Omnimaga

Omnimaga => Site Feedback and Questions => Topic started by: DJ Omnimaga on September 29, 2010, 04:30:14 am

Title: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 29, 2010, 04:30:14 am
I was lurking through TI-BASIC Developper tonight and when checking the recent posts list, I was saddened to read one of the comment that showed up regarding Omnimaga. I feel it was uncalled for and seeing as TIBD allows such comments on the site (and stuff like bashing large games and games with multiple files, as well as JFGI/RTFM comments), I no longer wonder why so many people have left UTI/TIBD and joined Omnimaga instead. (I know some people left UTI because of the downtimes and the removal of the download section, but I know that for many of those people, rude comments towards newbies and negativity towards certain TI-BASIC projects played a big role in their migration to Omnimaga and the decreasing activity on UTI and TI-BD forums.

Normally, I do not pay much attention anymore at negative comments towards us, because I learned to either ignore them or laugh at them, but this time, the one I found was too much. I never had to deal with such comment before about Omnimaga. Here's the deal:

Someone on TI-BD, who goes under the nickname Yatzy doesn't seems too happy about our site design, but the way he expressed his view, without even having the courage to come and tell us in our face, has put me into a not-so-good mood, especially with the amount of effort I spent on that dark forum theme (1 weeks, usually all day long, as I had some free days), the time I spent working on Omnimaga and the amount of contributions our members have done to the Omnimaga community.

Here is the comment at http://tibasicdev.wikidot.com/forum/t-267491/site-s-dying#post-883938

I could not believe my eyes when I have read it, because I believe it is a lack of respect and could have been worded in a much different way that sounds more respectful, like saying you don't want to sign up on Omnimaga because you don't like the site design and prefer the way TI-BD is done.

Had this been a comment from someone like Nikky that really sounds like trolling, I would probably have let it go or simply joked and said "Well, I guess the site is not that bad after all, considering it gets 7000 posts a month while TI-BD gets 150 and UTI 200" or something like "Well, I guess Omni isn't that bad after all, considering so many people left UTI/TIBD to migrate to Omni. Shouldn't we be looking for why people left TIBD instead?". However, I could not resist sending a PM to this guy on Wikidot:

Quote
Hi, I was lurking through TI-BASIC Developer website tonight and I stumbled on one of your comment in the recent posts list, regarding Omnimaga website at http://tibasicdev.wikidot.com/forum/t-267491/site-s-dying , quoted below:

"Jesus, my eyes just got laseredbeam by omninaga.com. I sure hope they are better on programming than doing web design. I haven't read through the other posts, but what I like about this website is that it's so convenient and user friendly, you got all in one spot- all the commands explained with tips and thorough guides on certain areas, which atleast gave me a really good base for getting started with programming. Nevertheless, it's also eye-friendly,not trying to combine pale pink with blue making the user dazzled."

I would like to tell you that I take extreme offense at your comment and I request an apology. I do not feel that you have much rights to insult my web design skills considering the insane amount of work I devoted on it (2 weeks just for the default site theme, several days for one of the alternate theme that can be selected on the main page and the 3rd theme, which is a remake of a 2006 theme we used on Invisionfree, had at least one week spent on it, by a former staff member, back in the days), and the fact you probably have yet to contribute any notable game on ticalc.org (with a green icon beside its name and a news article. Show me if you have any.).

Also you do not have the right to judge Omnimaga quality just based on web design and the fact it doesn't have every detailled BASIC commands on it. Omnimaga is not a TI-BASIC wiki, nor a TI-BASIC tutorial. It's a calculator site oriented towards game projects showcase and due to the calculator gaming side of the site. TI-BASIC Developer is help-oriented, so it's a great thing there's a full TI-BASIC wiki here. On the other hand, when we showcase our calculator game projects there, nobody cares. I saw many RPGs being announced on TI-BD and I myself announced one back in 2009, from my previous Wikidot account, and they barely got any attention. Each sites got their good side and downsides.

Also, the pink thing you see on the site is temporary: it's to attract members attention for the programming contest survey. Hence the different and bright color. It's not even going to be there anymore after October! Also I am not sure why you hate the forum theme so much considering the site gets so much activity (50000 posts in 9 months). I guess it isn't that bad after all, right? Do EVERY calculator website have to use light color designs with nothing fancy on them? Plus, you can select your forum theme anyway, from a drop down list. One of them is similar but brighter. The other one is darker, but it was only brought back up for nostalgia purpose. Also, if you haven't noticed, a lot of gaming sites on the web uses darker designs. White+light blue or beige doesn't always fit such site well. MaxCoderz original website used a high contrast design too and it was the most active community back in the days.

