Forum:Qwinn's fix pack and mods in general

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Hi all, as some of you may have noticed, there was a discussion on my talk page about adding links a new mod which fixes a number of issues from Dragon Age: Origins. While our current policy does not put any limits on how many links can be added to any particular mod, it has come to my attention that there is expected to be hundreds of links to this one mod. As we don't have an official policy on this, I'd welcome some broader feedback from the community about how you feel about it. Depending on the outcome, we can always make amendments to our mod policy. Thanks! Loleil ^Talk 21:31, September 12, 2017 (UTC)

Just like with any mod, there will be unintended bugs. I don't mind single fix mods because they're very simple and you know exactly what you're getting, whilst I don't think we should endorse this big mod simply because you gotta install the whole thing. With smaller mods you can pick and choose which bugs you want addressed, but here you might end up getting something you never wanted. I myself consider cut dialogue not canon, and it doesn't matter whether the dialogue doesn't appear due to a bug, or if it was a conscious decision. If it's not accessible in a normal way, it is non canon. henioo ^{(da talk page)} 22:00, September 12, 2017 (UTC)

I have to agree with Henio0. Promoting this one mod on such a huge scale feels way too much like advertising for me to be comfortable with it. Especially because the link is not to nexusmods, but to the creator's own website where they solicit donations. I have no problem with asking for donations, in theory, but I do have an issue with us directing people to a site that asks for it. We should try to be as neutral as possible, and treat all mods the same. After all, this is not the only mod out there that fixes specific bugs (though I realize it's the most comprehensive), why should we promote this mod above someone else's? The argument I saw that a user may accidentally click on the link over and over when they've already downloaded it doesn't really hold up, since if the user has downloaded a mod that fixes those bugs, they wouldn't be looking for a fix for the bug. It either wouldn't be happening to them anymore after installation, and/or they can read the patch notes (which I assume exist somewhere). They can also, as Loleil pointed out, hover over the link and see that it's the same.

I have mixed feelings about the vast number of bugs that are now being listed, as well. On the one hand, important, game-breaking bugs should be listed, but on the other hand, do we really need to list each and every tiny glitch that most users likely wouldn't notice and don't have any real impact on gameplay? Bugs that make a quest unable to be completed isn't the same as a character speaking a line of dialog without their lips moving, or whatever.

If it is decided to add this mod to so many pages, I believe the wording should be completely, 100% neutral. No naming of the mod creator, and I'd support adding that specific point to the current policy. --♫ Kelcat ^Talk 22:59, September 12, 2017 (UTC)

I just investigated the matter further. The author hosts the mod only on his site, and everywhere else (including nexus) there is only a link leading the user to his site. On the site there is something about donating (which is fine, the choice stays with you), and the thing about Amazon which sounds hella shady. I don't know much about how ads revenue work but it appears he would make some kind of a profit if people click on the ad and then make a purchase within a day. We don't know if he doesn't make a profit by simply having the ads on his page, as in every time someone goes on his site, it generates money. If that is the case, or it would ever be the case, I am absolutely against linking the mod on every article about a thing that is bugged.

Now, I have a suggestion. We create a separate article here on the wiki, and link to that article. In the article we would list all the mods that fix things, and then include this one, but without special treatment. Just one of the mods. henioo ^{(da talk page)} 23:42, September 12, 2017 (UTC)

