Oblivion Mod talk:Mods

TerminatingEdit

Cutting this page since Oblivion Mod Wiki is doing such a good job. We still have Tes4Mod:Mod Ideas|Mod Ideas and Mod Management, but they're now listed on the main Oblivion page. --Wrye 01:26, 29 March 2006 (EST)

ResurrectingEdit

Worth noting that the Oblivion Mod Wiki no longer exists. Jadrax 13:16, 3 March 2007 (EST)

Has it been discontinued? Well, it never was up to date anyway. :P All the 3rd party plugins are at TESSource, eh? --FMan | Talk (contribs) 13:38, 3 March 2007 (EST)

Yep, it's been discontinued. I think the hosting server dropped it and the guy who was running the wiki didn't feel up to continuing it since it was already so far behind. So potentially, this page could be put back in service. However:

Maintaining it is a lot of work. As is, the Tes4Mod:Mod Ideas|Mod Ideas page is a bit messy. While I definitely think that page is worth keeping, I'd rather not add another page in which is likely to attract more messiness.
For Morrowind the corresonding page is Morrowind Mod:Mods -- while the scope of what's available there is limited, it's still very useful. Both the Better Bodies and the texture mods compilations are useful and aren't available elsewhere.
I think that if we resurrect this page, we shouldn't just start it and hope someone comes. Rather it should be resurrected only if someone wants to put up and maintain a well thought out list. I.e., it should be a carefully selected list, not just a list of everything. (Buddah's already got that covered anyway.)
Possibilities. 1) Find someone who has a good list and invite them to put it here -- however they should be comfortable with the wiki "anyone can edit" process. Or 2) Have a list of lists and mod downloading sites.

Again, my main thought is that it should not be resurrected at this point unless we can start it off on the right foot with some quality material.

--Wrye 16:07, 3 March 2007 (EST)

FYI, Vhaeos left a note at Oblivion_Talk:Oblivion#Oblivion_Mod_Wiki_Link_on_Main_Page_Corrupted.3F about the site going down, including a link to a forum discussion for those interested in what happened.

I agree with Wrye that the page shouldn't be resurrected just for the sake of filling an empty page. We also already have Oblivion:Must_Have_Mods for highlighting popular mods, so it seems like it would take a fair bit of work to create a useful, more comprehensive list of mods. But if anyone wants to follow through on some of Wrye's ideas and put in the work to try to create such a page, then go for it :) --Nephele 16:55, 3 March 2007 (EST)

I am against. I believe it has already been resolved that third party plugins fall outside of the scope of UESP. Also, the time and effort of editors and administrators is much better used with actual content. --FMan | Talk (contribs) 18:51, 4 March 2007 (EST)

I'd have a short discussion of the basics of using mods, what they can do in general, and maybe utilities for them, for people who got here wanting to find just that much out. Then just link to a few relevant pages like the ones listed here. No blank page, only about two paragraphs of content to create, no sorting through good and bad mods, and only a handful of links to keep up-to-date. --67.110.213.253 02:13, 18 November 2007 (EST)

New WayEdit

This is sub-classed under resurrection. Why don't we make it that the mod pages can only be made by the creator/s or by permission of the creator? -Relic Kylias 07:38, 30 December 2007 (EST)

Because this is a wiki. To give an example. For my Wrye Bash, the stuff that's under my control is hosted on my site and/or included in the distro. Bt the Wrye Bash page here is explicitly designed to be an "unofficial" help page -- i.e. okay for others to edit. In other words, having info on the web that is controlled by the author is a good idea -- but the place for that sort of thing is not on a wiki. --Wrye 18:49, 30 December 2007 (EST)

Not quite what I meant Wyre. I haven't yet thought up a good system, but I mean that maybe some rules about writing mod pages. One example I can think of is you have to have completed it. Hope you understand I bit better what I was trying to say. -Relic Kylias 11:52, 31 December 2007 (EST)

I think we should create a Mods section but only patrollers and Admin can post new Mods. People are allowed to submit entries for a mod to be put on the website but Admin must test it first before it goes on. This will stop hacking and bugs from being put into the game. Matthewest--Oblivion and Morrowind player. Xbox user only. 19:20, 21 January 2008 (EST)

