though you do have that knowledge. Thus, I stand by my word that if you do either of this again, you will be receiving an official warning notice and a first-level ban. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 19:30, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Image update

Remember one of pics I posted few days back which you marked for deletion due to the presence of subtitle and therefore violated some of this Wiki's policy about adding images? Just let you know it's no longer necessary cuz I have replaced it with one that lacked subtitle which I found by chance in internet. – Black Soulstone (talk) 18:11, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

AC Unity Novel Differences

Hi there, I think Élise’s tryst with Byron is only explicitly mentioned in the US Ace Book versions. All books published by Penguin Books omit the said content. Has Ubisoft ever confirmed which is canonical? And should we note this for each related wiki page? —unsigned comment by Soviet NKVD (talk · contr) 23:23, 8 October 2023‎ (UTC)

About ACJade images

Hey, Darman!
I'm just passing by to inform you that the ACJade team contacted the staff and asked for the images File:ACJade Food Establishment.jpg and File:ACJade Food Establishment Interior.jpg to be deleted as they were not authorized to be made public. I have proceed with the request.
That's it! Take care m8!
Cristophorus35 (talk) 03:23, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

Starrick's Soothing Syrup

Hey Darman, sorry for the belated response! I was the person to add extra details about Starrick's Soothing Syrup, and you were wondering about "chemical" being listed as an ingredient. I was honestly a bit unsure whether or not to include it myself; although, I kept it as it's written like that on the map itself. (I've attached a partial scan of my copy here.) No clue what it actually refers to, though. Perhaps the "chemical" crafting ingredient?

On a totally unrelated note, I also noticed that one of the links in the header has a typo in it—however, I don't know how to fix it. "Content > Database > History" leads to Categpry:Database:_History. (Similarly, should Codename Invictus be added to the header under "Games > Upcoming games"?)

Anyway! Thank you for cleaning up my edits on the Soothing Syrup page. I hope this is somewhat helpful! Cheers. Nygma PI (talk)

Hello Nygma! Thank you in turn for providing a scan of your map, it was incredibly informative and I did not know that it contained extra information outside the game. It is indeed strange that the word is indeed just "chemical", because that could be anything. I've decided to interpret it as generic "chemical substance". As for the header drop downs, that is also beyond my abilities to fix as it requires an admin level clearance. There's a few other things in it that need to be relinked, since Mirage is no longer "upcoming" while the comic "The Converts" now oficially renamed for its English translation as "The Hidden Codex". I'll see if I can ping someone about it. Thanks for this heads up, and hope you enjoy your times editing here – Darman (talk) 23:45, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Echoes of History

I know you are taking point on this page. I was looking around to see if I could find any platform hosting pre transcribed episodes. Unfortunately I did not have much luck. The best was just using Chrome's Live Caption plugin but you can't copy paste from it. However I did find a sort of work around. It's not pretty but it might help. Another workaround would be to generate screenshots of the live caption box and then use a text extractor app. Lacrossedeamon (talk) 06:34, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

That's very interesting, thank you for the idea! I would have never thought of using an auto-caption generator. My experience with that has been limited to YouTube, where videos with auto-captions tend to not always be clear in their transcriptions of what is actually said, as opposed to when videos are deliberately uploaded with correct captions or if community contributions add alt language subtitles. I'll at least give this Chrome function a shot and see how it works out. – Darman (talk) 00:15, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Yo, D-Man. See you're in charge of reworking the Echoes of History page so just asking if its cool for me to add further transcripts of episodes. Cheers. VilkaIsBack (talk) 03:51, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Ah yes, I recall you added some of the Viking ones way back. I won't deny the help, there's so many eps now. Which ones have you done? I may have already written them in a draft doc I have. I just...didn't get to posting (I will rectify that post-haste) because I kept getting distracted by Valhalla's info, its near-endless expansions (ugh), and now Mirage and its supplementary materials. – Darman (talk) 00:00, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Got 4 and 5 of Vikings done. Luckily I didn't start transcribing all the ones you just added haha. VilkaIsBack (talk) 00:05, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Hey Darman! So, I should be finishing my current project this week (pages for the Nexus characters from the Kassandra memories) and I was wondering if you'd like help with the transcriptions for Echoes. If so, I can either continue with the Baghdad Soundwalks or start the Figures of Baghdad episodes, your choice. :) - Soranin (talk) 16:11, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

Finished that project already :D – Soranin (talk) 01:47, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Soranin, I saw your message earlier and the pages you made, as you have already know by having "thanked" me for some edits. I'm a bit busy IRL to give a proper reply (and because you and Vilka keeps making more pages!), but I will try to get back to you on this hopefully before you start writing. – Darman (talk) 00:15, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Merge of OotA and Templars

Hello there! Darman, you forget that the Order of the Ancients and the Templar Order, despite having similar objectives, they have different motivations and different beliefs (even if one of the Ancients ended up forming the Templars, but even so he rebelled against them). The Assassins and Hidden Ones case is different, they are the same organization which only suffered a name change. I've checked with Sol and he also agrees that the pages should remain as they are. As such, I'll remove the merge notice. - TiagoFF (talk) 00:43, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Tiago, you're not technically supposed to remove the merge notice. While I said on Discord that I am inclined to agree with you that the two pages should remain separate, given information from Valhalla, my word is not the final say on this. My point was not Discord is not the place for official deliberations, and there can still be a formal discussion about this merge if someone so desires. Darman putting up a merge notice on "Order of the Ancients" only signifies that he wishes to open a discussion on merging the two articles; it does not definitively mean that the two will or will not be merged. Darman's mistake was just that he did not follow-up on the proposal notice by actually starting the discussion on the talk page. Normally, only Darman has the right to remove the merge notice until talks about it has ended because others are supposed to respect that he is making that proposal and engage with it. On the other hand, since Darman didn't follow-up on the merge notice by submitting his proposal on the talk page, I suppose removing it can sort of be justified. Either way, Darman can re-add if he still wants this to be a discussion (but please remember to add the topic about it on the talk page next time). Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 03:50, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Hello to you both. I think they should be merged, since (in short) they both wanted to use Pieces of Eden to aid in controlling humanity. I do not think their poly- or early monotheism is enough of a difference to have separate pages. And thank you, Sol. I did not open the discussion as I should have. – Darman (talk) 05:00, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

