Survey posted 2004-07-16 01:15 by Jon.

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Survey idea by Morgan.

This is an open-ended survey question to see if voting for "Program of the Year" should be done differently this year, so feel free to share your ideas of how you think that POTY should be handled in 2004.

>>There are no comments yet. Why don't you add one?

OK, I'll add one.

I have a system to propose. Instead of radiobutton-type, one-or-the-other voting, there should be a way to rank them in order of preference.

One minute late. Sorry. Please disregard the first three lines.

Hey, I like that idea. Sometimes, it is very hard to choose just one favorite.

MWM

Why not have catagory specific POTY? ie: Math, Science, Games, Misc; etc. This would show us who is setting the stardard for each type of program(not so much platform type). Restricting POTY to one winner as such would bring out the gamers bias.

Well, the only problem with that is there won't be a program in every category. Or, another problem is that, for some categories, there may only be one. Automatic nomination. Heh, though I guess that isn't too bad of a thing.

We used the polls to vote last time, right? My memory is broken today.

Heh, just saying that a game is more likely to win POTY then a Math or Science program due to users "needing" to play games all the time.

Precisely! So then, only games get voted on, and math\science programs get close to 0 votes!

Yes, unfortunately for us who write utilities, that does seem to be the case... :-(

I don't think that's true. Most of us can look at programs from a higher viewpoint, since the majority of people on ticalc.org program and can appreciate good programming. Yeah, games are more fun, and you're going to spend more time with them, but if there's a utility that's really handy that can do a lot of stuff for you, and it makes your life easier on the calc... then it deserves a vote as well. I usually think when voting: "What program could I _not_ go without on my calculator" That sometimes could be a game, sometimes a utility... it varies, depending on what was programmed that year. Anyway, I personally don't care whether we divide up the programs into categories or not, but if we did, we certainly wouldn't be able to use the poll system to vote on the programs. The staff would have to make a whole other voting page... not that this is a problem, but again, the problem about not enough programs being selected for each category is still unsolved. Anyway, I don't think we'd have a problem with keeping them all in the same group. Utilities can be just as good (or bad) as games can. I wouldn't worry about that.

*withdraws comment that was going to be the intended reply*
Perhaps a poll that asks us users why we come to ticalc.org should be added. Might be surprised at what catagories users are interested in. That is to suggest that users don't just download games all the time and ignore the ticalc community.

What about this...instead of breaking it up into "Math / Science / Games / Utilities..." what if it were just "Games / Non-games" for each calculator group? Then there would most likely be at least a few in each category, AND the game bias is gone. I also liked the idea of the guy with second post...no radio buttons. But instead of arranging all of them, maybe just 1st choice (worth 3 votes), 2nd choice (2), and 3rd choice (1). That would be cool...

That would be suggesting that Games dominate the programming scene and that other forms of programming need to be in a group to be in any comparison... ;-)

No, it just means games get a little more high-end. Games can be real-time, turnbased, etc. With a utility, it completes a computation and gives you an answer, or some variation of that. Because games have more reason to show things graphically instead of spitting out numbers, they get better, and then people want to beat the best game, so they make something better. With utilities, you're not competing against a periodic table if you make something to help someone in calculus. With games, you compete against ALL other games.

However, routines to manipulate "numbers" do improve. They get more precise results and usually much faster. ;-)

Based on sheer numbers yes.

The one and only Cheerio:
-Samuel

Hmmmm... I like that idea.

As for the 1st/2nd/3rd, we could have
1st=4 points
2nd=2 points
3rd=1 point

And whichever proggy gets the most points wins! Or should we do 1/2/3 points?

I voted "no" at first, but that does seem like a very good idea...

Limiting it only to featured programs makes the whole thing worthless, unless the users can directly suggest an existing program to become featured.

Um, they can. Send an e-mail to news@ticalc.org with a link to the program that you think should be featured. This is not a new system.

