Anarchasshole Has No Soul

Just when you thought he had realised UESP was better off without him, back comes Anarchasshole with a typically stupid edit.

During the day, The Great Deceiver and Case Number 01 (HMS Victory / Itachi) had made a couple of undos to stop the Oblivion:Soul Gem page being overwhelmed with useless crap that only applies to one person's game. It finished when TGD made one big undo that also nixed AA's last edit to the page.

TGD's edit summary was "Undo several edits - pointless to list particular merchants as all magic stores stock gems and most of them are random rather than fixed". AA's undo was summarised with "Not only is the difference in price between filled player gems & filled merchant gems shown neither in the article nor on the talk page, but Timmen specifically recommended a merchant list, see Talk". So let's see if either of our combatants has a point.

First, we need to look at Asshole's claim that Timenn Made An Order on the talk page. Well... not quite. There was a question back in September 2009 that asked "Should I put something in on this page about soul gems restocking, since right now it looks like the only place to find this is on the Soul Trap page ?" Timenn's reply was (partially) "Good idea, the article could benefit from a ''Acquiring Soul Gems'' sections. It would be best to give general tips on the acquisition of the gems (especially the higher qualities) instead of a long list of locations." So Timenn explicitly didn't want a long list of locations. Okay, Anarchasshole is wrong on one count. Next?

Second, is the difference between different types of soul gems explained? Asshole's version was "Soul gems found empty, whether as loot or bought from merchants, have a coin value which depends on the grade of soul gem, which does not change if the player later fills them with a soul. Merchant gems sold or found filled with a soul have a coin value which depends on the level of the soul within, regardless of the grade of gem. The coin values below are for soul gems sold and found filled; all gems filled by the player will sell for the 'Empty' value."

He obviously didn't scroll down the page to find this: "Note: These IDs and values are set at the time you acquire a soul gem, and do not get changed when you fill the soul gem with a soul. In other words, if you pick up an empty grand soul gem, its value will be 200 gold. That value does not change when you fill it. Therefore, you can end up with grand soul gems containing grand souls with two different values, both 200 gold and 500 gold."

In other words, Anarchasshole made two points and they're both wrong. Next?

Who is That Masked Man?

It seems that the same high-quality comments that get made here by anonymous posters are now being made on UESP. The Great Deceiver's talk page got this today, pretty obviously from the same guy who trolled the same page a month ago. Being an expert on sock-puppetry, TGD quickly spotted the subtle ploy, which provoked a response even more obviously false than TGD pretending he's not Calliope.

In fairly short order, the anon got a warning from SerCenKing, which provoked a shocked response. The LGA stepped in with a "final warning", which led to a terse reply. Then serial depressive HMS Victory Itachi stepped in with a typically helpful comment and the anon came back with a series of replies that I can't be bothered to link because they're utterly tedious - except for this classic bit of self-justification from TGD. Eventually, LGA gets fed up and gives the inevitable block.

There are two questions: just who is this anon (and no, it's not me - I can spell for a start)? He claims to be a patroller but that's pretty obvious rubbish. The IP resolves to BT - an ISP that serves about half of the UK so there's not much help there. Question two: this is obviously not over yet since the anon will get a new IP before long. Will there be an episode three?

Happy New Year!

Well I've had a nice break, thank you all, and it looks like the site has had a similar break. Nothing really interesting has taken place during the few days I've been away. Let's see what I can remember...

Elliot the Thick seems to have realised he's not wanted and has disappeared (just ten posts in over two weeks), except for one or two things. First, he did an Elliot Special and got a good kicking from GuildKnight for doing so. Next, and this is an EtT classic, he votes to oppose S'drassa's nomination for patroller largely on the grounds that even EtT realises he got the role too quickly. So, in Elliot the Thick's mind, just because he turned out to be garbage as a patroller, everybody else is garbage at that stage too. And that's about it for EtT. With any luck he's gone to annoy another group of people now.

The Great Deceiver has been impressing us all with his ability to try something in many different ways until it works mastery of templates. To be fair, it does look like UESP can now deal without all the subpages that they previously used to artificially increase their number of pages (cf this from Rawtwat the Vicious).

Another new return is HMSVictory Itachi. So far so good, but I imagine we'll have to watch and wait to see what happens with this user who previously appeared less stable than a malfunctioning gyroscope.

One quicky from today was ^CEshe^V reminding us all just why she got her name.

I'm sure there was more than that. If you think I've missed out anything, please post a comment.