The future of GHF and MMH

[Fliggerty]

Hello everyone who is still around!

I have been thinking a lot about the nature of entropy lately. The nature of entropy is that all complex systems, left to their own devices, will decay and revert to chaos. The general notion of data on the internet is that it can last forever. In many ways, that is a fallacy - data can and does become corrupt and useless. But beyond that, even if the data is preserved properly, the means to manipulate or interpret that data is likely to change or go away altogether, effectively rendering that data useless.

When it comes to these websites, the last thing I wanted to happen was to follow the path of elricm. Essentially he put in a lot of time and effort on creating a great mod hosting site; over time his involvement with his site dwindled while other volunteers maintained it in his stead. When a technical error occurred, it required some time for those volunteers to contact him and get information from him or have him resolve the problem. When I created Modhistory, I had fully planned on maintaining it indefinitely. That was nine years ago. An awful lot has changed since then! Unfortunately I have become another iteration of elricm - and to be honest I'm mostly okay with that.

When I was actively writing mods and building/maintaining these sites, this was very much my passion. The only real responsibilities I had at that point in my life were to go to work to pay my rent and eat. I had a lot of free time, which mostly was devoted to Morrowind in one way or another. Since then, I got married (14+ years now) and had two amazing daughters. Obviously the scope of responsibility on my shoulders increased exponentially, which also led to a proportional decrease in hobby or leisure time. Additionally I embarked upon an actual career - far different than merely holding a job. I was able to take all of the knowledge I gained and skills that I honed while making mods and building GHF/MMH and apply them in ways that others were willing to pay me for. I absolutely acknowledge that my modding experience made me the accomplished software engineer that I am today. The final point here is that not only have my circumstances changed, but my passions changed and evolved as well. At this point in my life, I would give up literally everything for the opportunity to spend time with my wife and children.

So what is all of this about? I imagine you can see where this is going. I have been weighing all of my options regarding GHF/MMH for quite some time now, struggling to figure out how to accommodate everything and everyone. Of course that isn't possible. I do have the outlines of a plan worked out that I want to present here for discussion. I hope it is apparent that I have never considered GHF/MMH to be entirely MINE, but rather belonging to the community. Many have put in the same or more time and effort into this that as I have. As such, I have no intention of merely pulling a plug and ending an era.

My intention now is to focus all of my resources into MMH. I have long been working on a new version of the site - I have scrapped and restarted this task numerous times as technology and my knowledge has changed and grown. At this rate, it will never be done and will always be something on my "to-do" list. Lately the only time I have put into any of this has been trying to fix critical problems and keep things limping along. We have finally hit a point where there are too many of those critical problems for me to stay on top of.

So my intention is to board up the doors and windows of GHF. I will archive the forums and any other creative content and disable further use of most site features. Essentially I will turn GHF into a museum or memorial of sorts of the wonderful past that this place has enjoyed, while at the same time eliminating the need to update, patch, and maintain the functionality.

Regarding MMH, I intend to do a large push and finish the new platform. Rather that being a sort of add-on site to GHF, it will be completely independent. User accounts from here will handled purely by MMH. Additionally I will finish my intended scope expansion and change it from Morrowind Modding History to simply Mod History. Everything from GHF downloads will be moved there. All of the many Oblivion mods that I saved from PES will be made available. Finally, I will build a new forum using a modern forum application. Unfortunately this one will not have all of the integrations and customizations that I built for GHF - but it will have quite a lot of the enhanced functionality I built here as part of the core application; so it will more or less be a lateral move.

Before I do anything, I want to hear from those who are still around and involved with this place. I am open to anything you have to say or ideas you may have. This post is already long enough, but I want to express my gratitude to those of you who have been a part of GHF, and especially to those who have devoted much energy to the running of GHF.

[dietbob196045]

Howdy

A full life is good !!!

Haven't been on this site very long,  but I have been around for some time, I have seen and understand the necessity to move on/change things up.  Considering ( from my experience here ) it doesn't make any sense to attempt to maintain a site that has less then a handful of everyday users ( I am referring to those who actually post and contribute) to those who come on and may ask a question from time to time and or to show us something nice that they are working on.  