I don't think many people know about that, though. Perhaps there should be some kind of e-mail that is sent to a person when they sign up that explains some of the basics of the site?

Hmm, the site seems fairly straight forward. I can just image the amount of emails promoting programs to be featured. ;-P

I tried. I got ignored. (Of course, it was my own program, but still...!) I even gave good reasons why it should be featured!.

You sent an email asking for one of your programs to be appreciated?
Are you a man or a girl?

How is that relevant?

asking other people to validate your acomplishments is for little girls.

How so?

MWM

Oh, so when you go to apply for a job, you leave the "skills" section blank? And you never plug your own programs, or put your name or email address in the readmes of your programs because then you might get a "thanks?" How about you just keep your narrowminded comments to yourself. THere is nothing wrong with asking to get your program featured. It's not like a guaranteed thing anyway, some people just do it because maybe it was a REALLY great program, and they'd like to get SOME recognition for the hard work they put into it.

And if he's got good reason for his program to get featured, they'll do it. If not, they'll just ignore it. It's the same as someone else emailing them about it, they don't make a biased review of it if he asks them.

Exactly-just as if someone else had submitted it.

Sorry but there is a difference between advertising and asking for appreciation.

Back in the day of the old tinews I would advertise when I updated something to my site, my way of being nice. I put my email and name on my programs because of pride. I like getting emails from people who thank me. It's fun to hear from people around the world.

Convincing individuals on a one on one basis that your software is good is demeaning.

As far as resumes go, they are different as there is employment=money involved.

>> I put my email and name on my programs because of pride.

Well, then, you should understand that, with even more pride in your programs, you would want them to go even further than having your name on them...perhaps all of the way to POTY...

YES!!! There are many great programs that I've seen that get no recognition (no, none of them are mine). In that case, there's nothing wrong with the author trying to get their program featured-otherwise, it just gets ignored. It's not like he said "YOU MUST FEATURE THIS INCREDIBLE PROGRAM OR ELSE!!!".

And if someone did say that, they have serious issues. No offense to anyone who has actually done that...wait, that was supposed to be offensive to anyone who did that. Unless they were joking...

LOL...yeah, they would have *problems*...

He's a guy. How old, I don't know, but his profile shows he's a guy, unless theres a girl named Benjamin.

Can it still be entered for the POTY if it wasn't released in 2004? If it can, I'm going to immediately nominate a lot of progs...

I believe it needs to be uploaded sometime during 2004.

Yeah, I thought so but I was just making sure...I would really have liked to nominate Bubble Bobble, ATE, iShell, and HexView... :-(

Um yeah I guess you can do that but its not like your program was worth it the first time morgan or johnatan or any of the ticalc.org staff saw it. They usually know which programs deserve to be featured. But hey if it works for you GOOD JOB!

I think that a lot of the time they don't PLAY the games or anything...maybe a really great program got overlooked? You guys need to stop harping on the people that try to get their progs featured...Oh wait...you're just a BASIC programmer and don't understand just how HARD it is to write good ASM programs. I forgot. And if you're going to reply with some smart comment about how I only program TI-BASIC, let me save you some trouble. I don't. I also program in C, C++, Java, HP-BASIC, HP-ASM, and mayn others...I just don't upload them, because they aren't calc related (except for one java applet that was rejected a year ago).

It is also hard to write a really good TI-BASIC program that does something.

NOt really, it's just hard to write a good basic game. I didn't say it's impossible, for I know of many good ones. I just said it's hard. Utilities are pretty easy in basic though, or at least 89 basic.

Try this: a windowed, multitasking, GUI-based, no-exposed-functions defragmenter with a progress bar and graphics to keep the user entertained (moving blocks) while the calculator is defragmented.

That's hard.

Try this: A defragmenter that gets done five times quicker because the author of the program didn't waste his time trying to entertain the user in a program not meant to entertain... ;)

Non-entertained users become irritated at the speed of the program, no matter how fast it is.