Written by: SapphireGhost
Edited by: Garven

Introduction
BATmanager Garven has given me support for making and posting a thread of this type. This thread covers what is an important but subtle part of being a good modder: being courteous and friendly in the tone of your post.

Why is it necessary to mod courteously?
Mappers are much more willing to accept suggestions and ideas if they are stated politely and in a helpful manner. A good rule to keep in mind is to give the mod you would like to receive. Mappers do not want to accept suggestions from a mod that is hurtful or disparaging to them and their map.

The following are some examples of how changing the wording of a suggestion can help the mapper be more receptive of its content.

Example 1
X Please. Pleeeaase consider a NC here. This 29-combo is ridiculous.
O This 29-combo is too long and doesn't make sense with the song. Please consider adding a NC here to split it up.

Mappers do not want to be told that something in their map is ridiculous or stupid. If a mapper has something in their map, they have reason to believe it should be there and insulting them for their work has no productive benefits. A more professional and polite tone makes it easier for them to look at things through the modder's point of view and consider changing their own map.

Example 2
X What's this? sounds TERRIBLE.
O This object doesn't sound good here. [+screenshot/example of an alternative]

The mod here again insults the mapper and does not make clear what the modder wants changed. As such, the mapper does not benefit much from this suggestion. A better alternative is to make the tone more polite and reach out to help the mapper, offering an explanation for the modder's viewpoint and possibly an alternative that the mapper can try.

Example 3
X just another ass move to make people break
O This is mapped in a way that will make many people lose their combo here, so try to make it more playable/intuitive to avoid this. [+screenshot/example of an alternative]

Again, a more professional tone and a clearer explanation of what the mapper should change goes a long way towards making the mod more helpful for them. Try to have a positive attitude when modding and do not assume a mapper is not willing to listen. By instead making an attempt to help them, most often they will return that favour and work with you.

What does a good response to a mod look like?
When receiving a mod, remember that the modder is trying to be helpful and improve the mapset by offering suggestions, and their efforts should be respected. A good mod response addresses all of the issues the modder has found with the map, and responds to them with either confirmation that the suggestion has been applied or a logical reason why it has not. When a mapper shows respect for the modder's efforts, the modder is more likely to continue modding for that mapper and is provided an opportunity to learn what kinds of suggestions they should make in the future.

Note: Because not all users are fluent in English, simple English should be used to more effectively communicate the ideas in both a mod and a mod response. English is the recommended language for modding because it is the most widely understood among osu! users, and it allows the BAT to look for new potential modders to join the team.

Conclusion
Good communication goes a long way towards both parties being happier with the end result and creates a generally friendlier atmosphere. The community is here to help each other, not to put each other down. Providing a good quality and courteous post strengthens the relationship between modders and mappers and allows the process to progress more smoothly.

Thank you for reading! Comments and feedback are welcome.

wow, if this thread is really needed then i have some bad news. doesn't one have to be like this before joining the team?
but it should be posted to the public, that'd be nice.

senaya wrote:

wow, if this thread is really needed then i have some bad news. doesn't one have to be like this before joining the team?

That's true.. This thread should be in a public thread I think..
Anyway, is a nice thread!

Definitely great advice for all people interested in modding. I wish I would have seen this when I started modding. Great post, it would fit nice in the General Questions forums.

That's how it always should have been.

Really helpful and nice topic.

Also consider adding a section about replying to mods courteously. Too many people reply to mods defensively or with negative energy. I've seen people downright insulting modders because their mod isn't useful to them.

Really good SapphireGhost and Garven. Really good.
I was just yesterday talking with a member about the modding behavior again - how harder it becomes if someone is modding in a rude way, instead in a nice one. I think this is a good start and might defuse some community "voltages" if used proper enough. The more neutral you are, the less a mapper becomes insulted and angry, which could pass on to another mapper.

I agree to UnitedWeSin. Even though this should be obvious, adding a part which explains how to act if a mapper dosen't use certain points might be good as well, since some guys react allergic to it.

SapphireGhost wrote:

Conclusion
Good communication goes a long way towards both parties being happier with the end result and creates a generally friendlier atmosphere. The BAT is here to help mappers, not to put them down. Providing a good quality, courteous post supports the overall image of the BAT and helps to improve its relationship with mappers.

