I'm getting ready to update the "lore-friendly and others" versions of Skyrim Monster Mod to be compatible with the latest version, but this time I want to make sure I understand and do everything correctly from the start.

If you're not aware of what my mod does - it's a bunch of different files (14 in total) based on Skyrim Monster Mod - some just remove batches of creatures from the lists, and others quite heavily edit the stats of the creatures.

I didn't create the original mod, I only provide edited versions of it.

1) The previous version of the original vanilla Skyrim Monster Mod came as an ESM/BSA combo. I have always created a new ESP with its ESM as a master, deleted a bunch of the new creatures using the delete key in the CK, and renamed and edited most of the rest. I was always unsure about deleting as always understood that things should be disabled rather than deleted, but had also heard that only applied to the main Skyrim.esm, not to mod esm files - and in any case wasn't able to disable and could only delete. Is this correct? Lots of people use the mod without any issues. Or should I leave them in the game and just find and delete them from the lists - in which case how do I easily find the lists (is there a way just to bring up all lists without searching by individual creatures?). Would TES5Edit be useful in this instance?

2) The new version of Skyrim Monster mod (vanilla version) comes as an ESM/BSA combo, but also adds an ESP for compatibility with Dawnguard. If I make each of my files dependent on both, I'd end up stopping those without Dawnguard from using any of my files - and wouldn't be practical to create versions of each. How would I best deal with the dawnguard compatibility patch? Or should I ignore it and create my own?

Apologies if this all seems either ridiculously simple, or ridiculously complex - I'm just sitting here being very confused as to the best way to proceed.