Donation Points system now live for mod authors on Nexus Mods

[dikr]

In response to post #60377462.

andyjs wrote: I love the idea in principle, especially as I'm not in a position to donate directly myself. Ideally I'd like to see a modder's helpfulness and willingness to engage with users rewarded as well, but I realise that's almost impossible to measure objectively and you've got enough to be doing.

Off the top of my head though I can see an issue that could be fixed, or at least accounted for (apologies if already addressed).

Doesn't it skew unfairly towards makers of mods for the most popular games? As an example, the most downloaded Companion mod (comparing the same category to be more equitable) for Morrowind (comparatively high on the list of supported games at no.9) has had about 1,500 unique dls. The one for Oblivion (no.5) has had nearly 38,000. For Skyrim (no.1) over ten times that, at around 388,000 uniques. Even though the payout is based on downloads in the last 30 days, those numbers are going to skew similarly I think; probably even more so. That was a flawed example because doesn't take into account how long those mods have been available, but gives a rough idea (similar ratios can be seen just looking at recent mods).

I appreciate it's almost impossible to make a 100% fair system but maybe some sort of maths could be applied to factor in the game's overall popularity and give modders of less popular games a chance to get something significant from the pot?
Something like - take the number of unique downloads for the period for each mod, then divide by the total number of unique downloads for all mods for that game only over the same period, multiplied by (say) 100 to avoid too many 0.xxx numbers (unnecessary step, but handier for this example). This gives a figure that represents the popularity of the mod among nexus users of that specific game. For the sake of this example let's call that figure AP (Andy Points - what an ego eh?). Then use the number of AP to determine the number of DP (and therefore cash etc) each mod gets.

Example using made up (but vaguely plausible) figures for simplicity -

Albert makes a mod for Morrowind which gets 100 uniques in the first period. The total number for the game in that period is 1000.
Brenda makes a similar mod for Oblivion and gets 1000 uniques. Total for the game 10,000.
Chuck makes again a similar mod for Skyrim and gets 10,000 uniques. Total for the game 100,000.

Using your example figures from the FAQ, there are 2 DP to assign per unique. So, (without applying my idea), Albert gets 200 DP, Brenda gets 2000 DP, and Chuck is in the money with 20,000 DP. Each of them gave a similar amount of blood, sweat and tears, and each of them did work that was similarly popular among players of their respective game.

Using my idea, Albert gets (100/1000)x100=10 AP, as does Brenda (1000/10000)x100 and Chuck (10,000/100,000)x100.
Then let's say you've got (as per your FAQ example) 10 million DP to dish out, and a total of (say) 2,000 AP accrued across the site. Divide total DP by total AP, giving you a DP value for that month of 5000 per AP. So our friends above get 50,000 DP each (APxDP value), so $50 (which weirdly turns out to be the example amount in your FAQ). Someone who got 20,000 uniques for Skyrim would get 100,000 DP, someone who got 100 would get 500 DP, so it's still based on popularity, just now within the context of each game.

Does that make any sense? I'm sure there's a more elegant solution. It'd also need working on to avoid someone making a simple mod for a very, very obscure game, getting one download (maybe from a mate), getting 100AP and netting 500,000 DP. Maybe a minimum number of dls to be eligible and the game needs a certain number of mods in that month from unique modders? I'm sure a bit more maths could be applied to even that out. Some sort of taper like they use in benefit calculations. It's been a month since I've had a proper night's sleep, and three decades since I sat in a Maths lesson, so this might all be gibberish. Sorry if it is!

I see your point and logic. Sadly in the last paragraph you touch on a big problem. Even if you set total unique dl thresholds for games with smaller user groups, the amount of DP per dl will inflate to such an extent that it will become much easier to break the system with fake accounts, to, say accrue 50 unique dl's for yourself to earn a big chunk of that game's monthly 'pot'. (And screwing up the files of the month with crappy mods at the same time).