Ummm, this entire discussion is a resurrection of the previous thread, which was a discussion of what to do about the fact that Oblivionmodwiki was not available. Except now Oblivionmodwiki is back on line: www.oblivionmodwiki.com (and has been for quite some time). Therefore, I'm not sure why we're having a discussion about how to incorporate more information about existing mods into UESPWiki. Oblivionmodwiki already has a huge amount of content on existing mods, so I belive that any editors interesting in trying to expand listings of existing mods should add to the existing database on their site. Trying to duplicate any of that information here is in my mind counterproductive. There's also been some related discussion recently at Tes4Mod talk:Major WIP Mods. --Nephele^Talk 22:18, 21 January 2008 (EST)

Resurrecting IIEdit

I've now resurrected the page, and have added comments at the top of the page to guide how (I think) we should be distinct from other wikis (specifically Oblivion Mod Wiki). --Wrye 16:38, 11 April 2008 (EDT)

Followup... That's about done it for now. Since this section is now expanded, I've removed some of the links from the Oblivion main page (for which the mods section had gotten a bit oversized anyway). It's probably not perfect, but it will do for now. --Wrye 17:29, 11 April 2008 (EDT)

Mods vs. Modding vs. Tes4ModEdit

Tes4Mod namespace splits into two fairly distinct areas: Oblivion Mod:Mods vs Oblivion Mod:Modding. The first is for players the second is for modders -- since the needs and focusses of the two are fairly distinct, they have separate top pages. However, their "page up" from them should be considered to be Oblivion:Oblivion, not Oblivion Mod:Main Page. Accordingly, I have updated Main Page to simply link to the two main sections. --Wrye 17:29, 11 April 2008 (EDT)

Just Need To Know....Edit

Please, would somebody tell me, how long, on average, does it take to create the average mod? And if this can't be answered, that's all I need to know! Thanks.--Ahnaz31 13:13, 21 April 2008 (EDT)

That is practically an impossible question to answer, as it depends entirely on what kind of mod you are planning on making, and what it will involve, etc. However, I think it's fair to say that nearly all mods will require a noticable contribution of your time. --HMSVictory^Talk 13:15, 21 April 2008 (EDT)

Ok, thanks. Um, I am thinking of making a "wings" mod for my character?--Ahnaz31 13:18, 21 April 2008 (EDT)

This sort of question is better asked on the bethsoft forums. Talk pages are usually reserved for talking about the article. (I.e. if we started talking about "mods" on this page, this page would be a forum. Not a good idea.) --Wrye 13:22, 21 April 2008 (EDT)

SORRY!!!!! Really didn't mean to... thanks though!--Ahnaz31 13:28, 21 April 2008 (EDT)

What Goes HereEdit

Wrye 1Edit

A little over a month ago Xilver raised the question of documenting Midas Magic here. Since at that time we were already expanding thes Tes4Mods section somewhat, that seemed to me to be an extension of recent growth in the area. I did a review of what we had from the past, what we were doing currently and then did a moderately large reorganization/revival of the Tes4Mods space, including quite a bit of cleanup on this page an on the Modding page.

Part of doing that cleanup effort to reconsider what we were doing for documentation of mods.

Cobl has been docced here for a while, mostly only from from the project/modders point of view rather than the users point of view (but there is the Cobl/Mods page which is focussed on users.
FCOM was also starting to be docced here. Those docs are focussed on users and have continued to grow and are a substantial resource for FCOM users.
We also had the Body Mods page, which is a very useful review of several mods.

After reviewing a bit and comparing against Oblivion Mod Wiki, it seemed to me that it made sense to continue in this vein so long as an effort was made to distinquish what we're doing from what Oblivion Mod Wiki is doing. Hence the "What Goes Here" guidelines on this article page. Recapping:

There are a couple of other wikis and other information sources out there on mods, so we would like to distinguish ourselves from them in the way we approach mod information.

Depth over Breadth: Cover fewer mod and mod subjects, but when we do so, do so in depth.
No Readmes! Do not post the readme here.
No Reviews!

If you are looking for the above sort of info, then Oblivion Mod Wiki is a good choice.

