Suggestion: Changelogs should be compulsory

[AlienSlof]

Most modders mod games for themselves first and foremost. Sharing them is secondary, if we feel that others might enjoy our creations too. Enforcement of anything like this would just stop some from sharing altogether. Ultimately, it's the player who loses out while the modders continue to enjoy the fruits of their own labours privately.

I do like reading changelogs when they're available, just as I like to read patch notes for games I'm playing and this is why I include them - but doing such should NEVER be enforced. We're hobbyists. This is what we do for fun.

[showler]

I mean, if nothing else, unless the person has kept a record of the changes they made then suddenly being confronted with a compulsory "change-log" field when uploading is not going to produce a good result.

[Pickysaurus]

I think this problem effectively goes away when we improve the UX for adding a changelog. Right now is very clunky and you have to go out of your way to do it. I'm also aware the changelog is page-level, not file level which isn't super handy for complex mod pages. 

[LenaWolfBravil]

14 hours ago, Pickysaurus said:

I think this problem effectively goes away when we improve the UX for adding a changelog. Right now is very clunky and you have to go out of your way to do it. I'm also aware the changelog is page-level, not file level which isn't super handy for complex mod pages. 

Making it possible to have separate change logs per file would be fantastic! Especially since Nexus Mods encourages mod authors to combine single-file mod pages into a larger multi-file one. I have a number of mods with many files in them, and it does get quite messy noting the changes to the different files in a single change log. Messy both for the mod author and for the users since they can't get a filtered history of changes to the individual file they are interested in.

Similarly, it would be nice to have a better integration between the main mod description tab and the articles or something similar. I have resorted to using articles to describe the individual files on the mod page because otherwise the main description becomes way too long and impossible to maintain for me, as well as hard to follow for the users. I am hoping the new design will overhaul all that focusing on multi-file mod pages.

[Kregano]

15 hours ago, Pickysaurus said:

I think this problem effectively goes away when we improve the UX for adding a changelog. Right now is very clunky and you have to go out of your way to do it. I'm also aware the changelog is page-level, not file level which isn't super handy for complex mod pages. 

Yeah, the user flow for changlelog definitely could be improved.

I think putting it on the same page as file uploads would do a lot to encourage people to actively maintain their changelogs, simply by making it easier.

[Pickysaurus]

There's a whole bunch of things that we want to do to the mod page flows. Sometime in the future we're moving the current mod page to the new website and will look at improving it sometime after. 

[JohnnyBlade]

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Even if changelogs were compulsory, a majority of users probably wouldn't even read them. Getting users to read a mod description or FAQ is a herculean task in of itself let alone a changelog. It's a good practice to have updated changelogs but you can't penalize an author if he doesn't have one. 

[Pickysaurus]

10 hours ago, JohnnyBlade said:

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Even if changelogs were compulsory, a majority of users probably wouldn't even read them. Getting users to read a mod description or FAQ is a herculean task in of itself let alone a changelog. It's a good practice to have updated changelogs but you can't penalize an author if he doesn't have one. 

That's probably a fair generalisation, but there are exceptions. I always read changelogs. I actually find it annoying when an app on my phone or a game on Steam updates without publishing a changelog. 

[cyan49]

To me, changelogs are never optional, just like we're not allowed to upload a mod without a description.
Then mod authors can add it to mod descriptions, sticky posts, mod file descriptions, or all of them as needed. Usually changelogs are in one of those places, but it's inconvenient when they're not in a place they should be. I know that changelogs in changelogs aren't effective for casual users, but leaving changelogs blank affects regular users.