theblackman

Hopefully I adequately responded to this in my sidebar comment but to reiterate, could I recommend that you don't let it colour your responses at all and refrain from mentioning it - saving everyone time. I can assure you I am/was quite chill and will continue to be so. You're welcome to ask me if you're unsure. You might get that feeling but it would ignore the statements I've made about this domain being a nuanced and complex topic and about modders (users and authors) being a broad church. Rather than relying on feelings, why don't use quote/use actual evidence that supports your contention that I "...work more in black and white." But of course, if we can just spout unsupported opinions, then providing evidence is optional, isn't it... Because an opinion unsupported by evidence is dogma. If it is just an opinion, why do you feel the need to defend yourself so vociferously? And 'vaccines cause autism' is just an opinion too but I'm sure you wouldn't allow that sort of BS to be promoted on this forum. Unfortunately, the contention that vaccines cause autism shares the same fatal flaw that your opinion does: a lack of any evidence to support it. And if it is 'just an opinion' then why do you feel the need to mention your important job and how you believe it inoculates you against confirmation bias? You’ve also made an implicit appeal to authority here (your own) in support of your opinion. Unfortunately, you don’t seem to be acknowledging that experts routinely get things wrong even in their own domains of expertise. We saw this demonstrated during COVID when the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention told Americans that they didn’t need to wear face masks. An opinion that was unequivocally wrong. It was Zeynep Tufekci (a social scientist, not a medical professional) who convinced the CDC otherwise. An appeal to authority is not a valid argument in support of your opinion. Further, you make factual claims in support of your opinions, like: "The numbers of those that know proper modding skills has been declining over the years...", but you never actually provide any evidence. Modding of ES games has been going on for two decades now with significant use of automation tools being used for at least a decade. That's 10 years for evidence of a dumbing down of mod users to become apparent. Yet there is no evidence of that occurring (which you admit) and your anecdotes do not constitute evidence. You’re also assuming that your very limited experience with mod users ( I say ‘very limited’ as it constitutes only a tiny fraction of all mod users) is indicative of the wider community. So not only do we have clear opportunity for confirmation bias to occur, there is a selection bias happening as well. Perhaps you should ask yourself how long you'll go on espousing an opinion for which no evidence exists that proves its veracity. If there's still no evidence in another 10 years, are you still going to be banging the same old drum; still stubbornly clinging on to your cherished opinion rather than face the terrible embarrassment of admitting you were wrong and that you voluntarily adopted an unnecessarily negative view of the community you've devoted so much time to....? That was one of the reasons I quoted the community citizenship guide which specifically mentions negative attitudes, such as the one you’ve adopted about the modding community. Conclusion Tech’s assertion that opinions don’t need to be supported by evidence STATUS: Banished to the outer planes of Oblivion by the Hero of Kvatch I don't think I've ever taken issue with your stance on automating mod installs per se, other than a comment over in the other thread to the effect of: it would be good to know if the STEP community would like an automated install option (which has already been addressed here and there). I was actually referring to your decisions to arbitrarily defend some tools/utilities as acceptable automation, but others as unacceptable 'because reasons', which I already mentioned above. Also, at what point does automation actually start to produce this ‘dumbing down’ phenomenon? Does it depend on which automation tools are used, or the number used or some combination of these aspects? I keep identifying the implicit and explicit assumptions you are making and you keep ignoring them.... Please quote or specify the assumptions I’m making because I don’t think I’ve made any. You keep making statements like this, inferring that I am being somehow obtuse or that what I've written