Help asking Nexus to fix their site

[prinyo]

Hello,

 

I added a bug in the tracker about the broken links to the Oblivion mods that point to Nexus and are found all over the net.

The bug is extremely annoying, for most users it will actually be an unbreakable barrier to find the mods they came to find so it is a bit sad that Nexus is hiding the Oblivion mods in this way.

In the past 2 days I had to manually update URL's that I click on about 50-60 times. Most users will not even know it is possible to rewrite and fix the URL and will give up.

 

The bug is that, for example. http://www.tesnexus.com/mods/27638 fails to redirect to http://www.nexusmods...ion/mods/27638/

 

There are thousands and thousands broken links like that all over the internet.

 

It is quite obviously a bug and it actually takes 1 line of code and 1 minute to fix it if they care to do it.

But for some reason my bug reporting stays a second day now with a status "WAITING FOR USER FEEDBACK".

So please go to the bug report and confirm it : http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/tracker/issue-45905-tesnexuscom-redirects-broken/

 

This will help lots of Oblivion players find the mods they are looking for! Thanks :-)

Edited October 16, 2015 by prinyo

[eric31415]

It really sounds to me that Nexusmods can hardly be blamed for other sites failure to update their links. I would report the dead links to the other sites. If they are still an active community it will probably get fixed. If not, then why go there?

 

It is not really a bug. Just a result of one of the many (much needed) restructurings of this site, combined with a failure to update on the part of the other sites.

[bben46]

What you are asking is for us to fix other sites links to here. And we cannot do that.

Once upon a time (2001) Nexus was named Morrowind Chronicles, over the years it has evolved, first to Morrowind Source (2003), then Tessource when Oblivion was added. The name changed several times for various reasons ( we are no longer supporting only TES mods for one reason) Some links to tessource,net (and a few other previous sites) were lost in changes to the site over the last 14 years. Whenever we find one of these we fix it - BUT!!! somebody has to tell us as there are several hundred thousand files on The Nexus now. When you see one please just click on the report icon at the bottom of the entry and give us the lost link. However, if that link is to some other site, there is not much we can do as many good modding sites have gone out of existence with no forwarding address.

 

As for links to the previous sites on outside forums, we cannot change them, that is up to them. Most will make the correction if it is brought to their attention. But some are no longer maintained and what you see are archives that cannot be edited.

 

Usually changing the link to Nexusmods.com and leaving the rest unchanged will work. :thumbsup:

[prinyo]

For a technical person or somebody who has at least some idea how the internet works the two replies make no sense. I hope that people who are looking at the bug have better understanding of the online world.

 

Nexus did own and still owns this domain!

 

There is no reason why thousands of links should be killed-off just because somebody is too lazy to add a single line of code.

Something like :

 

if(preg_match("/tesnexus/", $SERVER['HTTP_HOST'])) header("location: http://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/".$modid);

 

 

It was probably because of moving to some kind of new system or some kind of incompetent management decision that the support for some of the domains was broken. There is no real reason why the addresses won't work.

 

Any decent site takes into account its responsibility to keep it's URLs alive even after major changes. Leaving dead links behind, especially in large scale like in this case is considered quite lame.

 

Fixing this problem is something that Nexus should and quite easily can do and not the people who considered it to be a decent site and linked to it. Not fixing it is a demonstration of disregard and insult (by doing conscious harm) to the community that Nexus says it serves.

Edited October 16, 2015 by prinyo

[bben46]

Maybe if you posted this in a bug report forum or even a site feedback forum instead of a game discussion forum the right people might see it. :rolleyes:

[DrakeTheDragon]

I agree, this is the totally wrong place for a general topic such as this. Only because the decommissioned "tesnexus.com" domain previously served Oblivion mods as well as Morrowind mods is not reason enough for this to be brought up here inside the Oblivion Discussion section of all places, as the number of people seeing it in here is little, the feedback you'll get almost non-existant.

 

The opening post contains links to correct places where it was posted already, so telling to post it at a more right place makes little sense, of course. But honestly, so did posting it in here again.

 

This is an almost historical issue going years and years back and very well known by everybody involved. It's been dealt with repeatedly on and off in different ways, for times it worked, then for whatever reason no longer anymore, then all of a sudden it was working again, rinse and repeat.

