Author Topic: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity from 2011 levels - What can we do?  (Read 98675 times)

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Offline Geekboy1011

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Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?
« Reply #300 on: June 06, 2013, 11:04:20 pm »
The contests will help soon as that starts thats a bit from now tho. its really just the end of school season that is the problem

and we are a programming forum with a direction of programming calculators. BUT we do love and enjoy having non calc related projects. HENCE THE ENTIRE SUBFORUM for it :P so post here to!!!!
« Last Edit: June 06, 2013, 11:05:36 pm by Geekboy1011 »

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?
« Reply #301 on: June 06, 2013, 11:18:02 pm »
Yeah true. That said, it also help that people who don't necessarily work on projects also check other projects from time to time and reply to them.

I would post more, but most of the time neck or back pain hinders my concentration so I don't feel like posting nor programming. >.<

One thing that some members could do is to reply to 3 project threads a day, then if someone else sees 3 threads where the last poster is the author or one he thinks he didn't check, then he replies to them, and so on.

Also Geekboy summer is usually much worse than the end of school, because most people don't feel like doing calc stuff while it's warm and sunny outside, and the ones who feel like doing so usually end up in camping with no Internet access. Based on the posting rate this year, I would say this Summer we get around 1000-2000 posts a month max (like on the old board).

It might just be the community really dying for real this time, though, because even Cemetech has low posting and TI-BASIC Developer isn't doing any better. In 2008, however, we all thought the community was on the verge of dying, then it eventually revived 2 years later, so all hope is not lost, but it is entirely possible that this time, Omnimaga have to expand its team and focus to non-calc programming in order to survive in long terms.

One thing I noticed on past forums, though, is that the regular members activity tends to be influenced by the staff activity, especially considering most people visit the programming team sub-forums in hope that those projects will get released. So if most staff rarely ever post, then most regular members will rarely post too. (See United-TI, Revsoft and MaxCoderz, for example)

(I'm probably gonna try to make another Omni tribute/ad on Youtube at one point, on my Channel, which has 620+ subscribers.)

EDIT in case anyone mentions school finals and such stuff being a reason for the decrease in activity, check this out:

May 2004: 4 (yAronet)
May 2005: 588
May 2006: 2634
May 2007: 711
May 2008: 0 (no board)
May 2009: 1431
May 2010: 4363
May 2011: 11169
May 2012: 5207
May 2013: 2771

Also April 2013 was actually lower than April 2006. On the other hand, it could be worse, because I still remember several months where days with fewer than 10 posts were very common, but I seriously hope we don't go through that again >.<

The good news so far is that we already have more posts in 2013 than our worst full year on this board install (2009) and we almost have as many as in 2007 (which was our final year on Invisionfree). It is still possible that we might have more than 2006 again. I hope I can manage to finish Zelda or something to bring some stuff for the CSE, since to attract CSE users, we need games.
« Last Edit: June 07, 2013, 01:12:49 am by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline Keoni29

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Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?
« Reply #302 on: June 07, 2013, 08:45:22 am »
I posted an article about my psion pocket computer on my website and now and then people find it using google. I think there are still people out there looking for an active community that programs pocket computers, pda's and palmtops. Maybe an idea for a cool new board?

Here is a link to the article to give you an idea what the hardware is like:
http://8times8.host56.com/?p=166
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Offline Sorunome

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Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?
« Reply #303 on: June 07, 2013, 05:41:13 pm »
You could always start some topics in general technology stuff (or general programming), and if many people like it i can see a board for it coming up :D
« Last Edit: June 07, 2013, 05:41:33 pm by Sorunome »

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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?
« Reply #304 on: June 07, 2013, 05:52:22 pm »
Yeah I think I brought up the idea in XiiCREATION (sp?) PS Vita topic once. The ROM hacking/homebrew subforum can be used for console game dev, but the issue is that people think it's only for NES/SNES/N64/GB rom hacking. A mobile/handheld development board would be nice.

Also Omnimaga won't ever have any choice but to expand to whatever most members are interested in, in order to try to keep them around.

Another thing that would be nice is if my finances allowed it and that the board stats didn't count humor/jokes/misc/random discussion, there would be a monthly gift card prize (not something huge but still noticeable considering our members have few money) for a Most valuable member award. The conditions would be the following:

-Having made the top 10 monthly posters the month before. At the end of that month, each top 10 members' total post counts and post rating would be recorded.
-Show signifiant calculator or game-related project progress (basically, not just a title screen nor a number guessing game) through at least two public forum updates the month after.
-Increase your post count by 90 that month (this means an average of 3 posts per day in sub-forums that counts towards post counts)
-Total rating must not get lower than the previous month (so basically, avoid spamming/trolling as a way to rack up your post count)
-Not be myself :P (not that I would be able to win anyway, because I post project progress so rarely x.x. Staff would be eligible, though, to encourage staff to also be active)

The prize would range from $10 to $50 in gift cards (or Paypal donation), but would be calculated this way:
-If the entire forum got less than 2500 posts during that month, a $10 gift card would be awarded
-If the entire forum got from 2500 to 5000, a $25 card would be awarded
-If the entire forum got over 5000, then a $50 gift card would be awarded

That wouldn't be very much, but that's almost enough to buy my entire paid discography on Bandcamp :P. Of course that would be kinda expensive even for me, so it might be something that is only done during July, August, September and January.

Another thing that could possibly be done is having my discography pricing in a way so that the higher the forum post count, the cheaper my albums (eg if there are less than 2500 posts, it's $5 each, 2500-5000 $4, 5000-10000 $3 and 10000+ $2.)
« Last Edit: June 07, 2013, 05:54:07 pm by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline Sorunome

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Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?
« Reply #305 on: June 07, 2013, 05:55:20 pm »
I don't really like the pay-for-activity idea as it is like paying people to use omnimaga and it somehow seems wrong to me......