Also you do not realize who you have insulted. I devoted 9 years into the TI community, releasing several TI-BASIC games since then, most of which are RPGs (Reuben Quest and Illusiat might ring a bell) and tried to offer at least one calculator website where you could announce your project without getting flamed for using BASIC and where people care, no matter what game genre your project is, no matter if it uses libraries or not, no matter how large its filesize is (I got bashed on UTI/TIBD because of game file size) and no matter how many sub-programs it uses, plus not getting yelled at if you did not search hard enough on the forums before posting, even thought it's your first internet forum post ever.

And finally, if you dislike the web design, it doesn't mean the rest of the site is crap. Yes, there are experienced programmers there, although we do TI-BASIC, ASM, Axe Parser and TI-Nspire C. If you do not feel like going through the project posts to see what the members are working on, just check this Youtube video, which shows many of them:


The next one shows older games (most of which are mine)


So I would ask you to have more respect for people who devote lots of effort without getting paid to the TI community, be careful what you say about people and other people work and keep destructive comments for yourself. The way you are talking sounded like Omnimaga was one of those old Geocities website designs. Plus, you could have simply posted on the Omnimaga forums about your opinion about the site anyway, instead of bashing the site on another forum. Right now it looks more like a troll or libel.

Regards,

Kévin Ouellet, a.k.a DJ Omnimaga

P.S: I have let the entire Omnimaga community know about your behavior on the forums. Here is the topic: http://ourl.ca/7224

Sorry, this had to go out. I normally don't post rant topics about negative comments towards a TI community contribution anymore, but this comment struck me and his narrow-mindedness just deserves to be shown in public, on the community he insulted. (He didn't bother signing up to rant about our design here. Since he did it elsewhere, why wouldn't I forward his rant at the right place? It concerns Omnimaga, after all.)

On top of that he did not even get the URL right. It's omnimaga.org, not .com.

If he did not want us to see this, then he took a huge risk, because a lot of Omnimaga members have TI-BD accounts.
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: jnesselr on September 29, 2010, 06:31:48 am
Hmm. Yep we do.  One of them happens to be a mod.

I might delete it if it needs to be, or just edit it.
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: qazz42 on September 29, 2010, 06:47:36 am
I like the design...

(I support you fully on this!)
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: ztrumpet on September 29, 2010, 06:53:49 am
I might delete it if it needs to be, or just edit it.
I believe it should be left, because I don't like censoring people.
Howeve, the sad, yet funny part is that it's posted in an "our site's dying" thread.  If you don't want your site to die, don't be mean to people!  Why do I rarely post and UTI and TIBD now?  It's because someone was mean to me and I found Omnimaga.  Even though there's stuff like this, I really like the wiki part, and I hope TIBD stays online for a while. :)
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: qazz42 on September 29, 2010, 06:58:28 am
yeah, if they only had been less troll-happy...

lol, that comment, it is kinda resembling the type of Youtube comments I see all the time

"LOL, THINGZ IS ST00PIDZ! IT L00K DUMB SO I QUIT DURR HURRR HURRRRR" <- like that
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: meishe91 on September 29, 2010, 07:11:25 am
Ya, I support you on this. That is just a dumb thing to do, and a cowardice thing too. No reason you should rant about another site on another site. If you have something to say, just say it to our faces.

I also agree with Z, don't edit or delete it. Won't change anything and knowing that he already got sent a message by DJ and then finding out that his post got deleted/edited by you, who he may or may not know is here too, will just possibly further make him angry or something.
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: jnesselr on September 29, 2010, 07:13:23 am
Should I at least change it to omnimaga.org? Omnimaga.com doesn't even exist.
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: Raylin on September 29, 2010, 09:59:52 am
Sometimes, people jump to conclusions.
I'd just laugh and start Zerg Rushin'.

