[Victor Oropeza]

It's (Nexus) modding etiquette. It makes sense, but I agree that in this case where it concerns a community patch and not some random mod compilation, and the fact that all the original authors and file download links of the compiled fixes were provided, I think an exception can be made.

There have been a lot of people porting FO3 mods to NV without crediting the original modders so the Nexus moderators are now a little more alert to these kind of things.

[Cayal]

Hello everyone,

The sad thing about this situation is that it was not a contributor to the mod who made a complaint, but a commenter in one of the contributor's mods who offered the mod maker some advice. The commenter PM'd me stating that they felt put out in not receiving a credit. I politely explained that it would be impossible for me to give credit in this way as it would mean I would have to trail through every single comment thread and credit anyone who had made a suggestion towards the respective mod, and that they shouldn't feel put out after having given help. This evidently was not good enough.

I think anyone who witnessed my conduct in making this compilation would agree that although I did not seek individual permission for the use of every mod, I made proper crediting a priority, and expressed my thanks to all contributors, trying my best to foster a good community attitude. Not one contributor objected. In fact, some expressed pleasure in being included. The whole thing was going very well, with the community drawing together their resources in order to produce something for everyone's benefit.

Now, because of a single complaint, the whole mod is hamstrung. I am debating which is the best way to go forward at this point, because the extra admin required to seek permission is a drain on my personal time, when I don't have much anyway. Why is a thank you not good enough?

What I do not want to do is to penalize the whole community because of one person's selfish and arrogant attitude. So I will continue work on the patch. I would like to host it on the nexus as I have been using those sites for years, and I think they do a very good job on the whole. The rules they create regarding permissions are in response to people complaining about being ripped off, and I agree with this. However, I have not ripped anybody off. I have dutifully credited every single mod contributor and clearly marked what I'm doing as a compilation made by the community. Many people feel therefore that the mod being taken down is unfair. And it is.

But I fart in the face of unfairness and tweak the nose of spoil-sportiness, for I am Zenball, compiler of The Undying Community Bug Fix Compilation Patch!

Huzzah!

Anyway, what I plan to do is to make a 'permissions thread' here on the official forums, so mod contributors can state in the thread that they give me permission to include their mod. Mods given permission will be marked off. If after a few days there are some stragglers, I will contact them. For future updates of the mod, individual permission will be sought through the mod creator's comment thread on the nexus. Or, what would be much more useful, the mod makers themselves should suggest and permit their own bug fixes for inclusion into the compiled patch.

This is the best way to go forwards from here. Onwards and upwards!

And thank you to everyone for your support.

ZB

edit: for clarification.

[Robert DeLarosa]

http://file.qip.ru/get/zxTwpp7X/Compilation_Patch_v0_05-35909.html
Meanwhile, you can get CP 0.05 here. Just wait for "Download file now" link to appear and click it.

Should not use acronym CP, it alerts the internet police ya know..

[JaNnatul Naimah]

what i dont understand is that some unknown commenter can get a whole mod to go offline for a long time. i mean he's not even the original creator of the fix.. If i tell Bethesda in a suggestion forum that they should introduce pink ponies as ridable mounts, and they decide to do it, i cannot claim anything out of this. 1. because there is no agreement that i am eligible for anything 2. because i am not a member of the production team. And why would i? The knowledge that thousands of people are riding 'my' pink pony would be a great laugh.

[DAVId Bryant]

I could see if I can have chat with someone on the Nexus staff, I used to be a moderator there for a while.

[Britta Gronkowski]

what i dont understand is that some unknown commenter can get a whole mod to go offline for a long time. i mean he's not even the original creator of the fix.. If i tell Bethesda in a suggestion forum that they should introduce pink ponies as ridable mounts, and they decide to do it, i cannot claim anything out of this. 1. because there is no agreement that i am eligible for anything 2. because i am not a member of the production team. And why would i? The knowledge that thousands of people are riding 'my' pink pony would be a great laugh.

Incidentally, many of the "new" features of FNV were realized by modders first in FO3 and Oblivion....buit that's another discussion.

