| Features: One Site to Rule them All | Jayhawk | If I asked a random visitor to this site to describe the TI community, chances are they'd describe it in terms of websites. Sure, there's a lot more to the community than sites, but these sites you visit for news, games, and anything else calculator related are really the face of the community. Believe it or not, if all the major sites vanished, there'd probably still be an active hobbyist community based about TI calculators. The first TI graphing calculator was released in 1990; the first major site came along a few years later. The community isn't about sites but about a large group of hobbyists with a common interest. Large sites are a valuable part of this community, but the sites wouldn't exist without the users. Instead of working against each other, like sites and users tend to do, they have to exist as a partnership. The users benefit greatly from sites while the sites just wouldn't exist were it not for the large community of users.
Anyone who's become a part of the community in the past couple of years only knows one major site with a couple of minor contenders. It hasn't always been that way, however. Five years ago, three major sites existed, all of which had their strengths and weaknesses. To the casual observer, that might seem like a fragmented community in need of consolidation. It's interesting, however, that people who were around at that time would describe it as the height of the TI community and it's been downhill from there.
To many nerds, the name Microsoft is synonymous with evil. While there's many complaints against the Redmond-based software giant, one of the most prominent is that they're close to being a monopolist. While they continually add features and functionality to software products, the pressure to innovate and stay ahead of the pack is off. Most people don't know there's an alternative -- if you want a computer, you'll have to accept that Microsoft Windows is part of the system. That's one of the rallying cries around Linux and other open source software -- it's an opportunity to take back large portions of the software industry and restore competition. When there's competition for users, there's innovation. And when there's innovation, the users win.
The same principle applies to the TI community. While one of those three sites from five years ago is defunct and another is in a period of transition and is a shadow of its former self, their influence on the community as it stands today is undeniable. The competition in the past brought about innovation, and that innovation brought about the sites you see today.
Woodrow Wilson was quite possibly the most intelligent American president of the 20th century. When the first world war ended, he proposed a series of points aimed at preventing such a war from happening again. The world ignored his recommendations and two decades later his fears were realized when the second world war started. The main idea of Wilson's 14 points holds true to nearly any situation -- if we don't learn from our mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them.
The TI community has seen many websites come and go. While many sites have died due to lack of interest by their maintainers, a large group have been plagued by another fundamental problem. When a site becomes too concerned with rules, regulations, and standards, they forget their mission to serve the users. While the community does expect a basic amount of ethical conduct from all sites, there are no other rules except those imposed by the sites upon themselves. To an extend, these self-imposed standards serve a purpose and improve the site. These rules, when taken too far, however, breed complacency and stifle innovation. When the rules interfere with providing content to the users, whether it be archives, news, columns, reviews, or any other section, the rules need to be thrown out.
The community can play a large part in overthrowing these harmful rules and regulations. When innovation is needed and it's not coming from any of the existing players in the game, it's time to start over and create something new. That's the time to learn from our mistakes and make something better. The power to start over has been given to the community and nobody, not even the most influential figures in the community, can take that power away.
We, as a community, have our Microsoft. Who will be our Linux?
Odds 'n' Ends
Calc.org, one of the oldest TI sites still in existence, has nearly completed a new design for their planned overhaul. They are currently looking for someone with PHP and MySQL skills and who has enough time over the next few months to complete the overhaul. If this describes you, send an e-mail to Nate or Steve to volunteer your services. Calc.org is one of the few sites still around with tradition and a history of excellence. It's in everyone's interest to get this site back up and running, so please do what you can to help.
Last week, I wrote about the lack of original content besides programs being produced in the TI community. It's come to my attention that rather recently a site called Calc WebZine is doing many of the things I mentioned. Check this site out for interviews, in-depth reviews, and some of the best news articles of any calculator site.
Our friends at ticalc.org are reporting that TI's store, where applications and calculators are sold, has been overhauled. Furthermore, they've moved free applications out of the store and back into other areas of the site. While registration is still required to download these free applications, they are simpler to find and acquire.
After a long absence from the web, the TI Calculator Programming Alliance website is back online. At the time of writing, it doesn't appear to be fully functional, but it's far more than what's been online in past months. Here's hoping this is a sign of the revival of one of the best and most prolific programming groups of a few years ago.
And finally it's time to look back at this week in TI community history. Three years ago on January 14, TI finally released an official version of their SDK for the TI-89 and TI-92 Plus. The SDK had been in beta for a long time before that. And six years ago on January 11, the news that TI would be producing the TI-83 Plus made the front page of ticalc.org.
Got some odds 'n' ends? E-mail them to redux@calcgames.org. | | 15 Jan 2005, 22:10 GMT |
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 | | Re: Features: One Site to Rule them All | allynfolksjr | | Nice article, I really like the odds 'n' ends feature. Gives a nice wrap-up of events. Will an article like this be a weekly feature? | | 15 Jan 2005, 22:38 GMT |
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| | | Re: Features: One Site to Rule them All | Jayhawk | | There's always things in the community to write about; that's not going to be a problem. I'm hoping I can get enough content to make Odds 'n' Ends a part of every column, too. | | 15 Jan 2005, 23:06 GMT |
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| | | Re: Features: One Site to Rule them All | Morgan | | To me that would be hard to do, but I don't know what redux thinks about that! It would be very cool, but I won't expect it. | | 15 Jan 2005, 23:10 GMT |
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| | | Re: Features: One Site to Rule them All | zkostik | Yeah Morgan, I agree with you on that. Though, I'm kinda happy that someone has reminded everyone of the calc history. Hopefully people will not be as close centered and expand the scope of calc sites they visit. Unfortunately this isn't very likely to happen...
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09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 | | 16 Jan 2005, 12:38 GMT |
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| | | Re: Features: One Site to Rule them All | JcCorp | | I like the title. I also like having new news every week. :) | | 16 Jan 2005, 05:20 GMT |
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| | | Re: Features: One Site to Rule them All | Coolv | | .....New news every day! | | 16 Jan 2005, 10:28 GMT |
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| | | Re: Features: One Site to Rule them All | zkostik | Yup, this is much more fun. Honestly I may actually like reading these news and participate in discussions even more than trying new games and progs.
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09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 | | 16 Jan 2005, 12:39 GMT |
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| | | Re: Features: One Site to Rule them All | VutonTheta | | ditto | | 17 Jan 2005, 12:19 GMT |
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