Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Here is my naive and inevitably unpopular few cents...

I haven't seen much consideration of the purpose of the meego versus maemo forums. My perception of this issue is probably very different, and perhaps ill-informed, but for the foreseeable future at least (and perhaps indefinitely), the meego community focus is almost exclusively on development. Versus here, where we have accumulated a lot of end users. When you consider the direction meego is going in (as in, multiple devices, potentially quite different UIs.. a 'base' OS for a wide variety of platforms and form factors) I would consider it absolutely disastrous to try and implement an all encompassing forum which caters for novice end users of individual devices. I cant see how it could possibly become anything other than a big mess. Meego faces significant enough challenges; multiple architectures, radically varying use cases, licensing/openness stuff, etc. These are big issues, and for the time being, this bread and butter stuff needs to be done.

So who reckons its a good idea to bring 30,000+ Maemo users to the party... many of whom are inactive, potentially uninterested end users who (I'm sorry, this comes across harsh) wont yet have any productive input towards the new project.

If Meego takes off, we're going to see it on phones, netbooks, probably slate PC's and even in cars. Exposure to a huge number of end users. Now lets put all of those users in the same place where the development stuff happens :confused:

I think the brief for the new forum/community needs to be carefully considered, because I fear it wont be compatible with what tmo has become. Dont get me wrong, I like this place, and I love the ethos, but something like this wouldn't work with meego, if meego becomes what the blokes from Intel and Nokia want it to. So far, this forum and its members have resulted from 4 (main) hardware models, and a handful of OS revisions (dont get me wrong, its much more than that now, but I'm stating what Nokia gave us). So imagine what it would look like if you had dozens of devices.. which vary (potentially) significantly in terms of form factor, interface and architecture, and the resultant many tens/hundreds of thousands of users which would appear with their irrelevant hardware related issues, should meego go mainstream.

I'm sorry, I am a pessimist, and I would like to be proved wrong!

I do think meego should have a forum, definitely. But I consider it a very separate entity, and so I don't think that forum should be modeled particularly closely on this one, and I absolutely don't think it should be merged.

Sorry for cynicism, and for being off topic.

*happyblob crawls back under rock*

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Relevant to this discussion: my take on the meego.com target audience.

http://wiki.meego.com/Who%27s_who#Wh...eeGo_community
http://lists.meego.com/pipermail/mee...ry/000028.html

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I think Designers/Artists should be represented as well - I mean, what would MeeGo be without the likes of our design community here? :)

This comic comes to mind:

http://www.usalyze.com/wp-content/dilbert-200209233.gif

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I doesn't seem to me like you're a pessimist, it seems to me you just fail at concepts like 'use cases', 'usability focus' and possibly 'agile development'. "Let us do our work in peace". Oh, and you might possibly think you're more qualified at coming up with solutions than the combined efforts of thousands of tech centric professionals and power users.

This is a resource you're rejecting. Of course, it's a resource that would take some effort to tap into, but if you do, you get better products.

I'm the pessimist. I don't think you're going to make better products. Because you waste opportunities. It's thinking like yours that gives end products like the system restore on my Acer tablet.

If they had a user involved at some point in the process, the alternatives you got would not be to choose between

(c) ontinuance or (a) borted.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I don't see the birth of a meego.com forum as the death of talk.maemo.org!!

tmo is indeed a very interesting place with a lot of value. Why not keeping it to discuss about those Nokia products with Maemo/MeeGo inside.

Nokia will come with new MeeGo devices and there will be a place where users (including MeeGo hardcore developers, which are users too) will want to meet and discuss whatever about them. I can't imagine a better place than the current talk.maemo.org for that.

Let's just set visible gateways to meego.com forums for those clearly needing something more, or something else. For instance, no need for Development forum. Many Community and MeeGo/Harmattan topics can just move there...


Stskeeps: noted and I will add designers to the wiki page.

volt, the involvement of users in development is crucial. It's just that as soon as they get involved they become contributors. If you just want to gather feedback you can just lurk or even drop in a user forum and ask for feedback (like e.g. Vitaly in the MS Outlook support thread).

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Are you advocating two forums to discuss Meego - one for hardcore MeeGo subject matter, and another (t.m.o.) to discuss Nokia MeeGo devices?