So new site time permitting is probably the best option

From a user standpoint I assume this site as it is will remain until a new one is established ?
Will other sites GHF hosts continue as is or will they be changed/archived as well ? (besides MMH)

Lastly I will ask what platform and framework are you considering for these changes ?

Looking forward to seeing the new stuff (eventually)  Not going anywhere  ....  maybe ..... someday.... I am getting old  


Enjoy
Dietbob




MMH - Independence is a good thing,  currently random issues with up/downloading

[Crazy Greggy]

While I'll miss GHF, I do understand ( there are other options for "forum-style" chat available now and the comprehensive forums are all departing in favour of Discord and other platforms) and am glad that MMH will be around for us still. After almost 10 years of association with MMH, its grown from humble beginings to be THE premier archival site for Morrowind Mods. Nexus may argue the contrary but I have very little to say about that except that the sheer quantity of mods available here speak for themselves. I've added to that figure in my own small way and will be seriously pleased to see the archive continue.

[Melchior Dahrk ...indomitable will might rid Morrowind of all its ills.]

We were actually just discussing the future of MMH, on Discord no less; so this post from the great Fliggerty is a ray of sunshine. Good to see that life is treating you well, Fligg! I'm not active on GHF anymore (I too have started a family in the intervening time), but I have many fond memories of the significant time I spent here and the great people I interacted with (hey Greggy!). The need to consolidate and downsize is completely understandableand I think the plan you've outlined is reasonable and better than I actually expected. And I eagerly look forward to the next iteration of MMH!

The only thing I wonder about is whether there's any hope that the mods held in the MMH "Black Archives" could be made available in a limited fashion unless modders specifically come back and ask for the links to be removed? There are so many mods that just disappeared when the old hosting sites went down and even MMH hasn't made them available. Maybe they could not be categorized and only available to search for by name or something? I'm not sure what a good compromise is there; but it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission in this instance.

[Crazy Greggy]

Hey Melchie! That's an interesting idea for the no permission files.  The difficulty of going against a modders wishes concerning their work is how far do you go? I understand the desire not to lose sight of great mods because the sites they were hosted on disappeared and their maker hasn't returned to update those permissions but I worry that if MMH starts to make them available, even in a limited fashion then what differentiates MMH from other sites where modders permissions are entirely ignored? Maybe a more logical method would be to request them on a request page and have a temporary link PMed to the inquirer? Even then there is no guarantee that the person requesting them won't abuse that and simply post the mod on a less scrupulous public forum. It's problematic.

[abot]

I think you should always make available a database dump or a least a .csv/excel table with mod details and download links. This way if your site technology goes rotting, someone can still make a working download database

[DonnerGott]

Do what needs doing, Oh Blue Genie. I'll stick around and sweep the floors, until ya tell me to hit the bricks.

[Melchior Dahrk ...indomitable will might rid Morrowind of all its ills.]

Hey Melchie! That's an interesting idea for the no permission files.  The difficulty of going against a modders wishes concerning their work is how far do you go? I understand the desire not to lose sight of great mods because the sites they were hosted on disappeared and their maker hasn't returned to update those permissions but I worry that if MMH starts to make them available, even in a limited fashion then what differentiates MMH from other sites where modders permissions are entirely ignored? Maybe a more logical method would be to request them on a request page and have a temporary link PMed to the inquirer? Even then there is no guarantee that the person requesting them won't abuse that and simply post the mod on a less scrupulous public forum. It's problematic.