And also: if you'd spread out even amounts of DP over all the games on Nexus, that would really mininize DP for the more popular game modders as the biggest DP chunk allocated to such a game needs to be divided over 100's of new mods each month rather than a handful in some cases.

Perhaps there could be some token amount of DP given to each and every new mod to balance it out a bit but that might promote people abusing the system by uploading as many as they can ... hard to solve the question. I guess we have to live with the fact that modding for less popular games means less DP. (People mainly do it for the fun and the sharing anyway so to me personally that's not a biggy). Edited May 25, 2018 by dikr

[iubee]

good action, support the modder support the comunity anyway.

[Morghean]

In response to post #60377462. #60378147 is also a reply to the same post.

andyjs wrote: I love the idea in principle, especially as I'm not in a position to donate directly myself. Ideally I'd like to see a modder's helpfulness and willingness to engage with users rewarded as well, but I realise that's almost impossible to measure objectively and you've got enough to be doing.

Off the top of my head though I can see an issue that could be fixed, or at least accounted for (apologies if already addressed).

Doesn't it skew unfairly towards makers of mods for the most popular games? As an example, the most downloaded Companion mod (comparing the same category to be more equitable) for Morrowind (comparatively high on the list of supported games at no.9) has had about 1,500 unique dls. The one for Oblivion (no.5) has had nearly 38,000. For Skyrim (no.1) over ten times that, at around 388,000 uniques. Even though the payout is based on downloads in the last 30 days, those numbers are going to skew similarly I think; probably even more so. That was a flawed example because doesn't take into account how long those mods have been available, but gives a rough idea (similar ratios can be seen just looking at recent mods).

I appreciate it's almost impossible to make a 100% fair system but maybe some sort of maths could be applied to factor in the game's overall popularity and give modders of less popular games a chance to get something significant from the pot?
Something like - take the number of unique downloads for the period for each mod, then divide by the total number of unique downloads for all mods for that game only over the same period, multiplied by (say) 100 to avoid too many 0.xxx numbers (unnecessary step, but handier for this example). This gives a figure that represents the popularity of the mod among nexus users of that specific game. For the sake of this example let's call that figure AP (Andy Points - what an ego eh?). Then use the number of AP to determine the number of DP (and therefore cash etc) each mod gets.

Example using made up (but vaguely plausible) figures for simplicity -

Albert makes a mod for Morrowind which gets 100 uniques in the first period. The total number for the game in that period is 1000.
Brenda makes a similar mod for Oblivion and gets 1000 uniques. Total for the game 10,000.
Chuck makes again a similar mod for Skyrim and gets 10,000 uniques. Total for the game 100,000.

Using your example figures from the FAQ, there are 2 DP to assign per unique. So, (without applying my idea), Albert gets 200 DP, Brenda gets 2000 DP, and Chuck is in the money with 20,000 DP. Each of them gave a similar amount of blood, sweat and tears, and each of them did work that was similarly popular among players of their respective game.

Using my idea, Albert gets (100/1000)x100=10 AP, as does Brenda (1000/10000)x100 and Chuck (10,000/100,000)x100.
Then let's say you've got (as per your FAQ example) 10 million DP to dish out, and a total of (say) 2,000 AP accrued across the site. Divide total DP by total AP, giving you a DP value for that month of 5000 per AP. So our friends above get 50,000 DP each (APxDP value), so $50 (which weirdly turns out to be the example amount in your FAQ). Someone who got 20,000 uniques for Skyrim would get 100,000 DP, someone who got 100 would get 500 DP, so it's still based on popularity, just now within the context of each game.

