I started a section of TI-Basic Developer called TI Story to document the TI community history. I am thinking about moving TI Story to its own wiki to give it more space to grow and mature, and because it is becoming rather cumbersome to have to sidestep all of the TI-Basic Developer content.

Although my primary interest in TI Story is researching content and writing articles, I recognize that the social aspect of posting updates and drumming up community support is a critical component of a site's success. So, I wanted to recruit a couple people that would be fellow administrators, and would handle the public relations side of TI Story.

I have put a lot of thought into who would be an appropriate administrator, and I think it would make sense if it was Kevin Ouellet and Kerm Martian. Both of them are well-known and respected within the TI community, and Omnimaga and Cemetech are currently the two most active sites in the community. It would basically be a site affiliation of sorts. So, what do you guys think about the idea?

Burr, I had seen that new section when browsing through the TI-BASIC Developer recently. I'd be happy to take some time to help administer the site, and hopefully with a group of administrators from across the community we can avoid any sort of accidental biases from one group or another. I do feel that this is a very ambitious project, though; what sort of scope do you envision?

You're right, it is a massive undertaking. What I am envisioning with TI Story is a TI community version of Wikipedia, with all of the accompanying TI community information and history. There is so much that has happened in the TI community since the release of the first TI graphing calculator in 1990, and I would really like to see that stuff documented. I recognize that my knowledge and memories are quite limited, and that the Wayback Machine will only take me so far, so I think it makes sense to turn it into a TI community project. I have only briefly looked at the non-English TI community, but I think they are an important part of the TI community history and should be involved in this project as well.

As said on Omni (which is down atm) I unfortunately doubt I could take on the job, due to my questionable health (although it got better over the last few months) and lack of time (nowadays I split my time between two different communities rather than just calc forums), but I could still help, probably, whenever I get some free time, to update pages of older sites, as I've been around for 10.5 years in the TI community and probably remember some of the older sites. (eg how TI-BANK used to be TI89 Prog from 2002 to 2004).

Those administrator choices are hilarious. Clearly you gave it zero thought about it.

Who would you choose as admins?

Don't mind nikky, he's just jealous that he's banned from Omnimaga.

I think that that would certainly be a very good thing to have, though I remain concerned about biases and points-of-view. And indeed, I suppose that would be the job of the administrators, to make sure that the resulting documentation was as objective as possible and didn't either inflate or defame a group, member, or project in the community unnecessarily.

From what I recall it also intends to include things about site wars or community disputes, as it goes through the entire history of the TI community, but it seems like it focuses on more notable events. Eg I am unsure if anything that occured between Cemetech and Omnimaga or UTI vs MaxCoderz would be as page-worthy as TI-Files vs Ticalc.org. I mean the latter went as far as channel/site takeover attempts and it generally involved several people instead of maybe two or three misunderstanding each others. Anything BASIC vs ASM could be included, though (maybe with a parhentese about Axe and libraries?)

Also I'm unsure if every single existing calc site should be included, considering a lot never took off and were just Geos***ties pages with a quadratic solver that takes 8 KB of RAM. Maybe put them in their own category, such as personal sites and unfinished ones? Also I even saw a programming group (Vuton programming) that had like 4 forums and 2 sites.

Of course to avoid any bias, I guess people could monitor big site pages in case and revert any innapropriate changes (although I doubt that will happen). If someone constantly changes back a page to questionable content then I guess it could just be locked down.

Saying the TI Community needs a wiki is like saying LiveJournal needs a wiki.

Oh wait, it has Encyclopedia Drammatica.



Not community "leaders", that's for sure.

Same with this guy, Burr I'm finding it funny that this topic is turning into quite the troll food.

That being said, I'll be curious as to how this project progresses. I would think that inter-site relations should probably be one of the more minor things to hit upon; being more objective with the actual programs written and discoveries made would probably give a better outcome.

Agreed, I think the technical achievements of the community and its groups should be far and away the focus, and any infighting or conflicts or undesirable members a small footnote at best.

Yeah, after all I'm pretty sure that a few important releases, like Doors CS 7, were still missing from the notable programs list as of yesterday. I'm a bit relunctant about adding anything I've made, though, except for maybe Zelda and the first Reuben game, because my other games do not provide anything really special that other games do not have, or they have major flaws that hinder their gameplay too much. Zelda would probably count as the first ever finished Zelda for calcs and Reuben as the first ever hybrid-BASIC grayscale game for the 83+.

I actually think the politics and drama is an important component of the TI community history, and it should be included along with everything else. I know keeping a neutral point-of-view is important, but I think we should worry about that when it is documented and we have some content to work with.

I also wrestled with the same question of what notable programs, games, etc. should be included and which should be left out. I have spent a considerable amount of time looking through the ticalc.org program archives, and it is honestly quite overwhelming just how many programs have been released by the TI community. What criteria do you guys think should be used to decide the in/exclusion of a program or game? A ticalc.org news feature? A ticalc.org POTM/POTW/POTY award? Good graphics? Good code? Number of downloads?

All of the above. I wouldn't mind helping with the site itself, assuming wikidot, or preventing biased pages.

I think tcpa or ticalc contributors would be a good place to get some neutral pov types as admins. as far as programs, I think all of them deserve a page provided it has a unique defining feature. Programs with multiple iterations would get one page, such as one page for all things Phoenix, and one page for all things Illusiat. Pages could also be written about notable community members. I could contribute fairly and I think a neutral point of view could still be cautiously enforced in the CalcDev Wiki.

There will also be articles over various calculators and certain hardware and software features. A few pages devoted to languages would be present as well.

EDIT: I think certain controversial events should be kept to separate pages, but they need to be there. There can't be any criticisms, say, on the page for Omnimaga forums, but there could be some on a page for nDoom. Additionally, if we have pages for community memes like lobsters or peanuts or rickroll, that might be fine... but there might also be community-related references such as JUST FUℂKING STOP that could attain their own pages.

I don't think notable programs should require a news article on ticalc.org. From 2007 to 2008 and in late 2010 there were times where news posting got pretty slow, so a bunch of programs may have been missed.

And yeah I guess a section for community inside jokes and "memes" could be added too, such as Wacky Fun Random Numbar Generator, providing it doesn't have too much emphasis. Just a short description of each and how it started I guess.

You're doing it wrong. <_< (you forgot to mispell the bad word)

Thanks for legitimizing the future creation of that article XD

There's no pressure to have an article for every program ever. People'll will add the ones they like over time.

Seriously, though, I fear there will be some work to do regularly to monitor what's being added, because I wouldn't be surprised if in the future, there were people trying to push their quadratic solvers for extra hits. When United-TI still had a download system installed, they said they would monitor what's getting uploaded, yet sometimes I saw such programs get through. I hope it doesn't get too extreme, though.

Also we need to make sure to not be too lax about adding programs featuring something new (eg the grayscale quadratic solver on ticalc.org)

We could simply have a single page for EVERY quadratic solver XD

not each, just a page detailing the most efficient one. i think code snippet pages may be helpful.

I think it would be appropriate for a fair and balanced article on each site to mention both the strengths and the flaws of each site and its members. I don't think it would be accurate or correct to omit the flaws.

I'm sure you must be trolling again. I could understand community-wide memes like WFRNG, but I think single-site memes don't belong in an accounting of the achievements of the TI programming community as a whole.