I'm a cathedral modder, so I admit to only being sympathetic to a point. To me, the greater loss is these mods disappearing for all time rather than the chance of someone re-hosting the mod to another site; which happens with mods not hidden on MMH as it is. So the protection against re-hosting isn't really the main point of concern to me. Instead it's whether a mod which explicitly states in the readme "do not upload to any site other than PES" or "do not rehost" for instance are fair game for rehosting now that either a) the original site is dead or b) the original author has been gone for 10+ years or c) all of the aforementioned. To me, it gets to a point where those original desires are found to not comprehend the death of a host site and/or the disappearance of the modder. I view MMH as a historical archive like the wayback machine. Do those same authors have an issue with the Internet Archive saving some select few files in its servers? If they truly wanted to restrict the sharing of their mods, releasing it onto the internet and expecting it to remain in one place for over a decade isn't very realistic.

With that said, I do feel like there may be somewhat restrictive ways to make these files available and try to respect the fact that the authors didn't anticipate the need for them to be shared elsewhere in order to continue being available to the community. It's not like MMH is profiting from their files being available. Your request idea with a manual retrieval and DMing to the requester doesn't sound like it has long-term robustness - since I'm not sure who's prepared to take on that potentially large task for an indefinite period of time. But going back to my original suggestion: make the restricted database searchable, but not browse-able. So if someone knows the name of "that one mod!" they used years ago, they can look it up. But people can't just freely browse through the whole database or download it en masse. Or maybe there's a better solution.

Anyway, that's just me ranting on a minor side point. I don't mean to detract from the best part of this thread: yes, please, Fligg. Revitalize this important repository for the community!

[Iolite]

This is going to be far more philosophical than practical, and perhaps will even sound rather odd and repulsive, but here are my two coins:

When I hear the word "entropy", I mostly think about the natural process of decay which is designed not to end things, but to refresh them - a necessary destruction for the sake of new creation. One of the greatest ways of nature indeed.

But I feel that with the world as it is today, something is not right about the entropic processes going on, and with each day I have more and more doubt whether the winds of change blow in the right direction. I believe that the path the chaotic processes take in this world is just as important as the processes themselves. The current of modern times brings about the demise of many things I cherish, things that could've bloomed into something truly wonderful. Something - or someone - controls the flow of events in today's world, something interferes greatly with the ways of our universe. People have this power to control the flow of fate to a certain extent. But not all people care about the consequences of their actions. They broke the cosmic mechanism. Dreams are tainted. Hopes are crushed. Trees are cut down, and the last wildflowers rot beneath our hurrying feet of black steel. The very way we think is growing shapeless. Soulless.

I see no way to prevent this course of events, nor do I think this is reversible in any way. Before, things died to bring about new life. Now, the cycle is broken and what's left is plastic white nothingness. We enter an era that is like a casket woven from our crystallized emotions. Inside - emptiness.

I am in no position to influence anything with my advice - yet I ask will all my heart to hear my words. I haven't been in this place long, and I didn't post much. But I know one thing - what I said above applies directly to the way the internet looks right now. Material design. Pitch white background cutting my eyes like shears. Lack of customization (or any sane amount of self-expression, for that matter). Overlays and other "heavy" things I don't know the proper names of. I'm not even a designer, but I sense these things, they are an echo of our inner destruction. Please, if at all possible, consider keeping the new layout far from this kind of entropy. It's not the natural kind of it. It's deception, and I'm not ashamed to say it's something I fear. A lot. When I first took a look at GHF and MMH, I thought about all the last good things left in this world, left out in this false wind, destined to die. Now the time has come... I have some hope in that mighty people can revive these things, but it must never be taken lightly. I know this sounds extremely subjective, naive, unnecessarily poetic, "idealistic" (though I can debate about that) and personal. I don't try to persuade anyone here into thinking the same way I do, but maybe my voice could be heard - so I'm using this opportunity to express myself. And if it sounds like a bad joke - so be it.

[Phobos_Jugular]

Nicely said Fliggerty – I’ve had a lot of years worth of creative pleasure with both the GHF and the MMH; but as with all of us time and interests move on. Even so as I’m writing this I did a quick search into MMH and saw that two of my early Khajiit mods are still avaiilable ... now that’s what I call shelf life.

Anyway, my interests shifted from creative modding Morrowind with the toolkit to creative writing adventures within Morrowind.  Drakkmore was good enough to allow me to publish my Fan Fiction and Poetry on your GHF Forum. I believe I had two years and almost two novels published there and advertised on STEAM and other Game and Fan Fic sites.