IMO, given Oblivion Mod Wiki's mod documenting style (Breadth over depth, Readme type content, and Review hosting), it very much makes sense for us to tackle mods as well if we take the opposite track on all those dimensions. There's a need/desire for that and it's consistent with what we've done so far.

I think that Midas Magic is a good illustration of that distinction. Midas Magic is a large and well regarded magic extension. It's large enough and deep enough to warrant an extensive guide -- if someone is willing to take that task on. While recently I've been concerned that the doc for it wasn't deep enough to fit the "depth over breadth" rule, it's now being expanded and looks like it will be a good addition. (Hopefully, we'll see similar efforts for Oscuro's, Frans and similar major mods in the future.)

--Wrye 01:53, 5 May 2008 (EDT)

RpehEdit

I don't think the arguments against using the Oblivion Mod Wiki are quite fair. I can't deny any of the three points but I'd also say that the "Depth Over Breadth" point is only true because that's the way the site has developed so far. The idea was to let people who wanted, say, clothing mods look at just one page to find as many as possible. There's no reason why people can't include as much information on a mod as they see fit. Sure, it would still mean that most of the pages would only have readme-style entries and some would have reviews but I don't see there's a problem with that.

I've never had a problem with COBL or FCOM being documented on UESP as they (from my understanding) are more like toolkits with the sort of APIs that lend themselves to wiki documentation, although I suppose it could be argued that they would be better off at OMW or TESCS. Split Infinity gets special treatment for obvious reasons, but I'd rather not start having a load of other mods on here when there are sites better-suited for the job. I would therefore support Nephele's proposal for deletion.

On the other hand, I'm not going to make a big thing of this. If there is a reasonable number of people that think it would be valuable then I suppose I can live with that. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 09:11, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

NepheleEdit

My concern using "depth over breadth" as a guideline is that it ultimately seems like an empty guideline, especially on a wiki. Nearly all wiki articles start out as stubs. We can't force editors to create articles only if they already have pages of content. "Depth" of the article cannot be used initially to determine whether or not an article should be started or kept. Some remain as stubs for a long time, even when there is more content that could be added to the article; we can't force editors to expand a given article.

In other words, the scenario I foresee gradually happening is:

A dozen or so mod articles get added, all for mods with a lot of content, all by editors who intend to eventually flesh out the mod articles.
Life happens, so half of those editors never find the time to expand those well-intentioned articles past basic stubs.
New editors follow the examples of those stubs and add a couple dozen more stubs, saying if "article X" exists then why shouldn't mine?
More new editors decide that if we have stubs covering a large number of mods, then we should be comprehensive and have stubs covering every single mod.
We eventually end up duplicating all of the content at Oblivionmodwiki.

This is what's happened countless other times on UESP. Take NPC articles for example: we started out with just important NPCs, but ended up with a separate article for every NPC, no matter how minor. Wikis start narrow and shallow, then naturally grow both in breadth and depth; trying to control that growth is likely to just lead to frustration for everyone involved.

Also, I would prefer to find ways to consolidate information rather than further fracturing it. Admittedly, we as a community have a problem with mod information being fractured. Wiki-wise, it's split between CS Wiki, and Oblivionmodwiki. Then start adding sites like tesnexus that host mods. And mod discussions that happen on the official forums. The result is that to point someone to information about any given mod you need to generally provide three or four links to cover all of the sites that cover the mod. If we start having in-depth overviews of mods I think it's just going to exacerbate the problem: "For the mod itself, go to tesnexus; for reviews, go to oblivionmodwiki; for guides, go to UESP". I'd say we should try to stick to two-stop shopping instead of requiring three-stop shopping.

One argument that's been provided is that a wiki would be the best place to start to consolidate information that currently is spread over forums and bulletin boards. I fully agree with the argument. But that doesn't mean that UESP should be that wiki. If there was an absence of any wikis devoted to describing mods, I'd say by all means, the community needs a place to start collecting that information, so let's do it on UESP. But that's not the case here. Oblivionmodwiki does already exist. Their article on Midas Magic is shorter than what we now have. But a week ago, their article was the same length as ours. And for any other mod we want to name as a candidate for an in-depth guide, Oblivionmodwiki is sure to have a "deeper" article than ours right now, given that we don't even have any article. Their stub would be a better starting part for any expansion than our non-article. And their community is already devoted to documenting mods; any editors who want to collaborate on documenting mods would be better off joining the existing community rather than setting up a new mod-documenting community here.