Does that make any sense? I'm sure there's a more elegant solution. It'd also need working on to avoid someone making a simple mod for a very, very obscure game, getting one download (maybe from a mate), getting 100AP and netting 500,000 DP. Maybe a minimum number of dls to be eligible and the game needs a certain number of mods in that month from unique modders? I'm sure a bit more maths could be applied to even that out. Some sort of taper like they use in benefit calculations. It's been a month since I've had a proper night's sleep, and three decades since I sat in a Maths lesson, so this might all be gibberish. Sorry if it is!

dikr wrote: I see your point and logic. Sadly in the last paragraph you touch on a big problem. Even if you set total unique dl thresholds for games with smaller user groups, the amount of DP per dl will inflate to such an extent that it will become much easier to break the system with fake accounts, to, say accrue 50 unique dl's for yourself to earn a big chunk of that game's monthly 'pot'. (And screwing up the files of the month with crappy mods at the same time).

And also: if you'd spread out even amounts of DP over all the games on Nexus, that would really mininize DP for the more popular game modders as the biggest DP chunk allocated to such a game needs to be divided over 100's of new mods each month rather than a handful in some cases.

Perhaps there could be some token amount of DP given to each and every new mod to balance it out a bit but that might promote people abusing the system by uploading as many as they can ... hard to solve the question. I guess we have to live with the fact that modding for less popular games means less DP. (People mainly do it for the fun and the sharing anyway so to me personally that's not a biggy).

There's a limited way that can filter out abuse of unique downloads, limited, as there's no sure fire method for it - or at least, I don't know it. IP address control. Like limiting the accounts to be created/used from the same IP address, therefore limiting the way someone could generate more unique downloads for their mods. The only weak point in this is internet cafes...

Now I'd like to extend andyjs' idea of equality across popular and less popular games, by stating, that a fixed number of divider (based on the game's age/overall popularity) is not good enough.

The divider itself should be based on statistics of the many factors of game's popularity, like unique downloads, posted mods, images, videos or feedback and of course their age. Which all boils down to the number, of ~relatively~ how many people are actually bothered with that particular game (per a set time interval). And yeah, bothering with older games should be a bonus, but really slight, not that much as andyjs have suggested.
We could also add things like the mod authors' frequency of visiting their own mods: checking on feedback, adding or repairing their own mod (newer version available, optional files available), how much they advertise their mods with Nexus (how many features are used that the site provides.. like writing a change log in it's own tab; bug report tab, adding images, videos). If you do a through out job to make your mod more appealing and informative, you could get a better rating to those who just upload in bulk.

Due to hardware issues, I'm limited to FO3/TES4 modding (and to be honest, I like those a lot more, than the newest versions of them), but I don't think, that modders for older games should be on totally equal ground with ones that adds content to newer games. So the idea of (andyjs') having 10 "AP" for Albert, Brenda and Chuck across the board is a bad one. Yes, there should be a _narrow_ difference between old and new games, but really slight. With the above additions (using statistics) would result a much fairer result, in my opinion.

[LadyHonor]

With the charitable donation thingie, does the user get to pick the charity or is does nexus decide that?

[BigBizkit]

In response to post #60381082.

LadyHonor wrote: With the charitable donation thingie, does the user get to pick the charity or is does nexus decide that?

We have a couple of options in our store for users to pick from, so, in essence, both.

We would love to include more options for charity, and we do appreciate community input in that regard. We just need to make sure that it is
a) Something with global appeal
b) They agree to become one of our store items
c) It is feasible to include in our storefront (from a web developer point of view)

[andyjs]

In response to post #60377462. #60378147, #60380477 are all replies on the same post.

andyjs wrote: I love the idea in principle, especially as I'm not in a position to donate directly myself. Ideally I'd like to see a modder's helpfulness and willingness to engage with users rewarded as well, but I realise that's almost impossible to measure objectively and you've got enough to be doing.

Off the top of my head though I can see an issue that could be fixed, or at least accounted for (apologies if already addressed).

