Tigerlilly

I'm so glad a new rating system has been introduced and though it hasn't stood the test of time as yet, at first glance it looks great! Much cleaner and fairer. I only wish I knew sooner it was going to be implemented in this way. I wouldn't have had the moderators remove certain ratings lol, as they would have counted in a positive way. I particularly like the fact that a new Category Top List has been put in place, not the least, because it was one of my own suggestions in the recent topic 'Vote Solicitation'. Thank you Dark0ne, I think the whole system makes much more sense now. Great Job! I just have one question. I noticed that on authors' 'member profile' their mods are still showing the old rating system ie: 1-10. Will this update to reflect the new rating system, or remain like that? I ask because I also noticed that new 'endorsements' are not registering on the mods in that area.

Vote Soliciting: I personally don't see a problem with advertising one's creations, as long it's equally available to all the modders. After all, despite mods being free, it's a big competition out there and why shouldn't people be allowed to promote their works? The only problem I see with it however is that some authors are very shy and feel uncomfortable with asking others to vote for their files. I personally know someone like that. Some see it as cheating, but frankly, that's a fallacy imo. For eg: when Sentient Weapon II was released at the end of January, no one promoted it or asked for votes for the FOM and it ended up with 16 votes for the month of February! It was a brand new mod and the few people who thought to vote did so. But really, I feel it's such a great mod; it deserved a lot more than it got. I'm sure it would have received more votes too, had it been promoted as some others were, or at least been around long enough for people to get to know about it. Once a new mod is gone from the 'new files' list and this can happen within a couple of days, it gets buried away among 1000's of others and unless you advertise it, people don't really know it exists. I think a 'New Mods Category' should be created, where new mods should be allowed to reside for a calendar month, so that they get a REAL opportunity of exposure. Otherwise, unless you know the exact title of the mod, the author's name and the category it's in, one can spend hours searching for that one mod you want. The Rating system: I'm sure it's not just me who feels this, but even before I got involved in modding, I've seen that there's a bunch of people going around deliberately rating good mods down, just so they can take the credit for doing so and go brag to their friends about it. I've found there are individuals who think no mod deserves to have perfect ratings and will deliberately rate it down just for that reason. I know this for certain, as I've had people state this very thing to me in PM's. Now I’m not saying that all mods should have perfect scores that would be unrealistic, even ridiculous. However, if a mod is a good one, what’s wrong with it having perfect scores? At least until a genuine problem is found with it and not just some arbitrary reason used to bring it down for the sake of it. After all, it should be ‘let the best mod win’ right? What I find most incredible, is that some person can come along and vote down a great mod that has say 50+ perfect scores and do so without any conscience, or consideration for the author, or really a good reason for doing so, or even without feeling the need to justify such a rating. I could never bring myself to do something like that, even if I found a problem with the mod. I would either first talk to the author and see if the problem can be fixed, or abstain from rating it all together and disable the mod, if I wasn't happy with it, rather than be the one to give it first non-perfect score. After all, no one held a gun to my head to downloaded it, right? But that is not why these people do it. They look for any petty reason to bring a good mod down, so they can derive some kind of kudos, or perverse pleasure from doing so. The thing is, I noticed most of these people who rate mods down like this, have never contributed a thing to this community. Most of them are 'Persona non Grata' and I guess being the one to bring down a perfectly rated mod, is the greatest achievement they can aspire to. As far as the idea, there's no such thing as perfect mod, come on! This is a game and what game is perfect? I know there are some badly made mods out there, but lots of them are as perfect as the game's engine and tools of Oblivion allows them to be. I actually feel sorry for lot of modders. It's a thankless job really. When one offers a 'free gift' to the community, it saddens me that a few individuals seek pleasure by deliberately bringing their works down for some childish ulterior motive. I would like to see a change in the rating system, perhaps something like the image share, where no one can defile other people’s work. If you don’t like it, don’t rate it and let the highest scored mod win. However, I do think it would be unfair if such a rating system was introduced and new mods were made to compete with those already in the top 100 list. They are so way ahead already, a new mod would never stand a chance of competing with them, let along passing them. Perhaps a separate top list for those mods, which have been released up to a certain date and a new top list for mods released thereafter, would be an answer? A top 100 list for each category would be even better, as this in my opinion, would offer more scope and variety for a lively competition, as well as go a long way in creating a much fairer rating system according to their categories. If the existing rating system is to stay, then I would like to see a clearer set of defined rules for rating mods, with definitions of what is and what isn’t a justifiable rating. A list of terms and conditions that an individual has to agree to (just like up-loaders do) and have them available on hand prior to rating a mod, would be a good idea. Having clearer and more defined rules available at the time of rating, would make at least some of these people think how and why they’re rating, before committing themselves to one rating or another. Lastly, I have been a Nexus member for a while now and feel in that time, I have made, or tried to make a positive contribution to the community. My comment here is not made to criticise Nexus, or it’s staff in any way, or those decent members of this community. This is a great site and I resent having a few bad apples spoiling it for the rest of us. I only wish to point out that I have noticed there are individuals out there who do not have the best intentions and have found ways to cleverly manipulate the existing rating system within the bounds of what is acceptable. And in pointing this out, I hope I have offered some constructive ideas and solutions to these problems. Tigerlilly

A very good story, it had me wrapped. I especially like the intro and the idea of an underground nation. I really think that may be the way of the future of human race.