Morrowind

New file adding \"wizard\", tagging and more prominent content blocking

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While we have our cluster setup looked in to we’ve been busy looking in to some other areas of the site we’d like to improve before we “centralise” the Nexus in to supporting mods for all games.

We’ve come up with a new file adding wizard that’s usable on all sites. Indeed, when we finally get around to centralising our database you’ll be able to add a mod for any game ever made to the site through this one file wizard, but for now it’s setup to work with the sites and games we already support. The idea is that the new file wizard will take you, step-by-step, through the process of making a complete file page for your files. While in the past you would simply add a few details and then be expected to add things in later, now you’re taken through every step of the process, with 9 steps in total.

You can skip steps that you don’t want or don’t need to do (like required files), or skip the wizard entirely if you so wish, but I’m hoping that this new process will at least introduce new mod authors to all the file page features we currently support so they can provide as much relevant information to their users right from the start while also providing veteran mod authors of the site with a quicker way of get their pages set up on the site without having to keep going backwards and forwards.

We’ve also added a new set of options to the wizard that allow you to better categorise your files. It actually makes use of our tags system, but in a much more obvious manner, in an attempt to better support our content blocking system, which I’ll now discuss.

Recently we had a couple of nude mods show up in our hot files on Skyrim Nexus. It’s not a particularly rare occurrence by any stretch of the imagination, but what was a bit more rare was the content of one of the mods. A penis. EEK, A PENIS! Lets get this out the way. Please repeat after me: penis penis penis, vagina vagina vagina. Got that out your system? Good. While we get the occasional rant about big boob mods or general female nudity on the sites, nothing sparks an absolute outpouring of pent up closet-case emotion like the showcasing of a penis mod on the site. Indeed, no less than 6 people sent me a message to inform me of their outrage of bearing witness to a penis mod on the sites. When pressed for clarification on why vagina mods were ok but penis mods weren’t the conversation went ominously silent. While I’m no expert in the field let me provide some advice: if seeing a penis mod throws you into a fit of quizzical fury you might need to explore your own sexuality a bit further. Don’t repress it, explore it. You’ll save yourself lots of therapy payments in the future.

With that said, I can completely understand why you might not be interested in seeing a penis, or a vagina, or boobs, or scantily clad men or women, or translations, or lore-breaking files, or save-games or any number of various types of content (indeed, the issue isn’t in not wanting to see the content but the way in which people get so comically worked up over the issue). While we can’t provide a 100% success rate method of removing this content from your viewing we can try our hardest to tailor the mods you see to your specific preferences.

We’ve had content blocking available for a long time. It works by blocking files that have been tagged with specific tags. If you block the “Sexy/skimpy” tag you won’t see any mods that are using that tag. There are a few pages that are the exception to that rule, the hot files originally didn’t block this content but it now does (we fixed it recently) and the new today/new recently pages don’t. However, the category results/search result pages will block this content. We even go one step further and tell you that you’re currently blocking content and you’re only seeing X number of files as Y number of files have been blocked from your viewing, with an easy link to see the results with your previously blocked content showing as well. The systems are in place, you just need to use them.

There are two inherent problems; (1) not enough mod authors tag their files and (2) people complain about files not being tagged but then don’t tag files themselves. Your profiles have a statistic on them called “Files tagged”. It tells people how many files you’ve successfully tagged. If you complain about files not being tagged properly and your “Files tagged” statistic is 0, you’re a part of the problem and not a part of the solution. Your complaining about the lack of tagging doesn’t fix the issue, your actual tagging of files does. So next time you see a nude mod that hasn’t been tagged properly, “doing the right thing” isn’t complaining about it, doing the right thing is actually tagging the file yourself so that others don’t have the same problem you did.

With that said we’re trying to do our part to make these features more prominent. In the new file adding wizard we’ve hand-picked some tagging selections that are known to be the most regularly blocked tags on the sites. You’re asked “Tick any of the boxes that apply to your file. My file...” and on Skyrim Nexus, for example, options include “contains nudity”, “contains sexy/skimpy outfits”, “is a translation”, “is for male characters”, “is for female characters” and so on. (Note: as of writing I haven’t actually gone around and added these, but they’ll be up within an hour of me posting this article). Ticking these boxes will automatically tag your file with the relevant tag.

On the user end, we’ve added these same tags to the file search page under “Attributes”. Each tag is given a tick box. If the tag is ticked then you’ll see files using that tag. If you untick the box you will no longer see files using that tag. It works exactly the same as our content blocking system but it’s just much more obvious, and provides a link to the full range of tags you can block on the sites.