@Zenball
I am glad this did not sour your spirit to continue with the project. I really think it's a bit excessive to have to obtain permission for simple fixes rather just those more involved fixes using scripts, textures, and meshes. This will slow the progress of the project (but then again so will the release of an official patch, because then you'll have to go over the plugin and remove the fixes corrected by the patch). If I haven't said it yet, thanks for what you are doing. If we had to consolidate the fixes ourselves, it would take...forever.

[AnDres MeZa]

I'm well aware of the situation as I was the one who took over handling it from Buddah. I've read every post in this thread thus far.

I have two choices; protect the people who do the work or protect the people who wrap up all the fixes in to one easy to download package. Personally I choose protecting the creative developers rather than the folks who are willing to do the gift wrapping.

If the fixes are really easy then get off your backside and do them yourself and provide them to Zen's project. If permission is needed then help Zen get in contact with the relevant people. This mod could go back up now if Zen just had a list of those files that were free-to-use and those files he had permission to use and he removed anything else until such time as he did get permission. Once I get the go-ahead from Zen that everything in the file is as it should be it can go back up.

[Tom]

While I find that reasonable, DarkOne, the fact that a commenter (and not a contributor) to a mod can get an entire mod yanked because the commenter believes he deserves credit for something he only supplied comments for and not any actual work for is a bit off. Are you going to require Zen (and other mod authors) to get permission from every single commenter on a mod before you allow that mod to be distributed? That sounds a little extreme.

[helen buchan]

Who is being protected from what exactly? This kind of thing just hinders progress. Why not leave the mod open for download and give Zenball a day to include this person's name? If i had to choose between helping a whole community versus one person, id help the whole community. Doesnt that sound reasonable too?

Another solution could be to include every fix' description within this community patch in .txt format. To make sure nothing or noone is being left out.

[rheanna bruining]

Zen implicated himself in the file's comments, just read back a little further. The file got reported to us several times regarding file permissions that sparked us to take a closer look. We rely on anyone to report files that have been used without permission, not just the person who feels they have been wronged.

Who is being protected from what exactly? This kind of thing just hinders progress. Why not leave the mod open for download and give Zenball a day to include this person's name? If i had to choose between helping a whole community versus one person, id help the whole community. Doesnt that sound reasonable too?

Do you actually create mods yourself, blackice?

[Heather Kush]

As DarkOne already explained it's not the commenter. It's Zenball who thinks he don't need permissions from the mod authors.
I had never problems to get permissions per PM on nexus if I needed one for my mods. Every PM was answered in a few hours, the longest one needed 1 day. It's fast and easy so I don't understant Zenball with his complains that this is to complicated and he couldn't make his mod compilation if he had to ask. I think that is simply not true.

[Laura Richards]

Guys, regardless of who implicated who. The policies on Nexus explicitly state that permission is required for using mods unless otherwise stated by the authors. Dark0ne cannot pick and choose which mods get this rule applied to. It would create way too many headaches, and the mods there are busting their humps currently trying to keep things in order. The Nexus is fairly well respected in the modding community for exactly this reason. They respect the authors. If this changes, then the Nexus goes downhill quick. Which isn't good for any of us.

Yes, some of the fixes are simple one liners. It doesn't matter though. Someone took the time to fire up the GECK, make a change, then upload it to the Nexus.

And honestly, it wouldn't take that long to PM each of the authors, or do a quick scan to see what permissions they have their addons released under. We can, as Dark0ne pointed out, help in this aspect by breaking the list up and contacting the authors ourselves. Once everything is in order the addon can be unhidden.

[Carlos Rojas]

Do you actually create mods yourself, blackice?

No, do you? i think we should all share our resources when it comes to fixes. This is about fixing a game for everyone, not adding more content for some people interested in it liek regular mods do. You dont see Bethesda release a hundred small fixes we have to download individually.

[Brittany Abner]

No, do you?

No, I realised I had no modding talent so put what limited talents I did have to use for the good of the community. 9 years, 1.9 million members, 120 million downloads later I feel like I've done something for the community, rather than just moan on an internet forum.