That sounds like the quickest and most sure fire way to confuse and bamboozle existing and future owners and divide the community. A seriously bad idea IMHO.

Either kill t.m.o. and bring it across as an archive of legacy postings to MeeGo, or leave it as a Nokia Maemo-only discussion forum aimed at legacy Maemo (and not MeeGo) devices.

Eventually Nokia will lose complete interest in t.m.o. and the problem will then be what to do with all the useful information in this forum as the devices will remain viable for many years, which is why bringing it across to MeeGo *now* makes more sense to me.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I think the hard part is that when you start creating device/manufacturer specific sections to MeeGo forums, it has the potential to become a real mess. It might be a good idea now, but what about a couple of years forward? Will it have separate sections for each device type(phones, netbooks, tablets, media phones, in car infotainment, etc.) each then divided to manufacturers, all of which again divided into devices/OS versions and so on?

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Ubuntu Forum Community

Device specific (or in the case of Ubuntu, architecture specific) discussions co-exist with technical discussions.

Similar story with other communities (eg. TiVo) - hardcore technical discussion co-exists with banter and chat. It's not that big of a problem, and a price worth paying to keep the community "together".

MeeGo should have a Nokia devices sub-forum (which could be broken down further by individual device) and discussions should co-exist equally with hardcore techie users.

I really wouldn't recommend splitting the community artificially such that one forum (MeeGo) is "elitist" and free of "noise" while t.m.o. is left for less technical discussion.

If techie users want to avoid the noise they can just ignore the sub-fora they're not interested in.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

It can be organised any way that is felt appropriate. If at some stage it is felt that there are too many sub-forums it's not difficult to re-organise and reduce the number of sub-forums.

The organisation of all forums should reviewed on a regular basis to ensure they remain relevant and appropriate for the members and topics under discussion. Meego should be no different - as new devices (or just device categories, ie. netbooks, desktops, phones etc.) appear the decision can be made to add a new sub-forum, or not.

If individual devices are given sub-forums then as these devices become legacy devices with little or no discussion then these forums can be hived off to keep the number of forums manageable.

Creating sub-forums for each device might make sense right now, but if MeeGo takes off and more manufacturers come on board that may not remain the case, but it's all manageable.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Fully agreed. Insulating developers from users only encourages "ivory tower" thinking and removes the migration path from end-userdom to bug reporter to tester to developer that the whole open source ecosystem lives on.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Perhaps my reservations were unfounded or at least premature, looking at what has been put here. I absolutely do agree that an ideal solution would be one place with everyone present. I do still think however that hitting that sweet spot will be a massive challenge, and so maintain that it should be very carefully considered. I wasn't really sure that it was possible, but if Millhouse is to be believed (the Ubuntu community I'm not familiar with, but it looks something like what we want!) I guess I was being overly negative, so I'll take your word on it :)

I am however still far from convinced that tmo should turn into meego; for reasons stated previously I consider meego a whole new ball game and really believe that maemo ought to stay here and meego over there, even if there is some overlap. As suggested, if the N900 becomes a valid target for meego it should certainly have a presence on a meego forum. People who keep maemo on their device have tmo and people who advance with meego (primarily, I suspect, power users and hackers for the first year or so at least) have the meego community. This is my two cents and again, I'm fully ready to be proven wrong! I suspect what it comes down to is a semantic misunderstanding whereby I am thinking of meego as a new thing while others consider it (probably correctly?) as the next maemo thing.

-

A little reply to Volt- I didn't phrase my post very eloquently and gave the wrong impression. Usability is the focus of my university studies this year and is my primary area of interest. I will advocate as much as anyone that UCD is not a frivolous luxury but an absolute necessity today. But IMO consulting thousands of users en masse when all those users only represent one section of the target demographic is of limited practical benefit (potentially counterproductive); I would expect things to be done differently... and so my ideas were not incompatible with a decent user consultation process. I really couldn't agree more with your view that users need to be part of (or preferably, central to) the develoment of the project.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

In my opinion. if possible. this shouls be the bes solution.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

The way I see it, from the forums point of view, I think TMO will evolve to a device specific site where end-users will keep talking, asking, and helping about their (current) device. I foresee moblin.org having the same set of forums as well for their own devices.

