UESPWiki talk:Authored Mod Lists

IntroductionEdit

This is a discussion regarding hosting authored mod lists at UESP. This issue is by it's nature slow moving. I originally raised the idea over a year ago, but the issue is now coming up again because the second instance of such a list has just recently been added.

The issues here are:

• Should we host such lists?
• Where should they be hosted? (I.e. in which namespace.)
• Should extra restrictions be applied?

Since this is an old topic, and since some of it has taken place elsewhere, I'll start with an overview and then resurrect/copy old discussion to here. --Wrye 18:40, 10 June 2008 (EDT)

Motivation: Abandoned Mod ListsEdit

Abandoned mod lists are a perennial problem in the mod communities. Someone starts a list. It's well done, and starts being used. Then they leave, abandoning the list. After about six months or so, has become notably outdated. In some ways, it becomes more of a hindrance than a help. Because it's generally good, other people refrain from creating new lists. OTOH, it's out of date -- links are broken, problems listed have now been solved, etc.

So, it would be useful if lists could be hosted in such a way that they could eventually be passed like a baton. Or at the least, technical corrections should be supported (link fixing, noting solution of problems, etc.)

Hosting the list here would solve many of those problems. --Wrye 18:40, 10 June 2008 (EDT)

2007 ProposalEdit

Here's a copy of the original proposal/discussion.

This is something that I've been thinking about off and on for a couple of years, but is now getting bumped up my priority list because of discussion on the forums: Turns out the Aelius, fairly well known for his recommended mod list, barely plays the game and hardly even reads the readmes. This fits something that I've noticed before...

List makers have a pronounced tendency towards arrogance. (Certainly NOT all of them, but several.) Since most players get lost in the sea of mods that are available, they (very reasonably) look for good lists for recommendations. But that means that mod usage can be heavily affected by some list saying "get this mod!" -- which means that mod makers are inclined to curry favor with list makers. Some list makers seem to really get off on that, and start expecting people to do ridiculous favors for them (like explain in person stuff that is already well covered by the readme!!!)

One way to avoid this tendency seems to be to have several editors for the mod list. OTOH, too many editors and after a while there's no standard -- too many mods end up on the list. So single editor is not good because they tend towards arrogance, and anyone edits is not good because there's no standard. (Wiki's work in large part because you can always appeal to fact to resolve a dispute, but recommended mod lists are inherently opinionated.)

Actually, probably even more of a problem than arrogance is abandonment -- someone starts a great list, then abandons it.

So, what I'd like to suggest is that we host several semi-protected lists here. Here' how it would work:

• Under Oblivion, have a "Mod Lists Section"
• Under that, have individual lists that are edited ONLY by designated editors. These pages would be "So and So's recommended mods list", etc.
• The pages would be semi-protected (so that only signed in users could edit), but there wouldn't be any extra server specification that "only designated editor XX can edit this page" -- rather that would be done by convention -- i.e. any edits by non list editors would be summarily removed.
• However, other users could still visit the talk page and suggest mods and post arguments, etc. there.
• If the editors for a list leave, then either new editors are designated, or the list is frozen. But being under CC license, the current list could be forked and a new list could be started. E.g., Bob is the editor/author of "Bob's List". Then Bob quits the scene and list is frozen. Jan comes along and Jan and copies "Bob's List" to "Jan's List" and then proceeds to be the editor for that.
• Lists are by invitation and/or consensus agreement. List maker should already have built a decent, respected list. Whether to allow it here would be by a discussion on the community portal.
• If someone starts a list, then they're agreeing to keep editing it for a while -- i.e. it's not just a one time thing, but something that the list builder is committed to.
• Editors should understand that their list is NOT their home page or their user page, and should not be used for rants, general opinions, etc. It's just a list -- we expect it to be opinionated, but it needs to be primarily as a list. They also understand the nature of cc.
• If there's a major dispute over the list, it can be resolved on the community forum. In an unusual case, we might freeze (or very unlikely) delete the list.

