Is the TI community over?

Dream of Omnimaga · September 30, 2015, 01:00:17 AM

@utz thanks for your suggestions. Regarding the recent posts list, it is in our plans in the future to add checkboxes to allow users to select which content they want displayed there. Similar to TI-Planet news, which allows you to hide exam/off-topic news, CW recent posts will eventually let you show/hide the following categories of posts: Calculator-related, site feedback/suggestions, non-calc programming/hardware, multimedia and off-topic. It will be cookie-based, in order to allow guests to benefit from such feature, but all categories will show up by default. I had this planned on Omnimaga in 2011. We don't want to hide content from the recent posts list, as it would defeat the point of such feature, but we would like it to please more users, by letting them decide if they only want specific range of topics to show up there.

@DarkestEx Yeah I agree. The thing is Omnimaga tried too much to be like Cemetech since 2013 and it didn't work well (and even sent away most active members, who ultimately founded CW to avoid being singled out of the TI community). What I and some others believe is that trying to be like another site won't attract members from that site, because we would look less unique towards them, thus, giving them less reasons to join. As for topics going off-topic often, I noticed this happening on every single new calculator forum I ran into (even Cemetech in 2004-05), so I guess that will change over time.

semiprocoder · September 30, 2015, 02:31:27 AM

One change I think you should do though is to make the introduction forum stand out more(maybe a different color or make it bigger), instead of just putting a small url at the top of the irc, because I didn't notice it until recently due to how small it is.

Dream of Omnimaga · September 30, 2015, 02:33:22 AM

It's a bit more due to the fact we only have 1 intro thread to avoid cluttering the forums rather than an entire sub-forum. I could always put it somewhere like the board index and more visible, though. Maybe the off-topic/misc descriptions?

On the other hand, when members sign up they automatically get a welcome PM by default, which has a link to the intro thread.

semiprocoder · September 30, 2015, 02:39:32 AM

Yeah wow how could I have missed that for like the almost month that I have been active on this forum. Wow. Yeah but I still think it should be visible on the main site more, and I think that putting it on the board index could work.

Dream of Omnimaga · September 30, 2015, 03:46:06 AM

I'll probably insert some welcome box somewhere, but it's hard to think of anything that won't add unnecessary extra scrolling to the board index.

semiprocoder · September 30, 2015, 03:58:38 AM

Yeah that's true. Maybe though just put it at the top and then let the user close it if they want to or auto close it in a week or something.

novenary · October 01, 2015, 12:23:25 PM

About threads going off topic, while it should be avoided there are plenty of good reasons to bring up off topic material in a thread. Since this is a small forum it's fine that it happens but when it really starts drifting, we split threads (and members are invited to start new threads for it when they realize that they're hijacking a thread too much).

DarkestEx · October 01, 2015, 01:48:32 PM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on September 30, 2015, 01:00:17 AM
Similar to TI-Planet news, which allows you to hide exam/off-topic news, CW recent posts will eventually let you show/hide the following categories of posts: Calculator-related, site feedback/suggestions, non-calc programming/hardware, multimedia and off-topic.

I don't want to advertise my post notifier but it already has options to hide topics by name too. So people who like desktop notifications can profit from hiding off-topic posts as well. I plan adding an option to hide posts based on categories too. In the future I might make the interface tabbed with different category tabs.

Dream of Omnimaga · October 01, 2015, 04:08:52 PM

Yeah the post notifier is a nice alternative too for people who wants to hide specific content. On top of that it even lets people hide individual boards.

And yeah Darkest category tabs would be a nice addition, as long as there is still a way to view all of them at once.

Dream of Omnimaga · December 02, 2015, 07:39:37 PM

So it seems like the spike in traffic this fall was short-lived and actually ended quite abruptly two weeks ago. If 84+CE development doesn't take off with upcoming tools like CSE dev did in fall 2013, then is it time to focus more on music and old school gaming in general?

DarkestEx · December 02, 2015, 07:59:34 PM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on December 02, 2015, 07:39:37 PM
So it seems like the spike in traffic this fall was short-lived and actually ended quite abruptly two weeks ago. If 84+CE development doesn't take off with upcoming tools like CSE dev did in fall 2013, then is it time to focus more on music and old school gaming in general?

Yes I think so too.

Dream of Omnimaga · December 02, 2015, 10:08:44 PM

The question is which platform? What would be cool is if old calc games were ported to PC and maybe consoles or smartphones.

Snektron · December 02, 2015, 10:17:53 PM

i wouldn't mind "General programming" either...

Dream of Omnimaga · December 02, 2015, 10:24:04 PM

Being too broad would cause us to compete against 9000 similar forums, though. I think I like our retro gaming and vintage platform side. Same for music.

123outerme · December 02, 2015, 11:21:24 PM

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on December 02, 2015, 10:24:04 PM
Being too broad would cause us to compete against 9000 similar forums, though. I think I like our retro gaming and vintage platform side. Same for music.

I agree. I think there was something to worry about but this is a niche area of the internet and sometimes, not a lot of people visit. There was the whole French government thing, but it's like that sometimes. I don't mean to sound like I have old wisdom or something because I joined this niche group waaaaaaaaaaay after DJ did, and so he should know better than me. But maybe it's just me and the calc community is pretty much always flowing.