Ticalc.org: The end?

[DJ Omnimaga]

I was reading through old rants on Fryedsoft website not so long ago and the end of calc.org one reminded me of ticalc.org current situation, with some exceptions of course.

Most of those here who are still active in the TI community probably noticed the drastic decrease in activity on ticalc.org over the past 12 months, while other sites still seems to be alive and kicking. In August they hired two new file archivers. One left, and they decided to fire the other one. He got fired because he became busy and couldn't do the job regulary like he used to, but he said he could at least do some weekly updates. After they fired him they never hired anyone again, so they're left with no file archivers to do the job anymore, so it's the other staff who have to do the job, and they are also pretty busy. Don't get fooled by the fact there is 3 file archivers while looking at the staff page, because it hasn't been updated in a while and all of them are retired now. Patrick Stone announced his retirement from the community last year, Joey Gannon just came back for a short while last summer to help but didn't stayed long and Jason M is supposed to be retired now, considering they posted a news about the hiring of new file archivers. As you can notice on the front page, there is like one update per 3 weeks most of the time. If there is more than that, there is usually only one or two programs added. At the beginning of this month I in fact uploaded Metroid II: The Last Chozo Expansion Set and AaroneusTheGreat uploaded Doom 68k one or two weeks ago, and still none of them got added in the archives. It has beeen like that for about 6 months now and sometimes I am starting considering getting all my files removed from here and making them exclusive to Omnimaga because it's impossible to get anything added here anymore in a reasonable amount of time.

Now the consequences of this: Of course, there is less news being posted on the front page. Less news and updates means that people visit less often and post less comments. You may indeed have noticed the decrease in amount of comments in the past year. Even Omnimaga get more comments on news articles nowadays. This also means less featured programs. Combined with the fact they've been pretty strict in the past 1.5 year in featuring programs it doesn't help their case either, because people feel less like posting their programs, because they never know if they will even be added in archives.

I remember the days where someone used to post their demo/beta on ticalc.org and relying on this one site to show their project preview to public because it would be added within the exact same week. Now it is no longer possible anymore. They now either rely on calcg.org or file uploading services.

Also, if you look at file upload form pending queue, it rarely goes above 150 anymore nowadays, even if the archives didn't got uploaded for months, even in peak periods. It seems like people are getting sick of ticalc.org updates slowness and decide to upload their files on other sites or their own blogs. There is also less reviews, because it can be a month before new reviews are added, and i even seen 6 months once. There has been like 10-12 programs featured in one entire year, while there used to be near 100 some years. Even last year there was twice as much as this year.

You probably also noticed that half of the hosted sites that were still online all suddently shutted down, all at once. I know there was some that were down long ago, but now it's more than half of the list. The server is also slower than it used to be less than 1 year ago, email requests takes nearly half a year, same for the deletion of innapropriate files (recently got a notice that my innapropriate file removal was accepted, even if the request was in early 2007) and now if they're gonna have less traffic, this means their new ads will pay less, thus, making the site stay online and pay for hosting even harder.

It's not that I want to be negative, but it just seems that ticalc.org is going the way calc.org did, minus the downtimes. It's getting less and less updates, and they hire no one else to take over the other staff job. And don't tell me it's the entire community, because on other sites there is the same amount of activity than last year and there is a lot of secret projects being worked on. Also calcg.org file archives increased drastically compared to what it was 2 years ago. At this rate I expect ticalc.org to close or stop being maintained completly around 2009; I don't expect a shutdown anytime soon, but I'm sure if it close it will shut down someday if paying for hosting isn't possible anymore for the founder. Calcg.org (Calcgames), unitedti.org or tifreakware.net may become the main unnoficial TI website then.

[echidna]

You said they hired the archivers? How much do they pay for that? If that's any reasonable amount, then they can hire me, i'm private entrepreneur, and they can pay me officially, i don't have to be an employee. But if it's a redicilous sum of money, then, no one can do that if he cannot get enough to make themselves some time free, if the pay is too small to solve anyone's problems, then it's as good as nothing, and no one can afford to spend their time for such, just not enough time would be left to earn a living. One conclusion which then can be made of this, is that open source developers most once get paid, in a way or another, this is the only solution, otherwise everything would go down sooner or later.