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Offline Eeems

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Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?
« Reply #306 on: June 07, 2013, 08:04:11 pm »
http://status.omnimaga.org/

the posts are still decreasing, the activity is decreasing.....does anybody have a new+good idea to prevent that?
The CSE unfortunatley didn't give us our hoped results :(
No new member due to the CSE yet
You really should use http://status.ourl.ca/ It's smaller :P

As DJ already mentioned the summer is normally slower on the activity side due to people going on vacation etc.
/e

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?
« Reply #307 on: June 07, 2013, 09:28:45 pm »
I don't really like the pay-for-activity idea as it is like paying people to use omnimaga and it somehow seems wrong to me......
Yeah true, although if that eventually becomes the only way to save the TI community, then I guess we might have no choice. I think it should only be used in last resort, for example if we get less than 1000 posts for several months in a row. We were actually supposed to do the Pay-for-activity idea during SUmmer 2010, as we brought it up in August 2009 when we had an all-time low August activity, but we finally didn't because the site managed to rebound.

However, I think the contest should have posting requirements to a lower extent, such as posting one contest project update or idea every 2 week, so people don't vanish until the end of the contest :P, and pay-for-activity might actually not be too bad for Summertime, as it might encourage people to not leave the site for the entire summer.
http://status.omnimaga.org/

the posts are still decreasing, the activity is decreasing.....does anybody have a new+good idea to prevent that?
The CSE unfortunatley didn't give us our hoped results :(
No new member due to the CSE yet
You really should use http://status.ourl.ca/ It's smaller :P

As DJ already mentioned the summer is normally slower on the activity side due to people going on vacation etc.
Yes, but as I mention  below, check the May activity over the years. Summer might be less active, but there's still a major difference between July 2011 post stats and July 2012.
« Last Edit: June 07, 2013, 09:30:36 pm by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline Jonius7

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Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?
« Reply #308 on: August 12, 2013, 10:18:21 am »
Did we have any contests this year so far?
Also something less related, but member numbers have spiked in the last few months, like they did a few years ago.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?
« Reply #309 on: August 12, 2013, 12:35:37 pm »
Not yet. One is planned but I'm unsure what ever happened to it.

As for numbers, yeah, although what surprised me the most was that unusual summer activity spike at the end of July.

EDIT: By the way you should change the 1st topic post title to General Decrease/Increase in Omnimaga activity - What can we do? or something, since the activity usually fluctuates rather than continuously decreasing lately. :P
« Last Edit: August 12, 2013, 12:54:46 pm by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline Deep Toaster

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Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?
« Reply #310 on: August 12, 2013, 01:55:40 pm »
There is one coming soon.




Offline critor

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Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?
« Reply #311 on: August 12, 2013, 04:25:20 pm »
I don't know if it will be visible in the montly stats, but I find that recent HP-Prime topics got a nice activity those last days.

There is a huge interest in that calculator - let's just hope that it won't die like the Casio Prizm interest.

So it just might be a good idea to go on? ;)
« Last Edit: August 12, 2013, 07:50:37 pm by critor »
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Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?
« Reply #312 on: August 12, 2013, 06:36:52 pm »
Just some thoughts:

I think that there should be mini-contests going on constantly. There should be incentives for members to program and participate, not money but maybe a link in their profile to their scores or something. Have anyone be a judge and have something like the 'likes' on facebook to help determine scores. Have a sub-forum named Competition or something where anyone can put up there projects to partake in these monthly themed contests using any calc, pc, or device. Have team competitions where 2 or 3 people work on projects together. Have duels where users can vote the programmers to compete. Have trophies given like those for games. Have crazy temporary titles that appear over their real names. Most importantly have awards, categories, and perks like 'newcomer', 'most improved' and other stuff so as to not alienate new members or new/just learning programmers. Give everyone a chance to win at something. If we can encourage new and promote existing programmers/artists/designers/engineers to program/create, *everyone* wins.
« Last Edit: August 12, 2013, 06:37:14 pm by AssemblyBandit »

Offline TIfanx1999

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Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?
« Reply #313 on: August 12, 2013, 07:01:54 pm »
We had "duels" of sorts going on a while back. They were called "cage matches". However, no one was organizing them anymore, so they kind of faded away. They were pretty neat though. Team competitions would be a nice idea, but team projects don't seem to go to far usually in this community. If one person lags behind or drops out the project tends to fall apart. :/

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Re: Re: General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?
« Reply #314 on: August 12, 2013, 10:59:28 pm »
I don't know if it will be visible in the montly stats, but I find that recent HP-Prime topics got a nice activity those last days.

There is a huge interest in that calculator - let's just hope that it won't die like the Casio Prizm interest.

So it just might be a good idea to go on? ;)
well to be honest, the issue with the PRIZM is that on Omni, only two people were interested in hacking it and programming ASM, and the extremely slow BASIC turned people away, back to their beloved Axe Parser and 84+ BASIC.

Then Cemetech started hacking it too, but with C, so since Omni barely did anymore PRIZM stuff, almost all activity about it moved there and it was hard to keep new Casio coders around as a result. But even now PRIZM coding there is quiet, especially since the 84+CSE came out.

The 84+ is very popular among students it seems because check the high download stats on ticalc.org for simple games like Hangman. The question is: Will people be more interested to code it than the PRIZM in long terms?

Hopefully the Prime takes off when it comes out. It really has a lot of potential.