Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

While this may not be a very popular idea, I was actually thinking along these lines too. If nothing else, it gets the forum up and moving, because we're drawing a distinction between user related stuff (unresolved issues here) and development stuff (for contributors of the project, to move things forward. I reckon this ought to be the priority for now?). By separating these, we can move forward with development at least, because right now it seems unnecessary to be getting stuck on issues surrounding end users when the first meego device is still many months off. And as stated, we’re going nowhere quickly in the ‘user’ department!

With regards to the user part of the forum, I think Texrat made an excellent point (#155). I still think we need to consider the purpose of talk.meego (in particular the end-user section), what it aims to do. For example, thinking out loud, we could remove ‘end user tech support’ role from the equation and instead consider the user section of the forum as (i) feedback and testing from users (ii) a vehicle to push advancements made in the development section to the community of power users (iii) a resource for hackers/developers to interact with a community of power users. This would provide a symbiotic relationship between hardcore developers and a manageable community of power users, and would provide a concrete and tangible benefit to the project. At the same time, the scope of the forum can be more clearly defined (as in, it concentrates on the meego platform, as opposed to ‘everything meego’ which would encompass support of individual meego devices). This would minimise the noise from novice users’ questions and wouldn’t require the massive forum structure which might otherwise be needed for ‘all devices, all users’. For tech support, manufacturers ought to take on the responsibility, as they are widely expected to and probably prepared to do (for example, if your average consumer has a problem with the software on their new symbian phone, they will seek advice from the network or manufacturer of the handset, they are unlikely to go and track down symbian and post something to the developer community. Maybe this is technically the correct course of action if it is a problem with Symbian, but it is not done because this doesn’t make sense to the user!). This is where I think meego forums shouldn’t become the next tmo, and should serve a different purpose from the off.

Like I said anyway, this is all just thinking out loud and I’m very much expecting large holes to be found in my logic! :D

Edit: my bad! I'm a bit behind, having only just caught up with the meego-community mailing list. Sorry some of whats above isn't really necessary! Anyone not familiar can catch up here

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

What I would like to see is a better for development compared with the one here in maemo.org. Currently there is only one section called Development and the description for it is:

So theory it's not a place to ask something like "how do I access the the camera with Qt". Currently this should probably done in Forum Nokia. But especially the Maemo section is rather quiet compared to maemo.org. Yes, there is a dev mailing list, but I personally prefer forums.

I would like very much like to see better support for devs in MeeGo forum. I also think the development sections should be divided by framework and language. For example:

-Development
--Qt
---C++
---Python

Yet at the same time, I'm don't wont to see it become a devs only forum. That would most likely lead to plenty of apps with ingenious code, but with useless UI. I think devs need feedback from end-users and a forum is a really good place to get that.

However, I don't like the fact that here we have only one section called Applications (and Games) which has threads about apps available in Extras mixed with all kind of other threads ranging from app requests to complaints about the inbuilt apps of N900. What I have seen in some other forums is that there is a separate section for all the apps and if some app proves popular (read: the thread becomes really long), it will get it's own subsection. I think this would be a great idea to implement in MeeGo forum.

In other words, I think a better support for devs would be great, but at the same time non-devs community members should not be forgotten.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

If we agree with the idea of starting from scratch, then we can agree also with the idea of starting new subforums based on real needs at the time.

Imagine we would start today. The setting could be:

- General
- Community (substituting the mailing list?)
- Development

More on request. If such requests would come with a concrete purpose, scope and 2 moderators identified then such forum could start soon and grow fast.

The limits would not be put by a predefined scope but on real interest coming with real commitment to keep some quality standards.

Under this premise we could be proactive with Nokia, LG and whoever else shipping MeeGo devices to see if they are happy getting related forums under this umbrella. Ideally they would provide the moderators or people acting as gateways with their own organizations.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

If you look at this from a competitive standpoint, you limit the impact of other forums (if that's what you want to do) by offering a superior experience to the target group (which at this point seems unclear "developers" "end users" etc).