Doesn't it skew unfairly towards makers of mods for the most popular games? As an example, the most downloaded Companion mod (comparing the same category to be more equitable) for Morrowind (comparatively high on the list of supported games at no.9) has had about 1,500 unique dls. The one for Oblivion (no.5) has had nearly 38,000. For Skyrim (no.1) over ten times that, at around 388,000 uniques. Even though the payout is based on downloads in the last 30 days, those numbers are going to skew similarly I think; probably even more so. That was a flawed example because doesn't take into account how long those mods have been available, but gives a rough idea (similar ratios can be seen just looking at recent mods).

I appreciate it's almost impossible to make a 100% fair system but maybe some sort of maths could be applied to factor in the game's overall popularity and give modders of less popular games a chance to get something significant from the pot?
Something like - take the number of unique downloads for the period for each mod, then divide by the total number of unique downloads for all mods for that game only over the same period, multiplied by (say) 100 to avoid too many 0.xxx numbers (unnecessary step, but handier for this example). This gives a figure that represents the popularity of the mod among nexus users of that specific game. For the sake of this example let's call that figure AP (Andy Points - what an ego eh?). Then use the number of AP to determine the number of DP (and therefore cash etc) each mod gets.

Example using made up (but vaguely plausible) figures for simplicity -

Albert makes a mod for Morrowind which gets 100 uniques in the first period. The total number for the game in that period is 1000.
Brenda makes a similar mod for Oblivion and gets 1000 uniques. Total for the game 10,000.
Chuck makes again a similar mod for Skyrim and gets 10,000 uniques. Total for the game 100,000.

Using your example figures from the FAQ, there are 2 DP to assign per unique. So, (without applying my idea), Albert gets 200 DP, Brenda gets 2000 DP, and Chuck is in the money with 20,000 DP. Each of them gave a similar amount of blood, sweat and tears, and each of them did work that was similarly popular among players of their respective game.

Using my idea, Albert gets (100/1000)x100=10 AP, as does Brenda (1000/10000)x100 and Chuck (10,000/100,000)x100.
Then let's say you've got (as per your FAQ example) 10 million DP to dish out, and a total of (say) 2,000 AP accrued across the site. Divide total DP by total AP, giving you a DP value for that month of 5000 per AP. So our friends above get 50,000 DP each (APxDP value), so $50 (which weirdly turns out to be the example amount in your FAQ). Someone who got 20,000 uniques for Skyrim would get 100,000 DP, someone who got 100 would get 500 DP, so it's still based on popularity, just now within the context of each game.

Does that make any sense? I'm sure there's a more elegant solution. It'd also need working on to avoid someone making a simple mod for a very, very obscure game, getting one download (maybe from a mate), getting 100AP and netting 500,000 DP. Maybe a minimum number of dls to be eligible and the game needs a certain number of mods in that month from unique modders? I'm sure a bit more maths could be applied to even that out. Some sort of taper like they use in benefit calculations. It's been a month since I've had a proper night's sleep, and three decades since I sat in a Maths lesson, so this might all be gibberish. Sorry if it is!

dikr wrote: I see your point and logic. Sadly in the last paragraph you touch on a big problem. Even if you set total unique dl thresholds for games with smaller user groups, the amount of DP per dl will inflate to such an extent that it will become much easier to break the system with fake accounts, to, say accrue 50 unique dl's for yourself to earn a big chunk of that game's monthly 'pot'. (And screwing up the files of the month with crappy mods at the same time).

And also: if you'd spread out even amounts of DP over all the games on Nexus, that would really mininize DP for the more popular game modders as the biggest DP chunk allocated to such a game needs to be divided over 100's of new mods each month rather than a handful in some cases.

Perhaps there could be some token amount of DP given to each and every new mod to balance it out a bit but that might promote people abusing the system by uploading as many as they can ... hard to solve the question. I guess we have to live with the fact that modding for less popular games means less DP. (People mainly do it for the fun and the sharing anyway so to me personally that's not a biggy).

