I thought that Michael Vincent was already part of the ticalc.org staff. He is one of the most well know TI calc programmers after all. I guess us normal guys really had no chance. Maybe next time.

congratulations Michael! I can't think of anyone more qualified for the position :)

-Greg
http://calc.gregd.org/
http://www.detachedsolutions.com/

I agree Greg... Like I have said on TiNews, not much TI stuff happens anymore.. but if anyone knows where to look, and the ins and outs, what belongs and doesn't belong to the news, etc, It Is Michael. Glad they got someone who (seems to) know what they are doing, right Michael? ;)

WTF MAN U SUCK

Just kidding, of course. Congratulations, Michael! I wish you the best of luck. I'm certainly a bit disappointed that I didn't win, but if there is anyone else who I think can do a better job than I can, it has to be you.

maybe win isn't the best term, its not a contest... that may be why you didn't 'win'... actually... Micheal NEVER did anything like post a book, so he seems like a more logical choice to me... but ohwell right?

I guess 'win' isn't the best word, you're right. Though I was told I was a close second. Besides, any time more than one person is vying for a job, it is a competition, whether you call it that or not.

awesome, now let's get ticalc.org back on track with ARCHIVERS, REVIEWERS, and STUFF. and don't hesitate to post that you're hiring archivers, do this ASAP!

congrats MV

Congrats Michael! (even though you did block me....)

I agree, this site needs file archivers more than a news editor. Maybe Michael's job could be extended to include that.

Yes, *cough* reviewers! ;-)

Actually, I think we need archivers before reviewers since there are 800 files in the pending queue.

Hello everyone,

Thank you for the positive comments. I'll strive to live up to the expectations :)

I have a few general comments of my own to add: First, someone asked regarding the policy of deleting off-topic posts. I feel that the small number of users who engage in this know they are doing it, and know that it is against the policies. My suggestion to them is just to stop now; do the right thing. I will be aggressively deleting posts that do not pertain to discussion related to the subject of the news article.

Second, I'm still learning how this works, so please forgive me if I make any mistakes in a news article, and constructive criticism about my style, links, comments, et cetera will be appreciated. I've already received a few e-mails to news@ticalc.org, and I'm developing filters to redirect and sort ticalc.org news mail into folders, and reading the e-mails and learning how to decide what is newsworthy and not. But I have the uber-elite Nick D. to guide my start, so I'm sure I'll do fine :)

Congrats, Michael.

PYRAMID for Michael! Just kidding.

>>I will be aggressively deleting posts that do not
>>pertain to discussion related to the subject of the
>>news article.
2 words: Thank God (not to offend anyone). Maybe I'll finally start reading the comments again (er, well, more regularly). If I had applied and gotten accepted, I would do the same thing too. You know, over at the TICT message board, there really isn't much of a problem w/ off-topic posts, b/c they are deleted by admins who aren't afraid to delete s*it that is off-topic/trolling.

Another question, now that NickD has been brought up: What's your policy on fake news? You know, every once in a while, there isn't slow news, and we HAD NickD, but now, well, ticalc.org has gotten a bit boring recently, especially with the lack of file updates.

Also, as a reply to the above post, Michael wan't a staff member, but one of the first people to create a ticalc.org account (look at his account number -- that's all I have to say).

People assume the staff always has really low account IDs... that's true for the most part, but our recent hires (ie after the redesign) tend to have really high numbers.

Our original staff, the folks that came on up to and including myself, goes up to the high teens I think. Michael was just a frequent visitor at the time.

As for the guy who asked if I was back, I guess I'm making a brief cameo to make sure Michael gets settled in with as much comfort as possible. I'll probably not post much news, but I'll make a presence on the comment boards for a couple of weeks.

Hi. My name's Nick. I posted here for a couple of years. Some people thought I was good; these people tend to be horribly delusional and should be taken with as little credibility as humanly possible.

You were good. The off-topic and troll comments were deleted, and news was posted fairly often.

The best way to counter off-topic posts would be to offer either an off-topic set of boards OR some sort of chat... just an idea.

I think the best thing for off-topic posts is to frequently update the news. Off-topic posts tend to come in more regularly after there's about 300 posts or so. I'm living proof :)

Hooray for michael :0

Hm... I think the filteration is almost a bit too strict. Maybe not... I guess I'm just not used to it, since it hasn't been used in quite a while. I did notice that within an hour, the number of posts went from 80 to 57...