It's not necessarily the device vendors, operators, and private businesses that decide how many forums are out there. It's the users of the forums that decide, the community members that give their vote of confidence to the various forums. With a massive amount of members the forum gains critical mass and it ends up being the natural place to start, because you know that's where the action is.

I believe that by being FIRST meego.com has a unique first-mover advantage over ANY other meego-related forum. Furthermore meego.com has a potential advantage over any other forum in that Nokia and Intel are both involved in the site.

If I were an executive at either of these companies, and certainly if I were a sales and marketing executive, I would get involved in meego.com and I would make sure I get the end users' attention, interest, approval, engagement, loyalty, buzz, and involvement in the forum, because ultimately it would lead to business. I would realize that I had a unique, but temporary, advantage here to create THE premier on-line meego community.

I came to this forum from WinMo and mainly the on-line forum called XDA-developers (hasn't been mentioned here; at least it didn't show up in my search). Yes I've frequented other forums, blogs, review sites etc, but I always came back to XDA, simply because it was the largest community that attracted the biggest amount of members, generated the greatest threads and had the sharpest developers.

For those of you unfamiliar with that community, it's got close to 2.2 million registered users, up by roughly 200.000 since december 2009 (!). There are 5-6 thousand people on line at any one point in time.

That site started out as an HTC/Windows Mobile developer driven community but evolved into a mix of user and developer forum. With the launch of HTC Android devices XDA opened up to this OS as well. A few weeks ago, due to popular demand, it opened up to other brand manufactured devices, besides HTC.

I think it would be a mistake by Nokia/Intel to make Meego.com a developer centric community exclusively and forego the opportunity and power residing in the end users.

Surely the issues of how to structure the forum, the number of sub forums, forums for other classes of meego devices and other brand manufacturers can be resolved.

Here's a link to XDA developers newly designed entrance. Nice color choice btw: www.xda-developers.com

and to the forum:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

This is a step in the right direction. And yes, substitute the mailing list.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Looking at the http://www.1src.com/forums/ site which he refers to (I didn't know Reggie was behind that well-respected site until now!), it looks like there is a sub-forum for each device within the 1src forums structure. I think this is a good model.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Please, please let it be vBulletin and nothing else. :P

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

My suggestion for Forum areas:
- end-users (newcomers, power users)
- community (community members, contributors, council)
- developers
- builders (vendors, hobbyist) [new with MeeGo]

I differentiate only these 4 on the highest level due to their different interest in coming to MeeGo:
E: use, get answers (Q&A, FAQ), learn
C: discuss, contribute
D: develop, distribute
B: build MeeGo devices

I think the high noise ratio on TMO is due to the fact, that there is no focused attempt to serve end-users for their typical need. TMO itself was a step to provide a place for community besides developers. My opinion is that there is no need to drastically change what has evolved previously - just add end-user focus and builder focus.

I agree with starting from scratch and starting with high-level grouping only.

I think spinoffs will happen later (e.g. end-user Q&A could be better in structured form instead of forum, community functions like brainstorm etc.) and sub-forums can spawn when there is need.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Well, I am not going to make any big fuzz about it either, but you quietly lost me. Single sign on or no sign on. I am not going to sign up to a mailing list (ever again, any more than I'm going to dial up a BBS ever again), and I'm not going to sign up on another forum when it should not have been necessary. I know I don't count for much as I do not contribute much. So, no fuzz, no loss, but also no involvement.

I would miss the bears.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Cheers qgil, that looks like an excellent idea and seems the way forward. And please yes, replace the mailing list with the forum.. I can only speak for myself but i'm not having much fun keeping up with both!

