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Games (M) ( comp.sources.games )

From [email protected] Mon May  8 18:44:22 1995 Path: uunet!bounce-back From: [email protected] (Bill Randle) Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,comp.sources.games,comp.sources.games.bugs Subject: RFD: comp.sources.games{.bugs} removal or moderation transfer Followup-To: news.groups Date: 8 May 1995 12:38:50 -0400 Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Redmond, OR Lines: 78 Sender: [email protected] Approved: [email protected], [email protected] Message-ID: <[email protected]> Xref: gs2.UU.NET news.announce.newgroups:6771 news.groups:148314 comp.sources.games:1900 comp.sources.games.bugs:2623                         REQUEST FOR DISCUSSION (RFD) for the disposition of comp.sources.games and comp.sources.games.bugs  summary: what should be the future of comp.sources.games{.bugs}? current moderator: [email protected] (Bill Randle)  This article has been posted to comp.sources.games, comp.sources.games.bugs, news.announce.newgroups and news.groups. Send in your comments to news.groups.  MY COMMENTS ===========  Comp.sources.games (nee mod.sources.games, nee net.source.games for those that remember that far back) is a moderated group for the posting of games source code. It is not a group for locating games. Comp.sources.games.bugs is an unmoderated group for discussion of bugs in software that has been posted to comp.sources.games.  What I would like to know is if this group can still perform a useful service in today's environment. In the early days of news (OK, who's used A-news?) when the links were slow uucp connections (fast was 9600 baud), the moderated source groups performed a valuable function. They would weed out the junk and the requests so that people only interested in source code wouldn't have to download the other stuff over their slow link.  The moderated source groups also performed a valuable archiving function. Some sites would automatically archive anything posted in the newsgroup for users that either didn't get news or would rather download it via ftp or uucp direct from the archive site.  Finally, in those days there were a *lot* of people who did not have connections to the Internet and their only way to get this stuff was via USENET.  Today, links are a lot faster (14.4K is considered slow today) and most people are using SLIP or PPP to connect to their ISP or even have a direct (or indirect) ethernet link to the net. This means they can use ftp to get source code directly from any number of sites around the world. Getting source code via a newsgroup doesn't seem as valuable as it once did.  Another thing that has changed over time is the nature of the games themselves. In the "old" days, the typical game posted to comp.sources.games was character based or maybe used curses (e.g. dungeon, nethack, etc.) and was targeted primarily at Unix systems (usually BSD, with sometimes support for USS (System III, System VrN)). Some of these games were also portable to PC's or other systems as well, but this was not the primary focus as most of the PC games were supplied in pre-compiled binary format.  Today, there is a much larger variety of systems and OS's. Unix games are often targeted at platforms running the X Window System with ports and precompiled binaries for BSD, FreeBSD, Linux, etc. MS Windows has taken over the PC world (with some notable exceptions). There are also many specialized games newsgroups. My .newsrc shows 93 newsgroups with the word "games" in them (although some of these are board or video games, as opposed to computer games).  All of this makes we wonder if there is still any value in a general moderated source newsgroup for games. Finally, it seems as though I never have any time available to devote to this newsgroup anymore. There a few games in the queue that people have sent, that I just haven't had time to process and post.  As I see it, there are three main alternatives for the disposition of this newsgroup:  	1) Keep it as is, but find a new moderator, 	2) Change it from a moderated newsgroup to an unmoderated newsgroup, 	3) Delete the newsgroup entirely. (If this were to happen, then 	   comp.sources.games.bugs should also be deleted.)  Whatever the disposition, I would suggest keeping the existing c.s.g. archives for a period of time, as I occasionally see requests from people looking for one of those old games. --  	-Bill Randle 	Moderator, comp.sources.games 	Tektronix, Inc. 	[email protected]