What do you all think? --Wrye 19:13, 28 March 2007 (EDT)

Not much apparently! :lol: No problem. Moving it back to the backburner.... --14:46, 31 March 2007 (EDT)

Sorry, still avoiding the place as I Havant received Shivering Isles yet... But yes, I have now read through and I agree with all your points and ideas! Jadrax 10:11, 1 April 2007 (EDT)

I was trying to volunteer everyone else to do the job! :lol: Didn't work too well, and I'm somewhat overloaded these days. I'd kind of like to if not host mod lists here, at least include a page of pointers to some of the better ones. But I've done almost 10 Wrye Bash releases in the past week and still have a list of stuff to do, so I probably have the time soon. --Wrye 21:24, 1 April 2007 (EDT)

I could help out as well, since I'm a bit of a mod junkie. I tend to dabble in a lot of random mods, and also tinker around in the construction set once in a while. I do agree with how the Wiki format is great for listing good mods. One question, though... this would be a list of recommended mods, not just a general list, right? --Talon Lardner 09:11, 7 April 2007 (EDT)

Moving this from backburner to sideburner... I've added a new page Oblivion:Recommended_Mods which is primarily intended to list recommended mod lists, with some evaluation of them. There's still room for hosting some more "owned" lists as suggested above, but again it would take a dedicated proven editor to do it right, so I'm not really expecting that to happen. (Yes, we have dedicated, proven editors here, but they're all busy with other stuff!) --Wrye 22:07, 14 April 2007 (EDT)

Recommended Mods TalkEdit

Oblivion_talk:Recommended_Mods has several discussions regarding this. I'll copy two discussions from there...

Getting StartedEdit

Copied from Oblivion_talk:Recommended_Mods.

Mod recommendation lists are fairly important -- players moving past the novice (modless!) stage want some advice to help guide them through the huge number of mods that are available to them.

As a result, mod lists become well known and powerful resources in their own rights. Experienced modders know that making it onto the leading list of recommended mods will likely drive a x10 number of users to their mod. Which means that the subjective biases of mod lists creators can have a huge impact on the success of modders. But of course, mod recommendations are inherently subjective.

So ideally there should be several different well known mod lists. That means that the lists still have a "best of" filter applied to them, but that room is left for different sets of standards.

Going forward, it would certainly be useful to have more lists -- I'm just not familiar enough with others to list them. Possibly such lists could be hosted here -- but if so, my inclination is that the list should start somewhere else (e.g., on the forums) and then if popular, move or be copied here, and be somewhat "owned" by the creator/editor(s). I think that a good list will needs a dedicated effort by a small set of editors. (I.e., I suspect that our own Oblivion:Must Have Mods list is too open.) (For my prior suggestion on this topic, see: Proposal: Recommended Mod Lists.)

--Wrye 21:58, 14 April 2007 (EDT)

Nice page! I added a few more good lists here and updated my entry. --Dev akm 14:06, 5 July 2007 (EDT)

Wrye's Cool Video ListEdit

Okay, another experiment. Here's a recommendation list that I would have liked to see somewhere -- cool videos. Some of these are just awesome -- (if nothing else, the dominoes are very cool.) First problem is that it's not actually recommending mods (falls under broader category of Oblivion Recommendations). Second problem -- it's by me, so I can't be counted as objective on this one. However, I would like this to be treated the same way as what I suggested earlier for mod recommendations lists. E.g., a limited editor page, where the editorship can be passed on.

Question: What namespace should it go in? "User" doesn't make sense if editorship might be passed on. "Oblivion" is a possibility, but I think a better choice is the so far unused "Review" namespace?

Again, what I'm trying to encourage is a few more good recomendation lists. But for this list, obviously I'm biased, so I'll leave it up to fellow admins and editors: stay or go? (And no, I won't hold it against you if you thumbs down it.) --Wrye 02:07, 20 April 2007 (EDT)

Moved it to Review namespace. --Wrye 20:04, 20 April 2007 (EDT)

A's List of ModsEdit

Copying some prior discussion from User talk:Wrye/A's_List_of_Recommended_Mods...

A's List: InceptionEdit

Copied from User talk:Wrye/A's_List_of_Recommended_Mods.

A little while back it was pointed out that A's List had become badly dated simply because most of it's links (to TesSource) were now unworkable. Aelius put the list together over a year or so, but suddenly deparated from the community around August 2007. (There was no departure notice, he just disappeared. There may have been health prolems, or he may have just left.) I sent email to him regarding archiving the list here, and did not receive a response, so I'm assuming this is okay. Naturally, if he turns up and objects, we'll remove the page. --Wrye 21:17, 6 June 2008 (EDT)

A's List: MovingEdit

Copied from User talk:Wrye/A's_List_of_Recommended_Mods.

