Where have Gobias' mods gone?

mgb204 · January 01, 2016, 07:27:29 AM

I'm in the middle of updating my TGN mods, wanted to find the link to Gobias' Suddeny Valley terrain mod. I got an error from this link - "File has been moved or removed".

So I went to try a power-search for Gobias... his Name no longer appears in the list.

Is this correct that the files are gone, or is there some problem here?

art128 · January 01, 2016, 07:34:12 AM

His name appear for me, but it does say "no result for query"... This is strange indeed, maybe Casper can have a deeper look.

mgb204 · January 01, 2016, 07:45:34 AM

While I'm here, I want to upload about 100MB over 5 files to the LEX. This is my v2 of TGN and was previously not available on the LEX.

I've run into a problem on ST where I've hit some sort of cap. Frankly the half-day spent organising such a large mod is quite tedious. Can someone explain what the rules are on this, am I likely to run into problems?

CasperVg · January 01, 2016, 07:52:16 AM

There are no rules on file sizes for the LEX, however, if one ZIP is very large, its possible that an administrator will need to upload the package separately over FTP.

As for Gobias' files, no clue. It's possible that he deleted them himself, of course. I'll take a closer look at it immediately.

EDIT: It appears that the files have indeed been deleted willfully.

mgb204 · January 01, 2016, 08:08:10 AM

Thanks Casper, the largest is just over 20MB, they are .exe installers though. But i'll try the largest one first, assuming that works it sounds like I should be OK.

It would be a great loss if all of Gobias' content was gone, crossing fingers it's just a bug.

Girafe · January 01, 2016, 08:11:33 AM

He just connected 1 hour ago. Someone contacted him?

metarvo · January 01, 2016, 02:21:07 PM

Yikes! That's not good at all. It's a lucky thing I at least DL'ed the sidewalk mod a few days ago, which means this is a fairly recent thing.

compdude787 · January 01, 2016, 03:46:50 PM

Why? Why would he do such a thing?! This is really quite shocking.

mgb204 · January 02, 2016, 02:30:40 AM

Honestly it seemed to coincide to the hour with TGN 2.0's release? A bit annoying when the culmination of 10months updates were finally finished, to know new users can no longer get the 2 best HD terrain mods (IMO).

If Gobias did do this, I fear we'll never find out why. I really cannot understand why someone would do such a thing.

Dublin · January 02, 2016, 07:59:27 AM

Just curious. Has anyone PM'd Gobias? Seems he prefered PM's to Email. Appears that Gobias has dropped in recently, just saying.

Bipin · January 03, 2016, 07:53:15 AM

This is bizarre to say the least. I can't think of any rational reason as to why someone might delete all of their own hard work from the LEX. If Gobias needed to update their mods, would they really have to start from scratch and reupload everything? I doubt it. Beyond that, I can only think that Gobias somehow felt ostracized by the community, but I highly doubt that would of happened, we all love the guy and what he does for the community!

Tarkus · January 03, 2016, 01:12:32 PM

Quote from: Dublin on January 02, 2016, 07:59:27 AM
Just curious. Has anyone PM'd Gobias? Seems he prefered PM's to Email. Appears that Gobias has dropped in recently, just saying.

Given that Gobias' last login to the forums was to press the delete button on his account, I wouldn't expect him to check PMs. The staff has, however, reached out to him via email.

-Alex

APSMS · March 05, 2016, 01:39:14 AM

Quote from: Tarkus on January 03, 2016, 01:12:32 PM
Quote from: Dublin on January 02, 2016, 07:59:27 AM
Just curious. Has anyone PM'd Gobias? Seems he prefered PM's to Email. Appears that Gobias has dropped in recently, just saying.

Given that Gobias' last login to the forums was to press the delete button on his account, I wouldn't expect him to check PMs. The staff has, however, reached out to him via email.

-Alex

If I may ask, has this effort yielded anything substantial, or have we been left in the dark as to why his stuff was deleted? At the very least some closure would be nice, like knowing what happened to SimPeg, or the Clayhurst U EP1.

Tarkus · March 05, 2016, 02:27:21 AM

Quote from: APSMS on March 05, 2016, 01:39:14 AM
If I may ask, has this effort yielded anything substantial, or have we been left in the dark as to why his stuff was deleted? At the very least some closure would be nice, like knowing what happened to SimPeg, or the Clayhurst U EP1.

