Six newsgroups are available for discussing the game Quake, by id Software, and the various add-ons related to Quake. Some news servers also carry a seventh group, alt.binaries.games.quake, in which binary files can be posted. This article will give you some advice about where and how to post your articles, in order to make these groups more useful and more enjoyable for you and the other readers.
All Quake newsgroups have their charter, which defines the topics that are appropriate for the group and the ones that are not. Since all groups (except for r.g.c.q.announce) are unmoderated, you are theoretically free to post anything you want, and nobody will force you to respect the charters of the groups. However, posting to the wrong group or cross-posting to many groups defeats the purpose of having separate groups for different topics. That's why it is useful to know where your articles would be the most appropriate. This article should not be considered as a set of ``rules'', but as sensible recommendations that you should keep in mind when posting an article. Usenet is cooperative by nature, so it is up to you, as a reader and contributor to the Quake newsgroups, to make these groups more --or less-- interesting to read.
This is the only moderated group in this hierarchy. The sort of postings likely to be approved by the moderator (Tony Lezard) are general announcements that are interesting to the broad spectrum of Quake players. Examples of these types of articles are:
Discussion in this group covers all aspects of editing and modifying the game. This includes topics related to:
Comments about configuring a server or playing user-written levels should not be posted here; they should go to .servers and .playing, respectively.
This group covers all topics that are not already covered by the other groups in this hierarchy, such as comparisons with other games, piracy issues, discussions about id Software, etc. Most of the topics that are currently posted to r.g.c.q.misc would fit into r.g.c.q.playing or one of the other groups, so you should consider setting the followups and directing the discussions to the most appropriate group.
Discussion about playing original or user-written Quake levels takes place here. Topics include:
This group is for discussing Quake-C, the language which defines Quake's behavior. All technical topics related to Quake-C are allowed, such as programming tricks and special effects, how to enable some features, etc. Level editing topics do not belong here and should be posted in .editing. Please choose the most suitable group and avoid cross-posting between .quake-c and .editing.
Excerpts of source code may be posted here, as long as they are reasonably short (not more than a few dozen lines). Longer scripts or compiled code should only be announced here and posted in a binaries group (alt.binaries.games.quake) or uploaded on a FTP or WWW server.
This group is for technical discussion of Quake servers. It should serve as a forum in which maintainers of public servers can exchange information about the configuration of Quake servers. Setup questions about large public servers (TCP/IP or modem) as well as local servers (on a LAN running IPX or TCP/IP) can be posted here.
Announcements of new servers should be posted in .announce and may be cross-posted to .playing, but they should not be posted here.
Discussion about how to use a server from the client side (i.e. how to play a multi-player game) belongs in the .playing group.
Any files related to Quake can be posted in alt.binaries.games.quake, as long as they do not include copyrighted material for which redistribution is not permitted. Examples of files that can be posted in that group (in a uuencoded ZIP file if possible):
General discussion about Quake or requests for files should not take place in this group. It is recommended that all articles set followups to rec.games.computer.quake.playing or r.g.c.q.editing.
General guidelines about Usenet can be found in the newsgroup news.announce.newusers. It is highly recommended that you read the couple of articles that are always available in that group, because they usually give very good advice, even for experienced Usenetters.
If your local news administrator needs more info about the Quake newsgroups, the original charters of the Quake newsgroups can be found in the RFD/CFV related to these groups, archived at ftp.uu.net:
Some comments about why the old Quake group (alt.games.quake) should not be used anymore can be found in the following documents:
This article will be re-posted weekly, so that it is always available for new readers of these groups. The subject line will always be the same, so that you can easily put it in your killfile if you do not want to see it again. This article is available from:
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