I mean http://morrowind2009.wordpress.com/, where the author offers advice on a first Morrowind install with a ton of suggested mods. This is pretty clearly aimed at new users, for their first playthrough. It does have a lot of good mods (especially the cosmetic additions), and some good quest mods, but there's some stuff in there that I think actually hinders a player's first experience with Morrowind.

Silgrad, for example, places a boat outside the Tax & Excise Office, which is sitting inside the boat you arrive in. It also adds a chest next to the barrel with Fargoth's ring with three items that don't have textures or icons. When I tried one on, Morrowind crashed. I expected a crash but since I was testing this out, I had to know for sure. It also overrides the local rumors about Addamasartus and the murdered tax collector. I also think this conflicts with the Seyda Neen transport mod for Tamriel rebuilt, which also places transportation there.

He also suggests Seyda Neen docks. I'm not going to lie, I like this mod, although it appears to be half-finished. Several houses are in the water, and it looks like there's supposed to be wooden pathways connecting them, as well as the stairs up to the transport boat, but they're mostly not present in the village itself. It also appears to add a couple of trees and at least one building between the lighthouse and Fargoth's hiding spot. Since this is an early quest a new player is likely to come across, this will probably make completing it an exercise in frustration.

I already made http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1097800-ice-bradys-robes/ about how he links to a Russian translation of Canadian Ice's robes. He suggests Better Clothes, but the Russian translation overwrites all the references so that the clothing is named in Russian and uses the original textures.

When he suggests not installing the official Bethesda mods, he states that the Master Index plugin actually overwrites the improved orc heads installed in another mod, but this is not actually true as far as I can tell.

I suspected there'd be a lot of conflicts and weirdness, and I already had several other mods I wanted to install that would conflict with his suggestions, but after running into trouble with the robe mod, I checked a few others out.

I think he's collected a lot of really good resources that improve Morrowind's appearance, but I think he's assembled more of his favorite quest mods more than simply mods that enhance a new players experience. Am I wrong?

So what do you expect this forum to do about it?

I don't expect the forum to do anything about it, but I kind of hope that if someone's having compatibility issues following his advice, they can at least get an idea of what's going wrong?

Also, I'm utterly confused now - Seyda Neen is half underwater in my game, but the Seyda Neen Docks mod is not itself underwater. Now I need to figure out how the heck this happened.

I think for a first playthrough it's not really a good list. Maybe a first playthrough with mods after you've played it vanilla for some time, but not for the very first playthrough. With these kind of lists it's not uncommon for new players to assume that everything is okay and they can just install it without reading about what it does exactly.

The list includes Silgrad's Tower, which has a pretty harsh intro that pretty much kills everyone outside at a certain settlement (Gnaar Mok I think?), then puts a 50,000 bounty on your head and forces you to take a boat to that landmass. I'd be pretty annoyed if that happened to me while I was just casually exploring Vvardenfell, especially if I don't expect it. Plus, IIRC all rumours are overridden by the rumour that points you to Silgrad's Tower until you actually go there... Not exactly the ideal first MW experience.

Thank you, yes, this exactly. I hadn't seen the intro, I had too much trouble with how much stuff it changed.

My Seyda Neen underwater problem was caused by a later mod that also altered Seyda Neen. Removing that mod or moving Seyda Neen docks to the end of the list corrected it. Said mod was one I created to start off with more stuff (put in the barrel with Fargoth's ring). I'd only added a few items, so I'm not sure why it affected all landscape in the cell. It still has the problem that the new tree meshes plus a house SND adds blocks any view of Fargoth's wandering.

Also, I think what he set out to do is pretty cool, and that a lot of his mods work pretty well. I like that he gives advice with an eye toward spoilers. I just think his selection is a bit heavy for a new player.

We should get together and come up with Beautiful Clean Shiny Morrowind 2010. Start by electing a dictator with good taste in clothing and mods.

A while ago I http://www.honnold.org/webapps/Forum/nerdery/morrowind-remixed-what-oblivion-shouldve-been-7928 similar to this but I really tried to limit it all to aesthetics and fixes without changing the actual gameplay or story or locations too much. I tested all the mods together on my system to make sure there wouldn't be any conflicts and think it'd be a great way to introduce new players to the game.