MeeGo's forum (if we create it) on the other hand will be mainly focused on the development ecosystem (Quim has done a great job identifying moblin.org's target users). It won't just be a haven for developers to talk amongst themselves (the mailing list is quite helpful with that) but what it entails is having the designers and end users there as well to provide feedback and with the goal of making the apps better. We have seen so much great advancements when the end-users start interacting with the developers here at TMO -- I actually would like to see a new thread automatically created (and not do a manual [Announce] anymore) for every new app release so everyone can talk about that app.

With regards to the triangle relationship between MeeGo, maemo.org, and moblin.org, I see anyone belonging to any of the camps to redirect the discussion to the more official forum, whenever a device or app specific question is brought up. I am quite optimistic that the 3-forum structure will hold-up and will work quite well (if ever we go this route).

EDIT: there might be more forums since it seems like MeeGo will run on Symbian devices as well.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I can't help but feel that multiple forums will be detrimental to the formation of a cohesive MeeGo community. It's an unnecessary and largely artificial separation of hardware from software, product from development.

What will happen to someone who posts a question in the "wrong" forum - will they be told to b*gger off and post in the correct place (wherever that might be)? For example, someone asking a Nokia related question on the MeeGo forum - will they be told "Sorry, please post in your own forum - thread closed"? Or a Nokia owner with an obvious OS/software related technical issue, will their thread be ignored when posting in the Nokia forum, because the Nokia forum isn't for technical issues? What a mess that will be.

These are just my opinions of course, as it's not clear what the benefit is of having multiple forums, spread out over the internet, all separate from each other but all discussing the same thing (albeit at different levels of "sophistication").

One last example: Android Forums (some of you may have heard of this operating system).

Do we really think doing it different is doing it better?

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

So how do you propose this to happen -- whenever a new device (company/brand/model) comes out, a new forum gets created at MeeGo.com? That would mean creating a forum for each new Nokia Harmattan device, Symbian device, Intel device, Clarion, LG, Acer, Dell, etc.? If those forums are not created, there will be discussions regarding those devices anyway. Isn't it better to just go to TMO or to moblin.org to just discuss about a specific device?

Artificial forums (e.g. Nokia Devices, Intel Devices, etc) can be created that when clicked, go to the specific company forums, TMO or forums.nokia in Nokia's case.

Sure, these problems will come up, often in fact. Dupes happen here at TMO all the time, and at MeeGo.com, it will happen most probably in a forum called 'General.' While your example shows the wrong way of saying it, I believe that a lot will reply nicely that they have seen a discussion (link added) about a certain topic at the TMO or at moblin.org.

I've seen this happen a lot of times as well in the mailing list, bugzilla, mwkn, blogs, news sites. They all mention the same topic and a link is provided to where the official forum thread is. They might still keep talking about it on the mailing list, blog, or news site, but for some reason, they will all gravitate to the 'official' thread and discuss it there.

Come to think of it, if someone points me to a specific forum or thread about something I am asking about, I would definitely appreciate it and go to that forum or thread to discuss it or maybe ask the same question again. I don't think it's a big deal, and I think it makes sense.

I'm not against having just one forum since I think it can be forced to work. I think it's just more organized to have some forums maintained where the correct organization or company has more control over.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

+1 (or more, if I'm permitted)

Look at the N900 forum here as an example. Consumers buy a box with "N900" printed on it. They then find a problem, discover a question, or think of an innovative idea, so they visit talk.maemo.org and post in the N900 forum. That's what was printed on the box, after all. Nine times out of ten though, they really want Maemo 5 or some other forum.

That's no problem here. I just bump the thread over to the correct place and leave a temporary redirect behind. The move is nearly invisible to the poster and other users of the site.

Once forums are split out to different servers and domains though, such transparent moves become impossible. "Thread closed. Go elsewhere," is a nasty bucket of cold water to dump on a potential contributor. Heck, RESOLVED MOVED to Brainstorm continues to cause hard feelings, and that's not even pushing issues and their reporters off to another community, just another service within one community.

Asking new community members to distinguish between hardware and first-party software has been difficult enough here on Talk. I can't see too many new users or developers immediately being able to trace that twisty line of separation between MeeGo software and the vendor-specific bits that run atop and along side it.

