Re: Ask the Council!
 

Seconded (after a couple of bad experiences Paypal won't be getting anywhere near my credit cards even again).

Nah, Ovi getting a 30% cut of donations won't go down very well. Unfortunately I don't have an answer that will :-(

Re: Ask the Council!
 

what about obopay? Nokia is now invested in it. ;)

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Haha ! ok that is fair.

Frankly anything that won't confuse end-users is a go for me. What could confuse end-users you may ask ? Any third-party application/website.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

I'll respond to this point by point now.

As mentioned in another reply, Obopay is an option I would hope. I have expanded that part of the presentation to accomodate alternatives to Paypal-- although it really was only used as an example.

Good suggestion, and I can see adding that as a configuration option, sure.

BUT-- the best time to survey the typical user is immediately after they've used the app. If I start an app, I just want to use it and not be bothered with a survey. However, no harm in making that user-configurable and in fact all options should be under a user's control.

And yes, certainly responses could and should be staged offline for later upload. That goes for everything in the proposed framework.

There actually already is a provision in Maemo for crash reporting... in fact there was a mild protest on the dev list about me encroaching on that. :D But sure, more needs to be investigated there. Note that this was also already planned to be configurable; to what, how and when a user responds should/would be completely under their control.

Thanks for the questions! Glad someone is interested.

I have added a page for this project to the MeeGo wiki. PLEASE join in if you are interested!

http://wiki.meego.com/Proposal_for_a..._working_group

Re: Ask the Council!
 

I have some general questions for the Council that will help in answering questions that have been asked of me as a first time candidate.

Hopefully you guys can answer them for me please.

How many members does our community have?

With the talk of the recent growth, can any real numbers be put on it yet?

For instance: How many members were there last year at this time?

How many members can vote in this election?

How can a member easily determine his eligibility?

Thanks. :)

Oh, and one final question if you don't mind. How much time on average per week do you spend on council business?

Re: Ask the Council!
 

If I'm reading it right it requires a cellphone so it would be a non-starter for non-phone device users.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Understood. But guess where the main focus will be. ;)

Anyway it's all about options. Suggestions welcome!

Re: Ask the Council!
 

We need 'thumb down' button next to threads. After some threshold such thread should not appear in the active topics and should be visited by moderator. We need to filter the noise a bit, it's getting quite a problem.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Accurate numbers will require some query work. I was recently quoted 30,000+ members, but I can't confidently say how that breaks down without access to the data, and I don't have it. Hopefully the metrics initiative at MeeGo will solve that going forward.

As for eligibility, I'm not sure if you mean candidate or voter. The former is on Dave Neary's list (http://wiki.maemo.org/Community_Coun...ble_candidates) and any member with 10 karma can vote. A member's karma can be seen by using their maemo.org member name (not Talk) as shown using mine (http://maemo.org/profile/view/texrat/)

I typically spend anywhere from 10 to 30 hours per week on community business; of that, maybe 1/2 has been specific to council-oriented work.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

I used to disagree with that, but I've come around to your way of thinking. Reggie is in fact testing that with the MeeGo forum.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Until last month I would agree (the future of Maemo looked very bleak to me, confined to the limitations of the smartphone form factor), but MeeGo changes things. Wouldn't it be great to see a device-neutral "marketplace" where you can get the apps (both commercial and community) you want for your MeeGo-running computer, tablet/MID, smartphone, car, TV and/or whatever else joins the party, all in one place? In such an environment I don't think the smartphone section would be the largest "consumer" of software.

I wish I had any good ones :-( The best I can come up with is for a a foundation-style entity to be formed and set up its own payment/donation system (possibly with some trusted third-party handling the card processing). I realise it'll probably never happen though.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Thanks. You're the best!

Does the current council have access to membership information, and track some of these numbers? I would really like to know how many members in total are eligible to vote? Not on an individual basis, just a total.

I'm sorry for seemingly just popping in to this active thread to ask these questions but after searching the forums, the title indicated that this would be the place to ask about current information.

