Take a look at this author profile. The number of unique programs is high (this is good), but the number of files uploaded to the archive is insane (less good).

The update feature exists for a reason. One can file a program under both color and mono categories (putting both 8xp's in the zip file). Having different files for levels 1-10, 11-20 or whatever could even be considered borderline abusive in my opinion- it unnecessarily boosts the downloads for no reason, just stick them all in one program.

Another problem is the miscategorization of files, sponsored by my new favorite shell.

I'm not accusing Roccolox of uploading low-quality files- for someone coming from ticalc this is about right, I guess- I would appreciate it if the admins would put even just a little more effort into making sure files are uploaded correctly.

While you could, this could also be confusing to unsophisticated users ("I tried to send all the files to my calculator and some of them don't transfer?!"). I don't think it's strictly incorrect to keep a separate color and monochrome lineage, especially for programs have different versions for each type. The author profile doesn't currently make it easy to see these differences, but we have an open bug to address that (by making it look the same as general browsing).

Users may only want some of them, though I tend to agree just distributing a single "level pack pack" might be nicer. Recognizing these situations doesn't really scale though, since it means somebody needs to know what already exists (or go looking), then either reject a file or make changes manually- where making changes manually is opaque to the uploader, and in practice it seems many users don't make changes after a rejection (seemingly giving up?).

This doesn't seem inappropriate to me? Scratch is kind of a shell, even if it's not a very useful one.

That said, the review interface doesn't currently make it easy to see assigned categories and making that easier might help notice when categorization is significantly wrong.

This kind of thing has been done by authors in the past and I certainly see no reason why it can't be done well- heck, there are methods for checking if the calc is color or monochrome in BASIC, so the author could even just merge the programs. It's certainly less annoying than scrolling through a bunch of copies of the same program. Our new-ish archive front-end makes individual files take up a whole lot of screen space (and this is a good thing). It's not like the old archives or on ticalc where each file gets a small strip- even just two copies of the same file is a nuisance, and having archives that are flooded by virtually the same program many times is really quite annoying now.

There is a third option here, and I consider it superior to both of the options you provided- the admin getting in touch with the cemetech member directly. Even just asking "hey, I'm going to merge this with your other level pack, so that users can get all the levels with one download so that we don't have five different uploads for pretty much the same thing, do you have any issues with this?" would go a long way here.

The consensus here seems to be that a shell is something like CEsium, DCS, or others like that- an interpreter is definitely not a shell.

I of course do not know what this interface looks like, but I doubt it has gotten a lot of TLC.

Are you volunteering to do this? Because that can be arranged.

You might be surprised. (I've just made the change that was suggested.)

As a regular user, I'm against this. It's probably a small issue but being able to download a small pack of levels is handy, especially with limited RAM. After you beat 1-10, you can remove it and download and copy over 11-20, and so on and so on.

I mean, I guess they can put all the level packs in one download as different programs. But what about if a programmer released 1-10 first? Then works on 11-20 over the next few months. What about themed levels? I think it's fair to let users upload files as they see fit, as long as they aren't abusing it and uploading 20 levels as 20 files.

Sure :)

Color me surprised, that's awesome.

I was more talking about putting all the files in the same upload, so that the user could select which ones they wanted (I agree with you that this flexibility is a good thing).