Heh, not that it's THAT important. Could the border/background be changed to a navy blue theme like the rest of the sites current layout? At the moment they just don't seem to fit in.

I think this is great, but there is one small problem I've noticed. If you sort by rating, programs with very low ratings are placed above programs with no rating. I think that maybe the very low rated files should be put at the bottom.

Well, if the file has no rating, you have no idea whether it is bad or good, so, therefore, they are "unknown." The files with bad rating could be better than the ones without rating because few people take the time to rate files if they are horribly sucky. On the other hand, if the files are good, people tend to rate them.

I still think that there should be a link to rate the file. If you download the file one day, the next day, you would have to rate it. I know some people don't try recently downloaded programs the same day they download them, so there could also be a "Rate Later" choice. If you were ready to rate the file, a "Rate Now" choice would be there. The site could install a time and date of the download into a cookie, and after 24 hours had passed and you were on the site, a link would come up saying this.

Ah... Even better idea. You know the little icons by the name of the program that tell you how it is rated? The site could make that something like a radio button. You click on the icon to rate it, and, depending on where you clicked on the icon, it rates the file.

Example:
User: "Hey, I want to rate this file." [clicks on the sixth bar of the icon]
Ticalc.org typewriting monkeys: "This file has been rated. You gave it a 6 out of 10. Thanks for rating!!!"

This or the soulution I spoke of in the last post would both be possible solutions to the rating problem at ticalc.org

That sounds great, but do you think that if it were made so easy to rate a file, people might just rate files they'd never seen?

Well, that's where the cookie comes into play. It would check to see if you had previously downloaded the file.

I know some loser will probably just download the file, not try it out, and rate it to screw up the whole system, but some people are like that. (...and should be banned from the site if you ask me)

A cookie isn't a good place to store that information. It would be better to store it on the ticalc server(s).

Then you'd have to log in and download the file again to rate it. Ugh. I think the current way is complicated enough to deter abuse without being too difficult to do.

Well that would be a good idea, but since the bars are so small, many people would have trouble positioning the pointer in just the right spot to rate the file appropriately.

Enlarge the bars. Though, if this were to happen, the gap between the name of the file and the date released would have to be shortened, and some zip names would have to take up two lines.

Yeah, and that would take up too much space and it would be a pain... I like it the way it is. If that was the way it was set up, then it would be easier for people to screw stuff up AND rate files without even looking at them.

Maybe under each rating there should be an explanation - a word that corresponds to each number. Here are my suggested names. 1 - Worthless. 2 - Horrible. 3 - Bad. 4 - Not Too Bad. 5 - Okay. 6 - Above Average. 7 - Pretty Good. 8 - Nice. 9 - Excellent. 10 - Perfect.

Now that's a good idea. I have only one (somewhat unrelated) question:

On top of each page is explained what each icon means. Shouldn't there be an explanation for the rated-file icons (with the star)?

Um... The little star means that they have been reviewed, not rated.

You kind of just proved his point :-)

Whoops, little mistake. However the issue remains.

I agree that there should be an explanation of the star-icon. At first I thought it meant that it was a featured program or an especially good program, but that is not true. I find it annoying that many people are most likely confused about this and yet no one does anything to fix it. The reason I think that people are confused is that when I wrote a review saying how bad this one program was and not to download it, that program now gets more downloads than ever. I'm guessing that people don't want to bother opening the file description since there is already one in the lists of programs and if they don't suspect that the star means a review, the downloaders will have no reason to click the file info icon. So, would somebody put an explanation at the top of the screen as was previously suggested? Thanks

Nice-but the graphics are a bit weird...

I did, too, notice that they did not really match the feel of the rest of tha page. The bars should be shades of blue, or something like that.

-W-

yeah, like a 10/10 could be a dark blue like the headings of the posts, and the 0/0, well 1/0 because you don't see 0/0...could be a very light blue, or maybe even white...

True...

However blue is not a shade that is comonly used to refer to good and bad. Red means bad, green means good. Thats pretty well known though many countries. Its kind of like a stoplight...red/yellow/green

The only people this hurts are color-blind :-/

Ooh... yeah. One of my friends is only 16 (got his licence 2 months ago), and has already gotten 4 tickets for running stoplights. I feel for him =(