Where would it be easiest for people to find the information? Ultimately, people will look for information on whatever site has the most complete information. If UESP expands to have more complete mod guides, yes, readers will find the information here. But I think it's equally true that if the same information is put on Oblivionmodwiki, then readers will look there for the information. Similarly, if we assume that Oblivionmodwiki isn't going to work for whatever reason, it's likely that prediction will come true, because a wiki only works if "we" (the community) support the wiki. If we all abandon a site it will die; if we all support the same site, however, it will thrive.

The Tes4Mod part of the site does suffer somewhat from being defined more frequently by what "it's not" rather than what "it is." It's not the main place for CS documentation, because that's on CS Wiki. It's not the main place for listing mods, because that's on Oblivionmodwiki. "No readmes; no reviews" is another example of stating what we're not. As I already mentioned, the mod community is somewhat fractured and that's unfortunate. But we can't really do anything at UESP to single-handedly change that situation. It would be good to find a better identity and definition for UESP's mod content; I'd just prefer to find an identity that complements the other sites instead detracting from the other sites. Also, I'm not implying that established parts of the site should be changed; clearly FCOM and Cobl already have extensive coverage here. We should continue to support those sections, expand on them, and encourage other related activities to be documented here. What's been brought up here, however, is a question of fundamentally expanding the Tes4Mod content by creating new articles and branching out in a new direction.

Having said all that, however, I am not particularly active in the Tes4Mod namespace. What happens in the namespace should be determined primarily by the editors who are active here and therefore are going to be doing the work. I'll accept whatever decision the Tes4Mod editors reach. --Nephele^Talk 15:32, 6 May 2008 (EDT)

AnonymousEdit

I am a latecomer to all of this, but I can see that you and some others are strongly against including info about mods on this wiki. Now, I don't understand this at all, the idea of distinguishing a site from other sites by deliberately including less information than people want to provide, especially if it's in its own namespace, which I believe attracts its own set of maintainers, those who are strong users of mods. If it were a matter of bandwidth I could understand, but I'm guessing bandwidth isn't a primary issue on a text-based wiki.

I have not seen the unfair arguments you mention about Oblivionmodwiki, but my own argument against it is that it's poorly maintained (I do not believe the statement characterising their community as "devoted" is accurate), and judging from comments above on this page, it's unstable as well. I have much less confidence in that site's continued existence than in this one, especially as time passes and Oblivion is played by fewer people (having "Oblivion mod" in the title isn't a good idea for longevity).

Now, on the concern of the danger of having every mod under the sun on this site -- the vast majority of mods do not require a wiki article, since they're simple modifications that are easily covered in a small readme file. Others are sprawling efforts that generate a large amount of discussion, and those are the ones that would benefit most from the wiki treatment. Midas Magic, taking the reason I came here as an example, has generated 18 chained threads on the Bethseda forum discussing it. If you use that sort of ruler to measure whether a given mod warrants an in-depth article here, it should prevent any flood of articles on simple mods that don't need them, I think, if you really want to limit how much useful information this wiki contains. This is my framework of where to draw the line on what to include, and why I consider this place the best place for it. --67.181.102.146 01:34, 7 May 2008 (EDT)

dev_akmEdit

I guess I'm obviously biased on this, but I completely agree with you [Wrye]. The main reason I wanted to put FCOM information here -- aside from the fact that I desperately needed to give the FCOM users a better way to help maintain the compatibility guidelines -- is that I know and trust UESP. UESP has been a constant resource for me since I first started playing Elder Scrolls games. That's not something I can say for ANY other Elder Scrolls web site. I don't have anything against Oblivionmodwiki, but I just never got into it. I also already had some active presence here and knew a few others who are active.

