Odamex Saturday Nitro #27 - Velocity CTF

Roger that.

Here's a link to the wad we'll be running on the Nitro servers tomorrow. Hope to see you all there!

Velocity CTF

Anyone think there are becoming too many news posts advertising MP source ports weekly play session?

It's a bit like they are using the news forum for a popularity contest.

Is it news worthy when something that happens every week happens again?

Vermil said:

Anyone think there are becoming too many news posts advertising MP source ports weekly play session?

It's a bit like they are using the news forum for a popularity contest.

Is it news worthy when something that happens every week happens again?

I guess we could go back to the last 5 years of 2-3 posts on the front page per month. Has some special single player news been pushed off of the front page in favor of these posts? Is the thought of an active, growing, sector of the community getting attention on the most major classic Doom website a bad thing?

I think the answer to both of these questions is no. I can't speak for the ZDaemon stuff that is posted, but turn out at the Odamex Nitro events is always MUCH higher when it is posted on Doomworld. Attendance took major hits for the few weeks that someone forgot to get a post up here. After these players become regular at the events, some have taken up playing Odamex on an almost daily basis. These posts have greatly benefited the Odamex project in a very visible way. I'm not so sure why a handful of people here seem to be so annoyed at honest activity surrounding this (almost 20 year old) game that we love.

As for this Nitro, I am looking forward to playing the Velocity CTF release very much. The Mechanix team, and Decay especially, put a ton of hard work into polishing this release up over the past few months. It should be a lot of fun tonight. Maybe you can even come out and play a few rounds Vermil :)

I absolutely agree with Ralphis, and I haven't played any Doom multiplayer in a long time so I'm not particularly invested in any "popularity contest." If people are checking Doomworld's front page to check out what's going on with Doom, then it's better for everyone that we tell them, even about weekly events. Most people aren't used to committing to "appointment gaming" so weekly reminders are useful.

I don't see how this weekly stuff is anything other than a good thing. Keep on keepin' on; the trip reports are pretty fun!

It seems to me that Vermil's comment was more about the fact that if you discount the weekly multiplayer adverts there is very little in the way of news content. A rough calculation reveals they account for 40% of the "news" so far this year and that ratio is steadily going up.

Sure, the major tournaments and events are indeed newsworthy. However I personally agree with Vermil - this sort of thing is far better served by RSS feeds. That way the user can decide if they want to subscribe rather than force everyone to wade through them to locate the news they are interested in.

kmxexii said:

I don't see how this weekly stuff is anything other than a good thing. Keep on keepin' on

Anyone think there are becoming too many news posts advertising MP source ports weekly play session?

Yep. It's not "news" in any shape or form. It clogs up the actual news. Whether it works for some people has little relevancy, it's simply not the right place for that stuff. Browsing old news has become much less interesting now that roughly half of the topics must be skipped. I can guess if it would have been that frustrating to catch up with Doom news when I checked this site a few times a year I wouldn't have bothered, but it's probably OK because people who aren't active aren't worth as much as human beings.

If we absolutely have to know about these weekly play sessions on Doomworld on top of their own official sites, it'd be much better if it was archived in a different section.

***DISCLAIMER: This post isn't a fluffu lubby dubby post, sarcastic language is prevalent. Technically I am scolding Phml (and i suppose by extension, DaniJ, Vermil and anyone who may agree with them) for being big giant fungus infested and most of all ingrown, toe nails. You have been warned.***

Phml said:

Yep. It's not "news" in any shape or form. It clogs up the actual news. Whether it works for some people has little relevancy, it's simply not the right place for that stuff.

This is pretty epic. The people over at ESR are known to be cranky trolling bastards. But even they don't bitch about weekly events being posted in the news section of that site. Those crazy bastards actually seem to think it is a good thing, to have an interaktive community that makes sure people more easily can know what is going on.

But that's always been the case here at DW, hasn't it? How many times haven't we seen someone pop into a DW news thread with the ever so important question "How is this related to Doom?". It's as if people here are actively working towards having a news section that is a vertial ghost town (or section if you will). Heaven forbid, if there were posts here that doesn't interest every single member of the forum. Or even worse, actually informs people of that there actually are things going on in this community outside of the small pond that is the DW forums.

The argument isn't "I'm not interested so how dare you tell me about it", it is rather "there is plenty of stuff going on in the community but the 'important' news is being buried by adverts".

Edit: Yes I know important is both qualitative and personally relative, that is why I used the word. It illustrates the point. I'm not able to choose, I must wade.

I don't have a problem with these "advertisements" and there has been more than one time where I completely forgot about Nitro until I saw the news post here. If anything, blame people like me for not submitting news about interesting projects that have been released and other things.

Wasn't Doomworld's news feed pretty much dead before these weekly events, anyway? I'd rather see something on the front page ("there's a front page?") of the site than one post every three months, making the community look dead.

Whoops, after some last-minute tweaks here is a newer version of Velocity CTF:

http://files.funcrusherplus.net/wads/veloctf_rc7.zip

If there are no last-minute issues, this is what will get played tonight.

