So, what do you think? Should we be cleaning ITMs or not? Does it depend on what exactly the ITM is? How can you tell ones to be cleaned from ones to be left in? Any advice is appreciated.
Even if a mod does tell you not to clean ITMs, you still probably should. I've seen "Unless a mod explicitly tells you not to clean ITMs, you should clean them. I've seen people say (in regards to Interesting NPCs) "Yes, the edits are necessary for the mod. Mods like CCOR inject records to Update.esm and for other mods to create out-of-the-box compatibility for them, they have to override those records and will look like ITMs.". Some mods require the ITMs to work like CCOR compatible mods.
I've seen people say "You shouldn't clean ITMs unless mentioned by the author or confirmed by other more experience modders. With Skedit, our teams have to fill out specific details to complete a job, making sure we have all the details necessary on the management end to make sure we run our. I've done my searches on here and there seems to be absolutely no consensus on whether mods should be cleaned, period. 'Skedit has made running my team of 10 trucks easier, before it was a mess with handling paperwork from multiple teams and making sure information is filled out correctly. Several popular mods like Conveniant Horses. Cleaning ITMs from mods can and will break them if the ITMs were put there on purpose for a function, and indeed if you clean mods the wrong way or with the wrong method you can actually break your game. I've run LOOT through MO2 and the following mods (of what I've installed so far) have ITMs: ELFX, Interesting NPCs, Rustic Soul Gems, CC Survival Mode and the Update and DLC. Sorry to be somewhat contradictory but you should NOT clean 'all' mods. So I just got a new PC and am starting to finally get through my load order.