The mod editor is functional, if a bit counter-intuitive. I suggest you copy one of the empty mods to use as a new mod.
The json files for me are all walls of text. Maybe they use non-standard line breaks that not all OSes recognize?
Yeah, if I open the JSON files(the *.gd ones) in Notebook++ without the json plugin, they're just walls of text. So if you are using Notebook++ get the plugin and see if it makes the files properly formatted.