Hello! A brief overview of upcoming changes
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Hello everyone,
My name is Robin and I've taken over the day to day running of 5Mods from Rappo. You can read more about that in Rappo's announcement thread.
I just wanted to (relatively) briefly touch base with you all about some of the niggling issues there are right now on 5Mods and where my focus currently lies with getting us up to speed and up to the extremely high levels of service Rappo was providing previously.
After 24 hours on the job I can tell you right now that Rappo was an absolute machine. The responsibilities and manual and direct interaction he had with the file systems on the site is to be highly lauded. It's clear that he wanted to keep things tight and to generally do all the work himself because that's what he liked doing and what he thought was necessary. It's lead to a great personal service on 5Mods, for sure, and I know he was loved a lot in this community and for good reason.
The manual validation and approval process for uploading new files to the site is one I understand was born out of necessity after the Angry Planes scandal, but, since then, the main crux of the site and its main purpose for existing -- that of uploading and sharing modifications for GTA5 -- has had to go completely and solely through him. And that must have been a big (and time-consuming) burden for him to bear. Well, I know it was, because I'm currently doing it. Just this morning, I've woken up after 7 hours sleep to find 50 new file uploads waiting for my approval. That's a lot to wake up to every morning, especially on the weekends when you would like to relax more, but the weekends are even busier than the weekdays.
The issue I have is that I'm never going to be able to provide the same high level of service that Rappo did on my own. I honestly have no idea how Rappo ever managed to take a holiday! My main concern is that there are often times when I am without internet for many days at a time. Case-in-point I have two weddings coming up over the next two weekends where I will not have any internet at all. If I don't have internet, files uploaded to 5Mods don't get approved and mod authors, understandably, will get upset.
As such, our current focus on the sites is on reducing the reliance on myself directly as a bottleneck to you all getting the mods you want.
The way we plan to do this is by enhancing and improving on the current admin tools that Rappo was previously using so that a team of moderators can be brought in to help with moderating the file database, handling file approvals and so on and so forth. The main aim of this is to not only bring in people who understand this community well (and better than I do at this time), but also to reduce the time it takes for your files to get approved and your reports to get actioned. The end result is you're relying less on just me (or any one individual) and more on a team of users who can potentially handle things a lot faster while maintaining a high level of quality.
Right now, Rappo has coded the admin section the way you would code any part of a site that only you would use. The core functionality is there, but we'll need to do a bit of work to improve security and set it up for a team approach. Similarly, there are some parts of the site (such as the featured mods and changing of download buttons to point to an external source) that can currently only be done by directly editing rows in the database itself, i.e. there is currently no web interface or admin area for these aspects of the site. We'll need to code whole new functionality to bring that into the admin web interface as directly editing the database is not ideal in any way.
5Mods was completely coded by Rappo, so while we have programmers who know Ruby on Rails, we'll suffer from the same issues any programmer suffers who enters a large code project that is not their own. We're going to need to learn how Rappo has done things before we can properly begin to edit it, and this obviously takes time.
Irrespective, right now our focus is on getting the admin and moderation section up to scratch and getting together a moderation team who can help with the running of 5Mods moving forward. I'd obviously like to get this done as fast as possible so you're not relying on me as much as you are currently, especially in regards to new file approvals. Coming from a site like Nexus Mods where the community is able to upload files instantly without any sort of admin approval it's a bit of a culture shift for me, but I'm sure I can find the right balance for 5Mods given time.
I'm currently aware of a few issues that we will also look into once we've sorted out the admin and moderation section, these include:
- Currently it seems that 5Mods will only host files that are 100MB or less in size. Apparently, this was chosen as the cut-off point to reduce the cost of file storage for Rappo. We will definitely want to change this moving forward so mod authors with large files don't have to upload their files to external services like DropBox and MediaFire and we can maintain the same standard of service throughout the site, irrespective of file size. We've successfully implemented upload scripts that support files up to 5GB in size on Nexus Mods, and I definitely want to ensure we can support the same on 5Mods.
- The servers are running almost to their peak capacity such that, on weekends or on days when traffic is higher than normal, it can sometimes become overloaded and inaccessible. We will look into the server set up and how we can increase capacity so that this isn't a problem moving forward.
- Currently any virus scans of new uploads need to be done manually by the admin approving the file. We'll work to implement the scanning of all files uploaded to 5Mods through the VirusTotal API, where the files will be scanned by 57 different virus and malware programs. We'll try to link the reports of these scans somewhere on file pages so that all users can see the results of the virus scan before deciding on whether they want to download and install a mod or not.
- There seems to be a bug in the profile picture setup for some users that is preventing it from updating on the forums when they update it on the main site. This is a low priority issue for us in light of the issues highlighted already, but we will take a quick look at some point to ascertain whether it's worth fixing it or not.