Gadgety, good call on bringing up xda-dev, I was thinking about doing the same thing. If talk.meego really does target all users of all meego devices, I think a lot could be learned from there and adopting the device specific subforum idea which Reggie and Millhouse mentioned. Its not without its flaws (e.g. some projects developed over at xda start for only one device and then users of other devices get linked across to the other forums, there is a lot of noise too) but still is by and large a usable and productive place despite its huge number of users. But for the time being, I think qgil has hit the nail on the head and we should focus on what is productive for now and consider structure (of say, device/vendor specific subfora) when the need arises for it.

Only thing I would add to qgils sections; a mechanism by which new forums can be proposed or structure/direction discussed. I guess maybe this comes under community in the list? Ought to have an explicit presence there anyway IMHO, if only a sticky! :D

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

What you say makes sense, but... Would not also other customers join in at some time, other than the Maemo owners? Meego will be the most advanced hand held devices on the market - would not a rather large section of this market be drawn to the new/changed forum? Like the majority on talk.maemo.org isn't 770 owners any more, the majority at talk.meego.org would not be Maemo owners.

Anyway, I agree with you on this being only a section of the target demographic, I just disagree on the idea that large communities works less well than small ones. I'm thinking Ubuntu must be one of the larger on the net. No one expects a single happy blob to keep track of all of the disgruntled N800 and N900 and N900.2 owners and their compaints... The only thing you'd really be doing is giving all the sub communities - that will exist nomatter what solution is chosen - a sense of belonging to a larger community at the same time.

You should be hogging as many users as possible and make them feel some pride in the umbrella they're under. Instead you want to divide and be conquered.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I still recommend renaming General (something indicating broad technology and related business talk-- Business and Technical?) as well as making Community first in that list. So...

• Community (augmenting mailing list)
• Development
• Business and Technical

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

General purpose update for anyone loosely following the thread... a MeeGo community website meeting took place via IRC on the 24th Feb. Details can be found here and a full log here. The meeting covered numerous topics, one of which was the new MeeGo community forums. It was decided that a new vBulletin forum should be set up, based on qgil's ideas shown in post #163 quoted below, and incorporating single sign on with the other services on the site (the practicalities of how this will be done are being worked on). So referring back to the first post, pretty much option number two :p

I'm sure most folks reading this are already aware of all this having seen many familiar names in the logs, and also I'm sure someone who was actually present at the meeting will come an elaborate if required, because I wasn't even there :o But just thought I'd put this up because its a wee pet hate of mine when I'm following a thread which gets resolved somewhere else and I'm left in the dark!


--

Volt- I think you're right when you suggest the MeeGo forum will attract a wider selection of users, however its probably a bit early to tell just yet. We'll have to see who shows up, and which direction the forums go in when MeeGo devices start to reach the market. There's potentially something of a paradox in that only end users who become useful contributors are likely to be welcomed with open arms, yet at the same time, any end user may become a contributor. Going back to user consultation during the development process though, seeking input from the online community is a necessary-but-not-sufficient method in any case because some of the target demographic will not be represented here or at talk.meego. But I'm waffling, and essentially you're quite right when you say the community will be a valuable resource which mustn't be neglected. And I absolutely couldn't and wouldn't argue against that :)

With regards to my concerns about a huge forum with many different potential tangents, I still think it is a tricky thing to get right but I have come around to the idea that its far from impossible, and having followed MeeGo on the mailing list and IRC logs I think my worries will hopefully be unfounded, because it looks like theres a good team of people there (or here!?) who can make it work. And what initially seemed to me like a very daunting prospect has been simplified enormously by qgils proposed dynamic approach where the organisation of the forum will be somewhat dictated by requirements as they arise and change. This makes a lot more sense than predefining a whole lot of stuff now, which is what I thought was going to happen (there's my pessimism and naivety coming in to play!)

In any case I hope you do find your way onto the new forum... maemo is evolving, so I can see the relevance of tmo and why you think it should stay here, but do consider its evolving into something else, something new and a probably quite a bit different. And on those grounds, to me at least, a fresh start seems like a positive move forward.