After reading through the thread to see if the questions have been asked and answered already to avoid repetitiveness, I see the thread has forked into three or four sub-topics that you are doing a very good job of maintaining.

So... in the interest of continuity I will also comment on one of those sub-topics...

On your intuitive:

I have always thought that promoting monetary support for a developers efforts was a very good idea...

>> HERE, on 06-28-08 <<

Thanks for expanding on this Texrat.

It has since occurred to me that having all those funds pass through a central server if even for a fraction of a second, could produce additional revenue. While I don't think this is, or should be the purpose in the design of this initiative, I believe it certainly should be looked in to.

Perhaps whatever payment service that is chosen can provide maemo.org with a percentage of whatever "handling" revenue that is eventually generated. Even if this stream initially is just a trickle, it would grow as the popularity of the apps and the devices that use them grows.

I am not a finance guy and do not pretend to be one. I am making the suggestion here so that perhaps someone with real knowledge of such things financial can contribute to this conversation. I'm thinking it could help in supporting the development of your initiative and others like it in the future.

~

Back to my original query:

Knowing the make up and size of the group I am purporting to represent in the coming election is important to me. If this information is not available to the current council, how would you direct my queries?

Re: Ask the Council!
 

This isn't some magical property which being on the council will allow you to know. Just ask someone like X-Fade, dneary or Reggie.

Anyway, the electorate size can be roughly determined yourself:

1. Go to http://maemo.org/profile/list/
2. Find the page which has the first account at karma <10 (128).
3. Multiply the number of people per page (30) by the page number found in step 2, plus any left overs (14)
4. Tada: your magic number is 3,854 :-)

Of course, the Maemo community is larger than that electorate and larger than any one system's account database.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

D'oh! That's what I get for answering without thinking. :o

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Yeah sure ! How do I do that, I add my name to the list of contributor ?

Re: Ask the Council!
 

And the total number of registered members is available here: https://garage.maemo.org/
Currently: 33,775

Re: Ask the Council!
 

I'm a simple guy and I'm sorry I asked such a simple question. :o
I didn't think that it had magical properties. The answer does have meaningful properties to me though if I expect to be effective as a representative of the whole community.

I would also think that membership and other key volume indicators might be something the council would want to know and keep track of in order to predict what resources it should allocate and to prioritize its efforts to best be able to represent the community to Nokia.

Would you or VDVsx also happen to have the number of active community mailing list participants? I only recently joined the "Community" list via Nabble and I believe it stated on the sign-up page that the community list had a little less than 300 members if you also added those who received it in digest form. I don't know how to easily determine if this correct or if a total accurately reports unique members.

Mama always said, "simple is as simple does" so you might want to check my math on that.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Sounds about right. https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/roster/maemo-community (requires authentication via https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/list...aemo-community) currently states:

BTW, the numbers for maemo-users are 973/245 and for maemo-developers 1488/392. Make of that what you will.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

I had a look at Fedora and I found something interesting called ABRT (automatic bug reporting tool).

May I ask why the protest to help users to report bug ? It seems to me to be a win-win situation.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

ABRT was mentioned on the email list, but thanks for the reminder-- I forgot to reference it in my presentation.

My understanding of protests was that some want to avoid involving users with crash reports, and make them 100% automatic or not at all. I disagree strongly with that idea.

Oh-- did you find RevdKathy's walk-through in this thread for using the MeeGo wiki? I had some blips while following it but ultimately it worked.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

@Texrat

Yeah I managed to find my way out of this mess.

How in the world did you create a table of content ?

Do you mind if I change the page a little to maintain some consistency in the wiki.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Table of contents is generated automatically based on headers. And no, I don't mind if you massage it at all! That's the fun of wikis. I just threw that up quickly anyway.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Ok I had a look at the proposed working group and tried as much as possible to give them all the same "look".

Would you mind to have a look at the UX working group page to be sure everything is all right ?

Link to the UX working group wiki page.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Mandor that is an outstanding job! So far all I did was change 1 word (expend to expand). Nicely done.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Dear council members,

How are you going to address those N900 users who use It as a business tool?

