General Decrease in Omnimaga Activity - What can we do?

[blue_bear_94]

Imagine that. I would be clicking the refresh button every 2 minutes and no new posts for up to 8 hours.

[DJ Omnimaga]

That was basically the entire TI community in 2008. Actually United-TI had some periods of higher activity, but often I checked the active topics list and there were no post for several hours, and that says a lot considering UTI led the entire TI community in forum activity at the time. That said, the worst, however, is if people asks help on programming or showcase a very great new program or a project that needs feedback, but nobody reply.

[blue_bear_94]

Title it "Recovery from the Nspire's Attack." Do you think something else might have caused this inactivity?

[DJ Omnimaga]

I'm pretty sure TI's actions against Ndless are enough to demotivate many from programming for the TI-Nspire or to expect many future releases, and since Omnimaga got a lot of TI-Nspire stuff, it got affected a lot. 83+ stuff still seems to be going strong and Casio, while not as present here as other forums, did not see much of an activity decrease compared to a year ago.

And of course maybe we just had a huge rush of new members a few years ago and less now, so that can cause activity to fluctuate as well. And I used to be much more active before as well.

EDIT: Also blame Minecraft.

[Hayleia]

EDIT: Also blame Minecraft.

And the Spam section

But you can also thank Minecraft: remember how many Minecraft clones are in the work ?

[Michael_Lee]

@HOMER-16 the requirement from the days I was still admin were to always keep your 30 day posting average equal or higher to 10 (or 5 during Summer), outside the spam/humor/intro sections, but seeing how Michael_Lee, Yunhua98 and z80man got away with it for months now, maybe it changed. Also you need to have a project upon joining (it can be computer, calcs or music, although one of the first two is recommended).

*Michael_Lee is shamed into posting

I don't know if somebody brought this idea up yet, but one idea apart from internal events such as contests and whatnot would be to try to raise awareness of calculator coding outside of places like Omnimaga.  For example, the main reason I joined Omnimaga was because of a video of Axe I saw on youtube -- perhaps more youtube videos might attract people who are willing to stick around?

[Scipi]

If we are on other programming sites we could put links in our sigs there. Dunno if that would violate any rules or be underhanded though.

[DJ Omnimaga]

It depends. On some sites, they disallow advertising in posts and PMs, but signatures are generally fine. Another place to advertise is readmes of programs you release.

Also I probably won't be very active for the next two weeks, since I will be quite busy.

@HOMER-16 the requirement from the days I was still admin were to always keep your 30 day posting average equal or higher to 10 (or 5 during Summer), outside the spam/humor/intro sections, but seeing how Michael_Lee, Yunhua98 and z80man got away with it for months now, maybe it changed. Also you need to have a project upon joining (it can be computer, calcs or music, although one of the first two is recommended).

*Michael_Lee is shamed into posting

I don't know if somebody brought this idea up yet, but one idea apart from internal events such as contests and whatnot would be to try to raise awareness of calculator coding outside of places like Omnimaga.  For example, the main reason I joined Omnimaga was because of a video of Axe I saw on youtube -- perhaps more youtube videos might attract people who are willing to stick around?

Yeah it would be nice. Be careful where, though, because for example on sites like RPG Toolkit Zone, there seems to be a bunch of people who find calculator game programming stupid and don't realize it can be fun to get around its limitations. (remember with Ashbad there?)

[Jonius7]

Well lots of replies since I last checked...

One cool thing maybe would be if I eventually made some sort of TIMGUL Memories mix like the TIMGUL Rave mixes, using songs from the TIMGUL days.

I like the name TIMGUL Legacy but that's my opinion.

At least it's better than when I left for work during morning after replying to every active thread, then when returning from work 8 hours later, there were like one or two new posts.

Those one or two new posts used to be my posts, but I can't really be that active now.

EDIT: Also blame Minecraft.

Lol yes I think there's a big craze been going on for at least the past few months.

IYeah it would be nice. Be careful where, though, because for example on sites like RPG Toolkit Zone, there seems to be a bunch of people who find calculator game programming stupid and don't realize it can be fun to get around its limitations. (remember with Ashbad there?)

Ah ok... I see. Was always wondering about Ashbad

Ooops quotes all from DJ_O

[DJ Omnimaga]

Well, if a new TIMGUL mix was made, it would mostly reflect the 2nd generation of TIMGUL users, kinda (the ones that joined or stayed after the drama from which the site never really recovered from).

And yeah Minecraft started draining activity from many members since Jan 2011 I think. I guess once the craze dies down it might help, or if we added minecraft discussion on Omni to keep those people around more (although so far we do have the general minecraft thread that some use).

Also since someone on TI-Story was asking people if the community is dying (see http://tistory.wikidot.com/forum/t-470961/history ), I decided to go around and update my 2010 activity by forum stats the best I could, to prove that the communityt did see a resurgence in 2010-11 and that even if a new lull occurs, there are huge chances that activity rebounds again a few years later:



Basically, this graph is 147 days into 2012 (also those stats are not super accurate, due to possible missed spambots, deleted posts and hidden threads). If we bring the overall back to 366 days, those sites get something slightly over 100000 overall. (which means this year is very 2007, aside from the activity migration from a forum to another). If the trend continues, then I guess Omnimaga will probably have something between 50000 and 70000 this year and 20000 the year after. I'm thinking Omnimaga might remain above any level seen on Invisionfree, though.

Also TI-BD seems to be on a roll.

EDIT: Also notice how activity migrates from a site to another over the years. This is why if one day most Omni staff got inactive that to ensure Omnimaga's survival (posting-wise) the team would need fresh new blood that is active on the forums and coding.

[Sorunome]

ticalc.org is dying? NOOOOOOOO
But the good message: Omnimaga is growing!

[DJ Omnimaga]

Well it seems like Ticalc is still alive, but stuff kinda caused its community to be driven away to other sites. Now people go there to download games rather than discussing. I think it's partly due to lack of (or suspected lack of) impartiality from certain news editors a few years ago towards specific languages (most notably TI-BASIC), programs, authors or groups. Combined with very belated news in 2007, 2008 and late 2010 (although with the staff being busy and not many to help, that can't be helped sometimes), this eventually led to ticalc.org audience changing from people visiting to discuss and download to one that only downloads. It still gets a lot of traffic, just not a lot of news comments compared to a few years ago.

Also Omnimaga traffic seems to be down but maybe that's due to the anti spam mods?

[Sorunome]

Ha, but isn't spam in some way a good sign? That means that the website is popular enough to be target of a spam bot

[DJ Omnimaga]

True, although it's annoying for admins.

Also I thought Ticalc.org comment design hindered their activity due to ancient design and people being more used to linear discussion boards, but if that was the case, then TI-BASIC Developer would be dead by now. (since they have the same system as Ticalc)

EDIT: Good news: After an April lower than our 2010 levels, May is now back above 2010 levels! Keep in mind, however, that in April there were a lot of downtimes and about 100 posts lost, so maybe that explains why May is more active than April. On the other hand, in 2009 May was more active than April.

[stevon8ter]

It's because i'm back online
Haha, joking