Sorry about the whole moving mess, just I'm not sure we're really using the Review namespace, even though it does technically exist. It contains only two pages, both of them created by Wrye. Other reviews are listed on General:Reviews, but are all stored in the User spaces of the people that made them. Since this review is by someone who is not a user on this site, I'm not sure exactly where it belongs. Just wondering if we want to make the Review namespace official? Or move this (and the other article in it) into a more widely-used location? --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 00:16, 7 June 2008 (EDT)

I think that we should leave these articles here in the review space, but continue to use it very sparsely. In particular, glancing over it, none of the reviews linked to from General:Reviews are of sufficient utility/quality to justify "official" recognition.

More general principle: I think that the Review space should be for "officially sanctioned" subjective articles. Those articles should be pretty rare and should be of fairly high utility. They should be subject to review/veto by experienced members of the site. (E.g. when I started Wrye's Fund Videos, I recall that I explictly asked for other admins to check and do veto it if they found it inappropriate or simply of insufficient quality/utility.)

Regarding the use of that for mod lists (one of the primary things I was thinking of since popular mod lists are often abandoned after a while), I originally posted the suggestion on the community portal: UESPWiki:Community_Portal/Archive_8#Proposal:_Recommended_Mod_Lists. (Ironically, the immediate impetus for that list was my desire to see more competitors with Aelius -- since Aelius was compiling his list without actually playing the game.)

Anyway, in Proposal: Recommended Mod Lists, I cover a couple of suggestions for keeping things from getting out of hand. But those largely come down to "common recognition of strong utility". In keeping with that, my votes/comments on the two pages currently in the space are:

• A's List: Keep. Very well regarded, established list.
• Wrye's Fun Videos: Abstain (Bias). I think it's useful, but not a huge deal. (Certainly not as useful as A's list and other good list mods.) I put it together as a kind of a test case for the Review namespace. I actually rather wish that someone else had done such a list (so that I wouldn't personally be involved) -- but there's no other such list that I know of. And they are fairly cool videos.

--Wrye 01:16, 7 June 2008 (EDT)

What exactly do we define as "officially sanctioned"? I mean, what that isn't going to run into copyright issues? We obviously can't just copy reviews from other websites here, since almost all of them are subject to copyright. (And even in cases of reviews on other wikis, we've had a general site policy of not copying things from other sites, regardless of their licensing issues, because only a site with the exact same license as ours would be compatible.) I have no problem with either of the articles in this namespace (even though they're really more collections of mod links/videos than actual reviews), but as it is, these two pages are very-nearly orphaned (only linked from Oblivion:Recommended Mods and a few User/talk pages), so the odds of any visitor to the site actually finding them (and thus the odds of anybody adding any other articles in this section) are pretty slim, as evidenced by the fact that the namespace has been in use for over a year, but only one person has made any real contributions to it. I think if we're going to be using this namespace, we should find some way of increasing its visibility such that it can be seen by more visitors to the site. If we don't, the articles would probably be better off in another namespace, either General as I suggested earlier, or since these are both Oblivion-specific, they could be in the Oblivion namespace. General probably makes more sense, as we try to keep the articles in the game-specific namespaces strictly objective and informative, while the General namespace allows for a little more personal expression. (Hence all the Fanfiction is stored there for example.) If you're worried about these getting lost in a sea of Fanfics, we can always add navigational aids - categories, breacrumb trails, links on a General:Reviews (we could make it clear that the other pages on there are of lesser quality somehow), etc. Just a little bit of infrastructure to hold this section together a bit better. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 21:06, 7 June 2008 (EDT)

I gotta back Lurlock on this one. We just got our first edit. I can't justify having a personal opinion namespace when we can easily use user space for that. --Ratwar 23:12, 8 June 2008 (EDT)

I sense a long discussion coming on... Let hold off until this weekend. I was just in a long, contentious community discussion on the forums, and I'm going to be busy probably until the weekend. There are good reasons for not userfying it. (E.g. list is by Aelius, but he doesn't have an account here, so he doesn't have a user page to put it on. Also we generally discourage users from adding mini-wikis on their own pages -- moving this to his or my user page would sanction such a policy. Also, the prospect of doing was raised and not objected to quite a while back on the Community Portal. In other words the existence of this page is in compliance with UESP policy -- it's just a little used part of the policy.) But yeah should be discussed since this is a more involved test of the idea.

I'll have time this weekend to talk about it a bit more, so please hold on until then. --Wrye 01:50, 10 June 2008 (EDT)

June 2008 DiscussionEdit

New discussion should start here.

Apology and IronyEdit

Apologies for the length of the above inclusions/copies, but the issue has a long history, and it made sense to consolidate it in one place.