has dimensionality beyond that which I have written in my post. That is a rabbithole entirely of your own making. What I mean is what I have written. Speculating on what is not in the content I’ve posted is a waste of time. Again, you’re welcome to ask me if you think I’m intending for you to read between the lines. I’m going to go ahead and assert, with no evidence, that most people reading this don’t care what you do for a job – I certainly don’t and it is entirely irrelevant to this discussion. But I'm sure you enjoyed the unnecessary flex. And NDAs are fairly routine these days. What you do for a job doesn't make you immune to unconsciously allowing cognitive biases to influence your worldview - in fact, your boasting here might even make you more susceptible. There's a reason why hubris was such a dominant theme of classical Greek literature.... I didn't use my 'important' job to try to sound more persuasive and authoritative when I was poking holes in your arguments. I didn't need to. And yes I am familiar with the literature regarding this domain - I've read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking Fast and Slow, for example. For your edification, you might also check out Iain McGilchrist's work (The Master and his Emissary) where he shows that the left hemisphere of the brain is rather adept as making up stories to explain why it does certain things, even when there's abundant evidence to the contrary. Perhaps that helps to explain why humans often dogmatically and irrationally cling to their cherished opinions even when there's no evidentiary or logical reason to do so.... Although avoidance of public embarrassment is a pretty good explanation if you ask me. Certainly in this circumstance, anyway. Conclusion Tech’s assertion that because he has an important job and has signed an NDA, he is immune to cognitive biases STATUS: Suffering from terminal irrelevancy, like Friendster and BeBo Thanks for providing a definition for 'proper modding', at last. If I had to provide a definition I would say that it would include the use of xEdit and The Method (as described in the xEdit documentation). However, as virtually nobody uses The Method, and most mod users use xEdit once at most if at all, it's rather a useless definition as it encompasses so few users, regardless of how many people might agree with it. Some will agree with you that 'proper modding' means to install mods manually but as virtually nobody does that, it is, like my definition of ‘proper modding’, also useless as it has limited practical applicability. It's also ironic that none of the guides that you have curated recommend manually installing mods, although I appreciate that this is your personal opinion, not your STEP opinion. So given the term 'proper modding' is so nebulous and has no commonly agreed definition, it is useless for communicating any meaningful information especially in its use as a prescriptive solution to avoid ‘dumbing down’ and discouraging 'lazy' users. So why continue to use it? Again, you’re making gross generalisations about a huge and diverse group of people and ignoring the fact that some mod users have always done that and will always do that. What you haven’t done, and frankly can’t do, is substantiate that there is more of that happening as a result of automation that there was before automation became widely used. It’s similar to the contention that social media use is making humans dumber, an assertion for which much research has been done but is yet to be proved, although some research has revealed many counter-intuitive results. I mention that last aspect because you have not acknowledged that some things are counter-intuitive and if we relied solely on our intuitions (as you are when you refer to your experience), then there would be some facts about the world that we 'intuited' to be true, that are actually false. But we might never discover that.... You're being unnecessarily hyperbolic here. I’ve never praised automation other than to state the obvious that it saves everyone time. I’ve also not condemned you for speaking out about your experience and the way you've phrased this seems a tad reductionist - there's more to it than that and I have shown that in this post. I’ve repeatedly asked you to provide some evidence to substantiate your opinion and to specify what you mean regarding certain terms you use in support of your opinion and to clarify why you think some automation is acceptable and other forms not. You are making the assertions about