[Jessica Raven]

No, I realised I had no modding talent so put what limited talents I did have to use for the good of the community. 9 years, 1.9 million members, 120 million downloads later I feel like I've done something for the community, rather than just moan on an internet forum.

Good for you, but do you have something to add to this discussion too? Im trying to bring this to attention , not for myself, i have the patch from a mirror already. For the community, like you said.

[Channing]

It's fast and easy so I don't understant Zenball with his complains that this is to complicated and he couldn't make his mod compilation if he had to ask. I think that is simply not true.

Well, he didn't say he couldn't do it if he had to ask everyone for permission (at least not based on the part of his reply posted by DarkOne), but he did say it would be a lot of work--and it is. Modders don't share the same online routine so some do take a long time to respond. This is compounded by the fact that there are literally dozens and dozens of modders that need to be contacted individually in this instance, unless they give prior permission ("you can do whatever you want with this..."), For simple, fixes, it is very possible that some people just upload then dissappear...you know the type who don't answer questions or bug reports in the comment thread of their own mods.


Having said that, before there are any more insinuations about how Nexus is draconian in its rules and such....DarkOne is caught between a rock and a hard place. If the Nexus didn't enforce its policies about respecting modders' wishes about how their mods are (re)distribued, I would stop uploading stuff there, and a lot of people would too. How many people would want to upload their mods to a website where the site operators do not care if the modders' work is reappropriated without permission? This isn't -just- about the community fixes patch,

[Adriana Lenzo]

Good for you, but do you have something to add to this discussion too? Im trying to bring this to attention , not for myself, i have the patch from a mirror already. For the community, like you said.

Blackice, give it up. Darkone has done more for the modding community than you could ever hope to. Darkone is free to run his site as he sees fit.

[Alexis Estrada]

Well, he didn't say he couldn't do it if he had to ask everyone for permission (at least not based on the part of his reply posted by DarkOne), but he did say it would be a lot of work--and it is. Modders don't share the same online routine so some do take a long time to respond.

Making a patch compilation is a great amount of work, granted. Asking for permission itself isn't (that's why copy and paste was invented). I am a modder myself and now how the routine works. As I stated I had never troubles with long response times. Even with modders who everyone thought they had already left the scene.

[lisa nuttall]

BlackIce: If you'll look through the included fixes, several of them have marked 'ask me for permission before using this' in their file details on the Nexus. This may be because they didn't bother changing it from the default or because they really are jealously guarded of their work, but in any case a modder should not use someone else's work without their permission after they've explicitly or implicitly said 'do not use my work without my permission'. Yeah, some of the fixes are pretty small and you could get away with saying 'fix first found by XXXX' and the guy really wouldn't have a leg to stand on if he said 'don't include that!', especially with the one-character-altered fixes since anyone could make that change and there's no real way to link Mr. XXXX to it other than the 'first found by XXXX' bit. But others required actual work and can be uniquely identified as such, and if the modder doesn't want his work included in other mods for whatever reason (even if I personally believe that anyone who releases a bug fix and says 'no, you can't use that in any other mod' has a really questionable moral character) then that's his decision. Yeah, I say something like 'yes, you can do whatever you want with this mod if you like, even re-release it as-is without credit to me' in my mod readmes, but other people really want to control how their work is done. Others are afraid of being blamed when a mod that includes their own fails to work properly or something like that and thus only want to give permission to use their stuff in mods with decent quality control, etc.

[Lovingly]

Blackice, give it up. Darkone has done more for the modding community than you could ever hope to. Darkone is free to run his site as he sees fit.

We're not debating who has done more for the community, im just a newb when it comes to that. I respect all Mr Darkone has done and sure, in the end he can do whatever he wants. But this shouldnt even be a topic of discussion. Im trying to debate whether fixes should be treated differently than regular mods.
And by that i rest my case. I suggest we continue this only if you have something useful to say regarding this discussion about fixes, or about the Compilation Patch itself.

langy: Yea ofcourse when people have the option to demand permission they have the full right to do so. But lets not talk how it is, but how it should be. I think fixes should be completely 'open source'. You make them for the community and not for your own fame and gain. And don't get me wrong, i would be happy to include everyone's names if i was making this compilation.