I tend to think it's very clear that UESP will not in fact "eventually end up duplicating all of the content at Oblivionmodwiki". On the contrary, I would argue that there's obviously not enough compelling interest in wiki-style collaboration on mod readmes and reviews. How viable is a review in a collaborative environment anyway? Without very active contributors and strong editorial oversight, reviews are just not a good match for wiki strengths. The same goes for readmes, except perhaps in cases where the original is very poor or does not exist. However, in-depth how-to guides and FAQs are a perfect fit for a wiki. It's no accident that this is exactly the sort of thing that UESP already does very well. I'd love to see it expanded with other guides that make sense. I think Midas Magic spells, Oscuro spoilers, MMM bestiaries, and Fran loot guides would be a natural fit here, for example.

A strong Tes4Mod section at UESP will evolve only if there is sufficient need and interest in it. In other words, the question will answer itself over time. I don't think UESP will be bombarded with a duplicate of what's on Oblivionmodwiki because there's just not enough pressing need for a wiki to handle that sort of material anyway (the approach taken by TESNexus and PES already seems to fill that niche quite well). For whatever it's worth, that's my take on it. --Dev akm 12:43, 7 May 2008 (EDT)

GECEdit

I'm going to add my vote to keep mods off. Wrye put it a lot better than I can, but there are a lot of places out there that will host free wikis, if a few people really want this it would be trivial to get one together; UESP is a place I can tell people to go to and not have to worry about questions about mods or the like. People who are already players of Morrowind or Oblivion would understand, but newcomers might not quite get it... -GEC 66.82.9.85 13:41, 7 May 2008 (EDT)

RatwarEdit

Well, since one of Daveh's long term goals has been to have mods downloadable from the UESP (hence the File Database Design), I don't think there's any problem with more mod pages. In fact, there's not a huge problem with duplicating Oblivion Mod Wiki in my eyes, though I agree that currently readmes and reviews have no place on this site, and if the UESP ever enters that market, we should do so with a plan to do better. Still since we're not hosting mods right now, I think that Wrye's point about depth over breath is something for us to strive for.

Of course, Nephele brings up a valid point. Enforcing Depth over Breath is hard due to the nature of a wiki, but it is possible. If we're diligent about cleaning the Tes4Mod of stub articles on Mods that don't have much depth in their articles, we should be able to prevent becoming another Oblivion Mod Wiki. This solution means both users and admins will need to be ready to dedicate some time to this section though. I know I can't do it that much.--Ratwar 20:05, 7 May 2008 (EDT)

Wrye 2Edit

Sigh... You know a conversation is getting too long when your comment has subsections...

UESP ReputationEdit

One major factor here is general reputation of the wiki. UESP has a very high rep for a number of reasons:

Long history (going back to Arena), clearly demonstrating ongoing support from the site owner.
Fending off advances from Wikia.
Strong likelihood of continued existence. Past history speaks to that. But so does an large, active editing community.
Good, open editorial standards. A lot of us have put a lot of effort into maintaining high quality and a good atmosphere at the site. Doing that is often tedious and sometimes grueling and painful, but we're now seeing the payoff. Readers like the site. They appreciate the general atmosphere and they respect that professionalism with which it's run. (And speaking as someone who put in some some buttnumblingly painful hours on painful issues, I gotta say it's a pleasure to see that pay off with some respect!)

In short, through a lot of hard work, Dave and the rest of the editors and admins here have made this a desirable place. We shouldn't be surprised that we get asked on more dates. :)

Vs. OblivionModWikiEdit

Aside from general reputation, it's not enough to describe a wiki by it's subject matter. There's also a general editorial policy. Yes, OblivionModWiki (OMW) covers mods. But it covers them in a particular way. That's the result of conscious decisions on the part of the site operators and editors. I personally think those were the wrong decisions -- or at least, they resulted in a site that did not interest me. Readmes are already readily available, so that's not as useful, and reviews are generally available from mod download sites, so that's also not of interest. The generalized search is of some interest, but that's only useful if you cover almost all mods. And for that, Buddah's mods listing plus the various selected mod listings have been more useful.

Now, could OMW policy be expanded to do what we're doing? To some degree, yes. But that that would be as much of a change for them as it is for us to proceed in this direction. So at best it would be a draw -- at which point, I think that our general reputation strongly favors us.

