What I am thinking is that maybe there should be another section to POTM for ported games. Then all orginal games go against original games, and ported games go against ported games. I will admit that porting from a big screen (85/86) to a small screen (82/83) is pretty hard, but all you have to do is find a few little bits of info like how many bytes in screen and stuff like that. One thing I'd like to mention is some games may seem ported but aren't. They may be very similar (clones) but should still be eligible since the person did not copy any code. Like if you look at Nibbles v1.1 for the TI-82 (I wrote) I state that it is a clone of Oskar Liljeblad's Nibbles for the TI-85, but I did not copy one single line of code (i even drew the title pic by hand). The reason I did is because I like nibbles, and no one made one for the TI-82, and I own a TI-82 and wanted to play it. Also, the title pic was drawn because I was bored :) I did not care for the TI-83/86 versions either. But I did give credit to Oskar for writing the original 85 version, and I state this in the program. Just e-mail me to look at my source and you can compare our code and tell I wrote mine all original...But what I'm getting at, and has been my point all along, people that only copy code and change addresses (ie: VIDEO_MEM to GRAPH_MEM) don't deserve a POTM, but if the public likes it so much, the original program has probably already won POTM and therefor no longer needs to win it again...
Just my opinion...

Wow, another set of awards just for ports? That would double the awards given out each month...

It wouldn't be an award for EVERY calc. The ports section would be like the BASIC section: 1 award, all calcs included.

With so many new and good ideas on how to improve the POTM (and this site in general), the TI-Calc.org staff will either have to hire more people or quit school and make updating this site a full time job. :)

Or hire Bryan back...

"The award was created so new (or substantially updated) programs & games could be recognized by the TI community. It also gives programmers something to work for (modivation if you will) and to display proudly on their web sites." If that is what the award is for, it has failed. Really good, but lesser known programs get only a few votes, while games that dont meet that criteria and dont deserve an award win it just because they are popular. I dont know how this could be fixed, you should have to use all of the programs in a catagory before you vote on one. Maybe have voters could take a quiz to prove that they have tried them all? The current system needs to be changed...

The only way to fix this would be for us to manually choose programs which we thought deserved the award. The reason for this is that the public will choose the games that are popular. That's just the way it works.

Yes! The public is choosing the games that are most popular. But that is not the point of the POTM award. Just because a game is popular or something, that doesn't mean it should be eligable to win the award. Perhaps you should rename it to "Most Popular Program of the Month".

But IMHO, I think you guys have watered-down the award since I "left"..

Exactly.. however, a quiz doesn't sound too practical.

In the ideal world, voters would only vote on a particular section (calculator) if they have tried all the programs. But I think we all know, the world is not ideal.

Sure its practical, inconveniant maybe. Just have a form (simular to the surveys) that asks a question for each program (a question only someone who had used it would know.) It wouldn't be that hard. Just get a staff member to make a quiz each month. Dont have a staff member? Get one. Tons of people would be willing to do it, myself included.

Would you allow the person to take the quiz over again if they fail the first time?

Making such a quiz would be difficult. You would have to strike the right balance between making it too easy and too hard.

However, no matter how easy or hard such a quiz would be, you would always have some people complaining because it was too hard, and they failed it, but they actually had used each program before.

Naturally they would only get one chance, but it would be very simple to make easy. Just ask something like what the first word is or something like that. Of course people would know to expect a quiz, and they would be told what will be on it (ie: For the program, xxxxx, be ready to enter the first word to occur in the program, etc...)If they felt cheated because they failed, they could email the person in charge of the quiz for a second chance with a new quiz, etc... Simple

How do you limit each person to one quiz? >By name? - no, too many Mike's and John's. :)
>By IP address? - no, they change. (dynamic addresses)
Even if there were a safe-guard of some sort, my school (as well as most others) has about 100 computers or more spread all over the place - if someone wanted to take that quiz a second time, they could.

When people vote (in real life, such as for a president :)), it's up to the voter to do the research on a candidate his or herself. If s/he doesn't, s/he should not vote on account of everyone else possibly ending up with a poor leader.

We're should be on a trust basis here. Reading all these posts, I get the feeling that it's impossible to make this voting process 100% fair and bug-free. The only way this POTM award thingy will ever work error-free will be (just like in every other voting process) if each voter takes the voting process seriously and does in-depth research before voting.

Of course, to me, it seems silly to go through all this for just a POTM award system on a calculator site, but some people seem to take it pretty seriously.

-AlienCow

With the current voting/survey system, you have to register in order to vote. Each "account" must have a unique e-mail address. So as long as you have unlimited e-mail addresses, you could have unlimited tries at the quiz and you could vote as many times as you wanted (assuming the sleeping ticalc.org staff doesn't catch on).

could you use IP's ? If not, if someone is willing to go through the trouble of setting up multiple accounts, then let them cheat...bastards.

Most IPs are dynamic. It would be far easier to cheat, just re-vote each time you log onto the 'net.

Personally, I was thrilled to see my game finally get some recognition. Let me tell you all something about porting: I worked with bill nagel, and -he- himself couldnt port dying eyes to the 83 or 85. Some of the routines, and apparently bugs which only showed up in other versions, escaped him. therefore, when sam finally did port it, i was happy-- and impressed by the accomplishment. Dying Eyes is one of the only games in ticalc.orgs ratings with a 10, but yet no one knows of it? I think kirk meyer or whoever it was made an important point: that the PROGRAM gets the award, not the author or porter specifically. If Dying Eyes wins, then so do Sam AND I.. besides, if youre looking for "fame" amongst the zitfilled legions of TI owners, I suggest looking for it somewhere else. Programming is about your own personal level of finesse, not how many "prestigious" "awards" you can get at ticalc.org. That said, go eat your wheaties.

I just wanted to say that no matter how hard the porting was, the program should win only because the original program (and author) deserves it. After all, its his (her?) program, not the porters.

However, yes, I do agree that giving the award to the PROGRAM is a good idea. And I don't have a problem with the porter taking some of the credit, I just don't like seeing the porter getting all the credit and the original author getting none.

However, I don't know how ticalc.org goes about contacting the "authors" of a program that wins an award. Do they actually find out if the program was a port and contact both authors? Somehow I doubt that...

Ticalc.org does not contact the author, original or porter.

Frankly Bryan, I think you're blowing the value of a POTM award way way out of proportion. I can think of maybe 2 sites, which actually display their POTM icon. To say that one person takes more credit over another implies that someone actually takes credit. POTM recognizes PROGRAMMING efforts, which reflect upon the PROGRAMMER not the porter. It's not like ticalc.org lists program authors next to each nomination, and if you look a program's description, a porter is clearly stated as such.

You are right, not that many sites (or authors) display the icon. Probably a good indication of how popular the award is. :)

The Program of the Month award comes with animated screenshots. Authors/porters must contact us in order to get their screenshot, because some of them don't want it/don't have a web page. mf.calc.org has our potm award displayed on the smq page; i'm not sure where the bigdyna page is but they have one of our awards; tcpa.calc.org has our award displayed.

In short, it isn't Author of the Month award. The program is what wins. If the authors want their reward, then they need to email me and I will make an animated screenshot of it.

>Let me tell you all something about porting: I >worked with bill nagel, and -he- himself
>couldnt port dying eyes to the 83 or 85. Some of >the routines, and apparently bugs which only >showed up in other versions, escaped him. >therefore, when sam finally did port it, i was >happy-- and impressed by the accomplishment.

That is, without a doubt, the coolest porting-related compliment that I've ever received. Thanks ;)