Agree with this. Couldn't write this better down.

senaya wrote:

wow, if this thread is really needed then i have some bad news. doesn't one have to be like this before joining the team?
but it should be posted to the public, that'd be nice.

That sums it up for me. Being polite and modding in this way should just be common sense, if someone really doesen't mod courteously then something must really be wrong... Excellent guide by the way, looking forward to see it posted to the public!

Don't limit this excellent piece of information to the staff only, I do think this should be present for the public too (Also an article regarding how to reply to mods), a wiki entry would be good too.

Never forget the language barrier (sadly, some people tend to forget this all too often).

This is not a BAT-only problem. And should be made public.

Not talking about how "helpful" some mods are but: Depending on the linguistic/verbal skills of the modder, the mods can either be detailed and with polite wording/reasoning/descriptions of problems or rather short and in very basic english. Those basic mods sometimes may seem rude or lazy but they can be excellent mods!

I remember a mod of a Korean modder with excellent gameplay suggestions for a map I wanted to mod myself. None of their suggestions were explained in detail because it seemed their knowledge of the English language was very limited. Therefore everything was just ignored and the mod reply was only "changed something". I went ahead and tried all the suggestions from this mod and reposted some of them with a short explanation of why this is a good change gameplay-wise. Suddenly the same suggestions were used by the mapper.

UnitedWeSin wrote:

Also consider adding a section about replying to mods courteously. Too many people reply to mods defensively or with negative energy. I've seen people downright insulting modders because their mod isn't useful to them.

This. It should be the expected norm to reply to every legitimate point of a mod in the same manner as it would be expected for the mod itself. Sometimes I can't fathom how modders put up with the kind of mod-replies they are getting (if they get anything at all!). Applying mods and replying to the modder is almost the same amount of work as the modding itself...unless you are just looking at the obvious stuff like hitsound/NC- and "move-1-grid-left"-mods which take no time at all to check and implement. Maybe we should get this into the heads of mappers as well...

Well, I think this is mostly dedicated to those who are actually able to speak the english language in a proper way. Those who can't, I think people will notice the language barrier.

Please create a code of conduct for mappers and modders for this, when they enter the beatmap forums for the first time or submit their first beatmap.

I have the feeling that the mapping community lacks of a code of conduct that everyone must agree to when participating on creating own content for this game.

Loctav wrote:

Please create a code of conduct for mappers and modders for this, when they enter the beatmap forums for the first time or submit their first beatmap.

I have the feeling that the mapping community lacks of a code of conduct that everyone must agree to when participating on creating own content for this game.

I like where this is going

Wait does this mean I can't be a bag o douche to my friends with my mod posts any more T.T woe is me woe is meee

p3n wrote:

Those basic mods sometimes may seem rude or lazy but they can be excellent mods!

You got it. Some modders write a long mod which lacks value or seems very silly to a skillful mapper. For me, if someone tells me to change a part which I have considered hundreds of times, the line will surely be ignored. I agree that a well explained mod is more than no explanation, but for skillful mapper the extra words are just annoying - like you are told (over and over again) how 1+1=2 is calculated. Remember, the mapper is likely to be the one who knows his own map best.

And I think the BATs should put more effort on mapping, or they will not know what the mappers need. Some BATs just abandoned mapping after joined the team.

popner, this is about the tone in which you deliver your mods, not the quality of the mod itself. This is more in response to a trend of generally inconsiderate or rude phrasing from upper-level modders that we want to remediate. People look up to us as an example, and I wouldn't want that kind of attitude to be spread to the next generation of modders. My thoughts are that we can spread this best by leading by example. Others can be rude, and we can choose to move on to someone that is willing to actually have a constructive conversation instead of slinging insults to make a point. Just don't lower yourself to that level.

p3n wrote:

Loctav wrote:

Please create a code of conduct for mappers and modders for this, when they enter the beatmap forums for the first time or submit their first beatmap.

I have the feeling that the mapping community lacks of a code of conduct that everyone must agree to when participating on creating own content for this game.

I like where this is going

I second this.

On top of that, I like the idea of the OP. This should just be posted publicly, as senaya and others have said.

I also agree with dkun.

This should totally be made public, so people will probably finally begin to be nice while modding stuff.

We do have a bit of info on on this on the osu!wiki but I mean it doesn't really seem like anyone reads or cares about it at the current moment.