Morghean wrote: There's a limited way that can filter out abuse of unique downloads, limited, as there's no sure fire method for it - or at least, I don't know it. IP address control. Like limiting the accounts to be created/used from the same IP address, therefore limiting the way someone could generate more unique downloads for their mods. The only weak point in this is internet cafes...

Now I'd like to extend andyjs' idea of equality across popular and less popular games, by stating, that a fixed number of divider (based on the game's age/overall popularity) is not good enough.

The divider itself should be based on statistics of the many factors of game's popularity, like unique downloads, posted mods, images, videos or feedback and of course their age. Which all boils down to the number, of ~relatively~ how many people are actually bothered with that particular game (per a set time interval). And yeah, bothering with older games should be a bonus, but really slight, not that much as andyjs have suggested.
We could also add things like the mod authors' frequency of visiting their own mods: checking on feedback, adding or repairing their own mod (newer version available, optional files available), how much they advertise their mods with Nexus (how many features are used that the site provides.. like writing a change log in it's own tab; bug report tab, adding images, videos). If you do a through out job to make your mod more appealing and informative, you could get a better rating to those who just upload in bulk.

Due to hardware issues, I'm limited to FO3/TES4 modding (and to be honest, I like those a lot more, than the newest versions of them), but I don't think, that modders for older games should be on totally equal ground with ones that adds content to newer games. So the idea of (andyjs') having 10 "AP" for Albert, Brenda and Chuck across the board is a bad one. Yes, there should be a _narrow_ difference between old and new games, but really slight. With the above additions (using statistics) would result a much fairer result, in my opinion.

Morghean - you're absolutely right, and some of what you suggest crossed my mind too. However, I saw somewhere (possibly the FAQ) that they've ruled out using anything other than Unique Downloads to make the calculations. So I tried to come up with something that would be fairer but only use that stat. All of the maths I did was really just to highlight the issue, and provide some sort of solution instead of just saying "wah it's not fair"!

dikr - Indeed. I still think it's a fixable issue by someone cleverer than me applying some sort of algorithm. I'm sure somewhere among all that stuff about logs and sine curves there's something that could do the trick. I just can't remember what all that stuff does anymore. Even something simple, like, if unique dls for a mod is less than 100, then they can only keep a percentage of the calculated DP based on the number of dls. So 1 download, you only get 1% of the DP, 73 downloads you keep 73%. 100 seems a reasonable point to say ok, you deserve it all.

[Chiaro22]

Speaking of more options for charity, here's a suggestion: Doctors without borders.

 

Another suggestion is to let mod makers give a certain percentage of donation points (per unique mod) to charity organisations also, in the same way mod makers can share percentages of donation points for mods with other mod makers.

Edited May 25, 2018 by Chiaro22

[BigBizkit]

In response to post #60383427.

Chiaro22 wrote:

Speaking of more options for charity, here's a suggestion: Doctors without borders.

 

Another suggestion is to let mod makers give a certain percentage of donation points (per unique mod) to charity organisations also, in the same way mod makers can share percentages of donation points for mods with other mod makers.

We will be looking into further options for charities depending on community input and feasibility.

As for your other suggestion, thank you for the input and we will definitely be looking into options for people to give their DP into e.g. a joint pool for charity. Edited May 25, 2018 by BigBizkit

[Vanguardascendant]

Does somebody mind putting up a list of the charities presently available to donate DP towards? I've never published a mod, so I don't think I have access to that list.

[Arthmoor]

In response to post #60350082. #60350272, #60355137, #60356532, #60356787, #60368267 are all replies on the same post.

Reneer wrote:

Looking over the details, this system seems terrible as it is. Authors now have reason to no longer bundle files in one place for user friendliness. People like me, who make compatibility patches left behind from this system in that way. It's not glamorous work and this just makes it even less so. Not that I care about making any coffee money off this ridiculousness, but I have 50+ patches on one page...downloaded 10's of thousands of times but by 13k "unique" people. Instead, now there is all the incentive to just release a new page for every similar file. It's not any less exploitable because it's not per-file but per-page.

