So with the "Stupid Things" thread being newly closed, I decided we should make a thread about HOW to do well in our community instead of simply laughing at everyone who doesn't. This will be a place not for quoting ignorance or nuisances but instead for guiding people in the right direction. That way, whenever we meet someone who may have been featured in that old thread had it been around, we can link them here so that they can learn and become productive members of the community. Post any tips you have for new community members here. We can then assemble various collections of quotes to direct towards newcomers. Please don't just say "Don't Do X" without also giving alternatives or reasons as to why not to do it. Overall, I hope we can create a much more accepting and logical community through this project.
Some examples:
For Mod Pack Creators:
Some examples:
- Mod designers put hundreds of hours into creating fun and exiting mods, often with incredibly tight real life schedules. They just about never get payed for these mods, and make them for the community out of the kindness of their hearts. Even if you think they owe you something, try to understand that they might not be able to do everything you want. There are thousands of people in the modded community, and it's hard to do everything for everyone. I am not saying you should not give them ideas though. Many mod designers love fan input. Just try to understand their side if it takes a while or they are unable to do it.
- "Do not ask for mod updates. Mod authors tend to get annoyed at this, because they're either a) already working as hard as they can on it or b) don't have time in real life. It's either being updated or it's not, but, unfortunately, you probably won't be able to change that just with your words.
If the mod is open-source, though, you may be able to update yourself and submit that to the author if suitable. That depends on the license, of course.
- Things said in private should be kept private, unless you have permission from the person themselves to say it in public. while free speech is good, people have the right to keep things private For example, if you're talking with a mod dev and they tell you in private that they may have a major release ready in a week and you go around telling people there will be a release, should there be a delay, there will be a lot of upset people yelling at the mod author when they never said anything publicly. That causes a lot of problems for them when they didn't even announce the update.
- I have learned to never ask for a ETA of any kind myself, and expect any announced ETAs to be delayed at least once before the project is released. May be a little overkill, but better than being hyped up and then be disappointed/mad.
- Respect other gameplay styles, there are many out there, and people have varying opinions on how the game is best played. Suggesting new things is great, but forcing something on someone else or making them feel bad for how they play is not
- This is universal to all forums: when posting, read the last page of discussion and the page before it (unless the last page is almost a full page). While responding to the topic is important, it's also important to know what people are talking about. This rule has more or less wiggle-room depending on the topic - for example, in a post seeking advice about power gen, it isn't that grievous to skip what other people are saying (though you're skipping cool stuff), but on a very controversial topic ideas can change rapidly without the OP being edited to reflect that.
- When posting about crashes/issues, look and see if other people have had that issue first. If repeating posts about advice is just annoying, then ten different people posting the same crash twice each is overkill. One example of people not following this unspoken rule was recently on the TiCon MCF thread; there were a lot of people who came in complaining about Forge's update to liquid handling crashing the smeltery.
- Spell/grammar check your post at least twice in serious conversations, you never know who will quote you
For Mod Pack Creators:
- If you need anything, don't hesitate to ask. You will be surprised by how helpful people can be if you ask them for help. I frequently add requested features to my mods, and sometimes I even create custom mods for people. It leaves me with a good feeling, which I will associate with you. You get both help and goodwill points. The person that helps you gain goodwill points. It's a win-win situation.
- DON'T: just take someone else's pack, toss in/remove a couple of mods, then call it all good.
- DO: Come up with a 'Mission Statement' for your pack, then choose mods that fit that mission statement.
- For example, you can see the Mission Statement I had for ShneekeyCraft in my sig: less is more. Basically, I had a 'minimalist' or 'lite' mod pack with fewer mods that was able to run on lower-end machines with fewer problems. I also put a LOT of time into the config files for cross-mod compatibility and synergy. So I had a tightly knit lite pack designed primarily for people newer to the modded minecraft scene. Unfortunately, the target audience was not particularly large, so there were very few tears shed when I stopped development.
- DON'T: be mean, to mod authors, particularly when it comes to distribution rights.
- DO: make sure you comply with any mod pack requirements for the mods you plan on including in your pack.
- Seriously. It doesn't matter if your personal ideologies consider the idea of restricted distribution rights to be abhorrent... the rest of the dev community will be very upset with you. At the very least, every single launcher that I am aware of demands that you have permissions for distribution for every mod in your pack (unless you roll on the Curse launcher and restrict yourself to mods hosted on Curse, in which case they do it for you), and your pack will get yanked and your reputation completely ruined if you just start tossing mods into your pack and the mod devs get upset with you. If a mod author is not letting you put that mod in your pack, then shrug it off and use some other mod.
- DON'T: be 'that guy' and spam every thread under the sun with adds for your mod pack you just made. The only thing that will happen is you will very upset forum moderators cleaning up after you and issuing various warnings or vacations. In fact, that's probably the fastest way to kill off any chance of your mod pack getting popular. Everyone will simply recall you being 'that guy' and ignore your pack entirely.
- DO: feel free to have a link in your sig, a SINGLE thread in the APPROPRIATE forum, and discuss it if the topic comes up.
- DON'T: spam updates too rapidly, unless you are fixing bugs, in which case you should probably be on 'dev' versions until you get to another stable 'release' version. Spammed updates make server populations cry.
- DON'T: ignore bug reports and never update. Because then people lose interest.
- DO: set yourself an update schedule. Not necessarily 'weekly' or 'monthly', but more along the lines of 'when I get enough mods updating with relevant content'. To give you an idea: Vaskii updates Botania like some kind of super sayan ninja. Every time I update... there's another dang update. Don't bother trying to keep up with the updates, just make sure if there's a major relevant update (for example, the Hydrodrangea not consuming water on infinite sources patch), it goes into your next update.
- This is a fine line to tread. You need to make sure your pack doesn't contain crash bugs, but on the other hand, updating too rapidly can cause servers to have issues because then everyone needs to download your new pack.
- DON'T: put your pack download behind adf.ly or other paid service. In addition to being a violation of the terms of most mods use, it also arguably violates Mojang's EULA. So don't do it, mmkay?
- DO: put your pack on a launcher that makes sense for you. In fact, you can even have it on multiple launchers if you want. Each launcher has pros and cons, find one that suits you.
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