Unfortunately not all of the mods are available anymore and some of the links are dead, but it was a good start.

I have recommended this mod several times to new players and I still think it's a good starting point for the basics. The problem is mostly with the extra mods listed at the end of the piece. He does note that those mods are what he uses and are optional and not crucial like the first set of mods are. But, yes, it does need an updating and, yes, I'll continue to recommend it, although maybe with a little warning.

I'm working on a list somewhat like that.

Yeah, I don't want it to go away or no one to recommend it. It does have a lot of good mods (esp. cosmetic and some quests), and there's some good advice in there. Just needs some caveats at the moment.

Hrnchamd, haha.

What would be really useful would be some kind of contact info for the person with this guide so that they could update their links when issues are brought up.

My frustration with the lack of such is partly why I posted this. At the very least, if comments were open on his blog there could be at least some feedback.

Maybe a few interested folks could get together and start a small wiki section at UESP on "Gettting Started with Morrowind", covering the basics of running a modernized Morrowind game. If it's on the wiki, then it could be updated by the community.

There must be a tutorial covering modding philosophy. Showing adding a basic replacer, adding a specific quest mod and so on. Simple stuff covering troubleshooting and how changes appear in game. If user would be successful, he/she can move to a full blown guide. We can add this to all guides out there, a common welcome//introduction. Not just a link but first page(or second.)

And there is also these:
MCP, MLOX, MASH, MGE

where I think MCP and MLOX can't be any easier, MASH and MGE can be a little hard for a new user. Both have large documents. MGE is a little harderer because of the dynamic nature. I made 3 big guides with interface screens targeting new users, all are outdated now.

This sounds like a really good idea to me - and something I have thought about a number of different times (though I don't know if I would be the best individual to contribute too much).

One of the things I had been personally considering was a kind of update for the Empirical Morrowind list - one that focused on bugfixes and additional realism aspects. What I think could be really great for new players would be something along these lines (assuming the community wanted to work them out):

Basic Update Guide: This would basically just cover removing bugs and updating graphics only. The end outcome would essentially be Vanilla Morrowind with nice aesthetics and less/no bugs. This would allow newer players to get a good feel for the game before really going about changing things.

The end of this list could then have a little blurb about the other lists with links off to them, these lists could each bend toward a slightly different focus but give step by step instructions of how to build them up for your game successfully. The final one could be more of an advanced guide that gives some final tips/tricks/suggestions for trying to compile your very own build of Morrowind with some little bits of info on how to make some basic mods (with links to the fairly established community information already available - Scripting for Dummies, etc).

I think (personally) a big turn off for players is the immense amount of work they have to invest right away before they even have a chance to fall in love with the game (thus making them okay with doing the work). Providing a few lists like this lets them first get their love for the game (in a nearly vanilla form), then build a little confidence through the stylized guides in regards to installing mods and using some of the 3rd party apps in getting them setup, and then finally getting them the last bits of information they need to start from scratch and work on building to what their own ideal game is.

I think these sound like really good ideas, especially having a list for modernizing Morrowind's graphics, followed up by lists on expanding Morrowind in various ways.

I also think that the blog linked has an excellent list of resources for graphical enhancements (although it's weird how he doesn't link directly to Better Heads).

Best advice I can give you is to load one mod at a time and see what it does. I always make backups and even have a folder on my flashdrive called Cumulative Mod which has all the mods that do work together without any problems. Whenever I get mod hungry and start installing a bunch of mods all at once, I get lots of errors.
Load order is important too. You probably already know about Wrye Mash and all that stuff.

Yeah, I did this. I honestly don't know how it happened, but a mod I'd made to provide some starting gold somehow started overriding Seyda Neen Docks with the default terrain. I just cleaned out all the references to Seyda Neen with TESTool once I worked it out.

And the mod that added so many trees - Vality's Bitter Coast add-on - actually managed to block Fargoth's path for his scripted hiding place walk. Seriously, what is up with surrounding the top of a lighthouse with thick foliage?

Anyway, I was adding mods one at a time and testing them, but this problem appeared some time during the process while I was testing different mods. And some problems I didn't find until after the mod had already been loaded and I'd moved on. Annoying!