The aim is to make content blocking both more relevant, by asking direct questions about the type of content your mod contains, and also more prominent, by making it a part of our extensive filtering system that should help you to drill-down in to the file database and discard the types of mods you would never be interested in anyway. While this system was always present on the site it was never this prominent.

You’ll also notice the new file wizard has some new options for categories. This is more of a precursor for our centralisation work as I think most of the sites are pretty set in their categories now, but I’ll quickly run through it. You now have three category options. You must pick from a pre-set list (as before) but you can also suggest your own category that you think would best suit your file, or you can select from a pre-set list of what others have suggested. What’s the point of this? With current sites there’s not too much of a point to it as there’s already plenty of usable and relevant categories, however if we start supporting new games we want to be as automated and flexible as possible. The idea is if you’ve got a texture replacer mod for a new game, you add the game yourself and the site will automatically setup the game site along with a “Miscellaneous” category (all games have that category in them, current and future). You select the “Miscellaneous” category for your file but you suggest a “Texture replacer” category. While the file will begin in the Miscellaneous category if an admin agrees with the suggested category any files uploaded to the “Miscellaneous” category but using that suggested category will then be moved over to this new suggested category. The suggested category becomes a new category in and of itself. It sounds complicated but it’s really not.

Alrighty, I’ve gone on long enough. I hope these new features can be put to good use and if you think something isn’t working properly then let me know.

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  1. megetian
    megetian
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    i wasnt too concerned about the nudity issues,,im a grown up man and i like badass veiws and badass women looking badass and besides there has been those filters to the side before and its not realy any fault of nexus if those people are not applying those filters correctily
    but my concern is for mods still being listed but not showing up in the manger while i still see the file in the catagory list once i click it to download its saying error-file dont exhist,,this makes me wonder if mods are being dropt or if moders are slacking off and quiting or is there something else attempting to block the normal flow?because realy when i first started searching i was finding cool stuff left and right and now almost everything is saying it dont exhist so whats up i may be needing some help or those files need clearing out if they dont exhist please help
    1. DrakeTheDragon
      DrakeTheDragon
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      Your post would be better off inside the NMM beta discussion forums, not reviving this ancient and outdated news article from June last year that's already on page 3 of the site news now. Not many people will come in here anymore to find and read it.

      There's a lot of threads and posts about just the same issue already by now, the NMM saying file does not exist, while it's still available on the sites. The common solution is to download it manually or change the download location your NMM is configured to use.

      The devs are still in the middle of taking down all Premium/file(?) servers and replacing them with better ones, and it won't be over until Dark0ne announces it.
      Those servers work in a network, they're "transfering" files from and to each other before download. If only 1 is down, it can still have a detrimental effect on all the others, up to the point at which they fail to synchronize and not every server will have every file anymore.

      If NMM says a file doesn't exist, while the file page is still up and available, it's solely an "NMM communication with the servers"-issue, not random files secretly taken down but still left in the lists or something. After all, it's still in beta. Don't give too much into what it tells you.
  2. AxlRocks
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    Good, it's fixed and improved a bit too. Appreciated. *Reads comments and part of article* Oh, look, typical "Let's bash anyone with a different opinion." comments. If only the same level of maturity we show was shown back. If the comments are directed towards complete idiots, fine, I don't want them here either; on my side or not. But if otherwise, I don't appreciate the hostility and arrogance, especially being given sexual "advice" and being questioned on our sexuality. That's been forever though, every single time this comes up, that is brought up. Wonderful.

    Yes, it was frustrating seeing the system break, why wouldn't it be? We don't all want that shoved in our faces, especially when others are in the room. Sorry I don't live alone currently or something I guess, right? I was frustrated, and I did bring it up in chat and luckily some nice users helped me there, and didn't make me feel ostracized over it either. Point is, maybe some people were stupid about it, but complaining about it isn't immediately a problem, which is what I feel some think around here.

    I'm not trying to anger anyone, flamebait, troll, or whatever else. Just being serious and stating the facts on it from my position.