Hullo, this is Qwinn. Sorry that I didn't chime in earlier, medical issues ongoing atm. Anyway, to answer a few concerns - I really wasn't asking for the template name to be changed back to "Qwinn's Fixpack". Just saying "fixpack" instead of "mod" would entirely solve the issue I was raising as far as I'm concerned. I really don't care that my name's attached to it, I just thought making the mod indistinguishable from every single other mod was a bit much. There's no other mod that I can think of named a "Fixpack" and thus that would be enough to differentiate it. As for the Amazon thing being "shady", it's called the Amazon Affiliates Program and probably half the blogs I frequent use it. Surprised anyone's unfamiliar with it. It's easy enough to look up the program and confirm for yourself that you do not get any money for views on those Amazon ads (though the click-to-purchase timer may last more than 24 hours, actually... just discovered that may be the case, haven't confirmed, and am stating it up front now so no charges of deception come up later - if I find out that's wrong, I'll correct it, though I really don't know what the point would be in such a lie.) I also have two Google AdSense ads on the sidebar that *do* raise money by view - a pitiable amount (about 2 cents a day) that I've decided I can do without and the only reason I left those up is because it probably incentivizes Google to make me come up more in searches, but even that I can happily live without if it causes anyone even the slightest concern... I'll leave the Google ads up if you guys don't want to cooperate at the end of this discussion, and I'll take 'em down if you do. Easy problem solved. To answer other questions: "After all, this is not the only mod out there that fixes specific bugs (though I realize it's the most comprehensive), why should we promote this mod above someone else's?" Because it's the most comprehensive, and the only other way to attempt to fix your game comprehensively is by mixing and matching twenty+ other individual and often incompatible mods, and that alternative is far more likely to break a player's game than any residual bugs that my mod could (and unlike virtually all those other mods, I'm still maintaining mine, and I usually respond to bug reports within half an hour). "if the user has downloaded a mod that fixes those bugs, they wouldn't be looking for a fix for the bug. It either wouldn't be happening to them anymore after installation"... that's actually a perfectly fair point. Fair enough. If you want to leave it as "this mod" then, I won't object further (remember - if page views was my purpose, I'd never have raised the objection, the way I was thinking about it, "this mod" would just get me more views), though I still think "this fixpack" would be more accurate. Thanks for considering this anyway. BTW, you know what's freaky? The single link to my website from the Ancient Elven Boots page (and it wasn't even me that put that one up) generates at least twice and sometimes 5 times more referrals than the other 5 pages I've added a link to (Ostagar, Lothering, The Mabari Hound, Magi Origin and Dwarf Noble Origin) put together. Freaky. Whatever's causing *that* might give an answer to deciding where it might be best to make folks aware of my Fixpack, which is really all I'm trying to do. But yes - it took me 8 months to create this Fixpack, and I do reserve the right to ask for donations... I hardly get any, but it baffles me why people think it is somehow unethical to do so, as if people *should* work literally thousands of hours putting together a Fixpack and they're honor bound to receive nothing in return, not even voluntary donations or (if it were worth doing) making money by advertising views. What do those of you who object to that think *should* motivate someone to spent 8 months of 30 hour days to create a comprehensive Fixpack for the game you love? It doesn't matter in this specific case, since like I said the pay-per-view ads aren't even worth annoying people with IMO, I'm just disturbed at the notion that a modder putting up ads that *could* make money is somehow dishonorable. Nexus puts up ads too, and the person who objected to linking to me actually objected that my mod isn't also on their site. Apparently, it's okay if whoever runs Nexus makes ad money on *all* of the work of *every* modder, but it's disgraceful and a dealbreaker if the modder who actually did the work makes any money by the same means? (The Nexus ads probably ARE per view, btw, though it can also be by click). It is simple curiosity that drives me to inquire what the parameters are of the ethical principle underlying that objection. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Qwinn (talk • contribs)

To address one specific point: I don't think anyone here has insinuated that you are "disgraceful" or "unethical" for asking for donations. I don't think there's anything wrong with you asking for donations per se, but I do have a problem with anyone wanting to use the wiki as advertisement for their product or website, especially when money is involved. I'm not accusing you of doing anything wrong, I'm simply trying to say that we need to be neutral in all situations when possible, and linking to your website literally "hundreds" of times does not feel neutral.

