The Nexus State of the Union - 2015

[Dark0ne]

As far as I'm concerned I'm dubbing 2014 "The Year of Stability and Sleep" for the Nexus. The first year where we finally grappled with and beat the recurring downtime issues that have plagued the site ever since its inception back in 2001, and, once we finally stabilised our new cloud and cluster setup around about the middle of the year, myself and the staff have had practically 5 months of uninterrupted sleep. No more text messages or phone calls at 3am telling us the sites are down again. That, in itself, makes 2014 a success for me.

 

Indeed, the sites have been so stable that it enabled me to take a bit of a hiatus from the Nexus over the final few months of 2014 to focus on some other businesses, to travel more and see more of my friends across the UK. While I've been away the programmers have been working on some long term projects for the Nexus and the moderation staff have continued to do an excellent job. Before I talk about that and what we've got in store for 2015, lets look at the year of 2014 in figures, because statistics tend to speak louder than words.

 

New members: 1,788,372 (26% increase)

New NMM users: 1,392,499 (50% increase)

New files: 18,640 (20% increase)

New file authors: 6,912 (18% increase)

Total downloads: 268,197,960 (39% increase)

New Image Share images: 126,775 (32% increase)

 

The percentage increases are based on statistics from April 2005 up until December 2013.

 

 

Stability

 

In the recent Steam sale we saw traffic reach 8,000 concurrent users at any one time generating 100 page views a second. Both traffic and new registrations exceeded that of last December and during the sale we were gaining a new member to the network every 10 seconds. You wouldn't have known it from using the sites though, where load times remained normal and the sites were fine to browse and download from. The only down-time we've had since July has been caused by issues unrelated to traffic, or us, and have been beyond our control.

 

I couldn't be happier. I freaking love sleep.

 

 

Downloads

 

Back at the start of September we changed our download serving mechanism away from the original system, which involved running and maintaining 24 individual, dedicated, high-capacity, physical servers located in the USA and Europe to a new CDN system, a distributed system of thousands of shared servers across the globe that we rent from a high profile company.

 

This change has cut down maintenance time, increased redundancy, reduced reliability issues and increased our flexibility to allow us to go from serving 4GBit/second of downloads to 10GBit/second of downloads within seconds (which happened in the recent Steam sale...), something that we would never have been able to do before. If we wanted to increase our capacity before we had to buy more servers, set them up and transfer all the files over to them. This takes time. About 2 weeks to be exact, by which point the burst in traffic has past and you're now paying for additional servers that aren't being used. You see the dilemma? Now, if demand increases, we do nothing, the CDN simply allocates more bandwidth to us, logs the amount of bandwidth being used and bills us at the end of the month depending on how much we've used. It couldn't be simpler.

 

For the vast majority this change brought improved download speeds (many users are now maxing out their 1MB/second normal member limits where before they were not), yet for a small minority this change was negative, either decreasing speeds or preventing downloads from working altogether. One of our programmers has been working on this issue full-time and the reports from the Download Diagnoser have been invaluable in helping him to better find and fix issues with the downloading system. We've helped out lots of people who were having issues already and we're continue to work on the system to improve it for as many people as possible. We haven't forgotten about it and we are still working on it.

 

 

Nexus Mod Manager

 

Feature updates for NMM were relatively mild in 2014. We've continued to squash as many bugs as possible but for most of the second half of 2014 programmer time has been spent on the much overdue profiling system.

 

The profiling system completely changes the way NMM installs mods on your system and enables you to choose between different profiles for your games/mods quickly and easily. With one install of NMM you can have different profiles for different users in your house, or different profiles for different playthroughs of your game.

 

It's taken a long time to get right because we didn't want to do any game/engine specific .DLL hacks. This profiling system has to work for every game that NMM supports, current and future, and not just for Bethesda games.

 

The profiling build, version 0.60.0, is currently in internal testing and due out this month.

 

Version 0.60 takes us one step closer to a full 1.0 release for NMM. On my roadmap, the only thing after profiling is a UI overhaul, smartening up, good documentation and a final round of bug squashing, which will likely take us in to 2016.

