As you could notice in the past few months, there are several good programs on ticalc.org that were ignored and some feature requests ignored. In some cases, for example with Axe Parser, it took everything to get it featured. I even had to make a video showing it in action to convince them. No offense to ticalc.org staff, they did a great job, especially on file archiving and posted more news, but I noticed a decline on the later in the past months. I had to bug tev so he feature certain programs.

I remember in late 2005, there were fewer and fewer features afterward there. Eventually it seemed like the community activity dropped. People thought nothing good were released anymore. With the large amount of files released in a month, sometimes, it's good to give the best ones some recognition. Now it seems like features are heading in the bad direction again, and despite my efforts and I am sure a bunch of other people shared their concern too (both on IRC, ticalc news or forums), still not much have changed. Contra 83, Robot War 82 (which doesn't need to be tested to know it's a great game), FFTOM2, Orbit, that bubble game Thepengiun made and Geometry Wars...

This is why in the past month, I started wondering if Omnimaga should start its own "POTY" award? Following example on BrandonW's release of the OS 2.53 and 2.54 MP patches, fixing bugs TI would not fix, we would do what people on ticalc.org don't want to do (or rarely wants to do). We would focus only on games and dev tools, though, since this is what Omnimaga focuses on. I am not too sure about making news articles about programs yet, since this would require a considerable amount of work, but for sure, every month, we would add calculator games to a new featured program page that would be added on Omni. At the end of the year, we would run polls where people would vote on their favorite 83+ tool, 68k and Nspire. There would also be a computer poll and one for other calc models, if applicable.

My only concern against that is that some people may see this as competition against ticalc.org. However, our goal would simply be to feature games/tools we feel that should have been featured (or that was featured). We would host NO file here (except maybe the RPGs and tools, since we have those sections in our archives). On the featured page, we would link to the respective File info pages on ticalc.org. Authors would still get their downloads there.

I thought about the idea also because Omnimaga traffic increased a lot in the past year, so featured programs (or stuff we felt that should have been featured) would get even more recognition.

I would most likely find new names for the page and the award, though.

Yeah, good idea, why we wait for the others to do it while we can do it ourselves? Of course, it would feature Omnimaga stuff only. And I really feel that this board needs some featured program section.

(w00t 100 posts!)

I think it's a good idea.  Bring on the POTMs again! (maybe)

I think it's OK to organize a POTM, but we need advertisement on other TI sites for it to work. Do we have some entering criterion? For example, more than n posts in the dev thread/subforum, more than n unique people posted in the development thread, featured on ticalc (that's the ticalc POTY requirement if I'm not mistaken), featured on omnimaga/uti/maxcoderz... (i.e. have a subforum of your own),... These are just possibilities, I'm not giving my opinion there.

Replicating the POTY is, IMHO, not a good idea.
1. Competing with ticalc doesn't really make sense. Most non-developer people end up there on a search (as did I, a few years ago), and it would not have the same 'weight' in download stats as it has when winning the ticalc POTY. (for the simple reason that we are not ticalc, the archive is not here) Ticalc.org has no POTM, so that's safe(r).
2.Certainly in the beginning, the omnimaga POTY would not be the same 'badge of honour' to the author. Ticalc.org's requirements for featuring, more specifically POTY entry, are very high. If we want to outperform ticalc, we'll need higher standards. I understand from DJ's post that that is the opposite of our goal.

One con to the POTM award: it will be a bitch to moderate. Maybe it's better to organize it bimestrially, or even every 3 months.

Just my two cents

Mmh, my argumentation totally missed its mark. I should proofread better next time

Actually, I just wanted to say that having two awards for basically the same thing does not make sense, and certainly not if one of them is well-established.

That's exactly what I meant.

Then we could have a system with laureates: e.g. three programs win, but no further distinction is made.

Mmhh... It might be a good idea only to feature active projects or 'fresh' programs. Even if it's only for manageability. And en plus, active stuff draws more people.