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.

There are articles and tutorials written the Tutorials section, but they're not really used or known much. I wonder...

Cemetech's front page is definitely simpler, with fewer widgets, but I'm not sure if that's better or would actually benefit Omnimaga.

Omnimaga has lots of quirks and addons (eg: arcade, downloads, tutorials etc) which I like, however it may be overwhelming to the new member. Still most people come to Omnimaga to contribute to calc projects, or just look at them.

Another idea that would probably be nice is that when people add an attachment to the forums, maybe something advertising the downloads section should be added as a notice there telling people that if they are uploading a calculator program or game, they should consider adding it to the downloads section as well.

For those who don't want to, then maybe on the front page there could be a list of all the latest attachments and their topics/posts on the front page too.

Good consideration. Actually I've never put anything in the download section on Omnimaga before, but just putting it there could help make the difference.

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.

Europe is not Greece and Greece is not Europe.


Don't worry, we are perfectly fine. There aren't any difference in everyday life: it's the same as years ago.

Almost all my students have their up to date color smartphones.

And by the way, TI-Planet had in september 2012 almost as many visits as in May 2012 (exams period), which was allready a record.


So you can't give such simple/generic explanations.

Could it be the fact that a lot of the staff/members who used to have ridiculously high posting rates (I had like 2400 posts a month once and some staff/members had 800-900 at that time) have either slowed down or moved on and a lot of the new members aren't as active? Although there isn't much we can really do if certain people wanted to move on or have other circumstances (in my case I replied to almost every post back in 2010, but then I slowly moved away from calc stuff and administration, add to that my neck problems which prevents me from concentrating when sitting in front of the computer for even reading posts at all).

I mean I would hate if Omni survival was solely dependent on my activity level as founder and that to ensure its survival I was forced to post like crazy (I would if I could still physically do it, though, as I still enjoy checking project updates). Seeing my monthly posting stats compared to the entire site, it seems the site has slowly became more independent from my contributions to sustain its activity:

Year: DJ posts / Board posts = %
2005: 2190 / 7723 = 28.4%
2006: 6562 / 29213 = 22.4%
2007: 3505 / 18647 = 17.1%
2008: 1152 / 3989 = 28.9%
2009: 3644 / 15004 = 24.3%
2010: 19533 / 87232 = 22.4%
2011: 11770 / 115419 = 10.2%
2012: 4263 / 43207 = 9.8%

But I notice that everytime my activity dropped since 2011 that the forums slowly returned in sync with my percentage. What will happen if one day, my activity is 0 post a month??

I wouldn't worry much about that factor normally, but I do remember what happened to the site in 2007 after I lost Internet access for 5 months... I would be willing to see monthly post stats after excluding the spam section...


As for the Internet bill issue, I brought up the Internet bill issue though because in late 2008 and early 2009, every single US-based forum I visited, including a bunch of non-calc-related ones, slowed down considerably. Invisionfree support went from a long-lasting 1000 posts/day average to 200 in an matter of a few months, for instance.

Also Cemetech activity dropped a lot too (it's generally proportional to Omnimaga in overall if you look at graph lines), which tells me it seems to be an english community-wide issue like in 2008.

I'm also thinking that the troll invasion of March 2011, along with the Omni vs Ceme drama that occured on both IRC channels from late 2010 to late 2011 in overall has not helped (especially that a lot of people joined in the very middle of it). A lot of people dislike staying in environments where drama occurs during long periods of time and where people tries to defend someone's bad actions, so they find the once-enjoyable community to be depressing and think it will never improve again, so they lose interest and leave (or become lurkers). Usually the massive loss of users participating on forums can never fully be recovered from or it can take years.

By the way I like the news translation idea. To do so we should make sure that news are compacted so for example there is only 2 linebreaks between paragraph instead of 5-6 like I saw in some news, so that way people don't go TL;DR, or French news could be placed in spoilers. Also someone would have to volunteer (not me) to translate news.

Could it be the fact that a lot of the staff/members who used to have ridiculously high posting rates

Sure, and ephan had a ridiculously high posting rate too. I noticed that I am less active too in general (due to exams etc), I used to have like 10 posts a day which now dropped to around 3 posts per 2 days.
(however I'm planning on quite a big release soon and DJ_O, no it's not continuity )

I'd be happy to translate articles to dutch tho I think a lot of dutch guys don't care reading english news :p

dj when did i disappear for 3 months O.o

I'd be happy to translate articles to dutch tho I think a lot of dutch guys don't care reading english news :p

dj when did i disappear for 3 months O.o

Every Summer or so, and like twice in 2012 (remember when you were barely active anymore lol)

And I think dutch might not have much interest. We had a dutch sub-forum once and it barely even had any posts, unlike the French and German sections, which are quiet but still get some messages here and there.

Quote from: DJ_O on October 19, 2012, 09:29:05 am

Quote from: aeTIos on October 19, 2012, 06:58:41 am

Actually didn't you have like 10 posts a day for a few months then kept disappearing for 3? And nice you got something in the works

Quote from: critor on October 19, 2012, 03:21:15 am

- OmnomIRC (and if necessary, finding a new server)
- improving the download sections (latests uploads on home page, screenshot + descriptions, online emulator, categories and subcategories, possibility to update the files...)

Yeah I've been suggesting Juju and a few other alternatives for servers, but to no avail so far. The issue is that staff simply can't afford the extra $20-40 a month that it would cost to run OmnomIRC.

How much do you pay the server per month currently?

Can OmnomIRC be run on another server than omnimaga.org ?

Nothing, because I am no longer in charge of the site and no longer have any privilege except posting news.

Omnimaga forums are hosted on an Amazon cloud server, but OmnomIRC had to be hosted separately by Jimbauwens, because it puts too much strain on Amazon resources. Since Jimbauwens server died, there was the possibility of having Juju host it, but he didn't seem too enthusiastic about the idea so far due to his servers not being very stable.

I could donate some money so juju can afford an upgrade, though. (as long as it doesn't exceed an extra $20 per month).

Quote from: DJ_O on October 19, 2012, 09:29:05 am

And an emulator on Omnimaga would require TI-Planet help since staff here would probably not be able to implement such thing otherwise.

I didn't say no.
Just keep in mind that the emulator I currently maintain does not support 83+.
So it would only be useful for Basic programs, or assembly programs for basic TI-83.

We haven't asked Kerm if we could integrated jsTIfied yet, nor for the required conditions if any (links? banner?...).

Quote from: DJ_O on October 19, 2012, 09:29:05 am

Also you would need to modify the emu to force the user to provide his own ROM for legal reasons. (like jsTIfied does).

No problem - I've got a build which asks for the ROM, although it's not the one we're using.

Ah I see. I guess in short terms it wouldn't be that much of an issue, although we do not have much recent TI-83 programs I think. I am curious if in the future Kerm would be willing to allow external sites to use the emu to test programs, although it would need to not have plenty of Cemetech banners and ads plastered all over Omnimaga.


As for any site upgrade that requires admin privileges, though, any such upgrade that is possible still requires the will, time or experience of the staff to actually perform them. Last week, I learned that certain Omnimaga admins had never bothered to check this topic at all until I talked about your long post. I do not know if the ones (I think Deep Thought does) who actually read this forum section notifies the rest of the admins about feature suggestions in case they find some interesting, since I do not have access to any staff subforums besides the News one.


EDIT: Actually it would help if the IRC post notifier notified of new posts in this section in the first place... and had a bit more stability