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Basically, that's it. Torrents get a bad rep due to many/most? being a primary avenue for piracy (although a proportion are perfectly legal and legit). I personally prefer them for obtaining and sharing large files, but we'd rather not tarnish our reputation here by association with what the majority of the public (and our users) think is a bit 'shady'. Torrents and torrent sites are still considered the 'underbelly' of the internet by the general populace, regardless of that being Truth or not. a whole assortment of mods. SRO covers more material than anything else by far. It really is the best "vanilla makeover" mod out there, regardless of what a few people say about the source of the textures (Bethesda vanilla/DLC) and their edits (some general filtering, some hand painting).

I don't see any definitive trend in their network stats other than the site became pretty popular in 2011 (and maybe Jan, see below). There is an 'iffy' trend whereby downloads dip in mid Spring and late Summer. Spring is usually associated with better weather in the temperate northern hemisphere, where most users are located. Late Summer is associated with school starting back up. These trends are not very consistent among the only three years that there is enough data to show anything. The one definite trend is peak downloads just after Christmas, which can be explained by Winter break and/or escape from January seasonal depression. Dips can happen as a result of server admin activity at certain times of the year (e.g., major updates, etc) ... sometimes stats collection applications need to go down, and since those apps are not essential for site functionality, they can often be neglected. As far as mod page trends, I just turned it on for STEP, and we had a big drop in April too. I attribute this trend (apparently common on a few other mod pages) to the recent paid mod debacle (Apr 23-27) coupled with what already may be lower general site usage due to nicer weather ... people were using Steam more, posting on Nexus main Page news posts, frantically searching Reddit, making whoopee, planting gardens, having picnics, and generally distracted from actual mods.

Torrents themselves are not generally anything to worry about ... it's the navigation around torrent sites that can be more of a problem, since they often incorporate HTML redirects or other potentially harmful code associated with links, buttons, etc. Just use a good antivirus program like ESET (MS Security Essentials is not usually good enough) with real-time browser protection turned on. Also, don't ever run files inside the torrent file without first scanning them. STEP does not advocate the use of torrents, but SRO is only available this way, so we vetted and made an exception. We will be dropping SRO soon though for this reason.

Also, remember to use Google Translate on any of our pages here if you want to get it in German or any other language. I think English to other languages work a little better than conversion into English from other languages. Translation can be done using the browser plugin applied to any page, so it is pretty convenient.

Correct .... @s4n see note #2 under Anonymous Parameters

Yeah, I now have a preference for named arguments, due to the potential URL issues ... not applicable in this case, but I think it is a good "best practice" for new templates in general. The way it is now is probably even better with respect to functional specificity, even though it is more complex and harder to follow. I would prefer to use a consistent method for all templates whichever way you think is good best practice in various situations.

Welcome Alicia

On the template page, only "Click Me!" is hyperlinked, not the entire length of the horizontal line, so still confused ... or do you mean that it used to be the entire line (even blank) that was underlined and clickable?

Great, thank you for taking care of it all ;)

I am not sure what the issue was as stated: "The entire line for the text to click to reveal the text will be clickable instead of only the text."

me too. I'll get to it at some point ;)

Many thanks!

Yep, that's true, but global replace can be tricky and devastating unless you go through it and review potential changes verify carefully. At the moment, the template works as expected, so it is relatively low priority ... now if transclusion limits are a big issue, this change could make a big difference, but I don't think it is an issue outside of a couple User guides, no?

Yes, I guess that's true ... I get caught up in semantics ;) I am not sure why it uses a complex method now, but I assume it was early training in wiki coding for s4n ... testing usage of parserfuctions. Making these changes will require many template calls (except for "{{clear}}") to be updated, so I will see about it at some point.

But I am saying, 'yes' there is good reason why we would only want either left or right values. I also think that we can simplify the template, since we are only talking about changing one attribute value amongst three values. I think named parameters method works well for this case (including default value after the pipe): <div style="clear: {{{method|both}}}"></div>... calling like ... {{clear|method=left}} {{clear|method=right}} {{clear|method=both}} {{clear}}The last call without the parameter defined will substitute the default 'both' due to the template parameter containing this default value.

Behavior is actually different for all three. I used both in the WB and MO guides I think ... maybe all three. It helps to be able to place images on both left and right while allowing text to flow correctly in either situation.

@Tech Could you comment as to those members in the moderators forum?