I get you spent a whole lot of time on making this, and it's awesome that you wanted to do that (I myself have spent hundreds of hours editing this wiki, so I get being impassioned about something you love even when there's no money in it). If you want to make money off it, great, fine. No objections. But while your mod may be "better" than others, it doesn't deserve special treatment. No one here does. That's not what wikis are about. If your mod fixes specific major bugs then it should definitely be listed on those pages. I don't think oversaturating the wiki with links to your mod is a good idea, though. We don't give this kind of treatment to any other mod, even the ones that fix quite a bit of stuff. This is simply my opinion, though, and I hadn't really planned on inserting myself into this situation; the only thing I feel strongly about is using generic wording in the template, such as "this mod". ♫ Kelcat ^Talk 04:24, September 13, 2017 (UTC)

"I myself consider cut dialogue not canon," The thing is, when it comes to canon, I only interfere when what's there is inconsistent *without* the bugged dialogue I'm restoring, or that adds context to what you consider canon. For example, does it make ANY sense in the context of Orzammar that a *casteless beggar* gets to hang out in the Hall of Heroes for the entire duration of the game, with guards 15 feet away? I restore the broken dialogue and content that was meant to have one of those guards approach him and yells at him to get the hell back to Dust Town. "I'm sorry, I just needed some food...!" If you really believe "Orzammar guards consider dwarven casteless beggars in the Hall of Heroes to be scenic and quaint and enjoy listening to their plaintive wailing" is canon, and what I did to fix broken scripts that make the dwarves not behave in a way inconsistent with every last bit of dialogue about them in the game... well, okay. And if Alistair referring to himself as King a dozen times when he's *not* King is canon, that's... an interesting view. And if the dialogue in the Jowan's Intentions quest is non-canon because, even though it was written by Bioware and intended to be in the game, but someone set the flag on it to be a dialogue-initiated quest instead of a job-board-initiated quest, and because of that you can't get the intended final reward for doing all the Chanter board quests either... that essentially means "bugs are canon". It is impossible for any fix mod to fail to violate the "bugs are canon" creed, so why are you linking to anyone at all? I don't follow the credo that "bugs are canon", and I don't think most people do, and no one who thinks "bugs are canon" would care about reading the bugs section of a wiki either. All I can say is, give the Fixpack a shot, or even just read the readme, and if you can find anything specific you consider a violation of canon that should be retracted, and folks agreed, good chance I probably would. I'm far pickier than most people about that sort of thing.

What have I done at the Wiki so far? I've made the bug lists on 5 of your pages 95% more accurate and complete, and I was willing to continue do that for you. As I said, "hundreds of links" would've been determined by "number of pages describing content with bugs that can now be fixed". Why did that become a bad thing? I did of course consult the wiki during development of my mod (and I've given it credit in my Readme since 2009, btw). It was valuable, though it also led me down several dozen blind alleys due to erroneous bug reports (usually wrong in what triggered them). Even so, I think perhaps only 20% of the bugs I fix were listed in the Wiki before I came along... I've probably increased that to 25% with my 5 edits so far. If the position of the wiki is "we don't want all bugs to be documented on our pages"... well, okay. I submit that it IS unnatural and even initially disturbing that someone has come along and offered to comprehensively and fully document every bug in the game for you... on your website... for free... which would increase your page views... and you won't share those page views with ANYONE, darnit, the guy who fixed them might make money!... well, whatever. Your choice. I wish people gave me choices like that more often, I can tell ya. And you're welcome for the five pages.

"To address one specific point: I don't think anyone here has insinuated that you are "disgraceful" or "unethical" for asking for donations." Sorry, those were listed in my thesaurus under "shady".

