FIRST COMMENT
MUHAHAHA

First comment baby!!!

I dont believe this is a good idea. Now that the programs have become rated, it is turning into somewhat of a competition between prgrams. By making the top downloads noticable on the homepage it is giving them an unfair advantage. Just thought i would voice my opinion.
thanks,
cullen logan

Exactly. Back when I was a staff member, there was a pretty strong opposition to having sidebars like these because it would make the programs already downloaded a lot be downloaded even more! But apparently something has changed since that time...

But since the sidebars are at the bottom, maybe it won't be QUITE so much of an issue...

Wow! I'm glad someone agrees with me. But dont get me wrong. I like knowing how many people have dl'd my programs but th eprograms should not be ranked, I mean oblviously games are downloaded a hell of lot more than apps, and on average asm progs are predominantly downloaded, so my proposal! Do not rank the programs simply tell how many people have downloaded them on the aithors page or the file info page!

Hmmmm, I gess but it really would be a better feature if it said WHAT calc they are for on FRONTPAGE!!! If they did I would really like the new feature.

Hey, I have a good idea, why dont they add they ability to let all ppl vote on a scale of one out of ten for each dl. NOT TO RANK THEM!!!!!! but to let ppl know if it is a good prgm beyond that of reviews.---and I think each prgm should have a link to its review on its little page.---i missed getting first comment again=(

Bad idea! Who chooses the featured program, anyway?

I, also, don't like the whole ranking idea. As others have said, it creates a competition between programs and makes the "popular" programs all the more likely to be downloaded. Since most people like the new rankings, I'm sure they wouldn't soon be removed. As long as they're here, have ranking rankings for both ASM and basic for each calc. For example: don't throw all 86 programs into one list, have top ASM and top basic rankings.

Off topic: no one gives a rats ass if you guys are the first comment or not, shut the hell up!

who started that first comment stuff anyways? :P

I've asked this before, and I have not received an answer from the staff. So, I'm going to ask this again: What exactly are the requirements for a featured program? Since the staff obviously does not check all programs, this makes me question how they decide what programs to test to get a featured program. Will someone on the staff please answer this?

Hm, remember how I said I use the message boards because I don't get replies to my emails? Well guess what, it's pretty obvious I'm not the only one with that problem...

I'm not sure how they pick featured programs. But I _do_ know that, a few days ago, a program called "MiniCalc86" was selected as a featured program. The program was about 90 bytes I believe, and all it did was let you type in a calculation and get the result (not all that hard to do if you know TI-BASIC... takes about two lines of code). Now how did that get to be a featured program... who knows. (Note that the error was fixed like so many of the others.)

This is an example of /exactly/ the type of comment ticalc.org deleted, and will delete, under the old system.

Not true. :)

Many of the comments I made were very very similar to Kirk's above, and they were all deleted.

Notice how even though a staff member (Nathan) has replied to several comments on the board, we still have no answer about what makes a featured program featured.

Well the fact is, there is no strict outline or guidelines for the staff to determine if a program should be featured or not. Basically, if a staff member comes across a program they feel is "neat", "notable", or whatever, they feature it. I kind of wonder why Nick thought a 90-byte BASIC program was notable...

Ummm...Nathan doesn't select the featured programs.

~ferich

OK, he doesn't have to answer my question then, but someone on the staff who knows should... So far, only Bryan (an ex-staff member, not even a current one) has answered this. I find it annoying that the staff members who can answer this don't, especially when some people are inquiring.

from The Email Box:

1) If it's a good program or it has a groundbreaking feature or it's well-coded (and small), feature it.
2) If the same program came out for multiple calculators at once, feature the program for only ONE calculator. This way, we don't get dupes in the POTM nominations.
--
Nick Disabato <nickd@ticalc.org> ICQ: 41168463
Screenshots, File Archives, News, Landscaping
the ticalc.org project - http://www.ticalc.org/

Does this help? :)

--BlueCalx

Works for me. I was just surprised that it took this long to get into print.

You mean if a game came out for the 82 and 83 at the same time, you would only feature one of them? How do you decide? Is this part of the revamping of the POTM, that you won't have anymore categories? I'm a little confused here.. because if not, isn't that unfair to the calculators you didn't feature the program for?

If this rule was created in order to avoid dump in potm, then it should be applied only if the two calcs are in the same category, for example 89 and 92+. If a game was made for 82 and 83, both versions should be featured, because these are two differents sections. Seems logical to me...

Why shouldn't both the 89 and 92+ versions be featured? They are different calculators, and its rare that someone will own both. That "category" should be broken up into 2 sections..

It doesn't make much sense to use the highly illogical category selection to show that something else is logical.