Please refrain from turning this thread into yet another debate about paid mods. This suggestion is about what can be done now to lower the amount of such arguments, not to further increase it. Right now, the mod repo and the forum contain both free versions of mods and demo/paid versions alongside them. There are prefixes for mod development status but not for whether or not it is paid. The only way to mark such mods as paid/demo is to add text that isn't distinctive enough to clearly state that the mod is paid, nor is there a way to filter such content if one doesn't wish to see it. I believe that the simplest and easiest solution to solve this issue as of now is as follows: 1) Introduce additional "Demo" and "Paid" prefixes for repo mods and forum threads respectively, 2) Introduce a filtering feature where one can hide mods and threads with those prefixes, 3) Enforce the use of such prefixes so that the filtering system will serve it's purpose. Here are simple HTML edit mockups of how such prefixes could look like compared to the current state: This would solve the issue of the poor visibility of the mod's demo/paid status, and it would allow for users to filter such content out if they do not wish to see it, so both sides of the community would be happy.
It's best to keep it simple, and the situation is pretty clear. The only paid mods on the repo are demo versions of paywalled mods, so making it clear that something's a demo version of a paywalled mod using a "Demo" prefix with the ability to filter it out will suffice. A paid early access is still a paywall, however it paywalls content that will become free in due time, so giving it a "Paid" prefix will suffice. When it becomes free, the staff can remove that prefix and the mod discussion thread will be visible for everyone. A good example would be the recently released TAZ Pack. When it was still available only as a paid early access, it would have had the "Paid" prefix, and anyone who doesn't want to be bothered with such content would have it hidden. Then after it's public release, it would no longer have that prefix, so it would appear in the forum as a free full mod, which it is in the repo. So anyone who had the filtering enabled would only see the mod after it became free with full certainty.