"I don't think there's anything wrong with you asking for donations per se, but I do have a problem with anyone wanting to use the wiki as advertisement for their product or website, especially when money is involved." Odd, when I go to the Wiki's home page, I see a few ads - look, an ad for "Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite!", and tons of links to Fandom.com which seems monetized to me. So - the wiki also has ads, and someone is making monetary value with them, even if all you're getting is free hosting by Fandom.com or whatever the relationship is. You're still offsetting costs, and believe me, I haven't accomplished that yet. As I also pointed out, several of the objections were ok with links to Nexus, the objections regarding "money" were that *the modder himself* hosted it. You know. The shady modder. Only Nexus can rightly make money off his mod! Why should they share any page views with him?! He's only sharing the products of 8 months work for absolutely free, no strings attached, with 100% transparency, and we can't be seen to endorse the idea that a modder should offer free ways for folks who use his work to show their support. What you are objecting to is that I get to try to make money to compensate for my costs (donations and amazon sales still haven't paid for the website) the exact same way you and Nexus do... except I'm actually providing all of my own content instead of getting other people to add content for free.

"I'm not accusing you of doing anything wrong, I'm simply trying to say that we need to be neutral in all situations when possible, and linking to your website literally "hundreds" of times does not feel neutral." How is "neutral in all situations" compatible with "supportive of modders"? I keep hearing how the communities *should* be supportive... but anyway. As for the number of times it could theoretically be linked, As I said, I think that number is determined by the number of the bugs in the game you actually want documented. I submit a documented bug and a means to fix it *is* an objectively neutral purpose of a wiki. *Not* wanting to have all bugs listed or offer a way to fix almost all of them - in one download! - is what's not neutral.

Look. The reason I claim my mod is special is because it's the first effort in eight years to create what patch 1.05 should have been but wasn't (well, okay, patch 1.05 would've also needed a lot of combat mechanics fixes too, which I don't touch). No one else has tried to make version 1.06. There's a list in my 98 page readme (have you read it?) that lists 24 mods that you don't *need* to install if you install my Fixpack. If you *do* install those 24 mods, pretty much the 24 biggest and essential-up-till-now fixpacks released so far, you'll have fixed about 30-40% of the bugs and restored about 50% of the content that is dealt with by my Fixpack.

My creative input is sharply limited to the bare minimum necessary to get Bioware's content to work. Unlike many of those mods that are the only solutions to certain problems, I think I pretty much wholly resisted the "and I'll add this utterly unjustified thing cause I think it makes the game better" impulse. If I can't defend and justify a fix in my Fixpack *as an objectively legitimate fix*, I'll remove it. I honestly invite open commentary on any such objections on my forums. The single and only big fight I got into in a 122 page liveblog of my development on Nexus was over a change I decided to *retract* because I decided it was unjustified after a reasonable objection was raised. By a Wiki editor, I believe, come to think of it.

Look. The only way it can be truly proven to you that my Fixpack is both special and essential is if you play it. So, please. Download and install it. Give it a play (if you've played all the Origins, I recommend dwarf nobles, they really were the most broken, lots of great restorations especially if you *cough* DON'T AGREE TO KILL TRIAN *cough*). If you give it a fair trial and can honestly come back and say "that is not what patch 1.05 should have been, and it does not earn special treatment or endorsement", I'll accept that judgement.

"the only thing I feel strongly about is using generic wording in the template, such as "this mod"." Just checking... does that mean "this fixpack" is not generic enough wording?

Last thing, since this sort of thing can sometimes matter, though it's not necessary to my case - I do actually have a credit in a fairly major game release. You can find Paul Escalona (hi!) listed as Design Consultant for Planescape Torment: Enhanced Edition, released earlier this year by Beamdog. That's the one other Fixpack I've created before this, it was bought from me by the game company with the rights to the property and they incorporated it into their re-release of the game. That Fixpack (as well as a restoration pack and tweak pack) collectively got over a million downloads at Spellhold Studios last I checked after the PST:EE release. And aside from the UI work, that re-release pretty much -is- my Fixpack (they thought it sufficient that they didn't need to add any further content). So, at least one professional outfit *has* deemed my work to be professional enough for professional release (and enough to stand alone), and I have the credit to prove it. Does professional credit in the game industry help? I actually haven't offered to sell it to Bioware yet - instead I released it openly, transparently, with builder to builder and a developer notes version of the Readme that allows ALL other modders to see exactly what I did and why and to fix all the same bugs in their mods... which I hoped would make my mod special too.

