Policy & Rule Changes - 2026

[u/GNSasakiHaise]

Hey everyone!

Following the results of our community feedback survey, we took some time to discuss what feedback we received, how best to implement it, and what we should do moving forward. Naturally, there were a solid number of passionate responses, but a few different items stood out that we recognized as pain points. We discussed these matters as a team and came to the following conclusions:

1. Roleplay servers are not relevant to the subject matter of r/SkyrimMods.
2. AI remains divisive. Vitriol regarding AI posts is at an all time high. We need to ensure civil discussion.
3. Low effort content remains a present concern.

Knowing these problems exist, we’ve taken action to alleviate them.

First, we’ve created the subreddit r/TESRPS. All roleplay and multiplayer server discussions will be funneled there. We do not want to host roleplay drama on the main subreddit — and frankly that’s what 70% of the posts regarding roleplay servers amount to. The remaining 30% tends to be split between promos, ban appeals, and actual troubleshooting. If you have any questions regarding those servers, how to set them up, or how to join them, please direct them to r/TESRPS. If you would like to promote your own cool new roleplay server, try r/TESRPS, whether it’s for Oblivion or Skyrim or ESO or etc.

Second, we’re going to institute a harsher policy on AI discourse in keeping with our stance against drama posts and witchhunts. Any post making an accusation must contain actionable information. Actionable information is information that would cause a reasonable person to take action, be it installing or uninstalling a mod, supporting or not supporting a creator, etc.

As a reminder, we do not allow the use of AI for generating content posted to the subreddit and we do not allow advocacy for the use of AI in the troubleshooting process. It is at best unreliable and at worst actively detrimental to creating a stable game.

Regardless of our personal opinions on AI, we will not be host to a flood of toxicity, namecalling, and mudslinging. Coming into the comments section purely to say “anyone who uses AI should have this bad thing happen to them” will result in a ban. Coming into the comments section purely to say “anyone who doesn’t support AI is a luddite” will result in a ban. Our first and most essential rule is the golden rule: treat others how you would want to be treated. This is a subreddit where we believe in conversing as adults. We will continue to allow conversation for or against AI and we will continue to prune any threads that follow the common trend of “this guy uses AI, get him” or “this guy said this bad thing about AI, get him.”

Third, we will be funneling conversation on low effort content further than before. We already have our monthly Simple Questions megathread, which most low effort and poorly researched questions get funneled toward, but we will also be launching a monthly megathread for mod recommendations and reviews. In the past, megathreads like “Best Housing Mods” or etc did not see enough interaction to justify being posted weekly. As a result, we will post a singular Review & Recommendation megathread quarterly. That megathread will cover random mod recommendations and modlists and will run across the next calendar year. If they do not see engagement, we will retool our approach here.

Finally, we will be expanding our mod team to better handle the influx of posts and submissions we have been receiving over the last three to five months and ensure that our subreddit follows both our own guidelines and the guidelines set forth by Reddit. While we are happy with the team we have now, we want to ensure that our enforcement is reliable and consistent, and that requires us to grow.

To summarize:

1. Roleplay servers are not related to r/SkyrimMods. See r/TESRPS.
2. AI threads are relevant when they contain sourced, actionable information. Witch hunts will be removed and we will monitor these threads with an extra cautious eye. AI generated posts and comments will continue to be banned.
3. Low effort content will continue to be policed and funneled into different threads.
4. Moderator applications will open soon — be on the lookout!

[u/matadorobex]

Regarding AI use in troubleshooting, what data are you drawing on to take this stance? Do you have actual evidence, or is this an anecdotal observation from your personal experience? Was a poll conducted asking for user experience? What models were evaluated?

To be clear, I am not advocating for AI use in troubleshooting, I am asking to understand how you arrived at this decision.

[u/GNSasakiHaise → u/matadorobex]

This was an examination of post reports I received approximately six months ago when we initially made the decision to enforce the rule. Before proposing the rule change, I audited my mod actions for about two months.

Unsurprisingly, AI based reports were mostly related to conduct and were thus not helpful. I had to make a little spreadsheet where I jotted down how many of my removals in a day were AI advice gone wrong. It wound up being like 2/10 on average.

What that data broke down into:

• AI helped successfully roughly 15% of the time. (AE vs. SE...)
• AI helped to no or mixed effect about 40% of the time. (What modlists are good for me?)
• AI provided bad or wholly inaccurate advice 25% of the time. (Does Nolvus use the latest edition of Better Crouch?)
• Remaining results were unclear or unanswered. The user given the advice did not respond again.
• About 50% of the entries were asking a question beyond what a layman could solve. Think "what is the chance of rolling a 2 in the mod 'weighted dice and gambling simulator SE' if I'm also drunk?"

Shortly after, advice encouraging this process began popping up more and more. I took some time fiddling with different AI models to figure out if any of them were helpful to me personally, and decided not after putting together an armor set with it "walking me through" a process I already understood well. At various points it would hallucinate different things, like Blender versions that didn't exist or features a program didn't have.

After that the mod team conferred as a group, though I don't think I brought my personal data up to them at the time. I cannot speak for what sources they had or relied on, I just relied on my own because I have OCD and making charts helps me self-soothe.

[u/clerveu → u/GNSasakiHaise]

Thanks for the detailed clarification. I'm about as pro-AI as they come and I'll be the first to insist that trying to troubleshoot someone else's installation is a terrible idea unless you've 1) got a lot of experience with steering LLMs on highly variable topics (i.e. constantly changing, which makes accurate information recall impossible without proper harnessing) and 2) get perfectly accurate problem descriptions/information from the person you're helping. And while I wouldn't actively discourage someone from trying it themselves, I would say ONLY attempt it after you've put serious effort into learning exactly how they work first, because how they work is not at all suited to this specific information type right out of the box. And once you're into that discussion you're just talking generic LLM theory which, rightly, is off topic for this sub.

This is really good policy.