 

 

Site and file statistics

 

We completed a major update to the site back in November that now tracks, stores and presents statistics to mod authors in graph format so they can easily see how their files are doing on the site. We haven't launched this functionality yet as the script we're running to go through all the past 930 million downloads is taking quite a long time, as you can imagine, but once it's ready I'll put a news post up about it.

 

For an idea of how it'll work/look you can check out our network statistics page which has been up for a while now. Rather than hide how the network is doing I've chosen to show, in plain sight, how active and busy it is. I don't have any shareholders to impress or reasons to hide the data, so take a look if you're interested. It's also great to direct Nexus haters to when they say, year after year, the Nexus is slowly dying. Sorry guys, but it isn't! ;)

 

Mod authors will be able to choose whether to make their file statistics public for all to see or just keep it to themselves.

 

 

New games

 

The end of 2014 also marked the end of the first year of the Nexus supporting mods for all games. We now support mods for 147 games, up from 27 at the end of 2013, with 3,400 mods being provided for games we never would have supported had we not moved to our centralised system.

 

 

Moderation

 

In March of 2014 I started a thread in the private moderator forums titled "Consistency, transparency and strict guidelines on warnings, restrictions and bans". In it I laid out a set of formal guidelines for moderators, with their consultation, on specific, regularly seen infractions and the actions that all moderators should take in these circumstances.

 

While it might sound crazy, up until that point there were no hard set guidelines (there was plenty of informal documentation) on moderating the Nexus that meant there were often inconsistencies in the way the Nexus was moderated depending on the member of the moderation team who was performing the action. Some moderators took a more rehabilitative approach, others a more hard-line approach, compounded by the fact I simply did not have the time to sit down, consult and draw up an extensive and exhaustive moderation document.

 

With the introduction of the warning system back in 2013 the moderators were given more tools in tackling infractions of our TOS including, most importantly, the warning system. With this system in place, and with the moderators up to speed with using it, it was possible to formalise documentation to help consolidate and bring all the moderation team under a single doctrine on how to manage the most common infractions on the site.

 

I'm very pleased with how this has panned out. Direct reports to me of moderator "abuse" dropped substantially in 2014. And I mean substantially. The warning system is being used for all but the worst of infractions on the site where before users were often simply banned outright.

 

I'm aware that there are still some actions that might seem arbitrary and confuse some members as to why one member was warned and another one was outrighted banned. It's often down to the subtle differences. For example, in the case of uploading another mod authors work without permission, if the user seemingly isn't aware they're breaking the rules when doing this, and they still get everything else right (like proper accreditation) they'll receive a warning (despite the glaringly obvious terms they agree to when uploading their files...). If the user has uploaded the file and is knowingly aware they've broken our TOS in doing so (e.g. by saying "I know I'm not meant to do this but if someone doesn't like it then they can just take it down) they'll receive an outright ban. Because doing that is just plain stupid. And it still happens. Really.

 

While there's still room for improvement, especially in the transparency department which I can't seem to get through to some moderators about for some reason, I'm pleased with the direction the moderation is going on the sites.

 

 

Plans for 2015

 

The major site update being worked on at the moment is a Facebook-style notification system that will completely replace the current notifications system. We want to make it as easy as possible for mod authors to be able to keep up-to-date with what's going on with their files, but it will also be usable by all users of the site, mod author or not, as the system will track a whole range of things on the site including new comments, new images, someone linking a video to your files, comments on your articles, replies to your comments, actions a member of your team performs on your files (someone you've given editing access to), actions moderators perform on your files or images, friendship requests, new uploads, versions or articles for files you're tracking as well as the return of author tracking that notifies you when your favourite authors upload new files, images or videos. Work continues on this functionality.

 

I will also be commissioning some web design work on the sites to change certain visual aspects on the Nexus. I am not looking for a major overhaul of the sites like back in 2011, but many areas of the site could do with some smartening up, better UI functionality and sharper visuals. On top of that I would like to increase the usable content width on the sites from the current 960px to 1200px, which should allow more content to fit on to the user's visible page at any one time while increasing spacing. It'd be really nice if I could find a professional from within the community to do the work, as the people who know what the site needs the most are obviously the people who use it the most. When I'm ready I'll get a news post up about it, but if you're one such professional and you're interested in a side-job then by all means, let me know. Only professional web-designers though, please.

