Whats the process you guys use when you update files? I looked at all of the files from the last update and almost all of them are made by William White. Did he upload a ton of files a the same time or do you not update by date?

The archivers don't do this by day, they upload it on a certain date(when they feel like it :E)

so its possible he uploaded it all in one day

I think you should create folders with sub-catagories. That way people who were just starting to program could have a chance for others to see their work. With the sub-catagories, a newby programmer could have a chance for people to try out their programs and not have you not post them.

I say we should just delete every file and start over the archive. That will be the real test of which programs are best.

Drew Worthey
Head Programmer of BHW Software

But...but...some great programs, like Ztetris, whose authors no longer visit ticalc.org frequently, would then be lost because they weren't uploaded again! Also, plenty of people would just upload their quadratic solvers a second time!

That is the worst idea presented yet in this 300+ comment discussion. (I'm not trying to flame you)

Either that, or he's just a little delete happy.

OOH OOH!!! CAN I DO IT?!?! I LOVE DELETING THINGS!! YAAAAAYYYYY!!! sorry... ;)

Thanks for agreeing with me. Seems we share the same ideas.

Drew Worthey
Head Programmer of BHW Software

OK, here's my justification.

Archivers rejecting meaningless files could produce developers who don't want to send something in that is a specialty file, but still useful that they worked VERY HARD on, simply because the archiver could see no lcd public relevance.

A rating system is subject to the same disadvantages as the one above.

Keeping everything the same isn't working.

That leaves New Folders. I voted for it because it takes files that, according to some people's opinions are irrelevant, and places them in a location where people who want it can access it. For example, for all most of us know, there could be an informal QUADFORM contest to see who can use the most advanced methods, debugging, graphics, optimization, etc., which would serve as a school for advanced programming techniques (something dearly needed). Who cares if it's QUADFORM or an OS? people download the file, learn from it, update other programs and make a positive contribution to the community. Just keep it away from the people who don't need it.

If someone rates a file, we will have to assume honesty. Perhaps if a file drops low, it could be looked at before a delete to see if the rating is useful.

I agree that we have a problem, but I think that two of the points are supurb solutions for it.
1) Subcatagories would be fantastic, I can't tell you how many times I say "I want to find a good puzzle game" and have to spend hours digging through the other programs
2) The rating system would be great, however, it could be abused. So, I think that the admins should instead implement the rating system, but when a program gets rated low they have to approve it's deletion, this way there isn't a long waiting period to get your program uploaded and people can't totally abuse the system :)

What I would like is a "pile of good programs" reccomended higly by a few people, to easily find good programs. This brings up the idea of no one bothering to try untried files...

Maybe there could be a "ticalc reccomends:" side bar. It would present a few very good programs that may be commonly overlooked, and it could rotate every few days. This would not be used for new programs, but for old ones, and would be like a mini featuring of a program.

Sounds like a great idea ... each directory has a "most downloaded" file, but that is not enough.
Besides, this way, nobody's programs get labelled as 'junk'

I really don't want to look through 300+ comments to see if it's already been suggested, so I'll just add a thought here.

What if the rating system was created so that each one of the files could be voted on, giving it a rating of one through five say. Then the search engine could be reworked or something to have an option that could search for files having a certain rating.

Example. If you wanted to find a quadratic solver (since there's so many of them), you would enter "quadratic solver" into the search and select which rating level you'd want it to have. Then the search would only bring up files with that specific rating level. Nothing's removed from the archives, and people can still search through the "junk" files.

But that's just an idea...

Nice idea about the search engine. I think a problem with it is that Google is used, and rewriting the search engine for google might be a little difficult...

How long is this debate going to go on for? The topic's been out for only a couple of days and it already has way more than three hundred posts? Is some ticalc.org staffer going to make an executive decision at some point and just declare the matter closed? Not everyone is going to be happy with what happens...

They used to get into the 700-800 range. But that was before they hired Michael Vincent to do some moderating around here.

It could go for a while. This is the most current news topic...

OK, please be patient with my ignorance on this topic, but since when has there been a quadratic solver on the calc? I typed in a quadratic equation in the symbolic solve() function in my Voyage 200 and the result was most assuredly not the quadratic formula. Doesn't it just use some version of push_internal_simplify (), not the quadratic formula?

I don't know about the Voyage 200 calcs, but on the 89's you need to use "nsolve(" to get the roots.

"solve(0=x^2+2x-3,x)" returns "x=1 or x=-3"

Probably because you entered a quadratic that didn't need the formula to solve.

I used solve(ax^2+bx+c,x) and expected it to return the quadratic formula, which it didn't.

But it doesnt really matter _how_ it solves the equation, the point is that it DOES, thus there is no need for more silly quad form programs.

oh, after my other post i checked it on the calculator. It definitely did return the quadratic formula. You must have typed it in as:

solve(ax^2+bx+c=0,x)

you should have typed:

solve(a*x^2+b*x+c=0,x)

The calc will interpret ax and bx as whole variables, not two multiplied. So it wont even be able to find an x in the equation and it will not know what to do, because there is nothing to solve for.

I did the same thing you did. I guess I'll just reflash it and see if it was corrupted.

That did it. Slightly different, but basically the same, with the exception of sqrt(b^2-4ac) is sqrt(.25b^2-ac)