And again, more support for the fact that this should be made public as BAT's generally shouldn't have this sort of attitude to begin with.

This might be off-topic, but I do feel like sometimes we need a post or something on what comprises a good quality mod. You can see so many modders who can't seem to find anything and just end up suggesting hitsounds or aesthetic issues. It could just be because they don't know what they are looking for. I rarely ever talk about aesthetic issues to be honest even if I genuinely think the shape is ugly, since I have accepted the fact that different people will like different patterns and shapes. I mean most of the time modding has to deal with listening to the music and not the actual map and note placement, since many mappers understand what kinds of spacing are readable and justifiable.

Is it a coincidence I was talking to eph about this a couple of days ago? ;P

Yes please. I'm pretty sure the examples were taken from End Time, which speaking of soulfear maps, I now have 3 examples of maps he made where people were complete jerkfaces to him when modding (Suishou-Sekai ~Fracture~, Gin no Kaze, End Time) and every time it caused drama, massive bubbling and popping, and many a post deleted and thread split. Let's just keep in mind that a mod isn't a roundabout way to say "your map sucks please kill yourself" to a mapper. A mod is about pointing out the issues in the map, explaining what is the issue, and how to fix it. I learned that the hard way when I tried modding First of the Year (Equinox) and Nold pretty much told me to get lost because my mod really gave a feeling of "I really don't approve of how you map, so I'm just gonna force my views on mapping and call yours unrankable so you have to fix everything".

Another point I would like to emphasize the everblasting crap of, because I see it way too much is, when dealing with people who aren't very good at Shakespeare's language:

USE

SIMPLE

ENGLISH

This goes to you, native English speakers. Read a "Simple English" article in Wikipedia and see how they do it, and use that for your mod. Explaining your suggestions is a great idea, but complicated vocabulary and involved grammar will be completely lost on the mapper, who will just think "no, I like my way better" because they don't understand your view.

tl;dr don't be a dick, use simple english.

Mr Color wrote:

tl;dr don't be a dick, use simple english.

i love you. was thinking about this too.

hark, thy sire of color. verily tis a most astute shame that those amongst our kin befit themselves to defile the queen's tongue with such plebian banter, but tis a folly of themselves, not of our esteemed order. indeed, tis no exorbitant request to humbly accede that our initiate aspirants doth use the tongue of culture to most ardently express thy observed faulting and failings within the map of the beats.

forsooth and henceforth, my chaps! verily tis I whom say that such pedantry of the written word is of the most inconsequential issue, to the point where such an issue is truly not of the stove-reddened kettle to begin with.

Ephemeral wrote:

hark, thy sire of color. verily tis a most astute shame that those amongst our kin befit themselves to defile the queen's tongue with such plebian banter, but tis a folly of themselves, not of our esteemed order. indeed, tis no exorbitant request to humbly accede that our initiate aspirants doth use the tongue of culture to most ardently express thy observed faulting and failings within the map of the beats.

forsooth and henceforth, my chaps! verily tis I whom say that such pedantry of the written word is of the most inconsequential issue, to the point where such an issue is truly not of the stove-reddened kettle to begin with.

I'm not a native english speaker and i could read this fine, WTF IS THIS!

Ephemeral wrote:

hark, thy sire of color. verily tis a most astute shame that those amongst our kin befit themselves to defile the queen's tongue with such plebian banter, but tis a folly of themselves, not of our esteemed order. indeed, tis no exorbitant request to humbly accede that our initiate aspirants doth use the tongue of culture to most ardently express thy observed faulting and failings within the map of the beats.

forsooth and henceforth, my chaps! verily tis I whom say that such pedantry of the written word is of the most inconsequential issue, to the point where such an issue is truly not of the stove-reddened kettle to begin with.

Can someone translate this to simple english? I want to read what eph said.

I can't read it either.
Okay, after reading it out loud it worked <_<

Sakura wrote:

Ephemeral wrote:

hark, thy sire of color. verily tis a most astute shame that those amongst our kin befit themselves to defile the queen's tongue with such plebian banter, but tis a folly of themselves, not of our esteemed order. indeed, tis no exorbitant request to humbly accede that our initiate aspirants doth use the tongue of culture to most ardently express thy observed faulting and failings within the map of the beats.

forsooth and henceforth, my chaps! verily tis I whom say that such pedantry of the written word is of the most inconsequential issue, to the point where such an issue is truly not of the stove-reddened kettle to begin with.

