The Doom Help Service
The Doom Help Service (DHS)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
(what is it? etc)
Last Revision: 15/Mar/95
Written by Ian Mapleson (mapleson@cee.hw.ac.uk)
This file describes the following:
- what the Doom Help Service is,
- where it is,
- how it works.
Also explained in this file are the various rec-based USENET newsgroups devoted
to Doom, Doom II and Heretic.
There is a separate file, called 'doomhelp.txt', which describes the various
individual help files contained in the DHS Archive.
Abbreviations used in this document:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
rgcd. = rec.games.computer.doom. (eg. rgcd.misc)
agd = alt.games.doom
agdn = alt.games.doom.newplayers
Question: What is the Doom Help Service? (DHS)
Answer: The DHS consists of:
- the newsgroup rgcd.help and the kind people who help out by answering
peoples' questions which get posted to the group,
- the DHS Archive (a plethora of help files that I have available on Doom,
Doom II and, to a certain extent, Heretic),
- me answering (if I can) any help questions that I receive via email.
The one exception to the above are questions about Doom level editing and EXE
file hacking. Unless such questions are simple (such as where to find a
particular editor, or a reqest for general advice on what editing involves as
a whole, etc.) editing questions should be posted to rgcd.editing and not to
rgcd.help.
Newsgroup summary:
The following new rec.games.computer.doom newsgroups for discussing all
versions and ports of DOOM and its addons were created on November 14th 1994:
rgcd.announce Info/FAQs/reviews about DOOM (Moderated)
rgcd.help DOOM Help Service
rgcd.misc Talking about DOOM and id Software
rgcd.editing Editing and hacking DOOM-related files
rgcd.playing Playing DOOM and user-created levels
These groups, created by the readers of agd in early November 1994, are
intended to be a replacement of the old alt groups in the following manner:
rgcd.announce replaces agd.announce
rgcd.help replaces agdn
rgcd.playing ] Together, these three
rgcd.misc ]---{ groups replace agd,
rgcd.editing ] agd.ii and agd.][
The exception to the above replacement strategy is alt.binaries.doom, which
will continue to be the _only_ place where binary (uuencoded files) should be
posted. Such binary files should _not_ be posted to the rgcd.* groups. A help
file is regularly posted to rgcd.announce explaining why this is so.
The above new rec groups are better organised, have a much wider propagation and
are better supported than the old alt groups.
The old announce and newplayers groups will be removed some time in early 1995.
The agd, agd.ii and agd.][ groups will not be deleted until traffic on agd has
died down to a low level.
Each rgcd group has a 'co-ordinator'; this person has _no_ moderation powers
and no censorship powers of any kind. So what do they do? Basically, the
co-ordinators spend a great deal of time gathering together all available
information about Doom, Doom II and Heretic in order to create and provide a
series of up-to-date information help files. This is done by maintaininga
close contacts with key members of Id Software and all the various important
people involved with Doom (such as the authors of the major editors and FAQ
files, etc.) The help files produced by this process are posted regularly
to rgcd.announce and are also available via the DHS in its various forms. A
typical help file would be the RGCD FAQ, for instance, which is intended to
answer the most commonly asked questions about Doom, Doom II and Heretic.
Another typical file would be the current edition of the WWW/ftp site list.
The co-ordinators also take it upon themselves to try and keep the contents of
the various groups reasonably on-topic. This does _not_ mean censoring any
posts or pressuring people to not post because of their opinions; it is
entirely concerned with more serious issues such as the following:
- dealing with the ever increasing occurence of USENET advertising spams (the
highly annoying practice of commercial companies posting the same 'advert'
to hundreds of newsgroups) and suchlike by sending email to the various
systems administrators concerned.
- dealing with the occasional user of the Internet who, for whatever reason,
decides to try and cause 'chaos' on one or more of the rgcd groups by
posting annoying/insulting messages. The usual form of response is simply
to send email to the abuser's system administrator. This doesn't happen
very often, but it does happen (it can happen to _any_ of the 12000 USENET
newsgroups. rec.pets.cats was devastated by such an attack in 1994).
Less serious things which are sometimes dealt with include:
- directing pointless flame wars to alt.flame,
- helping people who are intersted in other games apart from Doom to find the
appropriate newsgroup to post to (eg. pointing 'Rise Of The Triad' fans to
comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action),
- dealing with the occasional binary post that appears in the rgcd groups
(the poster is sent a polite email explaining why it is a bad idea to post
binaries to the rgcd groups and is asked if they can cancel the binary post,
if possible).