kekekekekekekeke

You did the right thing, DJ.
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: Michael_Lee on September 29, 2010, 10:24:51 am
DJ: I applaud your dedication to politeness and to maintaining a positive atmosphere here on omnimaga.org and elsewhere in the calculator community.
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: Builderboy on September 29, 2010, 11:22:21 am
I agree wholeheartedly with Michael Lee and you DJ, that comment was uncalled for and downright rude and disrespectful.  Even if someone didn't like out theme, they can at least say it in a nice manner and not dis our programing skills.  The fact that he is posting that post in a thread about their site dying is even more ironic
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: Happybobjr on September 29, 2010, 12:03:26 pm
Kinda weird the guy posted that though.  The design on this site the very calm and pleasent.  maybe his brightness on his pc was put up to 1000% or something.
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: Broseph Radson on September 29, 2010, 12:14:43 pm
Maybe he didnt like this:
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 29, 2010, 12:32:39 pm
Lol Broseph, we never know XD
I might delete it if it needs to be, or just edit it.
Nah, keep the comment intact. You could always edit the URL typo but otherwise, you should maybe keep it. It is up to him I think to decide if it's worth keeping or not and if he wants to edit it. On Omnimaga, personally, I do not delete posts unless they're flood from a spammer or bot and if they contain innapropriate content like links to warez sites or warez torrent trackers, I'll edit out the link from the post. If it breaks the page layout I may resize the text or images. There is no thing such as free speech on Omnimaga since there are rules to follow but I like to censor as less stuff as possible. Not only people sees what happened if someone was to be punished for repeated offense (people won't keep asking "why was X person banned???") but it allows bad comments to backfire on their authors, their behavior humiliating them until they decide to change behavior or edit/remove the comments.
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: qazz42 on September 29, 2010, 02:31:54 pm
To tell the truth, I only dont Like one skin, but I dont complain because I can just switch and everything is better
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 29, 2010, 02:45:04 pm
That reminds me, though: at one point I should maybe start working on the SMF remake of the skin I added as alternate skin on the old board in December 2005, which we started using as default skin shortly afterward. It looks like the 2006 theme, but the dark gray is light gray, the purple gradients are gree-blue-ish and the background image was an hand drawing by one of the staff back then.

Reviving the first skin we ever used on Invisionfree would be cool, too.
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: jnesselr on September 29, 2010, 06:11:02 pm
Lol Broseph, we never know XD
I might delete it if it needs to be, or just edit it.
Nah, keep the comment intact. You could always edit the URL typo but otherwise, you should maybe keep it. It is up to him I think to decide if it's worth keeping or not and if he wants to edit it. On Omnimaga, personally, I do not delete posts unless they're flood from a spammer or bot and if they contain innapropriate content like links to warez sites or warez torrent trackers, I'll edit out the link from the post. If it breaks the page layout I may resize the text or images. There is no thing such as free speech on Omnimaga since there are rules to follow but I like to censor as less stuff as possible. Not only people sees what happened if someone was to be punished for repeated offense (people won't keep asking "why was X person banned???") but it allows bad comments to backfire on their authors, their behavior humiliating them until they decide to change behavior or edit/remove the comments.
Very well, I will leave it as is.
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: Snake X on September 29, 2010, 06:25:02 pm
That reminds me, though: at one point I should maybe start working on the SMF remake of the skin I added as alternate skin on the old board in December 2005, which we started using as default skin shortly afterward. It looks like the 2006 theme, but the dark gray is light gray, the purple gradients are gree-blue-ish and the background image was an hand drawing by one of the staff back then.

Reviving the first skin we ever used on Invisionfree would be cool, too.

yeah you should make that the default skin for your 10th omnimaga anniversary too! :p
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: squidgetx on September 29, 2010, 10:56:19 pm
well obviously because it's so cool if you hate on other people/organizations. I want to be just like that guy when I grow up. he is now my new role model.


...........jk
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 29, 2010, 11:00:30 pm
this reminds me:
i never commented on the default theme, but i absolutely love it. it incorporates my favourite colour scheme
aqua
hotpink
lightskyblue
blueviolet

and the games and such in the background are wonderfully blended in
Mhmm, it will take a long while before we get such color scheme here...

That reminds me, though: at one point I should maybe start working on the SMF remake of the skin I added as alternate skin on the old board in December 2005, which we started using as default skin shortly afterward. It looks like the 2006 theme, but the dark gray is light gray, the purple gradients are gree-blue-ish and the background image was an hand drawing by one of the staff back then.

Reviving the first skin we ever used on Invisionfree would be cool, too.

yeah you should make that the default skin for your 10th omnimaga anniversary too! :p
Nah, for a 10th Omni anniversary, the site would match the color scheme of my avatar. I tried such color scheme before and it looked terrible. The original Invisionfree Omni forum theme was made in 2005. The first theme ever used on an Omnimaga site (April 2004) was this, btw:  http://www.omnimaga.org/oldsite/index_v1.html
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: qazz42 on September 30, 2010, 06:57:01 am
well obviously because it's so cool if you hate on other people/organizations. I want to be just like that guy when I grow up. he is now my new role model.


...........jk

YA DOOD, HE ARE MY FAVROIT ROEL MODLE!

j/k
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 30, 2010, 04:38:19 pm
I am unsure if he is a troll, though. Maybe his comment is troll-ish but sometimes we post stuff that are trolls but it isn't the primary goal. To me it seems more like someone who doesn't realize the work put behind those websites, or he is just jealous that Omni gets so much activity.