- I'm aware that I've been missing tags on files and some files have been added to the wrong category. Thank you to the people who have reported these issues so far and I'm sorry about that. I'll be more diligent moving forward.
- Because the featured files and download linking need to be done via direct database edits I am loathe to touch this aspect of the site right now until we can integrate this functionality into the new admin area. It's too much of a risk, else. I hope that will be done this week. If you're a mod author who currently needs their download button linked to an external source then please bear with us until we can complete this task.
So that's where we currently are and what we're aiming to get done over the coming days, weeks and months. If you think I've missed something please let me know.
PS. Please be aware that I am in a GMT timezone (while Rappo was on GMT-8). As such, the usual times you expected Rappo to be on will now not be the same as the time's I am online, for obvious reasons.
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@Dark0ne fair enough. Seems you are well informed about the current issues, we have confidence, that once you have time and have setup things required, this website is going to be better than before and shall improve.
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@Dark0ne Good luck
Nexus mod is my other favorite modding website, I think rappo took the good decision choosing people from nexus.
It will be probably a bit different now, but I'm pretty sure you will do thing well
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@Dark0ne Very thorough post; thank you for sharing the clear and well organized situation update.
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@Dark0ne Sounds good so far! If you need any more helping hands for the mod quality approval thing, I'd be willing to help. I've been active in GTA modding for 11 years now, so I know a thing or two about mods
This quality approval is basically what I wanted to introduce on gtainside.com, but that site won't change anything in the foreseeable future.If you don't mind, I'd like to make another suggestion: Have you thought about adding subcategories to the already existing mod categories? For example, a subcategory for every car-make in the "Vehicles" category. At the moment, every make is there, together with handling mods or original GTA V cars that have been improved. So, for a better overview, a subcategory for every make, for original GTA cars and for handling mods would be really cool!
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@dark0ne thats a good idea to have multiple moderators to be able to approve mods instead of relying on 1 or 2 people.
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Exciting news! Best of luck with the new changes and reforming the admin tools.
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@Dark0ne @MrMason : Good luck with maintaining this site, it's my favorite GTA5 modding site. Nexus Mods is very known to me, I use Nexus Mods to mod TES Morrowind, Oblivion & Skyrim. Good choice from Rappo to give it into your hands.
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@Dark0ne said in Hello! A brief overview of upcoming changes:
The manual validation and approval process for uploading new files to the site is one I understand was born out of necessity after the Angry Planes scandal, but, since then, the main crux of the site and its main purpose for existing -- that of uploading and sharing modifications for GTA5 -- has had to go completely and solely through him. And that must have been a big (and time-consuming) burden for him to bear. Well, I know it was, because I'm currently doing it. Just this morning, I've woken up after 7 hours sleep to find 50 new file uploads waiting for my approval. That's a lot to wake up to every morning, especially on the weekends when you would like to relax more, but the weekends are even busier than the weekdays.
Now mods go through automatically?
Say hello to viruses, everybody...
This must explain why my GTA 5 stopped working... I downloaded an infectious mod. All this time I've been wondering why my GTA 5 doesn't work, now I know.
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@krashadam they are not automated yet. Plz report a mod u feel is infected we will look into it
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Stop being an alarmist please... Mods have stopped working because of the publisher's content update.
@krashadam said in Hello! A brief overview of upcoming changes:
Now mods go through automatically?
Say hello to viruses, everybody...
This must explain why my GTA 5 stopped working... I downloaded an infectious mod. All this time I've been wondering why my GTA 5 doesn't work, now I know.
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@FoxtrotDelta Well, duh. But the fact this guy wants to remove a safe feature is just... dangerous, really.
I came here because I was worried all other sites were designed to infect my PC/games. Now, reading that DarkOne wants to remove manual uploads I can't feel safe when downloading a mod like I used to.
@DarthPungz said in Hello! A brief overview of upcoming changes:
Stop being an alarmist please... Mods have stopped working because of the publisher's content update.
Alarmist...? I'm just expressing how I feel about this situation.
Sorry for being alarmed about a particular feature I was glad existed. I'll just leave the thread.
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@krashadam It is just that you go from 0-100 and you made a false claim that auto approval is actively occurring and you stated that this was a reason for your PC to currently have an virus, or infectious mod that caused your computer to go down... so yeah... I stand by my alarmist comment.
@krashadam said in Hello! A brief overview of upcoming changes:
Now mods go through automatically?
Say hello to viruses, everybody...
This must explain why my GTA 5 stopped working... I downloaded an infectious mod. All this time I've been wondering why my GTA 5 doesn't work, now I know.
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@krashadam they are not automated yet and when they are automated we will have 3 virus total tools to scan he uploaded mod before approval so dont worry!