All these things help to keep the 'signal to noise ratio' (ie. the number of
useful posts compared to annoying and useless post) at a good level.
Fields of Operation of the DHS
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
In existence since about March of '94, the DHS has several fields of operation:
USENET
^^^^^^
I created agdn on April 12th 1994 as a place where people could post help
questions on any aspect of Doom that troubled them, without fear of being
flamed by more experienced users, etc. Being an alt group, agdn never got a
wide site coverage (the same goes for agd). Coupled with the ever increasing
daily posting rate on agd (regularly exceeded 300 posts a day), the formation
of new rec based newsgroups was proposed and, after a vote was taken by the
readers of agd, the new rec groups were created on November 14th 1994. agdn has,
therefore, now been _replaced_ by rgcd.help and, as a result, agdn will deleted
at some point in early 1995. Therefore, please post help-related questions to
rgcd.help and not agdn.
Note that rgcd.help is NOT moderated (the only moderated rgcd group is
rgcd.announce; since agd.announce was also moderated, there has therefore been
no change in the moderation situation).
Hence, readers can post what they like; however, the only real restriction I
would like to see for rgcd.help is a self-inflicted one on the part of those who
use the group: namely that there should be NO flames of any kind on the group.
rgcd.help is supposed to be a place where people can get answers to questions,
not where they get criticised for answering questions whose answers just
happen to be well known by more experienced players.
rgcd.help has been very successful so far; comments I get by email describe the
group as 'a delight to read'. I would like to keep it this way.
If you have made a useful help file on some aspect of Doom, I will gladly
add it to the DHS Archive with credit duly given.
World Wide Web (WWW)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The DHS is now accessible via the World Wide Web via programs like Netscape,
Mosaic and Lynx. The Doom Help Service Home Page is at:
http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~mapleson/doom/doom.html
Or you can go to my home page at:
http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~mapleson/
and access the DHS (as well as many other things :) from there.
Note that there is now a central Web server for Doom related files. Called
'Doomgate', it is located at:
http://doomgate.cs.buffalo.edu/
The DHS will soon have all the various help files available on DoomGate as
well.
^^^^^
If you have a question about Doom, you can email me. It's preferable that
you post your question to the appropriate group because:
- you're more likely to get an answer,
- others can benefit from the public display of the solution to the question.
You can email me if you like (I don't mind email at all) but I can't guarantee
I'll be able to answer the question (if I don't know the answer, I usually
know someone who does, however :).
Note that there are some aspects of Doom which I know very little about, namely
editing, hardware problems and multiplayer setup problems (I don't have a pc of
my own. I play Doom on an SGI Indy).
Incidentally, if you have a question about Doom/Doom II/Heretic, then please
examine previous posts on the various appropriate newsgroups first to see if
your question has already been answered. Chances are it has.
A note about ftp/WWW addresses.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Many of the help files available for Doom, especially the Doom FAQ v6.666,
contain references to ftp site addresses and World Wide Web HTTP addresses.
One of the problems of such addresses is that they can change, sometimes quite
often (this is more likely to happen with WWW addresses than ftp addresses).
Hence, if you are unsure about whether a particular site address is still
valid, check the latest version of the WWW/ftp list which appears in
rgcd.announce on a regular basis, or email me for a copy.
Finally, if you have any further questions or comments, don't hesitate to
email me.
For a detailed listing of the various help files contained in the DHS Archive,
please read the file called 'doomhelp.txt'.
Ian.
The Doom Help Service (DHS).
Co-ordinator of rec.games.computer.doom.help.
WWW addresses:
Home page: http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~mapleson/
DHS: http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~mapleson/doom/doom.html
Help Archive: http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~mapleson/doom/doomhelp.zip
Dissertation: http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~mapleson/diss/diss.html
SGI Info: http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/~mapleson/sgistuff/sgindex.html
Ian C. R. Mapleson BSc.,
Oceans Systems Research Group,
Room G86,
Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering,
Heriot Watt University,
Riccarton Campus,
EH14 4AS,
Edinburgh,
Scotland,
United Kingdom.
email to: mapleson@cee.hw.ac.uk
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