GHF was a great learning and growth experience and I wish you the best on your plans for the future.

[Fliggerty]

Thank you to everyone for your comments, suggestions, ideas, and desires. The fact that you find value in my creations here, even after all this time, is incredibly touching and important to me. I promise that I will do everything I possibly can to honor this community both for what it once was and what it is and will be in the future.

lolite - just... thank you. A lot. I fully agree with you in every way. I have always made it a point to consider the greater meanings and philosophical messages presented by everything I put into the world to share with others. The cold and clinical atmosphere of the internet in general these days truly does bother me. It's easy to view the online world as merely a collection of tools, providing nothing but utility. I once declared and enforced my desire to make GHF something different, to be a refuge for the creative. Without my constant presence here that used to be, it is easy to forget that mission and lose sight of its importance. I am grateful to you for your impassioned reminder.

For the past week I have been working on consolidating and sorting all of the archives and backups that I have - all told there is just over 1TB of mods, screenshots, artwork, forum discussions, and everything else that all of the GHF sites have either generated or preserved from other places. It is a lot, and the organizational quality is dubious at best. So this is a rather large undertaking, much of which I have simply avoided doing for the better part of a decade. Please bear with me as I work on restoring and building the capabilities of Modhistory. It will take a lot of time, and a lot of my effort won't be visible at first.

As for technical details: the first thing I'm doing is putting all of this data into AWS Glacier storage, which is cheap long-term storage. It isn't intended for anything other than archive purposes, but it will serve to ensure nothing is lost. Then all of the actual mod files will be put into S3 storage (most of those currently on MMH are already there.) I will spend a lot of time removing duplicates and sorting everything into the appropriate buckets. The new platform itself will be built on a web application "scaffold" that I use for many web applications I work on; it is based on the PHP micro-framework Slim. It is light-weight and simple overall, but also robust enough to handle all of our needs. Most of the time I spend programming it will go into the site design; I fully intend to keep the overall look and feel of Modhistory intact - I feel that it is reminiscent of Morrowind, which is of course where all of this started - so that is important to me. I was thinking of just tossing up a modern open source forum application and leaving it mostly vanilla just for the sake of time and effort, but lolite has reminded me that I don't like such things. Therefore I will skin whatever I use to match the overall theme.

With access and preservation of those so called "dark archives," I will turn to proven methods that are often used in copyright law. I think it is fair enough to state that most of these archives can be considered to be in the public domain, effectively belonging to anyone. So I fully plan on making everything accessible by some means. In the case of adult themed assets, not a lot will change. I don't believe there is any merit to censorship, but neither do I believe that things which tend to be private in nature have a place in the public forum - everyone should be able to make their own choices to both partake and avoid such things. This is best accomplished simply by placing things behind a locked door and leaving the key hanging on a hook by the door. So none of that will be absolutely inaccessible, but there will be hurdles in place that must be consciously navigated. The same will apply to anything that we have been asked to not publicly distribute by the authors.

One of my first areas of effort will be to make everything accessible in some fashion in raw form. Most likely through an FTP dump or read-only S3 bucket or somesuch. Then I'll work more on associating all of the files with matching screenshots, descriptions, comments, etc.

One last thing: it has been requested that I find a way to get the Census and Excise Office working again. I fully intend to do that, and have it be part of Modhistory. I will also keep the Smithy available and functioning. Those two things are perhaps my favorite creations ever!

[nzdawghaus]

Since you're planning on being around for a bit, could you take a look at MMH's upload problem?

[Iolite]

Thank you so much for catching my message and sharing my views, Fliggerty! I'm so glad to hear that people still care about the spiritual side of things. Truly, it's such a rarity these days... I wish you all the best in your plans to renew this infrastructure, and I'm looking forward to the future of Morrowind community, now that I'm sure it's in the right hands.

