Locking polite threads

[RunningBare]

Let mod authors have a 'block user' feature. Not only does it make negative endorsements more reasonable, it would probably improve the level of discource from people requiring help from a mod author. We might have a little less 'OMFG your mod set fire to my whole house!!' type comments. It's just a thought :)

From what I've seen so far, the feature would be abused by some mod authors, anyone with a little negative feedback could be blocked, the only way to prevent that would be to submit it to the moderators, and I'm pretty sure they have got enough to do already.

[Gopher]

Why u didn't let us do some automoderation and letting mod's author delete bug report they don't deserve. I mean seriously modders they like use a lot of time to do mod,

Automoderation by mod authors is a bad idea, I say that as a mod author myself, the time you put into a mod is your own choosing, no one forces mod authors to put in the time or share their mods.

 

I am genuinely surprised at the comments I've seen from some mod authors, this is supposed to be a fun past time sharing your ideas and mods with the rest of the community.

 

So why is it that 99% of people using the thumbs down function treat me like I owe then 24hour a day one on one customer support? :) Seriously some of them when challenged act like I had some moral obligation to fix every mod they ever installed. And yeah iam serious, I have recieved thumbs down because someone failed to install someone elses mod (darns UI) and I didn't help them fix it within an hour of them posting on my page. The idea of timeones never occuring to them, or the fact that the negative endorsement tells people my mod is hard to install, not the one they actually found hard to install.

 

And yes noone forces me to do this I know, and so I could chose to not spend the time modding. But for some mods I will feel personally like I let a lot of people down if I do not do it. I think you underestimate how much pressure there is sometimes when changes are needed in a mod. Besides, I take all my hobbies seriously and wouldn't like total stragners walking up to me and insulting me on those issues either :P

[RunningBare]

 

So why is it that 99% of people using the thumbs down function treat me like I owe then 24hour a day one on one customer support? :)

Because they do, unfortunately some down loaders see mods as some kind of official entity, they seem not aware that it's just another user sharing what they have created, when someone leaves me negative feedback in the form "this does not work"; without giving an explanation then I ignore, if the feedback is abusive then I report them.

 

Some down loaders do feel they have a right to support, they do not realize it's not a right but a privilege when a mod author gives their time to an individual, but it's the same the other way around, mod authors "choose" to give their time, it is not something forced upon them.

[Gopher]

 

So why is it that 99% of people using the thumbs down function treat me like I owe then 24hour a day one on one customer support? :)

Because they do, unfortunately some down loaders see mods as some kind of official entity, they seem not aware that it's just another user sharing what they have created, when someone leaves me negative feedback in the form "this does not work"; without giving an explanation then I ignore, if the feedback is abusive then I report them.

 

Some down loaders do feel they have a right to support, they do not realize it's not a right but a privilege when a mod author gives their time to an individual, but it's the same the other way around, mod authors "choose" to give their time, it is not something forced upon them.

 

Right, but without the ability to block such users, how do I know if I am chosing to give my time to such a person? In a way I am foced to spend time on them. I am given the stark choice between helping everyone or helping noone. If I could block them, then I would truly be able to chose who to give my time to :)

[gilith]

From what I've seen so far, the feature would be abused by some mod authors, anyone with a little negative feedback could be blocked, the only way to prevent that would be to submit it to the moderators, and I'm pretty sure they have got enough to do already.

 

Mod's author are a community if you can't trust them anymore u can't continue to make a community site why u don't just make a site where u can send mod to admin who test it and post it if they find it good enough. On a community site it's nonsense if automoderation don't exist.

[RunningBare]

 

Mod's author are a community if you can't trust them anymore u can't continue to make a community site why u don't just make a site where u can send mod to admin who test it and post it if they find it good enough.

I'm not sure I understand you, are you suggesting that several thousand files be sent to admin for approval?

 

On a community site it's nonsense if automoderation don't exist.

Of course that's an opinion to which you are entitled, it's my opinion that the nexus site has been operating very well without it for years.

[gilith]

bad endorsement and good endorsement was an automoderation system

without bad endorsement it is still one but not as performant than if bad endorsement was still here

 

I'm not sure I understand you, are you suggesting that several thousand files be sent to admin for approval?

 

Yeah, it's what i mean, so can you imagine it, you will have to wait several month for your mods can be seen but it will be safe anybody will be able to download it since it's got the admin's aproval, it means it will be finish and bug less or titled as a beta mod and everybody will be able to download it, without questionning himself about if this mod will make his oblivion bug or not if it's a good mod or not. But seriously it wouldn't work you will have only mod that have been create decade ago. So it's better a site like Nexus because everybody can post his mod without consents and check, before you were able to give him a bad endorsement if it makes ur oblivion crash, but now what can u do ?

 

with the old site you would see a mod with 12 positive endorsements and 100 negative and know to stay away, be it a game ruining issue or performance / boring mod. With this new system that same mod will seem only good by comparison, we no longer have a warning. Even if just going by the comments on a particular mod, certain attract so much attention real warning signs and problems with a mod can be swamped by too much random or positive feedback to shine through.