automation causing a ‘dumbing down’ and encouraging users to be ‘lazy’. The other side of the debate (me) is not making any positive claims. The burden of proof is on you – which is also mentioned in the citizenship guide, btw. I have said that there is no evidence that supports your assertions and that there are aspects of your stance that are problematic in that they are nebulous and contain double standards. I will grant you that it is possible that there is some dumbing down occurring, but it’s also possible that a supernova might explode over my house before Xmas. Again, you have mischaracterised my comments. I recommend you familiarise yourself with the terms ‘strawmanning’ and ‘steelmanning’ because it’s becoming a tad irritating having to correct your erroneous interpretations of my comments. I stated that the lack of evidence to support your ‘dumbing down’ opinion should be enough to reconsider your worldview, not that you don’t think that mod installation should be automated. The reason I think that is because you have voluntarily adopted an unnecessarily negative view (which is one aspect of your worldview) of mod users based on (as you’ve admitted) no evidence. Of course, you have the right to hold that view if you wish, but I don’t think it’s appropriate to promulgate that view on a forum where you have considerable influence and other people are likely to uncritically accept that view as fact, especially given the fact-based claims you have made in support of your view (mentioned previously), that again, are not supported by any evidence. Oh dear. You know what a synonym is right? Still, if I can make fun of you for your cringey flex about your job, I guess it's OK for you to make fun of me for my word choice. If not, that would make your Admin note a bit hypocritical - making fun of me, but then admonishing me for indulging in, what you arbitrarily define as, 'personal attacks' (and are still yet to identify/quote them). What is this, tit for tat? Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery but it does suggest a lack of creativity.... I’m not sure you do understand my point of view. Given the amount of content you’ve devoted to it, you seem preoccupied with my state of mind rather than what I’ve actually written, you’ve strawmanned my comments (as I show above) and you keep referring to all the assumptions I’ve made but you don’t actually identify any. Last year, during the fiasco that was the change to NM's mod deletion policy, a link to a Reddit thread was posted to the GMAD forum on NM. The Reddit thread contained dozens of toxic comments from mod users towards mod authors, as a group. You can read for yourself the responses from mod authors to that thread, in the GMAD forum – the responses range from angry to hurt to resignation and everything in between. So your assertion that making comments about a group of people as long as you are not referring to individuals is totally ok, is frankly wrong and this one example alone disproves it. And I could come up with any number of further examples here, but you could even do a thought experiment yourself to disprove your own assertion - a history book also might be a good place to start. So I stand beside my wrong-headed comment; as I wrote before, it wasn't a personal attack, it described behaviour which I found a little offensive and other people could as well. Conclusion Tech's assertion that it's OK to make negative comments about a group of people STATUS: Systematically demolished by the Akulakhan under Red Mountain. See directly above. Those are adjectives, not titles. I’ve re-read my comments. You are quite wrong. I have consistently addressed my points to what you have written – I made statements like ‘your stance…’, ‘your view…’. And I have not been preoccupied with someone’s state of mind. Further, you’ve brought your RL job into the discussion here which is a strange move if you’re (erroneously) criticising me for directing my replies to you personally. Stating that I have made personal attacks doesn't mean that that's what I in fact did (that's a 'because I said so' assertion). Quote the examples (as is recommended by the citizenship guide) so that I have the opportunity to either clarify or apologise and withdraw the offending passage. Name one. You can't have refuted any because you haven’t specified any. So personal attacks are OK if you perceive you are the victim of one? I don’t think it unreasonable to expect that moderators hold themselves to a higher standard of behaviour….

