Author Topic: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity from 2011 levels - What can we do? (Read 103012 times)

Jonius7 · « **on:** April 05, 2012, 08:22:44 pm »

Fellow Omnimaga Members,

After a discussion with DJ_O, he and I (Jonius7) have come to the conclusion that something must be done about the general decrease in activity on Omnimaga.

For those of you that need a little background info (DJ_O may be able to provide some more), Omnimaga reached a peak of around 400-500 posts per day in October - November 2010. This was mainly due to a surge of interest in the TI-nspire with significant ndless and nDoom and other TI-nspire hacking tools releases, though at this time z80 projects were also thriving too. However over the course of 2011 interest in the TI-nspire began to die out in general, and also combined with DJ_O's retirement from manager, several active members leaving Omnimaga or becoming inactive have lead to this gradual decrease in posting activity. Even with the opening up of the Lua programming environment on the TI-nspire, projects and forum activity in Lua are not as widespread as they could be.

In February - March 2012, Omnimaga is barely attaining an average of around 150-200 posts a day.
The stats graph illustrates this trend: http://www.omnimaga.org/statsgraph.php

Even activity on OmnomIRC is enough to show a general decrease in activity. The time period between 3am and 9am (IIRC in UTC-5) is often quiet, and even sometimes in some peak hours activity is low.

So I guess we need to collectively form a plan to tackle this. The big problem is that while we have more members joining than ever before (the rate of registration is exponential like), many of these members have only posted minimially or not at all and have left, leaving the older members to hold up most of the website activity. And when even some of the older members have become inactive, including some staff, there doesn't leave that much left of who remains.

What could we do to bring these inactive members back? What incentive would work? And how would we entice new members to stay and bring some new young blood to omnimaga?
Programming contests are one thing, however DJ_O and I have both agreed more action is required.

I leave these questions with the Omnimaga community. If anything is incorrect, feel free to correct.

Regards,

Jonius7 and DJ_O

Spoiler For PS:

Spoiler For Log of Conversation with DJ_O:

Yeong · « **Reply #1 on:** April 05, 2012, 08:27:15 pm »

Well, in my opinion, TI-nSpire's programming couldn't get much because they're not that simple to program with. (Lua needs computer, and so does C.)
If someone comes up with programming language on-calc for nspire, it could bring more people (Just like how Axe did)

Jonius7 · « **Reply #2 on:** April 05, 2012, 08:29:23 pm »

Quote from: TBO_Yeong on April 05, 2012, 08:27:15 pm

Well, in my opinion, TI-nSpire's programming couldn't get much because they're not that simple to program with. (Lua needs computer, and so does C.)
If someone comes up with programming language on-calc for nspire, it could bring more people (Just like how Axe did)

True, this may change with being able to edit the lua script inside the tns file in OS 3.2

Yeong · « **Reply #3 on:** April 05, 2012, 08:30:01 pm »

OS 3.2 can do that? O.o
I never heard anything about that.

Juju · « **Reply #4 on:** April 05, 2012, 08:30:07 pm »

I totally agree with Yeong here. A Lua on-calc editor or something? Or even gcc? EDIT: ninja'd

Also we should come up with cool awesome prizes for the contest.

Jonius7 · « **Reply #5 on:** April 05, 2012, 08:32:51 pm »

I think so. Apparently it will come with the LuaSDK, but I may have got things completely wrong.
oclua can already edit on calc in an indirect way.
Also made minor edits to my post.

Yeong · « **Reply #6 on:** April 05, 2012, 08:37:40 pm »

I know this is kinda asking too much to certain people, but since both Prizm and nSpire uses C (Well, for nspire, with ndless), if somebody comes up with the new programming language that can be used in both prizm and nspire(well, kinda differentiating the screen size.), it'll be nice. (idk if it's possible though, lol)

Darl181 · « **Reply #7 on:** April 05, 2012, 08:38:04 pm »

Quote from: TBO_Yeong on April 05, 2012, 08:27:15 pm

If someone comes up with programming language on-calc for nspire, it could bring more people (Just like how Axe did)

Or the Prizm

But anyways, what seems to boost stuff the most IMHO are projects, that are often updated. So keep 'em coming

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #8 on:** April 05, 2012, 09:31:47 pm »

There are a few ideas that I think that could help bringing back the site to its previous activity rate (or close):

-More active CoT staff and admins. The team activity often have big influence on member's activity and encouragement to sign up. I speak from experience, after seeing MaxCoderz and Void Productions die (barely any regular would bother visiting anymore), and Revsoft barely surviving over the years. That staff activity, if they are too busy to work on projects, can simply be encouraging other member's projects, by replying to their threads. That doesn't have to be extreme, such as Darl/Qwerty's insane post rate, but they should not just try to barely make it to the 10 post minimum every month, else members might think they just don't care enough.

-Focus more on the forums than OmnomIRC to ask help when it's not that urgent. Not only this provides more discussion to the hundreds of people that have OmnomIRC disabled/minimized, but also that discussion won't get lost in myriads of logs. We got help sections for a reason, after all.

-Don't worry bumping a 3-5 weeks old project topic if you want to comment on an update or release that you didn't have time to comment to. Heck, if the member was procastinating, maybe that could give him a small regain in interest to finish the game faster if he get extra encouragement?

-For next programming contest, do like Cemetech and force participants to make a topic about their entry when it reaches a presentable state (code done) in order to not be rejected. That will prevent people from just disappearing for 3 months while working on their entry. Last Summer, I think only 2 or 3 Nspire entries even had a topic and almost every Nspire coder on omnimaga vanished entirely during that time.