Sorry for the wall of text, but that's pretty much my entire case. I'll let you guys discuss it from here on out if you wish, other than to answer direct questions put to me, and I hope you'll actually try to play with it before judging such a huge effort unworthy. I'm honestly fine with it either way, I just otherwise wonder how anyone is supposed to believe modders get support from their communities, if he's massively fleshing out the bug lists on your website and the main concern is, it would be immoral to share the extra page views he's attracting to us with him. I had mostly already decided to host my own mod, but the last straw was when someone complained to the Nexus forum that I asked for a donation at the top of my 98 page readme, because it had to be at the *bottom* of the 98 page readme or it was too greedy. Heh. Getting called "greedy" is the reward for 9 months work distributed for free! All I can say is, play it, and if you think it doesn't make the game unqualifiedly better, and you don't think it should've been patch 1.05, and Bioware wouldn't be wrong to release it as a market-ready v1.06 patch, and you don't think it actually *massively fixes* contradictions to canon rather than changes it, and you aren't proud to have the Wiki give it a full endorsement, then I won't trouble you again. I wouldn't want to cooperate any other way. Qwinn (talk) 06:27, September 13, 2017 (UTC)

So let me get this right.
- Is it unethical that a Dragon Age fan has created the most comprehensive fixpack for Dragon Age: Origins which solves literally hundreds of bugs? And to be more presice "Every single non-combat mechanics bug".

- Is it unethical that in the bugs paragraph of our pages he inserts a single sentence which mentions a mod which can fix those listed?

There are mainly 3 types of people who visit this wiki:
1. Those who want to read about a quest, the plot, possible choices they could have made.
2. Those who want to read the lore of Dragon Age universe.
3. And those who stumble upon a bug and want to see what happened, or possibly fix it.

I first arrived in the wiki after clearing the Brecilian Forest and I realized the Ancient Elven Boots were missing. According to Kelcat's first post that would belong to a minor issue, and she is right since I was far advanced into my walkthrough and these medium boots were horrid, stats-wise. Yet I still wanted my ancient elven armor...

The "arguments" presented here are mind-boggling, instead of embracing the fixpack you are in a quest to find faults and create more red tape. 07:30, September 13, 2017 (UTC)

I think the fact that the mod creator took the time to fix literally every bug is commendable. He's created a great product and doesn't charge a dime for it. The problem that's been missed in this discussion so far is accessibility of that product. In other words, many of us are still dirty console peasants, so all player-created mods, no matter how phenomenally useful they are, are utterly inaccessible to us, thus this mod and the discussion around it are only of material value to those in the glorious PC master race. I'm not sure how play of the game breaks down by platform, or even if I should change this viewpoint if someone came to me with "51+% of DAO players play on PC," but exclusivity of a means to play, intended or otherwise, is a no-go in my book. I believe what Kelcat means by neutrality is similar to language in the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment: "...shall make no law respecting [x] or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." In promoting a mod that only a select chunk of the player base can even use, much less properly rate and review, the wiki would be taking a stand in favor of it to the exclusion of those who can't benefit from it. Essentially, promoting this could be seen as promoting PC as the "superior" platform with a "superior" game experience, which may be technically "true" in terms of tech specs and freedoms available (the command console being the most salient example), but in the end it is ultimately a collective opinion, and opinions are not fact the result of players' case-by-case experiences. I won't rehash a PC-console war here, but essentially to use this mod requires us to build a PC, purchase Origins on that PC, install the required mod managers, and go have our adventure. I might agree with the sentiment that PC is superior, but I don't think it's the wiki's place to take that stance or do anything that might be perceived as encouraging that stance. Although official patches require an Internet connection, which even today not "everyone" has, it's still a far greater leap in accessibility by comparison. Therefore, we can cover the patches not because they're "official," but we can reasonably assume 95-99.8% of the player base has the means to obtain the patches. On a PC-exclusive game, we could make a reasonable assumption that by virtue of having the game, anyone within that player base has the PC hardware to play it, and with it the means to obtain the player-created fixpack, so making people aware of it wouldn't hurt the concept of neutrality.

