[ADM] comp.sources.games Posting Guidelines
FAQ Autoposter
Archive-name: comp-sources-games-intro.txt
Posting-frequency: weekly
Last-modified: 2003/03/25 01:49:27
Version: 1.4
URL: http://www.gweep.ca/~robomod/comp.sources.games/
comp.sources.games Posting Guidelines
Copyright (c) 2003, Brian Edmonds
$Revision: 1.4 $ $Date: 2003/03/25 01:49:27 $
The latest version of this document can be found at
* http://www.gweep.ca/~robomod/comp.sources.games/
* post to the newsgroup or mailing list with the following text in
the subject (without the quotes): "send file: guidelines.txt"
Any inquiries, comments or suggestions should be sent to the group
moderator at comp-sources-g...@gweep.ca.
_________________________________________________________________
Contents
* Introduction
* Charter
+ Miscellaneous Policies
+ Robomoderation
* How To Submit a Post
* The Mailing List
_________________________________________________________________
Introduction
The comp.sources.games newsgroup was created in April 1987 as
net.sources.games, which Rich Salz, the moderator of net.sources
wanted to split out the games posts. Bill Randle volunteered for the
moderator's job, and ran the group through its renaming to
mod.sources.games and finally to comp.sources.games in the Great
Renaming. In the mid-1990s with the rise of the web, Bill began
looking for a new direction and moderator for the group.
In March 2003 moderation of the group was passed to Brian Edmonds, who
is running the group and a companion, gated mailing list. Bill is
continuing to serve as a co-moderator.
Since its creation a number of control messages have been sent which
at some sites appear to have erroneously changed the status of the
group to unmoderated. If this is the case at your site, you should
bring it to the attention of your news admin, as any postings you make
to a moderated group which is not properly recognized as such at your
site will be silently discarded at any site where the group is
correctly carried as moderated.
_________________________________________________________________
Charter
The original charter has been lost in the mists of history. The
original operation of the group was to post game sources in volumes
and issues, somewhat like a magazine. These posts were highly
structured and were automatically processed by a number of archives to
provide additional access to the sources by FTP, BITNET, and UUCP.
These days the web provides a much better distribution medium for
large chunks of data than Usenet, so the group's posting policies are
adapting to hopefully remain relevant. Source postings are still
welcome, preferably in shar (shell archive) format to avoid problems
with binary posting filters. Posts larger than 50k in size are
discouraged, and posts larger than 200k will be rejected, since as
posts become larger more and more sites will be filtering them out.
Large postings should instead be put on a website and the
description/URL posted instead.
To streamline the post approval process and spam filtering process,
all posts must use a subject line tag of the format [TAG] (square
brackets surrounding a three letter, upper case code). Valid tags are:
* [ADM] Administrative postings. This will be used primarily by the
moderators and others are discouraged from using it.
* [FAQ] Frequently Asked Questions postings. These should be
routine, scheduled postings that address one or more common
questions on the newsgroup.
* [SRC] A source posting. A uuencoded tar or zip file is acceptable,
but a shar (shell archive) file is strongly recommended to avoid
misplaced binary filters. Binary MIME attachments are not
accepted, since the moderation software is not currently smart
enough to distinguish between desireable and undesireable payloads
(eg. viruses or HTML vs. a source tar file). Multipart postings
are possible to get around the limits on the size of a single
post, but longer files should be placed on the web instead, and
just the description and URL posted to the group. Please do not
post just the URL -- always include a description of the sources.
* [PAT] A source patch. When bug fixes or features are released for
previously posted sources, it may be more space efficient to
simply post a patch. Including a description of the changes made
by the patch is strongly recommended.
* [DIS] A discussion post. Questions or observations on games that
have been posted to this group are welcome, as well as
meta-discussion about game sources in general. Specific questions
about programming languages or game development environments
should probably be raised in other groups where they are
specifically addressed.
* [REQ] A request post. If you're looking for sources to a specific
game, or type of game, you can post it with this tag. Also if you
want to request a feature be added to a game previously posted
here. Please do not use this group for programming questions, as
there are other groups dedicated to such topics.
Miscellaneous Policies
The moderation software may (now or possibly in the future) enforce
the following policies:
* Postings must be in plain text. In particular no HTML or mixed
text and HTML posts will be allowed. Excessive quoting and large
sigs are also not allowed. Any post with more than 70% quoted
material or a sig in excess of 512 bytes will be rejected.
* Postings must be formatted within 76 characters in width (limiting
your lines to 72 characters is recommended), and also must not
exhibit the long/short/long/short/etc misformatting that some
posting agents can produce when misconfigured. When posting
sources that exceed this width, you can include the phrase "long
lines" somewhere in the body (such as in the descriptive paragraph
at the top of your post), and the software will allow lines up to
160 characters long.
* Crossposting is not currently allowed. Please bring any groups
that you think it would be beneficial to allow crossposting with
to the attention of the moderators, and relaxing this will be
given a fair consideration.
* Mail address blacklisting and whitelisting may be implemented as
deemed necessary. In addition a number of anti-spam filters are in
place, and will be expanded as needed.
All posts (with a working return address) will either be returned with
a rejection notice, or posted to the newsgroup and mailing list. One
exception is that rejection notices for the same error are suppressed
for a few minutes after the first one is sent to reduce the danger of
the robomoderator being used as a mailbombing agent.
Posting with a non-replyable address is strongly discouraged. If you
feel you must post with such an address, please make sure you are not
using one in a valid mail domain; appending .invalid to the address is
the recommended way to ensure this.
Robomoderation
The robomoderation software (robomod) enforces various anti-spam and
text formatting requirements, as well as optionally allowing posters
to register their addresses. Note that in order to receive rejection
notices or other information from robomod it must have a valid email
address for you. More information on the registration process,
including how to use munged addreses, can be found at
* http://www.gweep.ca/~robomod/register.html
* post to the newsgroup or mailing list with the following text in
the subject (without the quotes): "send file: register.txt"
Remember, you do not need to register to post, but if you post with an
address that does not deliver to you, then you will not receive any
bounce messages from robomod unless you register a real address for it
to use.
_________________________________________________________________
How To Submit a Post
At a correctly configured site you should simply be able to post to
comp.sources.games and everything will be managed for you behind the
scenes. If you find this does not work for you, you can submit
directly to the submission agent by mailing your posting to
comp-sour...@gweep.ca.
Please try the newsgroup first, and be sure to bring any problems to
the attention of your local news administrator so that they can be
dealt with.
_________________________________________________________________
The Mailing List
All postings to comp.sources.games are also distributed to the mailing
list comp-sour...@gweep.ca, which is available in both regular
and digest format. For subscription information, send email to
comp-sources-...@gweep.ca or visit the list webpage at
http://www.gweep.ca/mailman/listinfo.cgi/comp-sources-games.
Likewise, all postings to the mailing list are also distributed to the
newsgroup, so subscribers can use whichever of the newsgroup, list, or
digest formats is most comfortable.
_________________________________________________________________
Brian Edmonds
$Date: 2003/03/25 01:49:27 $