The twitterfeed changes aren't hard to make, but I'm afraid people might take Omnimaga off their Facebook/Twitter feeds altogether if the topic notifications become a source of spam.

That's true.

We can make the feed take only those posts from the calculator-related categories.

Would it be too much to add computer projects/music showcase btw? Music discussion and computer hardware/news might be a tad too much, though.

The feed can search by board instead of category, but there are more boards to add (and keep updated) in the URL than categories.

THat said, if you look at the forum stats we average at like 5-8 new topics a day, so it shouldn't be that much of an issue I think (especially considering most Facebook users update their timeline every second)

Wow, I didn't realize the topics count was so low

Something that would be cool is if the mod to translate posts on demand (some icon in the top-left corner of posts) was added to the site, assuming it works properly. Although Google Translate provides half-hassled translations at times, at least our large French userbase wouldn't need to constantly open a new tab for Google Translate everytime they don't understand a post, same for other language-speaking people or vice-versa.

Yeah I noticed lately that there weren't more news. I kinda slacked down myself but it seems like Critor stopped newsing entirely too. Maybe we could have a newser for hardware/OS updates and some for games/program releases, and each others could sometimes help when they see something notable.

Yeah I noticed lately that there weren't more news. I kinda slacked down myself but it seems like Critor stopped newsing entirely too.

It's simply that I have very little time as I'm back to work.

Add to this that there hasn't been huge things for TI calculators lastly.
I used to only crosspost huge news on Omnimaga - check TI-Planet: we haven't made huge news recently.

Thanks Stefan.



By the way DJ_O, if you check the stats, you'll see that the news aren't the main problem.

I've made many news for Omnimaga during the last year and especially last summer - but the activity went on dropping more and more.


The problem is something else...

Quote from: DJ_O on October 17, 2012, 04:03:00 am

Yeah I noticed lately that there weren't more news. I kinda slacked down myself but it seems like Critor stopped newsing entirely too.

It's simply that I have very little time as I'm back to work.

Add to this that there hasn't been huge things for TI calculators lastly.
I used to only crosspost huge news on Omnimaga - check TI-Planet: we haven't made huge news recently.

Well there were plenty of great games released (see the staff news sub-forum) in the past months, but sadly we barely had anymore time to feature any. Often it requires a lot of time to track down screenshots, let alone one that is small enough to not deplete people's bandwidth when visiting the front page, then writing a small news about the software and finding the source topic.

As for Lionel I partially agree with your 2nd point in your post. The only reason I disagree is that the post kinda shifts the blame on a few forum members and some people (by reading the small portion just before the closed source part) might be confused as to who it is directed at and will be concerned that they are hurting the community even if they did nothing bad. Not a good way to keep members around. However you are right that certain community members are not helping in keeping the community together, and IMHO that isn't an Omnimaga issue, but rather a community-wide one. I'm not gonna mention everything that happened but it involves what you mentionned and attempts to compete against other sites (eg promoting oneself's products and discouraging the use of any products from another site, or constant cheap shots against it or its members), add to that the bashing of people's projects, although the latter hasn't happened that much on any existing site for a few years.

As for TI closing down their platforms it definitively hurts too, because we have to constantly convince current programmers to stick around despite TI blocking Ndless. See Chockosta for example, who almost quit once because of TI. Also, notice the following pattern:

Before Ndless: barely anyone interested for the Nspire. Only one or two Nspire projects (such as gbc4nspire)

Ndless 1.0 until OS 2.1 anti-downgrade: Sudden upsurge in Nspire programmers and activity

Ndless 2.1 anti downgrade: Public outcry, but people stick around hoping TI might still change their mind

Ndless 1.7 release: Even more of it

OS 3.0 release, rumors about Ndless possibly never being possible on the CX: The start of decline in Nspire activity

Lua arrival: A new upsurge in Nspire coders, but C ones and overall activity remains on the decline

OS 3.0.2 stronger anti-downgrade: Almost every Nspire C programmer and most Lua ones gives up, temporarily or permanently. Omnimaga barely get anymore new members asking for Nspire help.

Ndless arrival on 3.0.1: Barely even generates  any interest. Most project releases are from the very people contributing to Ndless development

Ndless arrival on 3.1: Same, but this time, there is a very long delay between Ndless 3.1 release and TI blocking it again. A small group of new projects appears, such as GBA emulation

OS 3.2 release with the ability to downgrade back to 3.1: At this point you can notice a slight increase in Nspire projects, game-based that is. By now it seems that this time, TI has left a small door open for Ndless by allowing people to downgrade back to an Ndlessable OS and they took a while before blocking it again, unlike previous times where they just flat out released an OS patch (usually extremely buggy) immediately after most Ndless release.

But yeah there are so many reasons why a community could become less active over time (or more) that it's hard to tell which ones in particular are the cause. It could even be the economy: Notice how few europeans are joining Omnimaga since Europe economy collapsed. Bad economy == Unable to afford internet/3G bills, let alone your own calculator. Even my Youtube videos get fewer views since the past years.