You trust 1 antivirus we shall have 3 of them running 3 scans then mod will be approved. So dont worry its perfectly safe. Safer than a mod approved currently by manual checking so definitely a step forward. Dont worry
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@FoxtrotDelta said in Hello! A brief overview of upcoming changes:
@krashadam they are not automated yet and when they are automated we will have 3 virus total tools to scan he uploaded mod before approval so dont worry!
You trust 1 antivirus we shall have 3 of them running 3 scans then mod will be approved. So dont worry its perfectly safe. Safer than a mod approved currently by manual checking so definitely a step forward. Dont worry
Yeah, but VirusTotal isn't exactly top of the line in and of itself either. While it may get somethings right, it's also a little flawed.
Weird example below: VVV
Ever bought those bottles that are supposed to be like cold coffee, or something? I bought one once, the Nutrition Values said the drink had 30% of Vitamin B12 in it, alongside (get this) 50 Gs of sugar. I was a little skeptical at first, but I assumed there was a reason, so I got it anyway. I start drinking it, it tastes like shit, I taste MORE than 50 Gs of sugar, and in the end of it all, my body's in pain all over! From my arms to my legs, pain everywhere.
I literally drank candy. That's all it was. I know it seems unrelated, but it's an example of how actions can speak louder than words.
By the way, what's the Angry Planes Scandal?
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@krashadam Good thing you didn't see that scandal. don't worry. they shall have 3 virus tools not just 1 virus total.
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@FoxtrotDelta said in Hello! A brief overview of upcoming changes:
@krashadam Good thing you didn't see that scandal.
I'm interested in knowing. I never heard this get mentioned here before.
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@Dark0ne I am a bit worried for the future of 5 mods.. not from these changes, but from T2. Has there been any word from them? Will they be ordering a cease and desist from this site as well or do we still have a chance at survival?.. Seems like they want to shut down modding completely, when the problem they are experiencing with hackers can be solved with simple filters both on their side, and our side. All they need to do is make a filter that checks the directory and update.rpf for changes, and prevents players from using gta online, and only allows single player until mods are removed. And on our side, we should require scripters to include code that nullifies their mods from working in online mode (if that is possible) e.g. game will crash if you try to go online and not to singleplayer. So many sales of the PC copy were for people who just wanted to put their favorite cars in the game and improve the graphics...and just to have fun, yes hackers are infringing on T2's rights... but T2 is infringing on our rights as personal copy owners by saying we can't mod. Modding is public domain.
If T2 contacts you.... this would make a compelling argument...
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@5dmc1 said in Hello! A brief overview of upcoming changes:
@Dark0ne I am a bit worried for the future of 5 mods.. not from these changes, but from T2. Has there been any word from them? Will they be ordering a cease and desist from this site as well or do we still have a chance at survival?.. Seems like they want to shut down modding completely, when the problem they are experiencing with hackers can be solved with simple filters both on their side, and our side. All they need to do is make a filter that checks the directory and update.rpf for changes, and prevents players from using gta online, and only allows single player until mods are removed. And on our side, we should require scripters to include code that nullifies their mods from working in online mode (if that is possible) e.g. game will crash if you try to go online and not to singleplayer. So many sales of the PC copy were for people who just wanted to put their favorite cars in the game and improve the graphics...and just to have fun, yes hackers are infringing on T2's rights... but T2 is infringing on our rights as personal copy owners by saying we can't mod. Modding is public domain.
If T2 contacts you.... this would make a compelling argument...
you are completely wrong. nice flowery speech though. if you took 2 seconds to read the EULA you'll find that you don't actually "own" the game. you're essentially just renting it from them. grow up.
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We haven't heard anything from Take Two. If we do, we'll obviously let you know!
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@Dark0ne And let's hope we won't.
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@V4D3R @Dark0ne well, based on what I heard in today's snippet from R*, they wont be targeting us. In fact it seems they want to encourage the creative community, just without harming their revenue or players being harassed, which I am totally behind. Hopefully, they will create their own mod tool for us that blocks use of mods in online while allowing us to change SP. More game developers need to embrace the modding community, look what wonders it did for Bethesda!
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@5dmc1 if they do that it would be great . rockstar should get openiv team and give them guidelines whats acceptible and whats not. Im sure they will be allowed in that sense.
Mod tool by rockstar , well i don't they will do that, it is possible and i would be very happy if they so it, but frankly i dont see it possible.
Lets see what rockstar does in coming days or weeks for single player mod community they did say they are "figuring out how to support it" i hope they can work it out .
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I imagine such an official system from TakeTwo would mean the end of 5Mods as, if they did do that, they'd want control over the mod hosting and distribution system with a future view to monetising it their own way.
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@Dark0ne they stated officially and rockstsr too, they were not going after sjngle player content (mods). We might be okay if thats the case.
