Projects boards rearranged, downvotes re-enabled, and more site updates

[Deep Thought]

A few months ago, we announced the division of the "Other Calc-Related Projects and Ideas" board into six sub-categories. Since then, there have been many great projects that just didn't seem to belong to one section or another, and had to be left outside in the cold, stormy night. This was a sign that the boards were split into too many parts, so we're glad to announce today that they've been rearranged a bit. The board is now organized simply by platform: Z80 (that's the TI-7x and 8x series up to the 86), 68K (the TI-89 and 92 family, including Voyage 200 and 400), Nspire-family, and Casio.

Members are encouraged to post about their projects in these sub-boards instead of outside (in the cold, stormy night), but if your project still doesn't fit neatly into one category, feel free to post it in the main calc-related projects board. (We're still in the process of moving past topics into the sub-categories, hence the large number of topics still outside.)

As you may also have noticed, a bit over a week ago familiar downvote button was added back to the post voting system. We hope this will be a deterrent against off-topic and disallowed posts as well as a signal to bring these posts to moderators' attention. This is not meant to be a replacement for the "Report to Moderator" button (found at the bottom-right corner of every post)—for urgent issues, you should use that link to notify a mod immediately.

Don't be afraid to use the downvote button on posts that you feel are off-topic or against the rules, but please do not abuse the post rating system. This includes rating posts that have no reason to be rated in that way, either down or up, but also complaining excessively over your recent downvotes. Posts should be rated by quality, not by whether or not you agree with the opinions made by the poster; if you don't agree with how someone rated your post, ask a moderator.

Finally, the renamings done in the Great Restructuring of Omnimaga have finally been completed, as former Managers and Newsers now sport shiny new Admin and Editor badges, respectively

[parserp]

Cool! I'm glad the downvote button has found it's way back into the forums.
Also, was this part of the Major Reconstructing?

[cyanophycean314]

Yeah, I noticed the Nspire family changed and the new badges. Good to see the downrate button back.

[Deep Thought]

Also, was this part of the Major Reconstructing?

Oh yeah, that too

[ExtendeD]

Nice to see the rearrangement, I have been waiting for it

[Sorunome]

Nice too see that stuff
Now the "Other Calc-Related Projects and Ideas" board won't be sooooooooooooo full of stuff ^^

[DJ Omnimaga]

I'm sad Netham45's badge is not called lobster

just kidding, nice updates.

What would be cool in the future is if somebody could code a site mod which automatically reported posts that get under -3 rating or something.

[Stefan Bauwens]

Strange, I don't appear to have a badge
j/k. Looks like a good update.

[NanoWar]

Downvotes really add nothing to the page IMO. Refactoring is always good .

[apcalc]

Good updates!  Thanks for the post!

[DJ Omnimaga]

Downvotes really add nothing to the page IMO. Refactoring is always good .

They sure made a huge difference when they were initially added in 2009, though, regarding trolling and spam. Also I noticed a drop in spam posts since they got re-added now.

[alberthrocks]

Great stuff! I think the emphasis of "non-opinionated" downvoting is important. I know it's tempting to use the downvote for certain posts (like this one), but the downvote/upvote is designed to promote quality of posts and content, and discourage spam. More amazing projects can grow this way!

(Note to admins/mods: I haven't ever really used the downvote button much, just the upvote button - if I'm wrong about the downvote rule, let me know!)

[DJ Omnimaga]

Well alberthrocks, usually downvoting is both for lack quality or if the post violates the forum rules or is deemed innapropriate (such as the one you linked, which contained flames against Omni userbase). It's best, however, to make sure to avoid voting based on opinion or if you find a post very funny, so it falsifies the user's total rating as less as possible.

However, I still think that one day, if that is ever possible or not too hard to mod, total ratings should show both minus and plus votes separately. One big issue about total rating is that a member might release revolutionary programs and get +600 in ratings just from programming-related posts, but troll the hell out of the site elsewhere and be unnecessarily rude, and end up getting -500 from those posts. Then just besides him, there's a very active and nice member, but who doesn't code as often, and he has +50/-0 ratings. With both separately, it would reflect more how behaving the member is.

[calcdude84se]

Regarding the less-than-serious Humor & Jokes and Spam subforums, might it be a good idea to either not count up-/downvotes there to users' total scores (that is, only count them per post), or otherwise simply disable it? I feel that posts there might acquire large numbers of upvotes for no particularly good reason

[DJ Omnimaga]

No, because in 2009 we did that early on and people used the spam section as a backdoor to troll. (Note the humor section didn't exist back then)