-An actual contest to begin with, but it might be best to wait for when Summer arrives, such as June, because there are too many contests lately and it prevents every other projects from progressing. I actually thought about taking over the entire contest management (except judging), if the staff do not mind. As for money issues, my entire TotKotM album sales are going for the contest, along with an extra personal contribution. However, until we know what happens with the Phoenix Coyotes NHL team, I do not know exactly how much I can contribute (it will be at least enough for 3 prizes, though).

-It seems many Nspire coders abandonned the fight against TI, and Ndless 3.1 did not create as much interest as 2.0 did. Don't give up! You know some people still code for 68K and AFX calcs, right? Also if you are really afraid of the Nspire being blocked permanently, maybe it would be a good idea to try doing what Reo did with his RPG: Make it for both the PRIZM and Nspire at once? Maybe Reo could share how he works on a C game on both the PRIZM and Nspire at once.

-The community has received fierce competition from smartphones, handhelds, Minecraft, other online games and such stuff since the past few years, which forced us and some other calc sites to branch out. If somehow you're on a calculator break at one point, remember we still got plenty of non-calc discussion areas, such as gaming, where you can also share your latest interests.

By the way what I noticed is that most of the activity decrease seems to have been in the Nspire scene. PRIZM saw a small regain in activity, but not that much. 83+ programming seems steady. Besides that, we have to take in account that two of our most active users got banned last Summer, so that possibly affected our activity a lot. Besides that our spam section is now limited to 500 post users so that's a lot less posts there (although that's a good thing I guess that people do not overuse it). I got less active too so that might have gotten an effect too. I just wonder what happened to some of the formerly active members and staff that are hardly around anymore (a bunch just vanished without saying why).

But yeah I agree something has to be done (by contributing to the forums like we used to, while not neglecting development/life either), because if we ever had another community-wide lull like in 2008, remember how hard it was to recover from it afterward: It took us 1.5 years to do so, and I pretty much had to reply to almost everything during that entire time to allow the site to grow again. Basically at the moment we still got a quite decent amount of activity, so it's a good opportunity to keep the site afloat in case of an inevitable lull. (From experience the community goes through up and downs every 6 year or so)

Juju · « **Reply #9 on:** April 05, 2012, 09:46:42 pm »

^^ This exactly.

Also I might contribute as well for the prizes, since I'm now 8x richer than usual.

Xeda112358 · « **Reply #10 on:** April 05, 2012, 09:49:40 pm »

I have lots of times throughout the year where I do not have internet (about 21 weeks per year, so about 5 months), so certain times I am not as active

Though when I am active, I try to maintain a 5.0 or better posting average

And DJ_O has good advice, I think, for keeping activity up. For example, right now I have tons of IRL stress, so I cannot really work on projects. However, I try to keep up a few posts every day and I check in here often. Plus, if there are answers that I can provide, it makes me feel good

In any event, Omni is still pretty active, right?

EDIT: @Juju: So you have an extra TI-8x to spare for a contest?

* Xeda112358 runs

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #11 on:** April 05, 2012, 09:54:43 pm »

Not only he brags about his much higher salary to his mom and me IRL, but now he shoves it in our face on the forums too.

But yeah I had plans to contribute. However to ensure this goes well and reduce risks of incidents like last Summer due to community drama, I might be leaving every other non-Omni calc site during the entire duration of the contest. And yeah for now I know I can contribute roughly for the equivalent of 3 prizes, but I have a shitload of money saved for hockey tickets just in case next Fall, so depending of how the Nordiques thing goes, that portion might not be useable for Omnimaga donations.

Quote from: Xeda112358 on April 05, 2012, 09:49:40 pm

I have tons of IRL stress

Qwerty.55 is stalking you again??

Seriously I hope things are not going too tough

Juju · « **Reply #12 on:** April 05, 2012, 09:58:29 pm »

Quote from: Xeda112358 on April 05, 2012, 09:49:40 pm

EDIT: @Juju: So you have an extra TI-8x to spare for a contest?
* Xeda112358 runs

I didn't even thought of that pun lol.

Quote from: DJ_O on April 05, 2012, 09:54:43 pm

Not only he brags about his much higher salary to his mom and me IRL, but now he shoves it in our face on the forums too.

hehehe

Also go Nordiques \o/

DJ Omnimaga · « **Reply #13 on:** April 05, 2012, 10:02:04 pm »

On a side note maybe that would be a good occasion to revive the "What have you been up to" thread, for the more busy people. Hopefully they tell where they have been and stuff.

shmibs · « **Reply #14 on:** April 05, 2012, 10:03:49 pm »

-encouraging more staff activity is always a good thing =)

-both irc and the forums have uses when it comes to helping people. irc is useful for both little questions and communication between developers, and the forum is good for complex questions, community-wide pole type things, or just general showcases.

-we can encourage people to post, sure (and i, for one, would like to hear more from people talking about their entries), but enforcing it seems a bit silly for contests. anyways, entrants announced/winners announced posts will provide places for discussing them at the very least. also, making people post before they've finished encourages them getting help from others.

-plans for the next contest are already being talked about =)

-i don't know much about nspire stuff, so can't really comment here, but some sort of guide to writing cross-platform C would be awesome =D

-we can't really force people to post. seeing more activity in other subforums would be nice, though.

Author Topic: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity from 2011 levels - What can we do? (Read 103012 times)

Jonius7

General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity from 2011 levels - What can we do?

Yeong

Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?

Jonius7

Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?

Yeong

Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?

Juju

Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?

Jonius7

Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?

Yeong

Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?

Darl181

Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?

DJ Omnimaga

Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?

Juju

Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?

Xeda112358

Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?

DJ Omnimaga

Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?

Juju

Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?

DJ Omnimaga

Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?

shmibs

Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?