The obvious solution would be to make the fixpack available to all players on all platforms, but given the locked-down nature of gaming in general, this is impossible at the moment. I would love to see Qwinn get recognition for his work, in the form of Bioware and other developers utilizing this sort of passion and dedication to repair and present their games as they probably intended back in the alpha building. The problem is the publishers would pounce on this and begin factoring this into the game's budget; essentially, they would cut beta-testing and debugging even further than there was in the advent of Internet-downloaded patches to begin with, and they would make reasonable projections to both executives and shareholders that "someone else will fix it for us for free." If one notorious example is to be taken to the worst case scenario based on its own sordid history (coughcreationclubcoughcough), they would even try to monetize the player fixes for their own profit and give the original user/creator barely anything. They are a business after all and the goal is to make money, thus they have every reason to charge for official patches. I believe there's either some law against it or some analyst showed that overall sales would plummet if they tried, so they either can't or won't charge for each title update. But player-generated content that is presented as entirely optional? And there's plenty of evidence in the industry that this is exactly what EA would do, but I need to wrap this up and get back to work, so I'll just say "freemium" and hope that infers (implies?) all of my talking points. Qwinns are great for the industry provided the industry utilizes them appropriately, and while a developer may take that effort and run with it appropriately or at least want to, EA or Zenimax would not.

In conclusion, Qwinn did a great job with this mod, but many of us will never be able to use it and judge it for ourselves, so this wiki shouldn't be actively promoting it as a means to solve problems with the game. We should continue looking for in-game workarounds, reporting bugs to Bioware for games still under active support, and cataloguing patch details, things that can be utilized more widely by the player base. RShepard227 (talk) 15:45, September 13, 2017 (UTC)

Hey Shepard, are you poking fun or you are serious with this post? I'm sorry but I am unsure. 08:20, September 14, 2017 (UTC)

Poking fun somewhat. The PC "master race" comments are old favorites of the Internet, and despite being ready to ascend, my GPU is getting bought left and right by Bitcoin miners. But what I saw in the discussion made no mention of how console players can't even use Qwinn's fixpack, so I decided to bring up that point in case no one else did. Ultimately, what I'm hoping the wiki can avoid is similar to what Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages does; Skyrim has something called the Unofficial Skyrim Patch, and by all accounts it's even better than the official patches. Except they make reference to a bug and then state "Fixed in the Unofficial Skyrim Patch ver. #.#.##" on every page. I'm barely kidding, every page mentions it. Few pages even discuss workarounds for console, much less have them printed on the main page, the UoSP is pretty much the only fix cited, and if there are workarounds cited, the Unofficial Patch comes first. So I sit there reading and thinking, "That's great, now if only my GPU wasn't getting scalped by Bitcoin miners." The end result is the approach to bug management ultimately reduces itself to "play on PC." So whether they intend it or not, they're effectively promoting PC as the "superior" way to play. No matter what page I go to, I am constantly reminded that Skyrim is, as of its final Official Patch, not the game it was meant to be. With Dragon Age, which I've managed to complete on two platforms and look to play on the third, I can live with the workarounds proposed (ex. Jowan or Shield Mastery actually reducing Overpower's damage), because I can still finish 99.999% of the game in the end, and as a result feel that this wiki is much more diligent in covering all bases. I don't want us to give up the search for such workarounds even though it would save many of us a lot of time to simply promote Qwinn's fixpack and call it a day.