And if we're really lucky, sans mailing lists eventually. I'm totally with you on that one, I find them a right pain. But shh, the old school is probably watching! :D

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Thanks for the summary happyblob!

So yes, Reggie got the action of setting up a vBulletin in the MeeGo server with SSO in place and with the minimal setup described above. From there we will grow.

The maemo.org round of this MeeGo forum discussion is basically completed. Please go to the meego-community list (or the MeeGo forum when it exists) to discuss further.

Also please start a new thread if you want to discuss further the future of talk.maemo.org.

BIG THANK YOU to anybody active in this very useful discussion!

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I didn't take part in the discussion, just thought I would go along with what was decided as usual. I'm happy that something reasonable came out of it after all :-)

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

A few more updates.

I did get to email mshaver yesterday asking access for a forum server. The reply I got was they want to make sure that Drupal (MeeGo.com's CMS) and vBulletin would work well together first. He also said that the Technical Steering Group (TSG) needs "to review and bless any implementation" that needs to be created.

It looks like the SSO is the big blocker here. Hopefully Intel has the resources to help code something to bridge Drupal, vBulletin, and other upcoming systems.

I'll post updates when I get them.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

/me wonders idly why they weren't represented at the web coordination meeting.

I'd really like to discuss the CMS issue before we start implementing a bunch of stuff on top of Drupal. . . .

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I agree. :(

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

The current meego.com approach of trying to make all the different web tools use Drupal's user database isn't really feasible in the long run. Because of it people have had issues getting editing access to the wiki.

We did quite a lot of work finding an appropriate set of tools for both single sign-on and user profile federation between systems for Maemo's SSO project. Why not use the results from there?

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Playing devil's advocate for a moment, it's not like maemo.org has always been a trouble-free experience either.

To an outsider it looks like a lot of NIH from both camps. I don't know if the right solution is Drupal, Midgard or (most likely) something completely different but I do wish you'd get together in IRC or somewhere and talk it out. Arguing about it here doesn't accomplish anything.

(Still in D-A mode) The fact that those results are several months old and we still haven't got working SSO (I'm not even sure about the current status, is http://wiki.maemo.org/Task:Single_sign-on/Status up to date?) may indicate that they are unworkable or overly complex to setup and maintain.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

[TSG]
Who even who they are beyond Imad and Valtteri.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

...which is the reason we started the SSO project in the first place. The problem with maemo.org is that the whole system grew organically instead of being designed. And that is what I'm trying to avoid with MeeGo here.

Agreed, which is why I wrote a pretty long post about different SSO approaches to meego-community. But now the lists server is down so I guess it will take a while to get delivered.

While I know that Midgard would run meego.com better than Drupal that is not the discussion I'm trying to get into here. The point is having a properly designed SSO and user identity system that isn't tied to the community running on a particular CMS, whether Drupal, Midgard or Sharepoint :p

The reason is simply that SSO has been waiting for the maemo.org server migration to be completed before deployment. And when that was finally done we got this new thing called MeeGo to consider.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Bergie's right. Let's avoid going into crazy loops and realize the chicken has to come before the egg here. There's also high value in agnostic, interoperable technologies at the base of MeeGo.com not just from an administrative standpoint but from a sociopolitical standpoint. As MeeGo grows to fulfill the needs of various manufacturers we need to stay as technologically agnostic and flexible as possible throughout the solution delivery chain.

As for Drupal... I can see some arguments for keeping it but to me the strongest argument against, and for Midgard, is Bergie's tireless engagement on behalf of this community. Do we have any Drupal developers so embedded yet?

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Ah, that explains it... Thanks, and looking forward to reading it when the mailman deities deliver it :-)

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Here we go: http://lists.meego.com/pipermail/mee...ry/000102.html

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

What about the name and URL for the forums? For example:

1. talk.meego.com
2. forum.meego.com
3. forums.meego.com
4. meego.com/talk
5. meego.com/forum
6. meego.com/forums

talk.meego.com would have the obvious symmetry with talk.maemo.org, but some users think of an IRC-style chatroom when they see the word "Talk". "Forum" and "Forums" are probably more widely recognised terms.