Except that if you split your 50 patches into 50 pages, you'll likely get 1/50 of the downloads for each patch, so likely around 260 unique downloads per patch. It's not as if people will download all 50 patches because they won't be using the underlying 50 mods the patches rely on (or are very unlikely to do so). There might be a small incentive to split mod variations into different pages, but it's unlikely going to somehow add up to 2x or 1.25x the downloads because people will only use one variation of the mod.

 

Now the issue I foresee as being a problem is if a mod author releases a "main file" on one mod page and then creates new mod pages for each patch / update, forcing users to "double dip" and inflate the overall unique download numbers. But I'm pretty sure that's against the rules somewhere already. Haven't found it yet, though.

Zeridian wrote: Except that they do, I have access to the data dude. That's simply not accurate in the least. There may be some reduction, but overall I would gain far more unique downloads by splitting them up, even if by the inconvenience some people somehow dismiss their need for the file.

As it is, if those files were split up, the unique downloads (as counted by this system) would go from 12-13k to around 120k. And that's being conservative and assuming some people would throw their arms up over the inconvenience. Why? The concept of supply and demand.

Edit: Not even that since my example is slightly off, because what we are shown is the unique downloads for the sum of the files for the page. The opt-in system uses unique users, not even total unique downloads on the page. So if you have 12-13k unique downloads, you aren't even getting that because the unique users is spread multiple times between those unique downloads per file. The incentive problem is still the same and exploitable though.

I could take what is potentially only 2000 unique user downloads (when I'm displayed 12k unique file downloads) and split the files into separate pages and see it multiply upwards to that figure, although it probably wouldn't hit the same amount. Probably in the range of 7-10k.

dikr wrote: @Zeridian.

I agree. That's the only way I can see how people would be able to 'abuse' the system to maximize DP. But the question remains to what extend you can actually call it abuse.

If people split up their work in various patches and parts to individual pages, it would only slightly inconvenience users if provided with proper links and in that, it's a valid thing to do, I suppose. There are plenty of mods with only very minor changes or additions, as it is, and you can't really police 'completeness' or 'substance'.

Yet such a 'divide and conquer' strategy might backfire too: a combined / complete file with more quality content will probably get more thumbs up and votes translating in better exposure on the front page and maybe FOTM and with that, more downloads, compared to a mod which looks to be 'chopped up'.

p.s. Retroactively chopping up old, popular mods, seems a complete waste of effort in my eyes, as the peak of unique downloads will be gathered in the first months after release and become an ever thinning stream afterwards.

Dark0ne wrote: This is covered in our Donation Point Terms and Service. We will moderate against this if people do it, and we will remove people's ability to use the DP system entirely if they continue to abuse the system based on our own interpretation of what constitutes abuse, not theirs.

If you have a mod, and you're patching that mod, that patch should always be on the same mod page and not a separate mod page.

dikr wrote: Thanks for the heads up, Dark0ne. Didn't even know that. I falsely assumed that multiple people uploading various files and fixes for the same source file carried over for original uploaders so that's kind of surprising to me. Only loophole I can see to circumvent that is using multiple accounts I suppose. But I reckon those would stand out quickly.

DaedalusMachina007 wrote: With all due respect, I don't believe the Nexus team is large enough to police/moderate the entire community against abuses. And if you want the community to police itself then we get another 'hands off Valve' situation. I don't believe the Nexus should go down this route.

Please consider just automatically donating 100% of generated funds to a charity that the modder chooses (or if they don't choose then choose a random one rotated each month). You'll get massively awesome PR and avoid this clusterpork of a mess that this entire discussion has become.

The community in general will jump on behavior like this so fast it'll be a blur. It'll be pretty damned obvious if someone is uploading a million versions of the same mod to game the system.