[HeyYou]

Hhhmmmm... Mod permissions can be an extremely touchy subject. But, so far as I am concerned, for those old mods that were posted on other sites, that now no longer exist, I, personally, wouldn't have a problem with you making them available as much as possible. If the original authors REALLY object, I would expect they would let you know. For the most part though, I would imagine that most of them wouldn't even care.... But, that's just me.

As for GHF going away...... It's a bummer, but, completely understandable. Life works on a curve. In the first part of the curve, you have lots of free time, and very few responsibilities. As time passes, you have less and less free time, and a LOT more responsibilities. Spouse, kids, career, they all have rather large time-absorption cross-sections. Then it peaks, and starts to taper off. You have maybe fewer responsibilities, but, oddly enough, you DON'T get the corresponding increase in free time...... I haven't puzzled out just why that is yet. All my kids are grown and gone. Most at a significant distance. But, there are still grandkids about, and I very much enjoy them.

Ah well. Life goes on. I have quite a few fond memories of this place, and even some of the previous iterations. Fliggerty stuck with me, and taught me scripting for Morrowind, introduced me to script extenders, and helped me out when I got stuck. I was never a prolific modder, more a collaborator on other folks projects, especially for Oblivion. So, all I have to say is: Thanks for memories Fliggerty. You have been a fixture in the Morrowind scene as long as I can remember. Seeing these projects combined, and improved, will be great. Do what ya gotta do my friend.

[Leonardo]

Hhhmmmm... Mod permissions can be an extremely touchy subject.

Indeed.  You know as much I know what heated discussions about mod permissions that have been lately in the MA's forum on Nexus.



This thread have so much to comment, probably too much for me to digest right now.  So, I'll try to make a post with a couple of suggestions, but also share my thoughts and experience I have gather here for the past 9 years.

I joined here in early May 2010 and at that time I couldn't imagine that I, a year later, become the first Senior Curator for MMH, which had its debut the 9th of May 2011 and have since then been in service to the community of lost, old mods.

In 2012 I had a tough time in RL and after 7-8 months I created my first mod, rather small mod, for Morrowind, which I released here on GHF and the rest is history.

I've always come back to GHF in the same way as I always do with some of my favorite games e.g Morrowind (of course what else), Oblivion (not much now as I once I did), Skyrim, the Total War game series (MTW, RTW, ETW, NTW).


Before I submit this post I would like to make a few suggestions about forum, subdomains e.g GHF Download, MMH.  What you said about letting MMH, renamed to Mod History of course, be a separate site entirely independent from GHF is a good thing I think as that is what most sites do these days.  When that happen just make sure to create a separate forum for Mod History, so people can ask about this or that or be answered for the questions they may ask.

For GHF, why not let GHF Download to be more intergrated with GHF than it is today.  What I'm referring to is have the same features you have today on GHF for GHF Download, but perhaps enchance GHF and GHF Download altogether similiar to what Nexus have had for a long time.

Or do you plan to stop using GHF Download and create something that's slightly different from what GHF Download is today.  If you plan to stop using GHF Download, may I suggest that you take a closer look at Joomla as most sites today are created by Joomla.  Joomla has CMS built in and there are a lot of videos on YouTube to get started.

That being said, as for the forum I suggest that you stick with phpBB as it has envolved a lot since the release of phpBB 3.1 and now are both phpBB 3.0 and 3.1 no longer supported.

Here are the major changes that was new for phpBB 3.1.

- AutoMOD and all mods are now obsolete and won't work with newer phpBB versions than the latest 3.0 version.
- Extensions are now being used and never has it been easier to install or uninstall an extension than it is today as no more edits in the core files are needed anymore.
- All styles for phpBB 3.0 or older will no longer work with newer phpBB versions.

All styles are now responsive so take a look what I did on Sovngarde.  Feel free to try a different style, just to see how it is in phpBB 3.2 and don't hesitate to ask about almost anything.

Here is a template for an extension, if you want to create an extension then use that template to get started.