I'm not a native english speaker and i could read this fine, WTF IS THIS!

Me too. You're not alone.

I had to read it like 3 times to understand >.> (and still I'm not sure I understood it correctly ..)

That proves my point better than anything else I could have possibly hoped for

Ephemeral wrote:

hark, thy sire of color. verily tis a most astute shame that those amongst our kin befit themselves to defile the queen's tongue with such plebian banter, but tis a folly of themselves, not of our esteemed order. indeed, tis no exorbitant request to humbly accede that our initiate aspirants doth use the tongue of culture to most ardently express thy observed faulting and failings within the map of the beats.

forsooth and henceforth, my chaps! verily tis I whom say that such pedantry of the written word is of the most inconsequential issue, to the point where such an issue is truly not of the stove-reddened kettle to begin with.

Shut up. D:

I actually enjoy reading Eph's classy messages, it's a good exercise once in a while (don't ever change your style, man). But can't say that mappers care about it when they have dozens of mod posts to work with so answers "sorry, can't understand that" can be seen quite often D:

Ephemeral wrote:

hark, thy sire of color. verily tis a most astute shame that those amongst our kin befit themselves to defile the queen's tongue with such plebian banter, but tis a folly of themselves, not of our esteemed order. indeed, tis no exorbitant request to humbly accede that our initiate aspirants doth use the tongue of culture to most ardently express thy observed faulting and failings within the map of the beats.

forsooth and henceforth, my chaps! verily tis I whom say that such pedantry of the written word is of the most inconsequential issue, to the point where such an issue is truly not of the stove-reddened kettle to begin with.

Did you even have to try?

Aw, Eph beat me to the punch.

The topic has now been updated and moved to General Questions for the benefit of the public.

about replying to mods courteously... i would say that sometimes it is "very hard" to manage an appropriate word to refuse since some of the advices are ... too nazi .. or leading to remap in a different mapping style....

Scorpiour wrote:

about replying to mods courteously... i would say that sometimes it is "very hard" to manage an appropriate word to refuse since some of the advices are ... too nazi .. or leading to remap in a different mapping style....

Even in the case of suggestions that are extreme, it is still possible to find a polite response after some thought. Tell the modder that their suggestions would cause the map to go in an undesired direction, or that they were not helpful on a personal level but their ideas were considered. If there is good reasoning behind the decision, the modder should be able to accept not having all of their suggestions accepted.

SapphireGhost wrote:

Even in the case of suggestions that are extreme, it is still possible to find a polite response after some thought. Tell the modder that their suggestions would cause the map to go in an undesired direction, or that they were not helpful on a personal level but their ideas were considered. If there is good reasoning behind the decision, the modder should be able to accept not having all of their suggestions accepted.

it's right.

Thats how modding should looks like.

Osu! needs more threads like this.

I figured this out before this thread was made. It's good that this is finally public.This is how we should all mod. Very great and useful advice when modding with a possible attitude and in such way that a non-English naive mapper could understand.

I also agree with UnitedWeSin, Scorpiour, and SapphireGhost that it's also a double-edged sword as the mapper could also attack the modder with any type of negative feedback possibly raging the modder, which I can understand. I personally don't mind any type of negative feedback or criticism to mappers since I'm very open-minded and I love feedback. It gives me an opportunity to understand the mapper and why did he or she reply in such tone. There are times that I feel I'm the one who did something wrong and try to look back at my mod post and see what could have triggered the negative response from the mapper and may reply back if I have any alternative questions, suggestions, or concerns and end it from there.

I'm sad that this thread has to exist. This shouldn't even be an issue, guys. ;_;

It's even worse that this had to be directed at the BAT. Aren't staffers chosen because they can act professionally?

Really, it's simple. Both sides should be assertive about every point, otherwise there's probably no conviction behind them. However, both should be able to feel when enough is enough and stop trying to beat a dead horse. None of this should encroach on the notion of politeness. There are plenty of ways to negotiate a point without going as far as either bending over backwards for no reason, and flat-out telling somebody to fuck off.

Of course, if either party decides to be a flaming anusface about the modding process, then they have it coming when the cavalry's called in to hit them over the head. Nobody should have to put up with griefing or sheer ignorance.