That was one of my posts.

Do you mean the one where I implored everyone to not assume another's state of mind (basically the golden rule)?

Just wanted to bring some attention to this utility as it looks to be nearing an alpha release. It works with MO2 and zmerge and simulates conflict resolution as described by 'The Method' in the xEdit documentation. Youtube demo here. NM forum thread here.

Discussion topic: Simplified Weapon Retexture Project 45 Auto SMG Bullet Texture Fix by cbgreely Wiki Link Fixes the texture of the bullet in the magazine of the .45 Auto SMG in Simplified Weapon Retexture Project

That's a relief. But STEP are the good guys. Also, we have all collaborated and continue to collaborate on making modding better, so given we have an actual relationship of sorts, it's a bit different.

You could have endorsed or agreed with the request in my sidebar, as Tech did, in the interests of continuing in a more productive and positive manner. Yet you didn't. That's disappointing. It seems like you are trying to force me to agree with your assumptions about my state of mind and intentions. I won't as they are untrue and I reject your assessment of my phraseology as inaccurate. The snip you agreed with didn't include my underlined sentence, which I felt was the most important part. Did you not agree with it?

If I might sidebar for a moment: In this thread, 1. I have been accused of being sarcastic 2. I have been accused of not being objective 3. of intentionally being insulting and posting with an annoying and insulting tone 4. of being argumentative 5. of being offended 6. of trying to change someone's views to match my own 7. of coming in hot and attacking personal opinions 8. of being passive-aggressive 9. of being upset and angry 10. I've had my what I've written and my intentions deliberately thrown into an uncharitable light 11. The words I've used have been made fun of and then I've been threatened for making 'personal jabs' 12. I've shown how some comments objectively don't comply with the Citizenship Guide and had this casually dismissed as 'incorrect and unnecessarily argumentative and sarcastic' when I didn't actually say/write anything 13. I've been accused of having trouble acquiescing or of admitting fault But not once has anybody actually asked if I was feeling/intentionally being any of those things and not once (as far as I can tell) was any one of these accusations actually substantiated with evidence or a reason. Please do your fellow human beings the courtesy of not assuming their state of mind, nor of imputing onto them a state of mind. It's hard enough accurately reading someone in person let alone trying to do it from the words they've written on a forum, words that by their nature are often imprecise, no matter how hard we try to use the appropriate one. Invariably you will be wrong about their state of mind/intentions, and once you've made the accusation, it's very hard to put the genie back in the bottle and can derail a conversation that otherwise might have been quite productive. Not to mention the fact that it's fairly arrogant to just assume someone else's state of mind and it's frustrating and unfair for the person who has to take the time to refute the false assumption. If you are unsure, just ask them rather than assuming you know what/how they're thinking/feeling or what they intended. That's the reasonable and responsible thing to do. Or better yet, just don't make any assumption at all.

And I adopted no such sarcastic tone. I also know because I wasn't in a sarcastic frame of mind and I was consciously taking care to be as objective as possible. Please do me the courtesy, as I do for you, of not imputing onto me or of assuming the mental state I am in at any time. Indeed it does, and this is helped by not making erroneous assumptions about another person's mental state and not deliberately throwing their actions into the least charitable light. I honestly don't understand what this means. I had hoped, from my comments above in response to the personal attacks allegation, that I would convey that I am choosing my words with precision and care.

Because I didn't need to say anything given how obvious it is that some of Tech's comments don't comply with the citizenship guide. So it's OK for you to adopt 'an annoyed and somewhat insulting tone' but admonish me for doing the same. And by the way, you are reading that tone into my comments. I am neither annoyed nor am I trying to be insulting. What's the difference between 'scraping' from the citizenship guide and quoting from it....? I did post objectively - from the citizenship guide. I even didn't say anything in order to be as objective as possible. You took issue with that and accused me of scraping - an accusation you provided no proof for, not to mention it being a fairly uncharitable take (the CG encourages contributing in a manner of good spirit). I don't think it does - it misses the points I made about the deficiencies in Tech's opinion, reasons for which I either provided objective reasons or made logical statements in support of. You're right that we're both stating opinions, but nowhere have I made a statement such as 'automation is dumbing down users/the modding process' (paraphrasing) and then provided no actual proof or objective reason to support it. I'd also like to address the accusations of personal attacks. As an example, I've used the term 'wrong-headed' to describe the Tech's behaviour of making broad generalisations about and assigning value-laden labels (e.g. lazy) onto a huge, diverse group of people in order to justify holding and promoting that opinion. Use of that term is not a personal attack - it is a word that succinctly describes behaviour that could be deemed hurtful and offensive to some members of that group. Further, given the industry that Tech claims to work in, he should be only too aware of how wrong-headed that behaviour is. ___ From your response it seems to me that admins can ignore the content of the citizenship guide because people who show how they aren't complying with it get threatened. That's a healthy community.....

Given how easy it is to muck things up in the CK and not realise it and then save the esp and not be warned about any potential issue, it's not surprising. Developing in the CK and then moving to something like UE, it's not difficult to understand why it takes Beth so long to make games and why there's so many bugs happy little accidents.

I don't quite follow. Discovering under what conditions the errors are reliably produced is the aim of testing. More or less.

I'm sure if someone did some structured, methodical testing we could firm up some conclusions based on the results but who would do that when making mods and playing the games is much more fun.

Just keeping this topic updated for those interested; note showler's comment here and excerpted: "It goes back and forth. Not too long ago the problem of disappearing floors in Apocrypha came up, so "don't clean" was the advice. Then xEdit was updated to avoid the issue and "do clean" became the advice again."

All good. When I install the guide (sorry for the delay - we've had some fairly catastrophic flooding in my part of the world) I might do a quick comparison of the two.