The second paragraph is just rambling about how publishers might start expecting people like Qwinn to come along for all of their games and start factoring it into their develop-publish-sell-patch cycle. It's irrelevant to the core issue: How would we give Qwinn recognition here for his work without implying that PC is the superior, and therefore "more valid", way to play? We do have the Mods page, perhaps add a section for "featured mods" that have been reviewed by the wiki's bureaucrats, or voted on by community members for reliability, thoroughness, and trustworthiness? Similar to how we promote people to chat moderator and admin? Just one thought. With that I'm pretty much out of things to say. I hope everyone will take what I've said into consideration. RShepard227 (talk) 16:14, September 14, 2017 (UTC)

Okay that's a lot more sensible post! In order to summarize your walls of text, you advocate for equality. If you do not own a computer to play DAO (a 2009 video game) and you only play it on a platform, it is "unfair" if a page lists possible fixes for bugs because all these fixes cannot be implemented on Playstation and Xbox. So you advocate for all console and mod based solutions (not just Qwinn's mod) to be removed from the wiki so that we do not somehow favor the "Pc master race" to quote your words.

Personally, I do not think "equality" is our wiki's central mission. The central mission is to provide information, answers and solutions to anything related to Dragon Age. Whether that is lore information, a quest walkthrough or a bug solution we should offer that information regardless of the reader's origin, being PC users, Xbox users or non-smartphone users (No HoDA for these fellas).

As for the Mods page idea, the fixpack will get buried and lost since it is a page which receives very scarce reader attention. But thanks to you, I came up with an idea which I'll share in the next paragraph! 09:32, September 15, 2017 (UTC)

"So you advocate for all console and mod based solutions to be removed..." I'd like to clarify that I didn't advocate for the removal of any posted solutions, that's the opposite of my intention and would be completely contrary to the wiki's purpose. I advocate for anything and everything to be posted, but done so in a way that doesn't tell the reader, "just play on PC." Ideally there should be discussion and posting of both mod-based fixes as well as potential workarounds for the benefit of console players, who can't use the mod fixes, and PC players who can but simply don't want to use it. (Re-read: By "console" did you mean Xbox and Playstation, or the command console in the PC version? Jesus that's confusing, from here on I'll refer to it as command prompt. :D)

In short, I think in-game workarounds should be mentioned first where they are discovered. From what I can tell many bugs are cross-platform, a result of the underlying programming rather than porting to one platform or another, e.g. Jowan's Intention and Velanna's Exile; if PC players don't at least use the command prompt to force-start those quests, they end up in the same boat as console players. My format is basically:

===Bug details===

1. "Fixed in Official Patch" (where applicable)
2. In-game workaround
3. Command prompt solution
4. Mod solution

But on UESP, it's more like:

===Bug details===

1. Mod solution
2. Command prompt solution
3. "Fixed in Official Patch" (where applicable)
4. In-game workaround

(...Now that I think about it, I'd guess they're just listing the solutions as they are discovered rather than from a perspective of, to use a metaphor, the trunk of a tree vs. its branches, and then not going back to adjust any of it.) The important message to send is that all players are at liberty to seek and use whatever lawful solution they desire and are capable of using, and posting workarounds first encourages the use of an option that is accessible to everyone. Apologies for the walls of text BTW. RShepard227 (talk) 16:46, September 15, 2017 (UTC)

Proposition

1. User:Lol-bot goes through all Bugs paragraphs and posts at the top of them a small but attractive notification that links to the Mods page.
2. We revamp the Mods page with very strict criteria, mentioning mods which only offer verified bug solutions (and are not covered by official patches). Any other type of mod is not allowed to be posted in there.
3. We manually remove links and references that currently exist in various pages.