Let me tell you I was not very happy when people bashed Cemetech's current forum design. I like blue but Kerm spent a lot of time on it. The original design wasn't as great and was less professional, but it was cool in a way as it was different from other forums.

The bad part is that it comes from people who barely contributed to the community or people who never tried to design a website before. They just use premade templates on webs.com. I would like to see them revamp PhpBB2 or SMF CSS to look better than Omni and Cemetech
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: AngelFish on September 30, 2010, 05:11:35 pm
Believe me, there are forums with worse color schemes than Blue and Pink...
Spoiler For Spoiler:
...such as Black and Yellow.
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 30, 2010, 08:25:16 pm
Black and yellow doesn't seems too bad, as long as it's the text that is yellow. I used to visit such site and I was fine with them. However, bright yellow with black text is overkill, IMHO, same for plain red. I believe the text area either needs to be light with dark text or dark with light text. TI-Freakware forums are tolerable. I was usually fine with them, but on certain computer screens, it hurt my eyes after checking many posts then going back to IRC x.x
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: jnesselr on September 30, 2010, 08:43:52 pm
What I really don't like is when I go from a google search page, then go to a website with a black background, then go back to google.  Talk about your eyes hurting.
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: AngelFish on September 30, 2010, 09:20:48 pm
Nope, the forums I'm talking about have Yellow borders and white text on a black background. All links are marked in Blue just to add to the eyesore ::)
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 30, 2010, 09:28:34 pm
Ah ok. Well, I find such design, while not being great, to be more tolerable than black text on red background like I saw on Geocities back then. That said, the blue links seems indeed like an eyesore, on black bg x.x
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: AngelFish on September 30, 2010, 09:30:51 pm
I much prefer the site design here :)
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 30, 2010, 09:39:24 pm
Lol thanks. Btw, which one of the 3 forum theme do you prefer the most? (there's a 4th one, but it's the same as the default, except the background scrolls with the page. Useful for old computer users)
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: AngelFish on September 30, 2010, 09:55:18 pm
The 2008 version is my favorite.
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 30, 2010, 10:07:54 pm
Ah cool. That one was made from the 2006 one, but made lighter. The background from the 2006 site was edited into a fractal and the banner was made a bit more blue. Actually, from the December 2005 theme until the current default theme, each new theme ever made were based off the previous one). You might actually notice some sort of pattern :)

The current theme kinda goes back to the original dark blue background on light div/tables style, except the light areas are blue instead of gray.

The December 2005 theme and banner (the banner was on a stretchable gray background image, which explains the weirdness to the right):
(http://www.omnimaga.org/images/screenshots/banner.gif)
(http://www.omnimaga.org/images/screenshots/afj2006b.gif) (the plushie thing was an april fools joke simulating a site hacking attempt)

The first theme we used on Invisionfree:
(http://www.omnimaga.org/images/screenshots/usersonlinerecord.jpg)

Banner was the same, except that it said Your calculator RPGs headquarter instead of A New Coding Utopia Awaits.
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: qazz42 on September 30, 2010, 10:12:39 pm
ohh, pretty!
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: ztrumpet on September 30, 2010, 11:05:24 pm
Honestly, I like the 2010 Omni design the best of every forum I remember.  It just feels... right. ;D
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 30, 2010, 11:11:17 pm
Lol thanks.

SOmething I really hope in the future is that when SMF 2.0 gets released, SMF will not stop releasing security patches for 1.1.11, else I'll have A LOT of hard work awaiting for me (converting all the skins to SMF 2.0 format)
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: Madskillz on September 30, 2010, 11:43:40 pm
Wow now don't those bring back memories of yesteryear.
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 30, 2010, 11:51:21 pm
What do you mean? Do you mean bringning back memories of the old community days?
/me wishes Sic/Joe put a copy of the old MC board somewhere when MC was still active so we could access some of the old stuff.
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: qazz42 on October 01, 2010, 09:10:05 pm
Honestly, I like the 2010 Omni design the best of every forum I remember.  It just feels... right. ;D

ztrumpet++
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: Deep Toaster on October 01, 2010, 09:27:11 pm
Wow, UTI's really gotta start reigning their members, especially the new ones...
Title: Re: Hate comment by against Omnimaga on TI-Basic Developer
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on October 01, 2010, 09:28:49 pm
In overall it seemed OK lately except one that seemed to have some sort of ego (no offense to him) but the staff will most likely have to be very active to bring the site to life again x.x