Sure, fan sites dedicated to specific categories of MeeGo devices will spring up. maemo.org doesn't cover every Maemo need, and I don't expect MeeGo.com to either. MeeGo.com's sub-forum for, say, the Nokia N900+2 might not be the biggest or most popular, but offering it, rather than a shove out the door, is the important part. Palm OS-focused sites managed to offer sub-forums for the products of diverse manufacturers, and I think MeeGo.com can too.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I think Reggie is making perfect sense on this (not meant to insult anyone) and given his experience and expertise I'm willing to support his proposals.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

how many new users coming to MeeGo.com for first time do you think will have heard of or known to go to a old platform forum called maemo to ask MeeGo device questions?
i think none and your going to create more work and duplications of answers in the long run

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I'm not proposing that it go down to the device level - at least not yet. I've already posted links to other forums that cope with similar problems to the one we are facing here. A middle path would be to create vendor forums, or simply device category forums, or even a combination of the two and only when necessary (due to the volume of discussion) consider creating device specific forums if/when particular devices become popular.

Basically, I'd just suggest playing it by ear for now but at the very least create a single forum where everyone can partake at all levels and employ whatever organization makes sense today. And there's always the mailing lists for the hardcore techies that think web forums make life too easy. :)

Great, but unless they're all using OpenID it's not likely I'll be able to post in that other forum and thus help someone unless I want to sign up to yet-another-forum. It's an option, but not one I would like to see happen, particularly as it means searching for information would be next to impossible which is another benefit of a single/centralised forum.

However if a vendor does want to strike out on their own and have their own MeeGo device forum with their own little community that's entirely up to them, but it's not something I want to be a part of.

Of course my example may be considered extreme, and I'm sure at first that people will be very kind and assist those newbies that are posting in the "wrong" forum, but eventually people will become more agressive/assertive out of frustration because it may become a regular issue, or posts will simply be ignored leaving the original poster to wonder what kind of community this is. Pretty soon we'll have stickies all over the show dictating posting etiquette.

And none of this is actually necessary, but may come to pass in an effort to cut down on anticipated "noise" that could result from a single, large and vibrant community. That's really the only reason I can see for this debate - a fear of noise.

I can certainly see that multiple forums would be more organised and focused, but I can also see that it will result in a tremendous amount of overlap and fragmentation - technical people will congregate towards meego.com (hub) leaving the newbies and not-so-technical end users to discuss amongst themselves on device specific forums (rim)... what a waste, and I'm not sure it's really sustainable.

Let's say a husband and wife have MeeGo devices, one a Nokia and the other LG - as I'm sexist, the husband has the support role in the household so he's now posting away on two forums depending on which device has the problem. He got the Nokia first so he knows his way around the Nokia MeeGo forum, but the LG forum is new and very immature and doesn't have such good help - should he discuss a problem he has with his LG phone on the Nokia forum instead? After all, the devices are going to be very similar, a Nokia person might be able to offer some assistance - or the problem may already have been answered which he could find by searching the Nokia site.

Anyway I think I'm digressing... but if that's the way it goes - fine, we're only our 4th (or is it 5th?) OS rewrite in 5 years, and now we're discussing the 3rd forum reboot in the same time-frame. ;-)

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I think it's a given that there are pros and cons to either polar approach. Ultimately going forward though I think the arguments for breaking with the maemo.org forum and starting from a clean slate for MeeGo make the most sense.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Can we agree at least that "talk.meego.com" needs to start from scratch, since the MeeGo project starts from scratch? Just renaming talk.mamo.org doesn't make any sense to me, even if the legal aspect (privacy data, etc) was clear, which is not. Maemo 1-5 and OS200n are not MeeGo. All the apps discussed here will need to make their MeeGo API compatibility check. 99% of the posts in this forum are not related or relevant to MeeGo today.

Why would the MeeGo project want to take this? Please look at the possibility of this move from the perspective of a non-Maemo guy e.g. someone with a background in Moblin, Android, OpenMoko, OpenEmbedded, Ubuntu Mobile, Qtopia, Pandora etc etc. How do you explain to them than their/your/our forum starts day 1 with half million posts basically off-topic from a MeeGo point of view?

What matters is the people, and there is nothing stopping anybody from registering at meego.com. If someone here is not intersted personally about doing this step, then why bother about organizing complex user/content migrations.