If you want to see more news about other stuff, submit more news.

well, these DM-oriented disclaimers have short life expectancy, so after one or two weeks you could comfortably send them to a special hell for old events instead of lumping them together with old news like wad releases and romero sightings. that'd help searching for particular past news/events, too.

however if i had to choose between the staleness of pre-event news and the current spam, i'd prefer not censoring a massive outburst of activity in the community, thank you. btw, i have zero interest in "vaguely related" id news like anything about rage, but you don't see me ranting about non-doom games clogging our precious doom site, do you?

So, collectively we are saying; the news is dead - it has been replaced by a poor approximation of a community event feed. And despite the fact that only some of the community are happy about that, we should all be happy there is *something* being posted (irrespective of the re-purposing).

And yet, a lot of the community is very happy about it and consider these things to be "news". What exactly is "news"? Is it the occasional one or two times a year that Quasar might release a minor change to Eternity? Should everybody hold their breath for the 5-6 wad releases that don't happen around Doom's birthday? What makes these things more noteworthy or important to what dozens of people find important every week?

Here's the few definitions of "news" from google:

1. Newly received or noteworthy information, esp. about recent or important events

2. A broadcast or published report of news

3. Information not previously known to someone

4. A person or thing considered interesting enough to be reported in the news

These reminders work when they are most visible to people. These events have brought new Doom players in the larger umbrella of the Doom community. Why should they stop because "only some of the community [is] happy" when it benefits the community at large? Should we try and get our numbers down so the remaining 40 of us can feel fantastic as our numbers continue to dwindle?

This information is inclusive.

DaniJ said:

So, collectively we are saying; the news is dead - it has been replaced by a poor approximation of a community event feed. And despite the fact that only some of the community are happy about that, we should all be happy there is *something* being posted (irrespective of the re-purposing).

Sounds more like it's you who try to repurpose the news section into something you prefer. A dead forum where news about your port is left on the front page for months on end. Wait, that doesn't work, by your definition. Posting about new versions of a source port doesn't constitute news because it falls under community event. So, we can't post about your port anymore, because it's a community event and I don't find it interesting to read about anyway.

The news section started out as a news feed for what was going on in the community. I really don't see what is wrong with that. And dew. News is news, Current events are news just like something that just happens once in a blue moon is news. They both stop being news when they no longer are new. The news forum isn't meant to be a form of odd/special events encyclopedia. It's a news forum. And again just because YOU don't find a large number of the news interesting. That doesn't mean that someone else won't either. Also, If you want to find something in the forums. Make a search. It's not very hard.

The news forum isn't meant to be a form of odd/special events encyclopedia.

Still, it would be nice to have news categories. Multiplayer news, port news, wad news... And an option to hide categories you're not interested in.

Exactly. No one is trying to impose their view here. The point is the lack of choice - the only reason we are even having this discussion.

I'm not gonna read all the stuff in here but just to say this:

I think it's fuckin' sweet that we can have a weekly game planned out, and guess when new people show up? The see the news, and they instantly know when they can expect to find a good game.

the enemy's flag has the enemy team. your team has returned.

Memfis said:

Still, it would be nice to have news categories. Multiplayer news, port news, wad news... And an option to hide categories you're not interested in.

Don't forget the sub-categories! I envision something like this...

Multiplayer News/
                  Port/
                        Player Limit/
                                      Game Mode/
                                                 Frag Limit

Port News/
            Port/
                   Major Updates
                   Minor Updates
                   Forks

News Items Copy/Pasted From Other Sites/

Wad News/ (with sub-categories more-or-less following the /idgames directory structure)

News About Other Games Published By Zenimax/

Romero Sightings/ (categorized and sortable by Country, State, City, Convention and/or GPS co-ordinates)

Doom 4 News/
             Official
             Unofficial
             April Fools

Random Crap That Really Belongs In Everything Else Or Blogs/

Joking aside, in the absence of other news I'd rather see deathmatch tournament announcements than have the home page look neglected.

People can complain, or they can actually submit some news and do something about what they perceive as a problem. I don't see anyone here who is complaining doing so at the moment.

Long gone are the days where I can have a big bookmark list of sites to check for news and then post about any updates. The vast majority of news posts are now user-submitted. Follow the guidelines and there's a very good chance your submission will be posted.

Hahahahaha, I was expecting DaniJ's post here (seen from the top page as last post) not to be anything about Odamex/multiplayer (he's more with Doomsday), but being contrary. Then, Phml coming shortly after...

I really appreciate these news events even though I don't play multiplayer. But if I played, I would be quite thankful of seeing this and the opportunity to play with lots of people online at a planned hour.

I think that they pass all tests written in the submission rules, so technically there's no reason to reject them.

I really don't see what there is to argue about. Its 2012 and every member of the community who reads the news is still forced to parse the one news feed. All I argue for is a technology update that brings the site up to date and which would only improve the user experience. If this is a big problem then fine, say so and I'll let it rest.

So wait, I'm actually allowed to submit news about my own projects now? Hmm, must have missed the news announcement about that one.

With regard to Doomsday, we already maintain numerous feeds, twitter, facebook, etc..., so it would be very easy to simply pipe all that into your inbox if you'd prefer.