You've entirely missed the point of my comments and responses which is bemusing because I clearly explained them in my last response to him. I've never accused Tech of being anti-collections or anti-wabbajack. He must be anti-demons though, given he's an angel.... The reason Tech isn't providing evidence is that there is none. How do you know this self-evident evidence (a fantastic oxymoron) isn't merely confirmation bias? You don't.... I've been modding ES games since 2006 and making mods for nearly a decade and I've never seen any evidence that automation leads to a dumbing down of the average mod user, or makes them lazier, as Tech has claimed elsewhere. And neither have any of my peers over at GMAD. Perhaps my large amount of time and experience is somehow inferior to Tech's....? The problem with analogies is that something is always lost in the comparison and often oversimplifies domains that are complex and nuanced. Like the modding community and ecosystem. And your car analogy is problematic in another way but it's largely irrelevant to the discussion here.

Discussion topic: Glowing Cazadors and Retexture by Scout Wiki Link A retexture of the Cazadors, with an optional ESP to add in a new variant, Glowing Cazadors.

The content of your reply makes it abundantly clear that you have either misread or misinterpreted me. This isn't a difference of opinion. This is the equivalent of one person saying 'astrology is a good method for determining mate selection' and someone else saying: please substantiate your assertion with evidence and logic. I do disagree with your views because they: 1. Are not supported by any evidence; 2. Clearly and objectively contain double standards and arbitrary decisions; 3. Are not separable from your own inherent confirmation biases; 4. Rely on vague terms which you've never bothered to or simply refuse to define, nor could you e.g. 'proper modding'; 5. Rely on you making broad and sweeping generalisations about a huge group of people (mod users) again based on no evidence - honestly, why do you think this is acceptable behaviour? Mischaracterising and casually dismissing my legitimate criticism of your views as a 'difference of opinion' given the clear and compelling deficiencies I've identified and further compounding it by encouraging me to step away for a moment only shows that you seem to be unable to grasp how precarious the foundation is on which you've built your shaky thesis. #1 above on its own should be enough for you to reconsider your worldview. Did you notice that nothing in your reply to me makes your opinion any more convincing, you provide no definitions, no evidence, but there does seem to be a lot of evasiveness. Here and in the other thread I've provided direct rebuttal to many of the points you made. That means I had to read and understand the points you made. Clearly I could not have done that if I was unable to consider your perspective. Accusations like this are clearly untrue so why bother to make them? I'm surprised at you. ____ To avoid any further misinterpretations or mischaracterisations, let me make my position abundantly clear to you: Stop believing in and promulgating BS, particularly on a forum where you have some considerable influence, just because it suits your point of view and then hiding behind a 'it's just an opinion' shield when someone challenges you on the claims you made in order to try justify why you hold that opinion.

Qolore7 (mod author) getting trolled in the comments by his mates is gold!

Here we go again. For most people, modding one's game is merely a means to an end. Playing the actual game is the hobby. Downloading, installing and conflict resolution are tasks that, I'd dare to venture, most people wouldn't consider a journey and would gladly avoid given a choice. The journey is the adventure in the game they modded. Please provide a definition for 'modding done properly', that avoids use of value judgements and bias and define shortcuts that would be ok to use on a 'modding journey'. Personally if I had to provide a definition, I doubt it would include 'following a curated mod list'. Time is the most precious 'resource' we have so yes, time is the actual problem, or rather wanting to use one's time most effectively. You arbitrarily accept some automation tools as ok 'because reasons' but dismiss others as being antithetical to the 'modding journey'. It's a shame you haven't modified your views since our last collision on this subject because you still continue to make biased and selective value judgements and make statements so general in nature about a fairly nuanced domain, that they are rendered virtually valueless because they fail to encompass any of that nuance. Your stance is inconsistent, arbitrary, laden with double standards and frankly, wrong-headed.

Sure. While you're doing that I'll do a clean install of FNV and install the mods in the guide.

Discussion topic: High Resolution Screens by lStewieAl - Wall_SoGB Wiki Link Increases the render resolution of in-game screens (Pipboy, terminals, character creation menu) to match game's screen resolution.

Do you have a date in mind for the release of the next version of the guide? No pressure, I was just thinking of doing another playthrough. Let me know if you need any help with anything.

Discussion topic: Pip-Boy Shading Fix NVSE by Wall_SoGB Wiki Link Fixes Pip-Boy's shading, making it not ignore lights around it