MeeGo is a new community project and it makes total sense that the new community members step in by their own feet. Nobody has made a big fuzz about registering to the mailing lists and we have some already, being active and useful.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Not to mention they may have just signed up to meego.com to post their post only to find they've signed up to the wrong forum and now need to sign up somewhere else to post about the same problem again.

It may not be the end of the world for the community, but it's certainly not going to be the best end user experience or endear that new user to his new MeeGo device.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I agree. I would think when MeeGo starts appearing in Nokia devices, most if not all of the forums here at TMO now will be moved under a "Maemo Devices" category,. A new "MeeGo Devices" category and sub-forums will then be created.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

If that's the biggest sticking point to moving this forward then Yes, fine, let's start it from scratch *as long as* we don't fragment the community any further and push people to talk.maemo.org whenever they open their post with "I've got a new Nokia MeeGo device..."

talk.meego.com will be the new community and talk.maemo.org will, I suppose, die a natural death if that is what ultimately happens. Anyone wishing to spend time in both camps will be a real trooper - ultimately though I think most will migrate from talk.maemo.org to talk.meemo.com over time.

Later this year Maemo5 users with PR1.2/Qt may be confused when they have a largely MeeGo "compatible" OS (from an API point-of-view) - should it be discussed on maemo.org or meego.com? - but perhaps that's another bridge to cross when it happens!

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Good that we are starting to put concrete examples:

http://ubuntuforums.org/
Good reference but there are some deep differences that need to be taken into account when comparing.

- Ubuntu users are first Ubuntu users, and then users of whatever hardware Ubuntu is installed. Most of them installed the OS themselves in a piece of hardware that came with another OS. This means that they are well aware of the difference between OS and device, and they have a clear priority over the OS and the apps available for Ubuntu. MeeGo will be also installed in e.g. netbooks, but it is expected that the majority of users will reach first a device that comes with MeeGo pre-installed. This also means that the possibility of getting MeeGo vendors interested in own user communities is higher than the same possibility for Ubuntu vendors, simply because there are not that many.

- The Ubuntu experience is mostly the same across devices. Some drivers here, some branding there but once things are setup Ubuntu is the basically same Ubuntu everywhere and everybody polls from the same repos. Now compare the situation with MeeGo, offering 5 UX references and (most important) the possibility of having vendor specific repositories. Ubuntu apps are available for everybody but what about the apps pre-installed in a Nokia MeeGo device? Many of them probably not available for non-Nokia devices.

- The software in Ubuntu repositories is mostly free as in freedom and in beer. Alright, some non-free as in freedom but still gratis and freely downloadable. The commercial software aspect around Ubuntu is minor, if not negligible. This is a situation very different from MeeGo, that being an open source platform needs to be successful attracting commercial apps that again might or might not be available across all users. Also in the case of open source you can at least get support from any developer interested in the project and willing to help. In the case of proprietary software the dependence from the owners wills are higher.

So fundamentally the Ubuntu forums are populated by a quite homogeneous community of users that are aware of common elements like Linux, open source, software platform, common repositories... The MeeGo users will find themselves in a different situation. A core group will also care about Linux, open source, software platform, common repositories... but it is expected that a majority will actually care primarily about the device they got, with a customized UI and a bunch of apps, some of them unique to their vendor and some of them common for everybody.

We can see this as a fragmented community or we can see this as a very diverse community.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Fine, but if you consider that Ubuntu is mainly a Linux distribution as is MeeGo, and there are different device categories for Ubuntu just as there might be for MeeGo (in addition to phones), are the differences really that great?

Granted there will be different UX references, but presumably that will devolve into vendor specific discussion within each vendor/UX sub-forum? Is it really necessary to create a separate and dedicated forum on another server for those devices using one of the 5 UX, or would 5UX sub-forum within meego.com be a better option? I'd certainly go with the latter (or however it needs to be sliced, grouping discussions at the highest level considered necessary) and if we're starting from scratch, what is the objection?

A better example may be the Android forum though - I appreciate it's not an official Google forum (they don't seem to have one) but it's illustrative of how diverse interests can co-exist within a single forum - even network operators!

Perhaps somewhere in between is what is needed for MeeGo, but I really don't think it will be wise to fragment this community any more than is necessary - it's had enough knocks over the years.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Another example mentioned here: http://androidforums.com/

Or wasn't http://www.talkandroid.com/android-forums/ the "more official" forum? It's really difficult to tell who is who in the world of Android forums.