 

Lastly, it is my intention to hire a full-time community manager for the Nexus. While typically this has been my role over the past 13 years I think anyone who's used this site for any length of time and has read my news posts and/or comments in response to them will know that I have public relation skills not too far off Christian Bale on the set of Terminator Salvation. It's simply not my forté. It'd be great to have someone with a happy-go-lucky attitude fronting the sites, representing the community among official game communities and interacting with mod authors from across the internet, not just on Nexus. Someone who's better than I am. Shouldn't be hard. The community manager will liaise between the users of the site, the mod authors, the site programmers and site moderation team to produce new features and ideas to be built for the site and NMM, in conjunction with me, and talk about issues that are directly affecting the community. On top of that they will also represent the Nexus abroad, among other communities, especially official game communities to discuss their needs and see if we can provide support for more games within the Nexus and help new mod authors get their mods on to the site. Once again, this job will go to someone within the community, who knows the community well. Preferably someone with a bit of experience in such things.

 

While it sounds like I am shirking responsibilities I merely see it as a logical progression for the Nexus, one that involves a devolution of power and responsibilities away from me so as to reduce the reliance and bottleneck produced when one person is needed to manage all aspects of a business. I've always said it, I'm a jack of all trades, and most certainly master of none. Much like I began hiring on full-time programmers back in 2011 to take over those responsibilities and improve that aspect of the sites, it's very clear to me that this side of the sites needs to improve too, and I'm not good enough for it. I'll still be around, don't you worry, I'll just be around in the shadows, pulling on strings, doing the accounts, sorting out deals with ISPs and hosts, annoying the staff, confusing mod authors. You know, where I belong. What I'm good at.

 

 

In conclusion

 

We're still here. We're still working away. The Nexus is getting bigger. The Nexus pretty much works now. I'm happy with the way things are going. I'm now able to sleep.

 

Happy new year.

[ordog2]

In response to post #21453764.

Happy New Year to You, your Family and everybody. :)

[McclaudEagle]

I was half expecting a more formal approach to the 2015 Nexus State of the Union Address. With you standing there on video, in a suit in front of a mock audience, looking very serious with a Nexus flag draped over the back wall. :D

 

That aside, very good read as ever, and certainly puts into perspective just how much work you guys go through to make these sites what they are. It's good to see the Nexus is now on more stable ground and is far more reliable.

 

Hope you have a great 2015, and can finally sleep a bit better. :)

[MurdermiesteR]

It has been a wild ride since I joined the Nexus. Everything from smooth sailing to "Nexus site down" pages. The NMM quirks and all manner of glitches. It does run smooth and fast for me now. Great job guys. You have built one hell of a community here. I am eager to see what comes next!

[Oubliette]

So, Nexus is hiring for a paid position? That's somewhat rare. Where do we sign up?

[Sundog9]

Pure Awesome, Dark0ne has no blinders on. I am not necessarily a fanboi of Nexus or NMM. What I can tell you is my experience. I first encountered Nexus because I bought TES:V Skyrim. The concept of after-market modification was brand new to me. I saw Steam Workshop for the first time and then Nexus .. wow. Perhaps I am lucky in that using NMM never gave me any trouble, but ya know, READING was never one of my personal obstacles. Anyways .. In my experience Nexus has provided, For Free, an astonishing variety of mods for me to pick and choose from. How cool is that? To be able to mod your store-bought game? Plus they give you, for free, NMM. For me going Premium was a no-brainer. I have gotten so much fun and Skyrim to this day continues to be a great game because of the modding community that is available via Nexus (and other places). So, fast forward, there is now Mod Organizer. Which is fine but I don't use it, don't need it. My hope is that more and more major studio game developers will allow and provide for after-market modification for their games. They would be stupid not to. And Nexus is here, ready to provide any gamer a means to mod the next great game.

[Thuggard]

Thank you and to the team for doing a sterling job over the past year!

[setiweb]

In response to post #21453764. #21454319 is also a reply to the same post.

Happy new year and thanks for the news update.

[Calzien]

In response to post #21453764. #21454319, #21459344 are all replies on the same post.

Thanks for all your hard work! Cheers!

[WightMage]

Happy New Year, and thanks for all the work you do! :D