 

But apparently some random people was giving bad endorsement just for fun or because they didn't read the Readme file or the instruction, but i don't think that the good thing to do, was to simply delete bad endorsement because without it what does mean a file wich got 150 endorsement it means nothing, just 150 people who thinks it's cool so what about the other 200 that have download the mod did they think it's a good one or since there's no bad endorsement anymore they can't say clearly that it's bad?

 

My idea was that people who give a bad endorsement have to put a comment with and perhaps to let mod's author have the right to delete it or not.

 

And don't be blind if people can't troll (if these people exist) anymore by giving bad endorsement they will gave good endorsement to bad mods and they will be on the first page

[Vagrant0]

And this is why it was removed instead of some other system being added. Nobody can agree on a good system, and any that are mentioned are either non-effectual, or are prone to abuse on either or both sides. Can't have authors automoderate because many would just remove anything which is not in praise of their mod.

 

You can't have some sort of system which punishes people for downrating mods because it would discourage valid bug reports in fear of being punished.

 

My idea was that people who give a bad endorsement have to put a comment with and perhaps to let mod's author have the right to delete it or not.

Which more often than not prompted people to fill in that comment space with "This mod sucks." and the like, or long rants on a similar thread. When people are upset with something to the point of going out of their way to voice their opinion, usually they don't care to mind their language or even explain what was wrong. We had this before... It was why non-endorsements were changed to not have a space for feedback... It was just that common.

 

And don't be blind if people can't troll (if these people exist) anymore by giving bad endorsement they will gave good endorsement to bad mods and they will be on the first page

No, not really... Trolling doesn't work that way. It's much harder to troll a good thing by trying to find a bad to elevate because finding bad things usually takes an inordinate amount of time and then requires far more effort to have any notice taken of the supposed trolling. We would also be able to tell when someone is trying to artificially boost the endorsement counts for a mod, and usually respond with an IP ban and resetting that endorsement count back to what it was.

[Gopher]

You can't have some sort of system which punishes people for downrating mods because it would discourage valid bug reports in fear of being punished.

 

It depends on what you consider 'punished'. I mean if you downrate a mod, and the response from the mod author is to block you, that is not really a punishment. You have already expressed disgust at this mod authors work and would be somewhat ill advised to go back for more. I cannot imagine a situation where I would find a certain mod so awful that I would downrate it, and be willing to install another of the same mod authors mods.

 

But of course it all comes down to how seriously you take downrating. People seem to feel that downrating is 'equal but opposite' to up-rating and is therefore no big deal. I respectfully disagree. Down-rating has a hundred times the impact of an up-rating. If you do not believe me, go to work tomorrow and find a colleague, then insult one part of their appearance, and compliment another. Come back and tell me if they balanced each other out :)

 

I submit the assertion that down-rating should be something done advisably, and with the understanding that offence may, and probably will, be taken.

[LadyMilla]

I have yet to see one proven positive effect of the negative endorsement system (not counting the fact that it allowed trolls to vent their stupidity by pressing a single thumbs-down button instead of posting snide remarks about the author's being a 'weebo', a 'sad perv', an 'effing idiot, cuz' his mod ruined my computer!!!111' and so on, and saved the moderators from spending time to clean up the mess. Oh wait, they still often posted the same inane rants. Just look them up in the Bans thread).

 

A negative endorsement does not say anything about a mod because many of the mods -- especially the huge and complicated mods like FWE, EVE, MMM in FO3 -- are work in progress. From what I saw in various upload threads, quite a few commenters are of the 'seagull' type: you know, the one that flies in through the open office window, makes a lot of noise, takes a dump on your work and flies out. Negative endorsements were reversible, still I doubt that many of them were reversed after the author fixed the bug that prompted the commenter to give the mod a negative rating. The mod may now be picture-perfect and work flawlessly, and yet it has a bunch of negative endorsements that have never been reversed. You might say it was the modder's fault that he released his mod in a buggy state but that's not always true: complex mods cannot be tested by a single person or even by a small community, and even if he thinks (they think) it has been properly tested, on a different system, with different mods installed, it may produce glitches, incompatibilities and so on. Is it a bad mod? Who can say? It may work without problems on the modder's computer, it may act up on yours and again, it may work properly on yet another person's computer. I've burned my hand with mods that boasted +1000 endorsements, and I've had a blast playing mods that virtually nobody knows of.

 

Myself, I seldom rely on endorsements. Some of the most endorsed mods have never been installed on my rig because they offer things I'm not interested in. By contrast, you would find a lot of mods on my hard disk that have less than 10 thumbs-ups or even 0, because the author blocked endorsements.

 

The mod description, the screenshots (where they are relevant) and a quick perusal of the user comments about bugs and problems sometimes offer a better clue about the mod than the number of positive/negative endorsements. But the only way to be sure is to download it and test it on your own computer. Is that a risk? Of course. But smart people can and will easily take precautions before doing risky things (e.g. create a backup copy of your Oblivion folder and your .ini files/saves if you want to test a huge mod with a lot of prerequisites and tweaks).