And, again, that's only "to some degree". Since we have few mods right now, we don't have a strong editorial policy yet. Thus we don't have a lot of inertia to deal with -- and the inertia that we do have is consistent with the depth over breadth policy. OTOH, OblivionModWiki has a substantial amount of inertia in the other direction: breadth over depth, reviews, readme quotes.

In short OMW made some editorial decisions early on about what the site would be. The policy that's been put up here is almost the opposite of their policy. The result is that some people will prefer the OMW approach, but others will prefer our approach.

Fracture InformationEdit

Nephele has a good point about the risk of fractured information, but in my experience that's not a problem with OMW, because OMW already duplicates information that ordinarily I find elsewhere. I.e. I never use OMW -- instead, I get readmes and review from the download sites and/or mod lists.

I don't want to disrespect OMW -- rpeh and others put in a chunk of work on the site. But the truth is that information there is already duplicative. And people who want in-depth guides already come here. So the number of sites being visited doesn't increase.

Documentation CreepEdit

Nephele has voiced concern about documentation creep. Essentially this is a slippery slope argument. I.e. each incremental change or allowance is small, but cumulatively they add up to being in a place where we don't want to be (over-documentation). I think that this is a valid concern, but I think that the danger can also be dealt with fairly easily.

First, clearly enunciate a policy which is against documentation creep. Make it clear that we do favor depth over breadth. (And perhaps clarify what too much depth would be.) One way to do that is to have a policy of "Utility over Exhaustion". I.e. make it clear that documentation should be written so to be so that most players of the mod will find the info to be of real use. (We don't want to say "useful to any player of the mod" since one can always imagine an information obsessive player who wants everything documented.)

Second, we can explicitly have rules to avoid documentation creep. One rule that's we were implicitly using is "No Stubs". I.e. don't start a doc unless you personally are actively working on it towards the end of meeting our standards. If a doc gets started, but doesn't make progress within two weeks, then prod it (prod == propose for deletion). That's what happened with Midas Magic.

RecapEdit

This approach still looks good to me. Probably makes sense to expand the policy a little more to say:

No stubs.
Utility over Exhaustion.

--Wrye 20:51, 7 May 2008 (EDT)

VhaeosEdit

First off.. thanks Reph for cluing me in on this discussion. Anyway, I should probably address a few things. We have no policy that I'm aware of. The way we 'cover' mods is try and do it quicker, the reason we do that is because there is hardly anyone willing to add mods, and the few people who used to still add them didn't like doing it, so they tried to do it quickly. I'd be more then happy to let someone do whatever they want with a page/namespace, so long as they include the categories on the relevant pages. (Which wont really get in the way.) Also, about reviews.. our reviews section has shut down. It did have editorial oversight and no one wants to run it.. so reviews aren't done anymore. I don't think Depth and Breadth are exclusive. A lot of our articles may start as stubs, but if an editor comes along and decides he/she wants to elaborate.. then I'd encourage him/her to do so. -Vhaeos 22:22, 8 May 2008 (EDT)

Rpeh IIEdit

The reason I asked Vhaeos for his thoughts was so that he could clarify the "policy" situation. With that one question out of the way and a clear message that depth is perfectly acceptable, I can see no reason why we wouldn't want to use OMW instead of UESP.

Wrye's suggestions for editorial policies look sensible and would mean that if UESP did take the job on, things shouldn't get too out of hand, but there's one problem that has been alluded to on a couple of occasions: time. Ratwar says that "...users and admins will need to be ready to dedicate some time to this section..." and that's pretty clearly true. The trouble is that he doesn't have the time, Wrye doesn't either (or so I infer from his earlier comments about not having time to post), I'm already spending far too much time on the site, I know Nephele is busy and in general there aren't too many people with large amounts of time on their hands to a) ensure the policies are enforced, and b) ensure the information in the new articles is correct. Some of that would be true no matter where the information is hosted, but I think there would be more interest in mod information hosted on a mod site than in the same information hosted on a site primarily about walkthroughs and information.