I looked the things in ticalc.org, of course there are mostly games, and even these i cannot run all with tilem, as tilem cannot extract groups, and do many other things, so it can finally run only the most simple ones. But in spite of that, there were at least some quite good small rpg-s, some well done, and completely bugless. Kind of sad, if all that one day just disappears...

[spandiv]

[DarkerLine]

Considering I have a considerable amount of free time, as well as experience with the file archiving business, maybe I should offer to help out if the situation with their file archivers is as bad as you say. (And yes, if you look down you'll see that their last file update was November 8th)

[echidna]

[DarkerLine]

Ultimately, paying file archivers and calculator programmers would require that calculator programs no longer be free. This would be poison to the calculator community, setting calculator programmers AGAINST calculator gamers when everything we've been doing for over a decade has been FOR them. Plus, it would be impossible, and will remain impossible as long as all the games out there can still be downloaded for free.

Just because you're not willing to do anything for free doesn't mean that other people aren't.

[Recursive Acronym]

Most of the activity on ticalc.org is people downloading stuff. The news and the uploads have slowed, but people are still using it to get the files that they need.

[spandiv]

[Liazon]

[Harrierfalcon]

/me thinks they should features some more epic Basic games, even if they're older.

Ask AlienCC about UTI. It probably cost him more to host this site for the length of time it's been up, than a job at McDonald's earns in 1 (maybe 2) years.

ticalc.org needs to stop being too selective about program features. I know this is a bad time to be critical, but that's the one reason I really don't want to be an archiver there. I can think of about 5 Basic games, off the top of my head, that should have been featured. (Contra, DQII, Metroid Pi, Dark Link Quest, ROL series)

Eyecandy always helps.

[Demon]

The guys at Ticalc.org should either just make it so things will be added/removed/updated instantly, then volunteer moderators can go and weed out things that shouldn't be there, or they should just let people freely volunteer to archive files, kind of like how Wikipedia lets people go and freely create and edit articles to perfection, so it grows really fast and stays really active.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Dark Link Quest and ROL were alerady featured

http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articl...119/119577.html

Altough the first went through the whole ti connect incompatibility fiasco

That said it's a shame that the other games that were mentionned were not featured. CDI's old metroid, altough short and having some glitches, should have got a chance too


Darkerline: sorry for the connfusion, my english sucks, I actualy meant ticalc. I shouyld really add my newer files on UTI x.x

[echidna]

[pugboy]

I have noticed the decrease in activity, and I have been contributing to that myself

[Pseudoprogrammer]

I (the new archiver that got fired) personally think ticalc.org is getting arrogant, once in the throne of TI glory. When they announced that they would be hiring, I quickly applied, along with about 20-25 others, about 20 got no response at all, after about 2 weeks I got a reply from Joey Gannon that I was to be interviewed, and that went fine, in about a week Magnus told me I was hired, and Joey showed me how the archiving system worked ect. During this time Michael V. was a little too rude for taste but so I didn't converse with him much, Joey was good though. When they told me I was hired I was A) Starting school B) Changing my ISP C) Parent's getting divorced and D) still having a life. I archived about 80 programs in my short lived career (I was only archiver for about 2 weeks or so before they just cut off my access, didn't tell me I was fired or anything, none of my passwords worked so I asked Joey and Michael "What happened? Am I fired or something?" they replied "Yes" and that was the last I heard from them really. I didn't quite understand why they would want no files archived rather then about 10 or 20 a week, doesn't make much sense.

[echidna]

[echidna]

I see now, payment was not small, but treatment was bad, all this amounts in the same, the work of the developers is undervaluated, and this must change one day.

[spandiv]

[Pseudoprogrammer]

This probably means UTI could possibly become the next ticalc, who knows.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Paying the staff could be an option, but I think it has been always like this on the internet, most user contributed sites or sites where ppl offer downloads for free generally don't pay their staff. If they want the work to be done faster then they hire more staff to divide tasks. I never seen a TI site pay their staff before (except the official site), if ppl were to pay them it would be next to impossible to keep the site online and keep the staff, as it would cost too much, and TI community would die fast.

Omnimaga has 20 staff members at the moment. Imagine if I paid them all? I think my appartment bills would be late quite often