The Road to 1.0 - Curated Mod Lists (Patreon)

The end goal of Wabbajack has always been to install mod lists with as few user interactions as possible while still respecting the copyrights of the mod authors. One of the hiccups in this quick install process has always been the two steps of downloading Wabbajack, and then sending the user back to the internet to find a mod list to install. A simple solution to this two step process is to integrate a mod list gallery into Wabbajack. And as you can see from our latest video, we've done exactly that:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUOTTzBkLwA

Wabbajack is just a tool, and like any web browser, or archive extractor, is no more liable for what actions it is instructed to perform than any other utility. But this gallery of modlists is associated with the Wabbajack name, and so it's important for the good name of the project to take special attention to the lists endorsed by our gallery. As such we've setup a review process where modlist authors can request to have their list added to our gallery, we then review the modlist and offer feedback, or accept the list out-right. Once accepted the modlist author gains access to our maintenance servers, private discord channels, and more in-depth support by the Wabbajack devs. Of course, Wabbajack remains open source and free, so anyone can continue to make modlist installers, but to be featured in the gallery, and to be endorsed (by association) by the Wabbajack app, the list will need to be reviewed by our team.

This human approval process renders our previous mechanical permissions system unnecessary. The number of requests we get for modlists is small enough that we can take the time to go through the contents by hand. And as any Youtube creator or Twitch streamer will tell you, a hands-on review and personal feedback is always preferable to a machine-based moderation system. So effective in the next few days we will be disabling the mechanical permissions system in favor of this human based approach. This approach will result in  more fine-grained content moderation, and result in more stable mod lists.

I mentioned our modlist maintenance servers. These are back-end services that verify the validity of a modlist on a given time schedule. Downloads get hidden, archives get updated, and servers go down. The process of tracking the current state of 200 downloads can often become more than a single person can handle. Our list validation systems watch the Nexus for changes, and every few hours check that all the downloads are still valid. Right now this information is given purely to the modlist authors, but in the next few days we'll be integrating this info into Wabbajack, disabling or enabling modlist installers based on their current download state. In the future we also plan on looking into auto-updating for certain mods that update frequently, or that update in predictable ways. 

As always, thank you so much for your support, both financially and non-financially. The donations on this Patreon go a long way in offsetting the costs involved in building and maintaining the back-end services that power Wabbajack.

In the next post I'll be going over the new installation sources we're supporting so be sure to stay tuned!