There's been no response from Gobias. The only working theory is that he decided to delete everything as part of some New Year's Resolution. Why he chose specifically to delete everything SC4D-related, we don't know, nor is it known whether or not he had accounts or files in other communities that received a similar slash-and-burn treatment. The matter is still under discussion among the senior staff, as the way forward involves a complex balancing act, between many accepted SC4 community protocols that come into conflict in this situation.

-Alex

APSMS · March 05, 2016, 03:10:27 AM

I imagine the situation is pretty complicated, given the popularity and usefulness of his mods, and the longstanding commitment to CC Creator support and copyright that the community has had. Not sure what I'd do to be honest, though as I said before, what went down does seem pretty odd and unsettling (and abrupt; even when Peg and the BSC had their falling out, I understand it was well documented and not a surprise).

Hopefully you'll be able to figure it out; I guess for now I'm just glad that I keep backups of all my downloaded files, but unfortunately that doesn't help new users very much.

Vizoria · March 05, 2016, 05:13:09 AM

All I can say is that Gobias' must be in a real self-hating and destructive mood by deleting everything he uploaded to the LEX. Since we've already broken his wishes (or rights as a creator?) by not deleting his content, and I certainly have no intention of deleting his amazing content from my plugins folder, why not upload everything we downloaded, pool it together, and restore his files on the LEX?

Forget about copyright, if Gobias' intention was to remove all his content, and we clearly have not then we have been disrespecting his wishes for months now.

belfastsocrates · March 05, 2016, 06:19:09 AM

Quote from: Vizoria on March 05, 2016, 05:13:09 AM
All I can say is that Gobias' must be in a real self-hating and destructive mood by deleting everything he uploaded to the LEX. Since we've already broken his wishes (or rights as a creator?) by not deleting his content, and I certainly have no intention of deleting his amazing content from my plugins folder, why not upload everything we downloaded, pool it together, and restore his files on the LEX?

Forget about copyright, if Gobias' intention was to remove all his content, and we clearly have not then we have been disrespecting his wishes for months now.

That's a bit different, as creator he has ownership of distribution and clearly no longer wanted them to be made available. Obviously there's nothing he could do about previous downloads but making them publicly available, although incredibly helpful, would be against his wishes.

mgb204 · March 05, 2016, 06:37:11 AM

It's not even as clear cut as this.

When you delete your account at SC4D, which for someone who's been gone a while, may just have been housecleaning. This process removes all your content from the exchange. It's quite possible this was not even intentional on the part of Gobias, he may simply not have realised this would occur.

My feelings are that unless he has signalled an intent to remove such content, until such point, it should be fine to host it once more. Consent was given originally and deleting his account doesn't necessarily remove such consent (down to the SC4D T's & C's). If such content was restored, and a specific request to remove them was made thereafter, of course SC4D would have to comply with it. I don't think legal action would occur, it's really more about the principle of respecting creators wishes.

But for me that's the crux here, unless there is some information I am not privy too, no specific request for removal was ever made. The likelihood is that Gobias has moved on, and the processes for removing content along with accounts doesn't seem like the best way to do things if you ask me.

APSMS · March 05, 2016, 06:39:16 AM

Quote from: belfastsocrates on March 05, 2016, 06:19:09 AM
That's a bit different, as creator he has ownership of distribution and clearly no longer wanted them to be made available. Obviously there's nothing he could do about previous downloads but making them publicly available, although incredibly helpful, would be against his wishes.

Precisely, hence the difficulty, I imagine. It doesn't help that he's unavailable for comment to let us know why he removed his files (makes the loss easier to handle, imo).

vortext · March 05, 2016, 06:48:19 AM

Quote from: mgb204 on March 05, 2016, 06:37:11 AM
It's not even as clear cut as this.

When you delete your account at SC4D, which for someone who's been gone a while, may just have been housecleaning. This process removes all your content from the exchange. It's quite possible this was not even intentional on the part of Gobias, he may simply not have realised this would occur.

While there's some comfort in thinking Gobias may have accidentally deleted his content, it's actually near impossible to do so. Remember forum accounts are separate from LEX accounts and deleting the former does not remove content from the LEX. Moreover, LEX accounts actually don't have an option for deletion, hence Gobias is still in the LEX author list. The only way to delete LEX content is via 'author actions'. And given Gobias also made all pictures in his thread unavailable it seems pretty clear, to me at least, he intentionally deleted all traces of his SC4 activity.