It used to be thought that people would make a judgement call on you within 30 seconds - now that we live in the Twitter and soundbite age that time has been reduced to 7 seconds

When a modder releases a mod to others, they've normally spent longer than 7 seconds on it - some modders spend hundreds of hours on their creations before uploading them

The first impression of your skill as a modder often occurs before the person plays the mod.

After we extract the zipped folder we almost always look inside - well if you have manually downloaded the mod that is.

So what impression will the player have of your mod?

Are the folder structures clear? Do you have naming conventions?

Is there a readme?

A readme is your way to introduce your mod and it's valuable to the player.

If your readme has no credits, doesn't even list you as the author and doesn't have basic info on the mod - it won't inspire confidence in your mod

Some players will stop right there - they have your mod but won't play it because you haven't inspired any trust

Or they download the mod to play later - when they come back to the mod months later there is no info on what the mod is about so it gets deleted or ignored.

Please modders - include a readme

What document format?

Some readmes are in html, pdf or word but the most common is a simple text document.

Text document is available to everyone - and is a good choice for readmes

What should be included?

The name of the mod

Your name (forum handle is fine)

***************************************

Description of what the mod does

******************************************

Don't write my mod will blow your mind without explaining why

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Any installation requirements

***************************************

****************************************

If you cleaned it and what with

***************************************

If you use TESAME then someone might to double clean your mod with TESTool or another tool to remove the things TESAME can't find

************************************

Credits

**********************************

This is where you thank your Mom

********************************

Usage rights

********************************

The last one is often missing - many of use free to use textures - however those textures often have a CC License which may have attribution rights such as a link back to the original site

Make sure you know what you are and aren't allowed to share and let mod players and other modders know if they can reuse any assets from the mod

Check for...

Tpyos that's right check for Typos - a well spelt readme makes you look like you care about quality and gives confidence to the player

You can use any style you like in your readme and this is not a rule that you ahve to have one - just a reminder that first impressions count

If you want to make a good first Impression...

Include a useful readme

There's a lot of truth in that.

Morrowind: find some strange .zip in a mod folder. When have I downloaded that? What's that mod at all, the name doesn't tell anything, neither does the .esp name. But hey, there's the ReadMe.txt file, it's got mostly everything.

Skyrim: same as above, except that there's no readme at all. Spend some time trying to figure what's that, by googling .esp name or try to load the file into an editor... or just forget about that mod and find another one.

I totally agree that people will perceive your abilities as a modder before they even download your mod but I don't think Read Me's weigh into that much. I think its more of an overall presentation.http://www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mods/43350/?

I personally don't think I attach any read me's with my files. Installation is usually pretty straight forward -- either some esp you just need to load and run in MGXE or some textures you need to extract to your Data Files folder.

There was one mod I made that had some .INI tweaking in it, so I included a readme, and the Nexus has a handy feature that allows you to upload readme's but overall, I don't think it's necessary. If you put a short and concise description on what you'll need to do to install the mod, you should be fine. Nobody really cares (unless they have something to do with it) about credits, so that could probably just sit in the description area of wherever your mod is being hosted.

Good thread.
If you need a fancy format (big document with sections, subsections, colors for more clarity), then good and portable/widely compatible ideas are probably rtf and html.

Mike; no, IMO readmes should be mandatory, even if the installation is trivial/standard. You'll notice that a typical Morrowind readme contains various info and sections, not just how to install. And as mentioned it also solves the problem of being able to tell what the mod is (and how many/what files it includes in case of a desired manual uninstall) when coming across its file on your system a while later, as well as credits and permission issues or license.
If somebody isn't aware, readmes are an extremely universal concept, they don't only come with mods or even things that are install-able at all.

I wouldn't say it's mandatory to have a long or sectioned readme though, of course, it depends on the mod and author - if the modder finds it appropriate it could even be a few lines with the basic info. A typical case of that might be a line with the mod name, esp name if different (or other included files), author and category, then another line or three saying "This mod fixes X by doing Y. Thanks to Z for the idea/request/whatever. Feel free to edit/redistribute and repackage // or please ask me first or let me know, my contact details are ABCDEF // this mod is provided under the ZZZ license.

Another important thing is that the readme filename should be unique - NOT 'readme dot extension'. So that it doesn't overwrite or get overwritten by other mods' readmes when extracted to Data Files or automatically put in Docs folder by a mod installer, and is easily accessible and retrievable later.

EDIT: Continuing with the original post, if you want to be verbose then additional info you could include are categories the mod fits into (words like Cheat/testing, Fixes, Bugfixes, Realism, Balance, Difficulty, Item, Spell, Weapon, Content addition, Companion...), shout-outs (e.g. check out Tamriel Rebuild and MCP because they go well with this mod or just because they are cool), a full list of included files and folders, technical subsection, modules subsection, configuring or customization section, each one as applies to the mod (or not). I'm not bothering going into the already commonly sections that weren't mentioned in the original post (such as known issues, effect on savegame/compatibility and changelog with dates, to name a few) but will be found in pretty much every readme by a 'big' modder.
Technical subsection: number or what kind of records are in the ESP, technical explanation of how the mod does what it does if it's not obvious or mod is complex (i.e. a large mod or a script mod or whatever). Also potential info for other modders wanting to patch/imitate/extend/support the mod in their own mod.
Modules section: if the mod is split into different ESP/ESM files, then list the differences between them and contents of each file.
Configuring and and customization section: if the mod offers any (usually applies to scripting mods, or mods where you have a choice of assets e.g. a given style of textures or another), then how you can customize or change what the mod does, i.e. by modifying global vars/starting a setup script/installing alternate files or in a certain order. Maybe even how to change things in the CS, if you didn't find a better way to provide customization.

I also think you're putting a little too much weight on readmes. If the file is clearly labeled, you can find it again (so like house mod.7z isn't helpful, while Wolverine_Well_House-27167.7z to pull an example from my installer folder reminds me exactly what the mod is). The only time I look at readmes as a general rule is when there's multiple ESPs, and I need to know which one does what before I install them. (This is a case where readme should definitely be there) But I also do read mod descriptions. Half the time they're literally the same thing as the readme word for word, so no, I'm not going to read that twice.