Actually the Android case is an example of clearly separate forums for developers and rest of the world.

The official Android "forums" are http://developer.android.com/resourc...ty-groups.html

http://androidforums.com/ is a private initiative from http://phandroid.com/ and both sites ar full of advertisement. I guess it's someone's business, and in it sense of course their interest is to embrace as much as possible.

Let's look at the situation around e.g. the Droid:

http://www.droidforums.net/ exists, from the same company putting up http://www.nexusoneforum.net/
HTC tries to pull their own Android forum
http://community.htc.com/na/htc-foru...f/default.aspx
Verizon too: http://forums.verizon.com/t5/Android...ndroid_Devices

About the Nexus One, apart from the mentioned private forum there is the official from Google: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/android?hl=en
Guess what, T-Mobile has also a forum: http://forums.t-mobile.com/t5/Nexus-One/bd-p/Nexus_One

And there are several other Android "community" forums there.

So the Android case (that actually as a platform/community structure is more directly comparable to MeeGo than Ubuntu) is not an example of unified forum, but the contrary: it is perhaps an example of extreme forum fragmentation telling us about a scenario we also want to avoid.

However, how much can we do to prevent that? Why device vendors, operators and private businesses would act differently with MeeGo?

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I agree with you with option 1, except if Drupal forum is as horrible as some said, :-) then it is option 2.

Thanks!

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

My experience here is end-users will look for support for their specific device. They won't care about the different UX's because honestly, majority won't know what UX they have nor what it is called.

I've been running a Palm OS enthusiast site for 9 years already it has become clear the end-users like to see a forum for their specific device rather than say a Palm OS version forum that encompasses like 10 different devices of different brands/models. Members with the same device are more united and helpful to each other, plus they can always use search whenever they are looking for something they can't find in their device's forum.

Each device will probably have something unique (form factor, maybe a new camera, a different GPS, an FM radio, etc.). A forum for each device from my experience, works, from the end-user perspective.

As for apps, that's a different matter.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I wonder how many times the same question has been asked on each of those Android forums (thanks for finding them all), and because there are so many the usefulness of each is diminished?

I suppose we could discuss this forever. I've made my point, I'd rather we had a unified MeeGo community forum with discussion at all levels and as much vendor representation as possible.

How the MeeGo forum is sliced and diced I'm not really bothered, just as long as we don't push device owners elsewhere when they come looking for help (unless a vendor doesn't want representation on MeeGo of course, but that would be bizarre).

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Do you mean what I would call a "sub-forum" (forum within a forum) for each device, rather than a forum per device on a separate server?

I can certainly see the merits of the former, with owners clubbing together to help out etc., and perhaps when there are multiple devices running MeeGo it's the kind of organisational change that could, if thought appropriate, be made to a a meego.com forum.

What concerns me is a forum on one server for MeeGo Device X, and a forum on another server for MeeGo Device Y, and a device independent forum at meego.com, when there is so much overlap between device X and device Y and the membership of meego.com.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Sorry if I misunderstood you. Yes, that is painful, but you know what, it happens all the time. Not that it is correct, but most of the time, it happens when there are no official forums for that device or a lack of support in that 'official' forum. It's the latter that needs to be done right.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Actually, just because you do not see it, does not mean it will not happen.

Problem is, a lot of people will now have to keep track of both forums and they will most likely abandon one of them for the other. This is most likely going to be detrimental to both tmo and the meego.com forums. Can we please just have a single site, with subforums dedicated to MeeGo and Maemo devices, with Maemo stuff being slowly phased out as MeeGo devices hit the market? Notice that it is quite possible to have this site accessible from both talk.maemo.org and talk.meego.com domains and have different visual themes/style depending on which domain the user is coming from. You can even reorder subforums based on the domain, placing MeeGo subforums at the top for the meego.com users!

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Ultimately I would like to see representation for all MeeGo devices within a single MeeGo forum, I think most people agree with that (although I could be wrong).

The sticking point seems to be whether end-user device support is going to play nicely with the big boys and their technical discussions - I can't see why it shouldn't.

What if there were two meego.com hosted forums, maybe a dev.meego.com and a talk.meego.com with the devices split out within the latter and a wider range of discussion/banter/chat, while technical discussion takes place in the former? I'm not suggesting it's ideal, not even sure it offers any advantages from a forum administration point of view... just that I think we're going round in circles. :)

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I'd really rather see brand-specific stuff in its own forum.