An irony here is that one of my motivations for hosting mod lists was that I was extremely fed up with the uninformed nature of A's List. Aelius created his ver large and well respected lists, while not actually playing the game. And then asked people to explain their mods at length, i.e. to explain stuff that he would have known if he simply played the game. Worse he wanted people to explain stuff to him in person that was already explained in readmes. Which is a major hot point with me.

However, despite my frustration with all that, the list is actually very good and well worth preserving. --Wrye

RecappingEdit

So, recapping: the issues here are:

• Should we host such lists?
• Where should they be hosted? (I.e. in which namespace.)
• Should extra restrictions be applied?

And recapping the earlier proposal: So, what I'd like to suggest is that we host several semi-protected lists here. Here' how it would work:

• Under Oblivion, have a "Mod Lists Section"
• Under that, have individual lists that are edited ONLY by designated editors. These pages would be "So and So's recommended mods list", etc.
• The pages would be semi-protected (so that only signed in users could edit), but there wouldn't be any extra server specification that "only designated editor XX can edit this page" -- rather that would be done by convention -- i.e. any edits by non list editors would be summarily removed.
• However, other users could still visit the talk page and suggest mods and post arguments, etc. there.
• If the editors for a list leave, then either new editors are designated, or the list is frozen. But being under CC license, the current list could be forked and a new list could be started. E.g., Bob is the editor/author of "Bob's List". Then Bob quits the scene and list is frozen. Jan comes along and Jan and copies "Bob's List" to "Jan's List" and then proceeds to be the editor for that.
• Lists are by invitation and/or consensus agreement. List maker should already have built a decent, respected list. Whether to allow it here would be by a discussion on the community portal.
• If someone starts a list, then they're agreeing to keep editing it for a while -- i.e. it's not just a one time thing, but something that the list builder is committed to.
• Editors should understand that their list is NOT their home page or their user page, and should not be used for rants, general opinions, etc. It's just a list -- we expect it to be opinionated, but it needs to be primarily as a list. They also understand the nature of cc.
• If there's a major dispute over the list, it can be resolved on the community forum. In an unusual case, we might freeze (or very unlikely) delete the list.

--Wrye 18:40, 10 June 2008 (EDT)

Where to put it?Edit

Such lists should not be on user pages! Several reasons:

• It's a major element of this idea that the lists be public in several ways:
  • That they not be deleted just because the original author decides to leave.
  • That they be technically fixable (i.e. links be fixed, versions be updated, problem resolutions be noted).
  • That (hopefully) some lists be passed like batons. I.e. when one person leaves, they pass the list on to someone else to maintain and extend.
• User Page policy
  • As a general matter of policy, we discourage users from treating the site as a personal wiki or a home page. Hosting lists that are supposed to be generally used/available on home pages would instead be sanctioning doing that. This would quite likely result in an explosion of other personal info on people's home pages.

Review Namespace: So far, the two such list pages are in the review space. There are arguments for and against that:

• Cons
  • "Review" is something of a misnomer because these lists aren't really reviews.
  • "Review" isn't game specific. Lists from Tes4 would be mixed in with reviews from Tes3 and Tes5 (if that ever happens).
  • The inclusion of useful articles within the review space is likely to engender non-useful, junk blog reviews.
• Pros
  • "Review" clearly designates a subjective judgement and sets the page apart from the objective material on the site.
  • "Review" space was created to host reviews, i.e. subjective content. The fact that we haven't used it much up to now doesn't militate against it's utility.
  • While "Review" isn't entirely accurate. It's close enough. We can simply understand it to be an area where subjective, authored pages exist.

Gamespaces: Putting the mod list in the gamespace has several advantages and one main disadvantage:

• Pros
  • Associates the mod list with the appropriate game.
  • Indicates that there is a communal aspect to the page. These pages are not entirely protected -- i.e. they are intentionally open to some changes by people other than the main author.
  • Avoids problems with the "Review" name. I.e. they're not quite reviews, and their existence does not encourage people to start writing reviews.
• Cons
  • Puts an article that is not fully editable in the gamepace, which is contrary to general wiki policy.

So the major con is that the article is that the article has limited editing, and that doesn't fit with general policy. But if we host the article in a non-user space, then we've already said "That's okay." -- it's just a matter of where we put it. Yes, the policy on these pages is exceptional, but that can be indicated with a standard blurb at the top of the page.

All told (now that I've spelled it all out), I think that the best solution is to host the pages in the gamespaces and put an appropriate blurb at the top of the page. --Wrye 18:40, 10 June 2008 (EDT)

General: Oops, forgot about that one. Hmm... Checking...