My biggest problem is what we're calling "fractured information". Both Nephele and Wrye make good points but I see more on Nephele's side. We already have a "wide" site; to create another one with "depth" rather than deepening the existing one seems perverse. What I think will happen is that people find a mod that interests them (on OMW or elsewhere) then come here for a guide only to find that, in most cases, it doesn't exist. It's better to have all the descriptive information in one place. I'd also argue that more "deep" articles would follow from going to OMW. It's more intimidating to create an article than expand an existing one, so people may be put off describing mods here when they might feel more inclined to do so on OMW given that the page already exists. True, they could do that now but the typical readme style may be encouraging people to continue in that vein. Creating a new category for "in-depth" guides, or using Featured Articles should help there and I'm sure Vhaeos would welcome such suggestions.

The one concern I would have about using OMW is that there's a limited site staff at the moment. I imagine, though, that Vhaeos would be glad of any influx of experienced editors from UESP and elsewhere and that some could be made patrollers and even admins after a short time.

Having said all this, I'll reiterate what I said in my previous post: "I'm not going to make a big thing of this". I think it's a bad idea and I think it'll harm both sites but like Nephele I am not particularly active in the Tes4Mod namespace, so I'll leave it to the judgment of the people who are. –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 10:56, 9 May 2008 (EDT)

Wrye 3: SummaryEdit

Reviewing the above, I think that this comes down to two points: First, people who are interested in adding this sort of content want to add it here. Second, the type of content to be added will be sufficiently distinct from the type of material added at OblivionModWiki to distinquish us from them in this regard.

The primary consideration is what the editors are willing to do. Looking at things from the admin/senior edit side, I think the possible objections come down to:

Is new material within UESP's purview? It's wiki grade material about Elder Scrolls universe, so yes.
Is new material of sufficient quality? Yes. Added material is looking good so far. Rules for content provide good guidelines for continued high quality additions.
Does new material avoid excessive duplication? Yes. Material is distinct in nature from what OblivionModWiki has done. (And here, what's relevant is what OMW has done, not what it possibly might do in the future.)

Since these editoral/administrative concerns are satisfied, it comes back again to what contributing editors want to do -- and all of those who are active contributors in this area have indicated that they want to continue doing so. I think that pretty much resolves the issue. --Wrye 20:11, 10 May 2008 (EDT)

Follow Up: I've updated the "What Goes Here" section of the article as previewed in Wrye 2 section above. --Wrye 20:39, 10 May 2008 (EDT)

Comparison of Custom Races?Edit

I was contemplating the table I threw together to compare the stats of the Tabaxi race by Luchaire with the other races in Oblivion, and realised that it might be a launch point for a comparison of prominent custom races. Does anyone have any comments on this idea? Ketsuban 07:52, 21 February 2009 (EST)

IMO, I don't think it would be useful.

Number of custom races is huge. And the qualities of different races is different in different mods. E.g, there's bg2048's race project, which rebalances vanilla races and then adds some more. Then there's the slightly trimmed down version of that in Cobl, which actually adds new races an then has a default stats for new races, and then has a rebalanced race mod.
Then there are racial variations. There are probably a hundred different versions of Mystic Elves. Male, female (as separate races), with various tattoos, looking gothic, etc., etc.
There there are the sheer number of races. Chocolate elves. Chingari demon races. Seducer race. Ayleid Farmer race. Etc. Etc. Etc. It's huge.

And even if all that were documented, how useful would it be? Not very, IMO. I just can't see it being a useful resource.

I will say though that the table that you "threw together" looks very nice! But if you documented all custom races it would be like 200 times wider. :eep: --Wrye 02:51, 22 February 2009 (EST)

Yeah, I was intending to be fairly ruthless in what custom races were used (they'd need to be proven popular, like Tabaxi, not just any one someone finds on TESNexus). I guess you could probably compress the variations on a theme into a footnote detailing major differences... but your points are very good. I thought it'd be a useful reference for someone wanting to know about a particular race, since not all authors publicise base stats or other salient details for their races. Ketsuban 06:34, 2 March 2009 (EST)

I think that most custom races exist because they make hot looking babes -- so screenshots are what really drives most users. Sad, but true. The tables are more useful for race compilation mods. Hmm... Speaking of which, Cobl docs could really use a nice table to explain the races in Cobl Races - Balanced... Want to volunteer? :) --Wrye 21:02, 2 March 2009 (EST)

