How to report mod problems in the right way

ReportModProblems.txt

My biggest stress factor is always gamers 
who have 300 mods and something does not 
work. 

They come to me with insufficient information 
and are hard to contact back. The way they 
send information is incomplete and often 
useless. 

So here are my pro tips for making it easier 
(and quicker!) to get problems fixed:

1) Reduce the number of mods to a minimum 
so that the problem still persists. This one 
is SUPER IMPORTANT and most players won’t 
do it because it takes time. A lot of time 
and therefore they assume we as modders can 
do it. No, we cannot (should be obvious). 

2) Create a simple save game that shows the 
problem. Add what you should do after loading 
it to produce the problem. Again: in the 
process of fixing the problem, I typically 
start that save game literally 20-100 times 
to example the error. If it loads 3 minutes 
I won’t do it. 

3) Full logs and stacktraces. I do not agree 
that a screenshot (some are even blurry) is 
enough. More information is better. Recently 
I’ve seen gamers cut of the origin of an 
exception which is equally important than 
the actual exception 

4) Versions: game, mods, Operating System, 
standalone/steam. Details are often very 
helpful and having a conversation back and 
forth for details makes the process tiresome 
and does not work if you have like 15 of 
those conversations going on at the same time.

5) Don’t expect me to find bugs in other 
authors mods. If they don’t look into it 
then they are probably not serious enough 
about it. Which is ok. Nobody can demand 
things from modders. 

6) Don’t just use any mod in your setup. 
Apply common sense just like if you would 
buy a used car. If it looks trouble it 
probably is - regardless of what it promises. 

7) Use modern ways to communicate. All my 
mods are on GitHub because that is the worlds 
best place for code. There, you have 
professional tools like Issue trackers and 
version handling. Create an account if you 
don’t have one already and post your log in 
a gist instead of a post to reddit/steam. 
Then post that link or even better, open a 
new Issue, describe your problem and add the 
link there. GitHub is free and easy to use. 

It’s easy to spend 6 hours on one a single 
bug report. 85% of those end up being some 
mod conflict. Mod conflicts are almost always 
related to non-defensive programming from 
inexperienced mod authors that are in the 
progress of learning. 

And the most important thing last: treat 
modders with the respect they deserve. You 
are NOT ENTITLED to anything. Mods are FREE 
and done by hobbyists in their valuable spare 
time. If any of the above seems like it’s 
too much for you, it will definitely be too 
much for a mod author too.