    I swear, this will be an issue here forever -only- because some people, of both sides, can't be mature about it and not make snide remarks constantly and just respect the opinions of others who declare it respectfully, and only get on the backs of the idiots.
  3. Toxicwyvern
    Toxicwyvern
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    I wanted to suggest a feature:

    When having been replied to in a forum, have notifications in the notifications window
  4. getlow2
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    While I’m no expert in the field let me provide some advice: if seeing a penis mod throws you into a fit of quizzical fury you might need to explore your own sexuality a bit further. Don’t repress it, explore it. ---Dark0ne

    You sir made me laugh today

    Thank you
    1. theavernus
      theavernus
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      That was pretty funny but sadly it seems the drama crap around here is starting from the top. I see people get told no adult files in a chat room with 20 some people and adult files on the main page is not a big deal? Lets see 20 people in a chat room and really only 1 is wanting the link as they are asking for certain mods, then the main page has that stuff? I personally don't care either way I didn't fire off a message complaining but I can see why some people would. I don't know why they would have to be so silly about it just a mention is enough complaining and acting all offended for effect is just a bit much but I can see why people do it, look how the staff treat subjects and how they constantly call people out. I am going to have to see some real change before I renew my premium membership again.
    2. AvengerJikir
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      Well, it's completely incorrect. What you should be doing is going to a psychiatrist to explore your extreme anxiety issues. Nothing to do with your sexuality.

      But yeah, ignoring the logic, pretty funny I suppose
    3. moldilox
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      They have the rules how they want them. They don't run this like a business if you don't like it don't renew your membership. I'm sure it won't change anything for them or anybody.
    4. whismerhill
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      @AvengerJikir
      it's far from being "completely incorrect", it's more like... incomplete
  5. bwins95
    bwins95
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    Happiness
    Happy-ness
    Ha-penis

    Who can guess where this is from.
    1. cplwarr
      cplwarr
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      King of the Hill
      (Peggy says that to ease into talking about sexual education)right?
    2. WetDogSquad
      WetDogSquad
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      Ha, one of my favorite episodes ^^
  6. DivineHeresy
    DivineHeresy
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    so by “centralise” you mean one site for all mods as in one page, or as in one major place to access all pages >.> clarify please.
  7. whismerhill
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    hey thank you for this article, the sexuality comments just made my day !

    And I just blocked all content that's not in english
    not that I'm bothered that much with non-english results, however if when searching I can have 1 page of results instead of 2 it's great !
    And since my skyrim is set up in english ^^ (no-brainer for me, mods are just outright compatible, no questions asked ! :p )

    btw I wonder what the "translation" tag is for ?
  8. BobValdez
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    automatic translation
    I think a useful tag can be if the mod is "script free" because it's more safe. And I would like if the incompatibilities being declared in a tab apart.

    Edit: I'm seeing that the major problem is related with sex mods. There is the filter, use it.
    In my char statistics there are countless killed, dismembered, burned people, stolen objects, lockpicked coffers, pools of blood and beheaded. This isn't a game for the childs. There is a high rate of violence, but it seems that all is rounding on the fact of the genitals.
    I remember that Sloft made a beautiful mod for oblivion related on the horses, and a user said that he/she didn't want to see the asshole of the horses, really. The fact is that the animals have the assholes. Men have penis, women vagina and breasts, such is the life.
    And so, there is a filter for it, use it. It's recommended by best gynecologists of the best universities. Can be improved? of course, give the time. Simple and plain. Or not? The rest is censorship.

    Dark0ne: your replay is clear and cristalline. Kudos to you
  9. grvulture
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    It's all good, but about the mod-tagging part, if I have to wait 3 freaking minutes for the tagging page to load, of course I will skip it! Just saying...
    1. whismerhill
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      just open it on a new tab, do some stuff & come back to it when it's ready ????

      *rolleyes*
  10. jediakyrol
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    "The Penis is evil! The Penis shoots Seeds, and makes new Life to poison the Earth with a plague of men, as once it was. But the Gun shoots Death and purifies the Earth of the filth of Brutals. Go forth, and kill! Zardoz has spoken."

    But really...I popped in, saw the "Dongs of Skyrim" or whatever the name was and went "ha...took longer than morrowind..." AND WENT ON MY MERRY WAY! But I guess some people and their sandy vaginas felt the need to complain...(and I practically guarantee you they all downloaded one of the "better female body" mods at one point and see nothing wrong with that.) Still, more filters and junk can only help make searching better, so no worry here, good job.
    1. jonas66
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      I wouldn't say it's certain that they've all downloaded. The nude body freakout is certainly possible and applicable to both sexes. Gamefaqs has a moralizing post every two days about it, and that's just the boobs.

      We're just f'd up about sex and the body in general in the West, it seems.