Removal of Protectors of Persia from the Persian Brotherhood

Darman, if you recognize that a major change to an article is still being debated, you do not apply that change. Your edit in question was far too deep in disputable territory, especially since you removed even Persian Hidden Ones from the article, which is a change with ramifications for the writing of all other articles on Assassin and Templar branches.

While I'm at it, adding quotation marks around "Protectors of Persia" and "Hidden Ones" in the infobox after removing content about them in the article is really strange and awkward practice. As always, I feel the need to remind you to please do not make up new formatting styles and notations on the spot. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 05:35, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

I had thought that, rather than keep information I felt was unclear regarding the history of Assassin branch offshoots, I would remove it to avoid confusion and limit it to is known aside from Mirage. How, then, should we differentiate between the Protectors and all three of the Persian, Alamut, and Levantine Brotherhoods, since the groups do not fit exactly into modern borders? As for the quote marks, I added them because the Protectors is a conjectural name, while the Hidden Ones/Assassins are the same entity and I thought it would be strange to write [[Assassins|Hidden Ones]] and then [[Assassins]] since one name is now a redirect. – Darman (talk) 05:55, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Common wiki practice is to encourage contributors to take initiative with changes they believe are proper but within reason. Where the changes are major, have significant ramifications, and likely to be controversial, editors should refrain from unilaterally making the changes. This does require some exercise in judgement, but your edit summary indicated you were aware that discussion for the changes had not yet been resolved, so it was not the correct judgement call to suddenly enact those changes.

Removing the Protectors of Persia from the "Persian Brotherhood" article is one thing but further removing the Hidden Ones in Mirage from it is an even starker change. We have been unclear whether the articles on "Brotherhoods" should be narrowly about the guilds established after Altaïr's reforms or the regional branches across history, but talks had been leaning towards the latter as I recall. I would also personally dispute removing Protectors of Persia from the Persian Brotherhood page as well—to err on the safe side—because even though they do predate the Persian Brotherhood, the only source for the name "Persian Brotherhood" so far is The Essential Guide (1st ed), where it is used for Darius' group. Although the excision of all mentions of Darius and his "Persian Brotherhood" in the 2nd edition implies it is no longer called that, it is awkward to me to have a page about the Persian Brotherhood that does not include mention about the group that had been the actual source for our usage of the name. This is certainly a highly debatable affair with probably no right or wrong answer, but that is all the more reason why we should not move on it until the community's position about it is clear.

While I personally would like to normalize the name Protectors of Persia to the extent it is actually canonized, normally we should refrain from using conjectural names in prose. The function of conjectural names is to have a placeholder title for an article that lacks an official title. That the placeholder title also becomes what our community likes to call the subject when we talk about it is just a result of this. Changing "Abstergo employee" and "research analyst" in encyclopedic writing to "'Noob'" or "'Numbskull'" is even worse because these people aren't actually named Noob and Numbskull. If it is more natural in a sentence to say "they had one of their research analysts do this" then, just saying "research analyst" but linking to Numbskull is the better option. Unlike Protectors of Persia, "Noob" and "Numbskull" actually are canonically verified, in-universe nicknames for these two subjects, so we could in writing say, "Violet gleefully asked if they would have to kill 'Numbskull' later", with quotation marks being appropriate because "Numbskull" is a nickname.

But nowhere in our manual of style or in our wiki practice have we ever used quotation marks to indicate a name we use in writing is our invention, a conjectural name. This is a formatting style you, again, just made up. Please stop making up new formatting styles on the spot like this. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 21:32, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

MTG x Assassin's Creed

Hi, I've just popped over from the [w:c:mtg|MTG Wiki]]. I'm not sure if the Magic: The Gathering cross-over is something this Wiki would cover but I thought I'd just provide some resources for the [w:c:mtg:Assassin's Creed|Assassin's Creed]] crossover set, just in case.

• The full list of cards and tokens will be available on Scryfall once the set releases in July 2024.
• Where Wizards of the Coast or an individual artist has released higher res images, without the Magic: The Gathering card components, they will usually be found on MTGpics.

If you've got any questions or queries, please feel free to get in contact with the MTG Wiki. Thanks, RivalRowan (talk) 04:56, 22 February 2024 (UTC)

Oh cool, I'd forgotten about this. Yes, this wiki has occasionally covered AC crossovers, though it's not a regular practice. Thanks for the links! This isn't usually my ballpark, but luckily, it looks like Soranin saw your message here and has got this covered. Love the art and looking forward to its release! – Darman (talk) 13:35, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

Talk page protocol

The issue with rewriting a previous talk page message is linked with the longstanding, customary rule in wiki practice that users are prohibited from erasing messages on the principle of transparency. I learned this rule when I first started on Wookieepedia, and it is debatable whether standard protocol even allows editing past messages at all, but I allow that for convenience because sometimes quick and minor corrections to messages just posted is warranted. If you're rewriting a whole paragraph of your previous talk page message from 5 days ago (and even editing the post date while doing so, which is unprecedented), I think that strains against the flexibility we usually afford. Sol Pacificus^(Cyfiero) 06:18, 28 February 2024 (UTC)