This was all cut-and-dry when Maemo AND every device pointed back to Nokia. That won't be the case going forward. And I don't think MeeGo wants to be the *official* support channel for every type of hardware it winds up on. If this is successful, that leads to a very messy forum-- worse than we have now, and people complain now. A lot.

Consider: MeeGo is the brand now.

I'd rather focus on the OS, the applications... the aspects that are universal or mostly so. And for devices, certainly allow the posts but for triage purposes that would include referrals to better fora (like Forum Nokia). Many here want a "Complaints" subforum here for a similar purpose-- maybe MeeGo.com forum ends up with a Device Questions subforum...

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

And, as you say on Twitter, this is a "mess". All the people I know who own Android devices say they own an Android device. However, because android.com doesn't provide a space for power-users and enthusiasts to sit, there are fora popping up everywhere fragmenting the user community - let alone the user community from the developer community from the power-user community.

meego.com taking a "we cater to the developers who build on top of our platform" will discourage developers from interacting with users (why do I want to follow 4 different sites to see who's talking about my software) and prevent a critical mass of MeeGo users from gathering in any one single place.

Nokia obviously wants MeeGo to be a brand which is exposed to users (otherwise we'd have "Maemo 6, powered by MeeGo" for Harmattan) - so going to whatever lengths are necessary to prevent the fragementation of the platform that every commentator says is a risk and/or issue for Android must be the #1 priority as one of the two commercial stakeholders. Not turning away from end-users, not washing your hands of existing Maemo devices and not providing easy-to-use cross-platform, cross-device tools, deployment options and APIs for developers are the way to do that.

Surely something that Nokia can answer from their own point-of-view and any other manufacturers Nokia have been talking to? This is a case of leading by example early on and using the shared leadership of the TSG to ensure that technically the platform can deliver that. (Similar sentiments can be expressed here about the talk of vendor-specific app stores rather than enabling/facilitating an Extras model for "MeeGo" applications.)

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

A big part of how quickly maemo.org will fade out is whether MeeGo is a realistic day-to-day OS for existing Maemo 5 users; Harmattan users and maybe even N8x0 users.

If, despite MeeGo's open source platform and the power and leadership Nokia have for MeeGo (and their own devices), Maemo 5 is the last usable OS for the N900, and there's no realistic progression from "MeeGo/Harmattan" to "real MeeGo"; then maemo.org will have a long life which will decline slowly. If, however, Maemo as an OS is replaced on thousands of devices with MeeGo then the decline could - and should - be a lot quicker.

It's also important to note that we're told Harmattan plans aren't changed by the MeeGo announcement (we don't know how much they were planned around MeeGo anyway - perhaps why the SDK is late?). Therefore, I'm going to assume that Harmattan is basically Fremantle + Qt 4.x + Aegis.

Even if this is released under a MeeGo brand, the people who are best placed to support that OS, and get existing Maemo applications running on the "community managed" Gtk+ is the existing Maemo community. Spawning a MeeGo forum too quickly will mean that one of the few things that Nokia are bringing to MeeGo (apart from their name) - the existing community of savvy power-users and enthusiasts will be lost. This will have two effects:

1. The MeeGo community will be at the 770 level in terms of processes, procedures, channels and so on. It will take years to grow that community into something of the complexity of the Maemo community (and many of the same mistakes can be avoided). This effectively "reboots" Maemo into MeeGo, meaning that Nokia is starting with a new next-generation mobile platform rather than continuing the one they've got; meaning more lost ground against iPhone OS and Android.
2. The existing Maemo community will have no continuity into MeeGo, and we might as well go and buy in to a different platform.

Of course, point #2 may mean Nokia can get rid of some of us ;-)

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

MeeGo Forum is boring.. I registered but there is nothing much happening there. So cannot be day to day thing.

But what is the whole point of going to MeeGo forum? Since N900 is not official support by MeeGo and it's only good for Developers. We are the normal Users won't find it that related to N900 at the moment until QT4.6 is released or something.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

WHAT MeeGo forum?

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Oh man, they are great!
There's candy, free booze - and no Bugzilla.
Pretty much heaven.

I likes it!