Now, something that has been a little annoying and that's the integrated social media plugin you see at the bottom in a thread.  These social media plugins (I can't come up with a better name for it) slows down the sites considerably as GHF is affected of how much traffic there is on these social media platforms.  I suggest to remove these social media plugins for better performance for the server.

Another thing I would like to mention is to have a specific forum for all members in which guests doesn't have access to similiar to what Emma have on her TES forum.

I think this is what I wanted to say for now, but I might post more later as it's a little hard for me due for not being a native English speaker.

[Melchior Dahrk ...indomitable will might rid Morrowind of all its ills.]

I'm super excited but ready to wait patiently. I know this is a huge undertaking. And I'm really happy to hear your take on the "dark archives", Fligg. Please reach out if you need help. Especially with grunt work like sorting files or something. If it's something an unskilled person like myself can handle, I'd be happy to help.

With regards to reviving C&E, before you get too far, there's been discussions of creating a new rendition of a "rich experience" for Morrowind and someone on the community Discord has actually been toying around with a new website and hooking into MWSE 2.0 with it. Perhaps there could be some synergy between the two of you! It's Merlord on the Morrowind Modding Community Discord. He goes by the same name on the Nexus.

[sassman]

Well, I see I was able to recover my PW and return to GHF at this critical moment in time, and none too soon!

And all I can say is,

No!  Don't get rid of GHF!

Why not take all of your wonderful code, port it over to the (soon) completed MMH, and operate GHF as a sub-forum of MMH?  The login (I understand) is already handled by MMH, so...really, all you would lose is the extra overhead operating the two sites separately.  The experience for your users need not change.

Wha'dya say, Boss?

[Leonardo]

I'm super excited but ready to wait patiently. I know this is a huge undertaking. And I'm really happy to hear your take on the "dark archives", Fligg. Please reach out if you need help. Especially with grunt work like sorting files or something. If it's something an unskilled person like myself can handle, I'd be happy to help.

Like you I will also wait patiently and I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty when sorting mods.

With regards to reviving C&E, before you get too far, there's been discussions of creating a new rendition of a "rich experience" for Morrowind and someone on the community Discord has actually been toying around with a new website and hooking into MWSE 2.0 with it. Perhaps there could be some synergy between the two of you! It's Merlord on the Morrowind Modding Community Discord. He goes by the same name on the Nexus.

Discord is a thing these days and it's highly unlikely it will disappear, which affects everyone in the community whether we like it or not.  Unfortunely, I don't like chat never has I suppose.  I prefer forum based communication on internet.

[HeyYou]

I'm super excited but ready to wait patiently. I know this is a huge undertaking. And I'm really happy to hear your take on the "dark archives", Fligg. Please reach out if you need help. Especially with grunt work like sorting files or something. If it's something an unskilled person like myself can handle, I'd be happy to help.

Like you I will also wait patiently and I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty when sorting mods.

With regards to reviving C&E, before you get too far, there's been discussions of creating a new rendition of a "rich experience" for Morrowind and someone on the community Discord has actually been toying around with a new website and hooking into MWSE 2.0 with it. Perhaps there could be some synergy between the two of you! It's Merlord on the Morrowind Modding Community Discord. He goes by the same name on the Nexus.

Discord is a thing these days and it's highly unlikely it will disappear, which affects everyone in the community whether we like it or not.  Unfortunely, I don't like chat never has I suppose.  I prefer forum based communication on internet.

Luddite.

Welcome to the Club.

[Iolite]

Concerning Discord, might I also add that there's obviously a number of issues about it, for example listed here https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/discord.html ? I imagine this is already becoming a common knowledge, but thanks to the evil social engineering magic even most people who are aware of it feel comfortable and think that the big D is an inevitable evolution of internet communication. What always concerned me is how quick people are to accept things made by other people as completely natural order of things, not realizing that they themselves have the powers of choice and change. That's merely what I'm thinking of course, I'm not inviting anyone to cross the swords with me

I believe that forums will live on (and so will XMPP/Jabber chat). We will eventually realize that this form of communication didn't deserve to be abandoned. I've lost a great community in the face of one forum solely because the majority of members moved first to Synchtube and then to Discord. Indeed, what an ominous name this program has, the creators were wise choosing it, I give them that.