 

From what I recall the administration is set on providing what one could very well call legacy support at this point and have rewrites or redirects in place connecting the old dead urls with correct current ones, where the item linked to is still present. But this isn't exactly an easy feat and definitely not doable the way you suggested it.

 

As said, the "tesnexus.com" domain has in times long since forgotten once provided mods for both games, Oblivion AND Morrowind, and as people got utterly confused beyond their capability to cope with it anymore, the decision had to be made to split the two sites.

 

Said split already came with an unpleasant side-effect of its own, as it was done automatically, of course, and not always correctly in that, which was inevitable. So now we already have had an insane amount of Morrowind mods with "empty" duplicate entries in the Oblivion section still, identical ids but the wrong game folder (an easy way to check if a file page is indeed empty or you're just looking at the wrong game site). Moderation is still working off a seemingly never-ending list of these even today. But, fortunately said list is, despite the feeling one gets while still encountering these pages, of course slowly coming close to its end, and the occurrences of empty pages like these have become less and less frequent the last years.

 

But the same issue creating the bad side-effect I mentioned back then is also bound to still disable your proposed solution from working. The old urls with the "tesnexus.com" domain just "cannot" be transformed "automatically" into correct current ones by prefixing them with the correct domain and the matching game folder just like this. The system will inevitably make the same mistake as back then with the split, mix urls up, or simply not even know which game site it should use for the id to begin with. Needless to say some ids have since then even been "reused" already and now exist on both game sites but for different mods! Which one's the system meant to choose and by what algorithm is it going to determine that?

 

Your approach is fine for the old "oblivion.nexusmods.com" or "morrowind.nexusmods.com" game-name-based subdomain urls, where the urls can simply be rewritten and that's it. And as far as I know that compatibility measure should still be in place as we speak. But for the ancient-in-comparison "tesnexus.com" domain-based urls where it isn't at all clear or given, or in severe cases even unambiguous like I explained, it's evident an approach has to be sought which may just not be worth the trouble, work, time and money anymore at one point.

 

(Not saying it can't be done, for I'm programming these websites and server apps for a living and have by now encountered way worse in terms of migration impossibilities like these, but at the end of the day the complexity is... well, nightmare-inducing doesn't quite cut it.)

 

I don't know what the site's administration is at with this right now, if it's still considering and/or working on backwards-compatibility measures such as the ones repeatedly provided in the past, or if the decision rather was it's no longer worth the effort, and an effort it is, mind you, and no small one. But I for one won't be surprised, if at one point the "tesnexus.com" domain itself won't even be paid for anymore in the near or distant future.

 

 

edit: Disregard what I wrote, and disregard your own OP, as the link you told not redirecting correctly in it as of right now just... does. The "tesnexus.com" url you posted above works absolutely fine at this point in time. Figures. :unsure:

[prinyo]

Maybe if you posted this in a bug report forum or even a site feedback forum instead of a game discussion forum the right people might see it. :rolleyes:

 

Well, if you read my original post there is even a link to the bug report, posted exactly where it should be :-)

Because my bug report was assigned status "WAITING FOR USER FEEDBACK" I invited people here to confirm it as it is in the best interest of the modding community.

[prinyo]

 

edit: Disregard what I wrote, and disregard your own OP, as the link you told not redirecting correctly in it as of right now just... does. The "tesnexus.com" url you posted above works absolutely fine at this point in time. Figures. :unsure:

 

Yes, they fixed the first part of the bug :-)

What is left is the subdomain redirects.

 

 

Just a clarification. Regardless of what decisions are made and why, backwards compatibility should always be a priority. Nexus has the benefit of years and years accumulated external links which is an extremely valuable asset.

The most important part in the URL is the ID of the mod. As long as it matches there is no real reason to not provide the backward compatibility.

A site can not expect all other sites on the internet to constantly review and update it's links because it might decide to make breaking changes. It is a site's responsibility do keep the old links alive. There are links accumulated on forums and Redit. You can not expect those links to ever be updated.

[bben46]

:thumbsup:

[lubronbrons]

yeah.... this need to be fixed for sure by editing htaccess file properly redirect to respective link, many legendary mod is scatter over all the world, But sadly.... using old link