Cartogriffi

Some issues cropped up, and the wikis had to be taken down for backend maintenance. Fixing these won't impact the content itself, including the errors introduced by migration. But, once resolved we'll be able to focus on getting the account system setup. Our priority remains fixing the Skyrim and FO4 wikis first, but we do want to get to everything. I don't have an ETA on any of this. But CK Wiki announcements are made in the #modding-news channel of the BGS Discord server.

Hi folks, as others have noted, all of our editor wikis were migrated to new tech. With migrations like this, formatting issues are often unavoidable - this was anticipated, and as editing opens up fixing this will be one of our priorities. Regarding editing, account registration is currently disabled. Due to the issues the old wikis had with spam, we want to ensure additional safeguards on accounts and editing before this is enabled. To set expectations, editing will start small, and is expected to initially roll out just for the Skyrim & FO4 CK wiki. We want to figure out what works best while focused on a contained environment. If you want to keep an eye on our wiki updates, we'll be posting them on the BGS discord.

Hi folks, I wanted to thank everyone who gave their opinion on this sometimes contentious matter. Speaking personally, much of my work is platform/host agnostic, but I also do a lot of specific support for Bethesda.net Mods, so when those two don't line up it gets tricky. (And in this regard, "permissions" has been a big deal since I began supporting Bethesda.net Mods.) Our goal for this discussion was to better untangle the matter, with a particular eye towards the future. However, many voicing their concerns have been especially worried about how we support older content, and that will be a big part of our internal deliberation. Thanks again.

I understand why many Nexus mod authors would prefer to keep to "Nexus standard" for things like port approvals. At minimum, tracking multiple standards is a bother. But there's far more tension around porting on Bethesda.net than here on Nexus. Bethesda.net struggles with two outdated reputations - mod theft and false reporting. Attempts to educate away these has had limited success, which is why we've moved towards more substantive change. Requiring the transparency of public approvals has it's downsides, but should do a lot to tackle these reputations, lower overall tension, and free up moderation resources for other areas (including edge case scenarios). No final decision has been made, although I am hoping to have something in place before the end of the year.

We tried to make DMCAs as quick and easy as possible, including a template and instructions on its use. (If there are further steps you think we should have taken with DMCA, please let me know.) Since DMCAs weren't working, we changed to our current setup.

Among mod authors, opinions have been decidedly mixed on our proposal. And those raising concerns have been especially concerned about older titles. What if we continued to accept screenshot perms for mods listed with "ask for approval" and the like? This doesn't help with the default very closed permissions, but it may be a viable middle ground.

My concern with unverified PMs is it effectively means that any port displaying permissions is immune from takedowns barring a DMCA request. This is very close to the situation we had at launch, and the end result were a lot of mod authors unhappy about theft on the platform, but also refusing to submit DMCAs. And in many ways, this led to the lasting reputation that Bethesda.net Mods is full of stolen content.

Depends on what we mean by "written on the mod page". There's a massive amount of mod authors who skip setting proper permissions, so I wouldn't call the preset Permission Box "written". If the mod author has actually written something on the permission tab or the mod page, I think that should always take presedence. If the idea was to improve the reputation of the platform, unverified PM screenshots shouldn't be counted. There will always be lots of people who think the screenshots are faked. Excellent point. For this question, anything provided by the mod author on the mod page would count as "written on the mod," including the permissions tab. However, we do prioritize explicit author statements in the description/comments above the permissions tab. I'll edit my post to clarify, thank you!

I wanted to thank everyone who has responded, it has been extremely helpful to get everyone's opinions. We're narrowing our focus this week, and have a specific question we're looking into. I touched on this earlier and some have already answered, but just to shine the spotlight on it here: When permissions are contradictory, should we prioritize the permissions as written on the mod, or unverified discussion via PM or Discord? For the purposes of this question, "written on the mod" can refer to the description, mod comments, or permission tab. We also accept explicit comments may be provided as exceptions to any general permissions.

A rules change like this would not be retroactive.

I will admit, when I first brought this proposal to closed groups I wasn't expecting much resistance. I figured folks who mainly operate on Discord would find it annoying, but I hadn't anticipated much pushback from folks active on Nexus. But this does make me very happy to have asked. For what it's worth, of the authors we've talked to who let their content be ported to Bethesda.net, most have supported the change. They're not necessarily happy about the proposal, but find it a reasonable tradeoff for improved transparency. While support may not be enthusiastic, it's enough I feel like we could implement the proposal and have a net positive. But we aren't in a rush, and I expect we'll be collecting feedback for the remainder of October. Hopefully we can find something that achieves our goals while minimizing complaints.

If this rules change would be onerous for older mods, what if it only applied to newer ones? They were trying to relieve moderation workload, not add more of it. oops...i guess just maybe consider number one then. that way, at least you are giving user the option to prove and store its legality on bnet and lessen the need of bnet moderation team to chase around different parties for verification...I think? :sad: Separate from the rules change, we are looking at adding specific fields for ports where uploaders put in the original author's name along with a link to the mod. Experienced porters do this, but a lot of new porters do not, and we think this will bump them in the right direction. Elianora is correct, a solution that adds much more work to staff isn't viable. Something which adds a little internal work, but removes the need for Moderation

We looked into a few tool solutions, but the development needs for each was very high, and they all had some glaring flaws. Additionally, any such solution would need to work for multiple mod hosts, not just Nexus. There are problems with the proposed solution. The fact that man mod authors do not use/like mod comments is certainly a strike against it. There are also problems with our current setup. For one, it's contributed to an appearance that theft is rampant even though this it no longer is. For that matter, we also don't have an issue with brigading, although you certainly aren't the first to believe it's a problem. But let's tackle the appearance of theft before we tackle the appearance of brigading. I'm actually pretty sure fixing the first will do a lot to resole the second. Back on topic, while neither the current solution nor the proposed solution are great, part of the reason for this discussion is to see if one can be improved - or if a third, superior option arises.

Thankfully, no one is faking permission screenshots on Bethesda.net. The truth of the matter is far more mundane and, considering this is a moderation headache, doesn't involve anyone acting unreasonably. A mod author approves a port, but forgets their mod perms are set to "You are not allowed to upload this file to other sites under any circumstances." There are some variations on this theme, but they mostly boil down to the same thing. And since both staff and users at Bethesda.net tend to be hyper-vigilant about mod theft, such a mod tends to get reported down as suspicious, and then I get to chase down the original author to confirm permissions. Problems like this are becoming increasingly common. I suppose there is an alternative solution - do not question the validity of permission screenshots. But given that the platform has never shaken off its reputation as a haven for theft, relaxing our standards is a tough sell.

If we change the rules, it won't be retroactive. I also want to update the mod publishing page on Bethesda.net to list the mod rules. So every time you upload a mod, you see them listed before hitting "publish." Eventually folks will tune these out, but we don't change them often so we should be generally safe.