Indeed it did. However, if you would like to see the nature of the moderation, save a copy of this article now and note which comments are on-topic and which are not. In a few days you can check with the current article, and all of the on-topic comments will remain while the off-topic ones will be gone :)

I guess so. Filteration usually is a good thing. How often are you going to do that? About once a day?

OK, that's ... odd. Someone voiced an opinion against MV, and all the posts following it are gone. That seems a bit biased, to me.

No it's not biased. It was off-topic, and it violated the rules of posting: "Don't insult or flame other people in your comments." Every post under his was off-topic...I saw mention of hot dogs and going to attack someone at 3...

Now what he did say was that he thought from reading my web site that I wasn't interested in calcs. That's not true, because I only wrote that when TI stopped my OS project. I was understandably upset at TI. I'm working on a math application right now in fact.

Anyway, feel free to tell me how much you hate me all you want :), so long as it is relevant to the topic (which would only apply to this news item since every other one will be about calculator-related news), but not just screaming.

Also, I've now posted my first news item. I'd appreciate any feedback on it, such as length (too long? too short?), links (too many?), or anything else.

Okay.... I must have missed the hot dog part ;-)

I thought the article was good... it was a nice-size, it gave the information, and that's what it's supposed to do :)

Is it just me, or are you, lord_nightrose, and I all on at the same time?

Ah, all right. I guess I hadn't read them quite thoroughly enough.

By the way, from what the e-mail you got from TI says, I drew the conclusion that they were telling you that you can't re-engineer the existing OS, but you *can* create a new one from scratch. Of course, you may well have gotten another e-mail from them telling you that you can't do that, but if you have then I haven't read it.

The whole "modded TI-OS" vs. "OS from scratch" subject has been quite thoroughly discussed on DS's site. See url above.

Thanks. I haven't checked back there in a while.

See my above comment


But of course, that's just my opinion. The things I think should be deleted are:

Posts with excessive rude words (everyone should know what I mean by that)
Anyone trying to take the identity of someone else (ex. the frauds)
"PORT THIS GAME NOW OR ELSE"
Really big posts with repeated material (ex. "DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE...")
"HAHA FIRST COMMENT" (if that's all the comment contains)
Pyramids
Parades (*cry* I started them too)
Anything similar to the above two


Things I think SHOULDN'T be deleted
Questions asking for help, even if it isn't relevant to the topic
Constructive Criticism
Comments with any trace of humor -- (some people think if a comment is funny, it should be deleted... I think if it's in any way related, you should keep it. Humor isn't a bad thing)

------

And as for the reason they deleted the whole thread is, I'm guessing that if they delete one comment, they have to delete all the comments after it, and [this comment has violated the acceptable use policy] looks bad

Oh, and one more thing... IMO if a comment is half on-topic and half off... I think it should be the decision of the news editor.

Oh, MichaelV, about the "fraud" thing in the above post... I don't know if you were regularly viewing the boards in the past three months or so, but what I meant by the "frauds" are, there is this guy, he has about 10 accounts, and we don't know who he is. He pops up randomly and posts profane stuff and he always makes his account name appear like somebody else's. Examples are
Fraud Account Name..............Real Account name
_no_one_2000_` ............... no_one_2000_ (me)
no_one_2000_. ................ no_one_2000_ (me again)
poIarDPres ................... PolarDPres
KermMartiain ................. KermMartian
Kerm_Martian ................. KermMartian (again)
"ac" ......................... ac

There's plenty more... like _lord_nightirose_` and _RCTParRoThEaD_`

Those posts will be reviewed and deleted as needed.

Michael, do you think you could get some sort of help-based formus set up? So people can ask questions about programming or such like, and then others can post their solutions underneath. That would also be useful to people learning to program as they could browse the forums picking up helpful snippets of code.

That's pretty exactly what the mailinglists are for. Subscribe and post questions. You can browse and search previous postings in the archives on our web.

Generally you have a good grasp of what I'm looking for. However, I will be deleting off-topic posts. I know sometimes you feel you need the large number of users who read comments as support for answering a question, but it isn't the place.

This is another reason why I think TICalc.org needs an actual forum; something along the lines of PHPBB or the like. That way, people could post whatever they wanted to, whether it's related to the current news or not.