[dietbob196045]

It is very sad but the reality is that Internet Evolution is just another way for the controllers to attempt to blind us into false realities and sell us.
Social Media can have it's advantages, but the dis-advantages far outweigh them.  I have never heard of Discord until now    Just the word itself tells me I wouldn't join.
Personally if I had a forum it would be closed, invitation only.  >Anti-Social< ...No...  but I would rather have a forum that stays true to what it was created for rather then to collect membership.  Membership would still grow but it would grow with members who are committed to the context of the forum

As far as permissions (in this case permission to distribute)  If a modder say's they don't want there creation distributed, then it shouldn't be, simple enough.
Of course this means the community may go without seeing/using many fantastic mods.  I don't think (at least I hope) that this was the creator of the mods intent.
I would hope that people with the intelligence to build a mod (not to mention using a construction/creation kit produced by another) would have the foresight to know that the sites they upload to would not be around forever.  
Again, just my personal viewpoint,  If you create a mod, uploaded it for use then it makes no sense to say, "you can only download it from this site"  Why would you do that, your limiting yourself....  In addition what stops "me" saying to "you" hey I found this awesome mod on PES <(ex) and I know your not a member but I'll send you a copy.  

Just my thoughts


Enjoy
Dietbob

[HeyYou]

Thing is, most of the mods in MMH came out before permissions were really a thing. So, for the most part, the authors didn't publish their wishes either way. According to theory, the rule of thumb is, if you DON'T have permission, or it isn't explicitly stated in a readme, or somewhere else, then you don't distribute..... In which case, likely 90% of the mods on MMH would have to be hidden. Is that really what we want?? Kinda defeats the purpose, don'tcha think?

I don't think forums are ever going to disappear. Sure, discord is great, you can chat 'live' with any number of folks, but, it's linear, no method to its madness. Not to mention, it's temporary. Someone may get an answer to a question they ask, but, that's it. The next person that comes along with the same question, isn't going to be able to find that answer. So, it will get asked again. (and again, and again, etc. ad infinitum.....) Forums, on the other hand, DO have a modicum of organization, and are even searchable..... So, someone searching for an answer to a question that has already been asked, actually has some hope of finding it.

[nzdawghaus]

You guys seem like you've made up your minds, but I want to add my two cents. When I was going out and digging up mods, I did my best to contact the authors when no permissions were stated. I probably spoke to more than a hundred folks, and not all of them were ok with me putting their mods up here. I'm sure Slartibartfast could say the same thing. If the author asked me not to, or I didn't hear back from them, I simply moved on to the next batch. Just cause the Internet got older, shouldn't mean we abandon what was great about this community.
My first mods were uploaded at PES, and way back then I didn't worry about permissions cause the community was centralized and we were rabid about looking after each other's work. I chose to use PES because APY ran it, and we had Quatloos who seemed like she tested damn near every mod. So I trusted the place I uploaded to. And I trusted the community.
Apparently I'm in the minority, but I don't want someone else uploading my stuff, and there were modders I spoke to back then that felt the same way.

[dietbob196045]

I don't think anyone's mind is made up  And I do agree that if someone creates a mod and uploads it to a site, if they decide that do not want it uploaded anywhere else without the permission then we should honor that request.   Personally I think it's dumb to do that but whatever,  If you create something and want others to enjoy it, why limit your creation to 1 download site... again not dis-agreeing with a creators request, just don't agree with the reasoning,  modifying the mod and or using it's components are a different story.  hypothetically if I were to create a mod and said "don't up load this anywhere without my permission" and then dis-appeared for 10 or so years and during that time the site I uploaded to has gone away.... no one gets to enjoy my creation which is the reason I put it out anyways.  

Enjoy
Dietbob

[HeyYou]

Indeed. For a vast majority of these mods, this is the ONLY place they exist........ Does anyone think that the authors WOULDN'T want them shared?