That way the wikia is not cluttered with bug solutions everywhere and instead we centralize and can easily monitor a single page which is dedicated to this very purpose. Ideas? 09:32, September 15, 2017 (UTC)

We could title the section something like "Unofficial Patch Modifications" or something to that effect, with a header such as "The following third-party modifications have been verified by the Dragon Age Wiki's administrators/users to provide fixes for many of the glitches within the corresponding Dragon Age titles. These patches have not been endorsed by Bioware or Electronic Arts and are subject to use at each player's discretion in accordance with Bioware's and Electronic Arts' policies regarding the use of third-party modifications (links to Bioware and EA's official disclaimers on the use of mods, inserted into or at the end of the word "policies", for good measure). Note that the following modifications can only be used on PC and vary in their technical requirements, please consult each modification's official description page for specific information." Subheader for each game, followed by a link to each mod. RShepard227 (talk) 16:46, September 15, 2017 (UTC)

This is all very interesting, but might it not save time to actually take a look at the five pages I've already done: Ostagar, Lothering, The Mabari Hound, Magi Origin and Dwarf Noble Origin, and see if what I've done so far actually supports your fears of me turning the wiki into UESP have any grounds? Because actually looking at what I've done so far would, I think, completely allay any such fears.

For example, here's three bugs I list in the Ostagar section:

"If you intimidate the bandits into letting you go, then talk to them again and intimidate them into leaving town, the quest closes with an erroneous entry indicating you fought them and they surrendered before they left. If you bribe them into letting you go, then talk to them again and intimidate them into leaving town, you receive no experience reward, journal entry or quest closure at all."

If this bug also afflicts consoles, I state step by step which methods of completing the quest yield no reward, which allows console users to avoid the problems.

And how about:

"Ser Bryant will not remember meeting you until you talk to him without Sten in the party."

Meaning a console user now knows he needs to drop Sten from the party to hear the rest of Ser Bryant's dialogue.

And I bothered to spell out:

"Your followers try to warn you that you should do everything you can in Lothering before you leave due to expected future events. This warning, however, is almost always immediately interrupted by Sten's chant from his cage, as the triggers for them are only a step or two apart. You can only hear the warning if you walk past Sten's cage and the Chasind extremely slowly, one step at a time, to trigger it and allow it to finish before moving forward and triggering Sten's chant."

If I didn't care about people who don't install my mod, would I have bothered to spell out in that much detail how you can hear it in the vanilla game (or the console)? There's no point to me doing that if I'm assuming everyone's going to use my mod.

And that's just three chosen at random from one page. There are many more instances of me not just mentioning a bug but spelling out exactly what triggers it on those 5 pages, which would be useful to all platforms (assuming 95% of bugs do afflict all platforms, which I believe is true). If you would want me to put the little PC icon next to every bug I list as only confirmed for the PC, and folks playing XBox/PS can add their icons for ones they confirm affect them as well, I think that'd be great, but that's on them, and if they don't think it's worth the trouble, I don't see why that should mean that it's better to have very very incomplete buglists instead.

Look, I'm going to be very frank. What I've offered to do, and did on those 5 pages, is WAY more beneficial to the Wiki than anything the Wiki can do for me even if I had a hundred links on every page. As I've pointed out, what I make off donations, etc. on my site is pathetically trivial, so much so that the current pathetically trivial times ten would still be pathetically trivial. I was trying to help *you*, because the wiki's bug lists even after 8 years are seriously, seriously deficient and incomplete (I actually think my prior statement that only 20% of the bugs I deal with were listed was being overly generous). If you guys don't want me to do it, fine. If you do, well, after the reception I've gotten for trying to do *you* guys a much bigger favor than anything I was asking for in return, and casting all these judgments ("hella shady"!) and predictions of my not caring about console users without apparently even looking at the five pages I've already edited to see if that's true... well, if you still want me to fix all your buglists, you'll have to ask me to now. Very, very nicely. If not, won't bother me a bit, as I've got much better and more lucrative things I can do with the hundred or so hours I was planning to invest in making your pages complete.

I mean, seriously, you can barely SEE the link to my mod on most of those pages, it's so buried in information that I've added that's useful to *everyone*, PC or not. Clearly, smothering the Wiki with links to my mod was all I really cared about! Ah, screw it, never mind.