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Introducing Monthly/Yearly CW Project Awards and disbanding of Elite Coder group

Started by Dream of Omnimaga, June 17, 2016, 03:19:36 AM

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Dream of Omnimaga

Back in December 2014, we created the Elite Coder user group in order to allow more prominent programmers, regardless of if their games have a mainstream name and genre or not, to gain more visibility for their projects and themselves. In return, the ones who were rewarded had to be somewhat active on CodeWalrus forums and show their commitment to the community. Unfortunately, with the changing demographics of the TI community in recent years, it eventually became clear to us that the Elite Coder usergroup was failing to encourage promoted users to contribute to the forums on a regular basis, even if we are not just about calculators. As a result, we have now decided to terminate the usergroup definitively and it will be replaced with something else in the near future.


What this means for the forums?

-The featured project boards will remain intact, since being an Elite Coder was not a requirement to have one.

-Author-specific boards for mini-projects are now gone, since being Elite Coder was required. It's not like they were ever used anymore anyway. If you have a notable project that you think should be featured, please PM @DJ Omnimaga , @Streetwalrus , @aeTIos , @Juju , @Cumred_Snektron and @Ivoah to request a board.

-@JWinslow23 and @123outerme now have the honor of being the last CodeWalrus members to ever have been promoted to the Elite Coder usergroup, the only two remaining ones besides them being Cumred and myself. Past Elite Coders also included @alexgt , @Keoni29 , @Hayleia , @DarkestEx , @matrefeytontias and former staff @Duke "Tape" Eiyeron . All of them will remain listed in the About section of the website.


Monthly and Yearly CW Project awards

However, the good news is that we are pleased to announce a replacement: the Monthly CW Project award! From now on, at the end of each month, all CodeWalrus member projects (regardless of the platform) that were active on the forums during that month will be featured in a news article on CodeWalrus front page, in a similar fashion as Cemetech (thanks for the idea). Then a poll will run for the following week, where people vote for their favorite project that month. The winner will earn the June CW Project Award, July Project Award and so on, depending of which month it is.

Each project can only win once per year. Once the year is over, there will also be a Yearly CW Project award, where the 12 monthly winners (or 7 for 2016) will compete against each others in a different poll, working in the same fashion. There might be prizes for that yearly award, although that is not decided yet.

Of course, if you manage to finish a TI project, then we also encourage you to submit it to Ticalc.org archives and notify their staff via e-mail so that it can be eligible for their Program of the Year award.

So what are you waiting for? Get to work and create some good quality stuff.
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

Yuki

  • Calculators owned: TI-83+ (dead?), Casio Prizm (also dead???)
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: A lot
Read Zarmina!
YUKI-CHAAAANNNN
In the beginning there was walrii. In the end there will be walrii. All hail our supreme leader :walrii: --Snektron

if you wanna throw money at me and/or CodeWalrus monthly it's here

TheMachine02

Indeed this is nice  :D The monthly and yearly awards seems pretty much fun. It is always good to promote good software  :)

novenary

Yep, after thinking it out for a while we decided it was a better this way.

brentmaas

You might be able to reuse those walruspoints from the CWick competitions.
Lel I glitched Omni

Snektron

  • Calculators owned: TI-84+
Legends say if you spam more than DJ Omnimaga, you will become a walrus...


Hayleia

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on June 17, 2016, 03:19:36 AMUnfortunately, with the changing demographics of the TI community in recent years, it eventually became clear to us that the Elite Coder usergroup was failing to encourage promoted users to contribute to the forums on a regular basis, even if we are not just about calculators.
I don't know about others, but the CoT group on Omni was something really motivating to me. I really wanted to be part of it back in the days. Then yeah, stuff happened and I only became CoT when I was starting to lose interest in calcs, but still, I wouldn't say the Elite Coder group doesn't encourage anyone.

Though yeah, that other idea seems encouraging too. Would it maybe even be possible to cumulate? Like, say, when you get the award for a month, you have the right to put a silver cup in your sig, when you get it for 2 months, you have 2 silver cups, etc, and 5 months make a golden cup (to save some space :P), etc?
Or something similar but managed by the forum itself instead of being in the sig (to prevent people from putting cups they don't deserve)?

Dream of Omnimaga

Well, so far, at least since the last year or so, all Elite Coders we added often just barely met the minimum requirements after joining, only to disappear or close after a few months. It might have motivated you but it doesn't seem like it was enough for others, at least enough to make them post more and code more. Also @Hayleia , the main reason why the Elite Coder group was created in the first place was because of the controversy about when both of you and Matref were rejected from Coders of Tomorrow in 2014 (I also got rejected, but due to the turnoil surrounding CW opening at the time I had forgotten that I had applied in mid-October 2014 as a last ditch effort to help Omni alongside the inevitable CW opening), and the fact you were both never told the respective reasons directly. The Elite Coder group would have happened either way since Keoni29 addition was inevitable, but not that early into CW life.

But yeah we also feel now that the new award thing might be more rewarding than having a different nickname color. We might prefer to promote projects rather than authors, so that authors can submit multiple projects in the year, but yeah you would be able to have multiple cups, providing that you got more projects. But of course keep in mind that if you just start a new project every month and barely work on it, then voters will take note and instead reward projects that are getting significant amounts of work anyway :P

Sadly, though, cups and banners would probably have to be managed by the user themselves, since that's not automatic, although I think there is a badge mod somewhere. And if people put in cups they don't deserve then people can report the post to admin and notify us so we can remove them :P
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

alexgt

  • Calculators owned: Ti-84+, Ti-Nspire, Hp Prime, Broken HP Prime, HP 48SX

Dream of Omnimaga

Keep in mind though that this new award and the yearly prize doesn't necessarily mean we will not do another programming contest in 2016. ;) One that is still being considered is the Optimize Me contest (which wouldn't have any prize) and a Contest 3 that we haven't decided the theme of yet. But of course it depends of our site finances. :P

The Optimize Me contest might be more of a collective warmup thing, such as maybe getting people to optimize GalagACE as much as they can for speed :trollface:


Also, we need to figure out how we will do the entry weighting for each month. If, for example, in July we get 5 active projects, but in December we have 30, then should the December winner have more chances to win the yearly award or should we just go the major league sport playoffs route where it doesn't matter (eg in hockey leagues the 1st seed plays against the last seed during playoffs)? One thing to keep in mind is that if a project doesn't win a month then he can participate to the next month if it's still active.
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

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