Survey posted 2010-12-30 10:34 by Travis.

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I think it should remain the way it is, unless there are A LOT of retro-active features in one year (in which case the programs should be separated). I think ticalc.org should continue retro-active features because otherwise, some great programs get missed, even when ticalc.org is e-mailed for feature suggestions, or the staff is busy, so it would be unfair for those programs.

I think they should be featured, but have a different category for the POTY voting. For example, xLib was a great program when it came out, but it has been overshadowed. It might have gotten the POTY award if it was featured the year it was released.

I think you should continue to feature old programs, as there is some old stuff that was overlooked at the time it was released. However, having old programs compete with new ones for POTY takes the meaning out of "Program OF THE YEAR". I think it would have been pretty strange for xLib, released in 2007, to be the 2010 program of the year, don't you think? It's also kind of unfair for new programs to have to compete against older programs which were only featured because of the random whim of a ticalc.org staff member. If there are going to be old programs included in a poll, then there needs to be a better way of determining which programs to include, because this year, it was just like "Oh, remember that one program? It was never featured! Let's go ahead and treat it as if it was brand new!", which seems kind of strange to me.

xLIB APP actually came out in 2005. The last update was in 2007.

> ... older programs which were only featured because of the random whim of a ticalc.org staff member.

Aren't new programs featured on random whims as well ?

Not exactly, because new programs are featured on the basis that they are new and have some high quality/merit to them. Who determines which programs are good enough to be featured is another question...

Are you saying that ticalc.org staff are without merit? :(

No...not at all. My comment was about the system used to determine if a program should be featured. I was just pointing out that what one person considers good enough to feature may not be what another person considers good enough. In ticalc.org's case, the final decision is ultimately made by the opinions of a small group of people (the ticalc.org staff), which inevitably brings a little randomness into the feature system.

I'm wondering whats the point of POTY when the the largest category (ti83) only gets about 100 votes. Much worse is that the 68k category only got 49 votes.

Also, the ti81 category got 60 votes but I'd be surprised if even 10 of them were done by people who owned that calc. Granted that this year you probably didn't need to own it to vote, because it was apparent what should win, but what about next year?

Just to be really opinionated: the POTY concept always seemed like bored ticalc staff slapping a contest onto something that never needed it. We should be happy that people spend hundreds of hours making great programs for us to use for free. Trying to decide which one is the best is silly.