Charity works I would be that “charitable” in using.
Many mods are made for a specific server admin team whim. Others made for the exclusive enjoyment of a select few, and people might not even be “intended” to find them. And some people do make mods looking for that sweet patreon fame.
What is indeed a thing is that to keep a mod there are some stuff people have to do regardless. But right now, since Age of Sorcery, if the mod is made as it should be, it is a matter of just repacking and uploading. Even when some minor hard edits are there. That unless your feature are explicitly being affected, which lets face it: Hardly happen.
Funcom devs even mention they are aware of how their updates will potentially conflict with more popular mods developments. All that jab in the past was people being used as fodder by a problem that was caused by the mod authors themselves. Of course, some people are always looking for an excuse the mob up and “have fun”, even if it is the real work of someone else you talking about.
The “routine” of a modder should include have the Funcom nice feed in which they talk about future and planned changes, which comes way before they change anything. Also the full list of assets changed, so you know if you are relating any. Consulting the mod material Funcom gives so we know how to do something properly.
Wont name names, but I know for a fact two very popular mods make their system wrong and as a result they need to do way more work to keep it updated than most. This might be because of some “problem” with the way they should do things, or some grievance because they dont think what the devs do is right.
The modder mindset should never be “I do it because I do it better than the devs”. Regardless of what you think, you can never know more about any development work (as in software development) then those who developed it.
So it is a simple “routine”:
Check the feed - If nothing there concerns you mod repack and upload
A mod should never directly change game assets unless it is mandatory for the objective. There are few instances in which it is needed, for the most part, character customization mods (mesh replaces do not need it, people just dont do it right, which is changing the character building tables, not the character building code). Following the instructions the devs and mod community managers gladly gives us, you learn how to change many aspects of the game without it.
One thing is for sure: if someone thinks in making a mod because they dont like “most of the game”, it is a bad place to start.