New FAQ Layout

[Julian]

Lookie!

I never really looked into it before and found it quite horrible. So here it is, with a TOC and much much more readable.

So now, feel free to give comments/ideas/suggestions or send me a dollar!

[Fredrik]

Bring back teh port reviews.

[Ichor]

Nice. Every long FAQ needs a table of contents with links to make searching the text that much easier.

[Darkstalker]

Nice work, I can't complain since there's nothing wrong with it. Good job for all the people that worked to make it !

[Epyo]

yay pretty!

[DEMOn]

yay, I can finally read it. :)

[Lüt]

Nice layout.

Just a few thoughts/suggestions:

enterance

"entrance"

Please do not reply to very old topics. If it older than say 2 weeks old, then do NOT reply to it. This tends to piss the Mods off.

I really couldn't care less, nor could most of the members, and I don't believe this should be any kind of officially endorsed forum policy.

IOW, I think we should ditch the "expiration date" regarding old threads. Threads are auto-locked after a certain time period anyway, that should be enough. Any open threads are fair game for replies.

(Also, you could add "IOW" to the acronyms list.)

Please do not exploit any forum bugs you may come across.

"Please do not exploit any forum bugs you may come across, but feel free to report them to the staff."

Read down farther for the /newstuff FAQ

You could have "down farther" or "/newstuff FAQ" link to the /newstuff FAQ.

Windows XP has limited DOS support, so doom(2).exe will NOT work.

Whether or not it works well is machine dependant. Doom(2).exe will typically run great on XP, so long as it's sound is disabled. For example, it runs fine on my XP machine with sound FX disabled. On others, it requires music disabled. I think Shaviro said he had no problems at all running doom(2).exe on his XP machine, and I'm not aware of any examples of doom(2).exe refusing to start entirely on any XP machine.

There are four sections of the Classic Doom area:

There are actually six sections, five of which are listed under the "four sections" description.

Religion and Politics is the place to bitch about everything. You can also post polls here.

Seeing as how almost nothing in that forum is religious or political, how about naming it back to Everything Else?

Post Hell is the forum where bad posts go to die. You cannot post in Post Hell obviously. Reading the thread there gives a good idea of what not to do on these forums.

This should be listed under the "morons" section, along with a description of the losers forum.

Moderators can choose their own custom titles, post attachments, view member’s profiles and perform forum searches.

Forum searches have been opened to all members.

they can modify his/her profile

Heh, I'm working on that :P

and sending e-mails to users.

"and sending e-mails to users via the forum software". It's possible to get a user's e-mail address simply by viewing their profile and send mail to that user via another client, so this line seems deceptive in that it implies no e-mail can be sent to users at all.

do NOT quote images

Bolden this.

Feel free to contact me (BigBadGangsta) or another Moderator, Super Moderator or Administrator with your question.

"Feel free to contact any Moderator, Super Moderator or Administrator with your question."

Also, consider adding some cell padding to the layout. Most of the text is lying right on the edges of the page.

[myk]

The Common Doom Question #8 refers to the FAQ section here, which is fine, but it should also probably lead to Activision's customer support section which has a list of questions and answers and a way of contacting them.

You don't upload to "/newstuff." The question as it is, is fine, as that's what most clueless people would ask (getting the idea from "Newstuff Chronicles.") But the answer should clarify that you are uploading to "/idgames" or the "DOOM community Archive", as it's officially called:

http://www.3dgamers.com/about/archives.html

Also, /igames does not accept demos to the incoming under the demos subdirectory. That has been closed for a long time. Direct demo uploaders to demo sites, such as:

http://xfury.net/doom (any engine, mostly IWAD demos)
http://www.doomworld.com/sda/doom_sda.htm (any engine, PWAD demos)
http://ural2.hszk.bme.hu/~ha211/compet-n/index.cgi (doom/doom2, competition demos)

[Linguica]

Lüt said:

I really couldn't care less, nor could most of the members, and I don't believe this should be any kind of officially endorsed forum policy.

Most people hate it.

Threads are auto-locked after a certain time period anyway

Nope, and I never found anything in the admin tools to do such a thing.

[Lüt]

Linguica said:

Nope, and I never found anything in the admin tools to do such a thing.

Huh? You told me you coded it yourself and that's why you wouldn't upgrade the forum software beyond vB 2.2.5, because it would break that and other enhancements you made.

But, whatever, maybe Julian can add it.

[Lizardcommando]

Shouldn't there be a description on Referalls?

[Fletcher`]

Lizardcommando said:

Shouldn't there be a description on Referalls?

Uh, yeah. What are the referalls(sp)?

[Linguica]

Lüt said:

Huh? You told me you coded it yourself

I think I had coded such a thing for the old forums but there was nothing of the sort for vBulletin and I never coded such a thing as far as I know.

[Fletcher`]

Well somebody code it in.

[Julian]

ravage said:

Well somebody code it in.

Must be doable but I'm concerned with cpu-intensive usage issues. So it would need a good thinking.

[Naked Snake]

ravage said:

Well somebody code it in.

Heh, yeah, sure. Julian is busy, Joel is busy, and uh...I dun think anybody else would know how to code it in.

[Linguica]

All you'd need to do is code a script to connect to the VB database and then do like

$time=time();
$query="update thread set open=0 where lastpost<($time-1209600))";
mysql_query($query);

Or something...

[Julian]

Linguica said:

All you'd need to do is code a script to connect to the VB database and then do like

$time=time();
$query="update thread set open=0 where lastpost<($time-1209600))";
mysql_query($query);

Or something...

Yeah I figured, but I think updates block the table. So I dunno if it wouldn't slow down if not stop the forums. It all depends on how fast the request is proceeded.

[Linguica]

The Reverend Julian said:

Yeah I figured, but I think updates block the table. So I dunno if it wouldn't slow down if not stop the forums. It all depends on how fast the request is proceeded.

Do it in the middle of the night, or turn off the forums and then do it.

[999cop]

Everything is perfect except for...

the logo still annoys me