The singular versus plural thing depends on whether you think that General, Community and Development are individual forums, or whether there is just one forum with different folders within it. Different sites use different terminology. Which do we prefer?

Trivial, maybe, compared to solving an SSO problem, but site names and URLs are still important, I think.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Please make your MeeGo related proposals at meego.com.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I created a test site and installed the latest version of Drupal (v6.15). I'm currently testing a Drupal add-on called Drupal vB which automatically replicates Drupal accounts to vB during sign-up. It does SSO nicely as well. It looks promising.

I might need help from some of you soon to help test/break it.

Thanks.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Reggie, thanks!

Sorry for insisting: please ask for meego.com testers at meego.com. It's all good if you want to copy here as well but the main place to try/test MeeGo services is Meego. Otherwise it feels weird for the people without a maemo background there (actually many already). Thanks!

http://lists.meego.com/listinfo/meego-community

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I've posted a variant on this to the MeeGo-community mailing list, see http://lists.meego.com/pipermail/mee...ry/000134.html

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Volunteer tester/breaker here.

Can't find anywhere to post anything at meego.com unless you mean mailing lists. And given what they did to me while on a lousy hotel wifi, I'm not favourably inclined towards them.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Another volunteer tester here if required!

Just in case anyone is wondering why I've been posting here but not on the mailing list, it’s because I really don’t like mailing lists. I find them very unengaging, distant and generally backward. Personally I find them highly exclusive; and I don’t mean that in a good way, like a trendy restaurant or posh club, I mean as a novice user, I feel excluded. And I don’t think that’s a good starting point for a community-centric operation! My own two cents anyway, sorry for the rant. I'm still following the meego community list however, just reluctantly, and I’m not contributing.

Going off on a tangent, I notice most of today's posts on the mailing list concern arranging an IRC meet, which perhaps kind of implicitly points to the inadequacies of the mailing list format in itself. Anyway, the meet is looking like 16:00 UTC Friday (5th) but that could be subject to change, just for anyone interested. Although I think the agenda is looking less relevant to the current topic.

Anyway, this is all just a really long winded way of saying I've not lost interest in the project, quite the opposite, and I’ll be looking to get more involved and stop twiddling my thumbs when these forums show up :) Keep up the good work Reggie & co!

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Some more updates. Mike (mshaver) has suggested to run the forum on the same Drupal server. Also, the main server is running Nginx, which hopefully doesn't conflict with vB (I haven't tried running Nginx). I've noticed in vBulletin.com Support that they have been suggesting Nginx recently, which is a good sign.

I've been working hard on Drupal vB. I'm surprised that it still has a lot of bugs, considering that it's been out for quite some time. Anyway, I've fixed some things and I should be opening up the test environment really soon. I will announce it here and on the Meego-community list soon.

Forgive my slow progress as I am new to Drupal.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Wiki page is up: http://wiki.meego.com/Forum_/_Talk

Feel free to help test the bridge.

Thanks!

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Hmmm... so the new forum will use the URL www.meegotalk.com rather than www.talk.meego.com? Is using a different domain to the "main" site a good idea?

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

If you read the wiki, it's a temporary site. The forums will run inside meego.com.

meegotalk.com on the other hand will just be dropped when the forums go live.

Ignore the domain.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Yay i love drupal. Keep up the good work Reggie.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Can't login from N900 using same credentials I successfully use from Windows XP workstation...

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

Note: I updated http://wiki.meego.com/Maemo_and_Moblin_community_assets and http://wiki.meego.com/Proposal_for_a..._working_group with references to the forum work.

Re: MeeGo forum? (maemo.org round)
 

I can't replicate this problem. Can you try changing your password and try again?