... and we you too krypto The majority of the community (even on the Nexus) are decent and appreciative people, and the minority are creating the lame mods, lame propaganda, and lame commentary. MAs would do well to remember that for every trumpeting pustule there are at least 9 actual people. They may not say much, because they also don't want to be on the receiving end of the bullying group. Are you sure it is 15-20% or are you just guessing? I would say no more than 10% of even the Nexus community, although group think is contagious for those of us who are sheep. MAs can always come here for a fair critique or a friendly audience. ... and we also you too RC Side note: Sorry to those offended by emoticons ... I need to fix that ugly heart as a proper PNG EDIT: much better

I agree it is about control for sure; however, for mod authors and utility devs, it was first about money (understandably so). Money was also important to many short-sighted mod users, but anyone thinking long term had to be thinking about control (DRM-ification, etc.). On the other hand, I don't think Valve approached MAs because it was cheaper. It would cost them nothing but time to reach out to the whole community (sure, time is $). Regardless though, Valve was not expected to reach out as a business with proprietary concerns ... I expected that MAs would/should reach out to the community or at least community leaders to vet the whole methodology. They should have told Valve that they were interested but that they would rather be inclusive rather than exclusive. If I were approached, I would have stipulated as much, and Valve couldn't have done anything about it. What kept MAs quiet I would guess is ultimately the chance to earn some money --they perhaps did not want to risk being dropped from consideration of ground-floor opt-in. It is all understandable, but Valve already controls too much if they can so easily lure our MAs into exclusive ventures that affect the entire community. Luckily, any person can become a mod author or utility dev and release their products in any way they choose, so as existing mod devs leave out of angst with the community, some of today's mod users will fill in the dev gaps --that is how it always has worked anyway, so that is why modding will never die as long as the game developer supports open modding like Bethesda does. It will be interesting to see how Bethesda releases future TES/Fallout games though. Hopefully, they will always allow derivative works from their base assets as an effectively open modding policy for distribution from places like the Nexus, regardless of setting up a mod "store" at the outset. If they don't, then projects like Morroblivion and continued modding of their old games will keep the hobby alive for years and years.

Glad to provide some entertainment ... I have to remember now to be a bit less critical of those that ask the seemingly dumb questions :P

@aaltair See prev posts with links ... RE the implementation of the pay-for mod system on SW: I am merely bringing this up in hopes that this sort of thing will not happen again in the future ... What is not really getting any mention at all is the ?fact? that certain members of the TES/Fallout modding community were privy to this implementation for the past several weeks (?months?), and the decision was made (presumably Valve's stipulation) that it should be kept under wraps (i.e., 'secret'). Those that allegedly knew about this beforehand seem to only have been mod authors like chesko, Isoku, Arthmoor and whomever else had a paid mod up, but not necessarily Dark0ne or other leadership within the modding community. From what I have heard, Valve appears to have solicited select MAs to opt into the now defunct system and asked them to keep a lid on it. I for one don't appreciate that the larger community was kept in the dark by Valve and all MAs in the know. Why would they do this if they all believed in a pay-for mod implementation and felt it was the right thing to do? I think this all could have been avoided if select members of the modding community refused to keep secrets and demanded Valve be transparent. This would have allowed for a more thoughtful 'wading' into this new paradigm in a more informed (and successful) manner. I personally support content creators' right to distribute their mods in any way they wish, but I personally felt slighted after learning that some modding community members kept the facts hidden from the rest. (no worries, all is forgiven from my POV ... I feel bad for participating MAs now) Secrets of this magnitude within the community create social disparity and lead to further division, so I hope that mod authors, mod utility developers, and mod users can remain more open in the future with regard to changes affecting all groups ... and I know that many mod users may deserve such treatment based upon their past behavior, but each one of these groups can claim its share of nasty, vocal members. Mod users just have a louder voice because there are more of them ... but obviously, the majority of each of these groups are good people with either nothing, little, or lots of good things to say. Getting a bit of flack from a minority when things are transparent certainly beats getting a ton of flack from the majority as a result of keeping secrets and springing a huge change unexpectedly upon the entire group. Hopefully lesson learned and moving forward we can all band together rather than forming cliques with questionable motives ;)

petitions require name and address, so 95%+ of people won't sign for that reason alone ... make up a fake address!

Exactly. The only issue is that the donate code will only be available for mods that activate it and set it up properly. Tannin could easily do a few sanity checks if there are markers in the API or wherever Tannin scrapes mod info at this time. There is only one string (the source ID for Paypal) that is required, so Tannin should be able to create a link in any manner he chooses using regular expressions, fe. to scrape the code and place it into his own context. The point is to make MO attractive to mod authors by facilitating donations where applicable (which may be why Tannin added an endorsement button long ago). We could simply add some boilerplate text to all mod pages advising our users to consider donating to mods/projects that they use and enjoy. Similarly, we could add a reminder in the guide. It is still hard to find, and requires more clicks, which is less convenient and less likely to increase an MA's donation rate. Thanks!

Yes, that is the question, but I assume it is in the Nexus API along with all of the other mod page data.

hmmmm, no ... maybe THAT's the problem EDIT: Yep, that was the problem >