So, are we at all special?

No.

Or do microcosm communities such as this exist all across the Net - like, the crochetter's union or something?

Yes.

The end. 

but there are many communities that have been around since the birth of the internet

some even since the birth of christ 

Don't forget this is just the mapping section of the Quake community, there's also the QC and Engine coding side of the community, another micro-cell of community in evidence yet often the bleedover is very little... 

there is awesome doom community that's really immortal.

their new bunch of wads contains 81 maps, omg!
http://www.doomworld.com 

Are pretty common online. 

There are a lot of classic Doom Wads I have been playing of late, Reqiuem, Alien Vandetta, Momento Mori, and Hell Revealed. Good solid stuff, architectually and game play.

Hey, Vondur, have you tried the Doom to Quake map utility? It works but you should see what it does to the map files because it follows the Doom over and under brush bsp design. So each brushes outer area aligns with the highest or lowest point in the map depending if it is the over or under brush.

And, does anyone have a theory why the production time for Doom 32 level megawads are usually pretty quick in comparison to Quake projects? 

Requiem Rocked my p90 a few years ago (doom legacy of course).
even has a quake map remade in doom
(by IK I think) 

no i didn't try it.
i'm not interested in converting stuff ;) 

Derailed in four posts. Yay! Then again, Shambler really said everything there is to say, for once. 

I was messing around with DoomCad a while back to make a few maps for Tenebrae. It is the only way (that I know of) to get good FPS's out of low end machines when playing that engine. 

whatever, so maybe the answers to my own questions were pretty obvious, I'm just slightly amazed that people actually use this internet thing for social communication. OK, so we aren't special here - actually that's a lot more amazing than if we were - that means there's thousands, millions of island microcosm communities that completely disregard physical space and social constraints as limiting factors (because the Internet obliterates these things) The new styles of interaction this has spawned are quite unique compared to the "real world" I would think. (goddamn leetspeak and all)

Or to boil it all down... Gee, the internet is pretty amazing, ain't it?

P.S. Harb, that's why I said several messageboards and irc channels. (i.e. acknowledging but not mentioning #qc and inside3d, etc)

sorry if this thread doesnt generate as much conversation as I originally thought it might. 

don't feel bad. a thread that doesn't survive first contact with shambie just wasn't meant to be. 

Grahf, you should visit Yahoo Groups. Some of them are even more retarted than #TF! 

they may be more retarted, but we take the cake in being retarded!

up with downs! 

I worked with a group of downers at a job when I was paying my way through college, those guys were the coolest. Wait. . . how did I get that job in the first place?