[Sista Sila]

Making a patch compilation is a great amount of work, granted. Asking for permission itself isn't (that's why copy and paste was invented). I am a modder myself and now how the routine works. As I stated I had never troubles with long response times. Even with modders who everyone thought they had already left the scene.

Well, you are one of the better ones then. Someone once asked me for permission to include CCI in an CC overhaul patch and it took me almost a month to reply, because life was just that busy. :/

To be sure, Zenball did ask for permission for many of the mods, in many cases directly in the comment/bug report thread for the mods where he also received permission and even offer of assistance (eg. "I'll PM when I upload the next update"). We are not talking about someone who has no care for the rules at all and just randomly integrated whatever mods they wanted. Keep in mind also that not asking permission is not what triggered this incident, but that someone who apparently contributed to a mod that was included complained that he was not credited along with the author of that mod, which caused Nexus operators to contact Zenball make inquiries about how closely he was observing the rules.

[Kayleigh Williams]

Good for you, but do you have something to add to this discussion too?

Indubitably. You seem to be new to this community or at least your join date on this forum suggests as much so let me break it down.

My primary concern when running the Nexus sites has been, and no doubt always will be, the well-being of the mod authors. The people who actually develop assets in the GECK and various model, animation and texture software for use in the games. Without these people the modding community would not exist so it's in the community's interest as a whole to insure they are well looked after as these are the people who make stuff happen. They're the do'ers. And if sometimes protecting them comes at a slight inconvenience to the people who download the files, i.e. the rest of the community, then so be it.

This community has long cherished the rights and wishes of mod authors to do with their work whatever they want. They can choose to make their work open source or they can choose to make it closed. The premise is very simple; if you want to use someone else's assets in one of your own mods then you must ask for permission (not just credit the person, but ASK the person). It's a matter of respect. This has been the way for a long time and long may it continue. If you want to know why mod authors want to have control over the distribution of their files then you can ask them.

Now along comes this community bug fix compilation with the best of intentions but the author has used work he hasn't created without permission. It's against what the site allows (and indeed there's a big news article on New Vegas Nexus about this very subject, complete with 100+ posts from the community) so we put it on hold until the creator has gone about it the right way. The way many others before him have had to go and many others after.

The intention is great; but I'll say again if protecting the mod author comes at the expense of users having to download bug fixes manually rather than all in one easy-to-use bundle then my decision is easy to make.

And re: the fame and gain matter; I'd take that more seriously if Zen wasn't asking everyone to vote for the file to become file of the month, which is another Nexus no-no.

[^~LIL B0NE5~^]

Thanks for your reply. I completely understand that you want to protect the authors of mods because they are the fuel that powers the engine of this community. This is a delicate subject and closely related to 'real life' copyrights, about which debates can go on infinitely. But my opinion still stands that i think all fixes must be open source.

and about your re-, yeah that's kinda contradictory.

[Red Bevinz]

While I find that reasonable, DarkOne, the fact that a commenter (and not a contributor) to a mod can get an entire mod yanked because the commenter believes he deserves credit for something he only supplied comments for and not any actual work for is a bit off. Are you going to require Zen (and other mod authors) to get permission from every single commenter on a mod before you allow that mod to be distributed? That sounds a little extreme.

This sums up my thoughts exactly. I'm tremendously grateful for all the things DarkOne's done for the community, but the policy that commenters rather than the actual modders are the ones that can get stuff pulled is [censored] crazy. How is it protecting a creator's rights if the creator in question has the same amount of control as random commenters like me?

[Cesar Gomez]

This sums up my thoughts exactly. I'm tremendously grateful for all the things DarkOne's done for the community, but the policy that commenters rather than the actual modders are the ones that can get stuff pulled is [censored] crazy. How is it protecting a creator's rights if the creator in question has the same amount of control as random commenters like me?

If someone reports Midas Magic saying Xilver didn't get permission to use some assets in the file I'd laugh at them, and probably either warn them or ban them. If someone reports a file I don't know about, and I look at the file and see the author has specifically said they didn't seek permission from all the authors to use their work then of course I'm going to pull it. I really fail to see where the issue is here.