I could certainly take a look, when I have the time. Ketsuban 20:19, 7 March 2009 (EST)

Can we add this to the list?Edit

Elsweyr, the Deserts of Anequina appears to be rather well thought out so far. Pretty huge landscape as well. Fruckert 15:36, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Windows 7Edit

Can someone please tell me how to install mods on windows 7? ~~TheElderScribe~~

same as the other OS download file goes into down loads find its data folder overwrite existing data folder fo fancy installation usually just manual install so you are the installer not the OS or a program no autoplay or setup.exe Mrp8196 20:56, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

cheydinhal pet shopEdit

i cant seem to find anything about the cheydinhal pet shop mod i just want to read it because im getting Oblivion for PC soon — Unsigned comment by 24.32.60.90 (talk) at 06:11 on 19 January 2010 (UTC)

http://www.oblivionmodwiki.com/index.php/Cheydinhal_Petshop is the main page for the mod you are referring to. Although I recommend you to not get it, Its very buggy. Mikeyboy52 06:11, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

2018 update: try https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/search/ on "pet". You can find more animal companions with a search on "companion" or "CM Partner" and comb through the listings for non-humanoids. There's lots of this stuff, much of it entirely functional, unlike the CPS mod. — Darklocq ^☎ ¢ 03:10, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Meshes fault?Edit

I have a problem which i hope someone can help me resolve. When i play the game the entire landscaoe(floor not trees, rocks, streets etc) becomes really wierd. It nshows a purpleish map of the city and the suirrounding countryside which it is closest too. Now, i had a feeling the elven maps mod may have caused this so i uninstalled everything to do with it...did'nt work. Deleted every mod i had...didn't work. Reinstalled Oblivion...didn't work. Please can someone help me?!? --TheElderScribe-- Never mind, i have sorted it now. But i do have one request to anyone, please could someone post a link of a valid CURP download page please, as i am in desperate need of it? — Unsigned comment by TheElderScribe (talk • contribs) at 20:45 on 4 February 2010

HELP!Edit

i just downloadec extracted and activated some mods, and now oblivion won't launch. connected? — Unsigned comment by 24.56.248.122 (talk) at 01:12 on 22 February 2010

Morroblivion?Edit

Are they ever going to add Morroblivion information like they did tamriel rebuilt for morrowind? — Unsigned comment by Skylar1146 (talk • contribs) at 21:55 on 29 June 2012

Probably not. If there's enough interest from users and someone willing to work on it, they could propose it on the Community Portal. Otherwise, it just won't happen. Vely^►t►e 01:46, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

"Just the basics" tutorial on Wrye Bash, etc.Edit

As I also noted at Oblivion talk:Oblivion, which may be better watchlisted: In a new section at Oblivion:Technical Support#Mod-related Headaches, I've added a quick run-down on the basics of how to use BOSS, WB, and TES4Edit to clean up a mod list and prepare a bashed patch. It took weeks to figure this out, and I think others would be greatly aided by a tutorial. Others should pore over it in case I've missed something.

PS: I also added a section to that page on how to debug problems with running Oblivion in a VM, plus some other specific tips, and generally cleaned up the page, which had a lot of mangled markup and broken English.

— Darklocq ^☎ ¢ 04:19, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

I would say that doesn't really belong on Technical Support; that should have its own page somewhere within this namespace. --Enodoc (talk) 09:12, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

No objection from me, as long as we retain a pointer to it from current location. The average visitor to this site doesn't even know the Tes4Mod namespace exists and probably never will. :-) My goal with the material was actually technical support, i.e. getting people the bare minimum basic info they need to not totally mangle their game (and maybe unmangle it) if they just want to try some modding without much of a plan yet, which probably most of us do out of the gate. It's not intended to be a comprehensive manual of mod usage and tweaking, which would be 10× longer (maybe much more than 10×). My goal is to prevent for others the week+ that I lost, including a lot of actual gameplay I had to abandon, in learning how to even basically mod this game without dire consequences to stability or ability to get the game to run at all. It's way more complicated with Oblivion than Morrowind. — Darklocq ^☎ ¢ 03:05, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

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