It looks like issues with missing search capability in email app and calendar do not get much attentention.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Why would the council address that issue? User support is not one of the council's jobs. If you have issues with the level of support for a particular feature, talk to Nokia Care.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Well, I use the N900 as a business tool and it works for my needs, so issues are going to be on a case-by-case basis.

That said, what would you be looking for from the council in this regard?

Re: Ask the Council!
 

I think oneFinn's question (and various parts of the discussion in the nominations thread) point to the fact that many people equate the volunteer community here at maemo.org with the official Nokia / Maemo organization, and many people think that the council has some influence over the internal workings of Maemo Devices.

The council is just five very engaged, enthusiastic community members. Nokia has (very) occasionally told us extra stuff, but we are not part of Nokia or Maemo, we don't have any control over what Nokia does, and we are not paid by Nokia.

So the council cannot "address" any issues regarding official Nokia software or hardware, unless it is open source, and then, well, anyone can address it.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Council, this is a question about my eligibility to vote in the coming elections. I'm asking in the open for the sake of transparency.

I have enough karma, but my maemo.org account was created on "2010-01-14 17:02:50", which is past the cut-off of 2009-12-31. However, I had some bug reports in December, 2009, before the cut-off. Would you consider extending voting eligibility to me based on my bugzilla activity?

Re: Ask the Council!
 

IMO that should count as a "maemo.org account". The fact that we don't have SSO yet is just an implementation technicality and shouldn't affect voting eligibility.

In case anyone needs confirmation, the bug #s in question are 7460, 7461, 7467 & 7468.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Thanks for the quick and positive response. If this is sufficient as a council decision, please tell Dave Neary so that he can send me my voting token.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

jacktanner, I don't speak for the whole council but I say you should be good if one account falls in the date period. But you should contact Dave directly.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

I share lma's thoughts, so I gave a yes to Dave yesterday when he asked me about the situation, also don't speak for the whole council :)

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Thanks, all, got my token, looking forward to voting.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Thanks, all, for your votes and support for me for the last two elections. It has been exciting, challenging, and a real learning and growing experience.

Even though I won't be on the next council, I'll still be around. Feel free to keep asking me questions! ;)

Re: Ask the Council!
 

I just googled my name, and found the following :

" maemo.org - Kristian Wannebo
maemo.org > Profiles > Kristian Wannebo. Karma 75. 0. 0. 0 Add to favourites 0 Bury. Websites. Garage. My Profile. offline Kristian Wannebo ...
maemo.org/profile/view/kristianw/ "

Other members are similarly visible.
( I hope it is just a mistake in the settings in the forum software. )

Inside this forum we can be anonymous, and outside...
Personally I don't mind much,
but personal information should really not LEAK OUT of a forum.

Also, we promote openness in software,
and implicitly indicate superiority over the Microsoft world,
and should attempt superiority in security.

Please forgive my heavy-handed approach to the subject,
but it is really a matter of principles of integrity.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

This is not on the forum software but on your maemo.org profile.

You have always been given the option to make anything private on your maemo.org profile. If you are logged in, go to: http://maemo.org/profile/edit/

Note that above it says: "Here is where you define yourself in the maemo community. You can set the privacy of each field after saving changes."

Save your profile and unpublish your first and last name:
http://content.screencast.com/users/...03-31_1050.png

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Reggie has just answered the real question.

unfortunately you might have kicked yourself in the ***.
because now searching for your name on google brings up your complaint post as first entry.

general advice for all computer activities:

if you expect anonymity do not post personal details anywhere online

Re: Ask the Council!
 

uh-oh. LOL.

Note that Google is constantly crawling TMO. Anything you post here will get cached in a matter of minutes.

Re: Ask the Council!
 

Thanks for correcting me.

I always thought that choosing privacy or not affected how this information was visible INSIDE the community.

I still think that karma is the kind of information that concerns only community members.

( As I said, I don't really mind personally, so have a good LOL, you are welcome.)