The argument for using General basically seems to be that it's already in use, so let's use it instead of Review. "General" seems to have evolved into a misc. bucket. FanFiction, the forums main link page, info on Bethesda developers. I.e. whatever doesn't fit somewhere else.

• Pros:
  • Already has both subjective and objective content, so the mixed subjective and objective content of Authored Lists fits.
  • Avoids some of problems with "Review" (mod lists are really reviews, though they do have a subjective content).
• Cons
  • Not tied to particular gamespace.

Okay (changing my mind from previous), on balance I'll support using General. --Wrye 20:12, 10 June 2008 (EDT)

November 2008 DiscussionEdit

Okay, hopefully this will be brief... The move notice has been up on Review:A's_List_of_Recommended_Mods since July. One way or another, it's time to take it down. Here are the options as I see it:

• Leave A's List in Review namespace.
• Move A's List to Tes4Mod.
• Move A's List to General namespace.
• Move A's List to Wrye's talk space.

Move to Where: The basic problem with moving it to my userspace is that I'm not the author -- just the maintainer. Obvious alternatives are general and Tes4Mod.

Move/Redirect: This is one of the most heavily viewed pages on the site -- it has over 26 thousand views. Aelius list, while somewhat dated, is one of the "gold standards" of mod lists and is linked to from many places outside of our control. So if we move it, then the resulting redirect must be left in place -- permanently. No ifs, ands or buts. It would be crazy stupid to break such a heavily linked to page. So, if we have to leave the redirect in place, is it really worthwhile to move it? There are two arguments that I see here:

• Pro(ish): Perhaps if it's moved to a user space, it's somehow clearer that it's not supposed to be edited by anyone other than the author. I'm really not sure how this is different from the review space, in which articles also cannot be generally edited, but... :shrug:.
• Con: If it's moved, then at some point, some admin is going to say "well, surely it's been long enough, now" and delete the redirect. There is no 'long enough' for heavily known/linked to pages. Keeping it in review should help avert this temptation.

Since we've already had a very long discussion on this (see above) (as well as a very long discussion on the advisability of eventually deleting redirects), I think that all has been said and am asking for a vote (below). --Wrye 02:05, 27 November 2008 (EST)

This also needs to apply to Review:Wrye's Fun Oblivion Videos, incidentally. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 16:52, 27 November 2008 (EST)

That's not entirely the same thing since that page is authored by me. However, I would say: If A's List stays in Review, then so does Fun Videos. OTOH, if A's list is moved anywhere (general, tes4mod or user), then Fun Videos should be moved to my user space. Again, Review redirects would need to stay up permanently since the page is heavily visited (> 33k hits and definitely linked to from outside UESP). --Wrye 17:24, 27 November 2008 (EST)

Looks like I'm going to lose this one (4 to 1 at this time). I'll wait until 12/4 to be sure, and (assuming no change in vote) move pages at that time. --Wrye

Yep, lost it. Moved. --Wrye 00:27, 4 December 2008 (EST)

Please vote hereEdit

Simple majority wins. If there's no majority by a week from now (12/4/2008), then the motion to move fails, the page stays where it is and the "Request to Move" notice is removed.

• Leave A's List in Review namespace.
  • Wrye --Wrye 02:05, 27 November 2008 (EST)
• Move A's List to Tes4Mod.
• Move A's List to General namespace.
• Move A's List to Wrye's talk space.
  • Rpeh –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 02:44, 27 November 2008 (EST)
  • Timenn --Timenn < talk > 04:58, 27 November 2008 (EST)
  • Game Lord - Game Lord^{Talk|Contribs} 05:40, 27 November 2008 (EST)
  • GuildKnight --GuildKnight^Talk2me 20:24, 27 November 2008 (EST)

Proposed PolicyEdit

Query - should this not be under Proposed Policy section, since it is listed as a rough draft of a proposed change? Timeoin (talk) 22:15, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

A very rough draft, yes it should have been under Proposed. I've given it a thorough going over, but my knowledge of this area is limited so I've left it quite vague, though it can't really be very detailed given its scope. I'm not even sure its a guideline we want to have, but we do have a number of on-site lists and, given the page exists, I thought a spruce up was the better option than outright deletion. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 23:50, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

No problem at all. I was going through some of the guidelines here out of curiosity (being different sites and all that), came across it and realised that it was kind-of outdated (the discussion at least). I am not saying it should be deleted by any means. Merely pointing out a very minor, pedantic thing. Timeoin (talk) 00:30, 4 October 2017 (UTC)