I've seen many mods on this forum which appear to be highly similar in content and direction, and as a consequence have many overlapping ideas. I feel that as a result of this, many hours of veritable effort and hard work have been essentially wasted. I believe that if many of you modders working on very similar projects would simply collaborate with your ideas, you would be able to save a considerable amount of 'overlapping content' modding time and would be able to focus on new ideas, bigger projects, or simply getting the mods completed at a faster pace.

For example, I must have seen about 10 different gameplay overhaul mods, 10 different new armor mods and countless others which essentially are 'duplicates'. Obviously they are not entirely 'duplicates' but many of them share the same foundations. If you guys would just get together and fuse your projects, I'm sure that after some mediation and compromise you would be able to agree on a set project direction and who knows what your projects could end up leading into.

Anyhow, it's just a suggestion based on some months of observations. And I just hate to see manpower wasted..

Well, part of if, would be ego really. Some modders, believe it or not, would rather see their mod go unfinished than to have someone else figure it out, and take the "glory". Another thing is the beliefs of the modder. Sure, there are many overhauls that do more or less the same thing, but one modder will be hard pressed to see one of his features, just one feature, go down the drain in favor of another modder feature.

Like an artist who does a painting, but when somebody changes the color or shape of a cloud, for example, he will consider the whole painting destroyed, his vision manipulated for better or for worse.

There a number of modders who would like to see more collaboration, and many who are collaborating.

But there is also a perfectly normal and natural tendency to "do my own thing with this game", hence the reason why a person begins to mod in the first place. And that spirit naturally carries over to modding and their choices of who to collaborate with (or more likely lack thereof). In a normal job, there is a pecking order and working around the needs of others, even if you don't think it's the best thing to do. Modding is a break from that. It allows you to run wherever you want with your creativity without checking in with other people to see if you're 'doing ok'.

Also, if you're going to invest time in work with someone else, you better trust that they know what they are doing. When you know someone well and trust them, then you're more inclined to join forces. Not all modders have broken that social barrier with other modders, which is also perfectly understandable.

welp Lorca and Kost gave the general gist of it I'll add with a simple word...variety. sure as you said many mods go along the same concept, many gameplay mods for instance. but "how" they do it goes along way, from packaging, being modular, compatibility things like that.

it ensures choice and variation so that no one is stuck with one outcome per say

There are some collaborative efforts underway. We are hosting Beyond Skyrim, which is a large collaborative effort that aims to bring all of the provinces of Tamriel to Skyrim. Each team is independent, but they are all working together on a heightmap that encompasses all of Tamriel, except Skyrim. They are also working together to generate all the regions. Currently there are teams for Archipelago, Elsweyr, Hammerfell, High Rock, Morrowind and Cyrodiil. The project is hosted on Dark Creations and their forums are http://www.darkcreations.org/forums/forum/119-beyond-skyrim/.

We are also hosting another project called http://www.darkcreations.org/forums/forum/306-skyrim-new-age-of-prosperity/. This is also a collaborative effort of independent mods. It aims to take several independent mods and link them via a comprehensive quest. It will also ensure that all mods involved are compatible with each other. Each mod involved remains an independent project and the mod itself is not included as part of the project - each mod must be downloaded individually. But SNAP will provide the glue to link the mods together and ensure they are compatible with each other. Each mod author offers up his work for inclusion in the project.

Elder Scrolls modding is an anarchic hobby and always will be. It has never been congenial to centralization and uniformity. That is its glory.

Give me a bunch of small mods that all do the same things in slightly different ways and I'm happy. Give me a large mod whose direction is planned and controlled by committee and I'm not happy.