Suggestion: Accelerate the launch of Oblivion and Skyrim MH?

[KyleKatarn]

Good Morning,

As i'm sure most of the community here is aware i've been around the community for a few years now, and when i show up, i normally have something specific in mind. Today is no different

We need to accelerate the launch of Oblivion and Skyrim Mod History

I can provide sufficient reason to make the work well warrented. Namely: The deletion of mods for these games has begun

Many files for these 2 games have been removed from the nexus following the Paid Mods incident and the firestorm it started. Some modders have also been trolled out of the game and locked there mods down, making them endangered. There have also been several incidents of Modders being deleted from the Nexus or having there mods hijacked which has lead to the loss of mods.

First off, i would like to provide an example.

Skyrim Monster Mod

This name should be semi famaliar. It was deleted from the Nexus (and its creator banned) for using models from other games, which i do not believe is a legitimate issue when the games he took the models from were over 7 years old at the time. Namely: He (dogtown1) stole the Bloodwings model from Borderlands and used a Nexus moderators weapons for use in his FalloutNV mod. This moderator then used his powers to falsify a report stating Dogtown 1 was warned several times (which dogtown1 was not) and ban dogtown. Resulting in his ban and the deletion of his mods from the Nexus.

The whole [X] mod disappears for [Y] illegitimate reason (E.G.: Someone puts it on hidden JUST because they dont want to allow people to use it anymore because the community trolled him such as in the case of Giskard.) + the recent and immoral trend of hiding mods behind Private Download sites to restrict access to it to those who are active on a specific community (a community often created or owned by the mod maker) and the deletion of mods over imported assets (something has LONG been a non-issue in the modding community) has led to the creation of a reddit dedicated to hunting these mods down.

http:\\www.reddit.com\r\modpiracy\    (Not really about piracy, more so hunting down mods that are no longer available for whatever reason)

I SAY AGAIN THAT LINK CONTAINS NO ILLEGAL CONTENT OR PIRACY. CHECK IT BEFORE YOU COMMENT ''PIRATE!'' OR SIMILIAR

We should take the opportunity to archive all these mods so that in the future they will at least exist.
Granted we would have to abide by the following:

If a mod is not publicly available elsewhere, and the modder can be reached. We cannot have it on public access. But we can keep it around so at some      point in the future it can be released
Exceptions should be made when the author cannot be reached as many mods and there makers disappear without any explanation. Especially in the case of illegitimate bans

in the case of any DMCA requests due to imported contents we would have to make them non public as well, although i highly doubt anyone will bother with a DMCA.

Also, i believe we should allow adult mods on Mod History. External hosting is too unreliable. We could put the AO section behind a login wall to verify age. There are a great many skyrim ''adult mods'' that arent really that adulterated. Such as the mod ''Being Female''.

I have more to say but i'm rather tired and i want the moderators to consider my proposal.

Ive already began collecting unavailable mods. I can have them all up within one week upon request.

This community is going to self destruct very soon (especially if the rumors of Paid Mods returning have truth). We need to act while we can.

[Fliggerty]

There is one real problem with the development aspect of your proposal: I am a sole programmer with a full-time job and a family. Finding the time to dedicate to this anymore is extremely difficult.

That being said, I do agree with you. I have a LOT of Oblivion mods from PES archived that I haven't been able to make public yet. I recognize that the need and demand for the service provided by Modhistory is growing more urgent. In that case, so too should the response from the community. Unfortunately the efforts of others have dwindled enormously in the past year. So what we really need is more members of the community taking the time to find and collect ANY and ALL mods that we can preserve and getting them to me in one way or another.

[KyleKatarn]

I could hunt down working links for mods that no longer have official sources available, and when i have time make copys at my Mediafire account to hold them hostage until you can get around to finding a more official place for them.

Only a temporary solution. but a solution nonetheless. Im not sure where to rally the troops from though. Im sure as hell not asking for help from the Nexus (Which is troll users AND moderators these days.)

Also i offer my hand in helping with the construction of Oblivion and Skyrim mod history. Im still fairly handy with HTML code assuming its nothing hyper-complex. Unless im mistaken isnt all thats missing from Oblivion Mod History an actual download database? The site looks to be atleast visually there minus a few pieces of art. If you need another moderator at some point, im also experienced in the art of moderation.

Anyways, im going to get started on the mod collection thing.

[Leonardo]

I have a LOT of Oblivion mods from PES archived that I haven't been able to make public yet. I recognize that the need and demand for the service provided by Modhistory is growing more urgent. In that case, so too should the response from the community. Unfortunately the efforts of others have dwindled enormously in the past year. So what we really need is more members of the community taking the time to find and collect ANY and ALL mods that we can preserve and getting them to me in one way or another.

deaths_soul (BSF) or Visceral Moolight (TAL) sent you a PM/e-mail about the archived Oblivion mods from PES last year I think (it could even be 1-2 years now), but I don't think he got a reply back from you.  I also know that the founder AndalayBay were interested to host those Oblivion mods of PES on TAL as long it's necessary.

I know you have a LOT of TES mods of various TES games, mostly Morrowind, Oblivion, and some Skyrim mods, archived and now GameFront is shutting down at the 30th of April 2016.  The need for a Game Modding History site(s) is even more urgent for the community, especially for games that doesn't have a wide spread community modding sites that's similiar to what the TES modding community has.

For example, the Total War modding community doesn't seem to have smaller community sites not that am I aware of, and the largest community site is no doubt the Total War Center (TWC) site, but TWC can only host mods that's max 100 MB I think it is and I know a lot of TW mods is sometimes even larger than the major overhauls for Oblivion (FCOM, MMM, OOO) are together hence for hosting large TW mods on external sites e.g Moddb, GameFront, and some less known free file hosting sites like FileFactory, mediafire, and lately also on 4shared.

However, the TW modding community even host mods on the site that in the past was known as MegaUpload before the site closure by FBI a couple of years ago.  That being said, the need for a mod history site is urgent for any game that's a modding community.

[Wolf undefined]

To my knowledge, the owner of Skyrim's Monster Mod had a hissy fit and didn't reupload his work for a reason (iiRC he was banned after PES shut down which is why it was on PES when PES was shut down).  Honestly I think the Nexus still has most of its mods, I don't think theres a huge rush.  Most of the Oblivion Mods that were exclusive to PES are archived and I'd love to see those come back (since they were the good ones...)

[Drakkmore]

Fliggerty is working on a scraper for Gamefront which has quite a few Oblivion, and Skyrim mods on it. I've got all of the Skyrim mods that made it to PES before it was shut down too (not that there were very many of them, but I got them). I hope the Admins over at Gamefront get back to Fliggerty, so he can scour the site for the mods. At any rate I know mod hosting sites are starting to drop again, bit we'll just have to be patient. As Fliggerty has stated he is the only person working on the new Modding history pages,a nd he will get it finished when he can.

[Daedric_Cat]

The Gamefront TES files are still up, if anyone wants to grab what they can.

Grab documentation, too. A number of files are .esp only, especially in the Oblivion section. C/P documentation of the file notes to notepad helps. I don't know what scrapers can pick up, but it can't hurt to have extra documentation to be added to the History sites later.

I think everything will be fine. It's just the matter of time.

[Drakkmore]

Yeah Fliggerty's still working on it. I also don't know what the scraper will grab, but IIRC the PES scraper managed to grab descriptions, but not screenshots. I'm not certain on this though so don't quote me. I'll ask Fligg about it.